Eat And Grow 2 (1/2)

“Hnnnngg,” groaned the Mimic. It was gradually growing frustrated. Right now it was trying to work out the correct chant to bring up what Spells it could use. “Uhh, shells!” it yelled. Nothing happened. So far nothing had worked.  “Najic!” was also a dud. It had dismissed that fateful Level Up window in haste so that it could double-check its main Status Screen. And now it was regretting that rash decision. It could no longer directly examine the unfamiliar words it saw there.

It had just learned the Shadowbolt Spell. It must have been that mass of darkness the scruffy-looking black-haired male threw at it a few times. It really wished it had paid closer attention as to what he was doing. But it was already too late - his ash pile would not offer any answers. It did absorb the Warlock Job from his corpse though. And since it learned the Spell, the Mimic knew the chant and gestures required to activate it, as well as how to target it.

But when it tried to cast it, nothing happened. So right now it was trying to find out what it was missing, just like the last time it was stumped. But the Shadowbolt entry did not appear in any of the screens and menus it was familiar with, so it was stuck. But surely there had to be some sort of list. There was a Skill List and a Job List so surely there was one for Spells, right?

“… Shell Lisht?”

Spell List

Shadowbolt

“Yeshaaaaa!” it yelled in triumph. Its spidery legs did a little tap-dance for a few seconds, commemorating the occasion. If the Mimic actually had lips, they would undoubtedly be curled in a smile.

Shadowbolt

Requirements: Level 1 Warlock, INT 10

School: Ruin

Type: Projectile

Cost: 40 MP

Range: 25 Meters

Effect: Launches a volatile bolt of darkness in a specific direction.

The force of the Spell will attempt to pull apart the first solid thing it hits, then dissipate.

Grows in power in dark places or at night, dealing up to 50% more damage depending on the environment.

Unsurprisingly, there was no new information here. All of this knowledge had already been transmitted to the Mimic’s mind and engraved into its memory. In a hypothetical situation where it could communicate with others, it would be able to accurately describe the spell as a Projectile from the Ruin school of magic that grew stronger in the dark. The problem was that it would then be unable to answer the obvious follow-up question:

What the fuck was Ruin?!

Ruin

An offense-focused school of magic that boasts the strongest destructive power, commonly known as Black Magic.

Ruin Spells are unbalanced and inefficient, making them cost more MP than Spells from other schools.

And now it could say that Ruin Spells hurt a lot, but demand high MP to use. Was it really that high, though? Compared to the staggering 150 MP Cost of Cadaver Absorption, 40 almost seemed like a joke. The question was, exactly how powerful was this ‘strongest destructive power?’ The Mimic only had enough MP on it for, like, 3 casts of that Spell. Or was it 4? Wait, how much max MP did it have again? It brought up the Status Screen to double-check.

It had 52/195 MP, so that was 2, 3, 4… Just short of 5 Shadowbolts’ worth of MP. It could probably do 5 in a row if it waited a bit for its MP to recover.

Oh.

It checked again. 53/195 MP (+0.4/sec). Now that the Mimic had a closer look, didn’t it have 20-something when it first got this Warlock Job? And didn’t it try to use this Shadowbolt spell almost immediately afterwards? It knew the cost was 40 MP, but it didn’t really think to check how much it had at the time. It was simply over-excited at the prospect of gaining a reusable ranged attack. It had given up after several tries and had been poring over its menus ever since.

So, now would be a good time to try again, yes? The monster switched gears and sharpened its focus. It let out a quiet guttural sound that was, in essence, the Shadowbolt chant in Mimicanese. It pictured gathering the shadows around it into a small dense lump while doing so. A 15-centimeter wide black mass formed steadily in front of it. A thick miasma poured out of it in all directions. The dark smog-like substance lingered in the air for a brief moment before dissipating into nothing.

After about a second of that, it shouted “Shatolholt!” while simultaneously imagining the conjured chunk of darkness flying off into a specific direction. And that is indeed what happened! The Shadowbolt flew in a perfectly straight line into the distance with a small hissing noise. It reached its maximum Range of 25 meters in just under a second before fizzling out of existence.

The Mimic had just used its first real Spell. It did another dance for joy. Like this, it would finally be able to fight at range and also increase its Warlock Job Levels.

Any Experience Points (XP) earned through killing things would, by default, feed into the monster’s Main Job - that of a Level 15 Mimic. For it to raise its Level 1 Side Job, it had to murder stuff by doing Warlock-y type things. Like, for example, hurl lumps of eldritch darkness at its prey. If it just continued stabbing and biting everything to death, the creature’s fancy new Job would remain as little more than a Level 1 decoration.

This was the gist of the knowledge it had gleaned from its brief struggle to find out why its Shadowbolt spell failed to activate. Most of that information was given to it freely after it Inspected the terms Job, Main Job and Side Job and Job Level. It also realized that it would need to split XP between the Mimic and Warlock Jobs, but that was not necessarily a bad thing. Those rapid Level Ups were sure to be tasty in their own way. Additionally, as a shapeshifter, it fully understood the benefits of being versatile, so having a means of attacking at range was going to be a huge help.

Although it then immediately realized something. The Shapeshift Skill was, in a way, this monster’s main weapon. The legs, tentacle-tongues and even that one eye it sprouted were all possible because of this Skill. But at the same time, it had somehow ended up neglecting it. Until now, it couldn’t really morph itself while waiting in ambush. Nobody in their right mind would assume a wiggling chest was the real thing, after all. That much it already knew by instinct.

But now was different. Now it would be taking a more active role that went against such gut feelings.

As a matter of fact, those very same instincts had steadily been getting quieter - even before its connection to the dungeon had been severed. If at first they were like a loud ear-piercing scream, right now they were closer to a murmur. It knew what they were telling it, but it could easily ignore them if it wished to do so. It wasn’t actually a slave to such things, it didn’t necessary have to obey them. It was odd that it took it this long to realize that simple fact. This was probably due to the dungeon’s compulsions anyway. There really wasn’t much point in worrying about it now. Besides, its natural urges appealed to it at a base level, so it would still end up indulging them every now and then. The difference was it could now make the choice whether it would do that or not.

And right now, it was making the decision to improve itself. Outside of this dungeon was the complete unknown and it needed to be ready. Therefore, it would need to train up its Shapeshift Skill so that it would be better prepared. After all, the speed and range of transformations it could do went up noticeably every time the Skill Leveled Up.

For starters, now that it had sight, how about increasing its field of vision? While not as accurate as its magical perception, it was still wary of being ambushed from a distance. Those humans with their front-facing eyes were clearly idiots. If they could see towards their backs and sides without turning their heads, they might not be such easy prey. Such pitiful creatures.

Over the next several seconds, about 20 additional closed eyelids grew from the monster’s wood-like shell. It needed that many to cover all possible angles it could think of, after all. Even if a few of them were redundant, it was good to have backups. When the eyelids were properly formed, it then began working on the hollow eyeballs under them. Since it had already figured out the proper structure, it just need to repeat it over and over.

Proficiency level increased. Shapeshift is now Level 4. AGI +1. DEX +1. END +2.