Monster Cuisine.

I summoned the minotaur that I was going to slaughter and eat.

After killing it, I got Spectre to chop its muscle off.

I cooked the meat on top of some torches and gulped.

'Let's not get deathly poisoned...', I prayed and closed my eyes, chomping down the minotaur meat.

After struggling to tear off the meat, I started chewing.

'...'

'It tastes like extra hard and thick beef... A bit overcooked too... It tastes like shit...', I told myself.

Chewing and swallowing the tough, diamond-like meat was causing extreme discomfort in my jaws.

After the torture, I got up and decided to go up the stairs, meat in hand. I would eat whenever I got tired or hungry.

But the issue of water still remained.

Ever since coming to this world, I had found a magma pool but not water. It seemed that water was quite a rare commodity in my domain...

'Oh come on... Am I in Africa or something? Why can't I find water?!', I complained.

{Author's Note: IT'S CALLED A JOKE GUYS}

But then, I remembered.

'Wait, don't slimes have liquid-like things in them...?'

But then the extreme disgust of drinking the cytoplasm of a slime came down upon me and I immediately gave up.

'Oh my god... I'm so stupid... Desmond can use ice magic! I can just melt the ice!', I remembered.

"Desmond. Conjure some ice in a cup for me.", I commanded.

Desmond swiftly made a stone cup using his earth magic and conjured some ice in it.

But the ice was way too cold.

I waited near the torch-lit fire for a few minutes and finally, some of the ice melted.

I drank the water and my face contorted.

'It's literally tasteless...', I concluded.

Drinking that water would actually make me more thirsty and it's also probably not very good for my health, even if I'm an Arch-Demon now.

'The quest's time limit was 10 days... That must mean that this task isn't as easy as it looks...'

'What to do... What to do... Should I make it into a stew? Well, I don't really have any other ideas...'

And so, Desmond made buckets of rocks and stored ice in them, waiting for them to melt and stockpile on water.

'Saltless, tasteless minotaur meat stew... yay...', I cheered.

"Craw. Craw...", Corvis tried to cheer me up which was quite wholesome of him.

"Haha, thank you Corvis. I'm not gonna give up and risk going insane...", I replied.

--- after some time ---

The stew was ready.

'*Sigh... the stew is ready...', I thought with a grim expression on my face.

I wasn't happy in the slightest that the stew was prepared...

There was nothing in it.

Just meat and water. The water had taken a different colour now, and the meat seemed to have gotten softer.

But I still didn't have faith.

I picked up the stone plate which Desmond made and took a sip of the stew.

'... It's surprisingly not too bad...', I thought with an astonished mood.

It tasted like a worse version of the beef stew I ate at that one restaurant I was invited to by my 'friends'...

Tasting it put me in a melancholic mood.

I remembered the moment I got run over by that truck...

I was going home from school like usual... No, it wasn't a usual day... I had taken some time to visit the local electronics shop to see some new mice since my old one was getting rusty.

'I wonder... If I hadn't gone looking for a mouse... and If I hadn't gotten run over... Would I still be going to school normally? Pretending to like things I didn't like? Hanging out with make-believe friends whom I could care less about?'

As I drank more and more stew, my mind began spiralling deeper and deeper.

I started remembering old memories.

That one time when I was playing with the other orphan kids, but when I hit a ball too hard and it hit a girl, making her cry, I got scolded for it...

'She was fucking acting... It wasn't even that hard of a kick...', I thought bitterly.

That marked the beginning of my distrusting and alienating nature.

After that incident, I was often called names and teased as the guy who makes girls cry.

My 'friends' were also joining the fun, making a mockery of me.

Then there was that one time in high school.

I started to like this one girl from my class.

She wasn't anything extraordinary, just above average. Just perfect for my eyes.

But of course, she just had to go and get all lovey-dovey with another asshole before I stood a chance.

I was so done with humans.

The memories kept flooding in. Only the bad ones.

But then I remembered what made me like this in the first place. Why I was so indifferent towards human connection.

I found out my parents.

They were still alive and well.

Naturally, I went to go meet them.

Guess what I got for doing that.

They were living happily like a family with their two other daughters.

When I showed up in front of their house, the husband, my father suddenly got extremely heated and angry.

The wife, my mother fell to the ground, trembling.

I didn't know what I did wrong, but I knew I wasn't welcome.

I went back to the orphanage and did some research on my mother and father.

After inquiring from some people and requesting old documents, I somehow found out what had happened.

I was the child of my mother and her ex-husband.

Apparently, he abused her and didn't provide for the family.

She hated him with every fibre of her being.

So, naturally, she also hated me from birth.

This discovery shook me to the very core and I would never be the same again.

I found this out the previous year, when I was 16 years old.

Just staying in the same town as those revolted me, so I moved away with the money I had saved up from selling some of my games.

From there on, I cared little about human connection. Although, I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the sunlight and fresh air...

'When will I make it out of this damn dungeon...? Wait, dungeon? What's that? Where am I? Ah, shit... I think... I shouldn't have... eaten the stew...', I thought before I collapsed.

My consciousness fell into a trance. It felt like I was not alive but still strapped to my corporeal body...

It felt like the weight of several worlds was pushing me down to the surface of the earth.

I started seeing fractals and distorted shapes.

'Am I... high...?', I thought in between a million different random thoughts.

My whole body felt like it was getting covered by quadrillions of tiny ants.

I lost the ability to focus with my eyes.

I was tasting the air and smelling the light... it was all so incomprehensible, it made me feel like I would go insane...

Suddenly, I felt like something started shaking my body.

I couldn't quite make out what it was, but it looked like a skeleton to me, haha.

'I think I'm drowning... in my own subconscious... my own insanity... is devouring me...'

After about 5 minutes of the madness, it all just suddenly stopped.

And when I say it stopped, I mean EVERYTHING stopped. Except my consciousness, as I was still very much awake.

I couldn't sense anything. Not my limbs, my nose, my eyes, my ears. Not even touch or temperature.

A void.

The abyss.

I started to panic.

'Did I die? No way... Is this the limbo or something?! No! This is worse than death! Let me out! LET ME OUUUUT!'

Just a few minutes in this nightmarish place was enough to push me to the edges of insanity and I started questioning my own existence.

But then, something unexpected happened.

The dark void suddenly cracked.

*CRACK!* *CRAACK!* *SHATTER!*

The darkness shattered like glass and revealed a bone-chilling crimson hue.

A red so dark and yet too bright, makes you question what could be the creator of such a terrifying colour.

The question wasn't left unanswered for too long.

*FLAP!* *FLAP!*

The flaps of gigantic wings echoed throughout the infinite red space.

The being that was making this sound-

A crow.

A crow the size of a planet.

Its eyes were a twisted red colour, its beak forming an uncanny and nauseating smile.

'Corvis...? Is that you...?'