Another mouse dies at my hand—or… tail and fangs. It tries to escape my grasp, but it takes all of thirty seconds for me to extinguish its life. The moment its heart stops it poofs, and I once again land on my fleshy hoard of conveniently packaged mouse parts.

There’s a delicious sense of satisfaction when I make a kill that I’m not sure belongs to me or the game. 

It could have something to do with the coins I get from a successful kill. In my quest for evolution, many a mouse has died this day. The hesitation I once had to draw their last breath is all but gone.

There were quite a bit of them in this tunnel system. I’ve earned back my points and more—though I reinvested them into stats just as fast as I earned them. Now that I have a far more solid points income, my first [Evolution] feels inevitable rather than like a chore.

But now I have a new concern: Evolving itself. 

Evolving in the tunnel might be a problem. If evolution entails me becoming any larger than I am now, I’ll very likely lose my ability to navigate the tunnels. 

I’m getting stronger, but getting stronger won’t do me much good if I can’t leave this tunnel. I’ll be stuck. 

By pouring my coins into stats and traits that don’t read like they might change my form too much I’ll be steadily improving. The faster I kill, the faster I gain points, and the less afraid I need to be of the vibrations in the dark. This last mouse bought me the last strength point I needed to have an even ten points across my three main skills.

Who knows? Maybe by the time I get out of here I’ll be able to take on that mongoose.

I laugh at my own stupidity. It won’t be that easy. Besides, I’ve been down in these tunnels for a while now. The sun should be set and that mongoose was probably long gone.

While my [Perception] has remained the same, experience has made me more sensitive to the vibrations in the cave. They are easier now for me to decode. Things that shift above and below have a subtle difference to them, but there is a difference. 

My guess about the water earlier might still be correct. That particular vibration has never changed. It’s even; consistently ebbing while the intensity has only changed with perceived distance. 

I must be getting closer now. The tunnel walls are wider and damper in this part of the tunnel system. Slicker. My belly glides over the stone as I slither on through. 

I want to find it, but knowing the direction of the vibrations only helps so much. There's no way for me to know which tunnel is right and which tunnel is wrong. I aim to go straight, and the tunnel curves. I go right, and the tunnel jerks left.

Or I find another mouse, like I just did. 

I see it running at me, and without hesitation I wrap myself around it and squeeze. I’m strong enough now that it doesn’t take much for the bones to break in my grasp and within thirty seconds I can continue on my way. 

As much as I don’t want to be stuck here, were I a bigger snake I could probably just gobble these mice up and swallow them without much thought. 

I save my coins this time and through the tunnel without missing a beat.

Without light or a way to visibly mark the stone, it's difficult for me know where I’ve been before. The best way I have is the System’s Notes tool—but drawing with one’s nose is… not ideal to say the least. Better than nothing, but I’m pretty sure a two year old with a crayola could draw a better map.

Finding that water source though could be both the key to my survival and a way out of the tunnel that doesn’t involve crossing that damn mongoose. 

Actually… would I even be able to find my way back to my original entrance? Blinking, I pause and look around. Aw, shit. I’m screwed.

I rub my face with my tail and give myself a minute to get over this revelation. The only way to get out of this place then was to find another way out. Finding that source of water could be my best bet. 

Flowing water needs a place to go, right? 

I should probably learn how to swim. More things to spend coins on, I suppose, but the [Swimmer] skill wasn’t that expensive; it was of the same tier as [Dark Vision], so I went ahead and bought it in advance. 

“Slither, slither, slithering along,” I sing in hisses as I go. Originally I was afraid my voice would carry and attract unwanted attention, but now I rather hoped it would. “Come to me, my little mousey friends, so that your bodies might join my hoard…” 

I rest for a few hours at the next intersection I come to. It’s large with plenty of space to curl up to one side so that any casual travelers might pass me by.

 I don’t want to sleep, but I know I need to. It’s one of the more annoying survival features of the game—I get hungry, and I get tired. It’s been an incredibly hectic day, and I’ve gone as far as I can without rest.

I use my remaining coins to buff up my constitution and resilience in case something does decide to attack me, and take a short cat nap.

I’m awoken by the sound of skittering echoing through the halls. By the vibrations, I can tell that something—many somethings—is coming from all three tunnels that connect to the space I’m in. 

Panic seizes me as I unwind and ready myself with the wall at my back. Until now, I’ve only fought one enemy at a time.

How many are there? What even are they? Some feel bigger than others—bigger than the ones I’ve fought before. I brace myself as they come closer.

Closer…

Closer…

Scritch, scritch, scritch!

Scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape!

“Squeak, squeak!”

“Chit, chit!”

“RrrrrREEEE!”

Like dam breaking, dozens of mice spill from the tunnels into the open space and I bulk as my senses are overwhelmed. So many sounds and vibrations bounce off the walls of the cavern and I only have moments to adjust. 

I’m not sure I was the mice’s original target, but when they notice me, they charge. I do what I can as adrenaline surges through my veins. 

I swipe my tail in a broad arc sending many of them flying back. The ones that rush after I wind my serpentine body around, two at a time with my current ability, and bite a third. I use the bodies of the ones I hold captive as weapons, swinging them like hammers against their kin. Once they die, I move on to others. 

They aren’t doing much damage individually, but there are so many of them. Their little claws scrape against my scales. While I flail against them, throwing them off, some cuts merely glance off my skin while others burn like paper cuts.  

With the first dozen down, fatigue starts to drain me. The HUD at the bottom of my vision gives my narrow yellow stamina bar a flashing red outline to warn of my stamina’s critical conditions.

I know I’m in trouble, game, what do you want me to do about it? I think with annoyance. I body slam a handful of mice as I writhe against the furry tide. If I assume that each of the three tunnels had a dozen mice each, then at least I was making good headway. 

If I didn’t find a way to recover my stamina soon, though, I could find myself in trouble. 

I see an opening and make a break for one of the tunnels. If I could at least get to a point where I could take on less mice at once, that might improve my situation. 

Might.

What happens if I die? I wonder, not for the first time, but it's a question that remains unanswered—and will continue to be unanswered if I can at all help it. The HUD might try to convince me that this is a game, but as far as I can tell, this is real life. Treating it like a rouge-like seems to be the best option.

If I die, it's game over. 

So let’s not die.

Once I’ve shed myself of mice, I slither just a bit ahead. I turn and breathe for a second as I watch the remaining mice crawling over one another to get to me. My stamina bar raises quickly, and just as the mice reach me the HUD fades to a less obnoxious state. 

Satisfied, I lash out and crash into them. The walls are closer, making it easier to crush and smother them against the walls. We do a dance of biting and clawing until my fangs close around the neck of the last mouse.

By the time the HUD starts to flash again, the last mouse turns into loot and I sink to the floor, exhausted. Stamina or no, the mental exhaustion of taking on so many enemies at once is draining. My skin was torn and I was covered in blood. How much of it was my own, I wasn’t sure, but my body feels like it suffered a thousand cuts. Going from one-on-one fights to a whole bloody army was not cool.

Then again, the seven thousand Eden Coins that were dropped into my account went a long way to serve as an apology. 

More settled, I hum as I take the opportunity to spend my points. [Swimmer] and [Poison Fang I] are the first things I go for, which leaves me with five thousand points. I consider saving them, but if I run into something like this again I’ll want to be stronger. I was using a tail swipe against the mice, but there's an actual [Tail Swipe] ability that I buy that adds extra damage and knockback. Honestly in a regular game I know I’d find knockback more annoying than useful, but it had proved vital in this case.

I go on through the other traits hoping that something jumps out at me. I’m not a big fan of the tail traits, so I by-pass them and pick up [Stone Skin] and [Camouflage]. [Stone Skin] gives me a fair defense bonus, and the [Camouflage] skill might at least buy me some time to have a more strategic entrance into battle. The rest of the coins I pour into my stats to balance out what I can. 

With all my coins spent, I go around and collect what the mice dropped. 

When I return to the chamber, however, I pause as the vibrations rippling over the stone have me staring into the tunnel opposite me. 

“Scriiiik, scritch,” says the rat as it stares at me through the dark and my heart sinks. “Skrit. RrrEEE!”

It charges.