Ninety-Seven. I repeat the words aloud as I look at the goblin numbers in the upper right corner of the menu. So there are ninety-six floors above me? Our celebration has come to an end now. The others are running around, ogling the piles of gold which fill this grand room. I wonder why some symbols and values are in goblin and others are in the human language? Hmm…

 

Well, I guess the whole menu is pretty janky, so let’s just say it’s because of that. That or it’s magic. Woooo~

 

I close the menu with some satisfaction, my grin still as wide as my ego, as I look at the two goblins climbing around on the pile of golden coins.

 

I never understood why the dungeon-master has a treasury, really. Do you think he sends zombies upstairs to buy stuff? I don’t. I guess it’s just a hoard of all the stuff from all the dead adventurers over the years. It collects after a while, you know? They have a lot of loot. Still. I walk over to the others and pick up a coin to examine it. I’ve done it. I’ve found a way up to a new floor. For the first time in a long time, I feel a bit of hope become rekindled in me. If I made it here now, I can make it here again, if I have to. But if I’m lucky -

 

I toss the coin back into the heap.

 

- If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to respawn here from now on.

 

My mind races, if I can spawn here, then that means I can be a mimic again. And if this all holds true, then maybe… I look around the room, as if the thing I am hoping to see will be right here. Maybe there is another secret-staircase? Maybe I can go up another floor? Maybe every single level has its own secret-staircase up to the next? My little goblin heart is pounding fast and I feel dewy sweat drip down my skin.

 

I can get out.

 

Granted, that was a lot of ‘maybes’ just now. But maybe. Maybe. I smile feeling the happiest I have felt since my almost-duel with the hero.

 

My plan is as follows, assuming I keep the menu when I die. Assuming every floor has secret-stairs. I’m going find my way up to as high as I can go. I’ll find a way to raise my stats. Maybe then… if I push the adventurers back up higher, maybe their levels will go down to what they were, back then when they were on those floors? Maybe the whole time thing goes both ways? I can even the whole game out. If I get stronger, they get weaker and I push them back to where they came from, floor by floor…

 

I can do it. It can work. It will work. Then, when we were on even ground and footing, I’ll fight the hero in a real fight. Uninterrupted. To the bitter end.

 

The others are still laughing and playing. They have never seen gold before, so it is a beautiful sight for them, I suppose. Plus the sheer abundance of it is almost comical. When I was a dark-fairy, I had one coin. One single coin. There must be hundreds of thousands of them here, if not more than that. There are so many, that I saw them on the map just now. All that orange and gold there? Coins. Worthless, useless, gold coins. There are no shops in the dungeon, guy. Not that I remember, at least. There was the occasional piece of equipment here and there, nothing that fits a goblin though.

 

Oh and the chests. This room, no, this floor is filled with treasure chests. All of them are open. Some of them are open and bleeding. Those were the mimics.

 

They’re all dead now so obviously they have been here, the adventurers, that is. I noticed there was a big red X on my map, there where the sub-boss of this floor is. Well, was. I guess the poor fella got got. See, there’s a glaring problem with the sub-boss here though and that’s… ah, no.

 

You’ll see when we get there. I’m surprised I’m still alive, I wonder wh -

 

Ah. I guess I just needed to complain. There it is. I feel it now. The dizziness. The weakness in my knees. Speak of the devil, it looks like the goblin-king got urked. Guess my royal-guard career didn’t work out after all, huh? I look up at the others, they have noticed too that they feel odd. But they don’t know what it is. Somewhat worried, they slide down the heap of coins together and come towards me, their faces are strained and a little pained.

 

This is going to be awkward.

 

“Do you feel weird too?” asks the brother.

 

“We should go, there might be poison here,” says the sister. Her brother agrees.

 

I look at their pale green faces for a moment and make a choice. I laugh.

 

“Are you feeling unwell?” I ask.

 

“Yes,” they both answer in some discomfort. The brother’s legs give out and his sister catches him. I tell them to sit down and they do so together.

 

“It’s normal to feel woozy when this happens,” I say.

 

“When what happens?” they ask together in worry.

 

“Oh? Don’t you know?” I laugh. “When you change jobs, you get woozy,” I explain to them, shrugging as if nothing was happening. “You must be becoming adventurers now,” I lie. Their sickly pale eyes light up, I think their vision is leaving them. Only because mine is too. “It’ll only be like that for a second. It’s your body changing, to let you use a menu. Stats. Mana. White magic, all of that. Don’t worry, you’ll be up in just a moment,” I assure them.

 

The beaming faces of my friends are the last thing I see, before the world goes dark as my body collapses to the stones and I am catapulted into that place beyond. This was a short life, but a good one. I liked having friends.

 

Thankfully, I feel it here now too. The demon-miasma. Honey! I’m home! It acknowledges my presence, I feel it rushing around my soul, as if I was cast underwater. Once more it seeps into me and takes part of my memories, watching my past life. I feel kind of awkward, actually. Like you know? It’s seeing everything. Like that one time I scratched myself beneath the loincloth, while we were going up the stairs. I didn’t tell you that before, obviously, but now I have to. Come on demon-miasma, some personal space please?

 

Ah, it sees its own body in my memories and the surge of the spiritual torrent changes to a more mellow trickle. It sees the menu and sees me use it. It sees me progress to the higher floor. It seems happy, for some reason. Uh, glad I could help, guy. Anyways we need to set up some boundaries if we’re going to live together, okay? Before I have time to get an answer back, I feel the lurch. The cold onset of the curse of life. Zig’urk has left the building. Mimic. Mimic. Mimic! Come on, mimic! Let’s gooooo-!

 

I open my eyes.

 

Good start. I open my lid. MIMIC! I cackle in a high pitched voice, I can’t help it! My mischievous, nasally voice echoes around the pristine treasury like that of a jubilant witch. It’s an annoying, raspy laugh. Really makes you cringe when you hear it as anything else. But as a mimic? I laugh again. Mimics are mischievous little devils and boy do they love trickery. They’re a little obsessed with it, actually. Honestly if there was any creature in the dungeon built to take off fingers, it’s the mimic. I clap open my lid again and peek my odd, slimy ‘head’ outside to look around.

 

I am in the grand-treasury! So that means it worked! That means I made progress!

 

I cackle again. Another chest opens its lid and I see two stalked, googly eyes looking over to find out what’s so funny. I can’t help but snicker at its confused expression and close my lid, so it doesn’t hear me laughing at its questioning face. In mimic culture, that would be considered rude for me to do.

 

Slowly, I open my lid again. It has looked away. Good, I need to check my menu. I wobble my box, shifting my weight around inside of the chest to move the container. The chest shuffles across the room, I bet it looks hilarious. I cackle at the thought. Once I am behind a pillar, I think, I pop out of the chest again to make sure that the coast is clear. It is. The menu pose will be a little awkward to do, seeing as I’m basically part of the inside of this box but… I do my best to mimic the hero pose given my constraints. Haha!

 

The menu pops up immediately with the little beeping sound trailing off. I am relieved.

 

 

Wait, I don’t have arms. Uh… Ah! Tongue.

 

Mimics have a really long, flexible tongue. Ladies. Swiping through the windows, leaving a trail of spit behind on the screen, I check my stats. They are different, but I don’t know what they mean. I swipe once more to my notes. They are still there. Thankfully, I haven’t forgotten yet. Though I guess the slime one is outdated now? Hmm. Well, whatever. So that means two of my three theories are correct.

 

I zap away the menu, having seen all I wanted to see. Okay. I need to find the secret-stairs. Where could they be here? The Hidden-Village slimes were already pretty secret on their own so… wait. Why were there Hidden-Village slimes beneath the hero-grave, which is beneath the grand-treasury? What were you thinking, dungeon-master? And if there is a grand-treasury, is there a non-grand kind here too? Hmm…

 

So, mimics. You might be wondering, guy, you’re a mimic. That’s kind of cool, right? You know what? It is. It is very cool, my guy. Obviously one, because I am excited to be somewhere new again, well old, but you know. Two, mimics are a fun life for me. I remember that.

 

There is no such thing as a mimic with a bad mood. Mimics are all cranked up on mischief and pranks and traps and just generally having a fun time of being a monster. See, there are treasure chests here, right? The adventurers love them. Always filled with stuff, the best stuff. There’s no stuff like the stuff you get here in our chests, okay? Well, mimics are proof that life in the dungeon will always evolve to fill the niches of our ecosystems here. Mimics look like treasure-chests. One to one. A perfect copy. Wood, metal, stone. Whatever kind of chest is on the floor you’re on, if you’re a mimic on that floor, you will look like it. The thing is, as a mimic, that material, wood in my case, is my body. It hurts if it gets burnt. What hurts more though, is if someone opens me and touches my squishy soft, gooey insides that are basically just a heap of organs with some eye stalks. Not only because they usually do it without my permission, but because there is often stabbery and such things involved.

 

Also without my permission.

 

A mimic’s gimmick, haha, is that if someone tries to open me, well then I try to open them. Them’s the rules of the game. When I’m not busy snapping shut on people’s fingers, I’m shuffling around the floor, setting up little traps that I can manage. Stacks of coins that’ll fall over on someone. An inconveniently placed rock for someone to trip on. Oh! One time, I remember now, one time I tripped the… uh… who? I tripped one of the hero-party people. But, ah never mind. You had to be there to see it. Getting back on track, I shuffle onward and down around the corner, out of the grand-treasury and down the long corridor towards the boss room. As I do so, I carefully eye each and every bit of wall and floor on the way. I’m not sure what it is that I’m looking for exactly, but I’m sure that I’ll find it. I need to find it. I won’t let anything distra-

 

I see an unstacked pile of coins in the long corridor. I stop. I need to stack them. It is important. It is pivotal. I love coins, I cackle, the sound of my voice echoing down the hall from which I hear footsteps coming. Wait.

 

Footsteps?