The Dungeon's Worst Little Mistake

// You have entered the Twenty-Sixth Floor.

// You have left the Twenty-Sixth Floor.

// You have entered the Twenty-Sixth Floor.

// You have left the Twenty-Sixth Floor.

// You have entered the Twenty-Sixth Floor.

// You have-

// You-

// You have lef-

// You-

// You-

…

"Ah, enough with the notification! Clear, stop stop, stop it already!"

"What is it?" Susan asks as she gives Bug and Elaine a weird look, the two of them swatting at thin air and trying to hit something only they can see.

"S%$#3& is acting up and spamming messages at me, can't decide if were on the floor or not! Disable all notifications. Yes, I would like to do this, just get all these boxes out of my face!"

"Ahhh!!! So many blue boxes!" Elaine screams on Bug's back, frantically waving her arms in the air like she is being attacked by bees.

Bug has to quickly help with disabling the feature as well and once they calm down, have to spend a solid minute just closing pop up boxes so they can see again.

"Freaking S%$#3&… I should send a bug report to Redacted later. I have a list of things they need to fix already…" Bug complains as she tucks some of her hair behind her horns.

Susan raises an eyebrow at that.

"Bug report? Why is it named after you? Is it something only you can do?"

"Wha- no? Bug is just another name for glitches, mistakes, errors, you know? A bug report is just for informing the devs that something is broken and needs fixed. Anyone can do it, even Mimmie."

Susan looks at Bug for a long moment and then opens her mouth to ask, but Bug quickly cuts her off.

"Yes, that's why my name is Bug. The Dungeon made a mistake when I was born, and the S%$#3& called me a bug, feel free to laugh…"

"I wasn't going to laugh…"

"Uh huh, sure."

"No, it's just… I guess this made somethings finally make sense for me."

"Like what?"

Susan scoffs, "Like why your so weird. Must have messed up with making your brain."

Bug gives Susan an angry look, clearly not finding her joke fun, but then stops and thinks for a bit. A finger on her chin, Bug looks up and says, "Actually… maybe? I doubt the way I think can exactly be considered normal for a Gremlin. Maybe my brain is different? Huh, I'll have to do some tests in the future when I have more advanced Body Magics to use. I'm pretty sure there is a spell or two that lets the user modify their own brain…"

"Wow, wow!" Susan raises her hand in surrender, "Let's not do that, ok? I don't know much about any of this, but even I can tell that that is a bad idea."

Bug just laughs and sticks her tongue out at her, "Just joking… Mostly… We'll see what happens…"

"Right… So, why not just change your name then?" Susan asks as she changes the subject.

"What?"

"You don't like your name, right? Basically being called a mistake. I know I would hate that."

"Oh…" Bug thinks for a bit and then answers, "Honestly, I've thought about it. I just can't think of any names that I would be happy with yet. And plus, by this point, I've been Bug for so long that I've just grown used to the name. Even if the source of the name isn't great, it is still mine, you know?"

Susan just slowly nods her head and elects to not say anything else, letting the subject die there. Meanwhile, Elaine is giving Bug some head pats and hugging her from behind.

"Good, Mommy."

"Thank you, sweetheart." Bug gives the loving little Mimic girl a pat on her arm.

Deciding to change the subject away from herself, Bug points to the floor ahead of them, the source of her glitching out HUD. Nearly perfectly cut in half, the twenty-sixth floor of the Dungeon is now laid out bare and open before them. Much like an adult looking over the walls of a maze built for children, Bug and co. can see the entirety of the floor's structure from where they stand on the pyramid. Every junction and intersection are laid out and open. Every dead end exposed. Ever little room and hidden short cut revealed. Everything down to even the pipes running through the walls and the steel support beams that have been shorn in half with extreme precision and heat.

"Oh, found the stairs and the Safe Room." Susan says as she points off at one corner in the distance.

"Where?"

"Right over there, I can see the glow from the hearth."

Bug nods, "Oh, right. I guess we should start by heading over that way then. Come on, I want to see if we can find anything interesting before the Dungeon repairs itself." Bug says as she climbs the rest of the way down and onto the top of the cut off walls.

Susan follows and has no trouble balancing on the wall, quickly catching up to her as they continue to blatantly cheat and not bother following the Dungeon's intended maze layout. Jumping over hallways and navigating around rooms, they make their way across the floor. Along the way, they don't find a single monster. Despite a day having passed, the Dungeon doesn't seem to have managed to respawn anything after the Cleaner had burned everything away into ash.

Just how bad was the damage for even the daily respawns to get disabled? The Dungeon must be using all its energy for emergency repairs right now. Serves it right… Bug thinks to herself as she watches some of the bricks slowly regenerate.

Stolen story; please report.

"Hm?" Bug looks to the side as she runs along the walls and Susan notices her gaze.

"What is it?"

"That hallway over there looks different from the rest. Let's go check it out."

Susan shrugs. "Sure, maybe we'll find some treasure."

"Oh, treasures!" Mimmie cheers. "Let's go, let's go!"

Making their way over, they find a strange hallway that is vastly different from the rest. Made of steel and concrete, it looks nothing like the rest of this layer's floors and their old stones. Everything is smooth and built with precision, and if it weren't for all the black marks and warping from the extreme heat of Deus Ex Machina's attacks, it probably would have looked rather clean and shiny. Jumping into the strange hallway that doesn't seem to be connected to the rest of the Dungeon except for the occasional locked door that seem to open into what should have been just a blank wall on the other side, the group continues to move toward the general direction of the Safe Room. The occasional room can be found along the way with most of them being melted shuts, or even some being stuck half open.

Jumping over the wall to peek inside reveals mostly useless rooms like broom closets and storage rooms full of now destroyed and burnt crates resting on metal shelves that had been cut in half along with the walls around them.

Searching through one of the storage rooms doesn't reveal much as almost everything had been reduced to effectively burnt scraps and garbage. Though, digging through one of the lower crates that had managed to survive reveals just a bunch of toilet paper.

Bug blinks at the rather mundane find but then shrugs. "I'll take this." and stores the entire crate away in her Inventory.

"Anything good?" Susan asks from the other side of the room.

Bug shakes her head. "Not really, just random stuff." Bug pokes through another crate. "I think this one had some sort of food? Identify is calling it peanut butter, but the jars are all busted and melted. How about over there?"

"No luck. You think people have been living here or something?" Susan asks as she holds up the burnt remains of what looks like what used to be a pillow.

"Hmm, let's keep exploring and find out."

Leaving the room they continue exploring further towards the direction of the Safe Room. Eventually they come across some rooms that are different from the rest. Peaking over the walls, the find beds and desks and other signs of life. The first room they enter, Bug heads over to the bed and starts to examine it. When Mimmie asks to be let down, she sets her on the ground to do her own thing.

"Dang, it's destroyed. Would have liked to steal a bed for myself… What are these things?"

Bug reaches over the bed and grabs a little burnt doll of a bear and another that looks like a fat pink horse with a little horn on its head. Out of the almost mountain of the little things, these two are the only ones not burned to the point of being unrecognizable.

"Ooooh gimme, gimme! I want!"

Bug turns and looks down at Mimmie. "You want these?"

"Yes!"

"What do we say when we want something?"

Mimmie thinks for a bit and then replies, "Please? Can I have them, please?"

Bug smiles, "Sure, here you go, sweetheart. You know, I can probably get you some that aren't burnt? I'm pretty sure that the Point Store sells dolls. Or, I think these are called plushies? Anyways, do you want some?"

Mimmie just shakes her head and happily receives the dolls, a big smile on her cute little face. "No, I like these ones~"

"Ok, you have fun. Still, I'll see about getting you some proper toys later."

Giving her a pat on the head, Bug gets distracted as Susan calls from the other side of the room.

"Hey, come look at this."

"K."

When Bug turns to walk other to Susan, she fails to notice as Mimmie promptly drops both of the dolls into the treasure chest that makes up her lower body and swallows them whole. While Bug and Susan are doing their thing, the little girl climbs up onto the bed, her pale hands becoming coated in soot, and starts scooping up the entire pile of plushies and shoveling them into her chest. Regardless of how burnt or damaged they are she eats them all, the sound of a large throat swallowing being heard now and then as she happily hums a little tune.

"Treasures~"

Oblivious to Mimmie's actions, Bug heads to the other side of the room and finds Susan looking into a closet that she had pulled open. Inside is a mess of burnt clothes and random items, many of them being so far gone that their use can't even be determined anymore.

But more than that, Bug finds what Susan had clearly been wanting her to see.

"Looks like people have been living here…" Susan says with a nod toward the thing on the floor.

Curled up in a fetal position, limbs looking like they had been pulled tight to their body by the heat constricting their nerves, there is a small, burnt and blackened body curled up on the floor of the closet. The arms are much longer than what would be expected, and the legs end with large, clawed feet. All over the floor are what look like blackened feathers with many of them having been burnt to ash.

"Must have tried hiding in here when this all happened." Susan notes. "Think it was a girl?"

Bug cringes a bit as she looks down at the burnt corpse, the smell of overcooked pork and poultry filling her sinuses with the disgusting urge to puke. Before she even realizes it, Bug finds herself itching at the burnt half of her own face, her eyes locked on the face of the girl that is permanently frozen in what looks like a desperate, pleading scream for help.

No one came to save her.

No one stopped the fire.

She died, screaming and in agonizing pain, choking as her lungs filled with smoke and her nose with the scent of her own burning flesh and hair and melting fat. She must have felt it. The heat, burning through her skin and muscles until it found her nerves and cooked them until the pain suddenly cuts off to nothingness and she loses all sense of her body and limbs. Left stuck on the floor as all she could do is suffocate and suffer as her own eyes boiled inside of her skull!

Itching harder, a scab starts to peel off and bleed, but Bug doesn't stop. Why the hell is this burn so damn itchy!? Why won't it just heal already!? Why did she have to bur-

"Bug, you listening?" Susan asks as she turns to look back at Bug.

Bug quickly pulls her hand away and turns her face away slightly, hiding the burnt half her face away from Susan before she can see the blood trickling down her cheek.

"Looks like it… Yeah, it was probably a girl. Identify says she's a Harpy." Bug answers as she gingerly pokes at the corpse with the tip of her tail, only peeking back at the corpse for a second before forcefully moving her attention over to a picture that had fallen from the wall and been burnt beyond all recognition.

"Harpy? One of those bird people?" Susan asks.

"Yeah, never seen one?"

"No, they don't travel far from Demon territory, and we were always told to keep our distance if we ever see one. They use sound to attack as they fly and are supposed to be extremely dangerous and hard to deal with. Plus, I've heard that they will kidnap men and drag them back to their nest to reproduce. Means that unless your entire party is nothing but women and have plenty of ranged options, you honestly don't want anything to do with them."

Bug thinks for a bit, still trying to keep her eyes off the corpse. "Hmm… Well, this does raise one question. What would a bird person be doing living down here? I doubt that there is very much room to fly down here. So, she would be useless in combat."

Susan shrugs, "Maybe she works here, doing something? The further I've gone into this Dungeon lately, the more it is becoming clearer that there is a force behind the Dungeons. And to think that us humans just thought they were monster filled holes in the ground…"

"Probably… If I hadn't ended up fighting the Dungeon myself, I wonder if I would have been living in one of these rooms? Maybe I would have been her neighbor… We should keep exploring. Mimmie, ready to get going?" Bug asks as she wants nothing more than to just get away from this spot as soon as possible.

Bug gets back up and walks away from the corpse without even waiting for a response, but Susan doesn't move. When she turns back towards the Ghoul, Bug finds Susan cleaning some drool from her lips with her sleeve, blushing and looking rather ashamed of herself.

"…Hungry?" Bug asks.

Susan stomach rumbles. Blushing an even deeper shade of red, she just nods her head and refuses to look Bug in the eyes. Clearly embarrassed.

"Hah… fi-fine, you can eat the body first. Then we'll get going. I want to see if they had any other secrets back here to find."

"Thanks, sorry… It just smells way too good. I can't help myself. I feel like I'll go crazy if I don't eat it…"

Bug has to stop herself from visibly cringing as she hears that. The smell of the burnt meat is doing something horrible in her guts right now, and honestly, she just wants to throw up.

"It's fine, I-I'll just play with Mimmie while we wait. Hey Mimmie, how about we play with the… dolls? Where did they all go?"

"I ate them!" Mimmie happily cheers.

"…Wh… W-Why?"

Mimmie just tilts her head like she has to think about why she would do something as blatantly weird as eating her new toys.

"I don't know? Treasures taste good? Mmmmm, felt like I should?"

Bug just slowly blinks as she looks at her weird daughter and then at the weird corpse eating Ghoul behind her that is already chowing down on a Harpy leg with gusto.

And they think I'm the weird one here…