Bob refused to move away from his meal, or even acknowledge his compatriots around him who were cheering and calling to him.
Ted and Suzy were becoming worried about him ignoring them; grabbing hold of his tail, they fought to separate him from his meal.
By the time they did so, Bob had devoured not just the human's brain, but his entire head and upper torso.
Bob suddenly came back to his senses, leaving the dream-like state he was in behind. His face was covered with blood, stained bright red, and with random pieces of flesh hanging from his teeth.
“Huh, what happened? Wasn't I just eating? When did I move here?”
Exchanging worried glances with each other, Ted and Suzy took a tender approach to the puzzled lizardman.
“My darling Bob, you were in a trance or something when you were...Hmmm...Eating that human.....Are you okay?”
Those words that were full of compassion and worry for her beloved seemed to strike a chord within him. Strange feelings he had never felt before had begun to approach the periphery of his mind.
Looking from Suzy to Ted and then at the faces of the other villagers, with many of them looking equally worried for his condition, he felt his voice become stuck in his throat.
Fighting to get his words out, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets before he finally managed to make a noise.
“BUUUUUUURP!”
A large expulsion of gas made its way up his throat and out into the air, an almighty burp that took everyone by surprise and ultimately made them fall into laughter.
A simple action such as that was the first time one of their number had ever burped, or in fact eaten anything edible.
Ted slapped his brother on the back and spoke to him.
“Ha Ha. So that's what a burp sounds like, Bob. Nice one!”
Bob turned to his brother to let out a laugh, but in that instant his head went light, and he fell back with a thud. His consciousness faded, and he passed out.
The last thing he heard or saw was the worried faces and shouts around him. All he left in his wake was the rotting stench of human flesh that hung in the air around him.
Bob found himself in a foreign place; no longer was he in the Dungeon he had known all his life, or surrounded by his kin; instead, he was in an endless sea of white.
Tentatively, he called out.
“He...Hello, is anyone there?... I think I'm lost.....Ted, Suzy, anyone!?”
No reply came, but a new object entered his vision.
Appearing from nowhere, a large floating skull stared ominously at him. Its size was larger than his body and appeared to be a human's, although in a giant form.
Its eye sockets burst into life, with red flames filling the voids, before its jaw lowered and opened its mouth.
Bob muttered under his breath, a question to which no reply came.
“What are you?.....”
Bob did not take any action, instead choosing to watch the strange entity.
He felt no fear or animosity from the skull, only a slight warmth that only increased as time passed by.
A bubble floated out of its mouth before several others joined it in the air. One came close to him, hanging nearly in front of his face and subconsciously begging him to touch it.
Following the unspoken request, Bob stretched out a hand and made contact with the bubble.
The white world vanished, and a flood of colours filled his vision, alongside a torrent of information and images inside his mind.
As if floating in the air and looking down on several people, Bob found himself silently and invisibly watching a group of humans in a dimly lit room.
As he looked about the room, he understood what he was seeing and what everything was, even going as far as to know the people's names and their motives.
Sitting on a chair at the end of the room, Heinz Siegfried, the inspector he had devoured, watched a naked woman dance in front of him.
The rotting stench of her reanimated corpse came anew with every sultry movement. Her vacant eyes that held no emotion reflected the malevolence of Heinz and also the pitifulness of his 'chair'.
The piece of furniture was, in fact, another corpse, a naked man on all fours who bore the weight of his master.
Heinz smiled at the dancing woman, digging his nails into the flesh of the man he sat atop while he spoke.
“You dance beautifully as ever, mother, and you father are the most ideal seat.....I wonder if you are smiling as you look up from Hell, or do you curse me with every fibre of your Soul? At least you finally serve some purpose......Speaking of purpose, what role will you fulfil?”
Moving his attention away from his mother, Heinz locked eyes with a cowering woman who was chained in the corner of the room.
Unable to say a word, her tongue was clamped outside of her mouth, making even the act of swallowing a chore. Tears marred her face, and her body twitched; she instinctively pulled away as much as possible, her body taking the shape of the corner of the room.
Heinz claimed a whip from beside him; a firm arm movement later, and the lash flicked out, a cracking noise that erased the scene from Bob's mind.
Even so, the scene no longer played before him; the memories and feelings of Heinz still lingered within his mind.
Thankfully, the hate and malice he felt had little impact on Bob's psyche, with him feeling little empathy towards the humans in question.
Yet, a seed of emotion had been planted.
Before Bob knew what happened, the bubbles were in front of his eyes, with another drawing him into a memory.
Looking down on a garden, the sunny day cast its warmth on Heinz as a child.
Sitting on the grass, he held a dead bird in his hands.
The pitiful creature lay on its side, its body limp and completely devoid of life. Its white feathers bore no marks or even damage that would point to its untimely death.
A Magic Circle appeared floating above the dead bird, turning black as it filled with power and activated. Purple tendrils of energy radiated downwards and made the bird writhe in what would be agony for the living before it stood up, awaiting its first command.
Young Heinz smiled warmly at the bird and spoke in a voice that carried compassion.
“Hello, little bird, now talk.”
In response to his order, the little bird began to hop on the ground, craning its neck up in the air. It let out a series of tweets and chirps that filled the garden.
The smile vanished from Heinz's face.
Claiming a rock off the ground beside him, he proceeded to bash the bird's head in until his Spell of reanimation failed to sustain the body.
“I said to talk, not to chirp and tweet.”
The unblemished white feathers were now a thing of the past; only blood-stained and mangled ones remained.
A second later, a fresh Magic Circle made the bird spring back to life.
“Now talk, say 'I love you'.”
The bird showed no fear or animosity towards its master for his previous actions, only showing a willingness to dutifully follow his orders.
Unfortunately, the bird worked within the limits of its species and began to chirp and tweet again, utilising as much range as possible to make its master happy.
“Tsk.”
Heinz pulled his hand back and brought the rock down once again at a blistering speed, forcing a spray of congealed blood to streak across his face.
The violent action forced Bob from the memory, seating him within the white room with the deluge of bubbles.
As if suspended in time, the bubbles did not move; no motion was elicited within the space, only he and the flickering eyes of the skull showed movement.
“What a horrible child, showing contempt for not only his own species and family, but even vulnerable animals....That's the real state of the human I devoured?...... I don't know how to feel about it......”
Before Bob could get his thoughts in order, time resumed, and every bubble in the room flew towards him at an unimaginable speed; the bubbles collided with him one after the other.
Memory after memory filled his mind, transferring him from one scene to the other, overloading his mind and forcing years of memories to be assimilated within mere moments.
“ARGHHHHHH!”
Bob sat bolt upright, eyes wide open and screaming at the top of his lungs. The incessant cacophony only ceased when he realised he was no longer in the world of memories, but back in reality inside the Dungeon.
Sitting underneath the shade of a tree, Ted and Suzy were looking at him with concern etched on their faces, with the rest of the village also in sight and looking dubiously at him.
“Ahh, is this...Hmm, real? I'm not in a memory again, am I?”
Suzy gently stroked his head and replied as if she was speaking to a confused child.
“My darling Bob, I know when you see me you think it's a dream, but this is real....Are you okay? Did you have a nightmare?”
“A nightmare? Yes, that's what it was, just a nightmare.......Wait, how long have I been asleep?”
Ted reached out a hand to Bob and hoisted him up to his feet.
“Not long, brother, only about an hour.”
Bob mulled over his thoughts before his eyes landed on the pit that contained Heinz's dead body, just below the surface.
Panic started to take hold of him as he spoke.
“What about the humans? Have they come to attack again yet? What did you do to that human's body?”
Ted and Suzy both chuckled at his words, with their arms folded and acting proudly.
Ted answered him.
“No humans have come...And for that dead body, we didn't let anyone near it after we realised eating it had poisoned you.....The Dungeons claimed it back now; it was absorbed about a minute before you woke up.”
"Eurgh, they thought the body was poisoned....How would I even explain that it gave me power? I was hoping to finish eating it, hoping that it would give me more power.....I definitely feel stronger now; I just can't put my claw on exactly what's stronger.....That's not what's important right now."
“We need to get ready for the humans; they could come at any moment!”
The rest of the lizardmen had been listening in on their conversation and had congregated in front of Bob.
Strangely, though, the villagers had split into two distinct groups.
Looking between the two, Bob noticed there seemed to be an air of hostility between them. Suzy picked up on Bob's thoughts and stepped in to explain.
“Bob, we were talking while you were asleep. We know we have to leave the Dungeon, and for that, the Dungeon Core needs to be destroyed. The problem is the village is split in two about who should break it.”
Bob was genuinely confused; the answer was extremely simple. Scratching a claw at his head, he replied.
“Who should break it, obviously we should. If we don't break the Core, then we can't leave the Dungeon!”
One of the lizardmen from the group on the right instantly spoke up, joy on his face at hearing Bob's words.
“SEE! Even Bob thinks we should destroy it. The quicker we leave here, the better!”
Bob nodded along to his words, then a lizardman from the opposing group interjected.
“Goblin shit! It's sacrilege for us to break the Dungeon Core, plus it's what respawns us when we die. We should keep it for as long as possible and let the humans break it, then we leave!”
An argument immediately broke out between the two groups, with small scuffles between their number added to the mix.
Ted let out a deep sigh and whispered to Bob and Suzy.
“This is what we've been dealing with while you were asleep, Bob. The group that doesn't want the Core broken by a lizardman are threatening to kill anyone who breaks it.”
Shaking his head in disbelief at the naivety of it all, Bob replied to his brother.
“Idiots. What's to say the humans won't decide to only break the Core once we've all been killed.....Tsch, I guess we'll just have to make it work.”
Grabbing hold of Bob, Suzy held him tight and buried her head into his chest.
“That's my Bob, I knew you would have a plan.”
Clearing his throat, Bob let out a deafening roar that made the warring parties stop, with every Lizardman staring in his direction.
“Now everyone listen, I understand the situation.....I'm of the belief that we should break the Core now, but....I understand some of you won't allow it....The last thing we need is a fight between ourselves and be weakened for when the humans come here. For that reason, we will try and hide until the humans come and break the Core, then we fight to escape!”
Silence persisted after Bob's words; everyone present thought over his statement before they came to the understanding that it was for the best.
The sound of tails being slammed against the ground made its way from the lizardmen, with the noise increasing and getting in sync. The war drums of the lizardmen were sounded, and they were raring to go.
Their simultaneous roars reverberated around the entire Dungeon.
“““ROAR!!!”””