I yawned as I groggily looked around the room I was in, until I remembered what happened before I blacked out, causing me to stop yawning and kick my brain into functioning. Realizing I was lying on top of something soft, I immediately jumped off. Withstanding the dizzyness and sense of vertigo, I investigated my surroundings, only to be very surprised. It looked like an expensive mix between a bedroom and study, nothing like the torture chamber I expected to wake up in. The room wasn't very big, but didn't feel cramped. Inside was a chair, a writing desk, and the bed that I had woken up on, which was very soft. The room had no windows, and was made entirely of wooden planks. Opposite the bed was a wooden door, which I promptly opened, walking into the next room.
As soon as I walked in, I froze. The room was larger than the previous one, and looked like a lounge. There was a fireplace, a short table and a few sofas. Something that looked human was sitting on the sofa opposite the fireplace with its back to me. The only odd thing was it had ears on top of its head. Before I could decide what to do, the person on the sofa sighed and turned around. "I heard you open the door. Come and take a seat" they said, before turning back. After seeing their face, I was even more confused. They looked normal, but their skin was a dark brown colour.
Taking a seat nearby, I stared at him for a while before he coughed awkwardly and said "So... Any questions?"
Of course, I had many questions, but one of them was more important. "What are you?" I asked. When I sat down, I noticed a tail curled up next to him, and his eyes were verticle slits, similar to Rondu's. The ears and tail were fluffy, but not nearly as much as wolves. When I first found out I was a werewolf, I thought I would end up looking like this, but with a big tail and wolf ears that would be very difficuly to hide. Luckily, werewolves remain completely human unless they transform. I had heard of an extinct race that had physical features like this, but I wanted to check.
"...That was not the question I was expecting. Anyway, I'm a feline beastman. Oh, and your welcome for me saving your life." he said with a smile that irritated me to no end.
Remembering the last thing I saw before blacking out, the silhouette did look like him. "You call hitting me over the head saving my life?" I said, not willing to back down.
"Either that, carry you here while you probably screamed and tried to kill me, or leaving you to bleed out; and I can't exactly have my first guest dying now, can I?" he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
One phrase caught my attention. "Your... first guest?" I said curiously. I could accept that this person used something to heal me, but I was curious about how I could be his first guest; I had never heard of a dungeon creating anything else other than monsters.
"I was given ownership of this dungeon and have grown it from when it only had one floor, but I have never had any adventurers enter my dungeon before you." he said, looking sad.
"..." I stared dumbly at him, processing his words. There is a myth that suggests all dungeons start out with two things: a dungeon core, which was the heart of the dungeon, and the dungeon master, who acted as a brain - they get certain bonuses such as an increased lifespan in exchange for loosing their ability to travel outside the dungeon. The more intelligent the dungeon master, the faster a dungeon would grow. However, as there had been no new dungeons discovered for centuries, this was assumed to be false- anybody could control a dungeon core once they reached it, the so-called 'dungeon master' was probably just somebody who reached the core first and tried to exploit the resources of the dungeon. Pulling myself out of my thoughts, I said "Why don't you want me to die?"
"I plan on using you to attract more people to this dungeon. If adventurers actually come here, I can make the dungeon grow faster!" he said while grinning. "It'll also be much less boring if anything ever happened. I can't believe I..." he continued quietly, his voice becoming quieter until I couldn't hear the end of his sentence.
"...Is that your only goal? To make the dungeon grow more? Isn't that a bit depressing?" I questioned, pretending to not hear what he said under his breath.
"Well what else is there to wish for?" he grumbled. It seems I hit a sore nerve. "It's not like I can go outside."
Remembering the pink tree, I said "Then what about the clearing and that weird tree? If you can't go outside, how do you affect the surface?"
"It's not weird; it's beautiful." He said with a straight face, before explaining that he has control over a small area around the entrance to his dungeon.
'So that's why the trees grew so wierdly' I thought, before saying "Last question; what are you drinking? It smells nice." This wasn't a very respectful way to speak to the person that saved my life, but my brain still hadn't processed all the strange things that had happened. Accepted? certainly. Understood? Mostly. Processed how to react accordingly? Definitely not.
His expression suddenly turned grave. "You... don't have tea?"
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