Wolf ears perked up as they each heard a faint ding. There were intruders in their forest.

As one, they ran to the door. A colorful group of humanoids stood there, the two in front holding a large bag. Fear radiated off them, almost as strong as the meat scent emanating from the bag.

Upon seeing the dire wolves, they upended the bag. Dozens of meatballs fell out, landing in a pile on the forest floor.

The wolf leader slowed, suspicious. Behind him, the pack pawed the ground and sniffed the air, not sure what to do. The leader moved forwards slowly, teeth bared and hackles raised. The colorful group moved back, watching.

A meatball rolled off the pile, landing at the leader’s paws. He sniffed it, not taking his eyes off the humanoids. It smelled like meat and water, with no trace of potions or poisons. With an air that said “if this is bad, you will die”, he stuck out his tongue and flicked it into his mouth.

It… was delicious.

He dove for the pile, biting into as many as possible as his pack jumped forwards to join him. They tore through the meatballs, barely swallowing before grabbing another one. It was barely half a minute before all the meat was gone, leaving them licking the ground.

The leader sat back, contentedly licking his chops. And remembered something.

He barked, and his pack looked up at him. There were still intruders in the forest. Intruders were bad. Intruders brought pain. They had to defend their territory from pain bringers, even if they also brought food.

The pack remembered and growled, turning towards the other door.

Death to the pain bringers.

*****

Dear Diary,

So, the dire wolves liked my food. Which was good.

But they didn’t like it enough to not attack us when they’d finished eating it.

We took a vote on what to do; keep feeding them in the hopes that they’d become our friends, or give up and figure out how to fight them. And, since Staab is a part of our group as far as traveling down goes, it was a tie. We compromised on this: we’d try food giving for the next week, trying every morning. If it didn’t seem to be working, we’d deck ourselves out in armor and swords, and go through the old-fashioned way.

I don’t really like fighting. Not that I’m a pacifist or anything, I just personally don’t like causing pain or being in pain. I mentioned this, and Lilly said she thought I would make a good healer. I like the idea of that; learning spells and buying potions to help people. I might even be able to put the potions into my cooking, so that instead of just chugging a mystery vial, someone could eat a cookie and gain health.

If I had cookies. I’ll have to try making more desserts. I’m not really that much of a “sweets” person, I always preferred potato chips to oreos, but after so much time with only milkshakes, I kinda really want a snickerdoodle, y’no? Heck, I’d take the most basic of chocolate cakes at this point, because there’s so much I could do with flour, eggs and milk.

Anyways, in other news, Mika and Kimi finished their marble choosing races, meaning after Aya does hers tomorrow we can move on with the prelims. We were kinda worried that spending so much time on exploring and making friends with dire wolves we wouldn’t have time for our marble tournament, but no one really wants to die more than once a day, so yeah. We go down there first thing in the morning, and are back by ten. I suppose that if we make it further and further down it’ll take longer, but I don’t think we’ll ever be back after noon. That still leaves us with plenty of time to make tracks and race.

Usually only Mika and Kimi make the actual tracks we use, leaving the rest of us to do whatever we find to do, but honestly it’s never anything important, so this time everyone is going to help out. That should make building the tracks faster. And Mika said she could save the tracks in pieces, instead of melting them down like she usually does, so next year she wouldn’t have to mould and form each track individually. It would only be a question of assembling them.

We told Staab about our marble tournament, and he thought it was the stupidest thing ever. Which, yeah, I see that. So we asked what his life was like, and apparently lvl92 is a lava level! He lives in a little hut alongside a river of molten lava. There are three other hobgoblins and a dozen ghosts that also live there, so they mostly play cards. Except a lot of times they drop cards in the lava, and so have to play with incomplete decks. He says it’s pretty boring, but the other hobgoblins like it, and didn’t want to come explore.

Their loss.

Well, that’s all for now.

Goodnight, dungeon!