I feel a chill.

A cold sensation runs along my spine, rising to my skull and my body buzzes with a quiet energy, my bones feel tense. If I had hairs on my arms, I’m sure they would be standing on end, but for what reason?

I look around, looking back at the clockwork floor, forty-six, that I am about to leave behind myself as I ascend towards the apex of the world. There’s nothing there. Nothing but clockwork mechanisms and spinning metal. I half expected to see the hero-party, but it looks like they still haven’t caught up with me, which is fine. I don’t want to have to fight them and make a dramatic escape every odd three of four floors. It’s inconvenient for my long term life goals, you know?

Turning back forward, I move, rushing on and up the staircase, rushing up towards the next floor above myself, so that I may rise to the next one after that and then the next one after that. I think I’m going to make it. I think I’m really going to make it.

Sure, I’ll need to ditch this body though. Because not everyone is here who I want to be here when I reach my last life. But that’s a minor detail. An easy fix. I’ll run up to floor one and then I’ll put up a good fight with the hero and let him kill me. Then I’ll respawn as a trash-mob on floor one since I always get a freebie and just find the last set of secret stairs and leave the dungeon for good. Easy.

Then I’ll have escaped and everyone will be alive and free to escape with me, before the rot consumes the rest of the dungeon.

It almost feels like it’s right in front of me now, as if it were just beyond these very stairs that I climb. Do you hear it too? That ringing? That sound of metal striking stone? The sound of my boots clanking loudly as I run? That’s all I need to feel better. I’m going to make it, I’m going to see the miller and it’s going to be the best day ever!

What’s the first thing I want to do, I wonder?

Hmm…

I think the first thing I want to do when I escape the dungeon is to sit down exactly where I come out and sit there and wait and do absolutely nothing until I can see the sun rise for the first time. That sounds nice. Maybe once I escape the dungeon, the hero-party will sit with me and watch the sunrise together with me? After all, if I’ve already escaped the dungeon, that means they can’t stop me from escaping the dungeon anymore, which means there’s no reason for them to fight me, which means maybe we can be friends?

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That would be nice.

“I’ve always wanted friends!” bubbles the slime excitedly, pulling herself out of my dented armor to look back at me with giddy eyes. “Can I come too?”

“You’ll have to climb out of the dungeon on your own,” I tell her. “If I die and respawn on floor one, you’re going to get sent back to floor sixty-nine,” I explain.

“Where’s that?” asks the slime.

“It’s where you came from.”

“Oh,” she says with her wet, underwater voice quivering uncertainly.

“Don’t worry, you can do it. Just follow the same path that we took,” I reassure her.

“Can you come get me?”

“What? No, I’d have to walk all the way back down again to get you.”

“But it’s really far,” she protests, her goo wrapping itself around my arm as her soapy, yellow eyes look up at me fearfully from my wrist. I nod. It is really far. But I’m confident that she can manage. Besides, it’s her fault anywa- “Will I remember?”

“Huh?” I ask, looking at her as we climb the stairs.

“Will I remember having a friend? If you die and I go back?”

“Uh… I guess you’re not a respawner, so… probably not?”

“Bad friend,” she gribbles, making a small mouth to chew on my finger in protest.

I nod. Bad friend. Told you so.

Anyways, that’s a problem for tomorrow. For today, all that matters is that I move, is that I climb. The dungeon would never forgive me if I stopped now, though, I get the feeling that it takes my existence personally at this point to begin with.

A gentle light trickles in from above us as I run. Lifting my head, my chest and my eyes I hurry towards what lies above, eager to keep this energetic buzz in my body going. If I stop moving, I’ll forget and die. If I stop moving, the rot will take me along with the rest. I leap, jumping like a frog to a fresh lily-pad and as I move, the floor behind myself ripples, quivering as if it were disturbed water, the stones coming loose and shifting apart in an instant, as the gray, meaty tendrils press out of them. As the thing beneath the rock reaches for me, as the encroacher encroaches upon the world once again, having found me once more.

It’s a good thing that it's so slow, otherwise I’d never have a chance. It would be really bad if I died and respawned as something slow haha, oof. That would be rough. Imagine if I was like… a tree. I know a tree isn’t a trash-mob, but just stick with me here, okay? Anyways, I’d just be stuck there, stuck there like I was trapped in golden, glimmering honey, as it crawled towards me, as it would encroach and reach for my eyes and I’d be powerless to stop it, because I’d be too slow. Too slow. Too slow. My eyes itch a bit.

The rot will take me if I’m too slow.

I feel something that I can’t describe. It hurts, but I don’t know why. Sparing a glance down as I fly, towards the aquamarine slime who shimmers with an odd, almost forest-green tone, I can’t help but think about honey.

My boots strike against the stones and I keep running. I’m too slow. It hurts. I’m not running fast enough. I need to run faster. If I run faster, it can’t hurt me. None of it can hurt me if I just keep going.