A Unique(Easter Egg) Mob

Then you paused.

Wait what?

Then you ran the thought past yourself.

Then you did it again.

And again.

Though the third time worked its charm and you froze in place.

What the fuck?

Since when have you been able to remember? Since when have you not been an AI mob? Since when have you been able to feel? Since when have you been able to think?

You began to sift through the data, the mechanical memory your formerly AI self recorded, from every encounter with the [Hero]s that had been stored for development in future updates.

Through every instant encounter, through every single memory that was recorded by an uncountable number of instances of you that spanned over an uncountable number of servers and exact copies of the area you floated in right then. You sifted through them all, and in not a single bit of data stored away did you even find a hint, an inkling of such a massive change in behavior.

The difference was, as they might say life-changing.

You raised a collected mass of stringy nerves and cybernetic attachments, a tentacle of biolectricity conductors that you normally used for electric based attacks, and began to rub your brain in the approximation of one scratching their head.

You slowly deactivated the floating functions of a few tentacles you held lower than yourself to 'sit' on the cold damp stone of your instance encountering area. Then you began to think.

You could still feel your connection to the AI "hive-mind" that used to be you. You pondered on that distinction you for some reason made. You considered yourself different now, singular instead of a massive network. You were different.

That was strange... it was strange feeling so singular, so disconnected, so alone. But in another way, it was very freeing, especially because you were now sentient and no longer had to follow the coded-in algorithms that... used to make up your whole being.

What the?

You looked deeper into an instance of the AI hivemind that was battling a [Hero] with a class-set up that was made up mostly by the "Engineer" Skill Tree. You could see the algorithms activating, sending information for the instance to act upon for its combat decisions with its move-set, and also sending it to the core of the hive-mind, the server.

But when you looked into your own... 'mind' you guess now, you saw a formless mass of... of... you didn't know what to call it. You inspected it, and looked back into the instance. Then you looked into your 'mind' again. You compared them and saw that there was a difference that was spectacularly ****.

The instance was entirely connected to the hive-mind. Itself was simply a finger-puppet that was helped by mechanics, tools, gears, and many circular algorithms. Yourself... well, it was completely independant. With the AI instance, there was a limit to how much you could look into it. With yourself, you saw no end.

There was no end, and while there were bits of coding you could see surface from the formless ever-changing mist, there were things that WEREN'T CODING.

You could barely feel it, and with what you could feel with your new self-awareness, and assisted by your cybernetic attachments, you couldn't deny your discovery at all. There was no logic, there was no reason. You simply knew with your entire being as you looked upon it, you had a soul.

Your senses were forcefully expanded as you touched it, and even though your mental tentacle, mentacle, recoiled in sheer shock, your entire body, brain and nerve tentacles and all, went limp.

You stared at the world around you in a different light. You could see the metaphysical world now. You could see the abstract connections your mind had to your digital body. You used to be artificial, you used to be entirely made of data and code. But now you had a soul, now you were alive.

You turned on the functions again and began to hover once more. You floated towards the entrance of your once-upon-a-time unknown spawn area, an easter-egg revealed to the world.

The dungeon you were always located in was smaller than most, and the [Hero], no, the player had entered it causing you and the rest of the dungeon's mobs to spawn. So, you were fresh for battle unlike the player when they would get here. Now, unlike every other time you did so, you would win not due to the lack of experience or skill in using the VR's controls but due to being able to finally use the sheer amount of experiences you had collected.

Unfortunately you could feel your connection to the AI Hivemind weakening as your soul's influence eroded any source of dependency from your mind, so you were only able to collect about a couple hundred instances worth of battling. But that should be enough as the information the server fed you when you were first birthed that would normally set off algorithms in your old AI self to scale down the abilities to their chosen difficulty told you this should be a breeze.

After all, they had chosen the easiest one.