Katelyn.

  For a moment, both girls just stared at each other, then, the more life-sized version of the small Pixie she'd spoken with jumped as though something was crossing her mind, but a heartbeat before everything that had been scattered about her ir—vanished.

  "If it helps…" Katelyn offered with a delicate smile. "My sister's room has definitely been worse before…"

  "Right…"

  "And, not to nitpick, but why didn't you—do what you just did beforehand?"

  "I haven't really had people around to worry about it?" Abby shot back, breathing deeply while tossing what she had in her hands to the floor, everything just disappearing as they hit the carpet.

  "Now, anyways, this is—well, my core room." She offered an arm zily waving over the myriad of nineties rock posters, terrible pink paint, and general—alt-vibe that Katelyn was looking at. When she raised a brow at it all, Abby simply scoffed at her. "Way too high, eyebrows-McGee, and also, it helps keep me sort of—sane, I guess?"

  "I figured…" Katelyn offered, smiling and adjusting her expression. "I spent god only knows how long as an over-hungry box. Trust me, I get it."

  "A little over a year, actually…"

  "Hm?"

  "A year, you spent around—one year as you were… at least, from the point I started paying attention to you… honestly, it might have been longer"

  Katelyn blinked at that revetion. All the same, she just stored it away for ter as she noted the grimace the other girl was giving her.

  "Yeah, I sort of lost track of things too, for a while… Back when I first started here… I was kind of, well… all hands on deck, you know? B-but, recently, as in the st forty years or so, I've been sort of—stuck… It is cool to have someone to talk to again, though! Must be pretty awesome coming from the future and all."

  "Sure…" Katelyn intoned, moving to start poking around the space, gncing between the posters and rows of books and games on shelves as she spoke. "If you call the early twenty-twenties the future…"

  This time, it was Abby's turn to look confused, swallowing a moment before asking a very clear question she'd thought up. "What year is it?"

  "Twenty-twenty-three st time I was evidently there to pay attention."

  "That's it?"

  "Yeah, I mean… they came out with a few cool things like AI stuff you can fool around with, but… I'm not really much of a... well, techy person..."

  The girl just sat on her bed. Eyes gzed as she let out the air she'd been holding, smiling weakly while doing so. "I left home in the early two-thousands, like, twenty-fifteen… But it's been around two centuries that I've been here, so… I just assumed…"

  Both were silent for a time. Katelyn chewed her admission over while, wondering if she'd been stuck as a mimic far longer than she thought… though, probably not when she really thought about it.

  There hadn't been enough resets to account for that much time passing… had there?

  She also got a sense of just how—lonely Abby was as her dejected expression zoned out. The girl probably realized just how screwy things actually were. Which, given she'd been here longer than Katelyn by a—rge margin, was likely significant.

  Kate continued to idly wander the room, slowly making her way to the only door she could see in the pce, when a voice spoke again, though this time without much inflection.

  "Hey, fair warning, but my core is back there. I'm not arguing if you feel the need to take a swing, but I will kill you if you go near it."

  The Monster stopped what she was doing to look at the other girl who had flopped on her back and was staring at her through a mop of hair, her eyes gzed and disinterested while watching her with barely existing consciousness.

  "Wasn't pnning on it."

  Still, all Abby seemed to do was shrug as if it really didn't matter to her either way. After a few moments wherein Katelyn decided she was probably in a somewhat delicate situation, she returned to the other side of the room if for nothing more than to be—polite.

  "Not to sound like I'm not interested in—hanging out, but… what exactly is it you wanted to talk about?"

  Abby twitched, coming back to life after a heartbeat, focus returning to her gaze as she lifted herself back up, scratching the back of her neck. "Yeah, don't worry if I kind of—daze off like that; this is—me, but so is everything else." She tried to expin, biting her lip. "Sometimes I just don't have the focus to be everywhere at once, and I get a little—stupid…"

  "Like, literally or…"

  "Nope, I one-hundred percent start to just run out of brainpower, and things just go on autopilot… Believe it or not, you've actually sort of been a big part of why I've got so much of—myself again… As much as I hate to say it… I probably owe you a pretty big thank you for helping me out…"

  "By eating people?" Katelyn asked, confused.

  "Pretty much. I get you're new to it all and probably missing a lot of context, but how dungeons work is that we need souls to function. It's sort of like our version of food, but it doesn't kill us if we don't get it.

  I'd—say it's more like we go into hibernation? Again, auto-pilot works, but we gain sapience as we grow in power, and we grow in power from—killing people inside of us."

  "And when monsters kill people…"

  "I take their souls. I can either keep it, sort of like a battery or use it to toe the line or start making expansions faster than we usually can. Those souls get mixed into our own magic, and we reach a sort of chemical bance that we all need to function properly.

  Without them, it's just all our magic, and we can't survive off that indefinitely, or else we—sleep…

  You just so happened to show up while I was being suppressed and started making waves again; heh, you've got so many people pissed off and confused about what's going on here… I've had to literally take an active role in trying to hide you from subjugation teams by bending so many rules as far as I could push them...

  Yet, you just kept killing and never dying, so…"

  "You're a leech?" Katelyn accused, gring at the girl who snorted and crossed her arms.

  "Coming from the chick who ate half my monsters whenever she decided to go hunting, I don't want to hear it."

  "Just how much experience were you sucking from me?"

  "Hey! I left you with half! N-not exactly by choice, but without me, you'd have totally eaten shit out there! N-not literally, obviously, but you know, metaphorically!

  Honestly, the only thing that's been our saving grace is that nobody ever got a good look at what you were. Except for two people a while back, they moved from the city, or I assume they have because nobody's figured out it was a mimic causing all the chaos.

  The real theory out there is that there's some sort of serial killer somehow jumping between dungeon shards for easy experience."

  "So, I show up, start feeding you, and… now what? You're back to your old self?"

  "More or less." Abby grinned, beaming at her in earnest. "I was—pretty fair in the early days when the town around me started growing. You know, still holding onto my human morals, trying not to take more lives than I needed...

  But, as more people got stronger while I was still trying to get my feet wet, they decided to—well, sort of ensve me…" At Katelyn's raised lip, the woman sighed with a nod. Not bothering to look for pity as she carried on, clearly having an emotional issue but, pushing through all the same.

  "I didn't really take it that seriously at first as there's no actual rule that says someone has to keep their core just lying around… But, I still need souls for a lot of what I do, at least, slivers of them…

  It's like a currency… I use soul-infused magic to make smart monsters or give them upgrades or levels, skills, and anything else… When a monster dies, it isn't really killed as my natural mana is able to just bring it back, which is different than if I were to artificially make a monster as smart as I am because it would take genuine power for its upkeep.

  Thus, the need for souls, small as the toll might be… "

  After a moment, she continued, pointedly looking away as though embarrassed. "I didn't really catch onto what they were doing quick enough… and, by the time I realized they were starving me out by marching over-leveled people through me that I had no real hope of killing off, I was already starting to fade away...

  Once I did, my dungeon self was sort of keeping it all running as is, if you know what I mean… Sort of like a body that just knows it has to breathe to stay alive..."

  "They fucking lobotomized you?" Katelyn asked, horrified by the premise of it but also strangely intrigued and, maybe just a little too interested, strictly for curiosity's sake, of course. She had absolutely no designs on trying to figure out if she could take this all for herself.

  "Pretty god damn much… I've since learned it's what sort of happens to dungeons that are either too nice, aren't careful, or sometimes, are just too well known… Now, I'm pretty much just used as a training tool by the kingdom that popped up around me, letting teenagers get a taste of what real delving is like in a wild dungeon.

  I'm flooded with too many shards of different teams, all filling me at the same time to really focus on any one of them, and so rarely does anyone die because I cannibalized all my good monsters trying to stay sane and fight back however I could that—now, all that's left is… well, you've seen them…"

  "The ugh... big fucker looked pretty mean…" Katelyn offered, not sure why she was trying to cheer her up but it wasn't like Katelyn was heartless... She simply acted in what was often her best interest without much care for those around her. It wasn't a rule, merely a preference.

  "He's Grog… The only Hob I didn't eat… And I reviewed that particur bit of weirdness with you, him, and that team that almost killed you, again and again since I've woken back up, and all I can say is that it was—all chance…

  Grog isn't supposed to spawn so close to the entrance. He is my st boss, but he can, by design, show up elsewhere as well; there is some forced randomness to it all, it's just not the norm... Likewise, there usually aren't so many goblins in his camp, but you decided to keep eating them and scaring them off until they ran into Grog's leadership aura and—fought…"

  "And the... pfft... adventurers that were there?"

  "Ha! Fucking suppression squad." Abby sneered, hate in her tone. "A lower-level one, at least in the grand scheme of things, probably not new to the job, but their whole thing is to barge through the dungeon and bully anything inside. Then, map it all out to make sure there haven't been any changes before reporting back to their guild and doing it all again ter.

  "Yeah… that sounds—not amazing…"

  She smirked at Katelyn, ughing with a clear sarcastic tint before brightening a fraction and stepping in close to pce her hands on her shoulders. "It's really not... But now you're here, and even if I can't really fight back yet, I'm at least in the game again! What's better is that they've got no idea about any of it…"

  A thought occurred to Katelyn as she blinked at the—dreadful expression of cruelty that was cracking across Abby's almost fracturing face. She paused, less from the terrifying nightmare smile and more because something wasn't quite making sense, and she felt she needed crification.

  "If you need souls but don't put them in your monsters, then… how do people—level?"

  "Hm? Oh, that's easy. Easier not to think about it, mind you, but dungeon magic seems to be a sort of—raw energy not indifferent from a soul… Both are cross-compatible with each other, but I can't make souls from scratch, only the energy they feed on.

  I can make a sort of sudo-soul that I, in turn, then twist into a real one, but I need parts of a real soul to do it. Likewise, because my magic isn't exactly the same, I can't just—print fake eternal sparks and eat them… Mostly, it comes down to souls being able to consume my magic to improve themselves and vice versa! B-but, while a soul can eat a soul, dungeon magic can't eat dungeon magic."

  "Complicated…" Katelyn intoned, understanding the premise, if not the reason.

  "Bme the gods if you want." Abby sighed, releasing her and taking a breath. "This is all part of their whole thing in this universe, so if you want more detail than that, you've gotta find one and ask."

  "Take it, that's a sort of—fat chance?"

  Abby just smiled at her as she turned away, not answering the question and instead returning to her bed to sit down before crossing her legs. The fabric of her tights crinkled around the knees as she spped them. "So, now that you've kind of gotten the four-one-one, what do you think?"

  "About—what?" Katelyn asked, not willing to give anything away.

  "Working together. You know, a little teamwork, I scratch your back, you scratch mine, tit for tat, mi casa es tu casa?"

  "No offense…" Katelyn said, raising up her arm at the grinning girl. "But I sort of want to go—outside again?"

  "Who said you can't?"

  "Uhh…"

  "Look, if you want to run outside and go explore the town, I'm not going to hold it against you; after all, if you die, you're just going to wind up back here again anyway… you are a dungeon monster, after all!"

  "So—I'm immortal?"

  "Eh…" Abby shrugged, rolling her hand back and forth like a rocking boat. "More, able to resurrect. This isn't going to be cheap if you want me to keep you as you are, and given that I'm going to assume you are going to try and wander out at some point and probably get yourself killed, it is a big ask on your part that will require reciprocation."

  "I think I'd make it perfectly fine out there."

  "Sure, I wouldn't bet against you either. Pretty people do tend to get away with more before shit really hits the fan, and I don't think I've ever heard of a Mimic, evolution or not, that has really nailed the whole Demi thing like you have.

  Still, at some point, you'll fuck up, get hungry and eat someone, run afoul of the w… really just end up attracting the scrutiny of someone that can break that little backstory you've got running with your feat.

  Again, super curious how you even have access to those as a monster, but my point remains the same. Trust me, I went through the whole process when I was younger as well.

  There's always something that happens, and, besides, is it really so bad to have a home to come back to and a friend waiting there?"

  Katelyn—wasn't sure if she wholeheartedly agreed with the other woman. That said, in exchange for what was functional immortality, needed or not, she could entertain the idea. "For—argument's sake, what did you exactly have in mind?"

  Abby smiled at her, her wicked grin growing wider by the second as she stretched out her legs, nguidly happy as could be.