Delicious in Dungeon, Volume 8: 04/08/21

Delicious in Dungeon, Volume 8 by Ryoko Kui begins lightheartedly. It feels like a one off, a humorous breather. But the back half is gearing up for a potential disaster. A dungeon that gets too big will end up destroying the town and people settled near it and the clock is ticking for this particular dungeon.

The first half opens with the humorous and embarrassing effects of eating or being too near changelings. They happen to look, act, and taste like mushrooms but they will make the affected into a different species for a while. The traveling companions get an uninvited opportunity to experience the particular strengths and weaknesses each species brings to the party.

But the rest of the book is right at the surface — the first room of the dungeon. Visitors are getting cocky. The dungeon appears to be an endless source of easy wealth. The battle that happens here is the first taste of how bad things are going to get.

Like the previous volumes, number eight also sits on the road narrative spectrum. While the previous two had been at the fantasy side of things, this one is back in horror. The travelers are once again united as a family (33). Their goal is to find a way to find a way of curing Falin. On a larger scale, they believe finding her cure might also bring about a way of neutralizing the dungeon's rapid expansion. Clues to both solutions are found in what they believe is the original homes (66) of the dungeon creators. The route they take is via an old funicular (00). Thus the forward progress the party makes can be summarized as a family looking for home via the railroad (336600).

Volume 9's English translation came out in January 2021.

Five stars

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