I float.

I feel light.

Snap shu- No! That life is over.

I am floating. I am in that place again. Something feels different. Demon-miasma? Demon-miasma, are you there? I hope not, I don’t want you to see these new memories. I feel a jolt shoot through my mind, it’s hard to explain. I feel tired. It is a deep exhaustion that isn’t tied to my dead, corporeal body. No, it is me. I am tired. But in that exhaustion, something twists. I feel something squirming in my soul, like the frayed ends of a rope, twining and spinning themselves back into a tight bundle. Hmm… Well. No… it’s something else. Something grosser. Like a fistful of worms coming together to form a writhing, wriggling mass. A ball of squirming, flailing meat. That feeling, that wiggly, disgusting sensation, that is me, the first me.

I am the thing that wiggles. I am disgusted with myself.

Demon-miasma? Are you there?

I float.

There is nothing here. Demon-miasma is gone. Where? How? I think of our last encounter, when it saw my progression, it seemed happy. Did you find a way to move on, friend? Ah… I’m so jealous. I’m so jealous! I’m also sad, I am alone again in death. But I am also relieved that this memory will be mine alone. I float. I am waiting for my next life, but honestly… honestly I don’t want it. I’ve had enough, I’m tired. My resolve is…

- My resolve? Do I even have any resolve? Why do I feel bad about hurting the priestess? She’s an adventurer. I’m a trash-mob. Adventurers kill trash-mobs. Trash-mobs kill adventurers, in theory, at least. I didn’t feel bad when I took the wizard-girl’s fingers, did I? I don’t remember. I don’t think I did, maybe? But maybe I did. But this is worse. It feels worse, I’m sure.

But my goal is to beat the hero, isn’t it? To fight him and the adventurers and win? Doesn’t that mean that only one of us can live? ‘Beating’ someone in the dungeon means killing them. That’s how it works. My goal is to kill, isn’t it? Isn’t that my resolve? My mission? So why do I feel bad for taking a step closer towards that desire? I shouldn’t. It’s my right as a trash-mob. They killed me more times than I can remember, it’s okay for me to kill them too, right? Right?

I float.

The memory of the taste of blood is still fresh in my mind, the sting of it in my eyes, still present. My mimic-body is still holding on by a thread, I wish it wouldn’t. I think about my hero friend, the demon-miasma, I guess they’re gone now. Did you entrust me with your menu, so you could move on in peace? How? Where did you go? I wish you had taken me with you.

I float.

The menu. I saw it for a brief moment before I died. I’ll have to look at it when I respawn, there was something new there. I hope the fairy of the fountain is okay, I bet they were mad, after the whole trap thing, the adventurers. But I bet she ducked back into her pool, before everything went down. Now that I think about it, I didn’t see her there when I was dying. Lonely people tend to cause mischief, huh? I don’t want to think about the adventurers right now. I need to do something else.

The stairs. The odds that I’ll respawn as a mimic twice in a row are low, so I’ll have to travel up to the treasury from a lower floor. I guess a goblin or a skeleton would be ideal but… hmm. Yeah, there were trash-mobs from the lower floors there now. They managed to get upstairs, so that means I can too now, right? Does that mean they can use stairs now? At least the lower ones? Did I ‘unlock’ them? I’ll have to test this. But this could be big. How often have I said that, lately? Times are changing, guy, tell you what.

I wonder if I’ll see the fairy again, I hope if I do, that I’ll be something that can talk. What trash-mobs can talk? I mean, apart from goblins. Uh… hmm. I don’t really remember.

Oh? I feel something. The lurch. Is it that time of the day already? The shifting cold washes over me like a baptizing river, the disgusting sensation initiating me into the new life that I am destined to live. Okay. Game face. I don’t have time to be blue. I’ll figure it out as I go along. Like I always have. Like I always w-

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Fire surrounds me. The room is black and filled with the aura of an orange inferno, the crackle of the raging flames mixes together with the shrieks of hundreds of skeletons, who walk through the blaze unharmed, if not a little charred. Looking downward, I gaze at my hands. They look like big, strong hands, don’t they? I think so. Flexing my grip tightly closed, my meaty, hairy fists in full view, I watch as several of my singed hairs snap off and break. The heat is intense in this room. I am taller than usual. Much taller. Ridiculously so, even.

I am a minotaur.

Damn. Damn? Hmm. Well. Hmm… Weeeeeell… eh. Minotaurs are okay. I think I mentioned it before. There aren’t many left. Just the handful who stand outside the dungeon-master’s chamber. The last wave. The final stand of the dungeon. Looking over my shoulder, I peer at the grand staircase that is lined with skulls, leading up towards a massive, ornately carved door. The big-guy’s final boss room. Never seen it. It’s a lucky spawn, in the sense that I haven’t had it in a while and also considering the odds.

Compared to the thousands of undead skeletons and dark-fairies that we have left, the chance of being one of the fistfuls of minotaurs is pretty slim, really. So that’s good. On the down side though…

I’m at the very bottom. I’ll have to go through the labyrinth to find the stairs, that is assuming that I can even go up them. But I’ll bet on that assumption now. There’s nothing with half a brain around myself for as far as I can see, between the flames shooting up out of the metal grates, branching around the black stone floor. Whether the stone is just black by nature, or if it had become that color from soot and ash, I can’t say. But man, it’s hot in here.

My large fur coated body is sleek with sweat. Minotaurs aren’t made to live in places like this, but here I am, in all my meaty glory. Seeing as I am alone though, at least in the criteria of consciousness, I open my menu. I don’t think the skeletons care. If they do, I guess I’ll just die then. Whatever. I don’t care at this point.

Thankfully, minotaurs are simple creatures in the mind. It allows me to have little interference in my ‘true’ existence. But on the downside, they’ll give me cow-brain after a while, so pardon me if I slur my words. With a sharp, crisp sounding plinging sound, my menu pops up before me. I can’t help but notice that the edges look just a little more frayed. A little wilder. Like the threads of a robe coming undone from too much wear and tear. A moment later though, before I have the chance to do anything myself, a new window opens.

I wish I could read. I recognize my two other windows though. They seem to be conjoined here, displayed as one. I notice that next to my stats are new icons which weren’t there before. Does this mean that I can raise them up? A glimmer of excitement manages to reach me after all, as I remember the values of the adventurers. A little piece of me feels like I am one of them now. Even though it's just a tiny bit. I stamp the good feeling down, I don’t deserve it.

[https://i.imgur.com/2acb6vT.gif]

I suppose out of all the adventurers, I want to be like the hero the most. Though the priestess is nice too. I feel a pang of fresh guilt. The new one adventurer is interesting too, but I don’t know enough about her just yet either. I rub my head in some confusion. I need to identify the rest of these values somehow. The letters are all jumbled and broken, but sometimes they pop through clearly. But it’s not like I know them either way. I look at the other menu, it’s a white field filled with several circles connected by straight lines to each other, creating a web of sorts, I have seen it once before. Though it seems to be rather simple just in this part.

One of the rings though, it’s glowing blue? I squint my eyes, I think this body is a little older. He -

I look down again.

She doesn’t seem to be able to see so great anymore. I’ll spare you the other details of what I saw, you aren’t ready to hear it yet, guy. I’ll tell you when you’re older.

Looking back at my menu, I hold my finger to the glowing circl- AH!

I shield my eyes as a bright light shoots out of the thing for only a brief flash of a second. As I look back, the ring is filled now with blue, the connections outside of it are still white and empty though. What did I just do? I have no idea. Curiously, I press on the circle a second time. A window appears before me. I can’t read it but it looks cool. Shit. Is this an ability? I think so. I guess? I’ve seen adventurers use them sometimes. The wizard-girl’s fireball or the priestess’ white-magic, those are both abilities. Do I have magic now?

Uh… no. I don’t think so. I don’t feel very magical. I shrug my brutish, minotaur shoulders. As I do so, my back cracks uncomfortably and I reach around to hold myself upright. Oof…

[https://i.imgur.com/heKUs7E.gif]

My old bones ache, what’s up with this body? Why am I a granny-minotaur? As I look at the window, I try to decipher what this new symbol could mean, but I don’t reach a satisfying conclusion. I have some kind of ability now, I guess, but I don’t know what it is.

Cool. Great. I swipe the menu, as a whole, away. I can not. Huh? I try again. It won't go away. What? The stats window shakes. I apparently have to assign the point now. Dang. I was hoping to avoid that until I knew more. Okay, think. Think. There are two at the top, so those are… health and mana, right? Yeah. Yeah, they should be. I have a double value on my health, I guess that makes sense, as a minotaur. My mana is a big, fat zero, if I had to guess. Since I don’t have any magic that I know of, I assume that’s a safe bet. There’s also the thief stat, so…

So that leaves the others. What others are there? I guess something that makes you ‘heroy’, right? The hero is strong so… strength? I guess, yeah. Yeah that makes sense. Health, mana, strength, sneakery, uh… I guess book smarts are a base attribute and so are practical smarts. Smarts? Ah, my minotaur brain is digging into me. That leaves two, but I am out of ideas. One of them doesn’t have a button to change it though and the other one seems high already, but it's hard to say. I still want to fight the hero, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I want to do that. Right? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. I press on the first value below health. The hero value would be the first one, right? Makes sense to me. I hear another plinging sound, the menu shakes for a moment. The tatters billow wildly, as if a gale were howling around them.

Just like that, it vanishes into thin air, leaving me standing there, my body still wet and dewy with sweat. It’s really hot in here, guy. I look down at my body, I am unsure if I feel any different honestly. I grip my hand tightly closed. I am strong.

But am I strong because of the minotaur-body, or am I strong because of the new stat and ability? I’ll have to find out on the way. Turning, I sprint down towards the labyrinth. I have a long way to go in this life and too little time.