Something skitters in the darkness. I see the face of the priestess of the hero-party emerge and I feel sick looking at the corruption of the pure thing. Her eyes are missing. She speaks, but I can’t understand her words. They’re gibberish. But I see her face change, it looks so soft, so worried. So caring. For who? For me? Don’t. Don’t, I’m not worth it.

  Her silhouette disappears into the darkness of the ocean, as if the strings holding her body upright had been yanked back by an unseen puppeteer and as it vanishes, I can’t help but feel an odd sense of déjà vu. My fingers grip the lance tighter as I warily watch the darkness.

  “I’m not afraid of you, skitters!” yells the slime with a quivering voice at the darkness that does little but skitter in response. Thousands of pointy, spindly legs move through the murk as it skitters all around us, above and below. The thing that skitters is everywhere, it can be anything.

  Not in the mood for another lecture today, I press on, pushing through the water. Walking past the spot where ‘she’ stood only a moment ago and as I walk, the darkness around myself, the water around myself, seems to shift. The sound of the thousand legs of the skitterer always follows me, follows us, for whatever purpose. I don’t know what the thing that skitters is, or what its goal is. I don’t know if I can trust it. I don’t think so, personally. It tried to trick me once before and I’m sure it will do it again if I let down my guard. Here’s some free life advice, friend.

Never trust anything that has more than twelve legs.

Is that a little discriminatory?

Yes.

  But you know what? If it has twelve legs, that means it has to eat enough to keep that many legs going. That means it probably isn’t picky about what it eats and that means that you’re on the menu. You, just as much as myself.

  Now, eleven legs? That’s also suspicious, honestly everything above eight is already sketchy, but I’ll allow some wiggle room here and there. But twelve is the cut-off point. There’s no coming back from that. I listen to the sound of the skittering. To the sound of the ten-thousand legs that skitter in the darkness. Now, obviously, ten-thousand is more than twelve. So that means, by my own personal codex, that I don’t trust the thing that skitters.

  Does it want to eat me? Maybe. I can’t really say for sure, honestly. But I also don’t want to try and find out. Let’s just do our best to ignore it and maybe it will go away, okay, guy? Like all of my other life problems. If we just walk away from them long enough, we’ll forget about them and then everything will be fine. Everything will be fine, tell you what.

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  As I walk, I hum a jaunty tune, bobbing and doing a little jig as I move over the surface of the ocean. I don’t know for how long exactly I walk. A while. Eventually, the slime joins in on my little dance, as we both skip down the way, on our journey to see the miller. That je-

“Are yoooou going to cry~?” coos a voice behind myself, instinctively I thrust the back of my lance outward, stabbing into something wet.

Turning my head around, I see nothing however. There’s nothing behind myself but darkness and water. Damned skitterer.

It skitters, as the swarm of pointy, chitinous legs move around the darkness. Apparently, it doesn’t need to breathe either. Great.

  Looking back forward, I keep on moving. Bouncing up and down in a floaty, swaying jig together with the slime. I wonder what the hero-party is doing? Maybe they’re still on the beach, maybe they’re taking a break. Maybe they’ve decided to finally leave me alone and let me escape. I doubt it though. They’re very serious about the whole ‘nobody gets out alive’ thing.

Very serious.

At least I got to fight them again, though ‘fight’ is also a generous term. It was more me getting pounded by the four of them all at the same time.

Wait.

I stop, scratching my chin to think as the slime giggles, embarrassed on my behalf.

  Ah, it’s fine. I don’t feel like making a joke out of it right now. There’s too much going on. So. Floor fifty-one, huh? Neat. I bet it’s fun if you get to be on the ship before it crashes. I bet there are a lot of water-monsters and stuff. But now, there’s just me. Just me, the slime and the thing that skitters. And the hero-party. So actually, there’s a lot of stuff going on here, though I suppose it’s all on my behalf. It’s a little flattering, actually.

  I guess the hero-party doesn’t know that they can just force me to respawn if they clear the dungeon. They’re obsessed with chasing me so that I don’t escape. Jokes on them, they’re playing right into my hands, those jerks.

“Jerks!” bubbles the slime.

“Jerks!” skitters the thing that skitters skitteringly.

Wait.

I look up at the darkness, watching it carefully. “Stop copying me, you jerk!”

  The slime makes a fist, shaking it at the darkness. “Yeah! Stop copying me, you jerk!” she says, splaying out a cape of goo behind us, if only to make us look imposing, which I like to think that it does.

Anyways, where was I?

  Oh yeah. Floor fifty is the next one. Wild, huh? We’ve almost made it through half of the dungeon, guy. That means there’s only another fifty floors left until I’m free. Well… ‘free.’ But it’s okay. It’s okay.

I just want to see the sun once, that’s all.

  I just want to open my eyes to a beautiful spring morning once. If I can do that, just once, it’ll be worth it. I don’t know about having a nice final life or any of that. I guess I don’t deserve it, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, right? Yeah. It’s like the dungeon-master always tells me. But that’s okay -

My head raises up as I look at the slowly rising coast, having reached the other end of floor fifty-one.

  - That’s okay. I’m going to go there. I’m going to escape the dungeon and I’m going to see that sunrise. Even if that’s it. Even if it’s all for that. I’m going to tear the dungeon open and rip my way out of it and I won’t let a minor detail like the heavenly chosen hero stop me. Or the thing that skitters. Or the dungeon-master. Or anything else and I’m going to make them all stand there at my side, if they like it or not.

  Climbing up the dune, rising towards the coast, I listen to the heavy thudding behind myself that walks in uneven steps. I listen to the words of the thing that skitters as it promises for me, that nothing is going to stop me from getting what I want.

Or they’ll get the belt.

I crack my neck, walking up the slope, together with a thousand legs of a thing that skitters, together with a bubbling slime who stretches her goo taut, as if pulling a leather strap tightly apart.