What Coffee had scratched on the wall was an elongated triangle, and a flame enclosed in what appeared to be a static-field. At first, I was confused as to how this would accomplish anything, but then it got me thinking. If I was right, that triangle was the stalagmite, and the static was…

‘Chaos mana does something to amplify and manipulate one’s perception of both the flame’s shape and light, right?’

‘Sort of, but you’ve got the gist of it. It’s the plan I was working on before those mimics came in here. Normally, Chaos mana will be countered right away, but it’s difficult to figure out where it’s coming from if it’s altering one’s perception of both the flame’s mana and the shadow that the stalagmites cast. Unless they can cast a counter-field wide enough to encompass the entire area, the mimics shouldn’t be able to deal with it, and be forced to evacuate. We’ll use that opportunity to escape through the hidden passageway.’

‘You’re a genius,’ I complimented in awe.

‘Don’t be stupid. This still has a lower probability of working than our original plan, and it alerts them of an enemy presence,’ she said. ‘But if we can hide out in the hidden exit for long enough, the bombs that those three set should go off after everyone has evacuated, and that alone should cause enough commotion for us to escape safely.’

‘We’re going to have to cast our two spells simultaneously and quickly,’ I assumed. ‘That’s going to be difficult. Maybe we should practice it a bit now, while we still have time.’

‘Can’t risk it; they might be able to detect us if we do anything to amplify the signature. You’ve had ample practice with Chaos magic by this point, haven’t you? If you don’t do it correctly on the first try, we might die,’ she teased.

‘You must be a blast at parties,’ I winced.

‘How would I know? I have amnesia. Anyway, there's another part of the plan that'll give us at least a minute more during the casting period.’

‘What's that?'

'Uh... you're not going to like it.'

'C'mon, Coffee. Stop holding me in suspense.'

'We're going to create a second diversion that will force them to consider that there's something terrifying down here. Essentially, a psychological attack that will prime them for the next one.'

'You're right, I don't like where this is headed.'

‘Before I tell you the deets, I'd like to remind you how dumb your idealistic goals are,’ she said. ‘It’s probably going to get us killed, but I'm compromising here. Arguing with you is also going to get us killed, so you have to trust me this time and compromise with me too.’

‘…Go on.’

'We're going to kill a mimic and send its mutilated corpse flying through the central mining area.'

Wait. What?

I must have misheard her. Yeah, that must be it. ‘Sorry, it sounded like you were proposing that we should kill an innocent person?’

‘No, that’s not it.’

Phew.

‘We will kill one of them. There's no choice in the matter, because I've already begun recruiting,’ she said with a note of finality.

‘The hell—I mean, would you please care to explain?’ I asked through gritted teeth.

Coffee's lips formed a thin, horizontal line.

‘You’ll see.’

Before I could say anything, I sensed a mana presence approaching us from the tunnel entrance.

‘Oh shit, kill the flame!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you doing? Hurry up and get rid of it! Have you gone crazy?!’

‘Not yet,’ she said, getting to her feet.

‘What are you…’ I was absolutely bewildered. The sound of footsteps drew closer. Panicking, I prepared myself to attack the intruder.

‘Leave it to me,’ she dismissed. Whoever had noticed us was very close-by. Perhaps a meter away at most.

As soon as the intruder stepped into range of the crack, Coffee snaked outside in an instant and did something with her mana that I couldn’t understand. Her casting time was much too quick for me, and she used a form of mana that I had never seen before. She then masked her mana signature and dragged the intruder into our enclosure. It was a young mimic who had taken on a humanoid form.

Oh my god. She was serious.

‘You’re fucking insane,’ I said. ‘Who is he?’

‘How should I know? All I did was draw him towards us. Who he is, is irrelevant,’ Coffee said coldly.

As much as I was confused, I was angry. This was not the plan I agreed to. Also, how did she draw him towards us anyway?

Sudden realization hit me. Maybe scratching the wall wasn’t just to sketch out a plan, after all? I noticed that Coffee was sticking her fingers in her mouth, with a little bit of blood dribbling out from the corner of her lips. The mimic was strangely captivated by this sight.

On his face was obvious hunger. Ravenous hunger.

Most likely, she had enticed him with her own blood, probably abusing the knowledge that there was a food shortage in the mimic kingdom. He had smelt it, and was driven here by it. And now he was limp and unmoving, although his eyes were open and conscious.

‘What did you do to him?’ I demanded.

‘All I did was inject him with a neurotoxin,’ she explained. ‘He’ll be paralyzed for the next ten minutes. During that time, you’re going to kill him.’

‘What?!’ I was shaking with rage now. ‘You’re crazy. I’m not going to kill him. And you led him here for such a stupid reason?’

‘Shut up. I told you that you're going to have to compromise with me. In exchange for helping everyone else escape, one person is going to have to die. That's fair, isn't it?'

'There's gotta be a better way.'

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'Life doesn’t bend over backwards for you, especially when you aren’t strong enough to put your money where your mouth is. What’s more stupid is that you can’t see that,’ she spat. ‘What are you going to do, Bell? This mimic's already here, and he knows about us now.’

I felt like punching her. I trusted her until now. I had thought that if I explained myself properly with good intentions, then everything would be fine. We could work together to make a better plan. So why?!

FUCK.

No, calm down. Remember what happened the last time you responded emotionally? There is nothing good that comes out of doing that. Stay. Calm. And. Think.

Coffee was doing this to save our asses. She was right that arguing was only going to waste our precious time.

I took a deep breath and began running through scenarios.

If we waited until he was unparalyzed and let him go, then he would likely tell the others and jeopardize our safety. Explaining ourselves to him wouldn’t work; we had attacked him outright, and there was no way that he would trust us, or that we could trust him to trust us. If we left him here, he would die because of the explosion. Could we take him with us? Could we alter his memory? I didn’t know how to do it, but did Coffee know? She wouldn’t help regardless, would she? She probably wouldn’t—

‘Tick tock, Bell,’ Coffee interrupted. ‘Here’s a little fact to help you through this. You think this mimic came because he was hungry for my blood, don’t you. Because of their Kingdom’s food problem? You’re WRONG. Mimics are carnivorous gluttons by nature. Do you know why they are in a food shortage?’

‘...Why?’

‘It’s because they’ve committed countless genocides of different species within the dungeon while building and growing their Kingdom. As a whole. That’s right. Not just one or two mimics. All of them. And now they’ve run out of species to wipe out.’

‘...’

‘Here’s another fun fact: slimes are one of their favorite delicacies, and I hear that the current Royal Slimes are only four of over thirty that ventured into the dungeon initially. Your parents think vampires are bad? The mimics were the number one reason for your species’ near-extinction.’

…Was that true? But even so, that wasn’t their choice to be carnivores or hungry all the time. They were just born that way. This mimic in front of me was alive. He probably had parents of his own, maybe even a spouse and kids. Others who depended on him.

‘And you’ve realized it by now, right? If you don’t kill him, he’s going to kill us. Either directly or indirectly,’ Coffee added.

…

‘…If we do this, we're no different than monsters…’

‘No, they're the monsters. We are survivors.’

‘That’s bullshit, and you know it. That argument can go both ways.’

‘Life is unfair.’

‘That’s not a—’

‘You’ve experienced it firsthand, haven’t you?’ Coffee eyed me strangely, as if she saw right through me.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘A mimic and a vampire suddenly appear in your village, you get sent teleported by some mysterious force, and we end up in a bloody mimic cesspool. And now, you want to help them? You’re fucking incredible. You have nothing. You can’t even save your own ass without me, and you have the gall to try and convince me that what you think is right?’

‘…’

‘Your morality isn’t a compass. It’s a poison,’ She paused, as if thinking about something. ‘Something really terrible must’ve happened to you in the past to convince you that being a ‘good person’ is more important than your own survival. But that logic’s flawed. You have to flush that poison out of your system.’

‘...’

‘It’s going to get you and everyone you’ve ever cared about killed. Is that what you want? Now, are you going to kill this mimic, or are you going to let him do us in?’

'Are you done?' I said in a venomous undertone. I was tired of people treating me like I was useless, doing things of their own accord or assuming that their views were the only valid ones.

'Sorry?' She looked equally as angry now. 

'If we hadn't spent this time bickering like children, and you hadn't been so blind to other alternatives than your own arrogant plan, we might have come up with something that could save everyone.'

'Oho, pinning it on me instead of your uselessness now? Like you said, we don't have a lot of ti--'

'Shut up. You had your chance to talk, and now it's my turn. I have a better plan than yours, because your plan fails if the mimics don't evacuate. All that your illusion trick might do is to cause apprehension, and they might retaliate instead. That's bad for them. That's bad for us.'

'What do you propose, then, idealist princess?'

'First, this poor bastard is going to wake up at any moment. Inject more of your neurotoxin into him,' I said, shifting to a calm, serious tone. 'We're going to buy as much time as we can before that bomb goes off.'

'And then?'

'I'm going to convince them to evacuate.'

'PFFT. That's your plan? You're even a bigger idiot than--'

'...as a mimic,' I continued.

'...' Coffee paused mid-sentence. 'What?'

I didn't answer, and began to carefully but rapidly study the mimics in my memories. In my past life, my parents didn't want me to go to law school just because it was a good career. Any fool knew that getting into law required more than parental support or even personal dedication. It necessitated talent, and an uncanny ability to memorize, regurgitate, and analyze. Luckily, I was blessed with these three skills from birth in the form of photogenic memory.

The bottom units were approximately 0.67 x 0.67 x 1 meter. The top units were arched, with a rise of about 20-30 centimeters. I ignored the complicated metal bands along the edges for now; not all of the mimics had them anyway. They had 2-8 eyes, and 1-4 tongues which roughly measured around half a meter in length and 10 centimeters wide. There were 8-14 rows of 9-10 jagged teeth inside the mimic's mouth. I noted the length and diameter of his arms and legs.

I rendered a three dimensional model of the average mimic in my head, a mental ability that I had developed back when I had a temporary job as an industrial designer in highschool. An aspiring musician has to make money when intruments costs hundreds to thousands of dollars, right? I had the talent anyhow, and it was unrealistic to think that my music would fund itself right off the bat. Anyway, I digress.

Replaying the scene back at the village during the mimic's transformation, I studied his mana conversion step. Into which of the ten types of mana it was converted to was anybody's guess. Luckily, I didn't need to know the specifics. I just needed to mimic him. 

I began to convert my mana. The mana used for shapeshifting was strangely enough, one dimensional. It was hard to describe. Each one was a line that didn't exist in the other two planes. It could be shortened, elongated, or bent into a continuous curve according to my will. It could also be reoriented in space to enter another plane. Like this, I recreated my mental 3D model in physical space. Once individual pieces were outlined, it began to transform a part of my body, and a signficant percentage of my mana was used up.

Plank by plank, I assembled my new body, and it took fifteen minutes with my full concentration. The most difficult part was creating the arms and legs, but it was simple enough if I visualized each limb as a manifestation of its individual component: the bone, the muscle, the skin, and the external hair. Actually, that reminds me, Coffee said that a type of mana was Manifestation, didn't she? 

Regardless, I was almost done. The only part remaining were the eyes. I had tried to do this before I worked on my limbs but failed. Now, however, I had a pretty good idea of how to generate them. First create the lens, followed by the ciliary muscles, the cornea, the iris, the retina, the optic fibre connecting to my core, and finally contain everything within the outer sclera. Aaaannnnnd... Done!

I reopened my four eyes to see a horrified and disgusted Coffee, and the same limp mimic laid in front of me. His core was still pulsating, which meant that Coffee had indeed continued to paralyze him. I opened my lid and let my new tongues hang loosely.

"Did I miss anything?" I asked aloud. I flexed my hinges and opened and closed my mouth to test out the feel. It had been a while since I actually spoke. For some reason, I adopted a high pitched voice.

'F-fucking gross...' Coffee stuttered. 'W-wait, that's an A-advanced Class Manifestation Spell. How?!'

"Photogenic memory. Anyways, that's not important. What is, is to convince everyone to get the hell out. I'll drop some rumors about Frank, Tony, and Claire planning to blow up the area, and things should escalate on their own, right? No one's going to believe that a non-mimic is down here in the mines, so I should be relatively safe. Also, I can also store you and our pal here inside my body, so you can sit back and analyze the situation while giving me advice. We'll both be using Absorption, so the only mana core that'll be detectable is his," I motioned to the paralyzed mimic.

'...Are you really Bell?' She asked, mouth agape.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I retorted, a little annoyed. "More importantly, do you agree with my plan? We probably don't have much time."

'It's better than our original strategy. We're prioritizing our own asses if things go south though.'

"Obviously, stupid. I wasn't arguing that we have to become martyrs. We all have the choice to prioritize ourselves, but that doesn't mean that we have to abandon our morals without a second thought."

'...'

"C'mon Coffee, let's move."