by Neven Iliev
“Over there!” came a shout from the north.
Guard reinforcements had just arrived from one of the adjacent streets. And the first thing they saw after turning the corner was a brightly glowing chest with concentric circles of bright light swirling around it.
“By the Goddess!”
And then they realised that it was standing in the middle of twenty bloodied, charred, pummelled, mangled, melted, decapitated, or otherwise completely decimated bodies of their colleagues.
This realisation was followed immediately by the appearance of a four-armed, red-skinned demon.
“T-to arms, men!” screamed the person who appeared to be in charge. The guards responded by drawing all of their blades, much like the first group had.
“Attack them, then draw them north,” Boxxy ordered.
“Hehehe! You got it, boss!”
Kora ran at the guards, screaming her lungs out. The men and women in her way seemed to completely forget about the glowing box as they turned their attention towards the fast-approaching threat. The Mimic hadn’t revealed its identity as a monster quite yet, so it was possible they mistook it for some sort of arcane artefact with the ability to call out demons. Wouldn’t be the first time something like that showed up, after all.
[Your familiar has been banished.]
“ … Huh?”
Boxxy let out a stupid-sounding noise after being notified its Snack had just been killed. Someone must have seen through her disguise. But surely she would have reported if that was the case, right? Or did she get taken out in a single hit? It wanted to ask her the details, but it couldn’t summon her under the current circumstances. Doing that would surely draw attention to itself again, and it lacked the MP to do so, even if it did drink both of its remaining mana potions. If only there was a way to speak to her without –
The soul number thing Carl mentioned! That would have been immensely useful right now, but Boxxy had completely neglected to ask her about it!
Silently cursing its own complacency, it quickly reassessed the situation. One of its familiars had been taken out and another was engaged in combat. The south wall was the closest one from its position, but it had some unknown enemy in its way. Guards would be pouring in primarily from the north, since the city’s keep was located in that direction. East seemed like the monster’s best chance of getting out of Erosa.
So the monster abandoned all pretence of being a chest, sprouted spider legs, and scuttled off into the alleyway, making a beeline for the edge of the city. Some of the guards saw it move but were unable to do anything since they had their hands full dealing with Kora. Boxxy remotely checked on her HP and determined she should be able to buy it at least a minute. Plenty of time to get some ground between it and –
[Your familiar has been banished.]
Her remaining 1,132 HP disappeared in an instant.
Okay. Now was the time to panic.
The Mimic scuttled along the alleyways more desperately than before. No, walking was too slow, it needed to get away from whatever was picking off its minions. And it needed to do so right. Bloody. Now! It quickly transformed its eight spider-feet into a set of four organic wheels and propelled itself down the tight spaces between the buildings. It used its flexible body to make twists and turns that would normally be impossible, bouncing off walls to round corners and jumping over debris and garbage that stood in its way.
It exited the tight pathways and found itself on another of the city’s main roads, at which point it turned south. Whoever or whatever was behind the deaths of its minions was no longer in that direction, meaning the Mimic had a clear path towards the wall.
“Aaaah!”
“What’s that!”
“Mom can I ride it?”
“Holy crap, what!”
It rolled through onlookers and pedestrians who probably had no idea why or how a treasure chest was rolling down the street, but they were in its way. The monster managed to avoid colliding with most of them by ducking and weaving and sometimes jumping over them without slowing down. However, it couldn’t avoid all of them. After all, it was rolling around at speeds like that of a horse in full gallop, albeit with a much smaller stature. Some crashes were therefore inevitable.
[Your target has suffered blunt force trauma. Target HP -103.]
It ran over an old woman who didn’t get out of the way in time.
[Your target has been crushed. Target HP -96.]
It hit a puppy crossing the road, killing it instantly.
[Your target has suffered blunt force trauma. Target HP -56.]
It smashed into a random adventurer’s knee before he could react.
Regardless, none of those things could drastically slow it down. It was moving at high speeds and had a mass of nearly a hundred kilograms. It was quite heavy considering its relatively compact size, meaning it could barrel through any civilians who got in its way with ease. And of course it kept two eyes wide open all the while – one in the front to watch out for obstacles and one in the rear to check for anyone who might have been following it.
The rear was clear, but there was trouble brewing at the front.
“Form ranks and stop that thing!”
A row of guards stood in its way, and it could make out the tall stone wall just beyond them. It just had to get past these guys and it would be out of the city, at which point it could keep rolling down the Imperial highway going east until it was well and truly out of sight. But first it had to clear the way since the humans had formed a shield wall in its path.
It momentarily slowed its speed and popped open its lid. The albino Xera-on-wheels made her first ever public appearance. Every single person on the street gaped at the bizarre sight of a naked, large-breasted albino lady rolling down the street while holding a staff. The two sets of pointy teeth surrounding her made the display far more horrifying than erotic.
Boxxy no longer cared about the opinions of those meals-on-legs, though.
“Dark Explosion ~♪!”
It ignored their reactions and calmly used its magic to force open the way. The shadowy shock wave that erupted in the middle of the guard’s line knocked them on their asses, allowing the Mimic to roll through them unhindered. It quickly retracted Xera’s upper body and sped up towards the base of the city’s walls. All that was left now was to hop into the air at the last moment and redirect its momentum upwards. At that point, it would bring out its arachnid limbs and finish scaling the fortification before leaping off.
It was a relatively solid plan of action, though the monster never got the chance to execute it.
*TWACK*
A black boot kicked the Mimic from the side seemingly out of nowhere, sending it flying off-course and careening into a nearby building. The monster smashed clean through someone’s living room and flew out of the other side of the house. It crashed into a random vegetable stall, sending plant matter, splinters, and monster blood everywhere, much to the distress of the stall’s vendor. The man gave up on screaming about his cabbages and made the wise decision to run away immediately.
[You have suffered major blunt force trauma. HP -1,152.]
[You have been stunned for 5 seconds.]
[Proficiency level increased. Natural Armour is now Level 7. END +6.]
“Kreh! Kphogh! Skraktktkt!”
The badly injured Mimic let out a series of guttural noises. Having been kicked through a building, it was understandably in a pretty sorry state. What was once a faux-wood chest with wheels was now a mangled mess of flesh. Its shell had been splintered, its circular limbs were torn off, and its yellow blood oozed from multiple wounds.
[Your flesh has been mended. HP +95.]
And there went the last of its MP. The cheat-like Mend Flesh Skill that gave it so much trouble in the past was simply not able to do much for its owner in this current situation.
“Oh? Still alive, are we?”
Boxxy heard a man’s voice, directly from above. It sounded very close, a
s if the person was leaning over the creature. However, its magical perception was not picking up anything or anyone.
“Good,” the voice said. “I was afraid I overdid things with that little love tap.”
It was a calm, collected voice. Oddly soothing and terrifying at the same time. It was also rather rough, but Boxxy had more important things to worry about than identifying its owner.
[You are no longer stunned.]
The Mimic tried to move the moment its consciousness stabilized. It grew a set of spider legs in an instant and tried to stand but immediately fell to one side.
“Don’t move, beast.”
“Rakh! Hrak?” it sputtered in its confusion. Where was this phantom speaking to it from?
“Come now, you can do better than that. I saw you grow an entire person just seconds ago.”
“…”
Taking the hint, Boxxy opened the mangled remains of its upper jaw and formed a human-like head out of its badly wounded tongue, which naturally assumed Xera’s form.
And then, when that head opened its eyes, it finally saw him.
An old man with a leather hood stood mere centimetres from the wrecked Mimic, with arms crossed across his chest. His face held two deep scars, one across his left cheek and the other on the right side of his forehead. His hair was grey from age and his skin was heavily wrinkled, yet he exuded a sense of youth and vitality as if he was in the prime of his life.
The body armour he wore was made out of thick, hardened leather that had been painted blue and bore a bizarre palm-shaped yellow mark on his left shoulder. A leather sling with several pouches on it was draped over his shoulder and two short weapons – daggers by the look of them – were sheathed on the left side of his belt. His lithe legs ended in a pair of plain black boots, the left one bearing a yellow smudge.
“Ah, there we go,” he said with a stern expression. “So you can understand me, right?”
“ … Y-yes,” Xera’s borrowed voice stammered as the Mimic spoke. It was afraid. This man was utterly beyond Boxxy’s comprehension. Not only did he nearly kill it in one blow, but he had also completely eluded the monster’s magical perception. Only its eyes were able to track him, and even those seemed to want to naturally slide off the man and look elsewhere. But it didn’t dare do such a thing.
“Good. It’s a start. Do you have a name, beast?”
“ … Yes.”
“And? What is it?”
“Boxxy T. Morningwood.”
“Morningw– Haah.” The man sighed and put a hand over his face.
“Dare I ask what the ‘T’ stands for?”
“Trap.”
“Of course it does … Well then, ‘Boxxy.’ I suppose since you gave me your name I will give you mine. I am Edward Allen, Spymaster to his Majesty Emperor Joseph Frederick von Einhart the Third.”
He went down on one knee and stared deeply into the Mimic’s face, which caused the monster to recoil and shiver in fear.
“And I will have you answer some questions regarding that four-armed demon back there and the big glowing crater far to the north.”
[General Information]
Edward Gordon Allen
Leader of The Gilded Hand
Human (Ascendant), Male, 103 years old
Level 100.00 Rogue (MAX)
Level 75.00 Spy (MAX)
Level 59.55 Occult Alchemist
4030/4030 HP (+7.5/sec)
1885/1885 MP (+3.0/sec)
[Attributes]
STR 245, DEX 964, AGI 645, END 757, INT 377, WIS 300, LCK 120, MNT 82, CHR 172, PER 342
Part Two
Boxxy woke up with its usual violent flailing.
“Hrrmmpf?”
Or at least it tried to. In the next instant, it was made painfully aware of two solid metal clamps that were bolted onto its imitation wood surface. They completely encircled its body as if it was a barrel, preventing its maw from opening up. Perhaps it was a good thing the Mimic had been knocked out; having those braces affixed to its body would have been incredibly painful to experience. Whatever damage it suffered as a result of the ‘operation’ had already healed up, that only made its current situation even worse. Its wounds had closed up around the steel screws holding its bindings, causing its flesh to fuse with the foreign objects. It would be impossible to take these things off without having chunks of its own body ripped out.
Those were hardly all of the restraints, however. The monster was hanging inside a cubic cage that was about two metres long, wide, and tall. It was being suspended by four heavy-duty chains, which connected those metal clamps to each upper corner of its new prison. The series of vertical and horizontal bars were made out of an ominous-looking black metal, and judging by the low buzzing and blue sparks that occasionally leapt between them, the bars were currently electrified. If the Mimic hadn’t been as firmly strung up as it was, it would have swung into the metal and electrocuted itself without meaning to.
As for the source of the electrical charge, that was most likely the large metal box attached to the outside of the cage. Its faceplate had a few switches and dials on it, and two bright blue wires connected its insides to the cage. Boxxy peeked inside the thing using its magical perception, seeing a complicated hodgepodge of wiring and circuitry and a glowing tank of shimmering, bright blue liquid. That must have been the fuel supplying power to the cage.
Now that it had properly regained consciousness, the monster began to remember the situation it was in. A human had completely defeated it with a single blow. After introducing himself as Edward, he then poured some strange liquid onto the Mimic which made it pass out. And now it was here.
Where was here, though?
The room the cage was sitting in seemed to be a large jail cell, probably inside the local keep’s dungeon. That would be the ‘lock them up and throw away the key’ type of dungeon, not the ‘there’s a giant exploding shiny in the middle of it’ kind that Boxxy was born in. The walls, floor, and ceiling were nothing but plain stone bricks. Well, aside from the rubber mat underneath the cage insulating it from the rest of the room. For some reason, there was an empty wooden chair directly in front of –
“Finally awake?”
“MMFFGH!”
A voice came from somewhere in front, causing the Mimic to panic. It then recalled that the old man who captured it was somehow able to elude the creature’s magical perception. There were a number of ways one could avoid detection through mystical means, and the culprit, in this case, was the Level 80 Rogue Skill called Obfuscate. Boxxy wasn’t aware such a thing existed, though, so it was completely lost as to how such a thing was possible. The most it could do was confirm that the voice came from somewhere in front, so the Mimic grew a large feline eye on top of its lid, where a chest’s lock might be.
Once it was armed with a more mundane type of vision, Edward once more ‘appeared’ before it. He was sitting cross-legged in the chair right outside the cage and took the blinking yellow eye as a sign that the monster was, indeed, awake.
“Very good,” he said in a calm manner. “Now then, do grow back that head so we can have words. I’m sure – oh, you already did. Never mind then.”
The sheer speed at which Xera’s flawlessly sculpted face appeared out of the monster’s front caught him a little bit unawares. It looked so real, too. As if someone had cut off a woman’s head, shaved it clean, bleached the skin, then glued it onto a chest. The man’s eyes seemed to linger on the pseudo-succubus’s pointed ears, which were normally hidden by her silky long hair.
The Spymaster took out a small, leather-bound notebook and a Never-ending Quill. He flipped the booklet open to a blank page and scribbled ‘Erosa mimic interrogation’ at the very top as a sort of title, then got down to business.
“Let’s begin, then. First of all, why use that appearance?” He gestured at Xera’s pointy-eared face.
“It’s easy.” Boxxy answered in a hoarse voice completely mismatched with the beautiful face it was u
sing. It was much closer to its natural way of speech rather than that of the sultry succubus.
“Easy, how?” inquired Edward.
“I know it the best.”
“Uh-huh.”
He wrote down ‘elf witch connection?’ on the first line.
“And who is it you’re imitating?”
“Snack.”
“I mean, what does this individual mean to you?”
“She is Snack.”
“What is her name?”
“Snack.”
Edward sighed sharply. This was only his third time speaking to a monster capable of both reason and language, so he had forgotten that one had to let go of certain expectations when speaking to such creatures. Some would argue he should just put the squeeze on his suspect, but he knew from experience that torture was not a viable method of gathering information. His way of interrogating prisoners was much faster, more reliable, and far less messy, although it did require a certain amount of patience.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Who’s Snack?” he asked.
“My thing.”
Make that a lot of patience.
“Where is Snack right now?”
“The Beyond.”
“So it’s a demon? Then how come it’s called Snack?”
He was keenly aware demons usually had long names that were nigh-impossible to say correctly without a certain amount of practice.
“Very tasty, but not very filling.”
“ … Right, and what species of demon is she?”
“Succubus.”
“So that face you’re showing me belongs to a succubus?”
“Yes.”
“And you call her ‘Snack’ because you … like eating her?”
“Yes.”
The Spymaster quickly crossed out ‘elf connection?’ and wrote ‘perverted box’ next to it.
“Then what of the red-skinned, four-armed demon that was reportedly with you? Is she your ally?”
“Yes.”