I awoke in a void.

I felt as if I should be feeling a sense of panic or fear, but there was nothing. No distress. No worries. My emotions were a blank. It was...a disconcerting experience.

What...was I doing before this? I tried to remember, but nothing immediately came to mind. Vague impressions floated in my mind...family, I think. Siblings. Friends. My interactions with them were...not the best, but not the worst either. At least, that was the impression. Without emotions I could not discern more.

It was not that I did not know what it meant to “feel”. I knew anger. I knew sadness. I knew love and support. I knew fear. Yet, I lost any connection to those words. I could remember what it meant to feel them, but...that was it. I started to remember feeling unappreciated and alone, and taking steps to alleviate that. I remembered...leaving my home, my place of safety, and...getting struck down. I remembered the spike of terror and the flash of pain. Then nothing more. Until now.

I lost track of time, as if I ever had an idea of its passage. Was it minutes that I spent, staring into emptiness? Hours? Days? Years?

There was no way to tell. At some point, though, a spec of light appeared in my vision. With nothing else to pay attention to, I focused on that pinprick of luminescence. It gradually grew larger in my sight, until it almost engulfed me. With a sudden realization, the light became a figure, and the empty void was filled.

Instead of darkness, my surroundings were replaced with dirt walls. A rock ceiling loomed distantly overhead, though I was able to perceive it clearly. In fact, I could perceive everything around me with perfect clarity...up to a point, I discovered later. I was a little overwhelmed at first as I should not have been able to receive so much visual stimulation all at once, but a few moments passed and I was still fine. It was...curious, to say the least.

What was more curious, was the orb directly above me.

It was the source of light in this cavern, for surely that is what this place appears to be. A faceted sphere, perhaps a precious stone. The radiance it gave off was enough to illuminate the entire area, though on some instinctive level I felt that I did not need it to see. I felt a bit of a connection to it for some unknown reason. It was uncomfortable.

Yes, while my emotions seemed to have vanished, I still felt a distinct discomfort at the mysterious bond between myself and this entity. I wanted to rebel against it. I wanted to break that bond.

I wanted to destroy that orb.

(Uh oh, this doesn’t look good.) A voice suddenly rang out in my mind. I had the impression that it was not directed at me.

(It doesn’t...what should I do? Destroy it?) A second voice responded. While the first sounded light and airy, almost ethereal, the second sounded neutral, generic even. And uncertain.

(I mean, can you control it? I think it will attack you if you can’t.) The first voice again. It seemed concerned...about me? Did my earlier thoughts mark me as a sort of threat to them?

(I...don’t think I can.) The second voice replied. (Yeah, let me call in a few mobs to destroy it and then we can reclaim some of the resources.) This time, I noticed a...pulsing, a very slight one, as the second voice continued to talk. The pulsing came from the orb.

Wait, mobs?

(Maybe you should bring in as many of them as you can, just to be safe. After all, it is a Boss tier monster. I don’t know what we did wrong when creating it.) That was the first voice again, the source of which I still could not determine...but I felt it was nearby.

Then it hit me.

A glowing, faceted sphere in the middle of a potentially underground cavern. Two voices talking about mobs and bosses. And finally, my own unusual circumstances.

It appears I have been reincarnated...as a Dungeon Boss.