I am thinking that the next day will continue along the same lines. But I am mistaken.

It rains half of the night and the water starts dripping down the basement. I can’t let Oollie sleep on a wet floor, so before it’s too late, I go to the Dungeon’s back and see what I can do.

There is a whole freaking waterfall coming down in one of the back caves. The ceiling is ten meters tall, and I have no idea how I can fix it. Oollie can’t climb on air, and building a ladder would take forever.

Then, I remember how I can control the temperature, and I knock it down to the minimum. It’s almost magical. I do not now even need to close my eyes to call the extremely low temperatures of the deep space itself and order it to embed itself in the water.

I guess I got so good already so I can just watch it turn into ice as it touches the floor and then all the way up to the hole. It takes mere seconds, and now I do not have a waterfall, only an ice column. But the leak is shut, and I see the ground above is not cracking, so it’s done. It’s a temporary fix, but at least I do not need to worry about flooding the basement.

Satisfied, I go back to Oollie and rest for another hour or two.

Now, I am mostly occupied thinking about how I can earn some coins. The question that burdens the minds of the billions of other lost souls.

With no souls to sell, the only way is to make more energy than I need and then sell it. SAMS informed me that each unit of LIC energy can be sold for 1 coin. Great! I have, after the Harvester and Energy worked through the night, 12 Energy units. So, what can I do with it? Nothing comes to mind yet.

But, I definitely now know how the Dungeon processes the material brought inside. We did a little test yesterday. We dropped some branches of equal size around. Some by the entrance, some in the middle of the first cave, some by the Core, and the rest all the way in the back of the Dungeon.

It becomes clear the further we place the branch in the Dungeon, the faster the decomposition. Like at the entrance, the things were being processed rather slowly. But all the way in the back, the wood was almost all gone.

I check my biomaterial inventory and now it stands at five percent full. That means I will have to go with Oollie and bring a bunch of more material inside, all I can find. Even rotten fruits count for something. I bet the more the material is processed and has more diverse chemistry, my inventory can be filled faster.

I will have to visit the Dwarfs' abandoned camp and strip it naked.

Downstairs, only the branches that were not placed on the black granite have also started to decompose, confirming my suspicion of a black marble serving as a preservative. That’s why the iron bars in the cell downstairs are not disintegrated. And that is why everything in the Core, all my equipment is positioned on the pillars of granite. If not, I bet they would be gone a long time ago, eaten up by the dungeon itself.

Obviously, I need to treat this endeavor as a business opportunity. That much has been made crystally clear from the start. I think that’s one of the reasons why Baron Ternicus picked me in the first place.

I am a very successful General Manager at one of the nationwide chains of family-oriented restaurants. Or I used to be one… I don’t know. But anyway, for most of my career, the higher management would send me to struggling restaurants that had potential, so I could sort things out, put them in place, and guide it to the path of growth and profitability. I’m good at it. Organized. Motivated. Intelligent. Good with people and workers. At least I thought I was.

So… to treat this as a business is like… First, build a product people need and want. Put in a capable and dedicated workforce. Then design the place to be ass-kicking. And then market the shit out of it.

But what can I sell that can attract people? And from what I see, there are really not that many locals.

Since this is very much like a middle-aged world, I could offer training. Some of the caves could be converted to monster fighting grounds, and if they win, well, they gain some fighting equipment or something. I do not know what yet. But that might work.

Still...Planning things out without knowing anything really does not make sense, and it starts to hurt my head.

It's clear that if I do not want to make mistakes and go the wrong way, I need first to find all I can about this world and how it works. And the things it needs and craves for.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Anybody in there?” I hear a voice as I’m sitting down, leaning against one of the boulders, just inside the Entrance, contemplating it all while taking a break from carrying everything useful inside the Dungeon.

“Anybody there??” The same voice, now louder, reaches me. A woman’s. A young woman's. I jump up instantly and run to the entrance.

I try talking, but she pays me no attention. I turn around and see Ooollie still resting there. I remember I came out so he could take a break as well.

He sees me, gets up lazily, and moves toward me as if he is a student called to go to the principal's office. Or a dentist’s.

“Well, hurry up,” I tell him, and then I rush into him. “She may leave!”

“Who are you?” I say, with the deepest guttural voice that Oollie could come up with, which is not saying much.

The voice cannot scare her one bit. It can make a person only more curious.

“You can show yourself. I will do you no harm,” she says, taking another step up the trail.

“Let me be the judge of that,” I say and have a better look at her.

“Holy momma,” leaves my lips without my intention.

Long amber hair tied back. A tight fighter uniform resembling a bit of Wonder Woman's.

I instantly feel guilty. Maybe she is not that pretty. Maybe I just have been locked up in the dungeon for too long. Too long? It has only been three days.

“Aren’t you a cute little one?” she says to me as she climbs up to the entrance and decides to stand there, not coming in through the Dungeon veil I know she cannot even see.

“I’ll show you cute,” I hear myself say, and then I decide I need to behave. This is strange. The first impression counts.

And just to make things worse, the wolves howl and one of them even growls from the basement, the sound carrying itself up, maybe answering her rhetorical question instead of me.

“I hear you have some friends there.”

“Yeah, I have some new recruits, but they are still in training,” I say, and sigh. “It might take a while with that bunch.”

“So, it is true. The children did not lie.”

“Oh, so, you’ve seen them. How are they?”

“Fine. And happy to be home. So, you just let them go?”

“Of course, what else would I do?”

“Well, their parents sent their gratitude.”

“Is that why you came here?”

“I actually have been tracking some goblins. A dozen of them have raided a farmstead not far from here. Just over the hill to the north. You would not know anything about that, would you?”

“No. I have not seen any goblins. But then, I’ve been here only a short while.”

“I see. Maybe I’ll go and look up the mountain. They are known to hide there during the day.”

“I would not know. But, hey, if I ever see them…”

She turns around to look at me.

“I’ll give them a message, tell them you are looking for them.”

She nods her head, and even smiles. That comes so easily for her. Yet the long sword she fidgets on seems ready to be pulled out of the scabbard any moment.

“So, it is true. The dungeon has a new master.”

“I do not know if you want to call me that.”

“Yeah, so what do I call you?”

I feel like telling her my name, or Oollie's. But neither sounds right. “You can call me ‘daddy’ if you want to.”

I sound like a pervert even to myself.

But she smiles. “No. You do not look anything like my daddy.”

“By the way, what is your name?”

“I’m Tarra. I’m a ranger around these parts.”

“Nice to meet you, Tarra. That is a really pretty name. And it suits you just right. Not too gentle and not too rough.”

“Are you flirting with me?” she asks, smiling and frowning at the same time.

“Me? Never. I have a wife and two kids. A happy marriage too, before you ask me.”

She smiles again. I think I’m going someplace.

“I’d offer you something, but… I'm sorry to say, I’m out of milk. And… bread is not going to be made for unforeseeable future.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Something about paying for the licenses and stuff. Just the paperwork, you know.”

She tries to look behind me, to see what else she can see in the Dungeon. I would offer her in. But… maybe it’s just too soon.

“And you say you’re a ranger?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you a little bit too young to be ranging all on your own?”

That upsets her a bit. I can see it clearly. I bet she hears that a lot. Suddenly her face does not look young at all as it appears she aged a whole decade in an instant. She looks at me with a funny glare in her eyes, frowning and smiling at the same time.

But then, she pulls herself back and returns to just smile to me. “I am old enough, don’t you worry. Besides, there is nobody left. Since Erwian Wars, we are left with few. And young. Still, if you have any doubt, I can show you how skillful I am,” she says and starts to pull the sword out.

“Oh, no need,” I say as I jump all scared. Scared that I have upset her. That she, this beautiful creature, might actually try to hurt me. That would be a bummer.

“I trust you are very good with that sword. No need to take it out”

She nods her head, frowning at me, and pushes the sword back in its scabbard. “Yeah. You are a strange one. Kids did not lie.”

“Well, if you see Verne and Nora around, tell them to be safe. And, that I’m working on those bad wolves that tried to eat them. Maybe the next time they see them, they’ll be nothing more than loving puppies. But then… it might take a while since…”

I am starting to babble again. Have to stop.

She still smiles at me though, and her finger is not fidgeting on the sword's handle anymore. “Well, I better go and see if I can track those goblins.”

“Okay. Hope to see you soon.”

“I’ll see you soon. And,” she adds as she turns around to look at me again. “Make sure you come up with a name by then.”

She is gone, just like that. And all I can do is sigh. Repeatedly.

Only after she has been gone for more than half an hour, did I understand what I did. Did wrong! Here was a person who could answer a lot of questions about the place I landed. And I let her just go. A pretty one that is. What am I going to do? Look for an ugly wench so I could feel comfortable talking to and finally get some good info about this planet??

The darkness does not come yet when I see dark shapes come through the lines of trees. Fortunately, I already carried all that the dwarfs left behind inside the Dungeon for processing. Fortunately. Because as they hit the trail, I see ugly heads of goblins coming my way.