Bug looks down at herself, her arms still bloody and one even still having an arrow sticking through it.

That was too close. I did it again… I underestimated humans and it almost cost me my life. Again!

The arrows had been aimed for her head, heart, and stomach. If any of these had landed, it could have potentially been her end. The arrows that had pierced through her arms, her arms which are covered in scales that are supposed to protect her from attacks like these, had only been stopped mere inches away from reaching her body, and only because she had flexed the muscles in her arms to stop the arrows from going the rest of the way through. If Bug had been even a moment slower, if her reflexes hadn’t been as quick to react…

Even the arrow that she had deflected with a slap away from her head had torn open her palm, leaving a jagged and horrible wound that ripped away most of the skin to leave muscle and nerves exposed to open air. The area where her thumb meets the rest of her hand is nothing but bone now where the meet had been torn away by the arrow's head, her hand looking almost like Mimmie had taken a bite out of it.

That attack. That ONE attack had almost killed Bug.

Right now, looking down at her bleeding arms, Bug is experiencing a mix of emotions. Surprise and anger being the chief contenders of the mix.

“I said I wasn’t going to do anything stupid again. I’m supposed to be trying to get better, not get myself killed! I thought I knew better than to underestimate them!”

With a bloody fist, she punches the back of the skull of her mount. The thing she is riding on being a literal, physical reminder of why she shouldn’t have done what she just did!

Again and again, she punches the back of the insect’s skull, the face of that girl choking her still burned in Bug’s memory. Even as the back of its skull is painted more and more red by Bug’s blood, she continues to hit it, cursing her stupidity with every blow until her hand is aching and her bones are on verge of breaking.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

One last hit and the bones in her hand finally snap, Bug not caring about the damage in the slightest. With a heavy breath, she sits back and runs her fingers through her messy hair, trying to rake the stress out of her brain with her fingers.

Mimmie is currently cowering on her lap, sealed up tight and refusing to come out, a light layer of frost having formed over its brick shell.

“Haaaaaaaaah… Ok… It’s ok… I just need to be more careful in the future. First, let’s figure out where I went wrong and what I can do to get better…”

Alright… Clearly, I got a bit too excited when I found some humans… Just a bit… Ok a lot a bit… I need to work on that. And I know why I did it, even if I am not proud to admit it. I miss Hannah and the others already. I’m… I am lonely… I need to accept that…

Geez, I’m a mess. It hasn’t even been a day since they left… Is this just how I am? Did I not know this about myself until they were already gone? Maybe it has something to do with being a Gremlin? Do we not like being all alone? I don’t think I do… Ah, I can’t wait to finally get out of here and catch up to Hannah. I wonder if I’ll meet any other Gremlins on the surface? Real ones, people ones. Not like these feral mobs in the Dungeon!

Getting mad again thinking about those things, Bug spits to the side. With a shake of her head, she tries to bring her wandering thoughts back on track.

Focus. Besides my apparently being… lonely… I was definitely having way too much fun chasing these humans around. I could have been smarter about how I handled this. I could have tried approaching them in a more friendly manner, and if that didn’t work, I could have just captured them straight away instead of chasing them down and backing them into a corner. That’s just asking for them to fight back with everything they have. That was dumb of me, and I need to do better…

Bug looks to her bleeding arms again, and finally decides to heal herself now that she is calming down. With a tug, she yanks out the remain arrow from her other arm, her wounds closing up as her magic does its work.

With arrow in hand, she looks at the thing and then at the woman who wounded her.

And this is precisely why I shouldn’t back them into a corner. First was that girl, nearly choking me to death even as I had her under Inflict Pain. Now there is this one, pulling out that move, or a Skill? Her arrows definitely weren’t a threat to me until she did that, and then suddenly she became strong enough to break through my scales?

Curiosity compels Bug to quickly check through the Skill Store, and sure enough, she finds it under the archery Skills.

‘Ricochet Shot. [Req: Bow or crossbow] In a single shot, fire as many arrows as you are able while locked onto a target. The arrow(s) will ricochet off of any hard, non-living, surface as many times as necessary until the target is hit. With each ricochet, the arrow(s) will gain increased piercing power and speed, scaling with Dexterity, up to a limit of ten (10) bounces.

Warning: Using this Skill will lower the durability of the User’s weapon by a significant amount.’

“That is definitely the one, but humans don’t have access to the System yet… So how did she use it?”

Bug watches the passed-out woman for a moment, her broken bow and a bunch of scattered arrows laying not too far away from where one of her skeletons is holding her down. She and the others are already starting to stir and should be waking up soon.

“Guess I can just ask her. I have plenty of questions for them anyways. It’s too bad that being friendly is off the table now… I really screwed that up… Mh?”

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“Muh… Plea-se…”

Bug looks down and over the side of her mount, and finds a man pinned beneath one of its bladed legs, lying in a pool of his frozen over blood, a layer of frost having spread over his body. Despite having a bone blade ran through his chest, the guy is still somehow alive.

“Must have missed his heart. Probably got a lung though, looks like you're having a hard time breathing there, buddy… Sorry, I didn’t actually mean for you to get stabbed like this. I thought you would be fast enough to roll out of the way in time, but I guess I was wrong… Again, sorry about that.”

“Uhhg… Please, he-lp me. *Cough*”

Coughing up a mouthful of blood, the man looks up at Bug with his desperate eyes, his body growing more and more weak as he slowly succumbs to his wounds. Bug Just watches him from where she sits cross-legged on her mount, not moving to do anything at all.

Hmmm, I could save him…. As long as the internal damage is just to his lung, I could use Respiratory Mutation to heal it, and then the rest of my potion to close up his wounds… I could… But why should I?

What could I get by saving him? Would these humans suddenly change their opinion of me because I saved someone that I almost killed? I doubt that would get them to start liking me. Plus, I can’t guarantee that I can save him. He already looks like he has one foot in the grave.

“Might as well just finish him off and put him out of his misery. Level 17, so he is worth some experience at least…”

Sending a mental command to her mount, it raises a bladed limb above his head and is about to bring it down on him. But it stops as Bug’s attention is drawn down to her lap, where Mimmie is crawling around a bit, trying to climb up her thigh so it can peek out and see what is going on now that everything seems to have calmed down.

Bug still has Identify active, so she sees the baby Mimic’s level. Just a weak little Level 5…

This gets her thinking…

Does Mimmie have a System too? How did it get to Level 5? Was it born that way, or did it gain the levels like I did? Obviously, it doesn’t have System User Access like I do, but do the monsters in the Dungeon have some level of access to the System as well? What will happen if Mimmie reaches Level 10? Will it gain a Class like I did?

“Hmm…”

Her thoughts go back to the first floor, and there were Level 2 mobs up there. And every time she found them, they had always been around the corpses of their own that they probably killed. So, there is a really good chance that Mimmie can in fact Level-up by getting kills.

“Mmm, worth a try. Not like I need the Experience from just one human anyways. Mimmie~ You hungy? Does Mimmie want a treat~?”

Lifting up the little Mimic from her lap, Bug holds it off to the side, Mimmie looking around with its eyestalks curiously as it takes in its surroundings with obvious excitement.

Did Mimmie learn what treat means already? Such a little glutton…

It doesn’t take long for Mimmie to look down, finding a pinned, weakened, and obviously dying human just a short distance below it. With its eyestalks peering over the edge of its brick, Mimmie blinks in surprise at what it finds, looking very confused.

‘What is a human doing down there?’ Is probably the thought that Mimmie would have if it had the required mental faculties to form complex thoughts. But Mimmie is a simple creature.

Surprise quickly turns into fear for a second as it finds a bigger creature looking up at it, but that fear is quickly replaced when Mimmie realizes that the human is heavily injured and most likely unable to fight back.

Not a threat…

An opportunity. A once in a lifetime opportunity for a baby Mimic. For a predator that would normally survive off of little critters like cockroaches and maybe the occasional rat or bat if it gets lucky, a baby Mimic would have to get very lucky to get to eat a human. Only adult Mimics are strong enough and big enough to do that! Normally, even if a baby Mimic manages to kill a human by tripping them down the stairs or something, the body usually gets stolen away by a larger predator before they can get to it. That, or the Dungeon ends up absorbing the body first.

Drooling like a flowing river, eyes going wide as saucers, and exploding with excitement, Mimmie starts to freak the fuck out like a kid that just got handed a gold coin and sent into a candy store with permission to buy as many sweets as they wanted.

The brick is practically bouncing in Bug’s hand as she holds it over Blane, Mimmie having entirely cast aside its disguise at this point as it is practical entirely split open into nothing but a drooling mouth full of a forest of sharp teeth, a long grey tongue waving around frantically as Mimmie fights to free itself from Bug’s grip.

Blane, pinned to the floor and very slowly, far too slowly, losing consciousness, can only look up in horror at the writhing creature suspended above him, drool raining down, on, and around his face.

“Hahaha, Mimmie, calm down. Yes, it’s yours. You can have the treat. Just remember that I am your master, and if you are a good Mimmie, you get treats. OK?”

Bug apparently takes Mimmie’s increasing excitement as a yes, because she smiles happily at her pet. If this thing were a puppy, it would have already pissed itself and dislocated its tail from sheer happiness by now.

With tears in his eyes, Blane shakes his head slowly side to side.

“No, no… please… no.”

But Bug isn’t listening to him. She is only focused on Mimmie right now. And regardless. Even if Bug has a desire to befriend humans, it doesn’t change the fact that she is evil. She’s a bad person. And what she wants will always be the priority over the happiness, and lives, of others. And right now, she wants to see her pet be happy, and maybe, just maybe, this treat will be enough to get her pet to love her.

Without a single care for the poor soul beneath her, Bug turns over her hand and drops Mimmie, mouth side down, right onto Blane’s face.

In his final moments, full of dread and one last weak burst of adrenaline, he tries to raise his arms and stop the hungry Mimic from reaching him. But he is to too weak. The cold of Bug’s Deathly Ice, and a healthy dose of blood loss reduces his final attempt at survival to nothing but a lethargic wave of his hands before toothy brick meets face, his final view being the dark void that is the back of Mimmie throat.

Screaming with what little energy and breath he has left, Blane suffers as teeth tear into his face and he is picked apart piece by piece.

Sitting comfortably on her minion in a seat of blankets, Bug watches with a smile as her cute little pet happily gorges itself on the best treat it has ever had. Like a dog that had just been give an entire flank of cow to devour as it pleases.

Bug is a good pet owner.

Off to the side, the humans slowly start to stir. Gerald is the first to wake up, and when he sees what is happening, all he can do is stare with wide eyes in abject horror and shock. Fel wakes up next and promptly screams a high-pitched scream that only a lady (Or an incredibly effeminate man) can make. Quite frankly, it is so loud and high pitched that it ends up hurting Bug’s ears a bit…

“Ouch! So loud… SHUT UP!”

It takes a moment for Fel to stop streaming, a finger from Bug being threateningly pointed at her being more than enough to shut her up.

“Well… I’m glad to see that you two are awake now. As I was saying earlier, I want to talk to you. So, how about we have ourselves a nice conversation? Yes? And if you behave and do as I tell you, I promise not to kill you. How does that sound?” Bug asks the two with a pleasant smile on her face.

Below her, Blanes body shakes as his nerves give out a last few spasms, the sounds of teeth scrapping against bones and human teeth getting crunched being heard as Mimmie works on chewing into the cheeks to try and get at that oh-so-tasty looking tongue it spouted while he was screaming earlier.

The humans can’t respond. They can’t find the words. So, they do the only thing that they can do as they look up in pale-faced terror at the Demon that is lording over them from atop her throne of bones.

They quickly nod their heads and silently pray that they won’t be next.

“Good! I like smart humans. I really do hope that you’re smart.” Responds a cheerful Bug.

*Crunch*

*Crunch*

*Crunch*