by Iliev, Neven
The man’s rant tapered off as he breathed heavily.
“But you,” he continued with renewed vigor. “You’re different, aren’t you? You’re practical, pragmatic, logical. You’ve seen both sides of the fence. That’s why I thought I could get through to you, make you understand. That there has to be a better way than this endless cycle of mutual destruction.”
“You’re right. There probably is.”
“You agree, then?!”
“Indeed. However-”
[Your mass has been reduced by 40%.]
[Your weight has been reduced by 40%.]
After secretly equipping two of Keira’s rings underneath its cloak, the burden on Boxxy’s bones and muscles became only a third of what it used to be. Its body still felt much heavier than normal, but it was no longer enough to limit its movement. It lunged upwards at the surprised, almost delighted-looking old man and grabbed him by the neck with its left hand, its grip choking the life out of the old man.
“-it’s not nearly as tasty,” it growled.
Boxxy transformed its right arm into a giant metal spike and stabbed the suffocating old man through the chest. Then the stomach. Then the chest again. Then wherever else it hadn’t already put a hole in him, over and over. One the sixth or seventh strike, it felt something snap underneath its ever-tightening grip on his neck, and Shinji Arakawa—the man who claimed to have come here from another world—went completely limp.
[Level up!
[Level up!
[Level up!
[Congratulations, you are now a Level 50 Warlock! INT +4. MNT +4. END +4.]
[Congratulations, you are now a Level 23 Doppelganger! All Attributes +2.]
[Feat of strength performed! You have unlocked a new Perk: Anti-centennial.]
“Ah! Should have used a sword…”
The monster muttered regretfully at the missed opportunity as the effects of the Ultimate Skill around it instantly dissipated. It discretely collected the old man’s corpse into its Storage and turned its attention towards a retreat.
“Snack! Get yourself back to the hideout! Move!”
“Huff, huff, huff,” the succubus panted as she picked herself off the ground. “Y-Yes! Right away, Master!”
She forced herself to stand, then cloaked herself in Invisibility and flew off towards the closest hylt tree—the one due north of Boxxy’s current position. Out of the corner of its eye, it noticed Shinji’s formerly bound fiend picked himself off the ground and gave his liberator a thumbs-up.
“Thanks for that,” he spoke with a deep, thundering voice. “I really don’t know how much more of that moron’s bullshit I could stand! Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few decades’ worth of resentment to vent and plenty of unwilling participants to help me out!”
He strode off towards the Imperial ranks with his glaive held hoisted on his shoulder, chuckling ominously. It was none of Boxxy’s business what an unbound fiend was about to do, but it concluded it was probably a good thing he targeted the humans rather than elves. Putting that guy’s existence out of its mind, the shapeshifter forcibly dismissed the highly conspicuous Arms and chanted a Spell. It was actually in a bit of a rush, as that little showdown had attracted too much attention. While it did want its employers to notice the Sandman’s contributions to the battle, this was the wrong kind of attention. At the very least Boxxy had a bit of time, so it wasn’t particularly worried as it steadily mumbled the magic-inducing gibberish under its breath.
“Snack, how far did you get?” it called mentally out, just as it was about to finish.
“I’m just entering the upper canopy right now, Master.”
It wasn’t ideal, but good enough.
“Transfamiliar!”
With a shouted word of arcane power, the Sandman’s towering, cloaked figure vanished in a puff of green smoke. In his place appeared a very confused-looking succubus that fell over face-first from the post-transfer disorientation. Xera lifted her face off the dirt and looked up, just in time to catch a glimpse of something headed straight towards her.
It was a black-haired, golden-winged woman, her bloodied metal staff already mid-swing.
“Well, fu-”
[Your familiar has been banished.]
Part Six
Boxxy, having just transitioned back into Keira mode, licked its lips at the absolutely delicious Perk it got from that encounter.
[Anti-centennial]
Those who stand on the shoulders of giants will never attain the heights of those who have trampled said giants underfoot.
Requirements: Single-handedly kill an Ultimate Skill holder.
[Effects]
Increases all XP gained by 10%.
Tasty rewards aside, the shapeshifter considered just how lucky it was to come out of that fight the victor. In its haste and greed, it had completely neglected to consider a Level 100 human’s Ultimate Skill before engaging him in combat. Logically speaking, an Ultimate was always related to the Job it came from, so a Warlock that focused almost entirely on offensive power should normally have one that was excessively destructive. Or at least that’s what common sense dictated, and yet Shinji’s Abyssal Zone had seemed surprisingly… lackluster.
That wasn’t to say that the old man’s Ultimate wasn’t powerful. It was doubtless that any human or elf who didn’t have a significant amount of Strength (STR) and Endurance (END) would have been crushed flat under that enormous pressure. It also affected everything around the user indiscriminately and interfered with magic to some degree. Even the Warlock’s own fiend couldn’t move freely inside it. In the end, all the Ultimate had done was to stall and prolong the fight since that Warlock seemed unable to do anything to Boxxy other than tie it down and throw words at it. He might have had some way or another to finish off his restrained opponent, but the shapeshifter had not given him the chance.
Looking at it objectively, the thing that had truly saved Boxxy back there was Keira. More specifically, the two weight-reducing rings that were part of her disguise. That delusional old man had been rather unfortunate to pick this particular individual as his opponent. It was almost as if the universe conspired to have him and his idiotic views disappear from Terrania. Which, considering he’d most likely been influenced by the Agent of Chaos Skill in the past, might have actually been the case.
Regardless of the circumstances, Boxxy had once again profited immensely from someone else’s misfortune, and there was yet more potential gain. The shapeshifter, now safely concealed by the hylt tree’s canopy, decided to process Shinji’s body before it returned to the dryads’ little hidey-hole. Using Corpse Absorption directly in front of them seemed like a bad idea since it might ruin the illusion of ‘mummy.’
Wait, was it even a good idea to use Corpse Absorption to begin with? It was undoubtedly a high-quality corpse, but Boxxy had some doubts when it considered the possible results. That Skill always targeted the highest-ranking parts of one’s Status, so realistically speaking, there were only four possible outcomes.
The most likely one would be failure, which would be of no consequence. The second most likely would be an Attribute gain, which would be INT without a doubt. The tastiest would be if it absorbed a whole bunch of Warlock Job Levels. The final favorable result would be a Skill gain. So, while most likely it would get either a huge chunk of INT or a bit fat nothing, it didn’t want to waste the potential of the other two. Job Levels being absorbed would be a huge waste since it was already at Level 50. Any XP gained at this stage would still be ‘stored’ until it got the Job advanced, but doing things that way would greatly diminish the amount gained. After a brief moment of deliberation it concluded that, in order to make sure it got the most out of Shinji’s ‘donation,’ the shapeshifter would need to find a Level 75 Warlock trainer first.
As for the potential Skill gain, that was going to be either Ruin Mastery or Domination Mastery, most likely the former. Cadaver Absorption would transfer the highest-Leveled Skill of its ta
rget, and the maximum Level of Mastery type Skills grew by five every time a relevant job advanced. As a Level 100 Warlock, Shinji most likely had at least one that was at Level 25. The Skills he had unlocked from his Job were forever stuck at Level 10, making it impossible for them to even compete. His Ultimate was completely out of the question since those abilities only had a single Level to begin with.
This mental arithmetic wasn’t just blind conjecture, but the results of much trial and error. After all, Boxxy had so far only gained various Mastery Levels whenever it absorbed a corpse’s Skill. The fact it managed to obtain Divine Attunement from that relatively low-Leveled Priest was pretty much an exception, as her Holy Mastery was probably not maxed out. The shapeshifter had also gotten Acid Spray from those giant crab-like monsters during its time in Erosa, but that too was an exception since feral creatures very rarely had any form of Mastery.
Either way, Boxxy’s current Ruin Mastery Level was 12 out of 15. If it gained a whole lot of Proficiency for it from Shinji’s corpse, then it had a feeling much of it would be wasted, just like the potential Warlock Levels. The other outcomes of the Cadaver Absorption were that it might fail or just provide a bunch of INT, neither of which were time-sensitive. Therefore, Boxxy decided to hold off on absorbing the corpse and kept it in its Storage. That airless space would keep the body from decomposing for a while. The shapeshifter had no idea why it worked like that, but it noticed that any food in its pocket dimension took much longer to spoil than it normally would. Besides, it could still absorb a halfway-rotted corpse as long as the head and heart were intact, so it had plenty of time to come up with a more long-term way of preserving the body.
As for the items the man wore, the robes and staff were not some disguised high-end magic items, but the same relatively low-grade stuff the rest of the Empire’s forces had. At least the jewelry was on-point. That human wore a number of magic rings and a shiny-looking silver amulet with a dark, orange gem embedded in it. All of them had different enchantments, of course, as only the effect with the highest magnitude would apply should multiple enchantments provide the same bonus.
The shapeshifter, in an ever-increasing trend of realizing its own ignorance, had no clue as to what caused this strange limitation. It had tried asking about it as Keira, but that only ended with the simple-minded creature being bombarded with a whole lot of strange words and technical terms it hadn’t encountered before. What had that gnomish Enchanter said? The Something-or-other Coefficient could not do its thing while another thing interfered with the third thing? And what the crap was a ‘five-point-conflux event’ supposed to be?
Oh, well. It wasn’t as if Boxxy actually cared about the minute details. It had asked more out of sheer curiosity, rather than a desire to learn things. The shapeshifter had tons of practical knowledge anyway. For instance, it knew eighty-four distinct ways to end a person’s life, either directly or remotely, on top of having an encyclopedic knowledge of enlightened anatomy. It could also put an explosive device together with both its eyes and MLG closed. That was all the information it needed to do the things it wanted to do and get the stuff it wanted to get at this stage in its life. Anything else was just pointless trivia.
Thinking about its mimicked Mana Locator Gland, Boxxy found its mood go slightly sour. It reminded the monster of its continued inability to copy a beholder’s far superior version of the sensory organ. It wasn’t difficult to find one of those many-eyed heads floating around Azurvale, so it had had plenty of opportunities to study and copy their MLG. Unfortunately, the way it worked was completely alien to the shapeshifter. Especially the part where the whole thing was completely detached and just sort of floated around inside the demon’s body. It also spun around wildly around each axis. It was not the sort of organ a doppelganger’s core shapeshifting was physically incapable of mimicking, even if applying that osmosis trick Boxxy had learned during its attempts at creating organic wheels.
Having arrived just outside the dryad quintuplets’ safe space, Keira slapped her cheeks to get back into character and was just about to step inside when she felt the Comm-crystal on her belt vibrate. This was unexpected, as there should have been at least a few more minutes before Fort Yimin’s defenders were supposed to fall back and retreat. It wasn’t until the shapeshifter took the item out that it realized it wasn’t Keira’s Comm-crystal vibrating, but the Sandman’s.
That was close, it sighed internally, I was so distracted I almost answered it with the wrong face on. I should really start labeling these things like that Underwood guy.
In retrospect, it really should have expected this. The Republic’s officers had demanded the password to that particular Comm-crystal the day before to better coordinate with the mysterious Sandman during the siege. It was only natural that they would want to have a word after what had gone down on the outside. Deciding it would be bad for business if it kept them waiting, Boxxy quickly changed character and answered the call, causing the familiar face of Silus Underwood to project from the Comm-crystal.
“Hello, mister Underwood,” it said in a displeased tone.
The elf on the other end furrowed his brows for a moment before confirming today’s passphrase.
“In brightest day, in blackest night-”
“-I shan’t stop tickling bums with all my might.”
“Hello, Sandman. You know, I honestly wish you’d pick more decent words for these.”
“Never mind that,” Boxxy growled. “What do you want? I’m busy.”
“You’ve been busy indeed, haven’t you? That’s exactly why I’m calling. Just so we’re on the same page, you did remove the Warlock VIP that attacked you, yes?”
“Yes. He’s dead.”
“Ah, good. Very good,” Underwood said with obvious relief.
It would seem the intelligence officer needed additional confirmation regarding that Warlock’s fate. Although one of his scouts had been keeping an eye on the Sandman, he failed to see much of their battle since it kicked up a huge amount of dust and smoke. The grunt didn’t even realize the vigilante’s opponent was a Ranker until that large-scale Ultimate Skill was revealed, at which point many sets of eyes were gathered on them. As a result, there were numerous reports of the cloaked mercenary somehow shrugging off the immense gravity and catching his opponent by surprise, then strangling and stabbing the life out of him. The human’s presumably dead body had disappeared somewhere under the Sandman’s cloak, and the vigilante vanished several seconds later, just before that Gilded Hand bruiser arrived at the scene.
“I won’t ask how or why,” the elf continued, “but you have the Republic’s gratitude.”
“I can’t eat gratitude.”
“Indeed. That’s why I have been authorized to offer you a deal. Shinji Arakawa should have had a necklace on him, a silver one with an orange gemstone in it. If it is in your possession, then the Republic would very much want to take it off your hands. For a generous reward, of course.”
The Sandman went silent. While it was true that more money was definitely a good thing, it did not want to pass up on uniquely shiny things so easily. That’s why it still held onto things like that bum’s golden skeleton, as well as the Profanus Gloria—the cursed chalice that it had created awhile back. Besides, if the Republic wanted it, then perhaps this was a magic item of some power. Boxxy hadn’t confirmed its effects, but if this was an Artifact, or maybe even-
“Since you are mulling it over, then am I to understand the item in question is in your possession?”
The elf’s words completely derailed the monster’s train of thought. That Underwood fellow managed to get a read on Boxxy’s thoughts just from that brief moment of silence. The shapeshifter had always been wary of his sharp intuition, which was why it wanted to avoid talking with him as much as possible. Unfortunately, asking for another point of contact was no longer an option. Even if the Republic leadership agreed, Underwood would definitely listen in on the conversations anyway.
�
��Yes, I have it,” it admitted, “and I would be happy to take you up on your offer.”
If the Republic wanted this thing, then perhaps handing it over was for the best. The last thing Boxxy wanted was for them to start hunting the Sandman over a trinket of dubious origins. It just didn’t seem to be worth the trouble, and the payout would likely be enough to soothe its collector’s spirit.
“Very good,” the intelligence officer nodded.
“Now, this reward you mentioned-”
“We will need to discuss that a later date,” Underwood interrupted. “While we want the item, it is by no means urgent. This is neither the time nor the place for negotiations.”
“Hmm, that is so,” the shapeshifter conceded.
“Therefore, I would like to ask that you safeguard the treasure for the moment.”
“Then, I shall take my leave of this battlefield and contact you a few days from now. Assuming you still live, of course.”
“Of course,” the elf replied with a wry smile. “I shall look forward to that day. Underwood, out.”
The intelligence officer cut off the connection, and the blue-tinged image of a head cloaked in rags disappeared from his palm. He went back to organizing what was left of the 1st Scouting Battalion. Even if the snipers in the treetops had the element of surprise at first, they were now taking return fire from the enemy’s archers and long-range Spells. The Republic’s forces had already lost more than a third of their thirteen thousand troops. The upside was that the enemy’s casualties were nearly double their own. Hilda’s Ultimate was giving the Republic a massive edge in combat. Combined with the massive disturbance that Sandman inflicted had allowed the defenders to come out massively ahead in that ‘trade.’
*RRRUMBLE*
Underwood’s grim mental arithmetic was suddenly interrupted when the floor underneath his feet shook mightily with a heavy roar. The entire stone keep that rested at the center of Fort Yimin rattled and creaked while dust fell out of the less-than-tidy ceilings and walls.
