“Meat? Seriously? What kind of dungeon drops meat? It looks cartoonish.”

Mark and Alverost hovered over the loot of the feral Kobolds killed earlier that day. The drops had been separated, organized and categorized. They were laid across the table in sections.

On one end of the table was an assembly of various small and mostly metal objects— a knife, bullets, US dollars, and a pile of fantasy coinage.

On the other, a backwards and primitive assembly of goods, looking a lot like what an animal would imagine for loot drops, including huge, cartoonish chunks of meat, that looks straight out of an anime or a cooking scene from Monster Hunter.

It was Alverost’s hope that the loot dropped could be used to infer information about the dungeon they were up against, since Aurie, the Goddess of Dungeons, caused drops that a dungeon both understood and recognized as inherently valuable.

“Is it really just meat? Look carefully. Its extremely rich with mana.” Alverost replied.

“I still don’t understand… so the dungeon that took over the bighorn Kobolds and made them feral, it was some kind of animal?”

“It would seem that way. A monster. Or a backwards barbarian who lived its life solely to hunt and eat.”

“You would think if it was a barbarian it would at least prefer some kind of stone tools. Maybe crude metal or wood. And why the hell would it make its Kobolds… like that?”

The Kobolds produced were wild things, feral to a breaking point. They had even eaten their fallen comrades corpses where they fell, tearing, ripping and biting through Marks and Alverost's defenses. Quite literally.

“Most likely, it doesn’t posses the refined knowledge to change the Kobold's as I have.”

“So we’re dealing with some kind of monster, and, what? It just scrambled them with mana?”

“A dungeon unlearned will attempt to turn everything to its own image. Most likely, as the Kobolds change more, we will get an approximation of what it looked like in its last life.”

“Ah. Like pumping them full of dark mana and then saying they’re the apex of living creatures.”

“Yes, exactly— what? No. Dark mana creatures truly are the apex of—”

“Yeah yeah. What I’m really wondering is…” Mark let his words trail off, opening the creation pane on the monster meat below him.

“Nope. No DNA at all. This isn’t even really meat. This is like giant tofu. Probably tastes good. Where is Mala? Mala! Come cook this!”

“Giant meat. Animal innards… I think thats supposed to be a tooth. Its definitely a sharpened endpoint of bone.” A gigantic, monstrous tooth was stabbed into the soft fungiwood table. “And leather. Lots of leather. That has to be a few pounds of it.” Mark observed the piles of square material at the end of the table. “We will have to make sewing needles.”

“With an intelligence as animalistic as this, its most likely it will only attack in straight forward ways.” Alverost said. “I will work on reinforcing the castle entrance above. You build the meeting room below— and more weapons.” Alverost pasued. “And more Kobolds. Let me know when Splotch 2 hatches. I am curious to see his progression.”

“We agreed no numbers!”

“When Splotch hatches then.” With that, Mark felt Alverost shift his perspective away. The room felt emptier than before, like a pall of darkness had finally lifted. Coins clinked noisily at the table as a Kobold worked to shove them into a black cloth bag.

Mark pivoted away as well, moving his perspective to a sub chamber where he had been working. The clutch of Kobold eggs sat here on a pile of deteriorating mulch, releasing heat to keep the clutch warm.

It hadn’t even been a full day yet since the siege of their castle, and it had made obvious a weakness in their defenses: a lack of ranged weapons. Sure, walls were good. Great even. They would hold back the tide. But eventually, any wall would fall. Walls were best when used in conjunction with other defenses, namely, bows.

Mark started by creating the curved shape he associated with a bow. The long, slender body with tipped edges that he strung, taut rope strung tight to the body of the bow. Made of precious fungiwood, it shown a beautiful white green. Then he assembled a dozen arrows, made of fungiwood with sharpened tips for now.

He looked at the arrows. He was missing something. Fletching. He was missing fletching, the feather like points at the end that would keep the arrow straight in flight. Lacking feathers, he added thin panels of fungiwood, so thin they were partially transparent— they almost looked like plastic.

Now to test it!

But Mark didn’t have arms. That was a problem.

“Alverost?” He asked, finding and pivoting to his location. Alverost sat in the core room beside Axel, who was setting silver coins into the engraving for the contact sigil. “Ah, you’re busy. Nevermind.”

Mark pivoted back. He was going to ask about something Alverost had mentioned— possessing a dungeon creature. Although he supposed simply instructing them on how to fire the bow would work as well. But he didn’t know which Kobold to show.

He pivoted to Silver, instructed him to grab the bow and arrows from the clutch, and began creating a target board above in the courtyard.

When Silver arrived, he found three fungiwood targets, circles made in alternating green and white. He was carrying the bow slung over one shoulder and the arrows under an arm.

“Alright!” Mark said. “Lets get shooting.”

Silver inspected the bow and arrows. Mark highlighted the bow. “Hold it here… put the bow here… and pull back on the string…”

Silver knocked the arrow, pulling it back against the taut string. The bow fit just right into Silver’s hands, made to fit a Kobold. The bigger the bow, the more force would be necessary to draw the string taught.

The soft, fungiwood bow bent under the tension, and Silver looked over his shoulder towards Mark.

“Ah. That won’t do, will it.”