Canta opens his eyes as a loud growling fills the room, bouncing off of the walls of the small space. His stomach is rumbling again.

He sits upright in a quick motion, hunching over forward in the hopes that his gut will feel less empty if he squishes it together.

“Good morning,” says Alleluia almost immediately, sounding very chipper and bright.

He turns towards the pipe, looking at it somewhat bewildered, blinking his groggy eyes a few times to get the morning dew out of them. Yawning, he stretches and looks around the room a second time to make sure that he hasn’t been eaten during the night. He hasn’t.

“That was fast,” grumbles Canta, shifting to get out of the bed.

“I’ve been standing here, listening to you sleep, so that I could hear when you woke up,” says Alleluia.

He turns back to the pipe. “…All night?”

“Yes,” replies Alleluia plainly, without a hint of sarcasm in her voice. She almost sounds pleased with herself.

“Huh… you know…” he lifts a finger to point at the pipe, wanting to tell her that that’s really weird. But somehow, he feels that his mood is somewhat lighter now, despite his fresh hunger starting to set in. Maybe because of the good sleep. Canta sighs and drops his hand, letting the subject drop with it. “Don’t you need to sleep too?”

“No,” replies Alleluia a moment later, together with the whirring of some distant machine.

“Oh,” replies Canta, not interested in starting a long conversation this early in the first real day of his new life. He gets up, draping the blanket over his shoulders as he walks. It isn’t exactly clothing, but it’s better than nothing. He doubts that he’s going to come back to this room, especially if he has to find food. He yawns again loudly, while stretching his small body out. “I’m going to keep walking.”

“But you’re gonna stay by the pipe, right?”

He rolls his eyes, not giving an answer as he removes the wedged chair and opens the door to peek outside. There is nothing there.

“Right?” asks Alleluia again, sounding somewhat more desperate.

“Yeah, yeah,” replies Canta. “Just gonna get some water first. Be right back.”

He can hear Alleluia start to protest, as he walks back towards the large basin. But she seems to stop herself this time, before she can form any coherent words. Dropping the blanket, he goes down to drink his fill of the stagnant water to calm his stomach down. Before then flopping down into the shallow pool and flopping around like a dying fish. He rubs his hands all over himself to scrub the gunk and the goo which he had slept in, off of himself.

Stagnant Water

~800mL

Questionable - Make Up - Trace Minerals: 3.00% Water: 94.00% Other 3.00%

A little bit later, he climbs back up and shakes himself off, ringing out his wet hair. Grabbing his blanket, he heads back towards the pipe and then down the passage.

“That was longer than just getting some water!” complains Alleluia. “I was worried…”

He can feel his fingers gripping the fabric tighter in agitation. “If you don’t stop being so clingy, I’m going to leave you here,” threatens Canta with very little emotion to his voice, flicking the pipe again a second later. Obviously, he isn’t going to do that. Not because he desperately wants to save her, but because there is a shortcut to the surface where she is.

But she doesn’t need to know that.

He thinks, trying to remember his old life. Was he always so impatient and manipulative? He doesn’t know.

“Sorry…” says Alleluia quietly a moment later. Her voice sounds deflated. “…I’m not trying to be clingy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” replies Canta. “I’ll let it go this time.”

Alleluia doesn’t say anything. But he can hear an indistinct muttering coming through the pipe.

Canta keeps walking, pulling his blanket tightly around himself as he navigates the dungeon exactly as he had done the day before.

The next few hours are entirely silent, save for the sound of his bare feet and the soft dragging of the bottom of the blanket behind himself, as he follows corridor after corridor, until eventually finding another large boss-arena that is built exactly like the first one. It is empty, no water fills the basin here.

He keeps walking, heading past the next destroyed set of doors. This time, there is no room off to the side. Canta sighs and keeps going, feeling his hunger well up more and more. Knocking on the new pipe, he signals to Alleluia that he’s moved to a different one. Whether she can find him or not, in his eyes, that’s her problem.

He stops as he reaches the next destroyed fountain. Looking inside, he sees a thick cob-web and a big, fat, juicy spider. Before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s crawled up inside of the dried out fountain covered in cob-webs with eight spindly, thrashing legs sticking out of his mouth.

Dungeon Spider ~100g Calories: 115 *Protein: 19.3 g Fat: 4 g Carbs: 1.3 g Fiber: 0,5 g Sugars: 0 g Rich in ZINC!

The spider tastes spicy. He has no idea why. But it does. It’s also crunchy, but almost too crunchy. It’s just a crunch and then a squirt of warm goo into his mouth.

A minute later, Canta grumbles, holding his stomach as he walks, not feeling as satisfied as he had hoped he would feel.

Another hour passes and then another. He follows each indistinct corridor down to the next and then down to the next. He crosses another arena. No water. Then, more corridors and a new pipe that he knocks on. What floor is he on? Is this still the lowest floor? Or was each of those arenas and passages one floor? How big is this dungeon even supposed to be?

He sighs and keeps walking.

After another two hours, he reaches the next arena. Canta falls down at the edge of the pit, his shaking fingers grasping the rim as he looks down into the basin, hoping to see some more water to fill the gnawing maw in his belly.

There is something in the water.

A slime. No, slimes. Little oozy, bubbly monsters with wildly different colors and sizes. There are a few of them. He watches, his eyes going wide, as they happily jiggle and wiggle and ‘iggle and ‘uggle as they live their best slime lives down in the pit. His hands push him forward, vaulting him into the hole like a pouncing predator. He lands on a slime, squishing it into the water, holding down the surprised creature by pressing the weight of his body down onto it, as he sticks his face into its acidic body and begins slurping it up.

The slime-horde descends down onto him in defense of their comrade immediately, covering his body in their goo, drowning him in acid. Greedily, hungrily, he keeps slurping and shoveling the panicking slimes into his mouth, as his face burns away and regenerates, as his teeth burn away and regenerate, as his eyes burn away and regenerate, until eventually, there is nothing left but him and a bloody, bubbling smear that floats through the stagnant water.

They taste like really salty, lukewarm goo.

Slime 2700mL Calories: 1680 *Protein: 32 g Fat: 4 g Carbs: 380 g Fiber: 0 g Sugars: 360 g 20g SODIUM !

He lays there in a puddle of viscera, his hand clutching his raw stomach that bulges out, full of liquid, as the acid of the slimes melts his esophagus and organs, flooding him with his own blood. It hurts. It hurts a lot. It probably hurts more than any other injury that he’s had so far, thinks Canta, as he smiles a satisfied smile.

At least he isn’t hungry anymore.

Half an hour later, healed and full, he climbs out of the pit and grabs his discarded blanket, indifferently covering it in indiscernible wet, as he goes to the next exit and pipe, knocking on it twice as he keeps walking. Eventually, he hears the soft winding sound of a music box being spun up from somewhere far away coming through it. Canta looks down at it, then back ahead, frowning as his fingers clutch the fabric of the blanket in fresh agitation. This time not at her.

He looks back down at the pipe, feeling a new pain. It’s not in his gut, but somewhere just above it, just at the base of the front of his ribs. He can feel a pulling, a tug, as if some tightly strung cord were yanking on his head from down here inside of his core. He’s sure it isn’t just some organ that regrew wrong. It’s a different feeling.

“Sorry,” mutters Canta, pulling his blanket tighter as if to muffle his own words. “About before. I didn’t need to say that.”

Alleluia doesn’t respond, but he can hear the sound of her huffing and muttering. Apparently, she’s a grudge-holding type. Though, he supposes he has been being kind of a jerk. He’d say that he just gets cranky when he’s hungry, but now that his stomach is full and his mind is clear, he realizes that that isn’t really an acceptable excuse for his dickery. So he leaves it at that and says nothing else.

Once again, two hours pass, together with a new floor. Then again. Then again. His legs are killing him as he drags himself around the boss arena, looking down inside. It’s empty. No slimes. No water.

Canta begins to sag, his second day coming to an end, having been filled with nothing but walking and drudgery, his highlight was a bit of salty goo.

He wants to get out.

He doesn’t want to be down here anymore. The dungeon sucks. Being in the dungeon sucks. Being trapped in the dungeon sucks. Living in the dungeon sucks. He looks past the next set of boss-doors, hoping to see another room off to the side. But there is no such thing there. He hasn’t seen one like that since the room that he had stayed in.

Canta’s shoulders droop as he looks around the darkness which he finds himself trapped in all alone, as if the unbearable crushing weight of the emptiness above his head had finally started to press down upon him, had finally started to force him back down into the dirt. Canta begins to sigh a tired sigh, which then turns into a yawn half-way that echoes out all around him, as the only thing that can be heard in the otherwise eternal void.

He should probably sleep. Walking tired serves little purpose, he’d just waste more energy that way and make a bunch of dumb mistakes. Though, truthfully, he doesn’t know what mistakes there are to make here. He’s done literally nothing but follow a pipe all by himself.

He flops down onto the ground, against the other side of the boss-door. There is a loud tapping three times, as he knocks against the next pipe. He waits for a little while, until he hears the whirring noise that indicates her presence has caught up to him.

“I’m going to go to sleep now,” says Canta, looking at the pipe somewhat desperately, hoping to hear a voice come back to him.

Alleluia doesn’t say anything in response. But a moment later, he hears a single knock on the pipe ring back down his way. It is a cold, metallic sound that is filled with nothing but the impact of a single half-hearted strike against the tube. It is a very lonely sound. A single beat of a heart. A single note of a song. It is missing anything of warmth, of the context of any emotion to indicate any excitement about his presence, any inclination of the tone that her voice had carried for him only yesterday. It is empty.

As Canta lays down, huddling in the open corner into a ball, as he covers himself entirely with the blanket, he realizes just how cold the stones touching his bare skin really seem to be all of a sudden. He remembers his recent promise, his oath, to himself to do better, to be better than he was in his old life. He was alone then too, he remembers that. He can’t let it happen again. He can’t let that hunger, that spiritual hunger ever manifest itself again like back then, because next time, it will swallow him forever. He has to do better.

Canta apologizes a second time, but receives no response.

His night’s sleep is terrible. His dreams are indistinct, yet cold and nightmarish and filled with abstract pain and suffering that he can never quite seem to stop, despite him having the sensation that the solution to these problems is right on the tip of his tongue. But somehow, he can never quite manage to nail down what it is.

He wakes up once, sweating and kicking with his blanket knotted around his leg. The pain of his bloody, swollen fist has woken him up. By the looks of it, he had struck it against the wall in his sleep, apparently with a significant amount of force. It hurts. Grabbing his blanket with his good hand and huddling himself back together into a tighter ball, laying there alone in the darkness, he restates his vow that he’s going to do better tomorrow. To be nicer. To be kinder. To be someone who doesn’t have to be alone in a place that is so dark and cold and empty. He’s only been here for a day and he already hates it more than he can put into words.

Canta closes his eyes again, allowing himself to start falling back into the inky void of sleep.

Suddenly, there is a gentle whirring to be heard. The sound of a crank being turned, of something pulling a rattling chain, of a music-box being spun up, fills the emptiness. He lays there, staring with wide, exhausted eyes at the pipe. as he listens to the voice on the other end start to sing a gentle, wordless melody, her voice ringing out as if soft chimes from a bell.

He doesn’t recall falling asleep after that. He simply falls into it and this time, he has no dreams at all. He experiences only a calmness that is neither satisfying, nor replenishing.

But at least he can’t feel the hunger anymore.