Chapter 82: Tanking Mimicry

Chapter 82: Tanking Mimicry

The ‘malformed and misshapen’ Mimic began to grow dozens of eyes over its body that spun and locked onto us, gummy and seeping thick fluid like they were infected. Limbs sprouted from its bulbous form with skinless muscle attached to yellowed bone. The ooze along its hands slimed up into the shape of various weapons: sword, shield, axe, spear, and claw. The weapons each had faces of their own, and lips stretched taut against bared teeth as the mouths of the lethal instruments muttered nonsensical phrases at us.

I had an excellent jeer to throw at The Mimic involving John Carpenter, but there was no more room for games. It was time to take this seriously.

“Ew,” said Xim.

“Riiiight?!” I said. “I’ve seen a lot of nasty shit in Arzia, but come. On.”

Ok, maybe serious wasn’t our thing.

“What’s the play?” asked Varrin as The Mimic began sprouting ears, noses, and scales.

“Big Bang Attack,” I said.

“It’s immune to physical.”

“Mana Bomb variant.”

Varrin nodded. “Good call. Disrupt its shapeshifting. How much time do you need?”

“Twenty seconds.”

“That’s a big bomb.”

“That’s a big mimic.”

Xim reached under the collar of her chainmail, touching a mana-weave that only she could activate.

“How come your favorite tactics,” she said, grunting as she shoved her hand deeper to find the weave, “are the ones where you aren’t the tank, Arlo? Gods above, this thing needs to be higher up!” She finally found what she was looking for, and her armor dropped away, leaving her wearing her mega-stretch bodysuit.

“Pitfalls of a dual spec,” I said. “Besides, Varrin likes getting the practice in.”

I dismissed the Life Warden skill from Etja, then cast it on Varrin. Now, half of the damage Varrin took from physical or dimensional transferred to me, the damage was reduced by my Physical Magic skill, and half of the damage I ended up taking from the transfer got refunded to Varrin as either stamina or health.

To translate, I just gave Varrin 70% DR.

Nuralie tossed the big guy a potion, and he popped the stopper, then downed it.

Nuralie’s Night-Rush Potion

(Reluctantly formulated based on a Littan recipe)

Duration: 15 minutes

Your melee damage is doubled.

-5 To all physical defenses

INT-based skills require twice as much mana and stamina to use.

You gain Toxicity: 10

Xim held her scepter in the air and moved it in ritualistic patterns. Varrin’s body began to glow with crimson light as she cast two buffs on him.

Sam’lia’s Blessing of Hunger

Spiritual/Divine

Cost: 10 mana

Cooldown: 1 use per target per day

Requirements: Fortitude 10, Charisma 10, Spiritual Magic 10, Divine Magic 20, Patron Deity: Sam’lia, Revelation of the Stomach

You grant a nearby ally a number of stacks of Blessed equal to your Divine Magic skill level, plus your Charisma, divided by five.

Whenever the target ally deals melee weapon damage to an enemy, they consume a portion of the enemy’s life essence, dealing 1 additional damage and receiving 1 point of healing for each stack of Blessed they possess. The target ally may elect for their melee weapon attacks and damage to become Divine for so long as they are Blessed.

Sam’lia’s Blessing of Pounding

Spiritual/Divine

The Mimic brought its blade around, and Xim’s footing was slick with the inert goo at her feet. She took the blade in the side, but rolled her body to try and reduce the force of the impact. Blood sprayed out from her ribs, and the blow sent her to the ground, sliding across the floor. The mimic’s body elongated, its arms and weapons reaching out to where Xim lay, while still exchanging blows with Varrin on its opposite side.

Xim finally got to cast Heal.

Golden light pulsed down the Cleric’s body, and the wound on her ribs began to close. I knew that one cast wouldn’t be enough to fully recover from that type of strike, and her body was awash with smaller cuts and punctures, but Xim could take care of herself. She and Varrin were focused on tying The Mimic up while doing as much damage as possible, and something minor like seeing an ally getting cleaved in the chest by a car-length claymore made of carrion and sadness wouldn’t distract me from my own job, which was to announce to the world foreboding things like:

“The dead cannot make war, and so you shall know peace!”

Etja whirled and shot out a beam of pure mystical force, carving a line across the mimic’s side. The cost of my channel went down by 1. She swept one leg in front of her in a wide arc and went into a forward cartwheel, then sucked the dislodged mimic goo towards us and consumed it into herself through her palms. The cost of my channel went down by 1.

Finishing Move will be applied to your next skill.

Etja raised her hands, and the power of her Nullify spell flowed through her soul, into mine, and out into the tips of my fingers. The cost of my channel went down by 1.

Etja pumped more and more into the spell, its magic-disrupting potency swelling in crescendo with the last few seconds of my near two-hundred mana charge.

“Witness! Take Heed!”

Varrin heard the signal words, and dumped every stack of Blessed he had accrued into a final attack, cleaving a massive, crimson line down the center of the Mimic, then both he and Xim got the fuck out.

“Explosion!”

I snapped my fingers, and The Mimic became one with the stone and the air.

My chest cavity thumped as the shockwave crashed through the air in my lungs, and my sinuses were rocked like someone had just dropped a king-sized mattress on my face. The sound of the explosion was brief, but it was God leaning over to clap in my ears.

The Mimic was reduced to a fine spray that assaulted my skin with a split second of hurricane-grade downpour. My eyes were protected by my specs, but my mouth...

Gods, it was in my mouth!

As I retched and spat, I saw that Etja was lying on the ground. I was still floating, so I used Gracorvus to lower myself to her. Her entire frontside was soaked in mimic, and her eyes popped open when I knelt to check on her.

“You ok?!” I shouted at her.

“What?!” she shouted back

“Are! You! Oh! Kay?!”

She wiped some goo from her eyes and squinted at me.

“... What?!”

We needed to figure out some hearing protection.

Varrin made his way over to us, and I started to ask how he was doing, but he waved a hand to stop me and just pointed at his ear. He sat down on the ground next to Etja. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and I knew that he’d be riding the Night-Rush bus for another fourteen minutes. It was better to avoid interacting with Varrin while he was on the rage high, so I let him be.

Xim appeared, back in her normal form, and somehow more soaked in slime than any of the rest of us. She must not have gotten as much distance as Varrin, which made sense. Her Speed was half of his.

We surveyed the room in silence, observing the thin paste that was The Mimic.

“Weren’t we gonna ask it some questions?!” Xim shouted. I nodded at her. “The fuck do we do that now?!” I shrugged.

I maybe didn’t think the plan through as well as I should have. My first priority was to win. A fireside chat afterward was a distant enough second that it wasn’t even in the same county.

I began to struggle with the feeling of letdown, and a bit of guilt. I was frustrated that answers had been within our grasp, and my tactical use of a yee-haw!’s worth of supercharged magic TNT had taken it away. I could have played this one smarter. I could have played this whole Delve smarter, to be honest.

I took a breath and tried not to dwell on it. We’d do a deconstruction once we got back to Ravvenblaq, to talk about what worked and what didn’t inside this mess of a Delve. For now, I needed to focus on claiming our level and getting us the hell out of here. Also, Nuralie was still missing.

I looked around for the sneaky alchemist, but she was nowhere in sight. What I did see was some mimic goo starting to wriggle.

“Fuck me” I said, and waved to get the attention of the others.

They looked up and saw me pointing out the puddle of goo that was now beginning to rise up into a vaguely humanoid shape. They stood, getting ready for round thirteen with this friggin’ thing, when a different puddle began to rise. Then another. Then... another.

Suddenly, we were surrounded by a dozen or more mimics, their bodies dripping and viscous. They continued to coalesce, their forms becoming more distinct, but they were struggling to stay cohesive. One flopped back and splattered into slime again, then trembled and tried to get back up.

Before we could move in and start working our way through this new horde, however, golden streaks of light filled the air.

Divinely charged arrows sprayed out from the dark, one for each mimic, and in less than a second, all of the struggling creatures were skewered through the head. They collapsed back into puddles, and moved no more.

Except for one.