Three months is a long time to be asleep. I guess it is the perk of a dungeon master to not die of hunger in this amount of time. Or was it Lilith who fed me? I decided not to ask this out loud to not make her think that I am questioning her loyalty.

“Welcome, master.”

Her smile is heartwarming. But why do I feel so safe now? Why do I feel so at peace?

In this short amount of time, was I able to make a home for myself?

No need to get sentimental. I need to get to work as soon as possible.

“Thank you, Lilith. But I need a report about the dungeon. How is the food situation?”

“We are on a low budget for food especially since you passed out. As you know, the dungeon heavily relied on your skill to summon slimes as a staple food. I was hoping you could summon more slimes.”

“About that….”

I explained the situation to lizard as she listens to me with a frightened face. Her shot probably suggests that she has never seen or heard of anything like this before.

“So, you can see the situation of the dungeon, but cannot summon monsters or change the dungeon using that menu?”

“Indeed. That is why we need to find another method to procure food.”

It is time to think. In the last three months that I was unconscious, there has been not a single development to initiate agriculture. Lilith told me that she did not want to make any moves without my permission. I feel lucky enough to have her by my side to take care of everything else in these three months. I cannot blame her for anything.

“We need to start planting food as soon as possible.”

“I understand. But I am pretty sure none of us know a thing about farming except for the dryads.”

“To be frank, neither do I. But we have a relatively big population and a huge forest lying in front of the cave. We can start somewhere.”

I ordered the creation of a team to explore the forest and collect seeds. Fortunately, we had dryads who were able to identify plants. They are neither fast in particular nor are big in numbers, and that is the reason why I made the exploration team out of goblins riding three fanged wolves. The plan is this: Goblins collect any plant they see and bring them back to the cave. The dryads examine the plants and tell the goblins which are edible. Goblins then go on and collect them. And finally, as the last line of security, dryads make sure that there is not any non-edible plant mixed into the final batch of seeds.

Also, the goblins would search for both fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Although fruits would virtually take much longer time to ripen, it is an investment for the future. Of course, however, our priority is vegetables and herbs.

After the fiasco of losing my skills, one thing that I am proud of doing before losing them is actually having summoned dryads at this point. I have to confess, though, this was not the reason I summoned them. Just like the others, I was only interested in summoning different races at that point, at the suggestion of Lilith.

According to the report I received from Lilith, it seems that the hares have been breeding well.

Some progress has also been made for clothing production. I learned that Lilith ordered the formation of a tailor’s group to this end.

I do not know how I can pay back her favor.

thing that I wanted to do now that I'm back in the dungeon. I summoned many monsters before going to the goblin village three months ago. Among them are the darkness imps and fire imps. I want to check their abilities. It would be pretty cool if fire imps can control fire or use fire magic. As for the darkness imps, I am clueless about their abilities.

After I ordered some of the fire and darkness imps to stand in a line in front of me, I started examining them skills. Both the fire and darkness imps look a lot like the normal imps. The only difference was the color of their skin. While the fire imps had a more reddish skin, the darkness imps have a darker skin. Pretty straightforward.

Firearms were able to control fire, but not to a great extent. I believe it was through magic and Lilith confirmed it. They were able to like small fire and shoot very small fireballs. They can provide light in the deeper parts of the dungeon for mining activities. I also feel like they can be very good cooks than many other monsters due to their ability to control temperature to the small extent. I hope they really know the difference between rare, medium, and well done.

I smiled at the idea of ordering a medium-rare slime for the dinner. I could take Lilith out for a dinner if I'm lucky enough.

Darkness ends, as anyone could guess, had abilities that enabled them to manipulate darkness. They have three major skills. The first one is manipulation of their own shadow. To be frank, I have no clue how we can make use of this. The second skill they held is night vision. We can send them out for exploration when it is night, or we can send them to the deeper parts of the dungeon without the help of fire imps. It is a rather simple but useful talent. The third skill which only some of the darkness ends were able to manifest, was blocking out the light. In essence, they are able to absorb light and make an area darker.

I wanted to learn if they were able to emit the light that they absorbed, but apparently they cannot do that. Otherwise, it would have been much easier for us to grow plants inside the dungeon.

Now that I have formed some teams to collect seeds for agriculture, I also need to think about the aspects of education and research. I can understand what education is, but I'm not quite sure what research really means here. I should ask Lilith.

“I believe it is for magic. In the outer world, especially the human and elven kingdoms often engage in magic research. I'm not quite knowledgeable about their system, but what they're trying to do is to further the understanding of magic. However, it is not a common theme for monsters.”

This answer is my question. So, I need magicians.

“It is good that I have a witch by my side then.”

There comes that smile that warms my heart. Being able to make Lilith happy with such simple words is priceless.

Knowledge sharing is one important aspect. However, to do that more effectively, I do believe we need a scripture. Everybody can speak the same language, namely the language of the dungeon. I'll name this language Echese.

Now what I need to do is to develop an alphabet for it so that every member of the New World can read.

I feel Lilith’s eyes on me as I'm thinking out loud.

“What’s the matter?”

“It just feels incredible that you are thinking of teaching monsters, how to read and write.”

“Is that not a common thing for monsters to be able to read? You said there were dungeons before. Wasn't written language common in the dungeon 70 years ago?”

“It was common indeed. The thing is, not everybody can read. Throughout the history of dungeons many of the monsters that are considered weaker than the rest, like goblins or hobgoblins, have always been illiterate. I have not heard of any single dungeon master to try and teach them how to read or write.”

“Why not?”

“In the dungeons, goblins were usually used for manpower. Besides, it is not like all humanoids are literate.”

“Fine, then. I will build a school. And it will be open to non-residents as well.”

A grin covered my face as I declared this.