Dragon’s Gate, Dorin thought bitterly. Of course, it had to be Dragon’s Gate.

  In the end, there was no avoiding it. He should have known better than to think otherwise. How many of his friends and family had been lost to the damned dungeon? How many had seen those blasted bronze doors in their dreams, only to be lured to their own deaths? His brother was one. His neighbor was another. In fact, if it weren’t for his grandmother threatening him with a butcher’s knife, he might also have been a victim—a fool falling for a sweet-smelling reward at the center of a flytrap.

  Even now, he could feel the pull of old memories and dreams he’d hoped to forget. Those memories whispered sweet nothings in his ears. He could find his brother, find clues as to how he died after all these years without closure. Once he did, maybe he’d delve deeper, explore the forgotten corridors of the Old Ones.

  After all, this place was unique among dungeons. According to legend, Dragon’s Gate was built, not grown. Most dungeons popped out of the ground like weeds anywhere that mana was plentiful. The Kingdom of Kyelnor employed a permanent retainer of over a thousand soldiers and mages, spread all across its borders, to defend against spontaneous monster and dungeon attacks. It was part of the reason why the civilized races of the world learned how to utilize magic in the first place; it was the only way to defend against the vicious monsters beyond their walls.

  Yet, Dragon’s Gate was different. If the legends were to be believed, there was a city somewhere beneath the endless corridors and blood-thirsty monsters. When an ancient enemy invaded the area, the city was submerged beneath the earth. It took the power of two gods to build the dungeon on top, and one of them gave their life to see it done. It spanned the length and breadth of the Forest of Kalgara, and was largely regarded as the greatest feat of construction this side of the Dragon Spine Mountains.

  Or…so the books said.

  Dorin’s wife, rest her spirit, was the one who was into the historic value of Dragon’s Gate, not him. To him, it was just a parasite, one who lured in adventurers and civilians alike. Its victims were never seen again.

  All he could do was try not to become one of those victims. He had to try. He wouldn’t allow himself to die here, not when Samri and Tanev were in danger. Even though they were back inside the walls of Felsporo, the threat of the shamblers still loomed. The guards were tough, but they didn’t have Dorin’s experience. They didn’t have the meager six levels that Dorin worked so hard to get after the level drain was lifted over the region. If the shamblers attacked in force, as they’d done earlier that day, the guards would be overrun, and Felsporo would fall.

  Dorin couldn’t let that happen, which was why he found himself following a sapient slime through an endless series of identical tunnels. That slime was by far the oddest creature Dorin had encountered, and he’d encountered his fair share of monsters before.

  On first glance, the small green slime wasn’t much. Suri was small enough that it…he...could have fit in a salad bowl given the chance. His slime was semi-transparent, and if Dorin looked closely, he could see the vague outline of an emerald core at the center of the slime. All of that was normal enough to anyone who’d encountered a common slime before.

  What wasn’t normal, was everything else. Suri radiated mana so strongly that Dorin could see wisps of green and gold rising from him when he stood still. None of the slimes in the walls could hold a candle to the power Suri held. One by one, the slimes in the walls were subsumed into their greater kin as he happily hopped from one side of the corridor to the other.

  “I guess you don’t share much of a family connection with the other slimes, do you?” Dorin asked, more than a little put off by the blatant cannibalism.

  Suri finished slurping down another silvery blob as it emerged from a crack on the left wall before he went still. Was he offended? Or just thinking? How was he supposed to get a read on a creature with no face?

  After a long moment, the slime wobbled, stretching its top up and waving it side to side. Was there meaning to that motion? A body language that Dorin just didn’t yet understand?

  “Slimes don’t have family. The number one predator of a slime is another slime. Why would we stick around to be eaten?” Suri said eventually. With his piece said, he began hopping again.

  “Just seems like a lonely existence is all.” There was far more to it than that, but Dorin didn’t feel comfortable saying it. He’d met harpy colonies, siren coves, cait villages, and many other dens of monsters far less savory. Yet, in all his years, he’d never met a slime who could speak. He’d never had a chance to consider that the monsters regarded as the bottom rung of the monster hierarchy might just have a language or culture all to themselves.

  The slime was silent for a moment, as if thinking about Dorin’s words. “I never really thought about it. I’ve been too busy eating rocks to notice.” The slime hopped ahead several paces. “Ooh! A fiery one!” With a pseudopod grown from the main mass of his body, he picked up a rock that, to Dorin, looked the exact same as a dozen other rocks around it. After examining it closely, Suri’s slime wrapped around the rock, drawing it in and dissolving it until nothing remained.

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  Dorin couldn’t decide if eating rocks was more unnatural than eating slimes.

  “I guess if you enjoy that sort of thing.”

  “Oh! Yes! I ate this one rock earlier that tasted like a cold winter. And this other time, I ate one that had lots of different flavors all pressed together into one rock.” Suri’s slime quivered, as if he were trembling with excitement at the mere memory. It was kind of cute. “And then, the first memory I have is a bit blurry, but I think there was this big obelisk rock. I think it must have been a few weeks ago but I’m not sure. Either way, it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. There was so much magic in it, and-”

  “Wait, did you say your first memory was from a few weeks ago?” Dorin stopped in his tracks, staring incredulously at the slime.

  “Yeah, there was this big rock, and it had all these little lights around it.”

  Dorin stopped listening. He was still trying to get over the fact that the creature before him, someone that he’d fought alongside and who’d saved his life, was just a child. If it weren’t for the fact that Suri was a slime, Dorin might have asked where his parents were.

  As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he chastised himself. It wasn’t right to apply human standards to a creature like Suri. The slime was capable, he’d proven as much on the field of battle. Without him, Dorin might have died at least three times today alone.

  Though, even after he’d shifted his opinion of Suri back to “quirky warrior,” he still couldn’t help the smile that crept onto his face. The slime was surprisingly cute.

  “When I finally ate the rock, its magic became part of me, and I evolved. That’s when I became a Guardian Slime, and also developed a mind and memories,” Suri finished.

  “And you haven’t been back to Dragon’s Gate since then?” he asked.

  “No, sir.”

  Dorin stopped and sighed. “I was following you. I thought you knew where you were going.”

  “I do. The boss room is that way.” He pointed with a pseudopod down a corridor that looked exactly the same as every other one we’d seen. He continued hopping in the same direction that he’d just pointed out as dangerous.

  “Wait, Suri. Shouldn’t we go away from the boss room?” Dorin quickly flicked open his arcane interface. He was barely to 50% health after the healing potion, but at least his major injuries had cleared. He was less than keen on encountering a boss so early.

  The slime hopped into the center of the room, and Dorin got the distinct feeling that the creature was staring him down. “I don’t know the way out, but I do know the way down. There’s a few bosses on every floor—actually, there are 117 different boss rooms on this floor, but this is the closest one. Each one guards a single path downward. Everyone knows that the bosses are meant to work in tandem for the benefit of the dungeon.”

  Oh yes, everyone knows that. Dorin bit back his sarcasm and let the slime continue.

  “In order to achieve this, most boss rooms are connected to one another and the exit by way of maintenance tunnels. That way the bosses can get fresh air!” Suri finished.

  “Isn’t that a major design flaw? What if someone found these tunnels and used them to skip past the defenses?”

  “It’s a secret of the dungeon-born,” answered the slime, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “Any good dungeon would only let its trusted monsters through, and even then, if it were my design, I’d let only the boss monster go down. Normal monsters would only be allowed to go up.”

  Dorin doubted very much that the original creators had the same design philosophy as the little slime, but he didn’t have anything better. During their adventuring days, he and his wife delved many dungeons, but never once had he ever heard about bosses needing fresh air or having tunnels to facilitate it. In his day, when you defeated a floor, you had to walk out, which in some cases, could be just as dangerous as walking in.

  “The first floor doesn’t have as many maintenance tunnels,” explained Suri as he hopped along. “Most monsters here are slimes, with only a few drakes and lesser wyverns, so they don’t need to move very efficiently.”

  Travelling with a dungeon-born slime was apparently a font of information Dorin had never had access to. He wondered why no one else had ever captured a sentient boss monster before. They existed in old and powerful dungeons across the world, but why had no one tried to get this information from one before? Was it really that hard to capture them? Or was Suri just unusually willing to share the information?

  The knight sighed. All this information, and it may yet die with him. Suri was intent on challenging the Floor One boss room. Without a weapon or even full health and mana, Dorin worried he’d only be a liability.

  “Well, if you can find one more of those drakes before we hit the boss room, I’d appreciate it.”

  Suri wobbled something that might have looked like a nod.

  Dorin thought he might measure the time by how many slimes Suri ate but gave up after he lost count at forty—he was certain he’d missed more than a few. It was clear that the main enemies of the first floor were the slimes disappearing into the superior slime of their Tier 2 kinsman. Dorin imagined a world where an adventurer challenged this floor. Even an experienced adventurer between the levels of 10 and 15 might struggle to keep up with the sheer volume of slime monsters waiting in the walls. They were everywhere, crawling from every nook, cranny, and crack in the walls until the walls were covered in silver slime. Yet, Suri ate them all. Apparently, he even got mana from them, which Dorin found equally disturbing.

  “We may want to rest soon,” he said. “It was the middle of the night before we fell, and who knows how long we were asleep the-”

  “SSsssshhh,” Suri insisted, raising his slime up as if looking around for something.

  “Why?”

  “Shhhh!” the slime repeated. “Do you hear that? The shriek alarm?”

  Dorin cocked his head. “No?”

  “The dungeon has sent a monster.”

  Without any further explanation, Suri hopped onto the wall. His sticky slime adhered to the rough surface and he climbed until he was directly above the center of the tunnel. He squeezed himself into a crack, until it was as if he was never there at all.”

  “Uh, Suri?”

  There was no answer.

  The ground began to shake as huge, thundering claws slammed into the ground.

  “Suri?!”

  The drake rounded the corner and eyed Dorin with its beady eyes, and a chill went up the knight’s spine. He’d been abandoned. He was alone and unarmed. In several past campaigns and adventures, he’d been praised for his bravery, but he knew the line between bravery and stupidity was thin. Caution was the better part of valor, and he knew it.

  He turned and ran, which was the wrong choice. The drake charged, and it quickly became apparent that he was not fast enough to outrun it. It would catch up, and when it did, he would die.