Letting her go dangerous? Slime asked as I watched the elf girl travel outside of my visible range.

"Maybe," I shrugged. "Hopefully she trusts me - I did tell her everything for that reason." Using my mana to save her in such an extreme manner would put me in suspicion no matter the case. I could have trapped her, kept her here, control the information, but I didn't know how long I would be able to get away with that. I assured the slime, "Don't worry about her. If she does what I ask and comes back, great. If she does what I ask and disappears, that is also just fine. However, if she does put us in jeopardy, there are always the shadows." An option I hoped I didn't have to resort to. There was a tinge in my gut as the situation didn't set right with me. I felt a little cruel even having such an option, but I had no idea what else I could do.

Now what? Now what? The slime excitedly hopped in place.

"Now what indeed..." I stroked my chin. There wasn't much I could do with Gil: expanding the dungeon was not an option without him. I decided, "Let's take care of the bodies around here. Can't just leave them around, ya'know?" I took my leave outside the dungeon with Slime and Tal in tow. "So, Slime, want to eat the bodies?" I asked with a chuckle.

Slime reared itself to slam me, an attack I nearly dodged. It didn't seem to take kindly to my joke. Metal. Metal Only. You know this.

I laughed again, "Yeah, I know." I couldn't shake the feeling that the slime was growing in an astounding fashion. Far has it come from the days were it single-mindedly repeated 'kill'. It spouted complete thoughts and ideas now. Deep inside I beamed like a proud father might over his blossoming child. I turned to the zombie, "How about you, Tal? Fancy a bite out of the bodies?"

There was no intelligible response from the zombie. It groaned and shook, but made no indication it cared or understood what was happening. I wasn't really sure what the zombie was running on. A little bit of mana flow was all I was allocating it and it seemed happy as a clam.

"Since neither of you two care for these bodies, at least give me a hand and group them up by the dungeon so I can take care of them." The dungeon powers were convenient; I could simply absorb them and store their nutrients and residual mana. It was like recycling in a sense, but I had other plans for a few of them.

Natural ordered creeped back into the forest. The unusual calm and quiet had dissipated, a note I made while beginning the cleanup. Still lingering in the air, however, was a faint smoke, a burning odor. The knights had torched and burned most of the village. A southern wind had wafted it into the greater forest. I wished that the wind had also carried away the rotting smell from the dead. That lingered to the earth making the walk through the forest unpleasant.

Bodies were neatly assembled in front of the dungeon entrance. Tal dragged some in, the slime created an appendage to carry them (doing so most reluctantly as if it was disgusting trash), and I carried them over my shoulder. Soon we had cleared all that we could out of the forest. The village was left as is - I considered it too far outside my range to bother, and all the bodies disappearing from there could attract attention as well.

I went to work dissolving most of the bodies. The slime rolled around next to me, I want metal, where is metal?

It was a simple slime that didn't ask much, so telling it there was none always was unpleasant. There were a few small trinkets and jewelry on the elves, bands and bracelets. Those were metal and I happily separated them out as I had the dungeon absorb the bodies. Slime was more than overjoyed, jumping on them and dissolving them faster than I could go through the bodies.

There was three left at the end, and to my delight, the slime asked, What are you doing with those three?

"Since things might be getting dangerous around here, having a few extra hands might be helpful. I'm going to reanimate them, but with a little twist..." I could make them zombies just like Tal, but he was a slow, lumbering type of creature now. There didn't seem to be any intelligence in the body sack right now, so all that skin and meat was weighing him down. "That's right," I broadcasted my thoughts, "I will be stripping these bodies of their flesh and turn them into skeletons." Without all the extra weight, they could be a valuable mobile asset. Not to mention reanimating clear elves from a village that was slaughtered wouldn't look good to anyone, especially Lia if she came back.

The process was simple. Strip the meat, reanimate the bones. Easier than healing wounds. Feeling like a villain, I went to work. It wasn't even a moment before the piles of bones clattered and clanged together and stood up. I brushed my hands together, "There we go! Three skeletons ready to go." The three lightly swayed together and, just like the zombie, didn't do much. Intelligence was something I would have to figure out. The slime didn't start of smart either, but as it was grew being fed mana and metal, it evolved. Skeletons and zombies don't naturally eat much so pumping in mana would be the best bet.

I wrote that down in my notebook. Another idea to be tested at another time. I ushered in the gang as it was getting dark and today's work was over. In the back of the book, far away from all of my notes, I got started on my next project. While there were a few things I had in mind I could test out, powers and abilities and the effect of mana consumption, I wanted to work on something more artistic; I wanted to work on dungeon design.

While without Gil I was too afraid to do any such thing, the mana consumption being the primary concern, that didn't mean I couldn't start planning. There were several things I was considering: size, reach, defense, offense, utility. I had no intention of living in just a plain old dungeon. If I wanted to make somewhere worth living it, it had to function appropriately and have all the amenities people would expect.

That meant planning out roads and transport routes, homes and stores, storage rooms and dungeon rooms, and then seamlessly weaving them into the structure of the dungeon in a way that it can be defended in case of attack. It was no easy task, but I had to get started somewhere. In the study of my room at the bottom of the dungeon's depth, I sat with Slime who happily bounced my ideas back at me. As interested I was in the development of the dungeon, a part of me couldn’t help but keep thinking about the slime. It started off as a simple white slime with no smarts to speak off and developed into a metal slime that could fight and think. I wondered where it's continual growth would take it and if the other monsters could experience anything close to what this special slime can. With the thought at the back of my head, I sketched out my mark on the world.