Hello Garbage,

I have over a million siblings born on the same day as me. Between two and five percent are still living. Staying alive is my goal as one of the weakest monster kinds, and the world has given me a curse title: Coward. Do you think I’m a slime? Those slimy sacs could only wish to be me, if they could think. Slimes are level locked to level one. Would I, future chosen one and leader of my kind, be a level locked monster? No. I am a proud level zero mimic, and someday I will escape this hell farm!

Not all mimics get to live leisurely lives as fake treasure chests in dungeons. They take all the credit, and tastiest experience point marinated meats. Bipeds like to use the corpses of my family members every day without realizing. When a miasma ley-line and an artificially constructed object like each other very much, they combine to form a mimic. That’s the grotesque story I and other mimics were told as babies mim’s by our elder antiques. 

“All of us started at zero. Mimics who eat the most, grow up to be the strongest. It takes experience points to make experience points.” they’d tell us.

Do you know what also requires experience points? A mimic changing their form, and I spent all my experience points to change into a woven basket.  I was supposed to live a quiet life as a fish trap in a rural biped village. I’d eat a few extra fish when the fish trapper wasn’t around, and then winter came. The stream froze over, and I got thrown into a communal supply building for the village. I was buried in a pile of junk including other baskets, boxes, and cordage like rope and twines. Some of them being my deceased family members that starved to death, or died while being used. 

“An iron cauldron is always full of meat,” some mimic once gloated as a large pot, then they were hung over a fire and burned to death.

“A coffin gets stuffed with delicious meat. I can’t be burned to death while covered in dirt,” a different mimic planned, until they were buried with a corpse and starved to death while trapped under a ton of dirt. 

“You can’t get experience points from dead meat,” a mimic teased that foolish coffin after it was too late.

“Don’t spoil it for the rest of us,” a different mimic had complained.

Being a thinking monster that spends most of its life stationary can seem boring, and it would be if we didn’t have the Mimic Mind Mesh social network, called ‘Triple M’ for short. The fully autonomous hive mind for mimics like me. A lot of us waste time thing-rotting while entertained by the amusing deaths of other foolish mimics. There was a mimic who saw another mimic die on ‘Triple M,’ and literally laughed out loud. It was a crib mattress that was thrown onto a fire by a pregnant elf after it started laughing. It died.

Needless to say, we mimics find it more entertaining to watch other mimics die stupidly. For every mimic on ‘Triple M’ that tries to give real advice to help other mimics survive, there are thousands of mimics giving fake advice. They call themselves Alpha Mimics. A famous Alpha Mimic calls itself ‘Whale Carnivore’, and has a thing-cast called ‘How to be things, and eat people.’ I guess I should get back to my own thinging life, before I thing-rot into a mimic basket corpse.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I didn’t starve to death during that winter, because I spent most of my saved experience points to stave off the hunger that can make mimics move. When the village chief unchained the doors in spring I was supposed to go back to the fish trapper, but a lousy farmer grabbed me first. They were secretly talking to themself about appraisal revealing one of my high level basket skills. I spent a lot of experience points to gain and upgrade my storage preservation skill to a high level. It’s a skill that allows mimics to eat their food slower, but now I’m always filled with disgusting farm produce.

My life is hell. This human farmer overfills my basket body with various farm produce, then spends all day posing for paintings while holding me like an idiot. Although I am artistically gifted to be the mimic muse of all art, this farmer and his harem of bickering wives are always canvas bombing my portraits. Do the gods hate all mimics, or specifically me for being the best mimic in the world? Normal bipeds with levels and skills above level one hundred would be top ranked adventurers or knight captains fighting in dungeons or against armies of monsters led by demon kings.

Rural biped villages are supposed to be full of low level people, not farmers that can knock out a flying dragon by throwing a basket at its head. That basket was me! I almost died. Now that dragon has taken on a half-humanoid half-dragon female form and became another harem member of the farmer. That farm produce jammed in my craw, which is inedible for us mimics, is high level. I bet you’re thinking I’m a whiny mimic complaining about carrying a few rare rank tomatoes, cabbages, and ears of corn. 

You’re wrong! I am filled with those produce items, and sometimes other things like fruit the farmer can harvest ripe out of season. I wish I could carry the burden of using my storage preservation skill on rare ranked fruits and vegetables. This vegetarian food I can’t eat is always mythic ranked! Do you want to know how I’m not killed by using experience points keeping my storage preservation skill active constantly? Slimes. They’re attracted to the mythic produce like flies on manure.

I think those unthinking slimes are smart enough to wait until they notice the overpowered farmer gets stupider at night, after the wives have “accidentally” destroyed their own beds the farmer builds during the day every day. Slimes are an extremely low experience point calorie food, but they don’t scream while being eaten. Once I got to eat a little more. It was a tiny mouse of some level below five. Its death squeak while being eaten woke up the whole house. I thought I was going to die hungry that night.

I don’t know how that mouse didn’t notice and wasn’t noticed by the guard animals, like the fenririan wolf. What level is Fenrir the fenririan wolf? Maybe it’s level ninety-nine or nine hundred and ninety-nine or higher. I had to sell my appraisal skill to buy back experience points to not die. A basket with an appraisal skill screams “I am a mimic, please kill me,” for anyone that can appraise a mimic's skills. I thought I was going to die on that spring day when this farmer stole me from the fish trapper in the storage house after using their own appraisal skill on me.

Skill blindness can affect anyone, even a freak of nature human farmer whose level and skills only have a series of nines in their levels. I hate the number nine. I had to get rid of my own appraisal skill, before I went crazy from seeing nines everywhere except in my own experience point pool. For you lesser things that have never heard of skill blindness, it’s when a skill, usually high level, dazzles a being into ignoring other skills. Having level fifty flame attribute skill as a sword might cause your next meal to ignore the cursed level ten weakening skill while they are skill blinded into trying to wield you.

I can’t wait to see which of you died on Mimic Mind Mesh from experience point depletion trying to turn into a sword after reading this. You can be anything, except me, and that’s why you stupid things hate me. Your comments never hurt me. I drink your mimic tears for breakfast. Tomorrow you’ll be another dead mimic, and I’ll be slime maxing my calorie deficit diet into living another day on this hell farm. When I escape, you’ll all know what kind of trash you are compared to me. Curse title ‘Coward’ was a mistake the world system made, because I’m a too powerful of a thing for it to comprehend.

I know it’s thinking I purposely keep my experience point pool low, so I don’t identify as a level one or higher mimic, because I’m always afraid of dying. I look at death in the face every day and laugh, but not out loud. Not because I am a flammable basket that’s afraid of burning to death in a fire after being thrown into it, or something like that. I laugh at your deaths, because they’ll never happen to me. So keep dying for my entertainment, trash, but also subscribe before you die.

Real high level mimics are already subscribed to my thing-cast: ‘Basket Mimic in Farming Hell.’ You can become a high level mimic by subscribing to me, but never as high level as I'll become in the future. Top subscribers who pay experience points to my hate-me-on link receive special benefits, including early access to my new posts here on ‘Basket Mimic in Farming Hell,’ and private access to my Only-Things page: ‘Original Basket Mimic in Farming Hell’  *restricted to mimics level 18 or higher*