I still don’t have a name for her.

Several days had passed since we had started ‘speaking’—not that either of us had said anything of real import. I’d pried some information out, but generally the responses she gave me were laconic, poorly-formed thoughts that I needed to spend a lot of time interpreting.

The skill linking us wasn't quite like a telephone--more like a caffeine-addled fourth-grader drawing pictures with their half-eaten crayons based on what the mouse was thinking, then walking it over to me and shoving it through a text-to-speech algorithm.

At first, my reaction had been to start troubleshooting—could there be an issue with our communication via Core Link? Or perhaps a first-tier intellect trait was the issue and further development was required for anything advanced? I saved my mana for a few days and dropped it all on another ascension for the mouse, even despite how much I was starting to grow worried about this investment.

The result had been simple enough, replacing [Kindled Intellect] with [Forged Sapience]—a trait that very specifically mentioned humans in its description text as a rough measurement. I was trying to get better at paying closer attention to the wording of the descriptions for these things—specifically, it mentioned “a mind aspiring to the standard of humanity” while suspiciously avoiding using the phrase "equal to”.

I begrudgingly chose that one as the trait to go with. Giving her a venom-barbed tail had been my runner-up choice, which really could have been cool. Having a mouse-manticore as a minion wasn't something I'd known that I wanted up until I'd seen that option pop up.

For all the good I thought [Forged Sapience] would do, it didn’t actually help much right away. Her thoughts came through better formed, tidier around the edges and lacking some of the noise that had been lingering over them like a fog, but otherwise she remained quiet and sluggish. At that point, all of the technical possibilities were ruled out, leaving it plain that the lack of communication was by choice. I didn’t think there was any skill that provided immunity to misery, so as far as using the system went I’d reached a standstill.

Even so, I greeted her every morning when she woke up and made occasional attempts to converse with her throughout the day, between other tasks I was working on.

“I think it’ll be autumn soon, judging by the color of the leaves. I’m guessing it’ll be your first time seeing it?”

“yes.”

“It’s beautiful. The leaves change color from green to all kinds of reds, browns, oranges. The weather gets cooler, too.”

“i see.”

It was better than the possibility of being outright ignored, but only just.

I had the most luck when asking her questions or offering ideas for things to do, but even these successes were measured in ‘length of response given’ rather than any kind of positive reaction. The connection seemed to grow sturdier though—that or we were just learning how to actually use it right.

She slept. She ate. Sometimes, she’d come out and stare at where the burrow had once been. That was pretty much everything she did, aside from grooming herself. I had hesitated to bring up the subject for a while, but it just felt awkward to not say anything at all.

“You miss them a lot, huh?”

I could see her body tense, but no response came right away. She looked around for a moment as if trying to find where to look at to address me. Eye contact was apparently confusing when speaking to a room, I was discovering.

“Yes. I do,” I heard chime from outside of my mind—clear and focused.

“Me too. Probably not as much as you do, but still. It’s not the same without them around. I miss watching Ratlas and Ratchet fighting over acorns. I miss seeing Ratticus trying to squeeze into that tiny burrow you all had. It’s too quiet around here, nowadays.”

Now she just looked confused.

“Ah, sorry. I didn’t have a way of communicating back then, so I just… made up names for a lot of you. The ones I saw most often.”

“Oh. We did not have names among ourselves.”

“I guess I’m not shocked that mice don’t have names for each other,” I replied, “I can’t really remember my own name anyways, so we’ve got that in common. If you’d like, I could try and come up with one for you.”

She glanced around, sitting down politely. “I think I would prefer to not be given a humiliating pun as a name.”

“That’s fair. Honestly, I probably would’ve been uncomfortable giving you a joke-name either way. Feels weird to do for someone I can hold a conversation with,” I admitted, a bit surprised by how coherent and… human this conversation felt, “You’re honestly a lot more… lucid than I had expected.”

“I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

“I mean—you’re a mouse.”

“Yes, and you are a rock.”

“I—wow, snarky too,” I sputtered, “Besides, I’m more than just a rock—just like you’re more than just a mouse now.”

That bit woke her up. She tilted her head back, staring at the glowing crystal held high on the twirling metal pedestal overhead. “Yes. You’re a core. A core without a dungeon lord, though.”

Now was my turn to jump to attention. “A what? What are you talking about?”

“When a dungeon is born,” her mind hummed into mine, “it catches the attention of all of the monsters near it. It is instinct for them to come and claim it, as the first one to make a tithe becomes the lord of that dungeon and claims vast power. Yet, I do not see one here.”

“Alright, hold up—how do you know any of this? You’ve lived in a dirt hole for your entire life. Besides, that doesn’t…” I began to protest, my train of thought screeching to a halt.

The crow?

But the crow wasn’t a monster, right? It was just a bird.

No, that logic wouldn’t hold up—the mouse had been registering as a monster for a while now too. Clearly there was something differentiation animal from monster, but it wasn’t a gap that couldn’t be jumped with some effort.

It didn’t make any sense though. But I hadn’t really paid much attention to the crow’s tooltips in a while. There was a possibility I’d missed something changing.

“I don’t know how. I just know it,” she replied, her pink tail curling up tightly behind her, “They aren’t like normal memories. Different. Like seeing the shadows of the trees cast upon the ground, rather than ever seeing the trees themselves.”

Hmm. Maybe some kind of base level of knowledge provided by one of the skills or traits she’d gotten? That certainly felt odd. How could I give someone information about something I didn’t know myself? There weren’t many other possibilities to theorize about, though.

“Maybe that's my fault. When that thing attacked, you were pretty badly hurt. I wanted to help you, but I didn’t really have any way to just heal you. So I tried what few other things I could manage. I’m sure you’ve noticed how things are ‘different’ now. That’s a side effect of that, though I’ll admit I’ve been pushing it further to try and find a way to communicate with you. I wasn’t really happy with myself over some of the choices I made, but—”

“Why would you want to talk to me?”, the rodent interjected.

“...Look, neither of us is in a really great spot right now, yeah? I’m throttled by the fact that I don’t have very much mana to work with. You lost just about everyone and everything you every knew. I just thought that we might be able to help each other out. I wanted to offer you a job.”

“You wish for me to be one of your monsters?”

“Not exactly how I’d word it. How about ‘my employee’?”

“And what work would you ask of me?”

I took a moment to conjure my manamites into a glowing, blinking path leading to the center of the room, guiding her over toward my ‘bank’ and its lonely occupant. She followed along after a moment, clearly still uncertain about all of this.

“This. It’s what allows me to do… basically anything. But one coin isn’t enough. I need more if I’m going to actually get anywhere.”

She placed her paws on the edge of the bin, standing up unnaturally, her pink tail laying across the stonework. Her brown eyes glanced at the coin, a strange and alien object she’d never seen before in her life.

“This is money?”

“Yes, it sure is. And I want to try and get more of it. A lot more, if possible. Money will give me stronger magic, and if you help me then I can use that magic to help you get whatever you want. A nicer den, juicier berries, uh… anything else you might want, really. Name it and it's yours.”

“I do not know if I want a nicer den or more berries, though. I can make a den anywhere, and there are berries up the ridge," she explained. I didn't need tone to discern that she wasn't very interested. I had to try and salvage this somehow, though.

"You’re not entirely wrong, but there has to be something you want! Power, comfort, safety? I can do just about any of it.”

“I don’t know what I would want. I don’t know if I want anything at all. You said you cannot heal. You can’t bring them back,” she responded back, her ears flattened against her head.

“It’s true that I don’t think I could ever bring them back,” I replied, trying my best to soften the blow, “But I actually can heal you thanks to a skill I gave you. As I get more money, my powers will grow stronger, more diverse. I can’t change the past, but I could help give you a more secure future.”

She looked around the room, hopping off of the coin tray as she started to stroll around.

“The future…”

“Yeah! If you decide to have kids—uh, baby mice… a litter? I’d be glad to watch over them here, even after you’re gone,” I added.

“Gone?”

Oh.

“A-ah, never mind. Don’t worry about that. Just know that I think we’d make a good team—”

“Gone?”, she interjected, insisting hard enough that her message got through either way.

Great. I was going to have to explain the concept of mortality and the inevitability of death to an already-depressed rodent.

“…Yeah. Gone. Sorry, I guess I took that bit of knowledge for granted,” I admitted, steeling myself to continue, “Everyone dies, even if it’s not to monsters or wild animals. Old age, sickness, those kinds of things get everyone eventually. Sometimes earlier than we’d hope, sometimes later. It kinda just depends on the life you live. Humans usually live for about eighty years, but some live a lot longer than that.”

“What about me?”

In my past life, I wouldn’t have been familiar enough with mice to know. [Biology I] was kind enough to fill in the blanks with a simple, callous pop-up:

MOUSE Average Lifespan: 12-18 Months

“I’m… not super familiar with mice. But, maybe two years if you stay active and eat healthy?”, I replied, nearly feeling my stone walls pull into a grimace, trying to soften the blow.

That wasn’t the correct answer to that question, I quickly discovered. I had to temporarily sever the mental link between the two of us, the chaotic noise coming through her end being far too loud and discordant to comfortably endure. It…

Well, it was the cutest, fluffiest existential crisis I’d ever seen.

That wasn’t really an appropriate thing to think at the moment though, and I tried to focus on remaining empathetic. It was honestly an incredibly ‘human’ reaction, the more I thought about it.

I certainly wouldn’t be in great shape if I found out I only had a year and some change to live.

For the rest of the night, she was entirely inconsolable.

I only really got her to calm down even a little bit when I mentioned that there were probably some skills or traits or something that I could use to help her live for longer.

Even then, it felt uncomfortably close to extortion into working for me. I didn’t like the feeling, but… I mean, it was mutually beneficial. It would be cruel to not help her at this point with how badly she wanted to cheat death.

That had been enough to get her to formally agree to help me. We lacked paper, parchment, or anything else, so I simply penned it into my mental notes and treated it like a verbal contract.

“The employee, hereafter referred to as ‘you’, is entitled to lodgings of an appropriate quality and security. You are entitled to food, water, and any other kinds of unforeseen sustenance you may require in the future. You are entitled to life, and you will not be placed into situations of abnormal risk against your will. You are entitled to compensation for any services rendered, as per our bargain. Lastly, you are entitled to your own self-governance, and I, your employer, will not perform any form of modification to you that goes against your will.

In exchange, you are expected to uphold a standard to your work and not take any hostile actions towards me, nor any that directly oppose my goals. You are expected to safeguard the holdings and investments of your employer—which includes yourself. By agreeing to this, you hereby accept your employment, effective immediately.”

Obnoxiously formal, but it almost felt needed. I could hold myself accountable with this. Even with the small amount of power I’d obtained, wielding it felt tyrannical and dirty for some reason. At minimum, this would provide a mutual understanding between the two of us, as well as prevent me from skirting the rules if convenience or ambition tempted me.

She didn’t really seem to listen too attentively to it when I’d rattled it off, simply nodding repetitively with wide eyes until I finally went silent.

With that settled, it was just a matter of deciding her ‘wage’. I couldn’t exactly pay her in money—not that she had any interest in it anyways—so I was instead going to pay her with my mana, indirectly.

Given that the terms of her employment were that I try to find a way to save her from a natural death that she only had a year or so to avoid, I would devote a certain amount of mana each week to the search, whether it be ascending her, leveling her up, or anything else.

I just had to try and figure out how to uphold my end of the bargain, which was starting to look easier said than done. The amount of skills to dig through was staggering; navigating them blindly was a bit like bumbling through a vast, sprawling library. I could find groups of them easy enough, like “Agility & Manuevering”, “Earthenware Craftsmanship”, “Animal Husbandry”, or “Petty Criminality” and then start to dig through to find ones that suited my needs. Trying to just bumble my way around looking for something as vague as “ways to not die” was like unshelfing it all into one massive pile and digging through.

I’d found a few so far, but they were divided into two equally problematic categories. The first were skills like [Enlightened Soul] which had a list of prerequisite skills so long it took me nearly ten minutes to read them all, including needing her to be a whopping level eighty just to manage it. All of this to simply gain ‘immunity to senescence’.

The others were pittances; small, percentile increases tacked on to other skills that, while they might have been a nice bonus for a human, were barely anything in this case.

For a human, living for ten percent longer could add on a full decade. For a mouse, she’d barely get more than an extra month.

I promised her that I’d keep looking for skills that might fit, but I figured such a thing would likely be a trait more than anything. Skills seemed to be gained from level-ups, useful bonuses or effects to be activated when needed. Traits, on the other hand, seemed to be innate, physical attributes earned from the process of ascension. While it lacked the direct numerical increases that came with a level-up, something about ascension felt more solid. More grounded in reality.

Though ascension seemed to have most of its requirements tacked onto me rather than her. Resynthesizing her had counted as a ‘first ascension’, so I’d done it two times now.

CORE-TOUCHED MOUSE RUNT LVL: 1 CATEGORY: Monster Employee SKILLS:

[Scavenge], [Festering Bite]

[Core Link I], [Core Bond I]

TRAITS: [Forged Sapience] A small, juvenile field rodent under the auric influence of a dungeon core. Force Level-Up Cost: 15 MP

Criteria for Next Ascension Tier:

Level: 3

Cost: 30 MP

So that was off the table for now. We’d have to work with what she already had, aside from level ups and actual physical conditioning and--wait, what?

'Employee'? Was that my doing? It absolutely didn't seem normal. Why was 'monster' still there, but crossed off?

I tried to snap myself back to focus--specifically, to delegating to the mouse. I could worry about that later.

“So, my first task for you is going to be to scout the area around our vault. We’re looking for signs of civilization, whether it’s people, a city, roads, anything that looks like a human might have made it. For now, we’re not gonna venture too far just yet to play it safe. Take it slow, stay out of sight, and be sure to tell me if you see anything unusual. Take as many breaks as you need, and come back whenever you feel like it. Stay in touch.”

That had been my directive for her. With how rough her leg looked, I had tried to make it clear that I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from her just yet, but she hardly seemed to let it slow her down at all. She gave an attentive nod and hurried up the spiraling tunnel I’d left inside the periscope, venturing all the way upwards.

I sheepishly rushed to have the manamites add an exit that she could use, having forgot one.

That towering pole worked great for keeping watch over the surrounding area at least, and I did my best to act as her eyes in the sky as she scurried off, vanishing into the verdant brush.

At which point I immediately lost sight of her.