Chapter 188: Chapter 188

It’s humming. Can you hear it, the electricity?

 

My little legs scuttle over the stone brickwork of the electric floor, the floor designed like the number eight. Or maybe more aptly, like an infinity loop. Depends on your mood I suppose, guy. But for now I scuttle. I’ve made it back up to floor eighty-three with little delay. The dark passage on floor eighty-five didn’t actually have anything in it. I’m a little let down. But that’s fine. Because I can hear it. Can you? It’s not humming. It’s skittering. It’s going -

 

*tskskskskt*

 

But I do my best to ignore it.

 

  Suddenly, I hear something else though from up ahead. I hear… boots. Shit. The hero-party must be coming down the staircase. I round the bend and carefully peek around the corner. Sure enough, there they are. All four of them, coming down the staircase and looking around. If I remember right, they turned left here. I duck back, as the monk starts to turn her head towards the tunnel on the right, which is the one that I’m in.

 

Don’t want her to see me like this. It would be so embarrassing, tell you what. Besides, iyoume is getting antsy too about the prospect too. Awkwaaaard~

 

They don’t seem to be talking today, they just walk in silence and vanish down the tunnel on the other side of the room a minute later. Waiting a moment longer myself, I then sneak out and away, skittering up the staircase.

 

Skittering? No. No, I’m scuttling.

 

I look around myself with narrowed eyes. The skittering stops.

 

With a suspicious gaze, I turn forward and hurry up the stairs. I did what I came back down here to do, so now it’s a race against time. Maybe I can make it up another floor or two still! This is a good body. Kind of clunky, but scorpiods are elegant in their own way, you know?

 

I click my pincers in excitement and scamper-scamper.

 

Wait. What?

 

I look around myself. I’m not scampering? I’m scuttling. My eyes narrow in suspicion. Someone is skittering when I’m trying to scoot and someone is scampering over their skittering and it's all ruining my scuttling!

 

Unbelievable.

 

  Agitated, I turn forward and keep walking, faster now. Before anyone else has a chance to ruin my day. Dungeon life can be such a handful sometimes, you know? You know? Yeah, you know. Before I vanish up and away, I take a final look at the pile of gold coins by the bottom of the stairs, but then turn my head and delve further into the darkness above.

 

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  Something’s bothering me about those coins, but I don’t remember what it was. Eh, probably not important. Right, guy? I hiss in excitement. Iyoume skitters, I really wish that they wouldn’t though. I listen to the sound, but I don’t stop this time. It sounds like sharp, tiny little feet. Like the legs of a spider dancing against a glass eye. They’re pointy and they scratch as they press against the surface.

 

Let’s just ignore them for now, guy. We have enough problems already. Maybe if we ignore them they’ll go away. What? No. I wasn’t talking about you, iyoume, you’re fine. What? Look, I don’t care, just leave me out of it. I’m busy.

 

Sheesh.

 

  I walk, continuing my way up, floor after floor as I assume the hero-party does the same only in the other direction. ‘Soon’ enough, I find myself back at the corrupted wasteland, the floor I was on last time when I died and I begin to make my way over it. I like it here, it reminds me of my desert. It’s dry and hot. Except for all of the green-water. And the strange, horrible monstrosities that look at me with eyes that can’t see. They don’t reach for me this time, I’m just a scorpiod. Just a cute little scorpiod walking through a horrible infernal desert.

 

*tskskskskt*

 

  I hope mama is enjoying her time in the library. I wonder if she knows how to read? I sure hope so, but I guess it can’t be less boring than the moonlight-arena. Soon enough, I reach the end of the corrupted wasteland and I step onto the real staircase, wondering if my last life unlocked this one or not? I raise a leg. To my relief it raises higher and I take another step. One more free floor. Thanks eyeyoume.

 

  So, all five of us walk up the next staircase. I sigh. Sometimes I just want to be alone, you know? I work better that way. Not that I mind you, guy. But you don’t count. You know what I mean. At least everyone is quiet as we ascend in silence, not quite to the apex of the world, but towards it. One floor at a time, guy, one floor at a time.

 

I sigh. There are a lot of floors. Oh well, what else is there to do?

 

  After an odd few minutes, a vague light comes into my vision. The light of the floor above. It looks so bright, do you see it too? Ah. It kind of feels nice. It’s warm. It’s like the light in the desert. Radiant. Glowing. My legs scuttle faster and so do the ten thousand legs of the skitterer and the just as many legs of the scampering. Something about this sensation excites me. It feels… invigorating. Do you smell that? What’s that smell? Wait. Do you hear that? I hear…

 

A roar. A rush. A surging.

 

I breach the surface, pressing my claw through another hole in the sand that once again comes down against me as I break the seal. But this time it’s not dry, like the desert was. It’s damp. Wet. Condensed. I burrow with my claws, pushing us up and out of it as I breach the surface and stand -

 

  Blue-water rushes against the bottom of my legs and I look down at it curiously, watching as it vaguely touches my lower body, only to pull back a second later. The surge of the ocean water retreating back into the blue mass before me, as if it were afraid to touch me. Which is a little insulting. I look up and over the ocean. Salty air comes to coat my body in a hot summer’s breeze as we stand there, mesmerized by the waves. Look at them.

 

The water draws back, surging forward again in another rush, as if a horde of souls were charging to press themselves against me.

 

But once again, the waves collapse in the distance, leaving only a vague foam that touches my feet which sink into the wet, hot sand of the beach.

 

 

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