“My cousin used to be a biter.” Dav randomly spoke up. “To curb his biting, my aunt started giving him gum bark to chew on. He was too busy chewing, his chances to bite seemed to diminish.”

It turned out that Pait’s maid came in with a potential solution. “Very well, hmm… what does a zombie eat? Isn’t that human flesh? Is she trying to eat me?”

Although I declared this, the little girl was still looking up at me defiantly, but wasn’t chewing or anything else. She had just clamped down and continued to bite down hard. Even the thought of cutting off the area bit and not the entire hand caused me to squirm. I probably wouldn’t do well if it was a zombie apocalypse situation. I’d be one of the first to turn.

I had Alysia go to my cupboard and bring back some dried meat I had brought. I knew there were ways to come up with some kind of refrigeration system in my inventory. Maybe I could just make a mountain, and the top would be cold. Or, I could go underground and make a wine cellar. If I finished the electrical system, I could get a refrigerator going. I had boughten one from Earth, but I wasn’t exactly knowledgeable about wiring. Thankfully, I had books and when I had the time, I’d figure it out. If only this world had electrical engineer or construction worker lore floating around.

“Here you go… some meat… some yummy meat.” I declared, shaking it near her face after Alysia had brought it back.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“It probably needs to be fresh.” Pait offered.

“I see…” I turned to Alysia. “Could you?”

“I-I guess…”

I ended up sending Alysia out with a blade of her own. She used to be a general, a dungeon diver, and an Osterian Princess. She wasn’t weak by any sense of the word. Since my hand was out of commission, she left my soul world and went to hunt for something to eat. The Deep may be composed of many monsters, but they weren’t built into dungeons, so when they died, they didn’t turn back into miasma and get reused by the dungeon.

Dungeons had an intricate system of recycling miasma, which is why they could keep growing even though dungeon divers pillaged from them. It was theorized that item drops were merely a way that dungeons bribed dungeon divers to stop. If their pockets were filled with useless crap, they would have to turn back and not be able to keep going deeper where they might cost the dungeon more later on. However, the Deep was an ecosystem instead. When a creature died, the only option was for a new one to be born. We were probably upsetting such an ecosystem, but I would not worry about that.

The door that had shut behind us was still closed, so I had to make a portal to help Alysia escape. At least I could still make Portals to anywhere I had walked in the Deep so far. I sent her to an area where I recalled a small and rather unaggressive monster, and she returned with a Deep Rabbit a short time later.

I lifted the fresh meat, still dripping with blood. The zombie girl’s eyes turned to it with interest. For a second, I had hope. Then she turned her head away, yanking my hand with it.

“Ow…” I sighed.

“Maybe you need to cook it?” Dav offered.

This was going to take a while.