Translated by iseuliEdited by Meira

The hardest part of this life was not having a cellphone. In her past life, she would always watch movies or play games on her phone as she worked. She could also pull up all sorts of world news, so there was never a chance for her to be bored.

There is no such thing as a cellphone in a dragon’s lair. The only things she had were a few books that NeAffronti left for her. She never had the chance to read as a slime, it wasn’t very useful to pass the time either. She once asked Elkiesel to read her books, but he couldn’t recognize the languages of the books so they were more for decoration than entertainment.

There were so many interesting things in her past life. She was dirt poor, but as long as she put in a little effort, it was easy to find fun things to do.

There was a manhwa café near the convenience store where she worked. Whenever school was on break, she would go there to read as much as she wanted. When she worked at the movie theater, she could watch all the latest movies. She received gift cards for movies from time to time, so on her time off she would often go to watch something. She regularly used the credit cards given to low-income citizens to enjoy theater plays and musicals.

There were countless enjoyable activities in her past life, but in this life, she felt like she would go crazy from boredom.

It’s a great thing to have many things to do. While Kalgilm, her master, hibernated, she passed all her time scrubbing his gigantic body. She was glad that she was the only named slime so she had something to do to remain busy.

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One time, she worked in a makeup store at the lower floors near the subway shopping centers. She couldn’t see a speck of sunlight other than the time she was walking to work. While she was working there, she couldn’t even feel the passage of time.

Living in a dragon lair felt the same as spending twenty-four hours a day underground. The dragon lair was always kept the same temperature and same brightness, so the passage of time grew muddled.

She evolved into a conscious being shortly after Kalgilm went into his second hibernation.

She had worked two hundred years to scrub Kalgilm, but she didn’t feel like two hundred years had passed. Yesterday felt like today, and day to day nothing changed at all.

She could only feel the presence of time after Kalgilm awoke from his slumber. She felt reality fall harshly upon her. She truly was not a human anymore, but a slime. Slimes were simple organisms. They ate, digested, and slept. Afterwards it was just rinse and repeat.

Like a herbivore, Elkiesel only ate plants. He couldn’t leave the lair because he needed to remain to protect and maintain it, so he often commanded orcs to bring flowers and leaves to eat. Elkiesel always shared his own food with her.

Honestly, she felt like all this was a dream. The fact that she was a slime, the smell of the air in this dragon lair, the rocks, that gigantic dragon, the elf with pointy ears… it felt like when she opened her eyes, everything would be gone.

She consumed only leaves and plants the past 200 years. The reality of the horrible orc corpse sent chills through her entire body.

Yes, I am a slime. I will live and die as a slime.

“Bouncy, open your mouth. You haven’t eaten anything in days.”

Elkiesel had been talking and trying to feed her mint leaves for the past hour.

She wanted to eat the mint leaves for Elkiesel’s sake, but she would remember the orc’s chopped up body and she would immediately lose her appetite. She saw chopped up body parts in manhwa before, but it was completely different seeing it for herself in real life.

“Triangle. Triangle Rice. Pu-ring.”

“What’s a Triangle Lice? What kind of plant is that?”

Elkiesel’s confused face looked silly. Seeing it made her feel better. Of course she wouldn’t be able to eat such a thing here.

She assumed that Kalgilm would look just as confused as Elkiesel. She rolled her body and looked up to Kalgilm. Kalgilm’s expression was different than her prediction.

“A triangle rice ball.”

‘Huh? His pronunciation is on point?’

Kalgilm looked with a satisfied expression towards her. She felt confused and slumped while sitting on his lap.

***

Kalgilm had a very long dream while he was asleep. Inside, he was flying around like a ghost amongst towering concrete buildings. He thought this place looked very similar to the human cities he saw in books, but at the same time it looked vastly different.

In the books Kalgilm read, humans lived in cities made of crude rocks. However, in his dream the buildings were not made of rocks but glass, and though it was night the atmosphere was blindingly bright. In this brilliant city, Kalgilm became overwhelmed by a certain young girl’s consciousness.

The young girl lived in the run-down attic of a brick house. She woke up every morning and walked to a place called the subway shopping center. That place was so full of humans it looked like an ant hill. The young girl lived among them while going to school and working.

If this city were the whole world, the young girl only made up the smallest part of it. If she were to disappear, nothing about the world would change. She was a meaningless existence in it.

The young girl’s name didn’t spread far. Her life was fleeting and ended meaninglessly when she died of a heart attack. Though young, she died of overwork. What meager property she managed to collect was taken by her relatives upon her death.

The triangle rice ball was the meal she enjoyed on a regular basis. The triangle rice ball was wrapped up in a shiny clear thing called plastic. If one removed it, it revealed a triangle rice ball wrapped in a black sheet of paper. This thing was sold for only a certain period of time. Once the period of time passed, the girl would take them for herself and consume it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She wasn’t shy and ate as much as she wanted to.

A dragon’s dream is not just a dream. Dragons who were created to protect this world would often dream of other worlds. This brilliant world was probably one of the many in the far reaches of the universe.

Bouncy was Kalgilm’s familiar. Named familiars could borrow strength from their dragon master, so it’s possible that Bouncy had seen Kalgilm’s dream as well.

‘Did you see my dream?’

Kalgilm pet Bouncy’s smooth head.

‘You couldn’t even catch one bug for yourself when you bounced here and there just two hundred years ago. Now you can talk, and convey that you want to eat triangle rice balls. Rice balls and bugs appear similar as they are both black, but they probably taste very different. Maybe it became curious over this food. It shouldn’t be able to taste it though. Ah, it must want to feel the fragrance of it?’

It’s in a living organism’s nature to become curious over strange new things in life. Bouncy was also a living organism, it was natural for it to become curious.

‘If I make triangle rice balls for Bouncy, it will be very happy.’

He already roughly knew the ingredients of a triangle rice ball. Seaweed, a strange black sheet of paper, rice, and meat.

Seaweed might be difficult to obtain, but rice and meat was easily obtainable in this world. The problem now was that Kalgilm didn’t have the tiniest idea how to cook rice or meat. Dragons live by consuming the mana of jewels and precious metals, so of course there would be no meat or rice.

Elkiesel was a dark elf. Dark elves live by eating flowers, leaves, and honey, so rice or meat was never necessary. He was sure there would be none of these stored anywhere in the lair.

He would have to travel quite far in order to obtain rice and meat. It wasn’t a problem to travel just in the outskirts of his lair, but traveling any further was very troublesome. He really was too lazy and hated to expend any energy. So, Kalgilm sent a message to his friend, the green dragon NeAffronti, by magic.

Come here if you are there.

NeAffronti returned to rest after a brief leisure trip, and a message was delivered by magic. He thought it was so strange to hear Kalgilm’s voice in his mind. NeAffronti had called for Kalgilm before, but it was rare for Kalgilm to call him.

‘What is that lazy guy calling me for?’

NeAffronti called his guardian golem, Falcon, and they traveled together to Kalgilm’s lair. NeAffronti looked at all the overgrown weeds at Kalgilm’s lair entrance and clicked his tongue.

‘He only has two familiars so his lair is never clean. What can I do to make this lazy dragon more hard working?’

A lair was a dragon’s pride.

NeAffronti mobilized dwarves to keep up the entrance of his lair. He felt so much pride every time he looked at the entrance of his grand lair. He felt so satisfied whenever other dragons came to visit him, and they stared in awe at his glorious marble entrance.

NeAffronti had decorated his lair entrance so well that there were many humans who invaded in an attempt to get rich. Those humans would immediately be smashed and trapped with magic. They would then need to face fearsome consequences from his familiars. There were many scratches and damage to the decorations from battle, but that made his lair entrance more unique.

On the other hand, Kalgilm’s lair… he was confused whether he was looking at a lair or a simple cave. In Bouncy’s terms, if NeAffronti’s lair was considered one of Gangnam’s luxury apartments, then Kalgilm’s lair was a shabby room in the slums.

It wasn’t just the lair itself that was pitiful, everything inside looked broken and old.

The orcs that Elkiesel commanded wore their characteristic ragged leathers and dwelled the surrounding grounds, so there was no danger of intruders at all. Other dragons would gear their orcs in shiny expensive armor. Who would ever guess that orcs dressed in shabby clothes were protecting a dragon lair?

NeAffronti pitied the orcs that had only loin cloths for armor.

‘Do I need to lend him my familiars? No, that’s too troublesome so he won’t ask for such a thing.’

NeAffronti felt depressed thinking of Kalgilm. Dragons were lazy by nature, but Kalgilm was probably the first dragon in existence who only slept and ate through three thousand years of life.

Kalgilm endlessly complained about having had to expend a little bit of effort to obtain Elkiesel as his familiar. Kalgilm probably went into his second hibernation because he feared that Elkiesel would ask him to do more annoying things for him.

‘Anyway, I wonder if Bouncy is doing well.’

NeAffronti had gotten the dragon a second familiar, and the name he came up with for the slime was Bouncy.