SIDE STORY: JOHN’S INTERVIEW

“Why do you want to be a Dungeon Supervisor, John?”

The man asked, looking at John from across the table. John had a smile on his face, confident that he’d pass this interview with flying colors. John made sure he got enough sleep the other night so that he’d be at his very best, and it was now or never for him.

“I want to take care of a dungeon, promising to keep it in check and to show others at the association if or when something happens. I want to take care of a town’s adventurer economy and take care of relations between a dungeon and the town that could be built around it.”

He responded with his well-rehearsed answer, but he couldn’t stop himself from grinning. The man looked at John, his lips quirked up in a smirk at the clear enthusiasm.

“Well, you’ve certainly got some drive. Are you aware of what the job entails?”

John nodded.

“Of course. I’ll need to observe the dungeon, inspect its’ top 5 floors weekly and its’ lower floors yearly.”

It was quiet for a moment as the man wrote the answer down, trying his hardest to keep a straight face. John didn’t mind the silence, feeling confident in himself and his abilites. His father was a Dungeon Supervisor and so was his grandfather… To John, that just meant it was his duty to keep up the tradition and do better than his parents ever did. He wanted to uphold their legacy, after all.

The man asked a few more questions which John answered, until he was hit with a question he hadn’t expected.

“Even if things go entirely wrong, will you swear to stick with your assigned dungeon until you are dismissed?”

John had to think about that. He wanted to be honest like he was in the previous questions - Honesty was the best policy, in his eyes - so he had to pry the answer out of himself. Eventually, he smiled.

“I may not be able to stick to it fully, but I’ll damn well try.”

“Good answer. You’ve got my full approval, kid; When you’re ready, we’ll toss you to a dungeon. Can’t say it’ll be a good one, but it’ll surely be interesting.”

The man said, grinning and holding his hand out. John couldn’t help but mirror the smile, shaking the man’s hand. Feeling like the world was in his favor as he sauntered out of the door, John was busy in his own fantasies of how he’d handle things and wasn’t quite looking where he was going.

He bumped into someone that seemed younger than him. The teenager he bumped into started stuttering and stammering apologies, holding a box of pastries in his hands like he was rushing to get somewhere with them. In too much of a good mood to be bothered, John forgave the kid easily.

“Hey, hey, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it, kid.”

The kid mumbled to himself, but seemed a bit too shy to look at John directly. To be fair, John was taller.

“I ‘aint a kid, my growth spurt’s just slow.”

Feeling an odd sense of connection with the teenager, John held his hand out.

“Alright then. Well, what’s your name? I’m John, John Delver.”

“My n-name’s Fizz, just Fizz. Is ‘delver’ really your last name?”

Fizz asked innocently. John realized his mistake in holding his hand out to someone that didn’t have a spare hand, and chuckled to himself as he pulled his hand back. He idly gestured to the tag on his leather vest.

“Yep, says it on my nametag. And Fizz, huh? You seem like a nice guy. What do you say you and I head out and, I dunno, get some sweets together?”

John noticed how Fizz’s eyes lit up at the idea. Fizz started rambling a bit.

“Oh, I’m a-actually trying to become a baker! If it’s n-not too much of a change from what y-you were originally thinking, you c-could try some of the snacks that I’ve made. If that’s okay. My previous testers have… decided to, uh, not trust my food anymore… But I swear it’s nothing dangerous. Just muffins!”

John raised an eyebrow, but decided that the guy couldn’t mean any harm.

What’s the worst that would come out of accepting muffins?

SIDE STORY: FIZZ’S FIRST DUNGEON

Oh, he was not ready for this.

From getting abandoned by his party after paying them specifically to protect him, to getting lost in the maze-like dungeon, Fizz would say his day wasn’t the best. Luckily, he’d gathered tons of ingredients; He could just feel that one of them might be edible if he tried hard enough, which was a thousand times more than what he had before!

…The amount of money he had to pay for anti-poison potions was astronomically high…

But that’s alright with him. Stuck in a dungeon, alone, with no contact, in a dungeon. He was going to make it out of this just fine, because he always did. Fizz believed in his luck, since it never led him wrong before. Smelling something curiously spicy, Fizz followed his gut and started walking towards it. Deeper into the dungeon he went, having to use his somewhat cheap sword to fend off monsters if he wanted to or not.

Luckily, the dungeon seemed somewhat neutral to his presence - the core was a dozen floors down, - but it was still known for loving a good ambush. Fizz kept his guard up the whole way, before finally reaching the den.

And, er, he wasn’t ready to be face to face with a dragon. A very, very pissed dragon, because while he was walking in he just had to accidentally step on some of it’s treasure. The next thing Fizz knew he had to fight for his life, tooth and nail, dashing and tumbling and getting his cloak burnt.

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“THEY DIDN’T SAY THIS DUNGEON HAD A DRAGON!”

Fizz yelled to himself in exasperation, tumbling to the ground. Oh, he really wished John were here right now. Maybe he knew some kind of weakness that Fizz didn’t know, since - in Fizz’s humble opinion - John was a nerd.

Rudely snapped out of his thoughts by the snap of a jaw that narrowly missed him, Fizz had no time to consider his options. All he had were various monster parts, baking ingredients, and a flimsy sword that was melting from the flames. Fizz had to think quick on his feet, doubly so since the ground had started to melt. Say what you will, but the guy could only run so much.

Struck with a stupid idea, Fizz stabbed his backpack with his half molten sword and slashed it back out, running on top of the treasure stacks before jumping and screaming like a little girl while attempting to either stab the dragon or get himself eaten by the dragon. Due to the fact his backpack was previously filled with monster gore, the sword itself had monster guts and gore just… slathered on it, like the breading on a chicken nugget.

The dragon understandably ate the sword, which made Fizz’s hand burn like hell. Already stuck in momentum, Fizz grabbed one of the dragon’s teeth to keep purchase before flinging himself out of the dragon, rolling on the ground before glancing up, certain he was about to die.

Luckily or unluckily, the dragon also ate something else that was in the backpack. Fizz’s “special blend,” - a cluster of every single herb he’d ever countered, used only when he either hated the taste tester or wanted to see what would work in his foods - was filled with all sorts of poison, because Fizz didn’t know a thing about botany.

…The dragon died, instantly. Not because it ate the sword of molten metal or anything, just because what it had just eaten was so vile, so disgusting, that it just couldn’t. It didn’t want to exist to taste it more. Fizz awkwardly squinted his eyes open upon hearing the thud of the body, noticing that the dragon was just… dead.

“...haha… I’m alive! I’M ALIVE! HAHAHAHA-”

Fizz proceeded to laugh like a maniac. After he stopped, he realized that his backpack - although somewhat burnt and a little unsuitable for meat - was empty, and that the rarest meat he’ll ever get was right in front of him.

Fizz grinned, ideas and plans running through his head. Wouldn’t this be a lovely secret ingredient? Maybe John would like it…

Smiling like a maniac, Fizz got to work. It took him a while, but he did it. He harvested as much dragon meat as he could carry and shoved it into his backpack, wheezing the whole way out of the dungeon. Someone found him and led him to the exit, and Fizz was too tired to get their name.

Either way, he was ambitious… and a bit too risky. But this was his life, and Fizz loved his life.

SIDE STORY: THE INSECT DUNGEON’S FAVORITE ADVENTURER

It felt nothing.

Intruders came and went, creatures that only wanted to shatter its’ core. It couldn’t allow that, so it created the most dangerous thing it had been in contact with that would never turn on it; Insects.

It didn’t have anything to do. Just keep moving the core down, keep hiding. Perhaps one day the pesky intruders won’t return. It didn’t have to do too much, of course; The few intruders who did have weapons usually left before causing too much of a ruckus. But it had been a while since it had last seen anyone.

Where were they? It questioned, but saw this as a positive. It was safe now. Nothing would hurt it. Then another intruder came in, a basket of food in the intruder’s hands. It knew it was going to steal the food; It would be a resource. While pondering how it would go about it, the intruder gently placed the food basket down onto the ground.

The intruder bowed.

It was very, very confused. An… offering? That was only given to it when it told its’ spiders to collect something for it to absorb or use. This was unheard of! Insanity! An intruder, daring to-

It noticed that one of its’ spiders had already begun nibbling on some of the jerky. It didn’t force its’ beloved creation to stop, knowing that it was happy. Reluctantly, it allowed others to join and informed the other creations of this strange gift. It knew that if the spiders had consumed the food, it was safe; They had a knack to avoid anything that had the slightest chance of being dangerous to eat, much to its’ dismay.

“#####! ## #### ## ####. ##’## ## #### ####### ##########. # #### ## ### ## ######!”

The invader- The gift giver started making sounds. It didn’t like the sounds, but there was a clear ‘truce’ in effect as the gift giver had given it a gift. After some more sounds, the gift giver left.

From then on, every week, the gift giver would look around the dungeon without harming anything. It allowed this, remembering the act of peace when it had first met the gift giver.

It liked the gift giver. One day, it wanted to give the gift giver a gift in return. Unfortunately, it had forgotten that little dream a long time ago.

But if it ever did remember; If it ever recalled that little dream, then it would certainly give the man a gift.

He was its’ favorite adventurer, after all.

And it… It felt happy.

SIDE STORY: LEMRIO BURNT HIS BREAD TO A CRISP!!!!

It hadn’t been too long since Lemrio had last seen Fizz. The bakery inside the dungeon was idle due to him not being there, but all the ingredients were there anyways. Lemrio… well, he was a little bit bored, and a little bit curious. He’d seen Fizz make ‘bread’ before, and wanted to try making some himself.

What’s the worst that could happen?

A measly 20 minutes later, Lemrio was trying to understand where he went wrong. He was sure he followed the cookbook correctly; At least, the page that he was on looked a lot like bread… So where did he fail?

Grumbling while spending a bit of magic to replenish the supplies - He didn’t want to inconvenience Fizz too much with his testing - Lemrio decided to try again. This time would be better, he was certain; His bread would come out edible! That was his goal.

Then he burnt his bread to a crisp, again.

Somewhat frustrated - a new feeling for him, oddly enough - he consulted his spiders on what they thought he was doing wrong. One of them said that maybe it was because he wasn’t making a web and trying to get the material himself. When Lemrio tried to question how that would apply to baking bread, his spiders didn’t have a good answer.

Continuing to work through the hour, Lemrio grew frustrated. His bread never came out right no matter what he did, it seemed. Was he putting it in for too long? No, he was certain he was doing things right, the little egg clock thing was set to the time it took. Lemrio was only trying to cook a small bread bun, after all.

Maybe it was the ingredients? Lemrio thought he knew what things were, but he didn’t actually know if he was measuring things right. Sure, he was using the ‘measuring cups,’ but he didn’t really know what a cup was. He thought cups were things adventurers drank out of sometimes, but he also thought those were called flasks and not cups. Confusing.

Lemrio figured it out; He was putting the bread into the fire, and not on the area above the fire! Feeling brave, he tried one last time to make a small amount of bread. It had worked, he had done it! Lemrio was very proud of himself.

Sure, it was a bit toasted, but one of the bravest spiders he had nibbled on it and said the inside wasn’t as burnt as the outside, and thus, edible. Feeling satisfied with this, Lemrio replenished Fizz’s supplies, removed all the evidence of his own shenanigans, and put the burnt bread in a corner where he wouldn’t need to think about it anymore.

When Fizz returned to the smell of charcoal, he was a bit confused… But, he quickly forgot about it as he began cooking cookies, rambling, and generally just existing in the dungeon. Once he was done, Fizz idly explained to the dungeon- If it was listening or not.

“So that’s how you make cookies, dear dungeon! Okay, hear me out, I know ya’ can’t speak…”