OldBegginings:[Howdy, I just wanted to state real quick that this chapter is the first that has two different main characters. I think it works out for what I was going with, but do tell me if it is just annoying. Thanks for reading, enjoy the chapter.]

*'Hiiro'*

Hm. So this is a dungeon...

I was looking at a building that seemed to have been built into the side of a mountain, I'm gathering there's a series of cave-systems to this, but it's still weird... Right?

I looked at the front, and a name plate over it's main entrance stated 'Mumble Tree's Dungeon.' Well, this must be the place. I'm surprised I found it so quickly... 

That's what I was I really wanted to say, but I doubt three hours is 'quick'. Being told it's some distance away from a town in one of four possible directions makes it quite hard to find specific things, especially when it's as well hidden as this place.

I digress, I'm here to beat this dungeon and test my weapons, and maybe get money to buy more. I'm alone, I'm only level 13, when the boss is supposed to be level 25. This should be at least interesting to see if I can get an army set up. I open the door to the dungeon, and with a menacing smile cracking my face, I accept this challenge head on. I wanted a challenge, so wanted to tame every mob I could. If it was impossible, I'd treat the dungeon seriously. Simple.

The first mob I ran into is a Hob-goblin, it had many weak spots in it's armour, but seemed like it would be a fun addition to my army to be. You know what, fuck it. Let's try to tame it. It worked... Not. And now the bemused mob seemed enraged, and attacked.

It missed though. "Way too slow son. Let me teach you a lesson in how to win a fight. First you don't fight me. That is all." I preached, taunting the hob-goblin whilst slicing it's arm where it's armour had a gap. Hm, that did quite alot of damage, removing about half it's hp in one hit. Now then, for science, I decided to try tame again... Nothing. "Tch!" I dodge it's continuous attacks, waiting for another opening. I could just bind it, but I want to test my off hand swing too.

After about three more attacks, the hog-goblin finally seemed tired, allowing me to attack it risk free. I didn't really want to get hit by the first mob I saw, so was patient in beating it. This attack was weaker than the last, but not by that much, leaving the poor mob with only a sliver of health. For science I try taming it again... It worked. Perfect. It's like BeaPoke. Wait... I gained a level? Beautiful!

I meet a couple more. And (un)fortunately the exact same strategy worked with them all.

By the time I had ten hob-goblins in my arsenal, the dungeon finally spiced it up. A small imp came into the fray. It should be a flying, magic based mob... "Bolt." As my attack hit the imp, it fell down about a meter or two away from me. "Bind." And it was now the waiting game... About two minutes later "possess." And the imp was mine. Nice. Now I unsummoned it, like I did the others.

A while later I found a random chest, looking awkward and out of place... Hm, "possess." And it worked... I now had a mimic in my army, perfect.

Now to repeat this flawless strategy. After about ten minutes, I moved to another level. Did the same, it was slightly more AP and time consuming, but it was just as good. I was greeted by the same enemies again, the difference was it took slightly more to tame them. I ended the level off with a team of 14 hob-goblins, 2 imps and a mimic. I'll need to train them, but this will be the basis of my perfect army some day!

I moved to the third level about seven minutes after reaching the second, once I had the strategy down, I gained levels and recruits easily, so cut through the mobs on the second floor quickly. 

The third level at least had something new. A hob-goblin with a bow... Which missed me ten meters away, with six shots no less. Good job William Tell, good job. I simply stood three meters away and hit this poor excuse for an archer, and I never got hit by an arrow. Yeah, I think this guy's just broken. For science, I tamed it though. I wanted to see if I could train it to actually hit something...

Apart from that revolutionary new mob type, there was nothing new. I saw bats on the ceiling, but they never attacked me, and what good mob army had bats in? None, that's the answer!

Soon enough I had gotten through the entire level, and went to the fourth. My meta strategy had no bounds. How long was this dungeon anyway? I might get bored soon.

My question would soon get answered, as I reached what I assumed was the boss door. A long staircase leading down, and a door slamming behind me. And what I saw was undermining... Yeah, that's the word I'll use for now, 'undermining'.

"I'm not gumball, but I can still beat this guy, right?" This thought escaped my lips, and it was enough to wake this tree up. I couldn't look, since I dreaded seeing the bad CGI face on trees from movies, but when I got the guts to look, my fear was unknown... It looked normal. That's a relief I guess.

"Who dares wake me!" A voice Boomed from the tree.

"Me. I want to conscript you into my mob-only army. Do you want to join, or shall I kill you with what were once your own men?" I replied. I had no idea how witty the banter was with a talking tree boss mob, so had to at least try.

"Ha ha ha! You are not enough to fight me. Your cockiness in coming here will be your undoing. Die!" The tree started it's attack by... Summoning apple mobs? 

"Possess." I tried to tame one of the mobs, and did so. These must be pretty weak or something. I did this about... fifty times, and unsummoned all the guys I got.

 Wow, now even I'm bored. Let's end this. I binded to give me room, and started slicing the tree with my right hand, holding my wand in my left. I came to a realization that the AP regeneration on the wand was enough to permanently maintain the bind, so abused this to prevent the deadly apples from touching me. 

I continued this for a while, and when it's hp was about a quarter down, it used a new attack. It blew leaves around, blinding and damaging those who got hit. Too bad that the bind made a pretty high wall around me the leaves couldn't pierce, so I kept attacking without being hit. 

When it was about half dead, it made roots come out of the ground, I think. The wall blocked them, and appeared to block the roots from underground... Meaning I never got hit. I think this move is broken. With this I got it down to a sliver of health, and tried to tame it... It failed. 'Oh well' I thought, and killed the boss out-right.

"Wait, what?" I asked, confused.

The source of my confusion was one of my drops. I got a log, two saplings and a book. The book was the reason I was confused. 'Mimic Grimoire' was the title of this book. 

I selected the book, and a prompt came as assumed. 'Do you wish to add Mimic to your sub-classes. This will use up your only extra sub-class space.' What was 'Mimic'? Out of curiosity I accepted the new sub-class. Oh, perfect!

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

It appeared Mimic let me changed the shape and size of my hit-box. I assume there was a catch, like I couldn't wear armour and couldn't attack, but I still saw this as OP. It seemed like I could make a maximum of 100 different models, and equipped <"Form" = Mimic_Form_(name_of_form)> to my shortlist, giving me 20/20 skills in the shortlist. Perfect.

You see, having armour is only useful if you get hit, and with the ability of changing my hit-box's size and shape, I could see myself never getting hit, so not needing armour. So I spent an hour or two making different forms, so that I could abuse this new sub-class perfectly. 

*'_____'*

I was looking at a screen. It seemed like your average SolarCraft 2 tournament, but for some reason I was watching it. I was on a break, wanting to scout out a few play-testers for my new game. Recently there was a player making all the big names in gaming scared. 

The dreaded ABC'sOfDatingSims. He'd already won a Super Brash Smothers tournament last month. He came in like a flash, and now everyone can't shut up about his name. The reason? He won it flawlessly doing stupid stuff. For instance, he called himself 'BoredNow' as he played as the lowest tier character, and won flawlessly against one of the world's best players only using one, ridiculous attack multiple times, the infamous 'sleep' move. He tied his hand behind his back against another, and won a ditto flawlessly out maneuvering the player he fought, and whilst simultaneously playing as two different characters, won a two player tournament with himself. And this guy is supposedly playing in the tournament I was watching.

SolarCraft 2 is an RTS, basically the national sport of Hangou, but is pretty popular elsewhere. It is one of the most developed competitive scenes of any game, having regular million dollar pools up for grabs. Players play for years to even get a grasp for the pools, developing their own ways to overcome other's strategies. The game play is high tier, and I'm now watching the world championships, and in it, there's only one foreigner, a wild brown haired guy wearing a mask who's going against the person who took the title last year. 

The game just started, but damn. The guys started by typing lyrics to a song, but is still out-pacing his opponent. What the hell? His opponent has a solid APM of 800, which is ridiculous considering the normal for a casual player is like 50 - 100... But he has a solid 1200-1300 APM... What? A camera under his screen is showing the ridiculous speed his fingers are moving at, it's like he's on a different key in each frame of the recording... He's micro'd his workers so that they get resources faster than I thought possible, and is getting perfect timings on building. Is this guy even human?

The three minute mark, and his army is confronting the other, it's a pretty one sided fight though. He has like 150 units compared to the army of 50 his opponent has. They get in range, the army of his opponent has died, the 150 units all survive, and game over by conceding... In the next game his opponent changes race, and gets serious. The foreigner seems defeated, he had more resources, but wasn't spending them for whatever reason... The other guy sends 100 men to his base, but loses when he realizes this guy had dropped 150 men into his base whilst he was moving his army, and that all of his building were destroyed... It's a best of three series, in a single elimination world championship, so the previous world champion just lost in the first round to a foreign noob. The crowd went wild, and as they slow-down the footage to see if this guy cheated, they realized he didn't... He legitimately pressed every button during the games... 

I stopped watching, not wanting too long off work, and continued to code the game.

Whilst working, I could only think, 'hm... This guy has skill, I'll give him that. I wonder if he'd play if I asked him to.' So invited him to be a play-tester of my game after he won the tournament. With a 'Why not' response, I became pumped to finish the game.

-

Skip a year, and my game, the MythOfMen was released yesterday. I somehow got the guy who impressed me last year to become a play-tester for 10k won an hour. Although he only gets payed for each hour he spends doing events. He renamed himself to DokiDoki17, and I've been watching his game-play out of morbid curiosity at this point. He's apparently only punched some goblins and talked to some NPCs at this point, but for whatever reason he's now going into his first dungeon. I mean, the other DokiDoki17 just woke up, and is now at a cafe being boring and social, so I stopped paying attention to him. You know, it's confusing having two of the same person to comment on. I'll call one Doki 1, and the other one Doki 2. It's a simple solution without any drawback.

Doki 2 is socializing like a boring person, whilst Doki 1 found the dungeon, just as I logged on. And for some reason started by trying to tame a mob who are higher level than him... The response? A very confused and annoyed hob-goblin. Wait, what? This guy dodged all of it's attacks, and is still trying to tame it... And after a while it worked, the hobgoblin joined him, and somehow he still got a level up out of it. 

Confusing, but I guess I don't know how most of the skill interactions work in this game. It's his job to find them out, not mine... Though I gather a mix of his attraction boost from being a succubus and the weakened state of the hob-goblin could explain it. Doki 1 is now doing the exact same thing again, and again... 

As I start to complain about how dull it's getting, an imp appears. Well, at least this should be different... Nope. But at least Doki 1 needs to dodge more and use magic... Oh, he just binded the guy and is just slicing the imp until it's on low hp, and tames it successfully. Sorry for opening my mouth, but what is with this guy taming so many mobs? I'm trying to listen into the footage, but he's basically silent, and probably isn't talking to himself about his reasons anyway...

And like that, this guy just completed a layer of this dungeon, gaining 14 hob-goblins, 2 imps and a mimic... 'Cause why not at this point?! This guy's starting to bore me at this point. I want to see awesome sword fight, or a flawlessly thought battle where he, under-leveled, took on 20 hob-goblins at the same time for no reason but he can! Not a BeaPoke game...

The second, third and forth went the same way, he simply didn't get hit by the hob-goblins with bows, and tamed them all the same. Now up to 26 hob-goblins, 11 imps, 3 archer hob-goblins and 2 mimics, his army of mobs seems pretty potent. Hopefully he actually bothers to fight the boss.

He's saying some stuff making it seem like he wants to go... And starts taming the apple-shaped mobs the Mumble Tree summons. This is dull! My patience gave out, and I logged off, annoyed. Hopefully he isn't so boring the next time... I could only pray.