I hop and plop and glop and blop my way down the passage. I suppose that I am in some form of a cave, but I am a little unsure as to what it actually looks like, this far in. You see, like I mentioned before, this is a secret area beneath the goblin outpost. But I only ever found the door as a goblin and got a quick peek inside the front area, before the slimes got all touchy-feely with me. I climbed back out that well right-quick, tell you what.

 

All I saw down there was this dark cave tunnel. I suppose that slimes don’t need light, honestly, so it makes sense that everything is dark down there. Well, down here. If there are rats and bugs though, then there must be something else to eat for them. Plants or mushrooms of some kind, maybe? Or maybe just each other. Slimes eat rats. Rats eat bugs. Bugs eat something, probably rats. That’s just nature, baby. But slimes are at the top of the food chain in this area. Absolutely lethal apex predators. I jiggle threateningly to prove my point. Haha! Slime is wiggly. I am a wiggly-jiggly slimiggily.

 

Okay wait. Listen -

 

I know this is really awkward to listen to, okay? All the ‘iggly and ‘ugglies and all of that. But I need to be clear here, it’s the slime brain, guy. Hidden-Village slimes are just fun dudes. The party-girls of the monster kingdom. I can’t help it. I can jiggle. So I must. I must jiggle. And wiggle. And shake and splat and sploot. It is what I exist for as a slime. It is my passion. My calling. I strive to wiggle. It is why the dark-lord has put me in this place. The sole reason.

 

I sense a vibration in my goo. Something scampers ahead of me. It has legs. I can feel them touching the stones, just a little bit ahead of myself. Every little claw sends a tap into the rock, which then resonates into my hyper-sensitive body. There is a rat.

 

Judging from the vibrations, it’s not too far off. If I make one big jump, then I can get it, I think. I ready my body, flattening myself down low and wide before I leap. As I spring into motion with all of the fury that a five liter glop of goo can bring to the table, I pull my body tightly together into a thin, long stretch in midair. The contraction and compression of this adds a literal spring to my step, as I fly much further than I would have with just an ordinary hop. I am speed. Death incarnate. I wiggle, rippling with excitement in mid-air at the prospect of a kill.

 

I strike like a bird of prey. Swift. Agile. Deadly. Splooty. My slimy body smashes down onto the ground and spreads out wide from the impact. Something is writhing inside of me. I taste it. I taste fur. Meat. Excrement. Eyes. It is a rat. It claws and scrambles, but it is already dissolving. It is a fast process. I am sure it hurts for the rat. I am sure it is frightened. Shh~

 

Shh~ little rat. Sleep. You are with me now. We are family. One. I wiggle. The rat doesn’t wiggle anymore. Aw. Wait. Oh no! I ate the whole thing, it went so fast that I didn’t even think of stopping myself. Sorry, sister. I will find another one for you. I hope you are well. I wiggle. I am lonely.

 

Hopping on down the cave, my thoughts go to the dungeon-master. Does he know about us? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a bag as a Hidden-Village slime. But then again, what would I do with it, exactly? I suppose that it would be rather pointless, all things considered.

 

Hmm. I wonder. Why were there so many rats here? It is a mystery to me. But they are easy prey. There is little to nowhere for them to run and hide. The stone floors are sleek and the lower walls, which we rub our acidic bodies against, are just as smooth. Worn and eroded flat from constant contact with our acidic goo. I suppose we are technically always digging a little when we move. Maybe in a thousand years or so, we’ll break through down to the level below. Haha! Wouldn’t that surprise the dungeon-master? Slime rain. I wiggle in excitement at the prospect of falling down on top of the adventurers. They would never see it coming. I supposed if a slime landed on their heads, they would go pretty fast.

 

Oof, but that’s a rough way to kill them. I think I’d feel bad about that, honestly. What if I land on the priestess? Hmm. Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

 

I feel my body expanding. The rat was fat. Fat rat. Fat rat. Trap rat. Trap? Fat. Fat! Haha! Wiggle. No!

 

Stop. I pull myself together, in both senses of the phrase. The slime mind is muddling my own thoughts a lot. Too much. It is making me simple. Weak of character. I can’t allow that to happen. I must resist the urges, no matter how fun they are. Think. Think. I keep hopping onward, thinking to myself. What was my last life? I was a goblin. No. I was a dark-fairy. Was I a goblin before that? Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. What was I before that? A mimic? I don’t recall. I need to keep it straight. It’s odd you know? The specifics of the whole memory thing. I can remember a lot of things from the past, like that we used to be on higher floors or the other monsters that I used to be, that I can’t be anymore. But other times, I can barely remember what I was doing yesterday. I don’t know how it works and how my magic-mind keeps some specific information and loses the rest. ‘Magic-mind’ being, of course, my name for my persistent consciousness that I just made up on the spot.

 

I don’t think I’ll be using it anymore though, that term. Seems clunky. Me. Myself. I. I am not a slime. I am not a dark-fairy. I am not a goblin. I need to remember that. I can’t let go. I can’t sleep.

 

I wish I could be the hero. Maybe it would be different. If I was the hero I wouldn’t die. I would defeat the dungeon. I would kill the dungeon-master. I would kill everyone and live forever. I would escape. I would be free of the dungeon. Be free of this life.

 

I stop. I would kill everyone? Would I kill sister? Would I kill the fairy-mother? They have been with me for so long, could I really betray them, if I had the chance? Even if it meant that I could leave? No. I could never. I would never hurt sister. The thought makes me angry. My goo begins to ripple and bubble with rage. No! Stop.

 

The slime isn’t my sister. I don’t have any siblings, as far as I know. I am just me. My goo stops boiling. I continue my journey.

 

I wish I could describe my environment more clearly. But you need to understand that slimes are really limited in their senses. I can only feel things which I touch and describe them through the sensation of that. I can feel small vibrations and I can taste things. That’s about it, really. Hominid slimes have eyes, but yeah. Taboo topic, that. Though I guess it’s like I said before. It’s probably just a dark cave. Smooth floors. Cave walls that are smooth on the bottom. Maybe some mushrooms and lichens higher up, there where we can’t reach? I am just using my imagination here, okay? So bear with me. What I’m trying to say is, Hidden-Village slimes don’t have a fancy place to live like the goblins do. Not anymore at least. We are forgotten. Forsaken by the dungeon-master and by the adventurers. But that’s okay. Living in peace is nice, like I said. It’s a rare treat down here to live a few days without being killed. Sometimes being forgotten is a good thing.

 

I feel lonely. The hunt must continue. How far have I gone? It’s hard to say. How big is this room anyways? No idea. Am I even going in any specific direction, or have I been hopping in a circle for the last few hours? I wiggle and wait for a response. I receive none. I hope brother isn’t still angry at me. I wonder where the hero is right now? I bet he’s fighting somebody, maybe the fairy-mother again. Or maybe he’s already at the goblin outpost? Hard to say. Wait. The goblin outpost. The well. Can I open the secret door from this side? Huh…

 

I realize I have never thought of that before. I think? Maybe. But what good would it do? If I opened the door I would be at the bottom of a well and as a slime it would be incredibly difficult to climb out and even then the goblins wouldn’t be happy about it. There is little point to it. Hmm… Oh well. It was an interesting idea to hold onto at least.

 

The hero. My mind goes back to him. To the last time I saw him. He was looking at his menu. Why am I thinking of this? I don’t know. The thought has come to me however. Why? I jiggle in curious excitement, the reaction, much like a shiver up my spine at a cold realization. But I don’t know what it is exactly that my body has realized. It is an uncomfortable feeling, like when someone asks you a question they think you know the answer to, but you actually don’t.

 

Huh? Has that ever happened to me? Has anyone ever asked me a question? If I had the capacity to get headaches as a slime, this is where I would say that I feel a sting in my head. Instead, all I feel is shame. Forgive me sister, brother is not smart.

 

Something is odd. You see, you might have noticed before that slimes can sense vibrations. One of the advantages of being made out of mostly liquid, is that my body is very sensitive to things moving around me. Every step that someone takes, shoots a vibration through the stone cave floor and then finds its way to me. Judging by how much it shakes my body and how strongly it does so, I can easily tell the size and distance of something. We don’t have eyes, but it’s how we see as slimes, more or less. This also applies to when I hop. Every time I hop, I send out a vibration too, as my weight hits the ground below. Well this also reverberates back if there is a wall or an obstacle nearby. So depending on the strength of the returning vibration, I can tell if there is a wall close to me or a rock or something else.

 

But what is odd, you see, is that I sense a gap. There is something missing in the wall, just ahead to my left. I am curious. I hop towards it, wondering what it could be? Reaching the spot I sense a narrow open space leading upward. There is a piece of the wall missing here. No. Not missing. It has been cut. Made this way. The edges are sharp, well aligned and in rough symmetry to another. This isn’t a natural development. This hasn’t been caused by some rock-slide or something like that.

 

I edge towards the missing space and curiously extend my body forward to touch what isn’t there. I feel something sharp. An edge. Then another. Then another. Stairs.

 

Stairs? Why are there stairs here? Stairs are strictly only on the entrance and exit to every floor of the dungeon. That is standard dungeon protocol. It’s forbidden to have stairs anywhere else. Why? By whose order? I don't know, but we take these kinds of things seriously down here. They go upwards, the stairs. To the level above? No. Above is the goblin outpost, like I said before. But there is no second staircase coming up to that place, at least not anywhere that I have ever seen. So does this go somewhere else? Some secret passage in the goblin-king's chamber? Or somewhere else entirely? Maybe it goes past the goblin-outpost floor? Maybe it goes even further than that. A secret path. A hidden path. The Hidden-Village? Of course! Maybe this is how we got here, us slimes. Maybe this is where the rats came from? It could be… It makes sense in my mind, at the very least.

 

I am excited. I have never found anything like this before. Maybe this will lead somewhere useful to me. If I can get up to the Hidden-Village, then maybe I can become something new. Something more exotic next time when I respawn. I need to do that. Every time we’re pushed deeper down, I lose more options of trash-mobs to become. If I stay too long or too often in one form, I won’t be able to keep my mind for long. Being a slime is cool. But if I only ever respawned as a slime, it would be over quickly for me. This little mind-diary of mine would stop, I would lose myself to the goo-brain.

 

But if I have found a way up, found a way back to the old monsters, found a way to return to the older levels above, then I could expand my portfolio. New experiences could keep me fresh. New monsters could bring new opportunities to defeat the adventurers. This could be my ticket. I need to go up. I need to explore this! I hop onto the stairs and stop.

 

In a sense, I look back the way I came, even if I don’t have eyes to see with. My mind thinks of sister. Will she miss me, if I leave? I hesitate…

 

No. I don’t need to care. I don’t have a sister. It’s only me. It’s only ever been me. There’s nobody here but me. I turn back to face up the stairs and hop into the darkness, alone.