It was quiet in the forest as a Slime oozed back into a small cave from which it had come out of moments before, a freshly killed squirrel being digested within its gelatinous body. Alas, the Slime's small victory didn’t last long as it was mobbed by six others, causing the seven Slimes to all fight each other for dominance and food. but if you looked further into the cave you would find it to be not as small as it looks from outside, having a length of thirty meters from entrance to the back wall and was twelve meters wide at its widest point... not to mention that it was filled with at minimum thirty more Slimes than the seven, now five, fighting each other at the entrance.

These Slimes attacking each other was normal however, because ever since they first inhabited the cave when it was but ten meters deep and four meters wide they had hunted the nearby animals to the point that they instinctively kept well clear of where the Slimes would roam normally. It was also why there were so few of the gelatinous monsters, for before their decline due to mindlessly overhunting there had been well over a hundred of them when they had been forced to cannibalism and absorbing the minerals in the cave walls to sustain themselves. Now if one ever caught anything a group would break into a fight over the precious food like a pack of starving hyenas over a bone, killing and eating each other for the carcass of whatever squirrel or bug had the misfortune to be found by them. As a matter of fact, these fights broke out so often now that the cave was practically infused with mana as the remains of many dead Slimes that had killed each other at the same time and were left unattended in there would evaporate and be absorbed by the soft earth and stone that made up the walls ceiling and floor of the cave. So when a fight broke out in the very back of the cave between two lone Slimes over a crystal that had started to form from the dense mana in the cave it sparked a chain reaction.

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“A new dungeon has been born.”

As the two Slimes killed each other in their fight they were forcefully absorbed by the crystal as the mana density of the cave was finally pushed over its natural limit, causing a catalytic affect which caused the rest of the cave’s mana to collapse into the poor crystal and causing it to crack and grow at an alarming rate until a small notification appeared within it. It didn’t take long for the mana in the cave to return to a more stable level, almost indistinguishable from the world outside its entrance as the crystal-now-dungeon-core stirred and the Slimes froze in confusion.

Their confusion didn’t last though as one by one the new dungeon took notice of them and began to methodically take over them one by one by infusing its mana into them. Some Slimes tried to resist but they eventually gave in and were taken over or were attacked by one of the dungeon’s captured Slimes.

It was during this frenzy that another rare event happened, almost as if guided by fate. One of the still wild Slimes had managed to overpower a captured Slime and was able to defeat it but died in the process as the dungeon’s Slimes had managed to rip the wild Slime’s core from its body in its final moments. As the two dead Slimes collapsed and their goo mixed a light descended from the sky but was knocked off course by an unknown force, sending it careening into the cave and crashing into the mixing remains of the two Slimes…

“Warning, a new species has been born! Variant: Ghost Slime acquired.”

Confused, and a little surprised, the young dungeon looked towards where the light had crashed into the two dead Slimes, only to be met with a pale, almost transparent slime with a pair of glowing orbs for what it assumed to be eyes.

‘W-w-where am I?’ The dungeon heard the strange new Slime think.