The Sealed Golden Castle

After a red dragon devours his sister Falin, Laios assembles a broke party and resolves to descend by living off the dungeon's own monsters, learning to cook them along the way.

The opening movement establishes the premise and the world's strange economy. The town of Melini sits above a vast dungeon that once belonged to a buried golden kingdom, and adventurers descend daily to fight monsters and chase the throne hidden at its bottom. When Laios Touden's party is wiped by a red dragon, his sister Falin uses a teleportation spell to save the survivors, but is swallowed in the process. Broke and out of supplies, Laios decides the only way to reach the dragon before it digests her is to stop carrying rations entirely and instead eat the monsters they fight. The party meets Senshi, a dwarf who has spent decades surviving underground by cooking dungeon creatures, and the chapters become a culinary travelogue: walking mushrooms, giant scorpions, living armor, mandrakes and slimes are turned into meals while the group descends. Beneath the comedy, the arc seeds the central mystery of the dungeon's origins and the magic that keeps it alive.