I Was Reincarnated as a Dungeon, So What? I Just Want to Take a Nap.

The slot snapped shut. The silence that followed was heavier than any they had endured in the woods. It wasn't magical, or oppressive—it was worse. It was the profound, soul-crushing silence of being put on indefinite hold.

The team just looked at each other, a silent, shared question hanging in the air. Had they won? Or had they just made things a whole lot worse?

They waited. A full minute passed.

Pip started drumming his fingers on his knee, a nervous, twitchy rhythm that only made the silence louder.

Zazu began counting the ceiling tiles, then froze mid-count, realizing there were no tiles at all—just a seamless white void. He looked even more disturbed.

FaeLina muttered Bureau bylaws under her breath like a frantic prayer, her voice buzzing in nervous loops.

And Sir Crumplebuns drew in a deep breath, clearly about to launch into a heroic speech about the nobility of waiting—only for Gilda to silence him with a glare sharp enough to chip stone.

The silence returned, heavier than before.

Then, at last, with a soft, expensive-sounding whir, a neat panel slid open in the wall.

A tray emerged with the slow, deliberate pomp of a royal procession, bearing a single, plain-looking quill pen. It gleamed faintly in the sterile light, an object so absurdly mundane that, in this moment, it had become divine.

The voice chimed from the slot, its earlier cheer now stripped away, replaced by the flat, mechanical cadence of someone who had read this line far too many times."Your request has been provisionally approved, pending the successful completion of Form 115-C. One Standard Implement, Writing, has been dispensed. Please be advised that any damage to Bureau property will result in a fine."

A pedestal of seamless white stone rose from the floor. With exaggerated ceremony, the tray lowered the quill onto it—like a crown being placed upon the head of a very unimpressive king—before sliding back into the wall with a soft, final click.

For a long moment, no one moved. The pen sat there, humming faintly with Bureau approval, waiting for a champion.

Zazu clasped his hands behind his back, bowing his head like a priest before a holy relic. "At last," he whispered. "The Instrument of Annotation."

FaeLina let out a tiny, tearful sob. "It's real. Oh, merciful bureaucracy, it's real."

Sir Crumplebuns puffed up proudly. "BEHOLD! THE SACRED QUILL OF PETITIONS! MAY ITS NIB STRIKE TRUE!"

Gilda just squinted at it like she was trying to decide whether she could break it in half over her knee.

Pip cut through the reverence like a knife. "Or it's cursed," he muttered, plucking the pen from its pedestal. He squinted at the nib, shook the shaft for hidden compartments, and gave it a cautious sniff. "Okay," he finally announced, handing it back. "It's not poisoned. I think."

The spell broke. A collective sigh seemed to go through the team. They just stared at the pen, their shoulders slumping with a shared, ridiculous exhaustion.

"We did it," FaeLina whispered, trembling. "We… we got a pen."

For a moment, it felt like victory. A stupid, tiny, utterly exhausting victory, but a victory nonetheless.

It lasted exactly fifteen seconds.

"Right," Gilda grunted, her voice a flat, stone rumble that dragged them all back to reality. "One pen. Seven hundred and forty-two sections. In triplicate."

The silence came crashing down again, and it was more heavier than before.

**********

Meanwhile, back in the Comfy Corner, my masterpiece was complete.

My boredom, loneliness, and the faint, annoying echo of my team's bureaucratic suffering had given me an idea. They weren't fighting a monster; they were fighting a long, pointless meeting. And you don't fight a meeting with a sword. You fight it with patience.

And I had created the ultimate weapon for that particular war: a cusion.

But this was no ordinary cushion. This was the distilled essence of coziness, the apex predator of naptime. Entire libraries of relaxation manuals wept in shame before it. It was a perfect, fluffy square of the softest enchanted silk, stuffed with the down of a celestial moon-goose (a creature I had just invented, but which was now officially canon). It radiated an aura of such profound, unshakable calm that just looking at it made you want to take a nice, long nap.

I called it the "Pillow of Unflappable Calm." A bit on the nose, maybe, but I was proud of it.

But every new item needs to be tested. And I had the perfect test subject for it.

With a soft poof, the pillow appeared on the counter of the Cozy Tea Nook, right beside Kaelen, who was, rather than washing a teacup, methodically polishing it to a mirror shine.

'A gift', I projected to her, my mental voice full of the pride of a master craftsman. 'For your tireless service. It is enchanted to promote a state of deep, unshakable calm in the face of any and all frustrations'.

Kaelen stopped her polishing. She turned her head and looked at the pillow. Her expression, as always, was a perfect, unreadable blank. She picked it up, gave it a small, experimental fluff, and then tucked it neatly under her arm.

And then she went right back to polishing the teacup, her movements just as silent, efficient, and unnervingly calm as they had been before.

I waited. But, nothing. She just continued her work, the coziest object in the world tucked under her arm as if it were a simple dish rag. I had no idea if it was working or not.

***********

Back in the processing chamber, the team had hit their next, even more infuriating obstacle.

The pen seemed to have a magical effect on FaeLina. Her despair evaporated, replaced by a terrifying, full-blown managerial confidence. "Excellent," she chirped, snatching the precious quill from Zazu with the air of someone reclaiming her natural habitat. "Everyone stand back. This requires a professional."

She zipped over to the massive, glowing form, wings buzzing with an officious energy that could have powered a small filing cabinet. Clearing her throat, she addressed the document as if it were a particularly dense intern.

"Section 1a," she declared. "Please declare the emotional weight of your unscheduled arrival in kilograms. Classic. A textbook Bureau trick question, designed to weed out amateurs. The correct answer, of course, is to note that emotions are a non-quantifiable metric and cannot, in fact, be weighed."

She turned back to the group, eyes shining with pride, waiting for their awe. With a dramatic flourish, she pressed the nib to the form.

Nothing happened. The quill just made a faint, dry scratching sound against the glowing, unmarkable surface.

FaeLina's face fell. "It's not working," she whispered, her voice thin, cracking under the weight of horror.

"What do you mean, it's not working?" Gilda grunted from the bench, though her tone already carried the grim certainty of someone bracing for the inevitable.

"I mean it's not working!" FaeLina squeaked, stabbing at the form with increasing desperation. "The form— the form knows! It knows I don't have any—"

Pip leaned in. "Maybe it's enchanted invisible ink?" He glanced around suspiciously. "You know, the kind that only shows up after you… uh… breathe on it, or hold it over a fire?" He cupped his hands and blew gently across the glowing text. Nothing happened. "Okay, not that kind."

"Perhaps it requires magical resonance," Zazu interrupted, stroking his chin. He gently took the quill from her trembling hands. "A pen such as this could be a conduit. Perhaps one must align its energies through—"

The nib slipped, leaving a faint scratch across the glowing surface. The scratch immediately healed itself.

"…never mind," he muttered, sounding utterly defeated as he handed the useless quill back.

Sir Crumplebuns stood proudly on Gilda's knee, raising his spoon like a divine relic. "AHA! I SEE! THIS IS NO ORDINARY QUILL—THIS IS THE LEGENDARY PEN OF TESTING! FEAR NOT, FOR I SHALL UNLOCK ITS POWER WITH A HEROIC SPEECH!"

"Sit down," Gilda said flatly, shoving him back before he could launch into oration.

FaeLina's wings trembled as her voice broke into a wail. "Don't you understand? The Request for Writing Implements is Form Q-11! Which means—" She gasped, eyes wide with bureaucratic horror. "Of course there's a separate requisition for ink! There's always a separate requisition for ink!"

The realization spread across the group like a creeping plague.

Pip slumped back, defeated. "So we've got a pen…"

"…but no ink," Zazu finished softly.

The silence that followed was worse than before—the kind of silence that felt as though someone had stapled shut the very concept of hope.

And then, as if in grim choreography, they all sagged at once—fairy, elf, rogue, warrior, and plush knight—crushed beneath the absurd weight of a single missing bottle of ink.

____________

Author's Note:

And the bureaucratic nightmare continues! Our heroes have won a great victory in "The Quest for a Pen," only to discover that their prize is useless without the ink, which will, of course, require them to file another, equally impossible form. It's the most "Comfy Corner" version of a video game fetch-quest I could imagine.

And we're back with Mochi! It was so much fun to finally show one of his new creations, the "Pillow of Unflappable Calm." But my favorite part is his choice of a test subject. Kaelen is already so calm and unflappable that the most powerfully calming object in the world has absolutely no visible effect on her, leaving Mochi in a state of deep, comical frustration.

The team is one step closer, but a thousand miles away from solving their problem. What new horrors of customer service await them in their quest for ink? Thanks for reading!