I was on fire. Everything hurt a lot, very briefly, then I was back in the black again.

I had died twice in the same day. The day officially double fucking sucked.

I couldn’t have been in the black for too long because when I opened my ghost eyes the sewer tunnel was still a smouldering ruin. The adventurers were doing a Burn and Boot. It was about the only reasonable way to manage a sewer dungeon. Scorch everything in front of you until you hit something that doesn’t die instantly then run the hell away. Sewer dungeon’s have notoriously poor loot but still have to be delved to prevent monster invasions. No point in fighting a Night Soil Wyrm if clearing a couple hundred slimes regularly accomplish the same thing. Guild pays a flat rate to do a Burn and Boot. The kind of job Apprentices do for drinking money. Never imagined I’d be on the other side of one. I’d have to think of a way to avoid those next time.

If there is a next time. I might have just blown the whole second chance at living thing after all. Sure it would have been as a Slime but I was getting the hang of it right up until I was blasted to ash.

My ghostly form was different this time too. I wasn’t just me but a ghost. I was more just a vague impression of a humanoid figure floating above where Slime Me bought it. Another thing I decided just to file under magical bullshit. Though this time I’m sure it would be my cleric buddies ranting at me about metaphysical representations of the soul. Didn’t care, I was more interested in the text that just popped up.

[Estimated Respawn Wait: 5 minutes ]

This time there was also a moving image of a sand glass running out below the text.

I guessed that was my countdown. The Dungeon could do pictures too. Neat.

Seems I get at least one more spin of the wheel. Just had to kill five minutes before it was slime time again.

I tried pulling up my status to see if I’d get anything interesting out of it but nothing budged. Next I tried to move away from Slime Me’s remains. Ghost scouting would be a handy trick, but no luck again. I could rotate but was otherwise nailed to the spot. Same as It was after the Warlord did me in, just more floaty. Before I could think of anything else to test I heard a familiar voice from behind me. I’d been half expecting them, so no kicked chicken sounds this time. Still flinched though.

“Slime, eh? Wasn’t expecting that. Figured you’d at least end up something with thumbs.”

I turned around to face the dungeon reaper.

“Hello to you too, Dunnie.”

“Got a Respawn Timer?” They asked in way of returning my greeting.

“Yup. Five minutes, closer to four now.“ I said, doing my best to estimate how long the remaining sand in the glass would last. It was kinda annoying I didn’t just get a countdown.

“Huh, that’s not a lot.” “Probably means you’re going back in a Slime. Can’t say for sure though. We’re in unexplored territory here. No telling what other quirks might pop up.”

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“Other quirks?” I asked.

“Yeah, this whole spectre thing ain’t the usual. Bit of a mish mash between adventurers and dungeon monsters. Handy though, saves me havin’ to track you down.”

“I have questions, Dunnie. So many questions. What’s with all the text and status stuff? Perks, Drawbacks, Titles, Respawn Timers. I can’t make heads or tales of half of it. Do you have to deal with this crap too?”

Dunnie opened their mouth to say something then froze. Then closed their mouth before trying again to the same result. Dunnie shook their head and sighed.

“Love to spill the beans for you, however it seems the answers I can give are pretty limited. It’s not that I don’t want to share. I am literally bound to silence on a lot of stuff. Especially dungeon stuff. I can only even say that now that you're an honorary dungeon denizen. Thought I’d be able to fill you in proper at this point, but you're still raising a few of the restrictions around adventurers.”

“We found another quirk?”

Dunnie looked rather put out and nodded.

“That at least explains why you were dancing around things when you were laying out my options.” I glanced at the dwindling hourglass. “We really don’t have time to play the question game to figure out what you can share, and repeatedly getting myself killed to weasel out information five minutes at a time is less than ideal. Dying hurts.”

I ran a ghostly hand over my face in frustration.

“I got nothing. Can you think of any workarounds?” I asked.

Dunnie tapped a tooth in thought for a few moments.

“Maybe, I’d have to call in a favour, and you’d might have to put in some work on your end that wouldn’t be easy.”

I gestured for Dunnie to go on. “Listening.”

“I’d have to send someone who could give you a proper run down on dungeon basics, but there's a good chance you won’t respawn in the same spot. If that happens you’d have to… well, kill something so I could find you. And I don’t mean a little bug or a random patch of weeds. It’d need to be something more substantial. Anything you’d recognize as a monster should get past the background noise of death and give me something to pinpoint you with. Which might be easier said than done.”

I saw what Dunnie was getting at.

“If I’m a Slime that is going to be one hell of an uphill battle and if I can’t pull it off we’re back to square one again playing the question game.”

I gave things a bit more thought and saw another potential problem.

“And favours only stretch so far. Whoever you drum up won’t just hang around at your beck and call forever, Right? Meaning I’ll need to be in a hurry and can’t just bash at things till I get lucky.”

“You’re quicker than a lot of the Armour clad types I’ve crossed paths with, you know that? I can have someone on standby for a day or two but things get spotty after that. It also might take them a while to get to you so you’d also have to not die after you take down whatever you take down.”

“Well, here's hoping I just pop back into the same slime cave and save us both the trouble.”

We shared a look clearly communicating what we thought the odds were of things ever being that easy.

“Clock’s nearly up. Before I go, if you can answer, you're clearly going above and beyond just doing your job here. Why all the extra effort for me? Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful and so far glad I decided to trust you, just curious ya’know.”

“Couple reasons.” Dunnie shrugged. “The first is easy. I like ya. You‘re a good kid.” Then paused looking somewhat embarrassed. “Second is a little more selfish, adding a motivated free agent to the mix opens up a lot of options when bullshit edge cases like yours pop up. You seemed the type who’d chip in moving a couch up flights of stairs, no questions asked, and I could use help. You got good taste in booze, too. Which is always a plus.”

Honestly? That was reasonable. I wasn’t gonna hold it against Dunnie for nudging me down the dungeon route because they need the help. It shouldn’t conflict with my long term goal of giving the Gods a black eye or two ether.

“Right, still no regrets on my end then. Keep shooting straight with me and I’ll have your back when you need it.”

I offered my hand to shake “Official Dungeon Buddies?”

Dunnie chuckled and took my spectral hand in their boney one and shook on it. “Official Dungeon Buddies.” They agreed.

I watched as the last few grains of sand tumbled through the hourglass. My vision swirled with colours as I was yanked away.