A man of somewhat short stature was jumping around in elation while shouting out cheerfully.

"It worked! It really worked!"

The shouting, while cheerful, was loud and somewhat annoying. There was a thought to speak out against it but the realization that it might make the short man even more annoying somehow prevailed.

A quick glance around without moving anything other than the eyes showed that it was a large circular room made of what seemed to be a smooth and unblemished white stone. In the center of the room was a pedestal with an orb made of some kind of rainbow-hued crystal sitting on it as if on proud display. The various colors the crystal seemed to be made of constantly shifted in smooth yet natural patterns making the orb seem almost as if it was alive. All of this seemed to be fine and gave an almost natural feeling like it was meant to be that way.

Contrary to all of that was the various tubes, wires, and strange devices that were attaching the orb and some strange pieces of machinery lying at the base of the pedestal. It somehow felt wrong, and brought a feeling of malcontent. There was a small bit of desire to rush over and tear it all away from the orb, maybe even evict it all from the room itself, but the other current feelings of confusion and caution of the current situation won out. The final decision was to wait for a while and slowly learn about what was going on.

"Let's see how good you are. Ugh! You don't exactly look great, huh? At least you look kind of strong..."

The man seemed to have finally finished his strange dance and approached while mumbling to himself. There was a strange feeling as the man glared harder as if the man could see further than the physical appearances in his gaze. The unpleasant feeling soon passed and the man began grumbling to himself again.

"Tch! There's some glitches and errors. How am I supposed to know if everything works if the system can't even tell me what I need to know. Hacking it like that shouldn't have caused that many problems. Hmm. I still need to get ready for the next steps so I guess I can just test it for now to see what it can do? Hey, you! Go fight Allie. Neither of you are allowed to kill each other, though."

There was a strange compulsion to follow the command. The strangeness didn't necessarily come from what the command itself was, as the thought of testing the capabilities of something new seemed reasonable. Instead, the strangeness came first from how the compulsion seemed not to originate from the man but from the orb and second from how there was no sense of necessity to follow that compulsion. Yes, the command would still be followed, for now, but the knowledge that a command could be ignored whenever desired left a sense of security for the future.

Deciding to follow the command somehow brought the knowledge of the how with it. How to leave the current room, where this 'Allie' was, and how to get there. It was as if it was all whispered directly into the subconsciousness of the mind. This strange feeling, like having thoughts that didn't entirely belong, led to some introspection during the short journey. There were other thoughts there, memories maybe, of other places and things from before, although it was all dim and subdued like being in a half-awake state. The questions of when is before and what's the difference between awake and asleep came but were left unanswered due to arriving at the location of 'Allie'.

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Allie turned out to be a named boss monster of the arachne line. Her lower spider half was pitch black and easily the size of a truck while her top humanoid half was that of a large and attractive, yet naked, woman. There was little time to examine her or the knowledge and thoughts in more detail as she attacked almost immediately. There wasn't much of a fight to be had, though. It was as if there were a hundred different instincts to do a hundred different things, slowed further by the attempts to think, which resulted in a complete lack of action and Allie's instantaneous win.

Thrown into the wall, and doubtlessly injured everywhere, consciousness slowly faded. As everything turned black, a final thought sprang up in a more crisp manner than all of the other thoughts until now.

What am I?

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Consciousness returned. There was activity all around, but nobody seemed to take note of the reawakened state so thoughts were turned inwards. Meditation. Before figuring out how the knowledge of this state being called meditation came to be, willpower was instead pushed into figuring out the self first.

Self. That was a good concept for the current direction of thoughts.

What am I? Who am I?

I am myself. I can think, so I must be sentient. I can choose and have a will, so I must be sapient. I think I'm alive in at least some way. I'm an individual. I am me. Since I am me I can call myself myself.

Although the thinking seemed somewhat circular it brought reassurances and helped focus the mind further. Some of the haziness that it felt like all the thoughts had been drifting in disappeared.

I have some knowledge of things before. I can't remember anything about myself, though. For now I should follow whatever commands I'm given while I try to figure out where I am and what's going on since barely anything matches the things I somehow know. When I get the chance I should also try to examine myself and those around me. There's something about knowledge equating to power and right now, although I know some things, I don't know how I know the things I know and there are still too many things I don't know.

Satisfied that enough things had been figured out for now, it once again started paying attention to the things nearby. Glancing around it saw that it was again in that initial room with the pedestal and orb. There were a bunch of small arachne women moving in lines looking almost like ants as they came in and grabbed pieces of the equipment all over the ground that was previously attached to the orb and taking them out. The small man was nowhere in sight yet his voice still came to mind in the form of a command which still felt more like it was coming from the orb.

It stood up to follow the command and noticed one of the small arachne girls coming to fight. It thought for a moment and realized that this was probably the best way to find out what it could do and how strong it was. It would also be able to see what all types of these supposed monsters were. The command itself also helped latch onto the information that it was supposedly in a dungeon full of monsters, meaning it was likely a dungeon monster as well.

The fight between it and the small arachne began while the rest of them continued their work in the background. The fight proved to be only marginally better than the the fight with Allie, though. It managed to dodge the initial charge attack from the girl who was about the same size it was, but the follow up attack threw it into the wall once more. This time it wasn't thrown hard enough to be knocked out but it was clearly a loss so the arachne girl immediately turned and went back to join the rest of her sisters.