Walking along the waterways of the thirteenth floor, Bug having learned that that is where she is now by finally checking her notifications, Bug is smiling down at the brick in her hands, holding a piece of jerky just out of reach.

She’s been walking along these deserted halls for the better part of twenty minutes now and has yet to run into any other living things, not counting the occasional cockroach or other little creatures that scuttle about and hide in the cracks of the brick walls. Just walking in the general direction of where it feels like her minions should be. No idea how far away they are. No idea what condition they are in. But at least she has a direction and a hungry little Mimic to keep her company in the meantime.

“Hehehe, almost got it. Oh, oh, come on~”

Wiggling the hanging meat a little closer, Bug giggles as Mimmie tries to snatch it, the tooth filled brick slamming shut like the shell of a clam as the jerky gets pulled away at the last second. Clearly not happy with being teased, Mimmie glares angrily at Bug with its two eyestalks extended and shows off its sharp teeth at the teasing Gremlin that is carrying it.

“HmhmHeeehe, such an angy little Mimmie. So cute~ Okay, here you go.” Coos a happy Bug who is hardly intimidated.

Dropping the meat, Mimmie blinks in surprise and quickly turns its full attention to the meat falling towards its open mouth. Eyestalks snapping back inside; a long grey tongue quickly darts out to snatch the meat out the air like a frog catching a fly. With a loud clap, the meat disappears inside of the brick and Bug can hear some light chewing noises.

“Such a hungry little brick. Good Mimmie, good.”

Petting the brick, Bug’s smile grows even bigger as it opens up a little bit again and the eyestalks come out to look up at her. Maybe it wants more treats? Maybe it is wondering about this weird girl that is holding it, about why she is giving it treats and not trying to kill and eat it? Maybe… it could be love? Could Mimmie have developed some kind of attachment to its new master?

Slowly moving a finger towards Mimmies eyestalks, like she wants to finally be able to pet the softer parts of her new pet, and not just the hard outer brick shell, Bug’s smile only grows larger as Mimmie similarly, slowly, extends its grey tongue to meet her.

Like monkey and man touching fingertips, finger meets tongue, and Bug is practically aglow with excitement as some connection is made in her heart. No, she really is aglow as her bioluminescence kicks in, and her scales start to glow with a happy light of shifting greens and blues and yellows. As this moment is solidified in her mind as the moment that she made real progress in getting her pet to finally (literally) open up to her. For the first time in her life, Bug is enjoying the wonders of being a pet owner! Is this what it is like to own a dog?

*SNAP*

Or maybe a cat would be a better metaphor…

“Oh, come on! Again!?”

For the second time since Bug has been trying to tame this damn brick, she has lost yet another finger to its ravenous appetite! Not counting when she had woken up and found it eating her hand, Bug had lost half a finger when she was feeding Mimmie some jerky and had her fingers just a little too close and underestimated its ability to lunge.

With Mimmie happily munching on her finger, Bug frowns and looks down at her hand that is currently pissing blood where her pointer finger used to be.

Should I just throw this brick away? Damn thing just wants to eat me… Become Weapon.

As her finger regenerates, Bug toys with the idea of chucking the naughty Mimic in the water to see if it will drown or not, but stops as she finds Mimmie peeking out its eyes at her. Is it smiling at her? Mimmie’s eyes do look quite happy…

“Oh, you… You cheeky little brick. I can’t stay mad at you~”

Bug goes to touch it with her freshly regrown finger again, Mimmie reaching out its tongue to meet her again. Maybe this time will be different? Just maybe-

*SNAP*

“Hahahahahaha! You missed! Thought I was going to fall for that again, huh? Looking all sweet and innocent. Dummy. Mimmie is a dummy, HaHa!”

Mimmie just claps its teeth angrily at the tasty finger wiggling teasingly in front of its face, Bug looking smug at the dumb brick and its glaring eyes that are hiding inside its shell.

Again, Bug has only been trying to tame Mimmie for the past twenty minutes or so. So, it shouldn’t be too surprising that she hasn’t already succeeded. A Mimic is hardly a domesticated dog, and it will take more than treats to make it fall in love with her. Even with feeding it meat, it had taken almost the full twenty minutes just to get Mimmie to actually open up its shell most of the way and not just stay hiding inside to snatch treats from a tinny crack.

At the very least, Mimmie is at least mildly, maybe… certain that Bug isn’t about to kill it at any moment now. No, to Mimmie, Bug is a weird creature that could be best categorized as, ‘Prey too big and strong to hunt that has tasty fingers that seem to regrow endlessly and for some reason gives me food.’

Mimmie wants to eat Bug and definitely will if given half a chance to do so. So again, less of a dog and more of a stray cat…

“So hungry, aren’t you? I wonder how much you managed to eat, living in a hole in the ceiling all day? Do you just wait up there until something comes by to eat? Do you eat moss? Eh...?

Bug suddenly lurches to the side mid step and catches herself on the wall with two arms and a wing, her modified tail bracing her against the floor to help keep her standing.

Looking surprised, and then annoyed, she reaches a hand back and feels at her lower back.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Dang it, I just pulled a muscle…”

Even though Bug was able to heal all the damage done to her limbs, her body is still bruised and battered. She had already been injured after fighting the Cleaner, but she has only become more injured after going after the Golden Fish and then getting flushed down two floors worth of pipes. As she is right now, she shouldn’t even be able to walk around right now, let alone stand, with how injured the muscles in her back are currently. But due to not being able to feel pain anymore and some weirdness with being Half-Undead, Bug is still able to force her body to move. Even if it means further damaging it…

I really need to stop moving and let my body heal. I’m just going to keep making it worse if I force myself to keep going… Maybe I could drink the rest of that potion? It did heal me at least a little bit... But then I will throw up again… Eugh… No thank you. I don’t want to ever drink a potion again. I just need to take it easy for a bit and stop doing dumb stuff.

Staying where she is so she doesn’t make it any worse, Bug pulls her remaining skeletons out of her Inventory. Mimmie, who was peeking out of its shell and watching what is going on curiously, immediately snaps closed in fright from the sight of magically appearing monsters. That gets a tired giggle out of Bug, and she pats the brick softly.

“You, get over here and let me ride you.”

Pointing to the insectile abomination of a skeleton that used to be a very rude and flat-chested girl, Bug has it come over and then fishes out a couple of her few remaining blankets to set on its back to make it a bit more comfortable. Nice thing about robbing so many people is that Bug has, or had, a lot of blankets. Regretfully, most of them got flushed… Still, her best blankets are staying in storage for sleeping. Those aren’t coming out until she is clean.

Looking at the face of the insect, a human skull with a pair of hands acting as mandibles, Bug can’t remember the name of the girl who’s bones this used be anymore, but she definitely remembers that girl because she almost strangled Bug to death. Even if she can’t remember her name, Bug refuses to forget her. After all, that very rude and very flat-chested girl was the first person to teach Bug that levels really mean almost nothing when it comes to humans. At the time, Bug had maybe twice the levels on that girl and was even assaulting her with Inflict Pain, which should have made her unable to do anything other than screaming in pain and flailing around on the floor. But despite that, she had managed to almost choke Bug to death…

Now she’s an insect. That’ll teach her.

Casting aside her thought on that matter as she looks away from its emotionless, boney face, Bug slowly sits down on its back and gets comfortable. With a tired sigh, Bug massages her back and tries to get her pulled muscle to stop spasming. It feels weird and is annoying. As she massages her back with one hand, another goes to her neck and tries to work out a kink there, her spine satisfyingly popping as she moves her head left and right and shifts her stiff shoulders.

“Alright, get walking. You three, up front, the rest of you in the back. Billy, you walk beside me.”

She looks towards the lonely little skeleton, Billy the Retriever, and frowns sadly. Poor little guy is supposed to be with Bob. At least he was safe in her inventory and didn’t get flushed away...

“Don’t worry Billy. We’ll get Bob back. Then you can get back to picking up his arrows for him again.”

The skeleton naturally doesn’t respond to her reassurances, but Bug smiles and nods her head happily non the less.

It would be nice if they could talk…

Bug blinks and quickly shakes her head, chasing that thought away. She’s not lonely. Nope, she has Mimmie now…

Keeping a smile on her face, Bug lets her escort of marrow filled underlings carry her forward, her muscles finally getting to relax a bit as she sits comfy like a little Queen of Death, petting her evil pet like a villain.

It takes a few minutes for Mimmie to finally open up again, probably coming to its own conclusions about the skeletons when it realizes that they aren’t attacking it or Bug. A piece of jerky ends up sealing the deal and getting the baby Mimic to relax and look around as it is taken for a ride.

Mimmie has no idea where it is going and honestly, this is the furthest it has ever traveled since being born.

Originally, Mimmie was born in a different hole in the ceiling of that room, but it didn’t like that hole as it just didn’t quite fit right, and had moved to a different one that it liked better. That took almost two days. That was a good hole, Mimmie managed to catch a bat there once. It was tasty.

And now Mimmie is here, being carried along by this weird creature and fed more food than it had ever eaten in its entire life so far combined. Mimmie is going to try and eat the creature’s fingers again. They are tasty and it loves how they crunch between its teeth.

*SNAP*

“Hahahahaha! Not fast enough, Mimmie! You missed! You’re just so hungry, aren’t you? Going to eat though all my jerky at this rate… I do have those frogs in my inventory, when I give cooking them a try, I’ll save some meat for ya, ok?”

Mimmie just glares up at the laughing Gremlin, not understanding a single word she just said, but feeling unsatisfied that it missed its chance at getting another one of those oh so tasty and crunchy fingers… Ooh, another piece of meat!!!

The hungry little Mimic happily munches on the jerky that Bug just pulled out of thin air, not carrying about anything else as it eats. Bug on the other hand, looks up from smiling at her pet and look around at her surroundings.

Where are the monsters at?

She’s been on this floor for about half an hour now, and any other floor that would have been enough time for her to run into something to fight and kill. Even if most of the time it just ends up being a big spider or something else not worth mentioning, typically because her minions just stomp them to death and move one, Bug still would have found something by now.

This floor is quiet. It reminds her of being on the first floor after all the mobs had been killed off at the end of the day…

Shifting most of her focus towards her big and sensitive ears and trying to listen for distant noises, her hearing only having grown better as she has leveled up, Bug manages to pick up on a couple of sounds spread throughout the floor.

Trying to sort it out through the noise of flowing water, Bug lets her insectile skeleton carry her forward as she homes in on one after the other and tries to figure out what it is she is hearing, her fluffy ears twitching and turning as she focuses.

Wet noise… A Jelly jumping? Sounds like it. Next is a frog croaking. Too far away in the wrong direction to hunt. What is this one? Something dragging? Fins slapping on stone, maybe? Sounds big, thankfully not where I’m heading… Next one. Clicking? Bones on stone? No, something else. Sounds high up too. Something with claws climbing on the ceiling? Need to keep an eye out for ambushes from above then. Next one is… Hmm… Are those boots?

A big smile, the happiest one she has had all day, spreads across Bug’s face as realization hits her. She might have just found some humans. And even better, they seem to be in the direction she is already heading.

“Oh, I hope this goes well! The last group did, and I even made a friend. Let’s just hope that these ones aren’t stupid like those other humans on the higher floors… Meh, even if they are, I’ll just kill them and take their stuff.”

Bug suddenly remembers her current situation and quickly deflates though…

“Humans are rather skittish though. If I show up with all these Undead following me, I doubt they will be willing to talk… Should I put them all away again, like I did last time? No, no, I shouldn’t be walking on my own right now, I need at least this one so I can get around…”

Thinking to herself and considering her options as her skeletons continue to escort her forward, Bug tilts her head in contemplation as Mimmie curiously looks up at her, probably wondering when the next treat will come. Thinking that she is distracted, the Mimic tries to bite her fingers again, but Bug pulls her hand away without even looking, the Mimic biting down on nothing but empty air.

“Mhh, screw it.”

With a shrug. Bug decides to just wing it and see what happens.

I’m too vulnerable to be doing anything stupid right now. I’ll just approach them with my full guard up and see what happens. If they are smart, they will live. If they are dumb, I will kill them. Simple as that.

…

I hope they are smart…

Pulling out another piece of jerky to tease Mimmie with, because it is being a brat and still trying to eat her fingers, Bug orders her ride to carry her forth and take a turn at the next intersection.

She’s still heading the right way to get to her lost minions. This is just… a slight detour.