“No no no no!” Shark pushed Jeremy away from the toy store. “It blow up! You get inside and it blow up! One of the orcs tried to drive it, it caught fire, Rampage barely got orc out alive before go-kart blow up.”

  “Figures,” Jeremy grumbled. Considering all the other toys in this store were death traps, the go-kart would be one too.

  “I have to go. We must learn ceremonial chant. Please stay away from toys. You blow up.” The kobold left him in front of the toy store.

  Flint, of course, was standing off to the side, tapping his “Don't Be An Idiot” sign with his sword cane.

  Jeremy had spent most of the day examining the go-kart. Any attempt of his to get into the go-kart resulted in seatbelts shooting out from both sides, forcing him to jump out quickly to avoid being confined to the seat. He was pretty sure things would go badly for him if he let that happen.

  “There's got to be a way to drive the go-kart without it blowing up,” Jeremy grumbled, looking longingly at the sleek blue vehicle. It was very cool looking, with a steering wheel and a complicated set of buttons and knobs he couldn't identify.

  Jeremy pushed the go-kart out of the store, ignoring Flint's glare. While the go-kart would certainly explode, it was unlikely to do so before he put it to use, and even then, it should give him a few seconds' warning, much like the jack-in-the-boxes.

  He pushed buttons on the dashboard and twisted knobs. As usual, nothing happened.

  “My suspicion is you have to get inside the go-kart. Once the seat belts confine you to the seat, it should start working.”

  Jeremy suspected Flint was right. “Maybe I can trick it somehow.”

  He found a large stone in a nearby yard and placed it on the go-kart seat. He tried the controls again. Nothing happened. He straddled the go-kart, inadvertently putting his hands on the black go-kart seat. When he did this, the go-kart came to life. Seat belts came out, wrapping around the stone. Then the dashboard lit up.

  As long as Jeremy touched the seat, the go-kart thought he was inside it. He pushed buttons and twisted knobs. With no warning, the go-kart shot forward, moving so fast it was all Jeremy could do to hold on, fighting with the steering wheel to send it flying down the red path, narrowly missing a stone statue of unknown origin in front of one of the empty houses. He frantically pushed buttons, looking for a way to slow the thing down, but all he could do was make it go faster.

  A green light flashed, and the go-kart emitted a loud beeping noise. “Let go!” Flint shouted.

  This seemed like good advice, so he did. The go-kart was moving so fast that he hit the red path and rolled some twenty feet before the go-kart exploded. BOOM! Pieces of the go-kart whizzed overhead, missing him by inches as he clung to the red stone path.

  An eternity later, Jeremy got up with a groan. Flint was, as usual, tapping his sign and glaring at Jeremy.

  Jeremy noticed a change to his stat sheet. In passive skills, he had Shock Resistance from his playing with explosives. Neat! Best birthday present ever.

  Per their agreement, Jeremy visited the kobolds as the dungeon sun set.

  “He didn't blow up,” Shark said, surprised.

  “Does anyone know why Trap Sense doesn't work on these toys?” Jeremy asked. Neither Flint nor Book had a satisfactory answer to this.

  “Yes,” Lard Lump said from her kitchen. "Fifty dungeon coin. Very good deal.”

  Great.

  They seated Jeremy at a table decorated with red and green streamers. The strangeness of the situation was overwhelming, and he wondered if he'd made a mistake.

  Then he smelled fresh cake. His mouth watered and his stomach growled.

  Lard Lump waddled to the table with a cake as wide around as a Frisbee and twice as thick, with eleven lit candles on it. She put the cake in front of him as the other kobolds gathered around him and began to chant.

  Their mouths weren't shaped for human speech, but nobody could accuse them of not trying.

  Happa ithday a yo

  Happa irthday a yo

  Happa irthday der Jirmy

  Happa irthday a yo

  The kobolds clapped as Jeremy took a deep breath and blew out the candles, blowing them out in one breath, of course. Meaning he'd supposedly get a wish.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Lard Lump took back the candles, and Jeremy got out his knife and cut the cake into eight pieces. But when he offered cake to the kobolds, they quickly backed away.

  “No, no, no,” Lard Lump said, bringing out a bowl of some kind of frozen creamy substance. “Cake and ice cream human food.”

  “I don't see how you can eat that,” Shark said. “But if that's what you want.”

  “More for me, I guess,” Jeremy said, helping himself to a piece of cake and ice cream which didn't taste like the cake and ice cream from Earth, but was still really good. The cake was sweet and moist with a rich nutty flavor, and the ice cream was sweet and tart, but not too much of either. “So you don't eat sugary foods, but you can cook them for beings that do.”

  “Yes. I'm very good cook.”

  “You sure are,” Jeremy remembered something. He pulled out the monster meat he'd gotten from clearing out the dungeon school. “If you cook this meat, I will share it with you. That way, we all get strength and vitality bonuses.”

  Lard Lump examined the dungeon meat. “I give you 100 dungeon coin. Very good deal, but I can't cook magic dungeon meat. That requires equipment and special skills I don't have.”

  “I see,” Jeremy said, disappointed. He put the monster meat away and went back to eating his cake and ice cream.

  Flint appeared next to him. “You should have used your birthday wish to wish us out of the dungeon.”

  “My birthday wishes never come true,” Jeremy responded. “I just thought about what I wanted the most. And no, I'm not going to talk about it as that would ensure my non-wish won't not come true.”

  Flint turned away, looking annoyed.

  Despite the strange location and party guests and the party not on his birthday, it was one of the best birthday parties he'd had. On his previous birthday, his older brother had pushed his face into the cake.

  After eating his fill, he finished his Pepsi and stuffed the cake and ice cream into his pack. The advantage of inter-dimensional storage is that the cake and ice cream would stay fresh, and he didn't have to worry about it messing up his pack.

  As he turned to leave, Lard Lump came waddling after him with a palm-sized package. “Jirmy, don't forget your present.”

  “Oh, thank you. What is it?” he studied the small package. It rattled when he shook it.

  “It is what you call candy, good human candy.”

  “Thank you,” he said again.

  “You may stay the night here if you wish.”

  “That's okay,” Jeremy said. “I'll be back tomorrow.” Though he liked the kobolds he was nervous about sleeping with them around. Besides, he needed to train.

  ***

  The next day, he returned to the kobold's safe room.

  “So why doesn't Trap Sense work on the second floor?”

  “It is Children's Dungeon logic,” Lard Lump said once Jeremy paid her. “The exploding toys are not traps because their function isn't to trap adventurers; their function is to explode. The candy in that candy store that is poisonous to you isn't poisonous to me. To me, it tastes horrible. I'm sure you would find candy that is poisonous to a kobold fine for you to eat, but it would taste horrible.”

  “Wow,” Jeremy said. “So Trap Sense is pretty worthless.”

  “Yes. You should level Trap Sense into Danger Sense. This will tell you if you're in danger, whether the threat is meant for you or not.”

  “I see.” Jeremy activated Trap Sense, determined to keep it activated until it became Danger Sense.

  He went on to tell Lard Lump about how Mezirma had killed his friend and tried to kill him, and how he planned to somehow kill Mezirma. “The god Arkys has blessed my quest for vengeance,” he said.

  Lard Lump listened and looked sad. “Arkys will be of little use. The four are blessed by Syritha, a powerful goddess. You are from new world, you don't know about Cleansing Wind.”

  “The orcs were talking about that,” Jeremy responded.

  “The Cleansing Wind places all beings in a pyramid.” Lard Lump drew a triangle shape with her finger on the table. “Elves are at the top, humans and dwarves are next, gnomes, centaurs, and pixies after that. Cleansing Wind treats all beings below these three levels as vermin and kills them when they can.”

  “Wow,” Jeremy said.

  “You should let go of your vengeance, Jirmy. Sometimes evil comes your way. All you can do is wait for it to leave and move on. Your friend would not want you to die for her.”

  “If you and the orcs attacked Mezirma and his party, they would have been outnumbered three to one.”

  “We would have been like insects, Jirmy. We'd have been bzzzz, and Mezirma go smack.” She smacked the table for emphasis. “The orcs wanted to fight, but Rampage held them back.”

  “Figures Rampage is a coward,” Jeremy responded.

  “Not coward, smart. Come here.” Lard Lump walked over to her kitchen and opened a cupboard drawer.

  Jeremy followed her to the cupboard and suppressed a gasp. In the cupboard was a dead kobold with its skin removed.

  “When Mezirma and his party arrived, they captured two of my people who didn't run away fast enough. I would have paid their ransom, but Mezirma wanted me to deliver the ransom personally, and I didn't trust him.” She pointed at the body. “This kobold, Lizard Who Moves Through Water, was the brother of one of the captives, so he volunteered to make exchange. He went to pay the ransom and plead for his brother's life. Mezirma decided he didn't want money after all, and he and his party strung up the three kobolds where everyone could see, and they slowly skinned them alive. There was nothing we could do but listen to them scream. Rampage stopped his party from trying to rescue them. 'It would be like attacking the orc king!' he kept shouting. 'They're all over ten levels higher than me, and I'm the highest leveled! Attacking them is suicide!' Three orc fighters and my strongest kobold fighter forced their way past Rampage and tried to mount a rescue.”

  “Wow,” said Jeremy. “What happened?”

  “They were like insects. Mezirma went smack, and the rescuers died. When Mezirma's party finished, there were six chests from the dungeon. One for each dead adventurer, filled with their belongings, minus the dungeon's share. Water Lizard was the only one still alive. Healing potions won't regrow a kobold's skin, and Mezirma and his people refused to return the skin they'd removed. There was nothing I could do but bring him to the safe room and watch him die. She shut the drawer again.”

  “I refuse to give his body to the dungeon. I will bring his body home to his family and tell them of his bravery.” She shut the drawer again, not saying anything, huddled in on herself. Jeremy realized she was crying.

  Not knowing what else to do, he sat down next to Lard Lump and put his arm around her.