Dear Diary,

Today was pretty ok. We got to Floor 10 at dinnertime, then most of the party wanted to do one more floor. That’s Lex and Tim’s floor, which I’m always happy to visit.

So we went down there and I fed my velociraptors while everyone else beat up the poor spinosaurus. I feel sorry for that guy. I wish we could have made super good friends with him. But oh well.

Tonight we’re spending the night between Floors 11 and 12. Floor 12 is the no-gravity floor. With the special rocks. I kinda don’t want to explain to everyone why I’m collecting rocks from there.

I mean, I’m gonna do it, but I don’t want to explain it. Maybe I should say they’re a secret thing for beating a floor later? Unless Edison knows about the rocks; he’s from Admin 5’s group.

If he knows, he can explain it. And then I can say I’m collecting them for personal use? But I don’t want everyone to think I’m a drug addict…

I don’t know, I’ll just hope no one sees me stuffing them into my pockets.

Anyways, we’re getting to know each other. Everyone in the party gets along well; no one’s a jerk or anything. We don’t work together as well as we could, but we’re getting there. I think by the time this cycle is over we’ll be a great team.

I’ll still feel kinda bad about killing people instead of giving them food, but that’s ok. I’m not gonna force players to become pacifists or anything. And I’m not doing any killing, that’s the important thing.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

So yeah.

Oh, Avi and I aren’t going to kidnap anything this cycle. It will be sad to not have any floofs around, but it’s kinda hard to explain why I want to take a velociraptor with me.

I guess… I might be afraid of people thinking I’m weird? I mean, I know I’m not the most normal of average people, but there’s a limit. There’s an acceptable amount of strange. Kidnapping Lex and Tim would go over that amount.

I think, if they get used to assuming everything I say is weird, and therefore a bad idea, then they’ll think even my important ideas should be ignored. Which wouldn’t be good. I want to be listened to at least some of the time.

I’ve never really thought about it before in those terms. Like, I knew we were weird, but it was because we weren’t supposed to be players. We’re supposed to be catgirls. So of course we acted different. And before we were players, our friends were mostly all kobolds. Of course we’re different from them. Kobolds are three-foot-tall dragon people. Obviously catgirls are different.

But we always had people around us to agree that we’re normal. A place we fit in perfectly.

Now, I’m by myself in a group where we all kinda look the same. We’ve all got the same skeleton, and the same type of fingernails. Two eyes. The same type of feet and ankles. We’re probably identical to someone who’s never seen a hobgoblin before.

And yet, I still feel different somehow. Not exactly like I don’t belong, more like… Like there’s an instruction manual I didn’t get to read but everyone else did. So it all makes sense to them, but I’m still watching to see how it’s done.

It’s probably not that deep. I don’t know, I should go to sleep before I start seriously overthinking things.

Goodnight, Dungeon!

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