Lemrio was having a fantastic day, at least, in his terms. Although he was dipping slightly in his material reserves to create a brand new monster, it was fun! The spider creations he made earlier were more than eager to help him.

Starting was easy; Take the composition of the flaky, brownish part of the ‘treat’ and see how to make it so that the skin looks and ‘tastes’ like that. Was it immoral to have one spider bite another spider to check if it tastes the same? Of course not.

Going on an absolute roll, he continued testing. At long last, results came! He had managed to turn one of the spiders’ skin into looking like a pastry. But, something still wasn’t right… Lemrio had gotten the design down pat, but everything else could certainly use a bit more something.

Lemrio realized what was missing; There was some kind of goo inside of the treat, and he hadn’t replicated that yet. The jelly did show up a bit on the outside, too! Lemrio knew it wouldn’t be hard to replicate, since he’d had to do something similar before with sap in the vines.

Becoming increasingly excited with how he’d do things, Lemrio was going to continue adding onto the newly dubbed ‘Pastry Spider’ when an invader came in. Lemrio commanded the spider towards the adventurer, wanting to know if the adjustments ruined anything in terms of combat ability. Sure, Lemrio was going to lower the combat ability anyways, but he had to check first.

Lemrio was excited to watch his test interact with a real adventurer.

*

When John came in, what he didn’t expect was the smell of donuts. Assuming that some stuck-up noble adventurer barged in and made himself at home in the dungeon as they tend to do, John was already ranting when he walked in.

“I swear, if I come over there and see someone, you are going to be detained by the Dungeon Association-”

And then, for the second time that day, John wished he didn’t have this job. There was a human-sized spider - which wasn’t abnormal for the Insect Dungeon - but the thing is that it looked like it was trying to be a donut. Like it was a donut in the shape of a spider, moving and breathing… and, was that powdered sugar? Baffled, John just stared at it.

Then it moved towards him, and John remembered that dungeons are dangerous. Luckily, he’d already placed the box of sweets on the ground nearby before seeing the thing. Grabbing his sword, John got ready and waited for it to attack him. Dungeon Inspector policy states that you never attack first unless you’ve verified that it’s a threat; Otherwise, you might end up angering a whole swarm.

Nothing happened.

He remained wary of the thing, but it just walked right past him. Knowing that it wouldn’t be smart to put his sword away just because it didn’t attack instantly, John kept a close eye on it. Part of his job is to write down when something in the dungeon changes - Which hardly happens, dungeons tend to be pretty predictable - so John was examining every part of the thing.

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He watched it grab the box of pastries, and momentarily had a staring contest with it. After a few awkward minutes of silence, the donut thing just walked deeper into the dungeon, carrying the box away. John would’ve been annoyed at losing his snacks, if it wasn’t for how strange this whole situation is.

Realizing that he’s going to be extremely busy from now on, John calmly sheathed his sword, walked out of the dungeon, and prayed to whatever deity would listen that he wouldn’t need to deal with adventurers making a mess out of the ‘new additions’ to the dungeon when they inevitably found out.

Unfortunately, nothing answered his call as he quietly left.

*

Lemrio was feeling good. Although the adventurer that came in didn’t choose to fight their ‘Pastry spider,’ they didn’t react with slight disgust! Instead, he just stared at it in what was clearly admiration and hardly did anything when Lemrio commanded it to take the box!

Getting back to work, Lemrio started work on changing a few of the other bugs into snacks. He’d just gotten so much more to work with as well, due to the box of assorted treats.

There were 4 kinds of treats in the box: A brown treat that the cockroaches in the dungeon seem to love, a slightly different brown treat with some kind of white, plush thing in it, a few lighter-colored treats with a yellow tint, and a treat that was - according to his bugs - chewier than the others. So many possibilities were right in front of Lemrio, and all he had to do was try them out!

First, Lemrio tried to do something he’d attempted before with great success in the past: Disguising his bugs as other things. He’d done great with that, so this should be similar. Taking a few moments to carefully examine the muffins, Lemrio finally realized a fatal flaw in his perfect plans:

Treats, muffins, and the sweet things his bugs and the adventurers like so much… expire very, very quickly. This was a problem. He pondered solutions, before eventually deciding to not depend on the original material nearly as much. As long as it looks the same, smells the same, and ‘tastes’ the same - as much as a spider can communicate what it tastes like - Lemrio was certain that it’d be just fine. This probably won’t make it taste different to the adventurers. What use would a complex tasting process have for them? Spiders don’t need that.

After fixing up that little hiccup by slightly changing the composition, Lemrio went back to his original plan: Making his smaller ‘swarm’ bugs resemble muffins. Starting with a simple 6-legged spider of his, Lemrio started by copying the strange inedible wrapper that was on the brown muffin. Then, he carefully copied his version of the muffin flesh, replacing the spider’s body and legs with the more stable version.

When he was done, Lemrio had a spider that looked like a treat. Success!

Lemrio let the little thing run around him for a while, watching how it seemed a bit out of place. But, it was never meant to disguise; It’s meant for luring adventurers in! Lemrio wasn’t quite done testing yet though, so he didn’t take down the sign yet.

Lemrio made a few more variations of the ‘treat spiders,’ making one of every kind and learning in the process. Remembering to adjust the dough on the pastry spider as well, he was very satisfied with the day’s work. Besides, the reserves of materials and magic he had were nearly out, and he just had to test out on more adventurers.

Lemrio was understandably excited when he told his spiders - both pastries and otherwise - to take the sign off the dungeon entrance. Yes, this shall be fantastic.