*Blip!*
“Another opened door…” I mutter to myself as I turn my head to the right, checking that it didn’t come from the door right next to me. “Ah, it isn’t this one. It’s fine.” I return my attention to the room on the other side of the glass panel.
“Can you see it?” Natalia urges me.
“I’m not sure. There are… plant-infested humans? Part of the floor is covered with their leaves, so I can’t see everything…”
“Should we open the door and check?”
“Umm…” I shake my head, “No, it shouldn’t be necessary.”
Natalia raises one eyebrow and shows me the two cards we’ve collected so far. She shows me two identical cards with a skull and the prohibited symbol drawn on them. “Are you sure? Didn’t they say there were more than two cards, and only one was useful?”
“I know…”
Finding the access card inside the botanical garden was easy. Although the monsters are designed for ambushes, we’re too good to fall for them. Furthermore, the lack of obstructions and abundance of trees gave us plenty of opportunities to hide and disengage at will. It was a matter of time until we inevitably found it.
It’s a completely different story for the underground passages, though, where a single monster group can effectively block the narrow corridors. Furthermore, the lack of light doesn’t help. When there are only shadows, it’s equally hard to hide than it is to spot the enemies, and any light we create will reveal our position.
The problem is that the more time we spend here and the more rooms we check, the harder it’ll get. More and more monsters are liberated from their locked cells and rooms as time goes on, who start to roam the dark corridors; and we can’t waste time or precious resources killing the monsters we ourselves liberate.
“Ah, I know!” I suddenly realize how to solve our problem, “Why don’t we check if the cards are real right now? If we have the good one, we can leave without regrets.”
“You’re right, we can try it now. I’m worried about wasting time, but if it works… Anyway, let’s try it.”
Natalia gives me one of the two cards and we start attacking them with our weapons. I use my dagger and she uses her staff.
*Clink, poof, clink, poof!* The repeated sounds of striking the hard objects echo in the narrow passage.
“I feel like a miner, striking the hard rock with a metal pick… This is boring. Did you see any change in your card yet?”
Since there’s a single good card, at least one of the two is guaranteed to be fake. The Mimic can copy the real access card, but it’s possible to kill it. The fake ones should return to their original form once we reduce the HP to zero.
“Sshht! I’ll tell you when I do. We’re making enough noise with our weapons already.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine…”
*Clink, poof, clink, poof!*
I’d rather fight my way out of a flood of monsters in this narrow corridor than spend any more time with this. I didn’t expect it’d take so long.
“Any change yet?”
“Shhht!”
Ugh…
We keep pummeling the two access cards with our weapons until the one I have starts changing. It grows in size, transforming into a chubby monster made out of stacked rocks. The Mimic’s dark slimy substance comes out from where the rocks touch each other.
“This one’s fake,” I announce, pointing at my monster. When I turn around, I find that Natalia, too, is staring at a monster identical to this one. It turns out the two access cards were fake.
“Mine too…” Natalia shakes her head, “Furthermore, we wasted a lot of time with this. We should have searched for the other cards without stopping.”
“I agree.” If I had known this would take so long, I’d never have suggested it.
With no option left but to keep searching, we resume exploring the underground tunnels. We need to find the real access card.
I observe my surroundings. White walls and ceiling, with what looks like discolored moss growing on them. The floor is uneven and flooded with water. There are a few working lights on the walls, but they don’t give enough light. Holding cells, mixed with containment units with security doors. If this place were real, I wonder what would be its purpose.
Coming from somewhere in front of us, it’s hard to know exactly where because the sound echoes in this place, we hear heavy footsteps and heavy breathing.
“That must be the boss,” says Natalia.
“Yes. These sounds, the groans… I’m certain, it’s a troll. We know the boss of this place is part troll, so it must be it.”
We exchange a look before continuing to move forward. We aren’t afraid of the boss. It’s slow and clunky. Even if it can block the whole passage with its massive frame, as long as we don’t get caught between it and another group of enemies, we’ll be fine. The mobs are more dangerous.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
This gives me an idea.
“Hey. Didn’t we find those exploding guys near this place?” I ask.
Natalia takes a look around before replying. “Hmm, I think so. I believe we found them in that passage over there. But why are you asking… Oh, I understand! Yes, let’s do it.”
----------------------------------------
“Uuooo! I hope you’re ready, Natalia, because I can’t stop now! It’s too late to go back!” I shout, desperately running through the dim passage.
Following behind me, there’s a long trail of monsters. I’ve provoked all the monsters I could find roaming the underground passages, and they’re now chasing me. It’s a monster train.
Leap is useless here. If I didn’t die yet, it’s because there aren’t any monsters faster than me. It isn’t like they aren’t trying to get me, though.
I duck just in time to avoid a web aimed to immobilize me. The sudden change in posture almost makes me fall to the ground, forcing me to use a hand to stabilize and impulse me back up. Before I can fully stabilize, a slime-like bat tries to grab hold of my head. But I jump to the side, somehow bounce on the wall, and escape from it before it can gag me. A single mistake is going to get me killed.
“Nataliaaaaaaaa!” I shout, desperate.
The battle noises coming from ahead grow in volume as I run.
“Ugh…! I know,” at last, Natalia’s reply reaches me, “I’m in a tough spot too, alright!?”
I understand that keeping a boss monster in place isn’t easy… but she can run away to a safe place if it gets dangerous while I can’t!
Evading a few more attacks from the monsters chasing me, I get close to my objective. “I’m turning the corner in five seconds!” I announce. “Five, four…”
“I’m doing it!”
When I count down, Natalia proceeds with the plan. Soon, I hear the familiar *Blip!* sound that announces that one of the holding cells or containment units has been unlocked.
“...three, two, one… Zero!”
With the last number, I turn the corner and run into another passage. To my left, the boss. To my right, the suicide bombers. To my back, the monster train I provoked. I rush past everything, running toward the single empty passage in front of me. At the same time, I evade all the incoming attacks. This would spell certain death for most players.
“Wall, wall, wall, wall, wall…!”
“I know! Stop repeating that word all the time!”
“Wall, wall, wall, wall…!” I continue repeating the same word, despite Natalia’s dissatisfied face. She furrows at me, running side-by-side, as she casts the spell.
With rumbling noises, the Earth Wall grows. As it grows, I, being a step behind Natalia, have to make a jump over it to reach the other side. I grab Natalia, who has stopped for some reason, and pull her with me.
“Don’t stop, keep running!”
“...I know.” She allows herself to be pulled by me.
We hear the monsters attacking the Earth Wall. Under so much pressure, it starts collapsing. And then…
…The Fireball I delayed explodes on the other side of the wall, initiating a cascade of explosions from the monsters killed by it. They too explode in turn, creating what sounds like fireworks.
*Boom, boom, boom!*
The explosion grows in size, obliterating what remains of the Earth Wall, and sends us flying into the ground.
“And to think we got the best of it…” Natalia shakes her head. “I wonder how many monsters will have survived.”
“I… I don’t think there are too many. Maybe the boss and a few stragglers. And those that are in their cells. Other than this… they all should have died in the explosion.”
“I think so too.”
We chuckle and stand up. What was dangerous was the increasing number of enemies. But now that we’ve dealt with most of them, we can safely search for the access card.
“Alright. We’re almost there. We just need to find the last key and we’ll have this!” I pump my fist. I expected Natalia to follow suit, but instead, she stays silent. “...what?”
She looks at me awkwardly, looking away before looking back at me. “No, it’s just… it’s just that your butt is burning right now…”
“What!?” I quickly turn around, grasping my butt for signs of fire. Just in case, I drop to the ground, filled with water, to put it out.
Natalia keenly watches me, a hand over her mouth. It’s then that I realize. I’ve been tricked! If I had been burning, it would have appeared on my status screen!
“You little…! It was a lie!”
I grab her by the neck. Instead of denying it or trying to get rid of me, she laughs merrily.
“Hahaha, you fell for it.”
----------------------------------------
“Have you noticed it?” I say, turning to look at Natalia.
She’s holding the two recently acquired access cards. We didn’t check which one’s the good one, but everyone says there are four, including the fake ones. One of these two must be the right one.
Natalia nods. “I did.”
We look at each other and nod, saying at the same time, “We’re being chased.”
Other players might not have noticed, but our expert eyes and ears aren’t easy to deceive.
At first, it was just a bird. An unexpected bird caught my attention while exploring the underground. I thought it was a normal monster, but unlike them, it didn’t seem to want to attack us, so I ignored it. Now, there are two more, waiting for us to lower our guard before striking.
We know who they are, and I hoped we wouldn’t find them. Because they’re the most troublesome monsters for players like us. They aren’t easy to evade, have multiple ways to approach us, and are some of the strongest monsters in this dungeon.
They’re the worst enemies of thrill seekers.
“What do we do?” Asks Natalia. “Do you want to deal with them now? I don’t think we can get rid of them like with the other monsters.”
“Hmm… I guess we have no choice but to hunt the Hunters.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/ZGSK4Pl.png]
“The fastest way to know if something is a Mimic is to attack it. The same is true for all other monsters that can’t be identified or that pretend to be decorations in the dungeons.
Ah, yes. I say fastest, but it isn’t necessarily something that takes a short time. When a monster can’t be identified, the game won’t show the HP bar either, to stop the invaders from immediately knowing it’s a monster. This means to reveal it, the monster must either show itself voluntarily after getting hurt, or remain still, pretending to be a decorative element until it dies. It can take a while to bring down the latter if they have defensive skills, that’s why it can take a while. Either way, it’s as I said: you must attack it to reveal its true nature.”
- Excerpt of an interview with a random DMA player.