Core Values 3 (1/2)

Level up!

Congratulations, you are now a Level 50 Mimic! All Attributes +2.

“Yeshaaa!”

Boxxy let out a cheer as the Stone Soldier crumbled into bits. It finally reached the maximum Mimic Job Level at the end of the 3rd day of stalking the dungeon’s hedge maze. All that was left now was to get Shapeshift to Level 10 and then the Mimic would finally, at long last, be able to Rank Up.

“Congratulations, Master!”

“Yeah, way to go, Boss!”

“Ahn, darling is splendid as usual ~♡!”

“Nice one, Boxxy!”

The Mimic’s unlikely entourage all congratulated it in their own way. They had been ordered to convene and follow it around ever since it got up to 90% XP. Valeria’s newly-created undead regiment was also skulking around the place. She had gone for a mix of Death Knights, Dullahans and a whole lot of Skeletal Archers, a configuration well suited to hunting wild beasts in the woods. Boxxy also found out that, much to its disappointment, these undead of hers did not yield any XP when slain. It made sense since they were beings that were made up of more mana than flesh, not too dissimilar from the Mimic’s own familiars.

“What happens now?” asked Fizzy.

“Shapeshifting practice,” it answered.

Valeria and Xera’s faces both lit up, almost as if someone had offered their pet dog a treat.

“As you command, Master!”

“Oh, darling ~♡!”

The golem and the fiend, on the other hand, really did not want any part of this. The latter remained steadfast in demanding on being ‘in charge’ as it were, something the Mimic had no intention of allowing.

“Well, in that case,” said Fizzy, “I’m going to go and raise my Level a bit.”

The metal gnome was not even remotely interested in such things. While there was the matter of her trauma, it was also a fact that her steel body had no libido or sex drive whatsoever, much like a certain animate chest. Not even the pleasurable sensation she got from being ‘seen’ could be considered sexual. It was more akin to the feeling of satisfaction and giddiness one would experience after eating a sumptuous meal and drinking a few glasses of wine. Therefore, she saw no reason to stick around.

Unfortunately, Boxxy had other plans.

“Fizzy, I need you for this one.”

The golem’s mind and body froze abruptly. Whatever thoughts she might have been having were now little more than forgotten figments.

It couldn’t seriously mean that, right?

“W-why do you need m-me?” she asked stiffly.

Boxxy began explaining its problem to the four women gathered there. Simply put, it had to try new things if it wanted to keep increasing the Level of the Shapeshift Skill at a steady pace. This was only reason it performed those lewd activities in the first place. The sheer biomass, complexity and movement involved in the act provided it with a lot of proficiency, resulting in a tasty net total of 56% progress towards Level 10.

However, it would appear this method had reached its limit, as Boxxy’s last few training sessions had been extremely disappointing. It had gained merely 1% proficiency after a whole 2 hours of practice, meaning there was little more it could learn from such act. So what it needed right now were brand new directions it could focus its shapeshifting towards. Unfortunately, it lacked the necessary imagination to come up with anything worthwhile, which is why it decided to ask its minions for any suggestions.

The steel golem and the muscled fiend both breathed a sigh of relief when they realized it finished its explanation. The Slobbering Slut Squad, as Kora had taken to calling the other two, were understandably disappointed. Not only because there would be no happy fun times with Boxxy right now, but also due to the implication that there would be no happy fun times with Boxxy ever again.

“You can turn parts of your body into metal, right? Have you tried producing Artificer-made goods from it?” suggested Fizzy.

The Mimic responded by instantaneously covering its faux-wood shell in dozens of Bladeblossoms, demonstrating that it had not only thought of it, but also mastered it. Fizzy was quite impressed with the sheer speed and number with which it reproduced them. Inspecting a few of them with Metallopathy allowed her to grasp that they were very well put together, too. However, these things were of little use. The hundreds of petal-shaped blades would turn back into soft flesh the instant they were separated from the main body, meaning that setting these off would merely cover the area in strips of shapeless Mimic flesh. Something that nobody present particularly wanted to see.

“What about imitating someone who isn’t that dimwitted succubus?” asked Valeria. “Or more specifically, me ~♡!”

Boxxy’s lid flew open and the pure-white replica of the lich’s upper body sprang out from it.

“Humanoids are all the same,” it commented. “There’s nothing more I can learn there.”

“What about skin color, Master?” pointed out Xera.

“What about it?”

“Pigmentation is important for infiltrating a city. We talked about this before, remember.”

“Oh, right.”

It had nearly forgotten that particular lesson in blending in. Truthfully speaking, the main reason it kept creating chalky-white skin was because coloring it was not only tricky, but also a gigantic pain in the lid. It’s not that the Mimic was lazy, it’s just that it found it unnecessary to put that much effort into something that didn’t seem to be necessary. It didn’t even bother to color in the skin of its half-chest half-human form back in Erosa because its height was already much too conspicuous anyway. But, as Xera had pointed out a few days ago, getting the coloration of the skin, eyes and hair right was  extremely important towards fitting in with humans..

Come to think of it, the only case where Boxxy had attempted to fully color itself in was that one time it had to pretend to be Fizzy inside her shop, and it had messed up quite badly. Its skin was slightly too tanned, the eyes were an unnatural yellow and the hair was closer to purple than pink. The only reason it managed to fool that human was because he was a random passer-by rather than the gnome’s acquaintance

And so Boxxy decided to give pigmentation a try. Splotches of beige started appearing on the imitation of Valeria’s body. They expanded outwards across the pure-white skin, as if globs of ink spreading on paper. The twin-tail hairdo on its head gradually turned black, much like Valeria’s original appearance.

“How’s this?” it asked once it was done.

“It could… use some work, Master.”

The succubus’s words were an understatement. Objectively speaking, her master’s attempt at skin pigmentation had failed horribly. Various patches of skin were a subtly different color from others, giving it the freakish appearance of skin that was sewn together from multiple corpses. Even the hair was noticeably darker and shinier on one side rather than the other.

“Okay, I’ll practice this later,” said Boxxy.

Shapeshift proficiency aside, this was something it had to master if it wanted to successfully blend into a city. It was quite pleased with Snack’s input, though. She sure knew her stuff when it came to infiltration. As expected of a conniving, backstabbing bitch of a succubus.

As for Valeria, she was at a loss for words. Having her physical appearance stolen and then toyed with was nowhere near the vaguely romantic gesture she seemed to have in mind when she made that request. In fact, she looked to be quite disturbed by it. Well, seeing a parody of her old human form like that was bound to strike a nerve. Xera was in pretty much the same boat back when Boxxy first started using her mirrored image to cast Spells, but she had gotten more or less used to it since then.

“Oh, I know!” shouted Kora. “How about combining things?”

“Combining things?”

“You know, like a whatchamacallit! A chimichanga?”

“... Do you mean a chimera?” offered Xera.

“Yeah, that!”

“What’s that?” asked Boxxy.

“It’s an artificially grown species of monster, Master,” explained the succubus. “Its most common appearance is a four-legged beast that has the head and forelegs of a janther, the body and hindlegs of a goat and a snake for a tail.”

“So it can be other things?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Is it a shapeshifter?”

“Not exactly. It’s just that those elves and humans do weird experiments all the time and sometimes produce different combinations. I think those gryphons this Empire uses might be a type of chimera. I mean, they certainly weren’t around 150 years ago.”