Chapter 48

Antoine was on guard, but he was not especially worried for the safety of the party. Mimics were dangerous if they got the drop on you, and they usually did due to their natural stealth and camouflage.

Unless you had mana sight, which Antoine did. Then their internal magics which allowed them to change shape and appearance lit them up like candles in the darkness. He’d known before even walking through the entrance that the dungeon would be filled with mimics. He was slightly surprised by how many, but still not overly concerned.

Emil’s little trick of changing the background helped the others see what Antoine had already known all along. Mimics didn’t see color, and the magic coating of the rocks which turned them red – actually the stone surfaces were beginning to shift orange now – might as well not exist to them. Disarmed of their one truly dangerous tactic – the overwhelming ambush – the mimics could be easily avoided or, if there were no other passage past them but within their ambush radius, they could be ambushed in turn.

“Why don’t we kill them as we move past them, since we know where they are?” Sevin asked as they walked. “I don’t know about you, but I could use the experience.”

“They would hear the violence and either realize that they are revealed or that we have some other way of tracking them,” Antoine explained.

“If we’re claiming the dungeon, won’t we just have to deal with them eventually anyway?” Grant asked. “I mean, if the goal is to seed this place with coal and have the goblins mine it for us, then we need to take care of the mimics for them.”

Antoine shrugged. “I suggest we worry about the Core first, before we begin making plans on what to do with it. Once Tom can Customize this dungeon, identifying and dealing with the mimics will be much easier. We won’t even need Emil’s magic.”

“Yeah, that was very clever by the way,” Jessica praised, and Emil acknowledged the praise with a smile.

“It was nothing,” he said.

“No, really. Your magic is way more useful than mine,” she persisted.

“My magic is only useful if I know exactly the right spell to cast for the situation, and if I have time to set it up,” Emil said. “If we were overrun by spiders right now, I’d be almost helpless. It’s only when I know they’re there and have ten minutes to prepare that I can cast the magic to eradicate them. Whereas your magic is always at your command.”

“It’s a shame you don’t have a spell like that for mimics,” she commented.

“It would certainly make this dungeon trivial if I did,” he agreed. “Especially with the goblins already surrendering.”

“It must have been terrible, living here, having your friends and family going missing all of the time but not knowing why,” Jessica commented, sympathizing with the little humanoids.

Sevin scoffed. “They’re dungeon monsters, Jessica. They don’t have souls or anything. They’re made of hate and evil emotions.”

“They seemed perfectly friendly to me,” Jessica argued. “Brutus is a good boy, are you saying that he doesn’t have a soul either?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Sevin insisted. “If Tom weren’t Controlling him he’d be trying to kill us just like the other minotaur we faced.”

“Loyal,” Brutus insisted.

“I’m not saying you aren’t,” Sevin argued, “I’m saying that if Tom hadn’t been the one to Spawn you, you wouldn’t be.”

“Perhaps we should save the philosophical debate for when we’re not surrounded by one of the most dangerous ambush predators in the world,” Antoine chastised. The others fell silent and focused on their surroundings.

The journey from the entrance to the core room was more than a mile of traveling underground, with a winding passage that took them past the goblin’s home. Jessica saw the encampment, and she saw why changing the color of the stone had frightened the clan of goblins so deeply. In the center of the room was an absolutely colossal column. One that had not been turned red. In three places nearby were red-stains of gore.

She swallowed nervously at the thought of fighting something that size and they moved past without engaging.

When they finally reached the Core room, they were finally forced to fight; the way was blocked off by three stalactites and two stalagmites that were clearly mimics. Beneath the core itself was a massive treasure chest which made Jessica snort, as she’d thought that mimics disguising themselves as treasure was a myth.

The mimics, seemingly unaware that they were revealed, waited patiently as the party discussed their tactics.

Sevin, more than slightly nervous at his role in the matter, initiated the fight alongside Brutus and the other two minotaur. Feeling somewhat foolish, the four combatants charged the mimics. Sevin’s spear embedded itself deeply into one of the stalagmite mimics. It was strange to see the steel spearhead impale what looked like solid stone as easily as flesh, but while the mimic looked like solid stone, its skin was soft and supple. It let out an inhuman scream at the ambush. It launched itself up along the spear, as though trying to eat it, but Sevin’s stab did not catch it near the maw. He pushed it further into the monster before bracing his legs and Leaping backward with a skill, bringing the spear with him.

The stalactite mimics tried to drop onto the minotaur. Brutus dealt with his monster by swinging his massive tree trunk at it like an over-sized baseball bat and scoring a home run; the mimic went soaring through the air and slammed into the far wall with a sickening “Splat!”

The other two stalactites were caught by Caesar and Cicero, who wrestled the amorphous monsters to the ground. One of the mimics scored a deep bite on Cicero’s left arm, but the beast-man responded with a furious barrage of punches which left the monster disoriented as its innards squished and broke.

Caesar likewise pummeled his mimic, and it eventually went still beneath him.

Jessica and Emil both unleashed their magic; hers a stream of liquid fire with her Napalm skill, his a controlled fireball enveloped in a magical circle that kept the flames burning. Both skills enveloped the remaining stalagmite mimics in flames and, to the surprise of everyone, the monsters caught fire and burned intensely. With a “Fwoosh,” they began screaming as the fire ate away their amorphous bodies at a prodigious rate.

“They’re weak to fire!” she announced, and she cast a second bar of flame at the remaining mimic, the one disguised as a treasure chest. However, rather than catching flame, this mimic proved to be resistant to her magic. Between the screams of its companions and the attack, however, the mimic realized that it had been exposed and burst out of its disguise, revealing itself for the horrible amorphous monstrosity it was.

Its skin retained the appearance of aged pine, but the shape became that of a massive maw with pseudopod arms and legs propelling it forward at the party. It was deceptively fast, reaching out at its nearest attacker, Caesar. The minotaur let out a roar and punched the monster, only to have his fist sink harmlessly into the beast’s skin and find that he could not withdraw it.

Sevin Charged once more, his Skill empowering his spear as he impaled the beast from the side. He was forced to abandon his spear as the pseudopods attempted to grab onto him and pull him towards the maw.

Grant stepped forward and, from his maximum distance, began slicing and stabbing the remaining mimic’s skin, causing black blood to splurt and fill the cavern with the smell of bile. In the end, it was Brutus who delivered the coup de grace, stepping forward with his tree trunk and slamming it down on the chest-mimic repeatedly until the beast went flaccid and lay still.

Brutus had done as much damage to his tree as he had the mimic, however, and the weapon would not be effective much longer. The four-armed minotaur examined it for a moment, then set it aside.

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“Weak,” he said.

“Did you see how those two went up in flames?” Jessica asked. “I think the ones that look like rocks are especially vulnerable to fire. We might be able to clear this entire place out after all!”

“Don’t get too excited just yet,” Antoine scolded her. “The one that looked like a chest survived your flames with barely a scorch mark. We don’t know for certain that the others won’t fare the same.”

“It’s worth a try,” she objected. “We’re never going to get a better chance to clear this place of its mimic infestation than right now, while they’re exposed and we have two people who can exploit their weaknesses.”

Jessica continued to press her advantage while Tom stepped forward to where the core stood, just beyond where the chest-mimic had sat. He kept his head on a swivel, looking for anything that he might have missed that might pose a danger to him, but when he touched the Core Stone, he received a welcome menu.

Welcome, Controller, to the Cavern of the Mimics

Core Name

Cavern of the Mimics

Controller Options:

Link

Level

31

Level

HP

36/36

Expand

Mana

2501/2612

Reduce

Territory

12510 M^2

Evolve

Floors

1

Summon

Inhabitants

65 mimics, 32 goblins

Spawn

Experience

2.4*10^12

Customize

Seed

“There are sixty-five mimics in this dungeon,” he announced. “And the goblins, but I think I claimed all of them already. They should be tame now. I’m going to link this Core to my network.”

“Tom, what would you have done if the core was a mimic as well?” Antoine asked.

Tom froze. “I hadn’t even thought of that! I was worried about missing one, but I didn’t think that they could look like a Core!”

Antoine nodded. “I can tell the difference, so I knew you weren’t in any danger. I only asked because if you’re going to be delving dungeons you need to start thinking of things like that. I have seen mimics disguise themselves as Cores before, but I believe that this dungeon is too low level to have such a menace within it.”

Almost shaking as he realized that he’d almost blundered into danger, Tom reached out and activated his Link skill.

Once more, it consumed all of his mana, and most of Alpha’s mana, and a good amount from the other two Cores in the network. Eventually it reached a tipping point and his mana suddenly snapped back into him. He exhaled a sigh of relief as he gained a loose sense of the dungeon, which he quickly renamed Delta.

He turned to the others and nodded. “It’s done. It’s part of the network now, and I can control it from anywhere as long as I have Alpha with me.”

“Did it cause damage to Link them this time?”

Tom checked the menu and nodded. “It caused eight damage to Delta and six damage to Alpha,” he explained. “Beta took four damage and Gamma took two. I don’t think that’s too bad considering that Delta is level thirty-one.”

“It still means that there is a limitation on how fast we can complete your quest,” Antoine informed him. “The faster we go, the more damage that will accumulate in your network. If it takes weeks for the cores to recover a single hit point, then this is a project that will take years to complete.”

“You’re right,” Tom admitted. “It’s a shame I don’t have the Mend skill that Inheritors get. At least, not yet. Maybe it’s one that I’ll unlock soon, but I don’t know. It would be useful for this Quest, because the only other way I have to heal my Cores is to Level them, and that has it’s own risks.”

“I suggest we focus on getting a few more Cores into the network, and then work on increasing your personal level,” Antoine said. “Once you’re a higher level, you should be able to handle higher leveled cores as well, which will presumably handle the damage of being linked into the network more easily.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Tom agreed. “Good thing we’re not on a time limit.”