Steven looked at the screen for a long moment before deciding to pull up the description for the class that he was now locked into. Finally, he read the information with trepidation.

Mimic

Strength 3

Dexterity 3

Endurance 3

Intelligence 3

Wisdom 3

Pain 1

Special class. Cannot exchange mana for levels. All weapons usable.

Select Mimic? [Y/N]

Even knowing he had no other choice, Steven didn't select Y immediately. He sat up and pondered his new situation. At this point there was no other classes to pick anymore. He inwardly kicked himself for rerolling instead of picking Swordsman like he thought he should.

This new mimic class could use all weapons, even more than the Swordsman could. It had a more even spread of attributes, but he was unsure how it would grow in the future. The other classes could level up and apply new attributes each level. This class couldn't do that, and there was no clue how to get stronger. But he was stuck, and could only do one thing. Steven selected Y.

Nothing happened at first, and after a few seconds he felt a sharp pain on the back of his right hand. Looking at it he saw there was now a red gem embedded in his hand. Thankfully the pain wasn't bad and lasted only a second. Then a cold radiated from the gem up his arm, across his chest, and down throughout the rest of his body.

This was a cold unlike anything Steven had experienced. Instead of burrowing into his body from outside, the cold came from within. The chilly puddle in which he sat felt warm by comparison. He pulled his knees up to his chest to try to maintain some warmth, but started shivering anyway.

He inspected the small canyon he was in for any type of heat source, but the only things he saw were the rocky ground riddled with puddles, some green and brown lichen, and an oddly shaped statue where the canyon narrowed. Slowly, he stood up, shivering, and made his way to the strange statue.

Drawing closer, he saw that it was actually an eye with a cross shaped pupil and the same color as the gem in the back of his hand. The eye was held in some bronze looking claws or talons that seemed to grow straight from the rock below. Steven was glad to feel the gem in his hand start to vibrate since it meant that he wasn't actually frozen. He guessed that the implant was somehow connected to the eye. He reached out and tapped the gem on his hand to the eye, and both burst into a bright ruby light.

When the light faded, he was left with a brighter implant in his hand filled with swirling red colors. He peered into it. The gem seemed almost depthless. He inspected the eye, and it was just as the implant. Reds of all different hues swirled around the pupil. He thought it looked alive now. Like it was watching him. Steven shuddered.

Before he could do anything else, another screen appeared with the same quiet chime. Steven read without hesitation.

Welcome to Drknfel Dungeon.

Drknfel Dungeon is an infinite floor dungeon temporary afterlife. Complete the dungeon, and earn a boon.

Each floor increases in difficulty. Complete the challenge on the current floor to proceed to the next.

The Red Eye is a respawn point and a progression check. You can teleport to ten floors prior to the current floor progression.

Dispatching monsters and completing challenges awards mana. Mana is used to level your class and empower yourself.

The amount of pain you experience increases each floor you progress, and each level you earn.

Death rewards you with a forfeiture of all mana. Lost mana can be reclaimed, only if you survive to find it.

Those who suffer the most, find the greatest of ends.

Floor 0. Begin.

Steven let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. So he was dead, and this was some sort of purgatory type afterlife. If he completed the dungeon he would get some sort of boon. Maybe the boon would be revival or resurrection?

He paced in the small rocky canyon room, heart beating wildly as he tried to control his emotions. After several minutes he wiped his eyes and stared at the only clear exit. He needed to go, but he still didn't know what he could do. He didn't have any kind of interface or status screen he could just pull up.

Looking down at the implant in his right hand with a small amount of inspiration, he reached over with his left and tapped it. A small screen appeared above, like a hologram from the old sci-fi movies. He smiled. The hologram implant thing was at least cool.

He explored the screen for a bit and found that it held a couple of pages. He had one that had his status and another that had skills. The status screen was just like the screen when he selected the class, just without the description. It also had a counter for both mana and time. The time counter was separated into total and floor. Both read 32 minutes. His mana was 0 unsurprisingly.

The second screen was what held his interest for a bit longer. His skills. Steven found that he already had two skills. Absorption and Identify. He focused on his absorption skill and it went into a description.

Absorption

Mana cost 0.

Damage 10% of current mana.

Attack can be executed from touch or melee.

If enemy dies from attack, the enemy is absorbed. All base attributes are added to own permanently.

Mimic only - enemy is added to catalogue and can be used for future transformation.

Steven stared. He no longer felt that he screwed himself over with the reroll. He previously had the idea that as a mimic he could transform, but only into a treasure chest. He thought that he would have to wait around and chomp down on enemies when they try to glean his insides. He'd planned to completely ignore his class and just continue as a weapon user. But this was just much better. He was right to believe he could transform, but it seemed that he could transform into whatever he absorbed. Better yet, Steven smiled, the attributes were added to his own. He was excited to try it out.

The second skill was a standard identify skill, but he saw the usefulness of the skill as he read the description.

Identify

Mana cost 0.

Damage 0.

Threat 0.

Ability can be executed from sight range.

Identifies the target species and attributes.

Mimic only - identifies number of mimicries the species gives on absorption.

Steven began to feel a bit like he was a puzzle, and while he had most of the pieces, there were a few key pieces that he was missing. He just didn't know it. The identify skill gave him a bit more information on what he could do, but it also raised a few other questions. Why would a monster have more than one mimicry? Why is there threat and how does that work? And the most important question that he could think of, how does he use the skills?

He tried to focus on different words in the descriptions to pull up more information, but nothing else worked. He went back to his status screen and inspected his status for anything that could help.

Why was there a pain attribute? The screen that explained about the dungeon had mentioned that each floor increases the amount of pain. He didn't like the sound of that. Thinking back to the previous class descriptions, their pain attributes were all decimals. Fractions of his. Steven had a solid 1. He could only assume the amount of pain was multiplied by the attribute. So for this floor 0, he would be feeling a normal amount of pain from whatever caused him any injuries. Other classes would feel less. And it would only get worse.

Unable to do anything else, he decided he would make his way down the rocky corridor and begin his dungeon descent. Or ascent. The description wasn't clear, but Steven had a habit of getting caught on pointless tidbits of information. He put that out of his mind and slowly made his way back to the Red Eye, near the exit of his canyon room.

From the eye, he had a clear view down the corridor, until a bend. The way the most of the descriptions he'd read sounded, there was supposed to be suffering and danger all over. He couldn't see anything but a rock wall and puddles of gray water. He slowly made his way down to the end of the corridor, where the hallway bent left, and he peeked around the corner. He saw his first monster.

After the small amount of excitement that reading about his class gave him, Steven suddenly realized he was both unarmed and unarmored.