It turned out that the fastest way down was falling.

  My health went from nineteen, to fourteen. If I wasn't made of cheese I would have broken my stringy legs.

  You have received fall damage as a reward for your stupidity.

  -5 Heath points

  I winced. I had been alive less than five minutes and was already dying. Groaning, I sat up and looked around, it was just rubble and rotted wood. Behind me was a clear path, but I just knew that I had to go over the hard way. That always happened to heroes in stories.

  It was difficult to climb over, and by the time I got over the rubble my stamina had depleted by five points.

  For most people that would be fine, but not me, I was special.

  My stamina was half-way depleted, and I was realizing that I should have gone the other way. I didn't detect any more rubble in front of me, so I decided to go forward and rest if I ran into more obstacles.

  The next obstacle I ran into was a wall. Where was the door?

  Because of your insistence on taking the path of most resistance you have gone the wrong way.

  Congratulations!

  You have earned the achievement;

  'Bad Sense of Direction'

  *The System would like to notify you that, if he could, he would demote you to the lowest level of intelligence; 'Potato Salad'*

  Once again, I was aghast at the audacity of the System! …Though I had to admit that it was stupid of me to assume that I was going in the right direction.

  I walked the twenty-minute walk back to the pile of stone. By the time I got there my stamina was two out of ten, so I could barely move. I collapsed on the ground and fell asleep.

  ...

  Dreams are strange things. Most people don't think much about them since they've dreamt all their lives. The first dream I could remember having was a nightmare.

  I was laying on the rack, unable to move, I no longer had arms and legs, but I still had my mouth. A man stepped up to the rack, he was covered in darkness and had a strange symbol on his clothes that looked like a scythe with some dots under the hook.

  He held a fork in his hand and had a hungry look in his eyes. He spoke in a loud, annoying voice.

  Danger Detected! The System strongly suggests waking up!

  The System detects low stamina

  System gifting 100% stamina

  Loading…

  *The System would like to state that you owe him after this. *

  Pure adrenalin flooded me. I bolted awake, suddenly aware of everything around me, (it was early familiar), but I was mostly aware of the person reaching down to pick me up.

  I screamed, jumped up and waved my arms all about, I looked like an octopus having a seizure.

  The man was not the same one from my dream. This one was skinnier than the one from the dream and had longer hair. He also looked absolutely terrified.

  "What the (Beep)!

  The System has added the child-lock;

  'Selective Ears' - Transcendent

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  You are now unable to hear swear words. This is a passive Child-lock.

  *You know what? How bout this too, you asshole. *

  The System has added the Child-lock;

  'Tongue Tied' - Transcendent

  You are now unable to swear. This is a passive Child-lock.

  At that point I shouldn't have been surprised that the System would do that to me, but for some reason I was.

  The adventurer spoke, breaking my train of thought.

  "(Beep)ing mimics. Looks like a baby, I guess we'll have to leave the dungeon entirely in order to get food." He straightened and turned to the person behind him.

  A feminine voice drifted through the air like pollen on the breeze and made me feel like sneezing. It was so musical that it sounded like they were singing. “That’s not a mimic, if it was then we could eat it.”

  A mimic? I’d be anything they wanted me to be as long as they didn’t eat me.

  The man wrinkled his nose. “Speak for yourself, mimics taste like (Beep), I don’t know what kind of food you elves eat, but that’s disgusting.”

  The elf stepped up to the man, so I got a good ‘look’ at her. Or I thought it was a her, it was hard to tell with elves, but I was decently sure. I had stopped moving and now just stood there, trying not to seem too ‘mimic-like’ so that the elf wouldn’t eat me.

  The man looked down at me and shook his head. “If it’s not a mimic then what the (Beep) is it?”

  The elf leaned down and picked me up. Pulling me to her face, she poked me in the side with her other hand. That’s when I snapped. “Will you please get out of my face?! I find it irritating.”

  The elf dropped me with a yelp… right into the jagged rubble.

  Health has dropped from;

  14 To 9

  You are low health. The system suggests avoiding fights until you are healed.

  “What’s going on!” A deep rumbling voice called out.

  In one of the fastest movements I’d ever seen, the elf snatched me up and stuffed me into her backpack. “Nothing, Falken. Just a mimic, we already killed it.”

  The leather of her bag slightly muffled my ‘sight’, but it wasn’t too bad. Through the bag I felt a man enter my field of vision, but because of the bag I couldn’t make out many details. The only things I could tell were basic, he was huge, super well-muscled and -from what I could tell- handsome. He was wearing nice armor and had a sword that seemed WAY too big to be practical.

  The guy, Falken or whatever, seemed suspicious of the Elf.

  Enji hesitated. He glanced at the Elf, who looked back with all her stunning unnatural beauty, then spoke softly. “There wasn't a (Beep)ing thing to eat, or anything important.”

  Falken frowned at Enji’s use of language but otherwise took him at his word. “In that case, let’s go out. Besides, I think we got everything we could from this kind of mage tower.” He turned to the Elf. “Do you have all the books in your bag?”

  She nodded and patted her bag, which slammed her hand into my face repeatedly. I tried to bite her but couldn’t get into a good position.

  “Yes, they're all about mushrooms and or cheese, but they're old enough that they should fetch a hefty price with the right buyer."

  I had a sinking feeling that she wasn’t only talking about the books.

  Thinking of the books, I looked down at them. They were stacked neatly, so I could only see the top one clearly. They were all too thick for me to see through them. The top one had a title that I could read. It read, ‘Cheese noob 1, How to make the best cheese* in the world! With mana! (*we aren’t actually claiming to make the best cheese in the world, but we came pretty (beep)ing close.)’

  I was curious. And you know what they say, “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”

  If I had eyes they would have blinked. Where had I heard that? And what the heck was a cat? Speaking of things, I somehow knew, how had I known how to distinguish the elf from the humans? I reached out to the system.

  You have discovered a new quest!

  Your new quest is;

  ‘Why, where and how’

  Find out these things and you will be one step closer on your path to glory!

  *The system disagrees with that last sentence but cannot change the quest description of a quest that is available to everyone, or else he would. *

  I thought about this for a while, until I realized that I was getting nowhere and the System probably wouldn’t change the prompt. So, I started trying to open the book. It was hard, with all the jostling and distracting sounds that they all made, but I finally did it.

  Kind of.

  The Elf must have fallen or something because everything in the bag was thrown about. Which opened the book.

  But to the back page, not the front.

  There was a single paragraph on the page, it read,

  "I feel the poison taking me, I will die soon. Just know, I cheesed till’ the end."

  What a stupid choice of last words. I thought to myself.