It is tiresome work, going up the stairs as a slime. Harder than you would expect it to be, seeing as all we do is hop and jump around all day. Well, that’s on a flat surface. Now, going up stairs? Stairs are usually made for creatures with feet. Ideally two. But I suppose spiders have no trouble getting up stairs either.

Wait. Do spiders have feet? They have legs for sure, but feet? I guess not. Hmm… Weird.

Anyways I’m rambling again. Picture a staircase in your mind. Okay? Now picture a slime.

Okay, are you still with me so far? Good, well then picture how that slime is supposed to go up that staircase. Especially if the steps are close together and thin. See? It’s an awkward image, right? There isn’t enough space on each individual step for me to build up to a full hop up to the next one above. So I need to kind of press my goo against the inside of the stairs and then fold the top half of my body over and then flip the back of my body up behind me with each step. Picture a living, coiled spring climbing up a flight of stairs.

It’s really hard to climb like this, tell you what. Slimes burn a lot of energy as is. We’re little power-houses. Tiny, gooey, little calorie-burning machines. Hidden-Village slimes are at least. I think the cubics are more the slow and steady types. But us? We’re burning all day just by living our normal lives with all the passion and excitement that our dungeon is renowned for.

This weird climbing thing that I’m doing though? This is hard. It’s burning a lot of my nutrients and it’s doing so easily twice as fast as just hopping around would have done. My slimy body is fairly robust however and I have eaten well in one day for my size, so I should be fine for a while. I’m really just trying to illustrate the challenges of being living-goo in this world made for those privileged with feet. I can tell how much energy I have left as a slime. It’s very different from when you’re a goblin and you get hungry. No, as a slime you don’t have a stomach rumble or a classical sense of hunger, like other living things do. Rather, the sensation is more sterile. Mathematical. It’s like I implicitly know exactly how many fats, carbohydrates and proteins are left unburnt inside of me. As if I had a measuring cup inside of me that I was always aware of. It’s objective.

So if I eat one and a half rats and a roach, I’m usually good for the rest of my life. Which, to be fair, was only ever three days at most since we reached the lower floors. But hey. Life is a give and take you know? Though realistically it’s usually way shorter than that at this point. How long was my last life? It seemed short. Very short. Suspiciously short. But then again, I really messed that one up, so it’s up to the dark-lord to know the specifics. How long have I been climbing stairs at this point? Half an hour? An hour? Am I even making good progress? Or any? I have no idea. How long are staircases usually?

See, guy, I have a secret to admit. The secret is that I don’t remember ever having taken stairs before. Anywhere. I know, shocking right?

Like I said before, there are exactly two staircases on each level. A staircase that came from up above, down to this floor and another staircase somewhere else on the level that goes down to one floor below. Usually both have a lot of trash-mobs around them, so it’s fairly frequent for me to spawn there by one of them.

So now you might be thinking, guy, if you spawned next to stairs so often then why didn’t you just take them? Why didn’t you just climb up them and leave the dungeon? Or just climb them to begin with? And you know what? That’s a fair question. The simple answer is that I can’t. Them’s the rules. Not the dungeon-master’s or even my own. No. The rules of the universe, friend. The rules of the dark-lord himself. Even if I wanted to climb up the stairs, which I do, tell you what, I can’t. For us trash-mobs, the stairs are sealed. Blocked off. Forbidden.

You literally can’t go up any of them, even if you tried. Set a foot on the staircase leading up to a higher floor and it’s as if the hero himself is standing on your feet and preventing you from taking another step upward. It is literally, physically impossible for us trash-mobs to go up stairs. It’s like you’re glued, tied to the spot where you stand. All you can do is go down, your trashy trash-mob body will simply not let you go up, no matter how you tug and pull on your own legs. I need to emphasize this, if I haven’t already. It is impossible. It will never happen. There is absolutely no way for a trash-mob, or any mob that I know of, to go up to an older, higher floor. Zero. None. Okay? Okay. Hell, even if you could, you would never be able to sneak past the hero party on their way down.

So, now. Do you see why this is a big deal, friend?

This staircase. This hidden staircase could be the ticket out, it could be the solution to all of my monstery problems. Why am I allowed to go up this one? Is it because it's a secret staircase? Apparently that’s a thing? Why is there a secret staircase to begin with? What happens if I find a way up? What happens if I return to a cleared floor? Does it become uncleared? Can I spawn there again? Can I push the adventurers back an entire level, if I sneak past them to a higher one? These are all the great mysteries of my newest life and I intend to solve them. I wish I could tell sister about this.

It is good that I don’t need eyes, I doubt there is any source of light here for as far as the eye can see. Which isn’t far. Because there’s no light to begin with. See? Ah, never mind. I thought it was clever, alright?

I wonder what my next life will be? I hope I have enough time to reach the top of these stairs before I find out. I suppose that even if I do run out of time and fade away, I can just come back as another monster. It might be tricky as a goblin, but I would have an easy time finding it, if nothing else. Heck, maybe I could be a Hidden-Village slime twice in a row. Repeat spawns have happened before and it isn’t entirely impossible to consider. I just need to remember. If I die or fade away I need to remember this. This is the largest discovery I can remember ever making. I absolutely, positively, can not forget the hidden staircase on the sub-section of the second to lowest floor. Stairs. Secret stairs. Hidden stairs. I spend the next few minutes during my odyssey repeating the phrases, trying to save them in that deep place where the rest of my being resides. I need to keep them here, they are precious. As precious as anything else in that dark place.

Wasn’t there something else? I stop my motions and stick in place, thinking. Wasn’t there something else I wanted to remember? It wasn’t that long ago. My last life. It was there. Something… Something… Sister? Rats? No. I ponder. My goo begins to hang loose and my slimy body spreads out flat and wide along the step, while I am lost in thought. It was important too. I remember that. I want to sigh, but I don’t have a mouth at all this time. It’s on the tip of my proverbial tongue. Something about… It was something about… I bubble, my slimy body showing clear signs of agitation. What was it? I was a dark-fairy, right? And I was in the moonlight-arena, right? Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. So that means there was what? Water? The fairy-mother? Mushrooms? Sure, but none of those seem significant really.

I give up, there is little point to sitting here trying to recall whatever it was. I’m wasting time just sitting here. Time is a currency quite literally more valuable to me than my own life. I have to keep moving. Whatever it was, wasn’t as important as this, I am sure of that. Were all staircases this long? The thought crosses my mind randomly, as I continue my climb. Or is it just taking longer because of my bodily limitations? My technique is, for sure, sub-optimal stair ascending practice. But I have no better method to do so as a slime. The staircase is thin. My body as a slime is already insignificant in size. An average Hidden-Village slime these days will reach an adventurer's knees in the best case. I am likely significantly less than that. Our width is about the same as our height, if not a little more. We are constantly pulling ourselves together to fight gravity, after all.

My point is, when I allow myself to spread flat and wide, I can touch both walls. What that means is an adult goblin could stand here shoulder to shoulder on these stairs. Maybe not the goblin-king, he’s kind of a big guy. But a normal goblin? Easily. A human on the other hand? It would be difficult. But not undoable. I am sure the priestess could pull her shoulders together and go down these stairs alright. The wizard girl too, if she ducked her head, she’s a bit taller than the others, you see. The hero though? No way. He isn’t a really bulky guy to begin with, mind you. Fairly average looking in a way. Kind of a beanpole. How do I know that? Good question. I don’t remember having ever seen another human male in my monstery life. I just assume he looks pretty average. Like a scrawny guy. Why is his entire party full of females of the species? I can not say. Humans are stranger creatures than most monsters, I do not understand their ways. But he has some serious armor and a pretty sweet sword if I do say so myself. Sharp as a razor, tell you what.

What’s a razor? Don’t know. What that means though, is he couldn’t get down this way. Not with those spaulders of his, that’s for sure. The hero has a stature like a statue, though I really do assume it’s mostly the armor. It’s some nice looking stuff though, very regal, very imposing. Very expensive. For sure more than one gold coin‘s worth. He has a cape phase, you know? I remember a few of the goblins were laughing about it, but I always thought that he pulled it off, honestly. Good for him. I wish I could pull off the cape-look.

Monsters don’t get many clothes, at least the kinds of trash-mobs that are left. Goblins are probably the most fashionable of the leftovers and they basically just wear rags toned in assorted browns and grays. Kind of drab, really. If you’re really lucky, the dungeon-master will give you a bag with a cool piece of armor or a weapon, but those are only special days. For the most part, we live a simple ascetic life down here. It’s not like we have a ton of resources to begin with, seeing as there isn’t really any sort of industry at all. We’re trash-mobs at the bottom of the dungeon, what’re you gonna do?

Why are we here? What are we doing? I have no idea.

I sense something. A shift in the movement of air touching my slimy body. There is an opening ahead, the stairs are finally coming to an end. I feel an odd excitement in my goo. The air here feels familiar, it brings back a feeling that I had once during a memory, now forgotten. The memory itself has faded, but the emotions that were attached to it have stayed. It’s an odd sensation. A nostalgia for a day that I can’t remember. My body tells me a single word, which my mind is unable to find. Maps? Scraps? Caps? No idea. It's not importa-