Ray could hardly believe the audacity. A mimic that had turned into him without even having interacted with him directly? How messed up was that?
To be fair, the Greater Imitator didn’t look exactly like him. It resembled more the first Lesser Imitator’s form Ray had met near the beginning of the dungeon. A clearly male human body, weirdly unclothed but lacking any genitals. It was hairless too. The only real similarity between it and Ray was the similar build and height.
But it was the mimicked draconic maw construct that made Ray frown.
After attacking his construct, the Imitator had allowed a chunk of its own body to float up and turn into a chrome version of the Greater Windbane Maw, complete with the wings coming out from the corners of the head.
Ray supposed it wasn’t surprising. One of the skills—Advanced Form—had described this phenomenon. He just hadn’t expected it to be the Greater Imitator’s go-to.
The fake construct roared out, perhaps trying to intimidate the originals.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re loud,” Ray said. “But can you breathe fire?”
The fake construct didn’t answer. Instead, it flew straight at the original with its jaws wide open and seeking to chomp it in half.
Ray shouted at his flying draconic head, but it was already on top of things. It evaded the fake’s charge easily. Then it turned and attempted to counterattack, though the mimic version’s speed made that difficult. He was considering assisting his construct, but his attention was dragged back to the Imitator who was charging at him too.
Setting his body, Ray waited until his opponent got in close. Just within the range of Soulstrike. Then he thrust his hand forward, activating the spell in the same instant.
The arm of True Mana appeared in a millisecond. A large, monochrome limb rising off Ray’s shoulder and tapering to an impaling point shot at the onrushing Imitator that was still over twenty metres away. A point within the outer range of his spell.
But just as Ray slammed it, the imitator created its own version almost simultaneously. An oversized chrome arm burst out of the mimic’s shoulder, before blocking Ray’s one.
In the very next second, another huge arm burst out of the mimic’s gut and thrust itself straight at Ray.
Cursing, Ray jumped to the side to prevent himself from being impaled. It was a close call. The side of his Shaper Raiment was ripped open, but at least he suffered no wounds. For the time being, Ray disengaged and stepped back.
His thoughts ran fast. The constructs were still engaged so he couldn’t rely on them, and if he created more, then surely the Imitator could do so as well. That it hadn’t done so already was perhaps a stroke of luck. The bigger problem was that Ray couldn’t use any more different spells. Otherwise, his opponent would just throw copies right back at his face.
Basically, he’d be better off fighting this thing with only the spells he had already used so far.
This fast-thoughts thing from crossing the Tier 2 of Intellect was coming in quite handy. Even as Ray planned, the monster only charged in for another attack.
It created more arms, all in an effort to overwhelm Ray. He was not giving it the opportunity to do so. Maintaining good distance prevented some of the blows from landing. For the rest, Ray recalled all the lessons Gritty had imparted about fighting and used that.
He held his two True Mana arms close and blocked a bunch of hits from the Imitator. Trying to get his own hits off proved difficult. There were just too many arms, too many blows raining in. Ray was forced on the back foot, even after he kept a good distance. But then, he could create use Soulstrike more too.
It was calculated. The Imitator’s relentless assault made it very susceptible to surprise, which Ray used to full advantage.
He called up a third Soulstrike, crafting the arm over his back and head to lay it down like a shield. It took the brunt of the subsequent blows, leaving the monster wide open to receive a quick one-two from Ray’s original set of True Mana arms.
The Imitator drew back, then immediately retaliated. Ray stepped to the side, blocked another few blows, then punched with an upper cut from distance to stagger his opponent back.
It went like that for a while. The next exchange sent the monster reeling after a straight jab to its jaw. After that, Ray hammered away with several quick punches to its midsection. Every blow made his chaotic energy corrupt away bits and pieces of the Imitator’s body, causing the strange, malleable flesh to rupture or liquify or even turn tumorous.
Ray grinned. It was a bit wild to think he was fisticuffing against a monster with magical arms but he could do this. So long as his construct kept the fake one busy, so long as he wasn’t distracted.
But it seemed the Imitator was tired of the game. It was now the monster’s turn to draw back.
“Had enough?” Ray asked.
The Imitator began changing form. Ray tensed. He was doing so well. But now his opponent had decided to pull out the big guns. Damnit.
It was much the same as it had been with the first Imitator. Wings burst from its back, a centipede tail lashed out, its legs turned hard and rocky and huge. Ray created another flying draconic maw construct, but the Imitator responded with several of its own. Really not looking good.
More than that, he didn’t want to get drawn into another furious fray. He could, sure, but was it really necessary? With everything the monster was creating, there was almost no way he’d be able to get a proper hit in easily.
Which wouldn’t even matter. All those punches and jabs that had left so much damage were already being healed up by the globules seeping out of the ground and from the walls.
Ray needed some other way of dealing with this Greater Imitator. A way that his own mimic could help with.
He quickly crushed another True Mana shard and summoned his construct, ordering the blob to become the tunnel it had been the last time. It worked fast, thankfully. The passageway reformed, cutting through the middle of the chamber, though Ray didn’t intend for it to go in a straight line. As such, he ordered his mimic to form it into a loop. Then he dove in.
A second later, the monster attacked with incredible ferocity. All its constructs, all the things it had materialized over its body, all of them attacked at once. Every single bit of it, including the Imitator itself, dove in behind Ray into his mimic’s tunnel.
Just what he was going for.
Ray was already running as fast as he could. It felt like his legs were getting more exercise than they had in a while. Had he always ended up relying on his wings that much?
He pushed aside the idle thoughts and focused on his mimic. A quick mental order to loop back the entrance to the curving side of the tunnel ensured that the tunnel now only had one opening—the one Ray was hurtling towards. All his pursuers not far behind him were now trapped.
Turning around just as he reached the end of the looping passage, Ray used Primal Spiritcraft. He called up the draconic maw to take its place at the end of his arm. Immediately, he made it fire.
The compressed laser-fire breath roared into the tunnel with the impact of a bomb going off. Ray would have been flung back by the momentum, but he used his wings to hold himself steady. The Imitator wouldn’t be able to see from within the tunnel, so he had nothing to worry about.
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“Sorry, buddy,” he told his mimic construct. “Just hold on a little longer.”
The chaotic fire had to be hurting. He could already see the tunnel cracking and bulging as he filled up the whole space with ferocious black-red fire.
It was working, though. Nothing from the Greater Imitator emerged from the tunnel. Everything was caught. There was no escape. Ray had made sure of it. His flames would be crushing and burning everything within the passageway.
Then the tunnel exploded. Burning chunks shot out in every direction. Ray flinched instinctively, covering himself against the blast.
[Enemy Defeated—Greater Imitator]
Tier 9 Monster: Greater Imitator [Level 23] x1
Essence: +2,070
Knowledge: +3
True Mana Restored: +230
Essence to Level 24: 8,650/33,900
Knowledge to next Threshold: 630/800
Ray twisted around. His draconic head had indeed killed off the copycat maw. It was a puddle of burning, silvery mess.
He gave his construct a thumbs-up. “Good work.”
Since it wasn’t smart enough to respond, Ray dismissed it. His other construct didn’t even show up, though. There was no sign of it anywhere. Nothing among the burning chunks of shiny, grey-white matter. It really had sacrificed itself to let Ray take down the Greater Imitator.
The small bloom of guilt was pushed back a bit when he received the notification for clearing the dungeon.
[Dungeon Cleared—Imitator’s First Conquest]
Rewards
* 2 Mimic Mana shards
* 5 True Mana shards
* 1 True Mana Tier Point
* 1 Inert Imitator Globule
* +1,800 Essence
* Reputation: +15 Cunning
Essence to Level 24: 10,450/33,900
Ray was pretty glad to have received the True Mana shards. That meant he had more of them than he had started the dungeon with.
The Tier point went to Lifeblood Soulform to take it to Tier 6. He had begun to consider how he might combine his personal mimic with his other constructs. What if he disguised his Greater Windbane Maw as a part of the natural environment with the help of the Imitator, then ambushed a foe that got too close? That would be perfect.
He would need to put some more Tier Points into Lifeblood Graveyard, though. What if he came across more Soul Aspects as useful as the Imitator’s ones? It had taken a hefty three slots. Not inexpensive at all.
He kept the Mimic Mana shards and the Inert Globule inside his Bag of Holding for the moment. Time to head out.
----------------------------------------
The dungeon’s exit opened up a short corridor away. Ray went outside, then stopped to stare.
This new Floor was very different from the first one.
It looked like the Imitator that had disguised itself as the ceiling hadn’t been lying. Unless he was still inside the dungeon and being tricked by an all-powerful Imitator. There was a non-zero chance of that being true, considering his Objective to kill an Arch Imitator.
But Ray didn’t feel like this was fake. Not the sky peppered with downward spiralling clouds, like tornados that never touched down. Not the gargantuan, mountain-sized spiralling growths that speared into the twisted heavens. Not the lay of the cliffs stretching out before him in the far distance, like he was standing at the foot of a continent-sized stairway.
Hmm, was Ray allowed to just sit down and take a moment to absorb everything going on? He supposed he was, but it wouldn’t be the ideal course of action.
The important thing was that he had to decide what his course of action was going to be. It was a bit said he was in kind of the same position he had been in at the beginning of the First Floor. No map, no guidance, no certainty of where he was supposed to go. Maybe that was just the typical first-time-on-the-Floor experience. He didn’t like it, though.
As such, his next plan involved him heading towards the nearest landmark he could spot. Those giant, spiralling growths.
Before he set out, though, he sent a message to Mary Felds.
Ray: Hey, Mary. Second Floor Greetings. Hope you’re still alive. If you’ve figured out some kind of layout for the Second Floor, mind giving me some directions?
Despite waiting several minutes, Ray didn’t receive a reply. That signalled one of three things. Either the chat didn’t function here the same way it did on the First Floor. Or Mary was dead or otherwise incapacitated. Or, as was more likely, she was simply ignoring him.
Ah, well. Ray got going.
As he headed out, he called up his flying eyeballs. Yes, two. Now that he had crossed the Intellect Tier, he felt no uncomfortable twinges or anything like that when using two extras streams of input.
Ray didn’t forget to use his mimic Soul Aspects to cloak his flying eyeball. It essentially made the entire construct except for the whites and the slit pupil into that grey-white chrome consistency. With a little force of will, Ray was able to make it take the form of the surroundings, effectively camouflaging the majority of the eyeball.
Even the wings that let it fly were hidden. This was great.
Two extra eyeballs made his field of view widen even more. It was definitely weird, though it felt strangely natural at this point.
Then again, Ray was almost afraid of just how much input he would receive if he created like a dozen eyeballs. He could so easily imagine his brain exploding. Of course, a brain didn’t actually detonate. But sensory overload was not a fun experience.
Sending the flying, almost-invisible eyeballs off to scout ahead of him, Ray followed not far behind. Hmm. They gave him an idea about a combination of spells that he could perhaps cast.
As they travelled, Ray found that the area he was travelling through was quite densely packed with trees. Thankfully, they were short enough that he could maintain a height of about thirty feet over them with his Soaring Wings. On occasion, he would brush the canopy with his feet, but he got past the trees without great difficulty.
The woodlands obscured a lot, so he didn’t see many monsters. He did catch sight of what looked like a moving plant jumping between the branches. Weird. It zipped by too fast for him to get a good look at it, and it was too far for Primordial Gauge.
As he neared the distant cliff, the first spiralling growth loomed in. It was so much huger than he had thought. Calling it mountainous was doing its height great injustice. A better description was an inverted, purplish-grey tornado that had solidified. Ray was getting the feeling that he had made a good decision to come to this thing as a landmark.
He jerked himself to a halt when he noticed what one of his eyes spotted.
People.
Ray had to blink and stare. He had already found people. More and more, coming to this giant spire was turning out to be a great call.
Except… there was definitely something strange about them. They were too far away for Primordial Gauge to activate, but just looking at them made his senses go haywire.
Those weren’t normal people. They were all dressed in strange, unfamiliar armour that were all the same. Armed with spears, bows, and even short swords sheathed at the waist, they stood guard before some palisades that ringed the base of the spiral growth, alert and ready to respond should something appear.
In other words, they gave Ray the sense of an organized military group. People who were familiar with the spire and had been here a while.
People who couldn’t be regular, new Denizens from the First Floor.
For a moment, Ray wondered if these people were from a different Tower. Virko had warned about a chaotic transfusion of Denizens from other Towers but had also said that they were going to be weaker than him. Those guys down below looked kind of strong though…
Which suggested they might be people native to the Tower.
Sometimes, Ray really wished he could talk to that System entity he had met way, way back when he had first been lifted off old Earth.
Ray decided he was not going to go accost these people without first finding out more. He had scouted this far. What was there stopping him from scouting more?
He looked up. Well, one of the eyeballs did, granting him a good view of the cliff face. He had a feeling he would not be able to climb past that huge cliff with just his wings and their limited elevation.
Whatever. There was a lot else to explore and discover before he engaged with the cliff or the spire.
For the time being, Ray settled down in an area not too far from the spire, but not too close either. He let one eyeball keep a watch on the distant group of men, while making another scout out the forested areas around him. Ray himself decided to sit and wait.
The flying eyeballs were fast. He was confident they would find something soon.
Of course, Ray couldn’t sit completely still. He had to keep moving, in fits and bursts, when the eyeball scoured and entire area and wanted to move farther. Wouldn’t do let it get out of his range of control.
Ray looked around. The trees looked a little strange. Maybe it was the light. They definitely weren’t a species he recognized—not that he was a plant expert, despite his forays into biomechanics research—but more than that, it was their appearance that bothered him.
They looked fake. Not the mimic fake kind, which would have been difficult to tell. No, these were more like the fake plants people showcased around their homes. The wood looked too artificial, the leaves were too rubbery. He was almost tempted to try poking the bark or tearing off a leaf. Primordial Gauge offered him no clues either.
While he waited for his eyeball to come across something interesting, he tried to plan what he could do next, in case he didn’t find anything besides the spire.
His musings were cut short when the eyeball spotted something quite interesting.
More people. Except, these ones were a lot more familiar. Especially considering they were fighting a giant plant that had already captured one of their own.
With a grin, Ray summoned his wings and headed out.