Porridge Made From Grain That Was Just Lying Around
S1 E7: Kelpie; Porridge; Broiled With Saucea
Delicious in Dungeon, Studio Trigger, 2024.
On the fourth floor of the dungeon, the architecture becomes less about walls and more about vibes.
A vast glowing lake stretches out beneath a mirage of a ruined castle town, gently suggesting that if you fall in, you will die beautifully. In Delicious in Dungeon S1E7, crossing this lake becomes not merely a logistical challenge but a philosophical exercise in hygiene, friendship, taxonomy, and porridge.
Marcille proposes the obvious solution: water-walking magic. Senshi, a dwarf whose beard contains enough accumulated monster blood and cooking oil to repel both spells and social invitations, refuses. Magic, he insists, is careless. What he needs is a more natural method of transportation, specifically, his longtime aquatic companion Anne, a kelpie who has spent years visiting him while he fishes and definitely has only wholesome intentions.
Laios objects on the grounds that monsters are dangerous even when they have cute mammalian faces and names that sound like they might attend your cousin’s wedding. Senshi counters with unwavering faith in Anne and the practical optimism of a man who has never once moisturized. He mounts the kelpie. She immediately attempts to drown him. It is revealed, with a certain emotional efficiency, that Anne has been trying to lure Senshi into the lake for years, foiled only by his stubborn refusal to bathe. Betrayed but hungry, Senshi butchers her. Marcille requests some fat for soap. This is how grief is processed in the dungeon: through personal care innovation.
Elsewhere, Kabru and his party are resurrected by opportunistic corpse retrievers who decide to spice up the situation by lying. Convinced that Laios’s group murdered them for their jewellery — jewellery that was, inconveniently, a cluster of Treasure Bugs — they vow revenge. They stagger forward into the dungeon with righteous fury and a bag of barley that will soon become the most ethically complex grain delivery in recent memory.
Meanwhile, Laios and Chilchuck discover Kabru’s party drowned again, this time by fish-men. Laios notices the scattered barley first. It is a moment of culinary inspiration. Soon he is crouched over a pot, combining soaked grain with shredded mimic meat and lake weeds in a preparation that suggests both rustic ingenuity and a troubling lack of boundaries. The resulting porridge is warm, nourishing, and quietly harboring a secret. Everyone gathers to eat. Something pops pleasantly between their teeth. Chilchuck narrows his eyes. Laios admits, with the casual pride of a home cook who has swapped out sugar for applesauce, that he added merman eggs.
His defense hinges on classification. These are fish-type merfolk, he explains. They have gills. They lay eggs. Taxonomically speaking, they are further from humans than cows. Chilchuck counters with the revolutionary concept of “it just feels wrong.” Marcille, mid-chew, realizes too late that feelings have already been swallowed. The porridge is, by all accounts, delicious. This is perhaps the worst part.
Freshly laundered thanks to kelpie-fat soap, Senshi finally allows magic to carry him across the lake. He even admits that walking on water feels quite nice. This fleeting triumph is interrupted by blade fish, which Marcille attempts to obliterate en masse with explosions. Senshi objects on ecological grounds. Killing too many at once will destabilize the dungeon’s food chain, he warns, moments before a kraken the size of a bad decision erupts from the depths. In a triumph of transferable kitchen knowledge, Senshi defeats the beast not through arcane strategy but by recalling how one dispatches squid: stab decisively between the eyes.
The kraken itself proves too bitter to eat, a rare disappointment. Fortunately, it is riddled with giant parasitic worms. These are broiled with sauce until glossy and fragrant, achieving a texture that is somewhere between eel and a deeply personal challenge. Everyone eventually agrees they are good. Laios, emboldened by curiosity and a digestive system that has never known fear, samples one raw. The episode closes with him doubled over in agony as a smaller parasite begins the slow work of turning his stomach into conceptual art.
Senshi reflects that he may have been arrogant to believe he could protect the dungeon’s ecosystem. The truth is simpler and more humiliating: they have always been part of it. Fish-men eat blade fish. Krakens eat fish-men. Adventurers eat krakens. Parasites eat adventurers. Somewhere in the dark, a pot of barley porridge continues to steam, wholesome and treacherous, reminding us that lunch — like survival — is always a matter of perspective.