by Neven Iliev
It tried again, but it didn’t fare any better. It didn’t seem like the grate was withstanding the force of those shockwaves, but more like the magic itself wasn’t exerting as much power as it normally would. That was because military fortifications such as this would have some sort of enchantment that would repel magical attacks. It was only common sense. Otherwise any moron with a bunch of Levels could topple a castle. The only reason Boxxy’s Spells worked on the walls outside was that the enchantments had all waned and lost their hold over the years. However, the magic built into the central part of the old fort had not succumbed to the ravages of time just yet, which was the only reason this tower was even standing in the first place.
Not that the Mimic had any idea about any of this. From its perspective, it just wasn’t hitting things hard enough.
*Krakakoom*
“Huh?” exclaimed Xera.
She was still a bit stupefied when she realised the big bad ‘enemy’ her master was so wary of was an inanimate object. The angry face and hate-filled shouting her albino imitation made were also a first. So she was slow to react when said master flared up with the really dangerous Power Overwhelming.
“Master! If you –”
“Dark Explosion!!”
*KADOOOOONNN*
Aimed right at the middle of that infuriating grate, the extra-strength Dark Explosion finally did the trick. It overwhelmed the anti-magic enchantment on the steel and the surrounding stone, blowing them apart. The nearby wall of the tower itself also got caught up in the Spell, setting off a chain reaction that collapsed the entire thing on top of Boxxy and Xera and burying them in debris.
A few minutes later, the animate chest crawled out from under the rubble. The pseudo-Xera sticking out of it had been pierced clean through the chest by one metal rod, and a second, smaller one was stuck in the Mimic’s main body. The extra-powerful Spell had turned the metal rods the grating was assembled with into spear-sized shrapnel.
“Piss!” it cursed, using Xera’s borrowed mouth. “That stupid grate, how dare it try to kill me again!”
“Master, that was entirely your own fault,” came a voice from nearby.
The real succubus was currently digging herself out of the rubble. Apparently the metal shrapnel had missed her entirely, and the falling stones weren’t enough to finish her off.
“No, it wasn’t,” insisted Boxxy. “That thing is just really dangerous.”
It refused to admit that it had inadvertently hurt itself again, despite copious amounts of evidence to the contrary. Especially since it should have known what would happen if it went for the Big Bang in an enclosed space. So what if that little fact slipped its still developing mind in the heat of the moment? The inanimate object was surely to blame, not itself.
Xera let out a disappointed, almost defeated sigh.
“Haaaah … Whatever you say, Master.”
The cluelessness of this monster that annihilated an entire city for kicks calling a lump of metal ‘dangerous’ was too much for her to handle. She decided to avoid pressing the issue and change the subject entirely.
“So what happens now?” she asked in a dull monotone.
“…”
Boxxy took a few moments to calm down a bit. That was a good question, wasn’t it? Why did they come in here to begin with?
Oh right – checking out the place. The Mimic pulled the metal rods from its body and went back to its more compact spider-chest form. It went over to double-check on the passageway it blew apart, but it was inaccessible. The narrow, steep staircase entrance was covered with rubble, as was the path beyond it. Clearing the way would take substantial effort, not to mention the basement it led to might have collapsed anyway. The Mimic’s little magically-empowered tantrum had put the nail in the coffin for this old ruin.
Well, technically it was possible to use Storage to excavate the place and explore what was downstairs, but Boxxy had more pressing matters to attend to.
“We go back to where Arms is.”
Like those twenty-plus corpses waiting for it back at the massacred caravan. It had gotten a lucky streak of successes with its Cadaver Absorption recently and wanted to see if that would continue.
And so Boxxy and Xera left the former fort and current pile of rubble behind and made their way back to Kora. The sky had already gone dark and the stars peered down from between gaps in the forest’s canopy. While this forest was never particularly hospitable during the day, it was much worse during the night. Most nocturnal monsters were far more vicious than their daylight-loving counterparts. The janther was a prime example of that, and this area was home to one of those self-proclaimed kings ... an individual who was currently investigating the scent of a challenger that had entered his domain.
At least that was what it seemed like at first. The simple beast was more than a little confused when it found out this ‘challenger’ was a box with legs, rather than one of its own kind. It observed this curious creature from a distance, not sure what to do with it. That wooden shell and stringy-looking legs didn’t seem particularly appetizing. On the other hand, this thing carried the faint scent of another male’s urine and was brazenly walking around its territory, which was an insult – one this janther would not forgive. So it gave up on stalking its target from a distance and crept closer, using its Stealth Skill to make sure it wasn’t discovered.
And it worked perfectly until it got to about ten metres away. That was when the hunter felt an odd tingling in its whiskers.
“Ebonfire ~♪!”
Followed immediately by an intense burning sensation that covered its entire being.
“Fireball!”
Then came a second, even more intense, pain spreading across its face. The beast roared and charged forward in a blind rage, but it was no match for the Mimic. Boxxy may have had the disadvantage when it came to base parameters, but its Attributes were significantly higher. And it could use magic. The janther was therefore slain with little to no effort by the monster with a combined Level of 57.
[Level up!]
[Congratulations, you are now a level 25 Warlock! INT +2. MNT +2. END +2.]
[You have learned a new Spell: Singularity.]
Correction, fifty-eight.
“Status,” chanted Boxxy, eager to see what changes had occurred.
[General Information]
Boxxy T. Morningwood
Mimic (Greater), Genderless, 3 months old
Level 33.52 Mimic
Level 25.00 Warlock (MAX)
1026/1026 HP (+2.3/sec)
543/910 MP (+1.1/sec)
The Warlock Job reaching its ‘MAX’ Level at 25 wasn’t that big of a surprise. Those seemed to go up in multiples of 25. However, the lack of a (+) sign anywhere on this Status screen was most unsettling. Boxxy tried to ask its font of knowledge about this, but Snack wasn’t particularly helpful. Her Status worked in a completely different way, after all, so she never cared about the Job progression of mortals.
Still, someone with her wealth of life experience inevitably picked up on certain things whether they wanted to or not, like the whole Rank Up process. One of her old masters obsessed over it constantly, so it was natural she would learn a thing or two about it. Just how she knew that one way to advance the Warlock Job was to visit a trainer who worked for one of the guilds. That wasn’t very helpful to Boxxy, though, as those places would never accept a monster’s custom.
There was some good news, at least. The succubus remembered something about an alternate way of advancing to the next tier of one’s Job but couldn’t offer any details. She never gave a damn about such trivialities, so it was hardly surprising some things went in one ear and out the other. Boxxy would need to extract information about developing its Warlock Job from a library or guild by using its Snack as a proxy pair of eyes.
Bottom line was that it wasn’t going to be getting any new Skills for the moment, but at least it got a brand new Spell for its troubles, right?
[Sin
gularity]
Requirements: Level 25 Warlock, INT 200, MNT 100
School: Ruin
Type: Area Effect
Cost: 500 MP
Range: 40 metres
[Effects]
Creates a gravity well at the target location for 15 seconds.
Requires a focusing crystal.
Okay, maybe not. It was still short of the 200 INT requirement, but that could be solved with a few more Levels. The real problem was that ‘focusing crystal.’ Yet another thing Boxxy didn’t know about. Inspecting the words didn’t offer any new insight, either. The knowledge of the Spell seemed to indicate it was an apple-sized bauble and that it would be consumed to invoke the Spell, but that was it. More useful data like what it was made of, where to get it, or what it actually looked like was not available. And, most important of all, the Mimic had no idea if a focusing crystal was tasty or not. It didn’t sound very tasty, but it would probably be shiny at the very least.
“Oh, Master! You’re back!” said Kora when she saw the two of them step out of the treeline. “Thank fuck! I was getting so bored that I –”
“I don’t care. Did you finish retrieving the bodies?” asked Boxxy, shoving aside her complaints.
“ … Yeah, they’re over there in a pile.”
The fiend pointed behind her towards a deep crater in the cobblestone road, the site of Xera’s butt-bombing. All the dead bandits were there, as well as what was left of the adventurers. The mutilated corpses and miscellaneous body parts were piled up in a way that resembled a disgusting salad. Which, considering the circumstances, was oddly fitting. The Mimic went to the corpse pile and started processing them using Cadaver Absorption.
“Urk!” exclaimed Kora. “Is it … drinking those people?”
“Oh yeah,” said Xera. “This is your first time seeing that, isn’t it?”
“What the fuck! It does this regularly? Why!”
“It’s some weird Skill the Master uses to permanently upgrade its Status. I’m not sure on the details, but I think that’s how it got the Warlock Job without visiting a trainer. Seems to be quite convenient.”
“That’s an understatement! Considering the body count that thing has racked up in just a day, I’d say it’s almost too convenient!”
The succubus shrugged. “Maybe. It’s not a bad thing, though. Honestly, I don’t mind having that box as a Master. It may be a moron, but it’s certainly more entertaining than my previous contractors.”
“Hmm ... You do have a point. I mean, it’s only been my first day, yet I got to smash, like, a hundred different things! Certainly way better than my previous jobs. Though to be honest, this is only my third time being bound to a mortal, so I don’t know if that statement counts for much.”
“What? Really?” Xera blurted, eyes wide. “Only three contracts? Aren’t you like three hundred years old?”
On average, a demon got contracted to a new master once every fifty or sixty years, so cases like Kora’s were quite rare.
“Well, my first master was okay, I guess,” explained the fiend. “It was some crime boss or something who had me act as her bodyguard. I mostly threw mean looks at people, but I saw a fair bit of action.”
“That doesn’t seem too bad.”
“Yeah, it was alright. A lot more fun than being used as some ‘champion of justice’ or whatever. My second contractor sucked donkey ass though. It was some damnable dwarf that kept me bound in his service for almost a century. The asshole only summoned me three times! Three! And the worst part is they were all to help him move furniture around!”
Xera grimaced. “Wow, that sounds terrible. No wonder you jumped on this thing’s fiend contract so eagerly!”
“If anyone here’s the eager one, it’s you, isn’t it!”
The two demons kept making small talk for a while before it inevitably descended into their favourite pastime: hate-fucking. It really was no surprise that the two of them seemed unable to keep their hands off each other – almost as if they were newlyweds on a honeymoon. After all, the pleasures of the flesh were impossible to experience in a place like the Beyond, so they indulged themselves at every opportunity in the physical realm.
Boxxy ignored the flesh-on-flesh slapping noises coming from behind and continued processing the corpses. It had absorbed thirteen mostly intact bodies, seven that had a few missing parts and three that were basically a head and torso with extras. It appeared that the Mimic’s earlier lucky streak had run out, however, as none of them yielded a success. There were also a bunch of leftover bits that weren’t usable, so it just devoured them to fill its belly. It did, however, regret waiting so long to do so, as humans were at their tastiest while they were still warm.
Having concluded its desecration of the dead, Boxxy climbed out of the crater and went to investigate the two cargo wagons and the overturned stagecoach.
At first, the food cart seemed to be a really good catch, but that judgement quickly changed after the Mimic sampled its contents. The preserved food it carried would definitely satisfy the monster’s hunger, but Boxxy would be hard-pressed to call it tasty. The fruits and vegetables in particular had little to no flavour, while the salted fish was downright nasty. The various dried meats and jerky were all right, though. After tasting a bit of the merchandise, Boxxy began putting all of it, except for the fish, into its Storage. Food was food, even if it wasn’t particularly tasty. Having another source of nutrition would allow Boxxy to absorb more corpses rather than be forced into eating them to sustain itself.
The fish could just fuck off and disappear though. They were almost as untasty as the mummified remains left behind by Cadaver Absorption, so it didn’t even bother with them.
[Proficiency level increased. Storage is now Level 5. END +1. INT +1. WIS +2.]
This was the first time in a long while Boxxy had used the Storage Skill so much, so gaining a Level of it wasn’t that big of a surprise. In fact, Boxxy was counting on it. The higher the Skill Level, the higher the pocket dimension’s capacity. At Level 4 it would have been impossible to fit in all the cargo it wanted to carry around, but Level 5 gave it more space. It was filled almost to bursting anyway but still had a few cubic metres’ worth of room inside it as it moved on to the second wagon.
This one held a plethora of common items one would find in a general store and was slightly more exciting, at least at first. After all, the Mimic had never seen the vast majority of things in here, like kitchen utensils, wooden plates, commoner clothes, string, hammers, nails, paints, farming tools, and so on. However, simple curiosity was all the attention they got. Once they were judged as neither shiny nor tasty, they became unworthy of the Mimic’s notice. It still took a bag of glass marbles and a mining pick though; the former were somewhat shiny and looked like they would be fun to play around with, and the latter seemed like it was good at breaking things. Certainly better than slamming its swords or daggers into hard surfaces.
Satisfied, Boxxy left the cargo wagons behind and approached the ruined stagecoach. It seemed Arms had been slacking when it gave her the order to gather all the corpses in one spot. Then again, it only told her to gather the ‘redheads and adventurers.’ It failed to realise there would be people in the wrecked pile of wood at the very front until it was standing right next to it and saw a bloodied hand sticking out from under the mass of planks. It tore through the wreckage, pulling it apart and flinging the debris haphazardly around using its tentacles. To its surprise, it actually found not one but three corpses inside.
The first was an adult male human. One of the bandits’ Spells had hit him on the side of the head, destroying half of it. He was eaten to become part of the Mimic’s Biomass. Oh right – Biomass only increased in proficiency if Boxxy consumed flesh. Focusing too much on Cadaver Absorption would have a negative impact on this Skill’s development, and the Mimic couldn’t have that. If it wasn’t for the additional HP recovery it granted, the monster would have surely died in its encounter with the
Fleshmaiden. Regrowing all those lost body parts would also be impossible without the deep reserves of raw shapeshifting material this Skill allowed it to store up.
The monster now regretted not chowing down on that janther it killed. Consuming hundreds of kilograms worth of meat and guts like that would have surely helped push Biomass closer to Level 4. Using Cadaver Absorption on it felt like a waste, in retrospect. Perhaps, in the future, it would be better to devour large and relatively weak creatures like that. Smaller ones could be absorbed in order to raise its Cadaver Absorption proficiency, since the size of the body didn’t seem to actually matter when it came to that particular Skill, unlike Biomass.
Speaking of which, the second and third corpses in that wrecked caravan were quite small ... puny even. They were both gnomes – a race of people said to share some distant ancestry with dwarves. Their average height was only about a hundred and twenty centimetres. They could almost pass for human children, were it not for their well-trimmed facial hair and slightly ‘off’ proportions. Their heads, for instance, seemed too large for their bodies, while their arms were so long that they could probably touch their knees without bending over.
For Boxxy, this was the first time it had encountered this race. Based on their anatomical oddities, it was immediately able to recognize they were not human, so it was slightly curious how they would taste. It wrapped its tongue around one’s waist and gobbled it up like a piece of candy. These things were so small, the Mimic could probably fit two or three of them inside its mouth cavity at once.
As for the taste, it was nothing overwhelming. They had a flavour very similar to that of humans, much like the elves and dwarves it had already sampled multiple times. They were still tasty, but humans were definitely the best. The monster didn’t eat the second one though, as these scrawny morsels would do little to satisfy its hunger. The only reason it ate the first one was to get a feel for their taste, so Boxxy just absorbed the second. This resulted in another failure, but the Mimic wasn’t all that bothered by such outcomes. It wasn’t like it lost anything other than MP when it ran that sort of gamble, so there was no point in feeling disappointed.
