"What's wrong? Did you forget how to speak?"

"I... Hello?"

"Oh good, so you can talk. Would have been a bit of a wasted trip if you couldn't."

While I was standing there stunned senseless, the fairy from our group walked over. "Yasmin? What are you doing on the surface?"

Yasmin? Then again, the notice board did say in no uncertain terms not to call her 'Blobby'. Were we supposed to just pick a name at random?

"Oh, hi Rose. Mother told me Peter was here, but that he wasn't allowed in the dungeon for another couple of years because he was too young, so I decided to come up instead."

I noticed that while all the visitors were staring at not-Blobby, most of the locals in the room were staring at me. Apparently, between the sentient slime of indeterminate name and the kid who attracted her, I was considered the weird one.

"Umm... And why did you want to come up here to see me?" I risked asking.

"Because I wanted to hear stories from this other world. And because mother isn't messing with your mind like all the others. It makes them boring."

The faces of everyone else in the room and corridor outside instantly went blank, in what I now recognised as the 'memory editing in progress' expression. Personally, I thought there was still plenty of variety in personality around. I know I've complained about the lack of competition and the generalised numbing of society, but on an individual level I wouldn't have described people as boring.

"I don't think you should mention that in front of them..."

"Why not? They just forget again afterwards, so it's fine."

"That's... I don't know, it just feels like taking advantage. Umm... Should we go somewhere quieter?"

I couldn't say I wanted to be on my own with possibly-Yasmin, but she didn't seem like she was about to attack me, and I really wasn't comfortable with her openly talking about the Law in front of people like that. I think I was developing a sort of out of sight, out of mind mindset about the whole thing; I liked to pretend that everyone was just generally nice, and to ignore inconvenient reminders that the whole thing was forced.

"Yeah, sure. There's a nice restaurant a couple of streets away. Let's go there."

Not quite as quiet as I had in mind, but she'd grabbed me by the wrist and started pulling me back out into the corridor before I could even answer. Given that I had absolutely zero chance of resisting, despite her lack of bones and not quite solid hand, I had little choice but to play along.

I let myself get pulled out of the room, past the stunned-looking crowd lining the corridor and up the stairs, where a very grumpy-looking four-armed demon was blocking the exit out to the street.

Dru'hazzak, Demon, Calamitous Fist (17/97)

"Must you really cause this much disruption, Yasmin?" he growled.

Apparently I'm being rescued. Thank goodness. And he's calling her Yasmin, too? I guess that must be her real name?

"What? I didn't do anything? I just walked over here."

"That's the problem! You're perfectly capable of disrupting half the city just by walking down the street. At least give us advance notice so we can warn people, or wear a disguise or something."

"Oh, I can do a disguise!"

Yasmin's dress shifted, turning brown and growing longer. In a couple of seconds, she was wearing an ankle length trench coat with long sleeves and upturned collar.

""In what way is that supposed to be a disguise!""

My voice overlapped perfectly with Dru'hazzak. Not only was the trench coat as suspicious as heck, even putting aside the fact that she hadn't changed her hat or sandals, but it was still every bit as transparent as her earlier dress! She was fooling no-one.

"What? I thought these were supposed to be good disguises?"

"But we can see straight through it," I pointed out.

"Ah, good point, but I can't make my slime opaque."

"Where are you even trying to go?" asked Dru'hazzak with a sigh. "I'll send some people ahead to give everyone a heads up."

Oh? This demon must be one of the higher-ups in the guild, then?

"Peter wanted to go somewhere quieter to talk, and I can't take him back to my room since you won't let him in the dungeon, so I was going to take him to The Golden Wok on Booker Street."

"The what? There's nothing with that name down there."

"The little restaurant? Run by some old human bloke? Arnold, I think his name was? They do good noodles."

"Arnold? Hah, I know the place you mean. It's long since closed. Arnold died a good few years ago."

Yasmin stood there in silence for a few seconds before deflating. Literally; she just kinda shrunk inwards, losing a good ten centimetres from her height. "Why do humans live such short lives?" she asked.

"I don't know. Ask your mother, not me. Look, if you want to talk in private, use one of the rooms upstairs. If that's not good enough for you..." he glanced at me, and I swear I could see a touch of pity in his eyes. "I'll give my permission for Peter to enter the dungeon, as long as he's with you, and you guarantee his safety."

Wait, what?! I didn't get a chance to react or object before Yasmin popped back into her full size, jumping into the air and shouting, "Yes!"

"Come on, I'll show you my room," she added, grabbing hold of my wrist again and dragging me out onto the street and towards the dungeon. I had my home-made armour on, but I had no weapons or equipment beyond what I had in my [Item Box]. I can't head into a dungeon like this! Damn that Dru'hazzak; I thought it was a rescue, but he just made things worse! He just tossed me to the wolves. Or rather, the slime!

"I can follow you on my own," I said, hoping to at least get my hand back. "You don't need to drag me."

"Ah, sorry. I was getting too excited." She let go, leaving me to trail behind her. The crowd of shocked-looking spectators here was far bigger than in the guild basement. Presumably the dungeon was a lot quieter than it would otherwise be without the tournament running, but there were still multiple groups of delvers around, as well as other pedestrians, not to mention the array of guards at the gate. There were far more than before, at least two dozen of them, presumably summoned by the bell. And they were all staring at us.

"Hi," waved Yasmin, not even breaking her stride as she walked through.

"Wait up," called one of them. "What's going on, and why are you taking that kid with you?"

"We're just going to have a chat. The big grumpy demon dude gave me permission."

The guard looked to me for confirmation, the Law against deception not applying to monsters. "She's telling the truth. It was someone called Dru'hazzak"

He still looked uncertain, presumably thanks to it not applying to me either these days, plus me possibly pronouncing that name completely incorrectly, but despite his obvious disagreement, he didn't stop us. I followed Yasmin through the enormous gate, and into a plaza that looked very different indeed to Dawnhold. There was a circular area of dungeon stone, but no statues or staircase. Instead, there was a ring of tall black crystals, each mounted on a silver stand, in the centre of their own circle of runes inscribed into the dungeon stone.

Presumably the crystals were the way into the dungeon, given the lack of other features. While there were delvers on the inside of the gate, none of them were doing anything other than staring, so I didn't get to see how the crystals worked. I followed Yasmin to one of them and watched as she touched it. "You're standing in range?" she asked, looking over. Apparently I was, because before I'd had a chance to answer, my vision flashed with the bright white of a teleporter activation.

I ended up in a girl's room. Very definitely a girl's room. There was a bed, with pink sheets decorated with blue slimes, and a selection of pink stuffed toys on top. There was a pink wardrobe. There were a couple of wooden bookcases with pink motifs, filled with books. There was a pink dresser with a mirror. On the walls were a couple of shelves, each holding a collection of pink knick-knacks. In the middle was a small, round, pink table with three pink chairs arranged around it. There was, in summary, a lot of pink. There were no windows, which wasn't a complete surprise given that we were now presumably well underground, the sixth floor being plausible based on the mana density. There were a pair of doors, though, one each on opposite sides of the room.

"Through there is the bathroom," said Yasmin, pointing to one of them, "in case you need to wee or do any of the other weird things you surface types need to do, but mother says you're too young to use the bath. That side is the boss chamber. I put it on auto before I went out, so no need to worry about interruptions."

"How do you put a boss chamber on auto?" I asked, still looking around. This place didn't have the same glowing walls as Dawnhold, or perhaps the walls did glow, but they were covered up by the wallpaper, which was patterned with blue slimes riding pink unicorns. Either way, light was instead provided by a small chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It was, thankfully, not pink.

"It just distributes puzzles randomly from a preset list. It didn't really need me running it to begin with; I just like talking to people. I used to use this room as the boss chamber, but people kept making fun of the decoration, so I had to change it. Would you like some tea?"

"Sure, why not? And why does a bath have an age limit?"

"Dunno," answered Yasmin, taking a couple of teacups off one of the shelves, along with a pot and a little box, pulling out the various bits of equipment required to make tea in a world that has yet to invent teabags.

"It's not the bath itself; it's what that slime tends to do to people in the bath. You would end up, shall we say, very clean."

I did my best to keep a straight face, very glad that I didn't yet have a mouthful of tea. There had been no warning at all that Erryn had been paying attention. Yasmin didn't react at all, so presumably Erryn had spoken to me alone. Wait, didn't Erryn refer to a slime the first time we spoke... Given the naming oddity, I assume that was about Yasmin?

"She wasn't Yasmin back then, and probably won't be in ten minutes' time either, but yes. This is the one. Sorry, I didn't notice her heading for the surface, or I would have stopped her. Welcome to my dungeon, in any case."

Your dungeon? I thought you said they were all you? No, more importantly, why couldn't I contact you in Dawnhold? What were you doing to the dungeons? I had a whole bunch of things I need to ask!

"They are, or rather, as you already noticed, were. This one is special, though. This is where I was born."

Were? What happened?

"You're the one that pointed out the danger of dungeons. Why act surprised that I took steps to rectify the situation? Alas, there have been... complications. It's no longer safe for me to manage them directly. And the result has left me rather busy, so I'm not able to have a long conversation. That slime is weird, but she's safe, so enjoy your visit."

The rustling of Erryn's telepathy faded away before I had a chance to ask anything more. I'd wanted to ask about the changes she'd made to dungeons, as well as what I'd been doing to society... Well, we're fairly sure dungeons are safe now, and she hasn't smote the research institute or turned the Law against mythril production in the past few years, so she can't be too upset with them. But now I had even more questions. What sort of complications? What's she busy with, that has taken up multiple years of time?

Temporarily-Yasmin put down a cup in front of me, on its own saucer with, obviously, pink swirly patterns around the edge for decoration. I took a sip, and to be fair, it was damn good tea. Yasmin sipped at her own cup too, the brown liquid pouring into her short throat and then dispersing and merging into her slime once it reached the bottom.

"Can you even taste that?" I couldn't help but ask.

"I can perform a highly detailed analysis of its constituents, and I know what sort of chemical makeup makes it good or bad. Whether that counts as 'taste' I couldn't say. Probably not in the same way as you'd consider it, but you have to drink tea at a tea party. Anyway, tell me all about this 'Earth' that you used to live on."

This is a tea party? Well, if the not-completely-sane monster says so, I'm not going to argue. I went on to talk about Earth, more than I had done for a very long time. Unlike Lord Reid, she had no interest in science or technology, but rather wanted to hear about entertainment. Fashion, what sort of TV programs I watched, what sorts of games I played, the books I'd read. She must have heard some stuff from Erryn already, given that she knew what a TV was, in which case why hadn't she shared everything? I mean, I don't want her to share my whole personal life, but the plots of my favourite TV shows wouldn't have hurt.

Things started deteriorating once she started shapeshifting into some of the characters I described. With only words, I couldn't describe them well, so her attempts were way off the mark and utterly hilarious. She could do a pretty decent impression of me too, aside from the whole transparency issue. Then she departed from the whole Earth thing entirely, and started showing off, shifting between different races. Switching between a thin, metre high child and a hulking three metre demon didn't phase her, and where the extra slime was going or coming from I had no idea.

Some of the outfits didn't seem to match, and when I pointed that out, she claimed it was because her mother said that I was too young to see her normal attire, however much her usual visitors liked it. Between that and the bath, I was starting to get a bit suspicious as to some of this slime's lewd tendencies, but at least she was behaving herself in front of me. She even dug up some hot food from somewhere, despite no cooking facilities being visible. She'd said that everything here was produced by Erryn, so maybe it was spawned on demand somehow? It was nice, in any case; some sort of noodles with a vegetable sauce, and watching Yasmin 'eat' noodles made me break down in laughter all over again.

All in all, despite the strange start, it was a very enjoyable day.