7 Chapter 7 - Eat the...what? (1/2)
”You want me to eat that grumpy guard? And how can you know- no, actually whatever you are I can understand you being able to see into the future a bit. But why eat him at all? And, well I don't think he'll pass through as easily as soup anyway.” While Kenji hadn't spoken his other fear, he was also subtly worried about his own lack of concern. To think that boy who once squealed at spiders could now speak of cannibalism without nary a blink?
”Remember, while you have a corpse you will have the power to perfectly replicate it. Such is the power of your species of Mimic. The memories, the skills, the abilities and the stats will all be yours. Leaving the corpse behind will lose you those abilities, but you'll gain the option of taking a new corpse in its place.”
Thump. Something hit the ground hard in the hallway, Kenji tentatively put down his soup and stared wide-eyed at the door.
”One last thing, your progression. Like the other seventeen evil souls, you can improve any stat or skill by mastering it. Accomplishing difficult feats, expanding your comprehension, and training hard, provide the most experience points, in that order. But each of you will have a unique way to level your special components. For you, that means evolution, to handle more bodies or new skills entirely. To do so you must scout out heroes for me, and fulfil the obligations of the class 'Hero Scout'. Your job is then to grow their grade as much as you can, and when you leave them to their own devices you will gain XP based on how far they have come. Understand?”
”I-I understand.” Kenji turned away, thinking fast, mind turning blank as he saw his reflection in the mirror.
He looked like a tiny old man with flickering green eyes, wearing a street urchin's black scraps for clothing, and he had a mound bulging out the back of his neck. At that moment it hit him, was he really that old guy in the mirror? That mimic...that was him?
Where was the chin his mother used to say was so manly? Or the hair that he had always worried would recede early, like what happened to hisfather?
”Kenji, the guard outside the door is dead. The Holy Knight that rules this keep is definitely hero material, and one of your rivals is out to get him. You don't have much time,” the woman spoke with neat tones, as if everything was in order, and she couldn't see the red liquid spilling out from below the door. As if she didn't address a sixteen-year-old that looked like he was six hundred.
Kenji took a deep breath. Then another. And a third.
”Leave it to me.”
Kenji strode to the door and pulled it open, the quiet guard now forever silent as blood gushed from beneath his helm. No visible wound, not even a dent in the well-maintained iron plate armour. It seemed that the attacker had ignored the large man's defences completely.
Casting his hands wide, Kenji pushed them against the corpse, his cloth, his chains and his everything else melting as he pulled himself over the body and had it sink down into a small space within. When all was done only the blood remained. About two-thirds of his internal space was now filled up with the body, his weapons and his armour.
”Sorry Mr Guard, I didn't know things would go this way,” Kenji whispered, reformed into an especially bow backed elder. The weight of the death-haunted him far more than any video game in the past. This...it just didn't feel like an NPC death, this felt like the gurgling corpse of a man. Of someone who once had life in his eyes, and dreams in his heart.
”You can store other stuff in there of course, like this cane,” she said. Handing him the cane, Kenji's bulging back became easier to move around. Quickly he slid the cane into his chest, vanishing wherever everything else had gone.
”But space is limited without fulfilling your special missions. Now, morph into the guard quickly, or else when I release this serving girl she'll think you killed him.”
Kenji shook his arms, concentrated, and looked up at her one last time.