by Neven Iliev
The gnome’s eyes lost focus as realisation struck. She’d only asked because she had recognised the succubus’s face. After all, it was the exact same face Boxxy made whenever it spoke to her. She was obviously one of the summoned familiars Fizzy had heard of, probably the same one that had tampered with her memory. And with a nickname like Snack, it was painfully obvious what her function was. For the briefest moment, the gnome found herself sympathising with the demoness, despite the hostility she’d shown her.
However, when Xera was re-summoned a minute later, she did not look apprehensive, fearful, or even angry. She hummed lightly to herself, a thoroughly content smile on her face. Her mood and disposition had improved so much, in fact, that it looked like getting eaten was exactly what she’d wanted. Come to think of it, hadn’t her wails and moans sounded more… erotic than anything else? The gnome had averted her gaze from the violence, but the noises had been impossible to ignore.
Having deduced the nature of Xera’s ‘eccentricities,’ the perceptive Paladin felt incredibly silly for feeling even a tiny shred of sympathy for the pervert.
The box, the succubus and the gnome sat in near-total silence while they waited for Boxxy’s MP to recover. The Blight still had ahold of Fizzy, so she had to heal herself every few minutes, though Xera’s demonic constitution was able to repel the magical disease and fight off any negative side effects. Which was a good thing, seeing as her vitality was much weaker than Fizzy’s.
After about ten minutes of sitting around, Boxxy was able to repeat the summoning to drag Kora into the mortal realm. The muscular, red-skinned fiend appeared, sporting a gigantic, toothy grin. She disregarded the tiny Paladin entirely, raising both her right palms in the air as a greeting.
“Yo, boss! Nice to see you’re alive and kicking!”
“Me too,” the Mimic replied in good humour.
“Man, am I ever glad to be back here. I was seriously dreading losing you as a master, you know!”
It was the truth. Much like Xera, Kora had also grown attached to Boxxy. Unlike the succubus, however, her feelings were purely platonic. She just found it both amusing and exciting to be around this thing. Sure, there were some rough spots, like the boring-ass guard duty, dragging the heavy-ass cart, and the Mimic’s violent-ass experiments, but that was overshadowed by the fun she had in the interim. The sheer number of things she got to smash on a daily basis had made her the envy of all her peers, especially when one of those things was the tight butthole of a succubus practically begging to be dicked to literal death.
Speaking of which…
“Boss, requesting permission to fuck the succubus in the ass!”
Xera’s already smiling face brightened even more at Kora’s enthusiastic words. Just because she’d admitted to having feelings for her master didn’t mean that she no longer enjoyed a good pounding. Fizzy’s eyes, on the other hand, widened in surprise. She wasn’t quite sure how that would work between two clearly female demons, and she found herself morbidly curious. Of course, said curiosity would inevitably dissipate when she found out about Kora’s third leg.
“Denied.”
However, it seemed that that particular revelation would have to wait.
“First we find a place with tastier air.”
Just because the Mimic was able to fight off the degenerative effects of the Blight didn’t mean that it couldn’t feel them. Even if they only amounted to a vague sensation of lethargy and exhaustion, unpleasant things were still unpleasant, and thus it swiftly mobilised its demons and Paladin and set out into the night.
Boxxy once again found itself beset by hundreds of wild undead as it made its way through the barren, dying land. This time, however, it had Kora and Xera to do all the work. The succubus’s magical flame incinerated nearly everything in their path while the fiend stomped the rest into bloody paste.
Fizzy was just thankful that her role had been reduced to merely the healer who followed behind, providing support when necessary. It was a far less taxing job than what she had gone through that afternoon. She barely had to do anything, other than carry a torch and occasionally heal herself.
She didn’t let herself calm down too much, though. The unsettling glances she was getting from the two demons sent chills down her spine. One of them looked at her like she was a piece of trash, while the other seemed to be sizing her up as though she were planning to devour her. The poor gnome wasn’t quite sure which she should be more worried about.
As for Boxxy, it simply followed the trail of destruction left by its newly reinstated familiars, taking the opportunity to review its Status. Both the Warlock and Artificer Jobs appeared to be back to where they had been prior to its capture. It felt as though it had perhaps lost a bit of progress, but the all-important Jobs and Skills were there at the appropriate Levels, so it really couldn’t complain. After confirming for the umpteenth time that everything seemed to be in order, it finally turned its attention to the new things that it had acquired.
[Hero of Chaos]
The harbinger of chaos and confusion.
Requirements: Officially recognised by the Goddess of Coincidence
[Effects]
Grants the Chaotic Disposition, Agent of Chaos and Essence Concealment Skills.
The Perk itself appeared to be little more than a fancy title granting a bunch of Skills, but all of them were a bit… odd. For starters, they didn’t seem to confer any sort of Attribute bonus, plus their maximum Level appeared to be only 1. Still, the god called Willy had said that there was a good chance that Boxxy would find them tasty, so it inspected them with no small amount of anticipation.
Chaotic Disposition
Under the divine protection of the God of Probability.
Requirements: Hero of Chaos
Type: Passive
Range: Self
[Effects]
Has a chance to produce a random magical effect each time MP is spent.
This Skill may not be triggered more than once every 60 seconds.
The first one was… vague, to say the least. Still, Boxxy was eager to see how it worked, so it started firing Shadowbolts into the night sky, one after the other. This naturally drew the attention of the three women with whom it was travelling. They watched curiously until, on the sixth Shadowbolt, something finally happened.
[Chaotic energies swirl around you. Your body has turned pink for 1 minute.]
And indeed, the Mimic’s predominantly wood-brown shell turned a bright, eye-catching pink that put the gnome’s pigtails to shame.
“Pfffthahaha! What the fuuuck?! Aaah hahahahaha!”
Kora roared with laughter. There was never a dull moment as long as Boxxy was around. Xera and Fizzy, on the other hand, tried their hardest not to follow her example. The former did so out of respect, the latter, fear.
Boxxy was more than a little disturbed at this development. It wasn’t a fan of pink. That was the most un-stealthy colour imaginable, after all. It attempted to forcibly change its pigmentation, but the effect of the Chaotic Disposition Skill proved much stronger than Shapeshift. Granted, changing its colouration was something it already struggled with, but this was unlike anything it had experienced before. What was the purpose of this pointlessly powerful effect?! Then again, it was only temporary, so the Mimic gave up trying to fix it and moved on to its next god-given Skill.
[Agent of Chaos]
Complex machinations converge to a single act of power.
Requirements: Hero of Chaos
Type: Passive
Range: Self
[Effects]
Your actions will have more profound consequences.
Increases the effectiveness of the LCK Attribute by 10%.
This one was even less clear on what its function was. Sure, it boosted the effects of the LCK Attribute, but Boxxy still had very little idea of what that Attribute actually did in the first place. That aside, the more the Mimic pondered the obtuse ability, the more ominous it seemed. The always-b
ored God of Rounding Errors had probably forced the bizarre Skill on it so that things would get more interesting. And ‘more interesting’ didn’t necessarily mean good things for the one saddled with the ability.
The same could be said for the first Skill. If the effect truly was random, then it wasn’t a stretch to assume that it could cause something bad to happen. Or it might be unexpectedly beneficial. In the end, only time would tell if these Skills were tasty or not. That said, Boxxy’s scepticism only increased when it remembered that William had said that there was an eighty-something-percent chance of the Mimic finding the Hero thing to its liking. Good odds, but not nearly good enough, considering their source.
Then again, after seeing the last Skill on the list, Boxxy had to concede that Gigaclash may have had a point.
[Essence Concealment]
Being a Hero sometimes requires a certain degree of subtlety.
Requirements: Hero (Any)
Type: Toggled (OFF)
Activation Time: Instant
Cost: None
Range: Self
[Effects]
Allows the configuration of a Mask Status every time this Skill is toggled on.
Substitutes the user’s true Status with a Mask Status when targeted by Appraisal-type effects.
This Skill does not affect minds touched by divinity.
With this at its disposal, Boxxy would finally be able to overcome one of the major hurdles it faced when attempting to blend in civilised society – mandatory Appraisal checks. Oddly enough, this appeared to be a Skill that all Heroes had access to, not just Morgan’s. It briefly wondered if it might have gotten a better deal from one of the other members of Terrania’s pantheon, but it gave up on that thought. From what little it knew of those other deities, it had been able to determine that they all favoured one enlightened race or another. The Goddess of Happenstance was probably the only one willing to give the villainous box the time of day.
Boxxy therefore decided to be happy with what it had gotten and immediately activated the Skill to see what its options were. It spent the better part of an hour fiddling with the divine gift like some sort of toy while absentmindedly following the others.
[You are no longer afflicted with Blight. Automatic HP recovery has returned to normal.]
The sudden notification made Boxxy tear its attention away from the multitude of menus floating around in its mind to take in its surroundings. This left its current fake Status proclaiming it to be Enrico Rodriguez de la Butts, a dwarf woman with an apparent age of nine hundred and fifty fish. It would get back to that eventually, but right now it needed to get its bearings.
The diseased wasteland had given way to the same untamed terrain the Mimic had been traversing the past few weeks. The return trip had taken significantly less time than reaching the tower, which was unsurprising considering the short work Snack and Arms had made of the mindless undead. Not to mention that it didn’t have to stop and wait for Fizzy to catch her breath after every battle.
Once the group had put some more distance between themselves and the Blight-infested landscape, the Mimic found a shallow cave in the side of a random cliff and called for a rest until dawn.
Having finally gotten permission to take a break, the gnome collapsed on the spot and fell asleep instantly. She slept like the rock she lay face down on, not even registering the sounds of two pairs of demonic thighs slapping against each other just outside the cave. Her body had learned the hard way that prolonged exposure to Blight was an immensely draining experience. The fact that she had been able to push herself to this extent without passing out sooner was nothing short of a miracle.
Boxxy too found itself unreasonably drained by the Blight. Not as badly as the gnome, but it was still tired enough to need a good night’s sleep. It sat next to the tiny Paladin, its mind busy with thoughts of the future as it waited for sleep to claim it.
It considered that the man called Edward didn’t seem to be the kind of human who would leave a job unfinished and thus would no doubt chase after the escaped prisoners. Boxxy naturally wanted to avoid that, so it sought to put as much distance between the two of them as mimically possible. Once it had hidden itself away, it could continue to grow in strength and experience before finally taking its revenge. It would murder the ever-living crap out of the Spymaster, feast on his flesh, vomit him up, then eat him again.
That was a story for later, though. Right now, the shapeshifter concerned itself with recuperating from the Blight and taking a restful nap.
And then it would see if that lich could perhaps be… persuaded… to do its bidding.
Interlude
The Shadow of Death
[You died.]
The rather ominous notification was the last thing Valeria Vortena saw before her body gave out. Her spirit rose from her remains and looked on in mute horror as her killer – one of the very mimics she had described as harmless sacks of XP just minutes before – devoured her body in just a few bites. After which it proceeded to slam itself against the wall for seemingly no reason, and then, once it was done, licked up any evidence of Valeria’s fate and sat back down as if nothing had happened.
This is what killed me?!
Finding out that she had been murdered by such a moron somehow made the situation even worse. Her spirit lingered in the room, cursing the animate chest for a good three hours as she unleashed a lifetime’s worth of resentment. Her efforts were for naught, however, as the yet-unnamed mimic could not converse with disembodied spirits. Or even sense them, for that matter. It simply stood in a single spot, chesting as always while blissfully ignorant of the malicious spectre floating above it. As to why Valeria’s spirit continued to linger, it was simple:
Those who ventured into Taboo were not granted easy deaths.
Like every other Necromancer in existence, the young woman had violated the Taboo of Mortimer, the God of Death and Commerce. Plus, her rather unsavoury hobby of having questionable relations with monsters had broken the holy law of Nyrie, the patron Goddess of Nature and Fertility.
Though it wasn’t as though either of them had personally witnessed Valeria’s transgressions. Even if they were gods, they were neither omniscient nor omnipotent, which was why the gods of Terrania had used their considerable power to automate certain divine mechanisms within the world. One of which was the Taboo, used to punish mortals for knowingly and willingly breaking the laws set in place by the gods. There were nine of these holy decrees – one for each member of the pantheon – and they each forbade that which the divines saw as the antithesis of their respective existences.
Should a mortal commit one of these grave sins, they would immediately lose an amount of Faith (FTH) directly proportional to the severity of their crime. Once this Attribute dipped into the negative, which happened instantly to those without it on their Status, they would be marked with the stigma of the Taboo Skill. The deeper they sunk into depravity, the higher the Taboo would grow in Level. Conversely, if the sinner wholeheartedly repented and sought redemption, it was possible to have their crimes forgiven and the Taboo lifted.
However, that was not an option for some. There were those that had fallen so far that no number of offerings, prayers or pilgrimages could ever absolve them. Only death had the power to free those wayward souls from the weight of their transgressions. Literally, as Mortimer would see to it that their souls were cleansed of taint so that they could be reincarnated without their past lives influencing future ones.
Not personally, of course. Even the God of Death couldn’t attend to every single dead soul on Terrania by himself. He had a system in place, something the scriptures called the Well of Souls, which was responsible for processing the vast majority of the world’s dead.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t foolproof. Certain individuals… fell through the cracks, as it were. When that happened, it usually led to the creation of a cursed undead being that would be unable to move on unless its body was utterly destroyed. Taboo h
olders especially were likely to go down that path if the Well of Souls wasn’t able to claim them fast enough, which was what had happened to Valeria. Except that she couldn’t return to her own body, as it had been in the process of being digested.
As a result, the dungeon she had died in had claimed her spiteful soul. The dungeon core, which was simply fulfilling its function of populating the sprawling cave system with monsters, bound the woman to its service as a Level 13 Banshee. It suppressed her ego and enslaved her, forcing her to act as just another of the faceless undead within the Litigar Dungeon Complex’s Red Zone.
And she performed her function, quite admirably at that. Her brief life as an adventurer and a Necromancer had given her just the edge she’d needed. Even if she’d been robbed of her free will, certain practical skills and habits that had been drilled into her by her guild still remained. Her mindless, barely conscious self was able to use them to great effect as she helped her undead brethren prey upon targets of opportunity.
However, she occasionally found herself drifting from the Red Zone into the Yellow or Green. The grudge she held against the stupid, murdering box remained, along with her knowledge and training, and was powerful enough to cause her to drift away from her assigned area. These little jaunts didn’t last long before the dungeon’s leash pulled her back, but they were not entirely for naught. She did manage to cause the death of anyone unfortunate enough to cross her path, since those unprepared to face an ethereal enemy made for easy victims.
As a result, over the next few weeks she steadily progressed all the way up to Level 20. And as she grew in power, so did the dungeon’s hold on her psyche weaken. It was at this point that Valeria found herself – almost unthinkingly – using her newly acquired Possession Skill on a cute, low-Level elf girl passing through the Green Zone. The barely-awake part of her that yearned to once again own a living body practically leapt at the chance to inhabit such a beautiful creature.
One of the woman’s companions, a low-Level Priest, noticed her predicament almost immediately and directed the rest of her party to restrain her. His previous training had helped him to recognise the signs of an evil spirit within his teammate before she could harm any of her comrades. However, he lacked the necessary Skills and Spells to exorcise Valeria on the spot. Having no other choice, the Priest instructed the rest of his team to bind the elf-girl’s limbs and get her back to town as soon as possible. The possessed victim had struggled, wailed and screeched, but lacked the physical strength prevent the group’s burly Warrior from dragging her out of the dungeon.
