Player Reborn 2

by Deck Davis

  “Got it. Check your maps. Since we’re a party, anything we find will update on all our maps.”

  Tripp opened his map, seeing a zoomed-in view of the room. It showed the square-shaped floor and both doors. There was a T symbol ahead of him and to his left, as well as one on the floor.

  “Two traps,“ he said. “Well done. Do you think you can disarm them?”

  Rolley sighed. “Not with hands like dad’s burned barbeque meat. Stupid tower.”

  “We’ll have to avoid them. I guess we should look around to find levers, clues, that kind of thing.”

  “I’ll take the walls,” said Etta.

  “Watch out for the trap. It might be a pressure switch or a lever.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Tripp looked around the room. He wanted to cast Underlay gain, but barely 20% of his manus had regenerated. He had no idea when he’d need to use his artificery or armorer skills. If he kept using it all on Underlay, there was nothing left for his stronger abilities.

  No, he was going to have to find stuff the old-fashioned way. While Etta went left to the wall, Tripp took a step forward toward the center of the room.

  A great rumbling sound came from above. It sounded like a giant’s stomach gurgling.

  He looked up, and adrenaline spiked in him, a dozen shots of it fired into his bloodstream at once.

  “Rolley, Etta,” he said, looking up.

  The ceiling had disappeared, revealing a kind of shaft that went forty feet high. At the top, there was a rock boulder big enough to crush them all. Though it wasn’t moving, Tripp couldn’t see anything supporting it.

  “Nobody move,” he said. “We must have triggered a trap.”

  “What are you saying? I showed you the traps,” said Rolley.

  “Hey, it’s not a criticism. Do you think when I make armor, I make perfect quality stuff every time?”

  “Guys, it doesn’t matter what we triggered,” said Etta. “It isn’t moving now.”

  As she said that, the rumbling sound came from above. The noise almost deafening, and it sent a shudder through Tripp.

  When he looked up he caught the boulder moving, though it stopped a second later. In that time it had gotten a few feet closer.

  “It stopped moving as soon as you looked at it.”

  Rolley studied it. “A sight trap. If we take our eyes off it completely, it’ll get closer. I'm not a genius with traps, as Tripp kindly pointed out, but I’m guessing that if we let it fall all the way, it’ll crush us.”

  Tripp quickly thought about what to do. “Etta, keep your eyes on the boulder. Rolley, can you check the door for traps one last time?”

  The rogue nodded. “Got it.”

  “Kinda cool,” said Etta. “I can pretend I’m holding this giant boulder in place using telekinesis. Watch.”

  She looked at the ground, and the boulder grumbled at them as it began to descend, its echo drifting to their ears.

  “Etta!”

  She looked back at it, stopping it, making a strained expression. “With the power of my thoughts, I stop you.”

  “No more playing with boulders. Rolley, how’s the door looking?”

  “Seems safe. I checked it twice, no traps. Want me to try opening it?”

  “We have nothing else right now. At least rule it out as an option.”

  It was as Rolley reached for the door handle, that the door changed.

  The wood morphed into the shape of a giant mouth, with rows of yellow, jagged teeth and a bloodred tongue. Before he could move, the mouth bit his arm, ripping it clean off at the shoulder.

  Tripp could hardly choose something to focus on.

  Rolley running in a circle, clearly in shock, his right arm missing.

  The door, which had now formed eyes to match its mouth, grinning at them, slurping its tongue over its lips.

  The boulder coming down from the ceiling, twenty-five feet away now.

  It was at times like this that he was especially pleased with his ability to stay calm. Even when he’d be well within his rights to freak the hell out. “Etta, I know it’s hard, but keep your eyes on the boulder. I’ll deal with Rolley.”

  “I gave all the healing potions to him.”

  While Etta stared at the boulder, halting it, Tripp dragged Rolley from the doorway. He settled him on the floor. His face was pale, his armless shoulder a mess. His pain would have already left since this was Soulboxe, but the realism of a severed arm stuck around. Tripp guessed even his orcish face would turn white if that happened to him.

  “Take a health potion. A full one,” he told him.

  Rolley stared at the door with his mouth wide open. The door’s face had disappeared now, so that it looked normal again.

  “It’s a mimic,” said Tripp. “The real door must be somewhere else. Come on, buddy. Drink up.”

  Rolley uncorked a vial and drank the sweet potion. It wouldn’t grow his arm back, but at least his HP would fill up. Tripp saw the bar above his head, and then he realized something. Rolley’s health bar was much smaller than before. That made sense, given the permanent injury he’d suffered.

  “I’ll check for another door so we can get out of here. One that doesn’t try to tear my arm off. Etta, can I borrow your spear?”

  “Sure.”

  Item Received: [Good] Iron Spear

  Tripp held the spear clumsily, the weight feeling awkward in his unpracticed hands. He guessed this was because he hadn’t leveled his power stat much. The more level-up points you threw into power, the more natural new weapons felt to you.

  He didn’t need to look good with it, though. He walked around the room, prodding the spear against every section of the wall, checking each three times. He missed out the door, since he already knew what would happen, and completed a lap of the room.

  “No more mimics,” he said. “We know that much. Rolley, can you try your trap skill again? See if you can spot any illusions? There might be a door hidden in one of the wall panels.”

  Rolley, color returning to his cheeks, got up to check the walls.

  “You okay?” asked Etta.

  “I’ll live. It’s only Soulboxe, after all.”

  “You’ve had it rough. First your hands, then Barnard, now this.”

  “I assume that you guys will give me a bigger cut of our prize for beating the hell out of this tower,” he said, forcing a smile.

  While Rolley checked the walls, Tripp performed some quick crafting. Using his armorer hammer, he tapped the tip of Etta’s spear, concentrating on knocking it into a better shape. Before long, a message appeared.

  Item upgraded: [Good] spear is now a [Great] spear

  The spear tip looked sharper, sturdier, and much easier to stab into things. His last armorer level-up said he’d be able to improve weapons better, and Tripp was impressed with how easy it was. He’d come a long way since the first time he’d made a crappy gauntlet.

  “Thanks, Etta. You can have your spear back,” he said.

  She took it from him. While Etta checked her spear, Tripp stared at the boulder. He had to admit, it was pretty fun pretending he was holding that giant block of stone in place using his mind.

  Etta tossed the spear from hand to hand. “This feels different. Did you do something? Varnish it, or something like that?”

  “Check its properties.”

  “You sharpened it! Thanks, Tripp.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now we just need to find the door. Rolley?”

  “There’s nothing. I’ve checked twice, and now I’m completely out of manus. I could miss an illusion if I only checked once. After all, I didn’t pick up on the mimic. But twice? It’d have to be a master-level trick.”

  “Which leaves us with one option,” said Tripp. “Get past the mimic.”

  “I never came across a mimic before,” said Etta.

  “I have,” said Rolley. “Back in a dungeon down south somewhere. I can’t remember the name now. The dungeon was full of acid pits and
big, exploding cocoons. Anyway, I sneaked all the way through, I backstabbed a guardian troll, and found myself with the chest. I went to open it, and guess what?”

  “It turned into a mimic?”

  “Nope! The floor beneath my feet was a mimic. But it didn’t eat me straight away. Mimics are playful. Part of their nature, you see. They can’t resist sport. Watch.”

  “You know a lot about mimics and dungeons, Rolley,” said Etta.

  Rolley, surprised at a compliment aimed at his knowledge instead of his skills, gave a toothy smile. He quickly adopted his serious rogue face again.

  He approached the door while rubbing his stump, staying a safe ten feet away.

  “Mimic,” he said. “I propose a challenge. A game of wordplay with one so clever as yourself. A match of riddles, for which the victor gets a prize.”

  The door tremored slightly, but it didn’t change shape, nor did the mimic speak.

  “You give us a riddle, and we give you one,” Rolley continued. “We keep going until one of us gets stuck. If we win, you step aside and let us pass.”

  A mouth formed in the door now. Big, juicy slips with a tongue stained by blood, and rows of jagged teeth as big as Tripp’s head.

  “And if me win?” it said.

  “If you win, you can eat one of us.”

  “No. Eat you anyway,” said the mimic. “Tasty arm.”

  The mouth disappeared, leaving behind a normal-looking door.

  Etta, staring at the boulder to stop it crushing them, said, “I guess that didn’t go well.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “If only we could distract it,” said Rolley. “Maybe wait for another player to come into this room, and then feed them to it.”

  “Tripp likes cutting heads off corpses, you want to feed fellow players to mimics. You guys are disgusting. Practical, sure, but disgusting.”

  “Besides,” said Tripp, “Nobody is coming here. I think that when others go through a door in the tower, their room will be completely different from ours.”

  “But how? The geometry doesn’t make sense. How could one door lead to a different room in the same space?”

  “You’re asking the tower to fit in with rules? You’re in the wrong place.”

  “Guys, can one of you take over looking at the rock? My neck’s hurting,” said Etta.

  Rolley took her place, while Etta stood as close to the door as she dared, staring at it.

  “Such a gentleman,” she told Rolley. “Now, what do we do about this thing?”

  “There are a few different types of mimic,” began Rolley. He seemed to be growing in confidence now he was talking about something he was knowledgeable in. “They’re all tricksters, but this one doesn’t like riddles. That means its motived by a couple of things. Hunger being one, as we’ve seen.”

  “Doesn’t your arm…lack of an arm…bother you?” asked Etta.

  “This place already ruined my plans for a manicure,” said Rolley. “If this were real life then losing an arm to a man-eating door would be quite traumatic, I’m sure. But this is Soulboxe.”

  “So we know it’s hungry,” said Tripp. “What else?”

  “Vanity. Mimics are vain as hell.”

  “How do we use that?”

  “Let me try something. Etta, can you take over the boulder for a second? Tripp, get ready with your flail thingy.”

  Rolley stood a careful five feet from the door. He went to fold his arms, then realized he only had one. He must have not got used to it yet.

  “This is a really crappy door,” he said. “Real ugly.”

  “Sure, but we’re not here for the aesthetics.”

  Rolley spoke in a lower voice. “Tripp, just go with me here.” Then he spoke louder. “Yeah, the workmanship is shoddy. It doesn’t even look like a door, actually. More like a god-ugly sheet of wood. Disgusting varnishing. If I had a door like this at home, I’d throw it out and burn it. Then I’d throw the ash in the sea. That’s how ugly it is.”

  The door warped a little now, as though the wood was heating up. A flicker of a grimaced expression overtook its timber features. Just for a second, then it was gone.

  “Yeah, this looks like the kind of door a blind carpenter would make.”

  “Hey!” said Tripp. “I was an almost-blind carpenter once.”

  “Tripp, go with this!”

  “Sorry.”

  Rolley spoke at length for a few minutes, discussing out loud all the ways he hated this particular door. Tripp was impressed with his creativity; the door wasn’t all that bad. After all, it had initially fooled them all. But somehow, Rolley conjured insults about a door that, if Tripp were a mimic, would have made him red-faced.

  As much as he tried to rile it up, the mimic didn’t leave its door form.

  “Maybe it isn’t as vain as we thought.”

  “Then there’s only one thing left to try; one of us has to sacrifice ourselves to it. While it’s eating our unlucky but brave party member, we kill it.”

  “Really?” asked Etta, rubbing the back of her neck as she stared at the boulder.

  “No, course not. It’s easier than that. See, when a mimic is disillusioned, it’s a simple thing to beat. They aren’t all that tough; their skill lies in stealth. This one was stealthy enough to beat my trap skill, but it gave itself away. Does anyone have a spear or something they’re ready to lose?”

  “I would have said yes, but Tripp upgraded mine. I don’t want to feed it to a mimic.”

  “I’ll make one,” said Tripp.

  He didn’t have a crafting card for a spear, but that wasn’t a problem. He knew what a spear looked like, and they were simple weapons. A guy in a forest could find a log, stone, and vines and he’d be able to fashion one.

  So Tripp first created a crafting card for a basic spear by simply imagining it in his mind.

  Crafting card created: Basic Spear

  With his crafting card ready, he used his armorer skill to remove the wooden handle from one of his [poor] axes. It was a little short to be a spear, so he split the wood and lined the two pieces vertically. He then fused them using manus and his armorer skill.

  Once that was done, it was simple to use his hammer to pound an iron sheet into a tip and attach it to his spear shaft.

  You have created an [average] wooden spear!

  He could have made a [great] or [excellent] spear if he’d spent more time, but that would have been a waste of manus for this purpose.

  “Here,” he said, showing Rolley the spear. “What now?”

  As if in answer, the sound of gears crunching filled the room. There was a sudden screech, and then a rumble.

  The boulder began moving, despite Etta staring at it. The sound was almost deafening. Tripp couldn’t help but feel small under the great weight slowly descending to crush them.

  “Time to use the Time Tapper?” asked Rolley.

  Tripp thought about it, then shook his head. “We need to get the mimic away from the door. If we stop time, the mimic is presumably stopped. If it is, we’ll have wasted one use of the tapper, and every use makes future rooms more difficult. Not worth it.”

  Another crunching sound made them all look up. The rock was falling faster.

  “I’d say we have two minutes,” said Etta. “Unless it speeds up again.”

  Holding the spear, Tripp drove it into the center of the door, putting all his effort into it to really stab it the wood. As he did, he prayed his average workmanship would hold.

  The mimic roared. It was a high-pitched sound, one that wormed its way into his skull and made his head throb.

  For a flash of a second, they saw the mimic’s true form. A man-sized blob of green ooze with bulging eyes and bulbous lips, and a tongue rougher than sandpaper.

  The mimic flew from the door, colliding with Rolley. The rogue shouted and pushed it away.

  Gears crunched. The rock fell even faster.

  “Tripp!” shouted Etta, holding the Tapper in one hand, pointing at
the new door left behind when the mimic moved.

  Tripp turned the handle, holding his breath, and he opened it.

  “Looks like we’re through. Come on.”

  The rock was just ten feet above them now. Etta sprinted through the door first, followed by Tripp.

  Outside the room, they stared at the doorway and waited for Rolley to come through.

  He did, just seconds later.

  But not one Rolley. Now, there were two.

  Behind them, the boulder completed its fall, smashing against the floor and cutting the room off.

  Etta drew her spear and pointed it at the two rogues. Tripp equipped his flail, hit his thigh to store damage, and then kept a safe distance from the rogue and his copy.

  Both rogues were identical. They had one blackened hand, one arm missing.

  One Rolley stepped forward, but Etta prodded the air with her spear. “Nope. Move, and you get this in your gut. Which one of you is the real Rolley?”

  “Me,” said Rolley.

  “Me,” answered the second Rolley.

  “They sound exactly the same,” said Tripp.

  “Well, yeah. One of them is a mimic.”

  “Then it should be easy to tell them apart. Ask them a question. The mimic can only copy Rolley; he won’t be able to think of an answer to something Rolley would know.”

  Etta shrugged. “Okay. Rolley, who is your best friend?”

  Tripp waited, gripping his flail. He felt tense enough to snap it in two.

  One Rolley opened his mouth.

  As he did, the other Rolley opened his, but this mouth opened impossibly wide, revealing a huge set of teeth and long, slurping tongue.

  Etta was quick with her spear. Golden light gathered over it, and she drove it into the fake Rolley’s chest.

  Tripp swung his flail, smashing the spike’s into the mimic’s stomach, feeling the stored energy explode out of it.

  The mimic stumbled back now, its form changing so it was a horrible mix of half-Rolley, half ooze.

  Etta ran him through with her spear again. The mimic fell back against the wall, its form changing from one thing to the next from second to second.