Fizz was working on more sweets; Today, he was working on a jelly. Internally, he hoped that the dungeon didn’t do anything with the jelly; John would scold him for allowing it access to slimes, no matter how harmless. Most of them tended to be acidic, anyways, and Fizz hated working with them.

For a moment, his hands clenched. Slimes… They were useful for making jelly - he was using some slime organs to make the jelly in the first place - but he loathed the slime race. If it was up to him, slimes just wouldn’t exist. Now, someone might look at his thoughts and find them unreasonable; Slimes didn’t really do anything wrong, per say. They just… drifted around, munching on dirt or whatever else. They were actually incredibly helpful to their chosen environment.

But Fizz hated them not out of spite, or because they had bested him one too many times - although they certainly had - he hated them because they were nearly impossible to cook with. He’d tried buns, he’d tried cakes, he’d even tried cupcakes and muffins, merianges and frosting…

But everything - except a well-processed jelly - didn’t take in any flavor, at all! None! Nada! It didn’t matter how much seasoning he had thrown onto the thing, it was like it took the flavor and never gave it back. Even the sweetest thing he put onto it hardly worked. It was practically a blessing from the gods when someone else had told him that he could make jelly with them.

Grumbling to himself while he stirred the slimy mixture with a bit more ‘enthusiasm,’ he noticed that he was nearly out of sugar. This wasn’t too much of a problem - He’d just need to refill it and he had enough for the jelly - but he muttered his dismay regardless. He loved making treats of course, but sometimes it had a little frustration in it.

“I’m out of sugar already..?”

For a moment, Fizz felt a bit down. It’d been a while since he felt that tinge of genuine displeasure at something. Well, it didn’t last long when he got gently nudged by a little muffin spider, precariously balancing a jar of sugar on its’ head. Fizz quickly relieved the poor thing of its’ burden, before confusedly looking over at the core.

The core that had started to turn from a mild brown to a soft pink. He didn’t know cores could change colors; He didn’t even know what the colors meant. But he did know his manners. He nodded at the core before setting the empty jar on top of the little spider - whom promptly rushed off with it - and putting the new jar where it should be.

“Thanks, dungeon.”

Fizz said with a nod to the dungeon, content. He didn’t know they could do that! He should’ve paid more attention to the few times John rambled about dungeons.

If he did, maybe he’d realize this level of understanding wasn’t normal, and that a core changing color was unheard of. But he was far too busy making jelly, muttering at his cookbook, and rambling to the air.

Lemrio was feeling great, having done a fantastic job helping his friend. At least, he thought of Fizz as a friend; He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t actually know the word ‘friend’ in the first place. Lemrio had to scratch his memory to remember what ‘sugar’ was, but he’d done a good job. At least, he hoped he did, since it wasn’t rejected.

Idly continuing to listen to Fizz’s mutters while trying to associate it to the word and what he did next, Lemrio was learning a lot compared to before when he was only able to attach words to meanings sometimes - Said words include ‘Spider,’ ‘Roach,’ ‘Disgusting’ - His least favorite word in relation to his beloved siders - and ‘Gold.’ Adventurers liked gold, but Lemrio found it a bit too… Well, he wasn’t sure, but it just didn’t feel right to have it in his dungeon whatsoever.

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Lemrio noticed that Fizz wasn’t doing what he usually did. Instead of kneading dough or mixing batter, he seemed to be mixing some kind of translucent material. Lemrio’s curiosity peaked long ago, and he was watching this process with all his attention. Listening to the rambles - even if he could only understand some of it - and trying to record this to his memory. Fizz continued working, adding sugar to sweeten things up, and squeezing oranges to add the juice in. He even put a bit of orange zest too, but only a bit.

Too much would overpower the flavor.

Muttering and mumbling to himself, Lemrio started to notice how words had a varied but not unlimited range of vowels. 2 kinds of sounds related to ‘a’, 2 kinds of sounds for ‘e’, 2 for ‘i’, 2 for ‘o’, 2 for ‘u’... It was a lot to keep track of for Lemrio, but he had kept track of the location of all his spiders before - a hard feat for a human - so he was doing alright.

He idly tried to consider how to make those sounds. It seemed like he would need an adventurer or something… But again, he just didn’t get it. Something wasn’t clicking. But Lemrio knew he would probably use this at some point, and at least, he was starting to understand some of the instructions. Dungeons learn fast or die, usually.

Fizz was unaware of that, continuing to make some jelly to add to one of his cakes. Lemrio stopped focusing so much on vocabulary and understanding when he realized how things were forming; Fizz put the jelly in the middle of the cake and stirred it.

“...An ice cube would make this process faster.”

Fizz idly remarked to himself, but didn’t expect anything out of it. Due to the fact Lemrio had no idea what ice was, he couldn’t help, but he gosh darn wanted to! Lemrio racked his mind for a while before giving up, deciding that giving random objects to Fizz in hopes one of them could be ‘ice’ would do nothing but make him annoyed.

Fizz finished up his orange cake and began decorating it with slices and icing. Thanks to Lemrio, he hardly ran out of anything. Sure, Lemrio had to spend more magic than he gained with that, but he got it back due to just how long Fizz had stuck around. Satisfied, Fizz looked at his work and hummed.

“Hmm…”

He felt like the cake was missing something. Fizz squinted at the cake for a few minutes, before another muffin spider came up with rainbow sprinkles. That was it! Fizz grinned and took the sprinkles, adding it to the cake. Now it was perfect; Now it was good for eating. Satisfied and feeling somewhat giddy about how the dungeon had helped out a few times, Fizz decided that he shouldn’t just take the whole cake out.

Cutting it into slices and leaving half the cake on the floor for the dungeon and its’ inhabitants, Fizz left happy. Well, for a short moment he wondered if it was technically cannibalism for him to have indirectly offered the cake, but it didn’t matter to him. He was having a grand time in the dungeon! He knew it’d probably get harder for him to get into the little ‘secret bakery’ he had in the core room when the dungeon started focusing on making more floors, but that was alright with him.

Fizz loved his life, no matter the twists and turns.

Lemrio also loved Fizz’s life, at least, the parts he saw. Fizz was the one who stayed the longest, and due to the fact he wasn’t really killing any monsters - all the ingredients in the dungeon were being supplied by Lemrio, there just wasn’t a need to - he was practically a magic generator for Lemrio. In all honesty, Lemrio wanted to just keep Fizz. Make him a little home in the dungeon so that he wouldn’t need to leave and so Lemrio could learn even more…

…But Lemrio rejected that idea the moment it crossed his core. It didn’t feel right to keep Fizz in the dungeon for longer than a week, even if it wasn’t against his will. Fizz’s ramblings about his day wouldn’t have any more surprise to them if Fizz started living all his days in the dungeon!

Satisfied with the explanation he scrambled to make up for himself, Lemrio decided to try his hand at baking jelly like Lemrio did. He was certain that this would totally go perfectly fine, and he would not burn anything, and everything would be fine.

…He might’ve burned most of his batches, but he managed to make something resembling a cake! Satisfied with this, Lemrio set it down on the table and put very clear restrictions for his spiders to not take even as much as a little touch of the cake. It was for Fizz! Lemrio thought he spelled Fizz’s name right - or at least put something similar to it - and he felt good.

Lemrio realized that even if he wasn’t good at it, he found baking fun!