75 Unfamiliar Sight

Galahad turned to the last mimic still capable of standing, Heath. Blood was still pouring out the end of its broken blade, but not as badly as it did moments ago. His eyes were still rolled over white bulbs with a new set of teeth overlapping in front of his human ones, they were longer and thinner points that made his impossibly wide smile far more creepy.

In a deeply garbled and watery voice, the monster Heath spoke at him. "You've only delayed what's to come. If we do not eat you here and now, you'll only become food for something worse than us."

"Tell you what." Galahad said with very little enthusiasm in his voice. "You tell me how all your little buddies managed to pull off looking exactly like my friends, and then you can try to eat me all you like. Sound like a good deal?"

"Gah gha gaha!" The mimic let out a laugh that sounded like someone was drowning in a puddle. Followed by the sounds of his broken blade breaking into smaller pieces in his hand. In a moment of relief, Mimic Heath now had a claw hand made of false metal shards.

Galahad stole a glance at the blue gem in his sword's hilt and found he overworked the blade again. Using the reshaping ability and lightning strikes so close together always drained the array design etched onto it. Now he was stuck for a few hours with a five-foot long, arrowhead shaped sword, what was even worse was the blade was embedded in the wall with Mimic Victor between it. He didn't wanna get close until the he was certain he could get the weapon out without any risk.

When he turned his eyes back on Heath, he saw it was scuttling at him on all fours instead of running normally, reminding him of the Wendigo that Solteer killed months ago. Its hungry jaws were no different, only the face of his friend was plastered across this abomination.

Mimic Heath was much faster now than before, acting more like a predator instead of a human battle class. It had clearly gone feral and its animal instincts were making it more reckless, thinking less about the consequences of its actions and more about the eating step of the process.

It pounced to the wall and hung suspended along the side for a moment, before jumping like a giant spider to Galahad's right side. The mimic took into account that Mimic Trista stabbed a hole into Galahad's right hand, making it the weaker of the two. He could still smell his blood in the air from the small stab; it was almost so intoxicating to his nose, that he was salivating from the smell alone.

Galahad didn't have much time to do anything but drop his backpack from his shoulder and grab for its contents while trying to retreat backward. He only managed to get as far as his wrist inside the pockets, before the mimic tackled him to the ground.

Suddenly, as if the mimic was capable of wielding the strength of a giant, he gripped Galahad with his weaponized hand and flung him over his shoulder and straight into the top of the tunnel. It was a twenty-foot tall ceiling, but the apex of the throw would have gone much higher if there was more room.

Galahad had the wind knocked out of him and he saw stars in his eyes from the impact. On the descent, he could feel his right shoulder was bleeding from the claw hand stabbing through his armor on the throw. The sword might have been a physical part of the mimic, but it clearly capable of using the shards like lethal daggers to pierce through the armor no problem.

Mimic Heath never dropped his insanely gleeful smile as he jumped up and caught Galahad by one of his legs. The monster twisted the force of the fall midair with its jump, launching Galahad sideways and straight into the wall.

Galahad felt the dirt wall shower him in pebbles and dry mud. Before he could react to second impact, the mimic landed and was already there to keep him pinned against the wall. With an abundance of speed and strength, mimic Heath wanted to give no time for the human to react and wanted to enjoy finding the fear he always saw in his victim's eyes before they died.

He drilled his metal cluster of a fist into Galahad's left arm, making him briefly scream in anguish. Reminders to how painful the black orb was flashed in his mind, making it mentally more painful than he cared to admit. The monster mistook his agony as terror, not knowing Galahad was briefly reliving past trauma.

"Gha gaha gah!" Mimic Heath started chuckling as he got his face right up in Galahad's. "You have an interesting scream as well as a smell, almost like you're one of us."

Every hit and motion made more blood spill from his arm, and the mimic loved it so. Something about the moment before tearing apart Galahad's innards made him feel excited, like he found the golden ticket to an eternal buffet.

"Oh I'm flattered, but its time I take that little orb sitting somewhere inside you." Galahad ignored the pain and gave a somewhat calm expression as he looked at the milky-white spheres he assumed to be eyes.

"And just how do you plan on doing that?" Heath mocked as his rows of teeth came closer to Galahad's face.

'With misdirected anger and the only hug you'll ever get.' Galahad thought as he slammed the bridge of his nose into the mimic's chin. The mask provided some cover from the monster teeth he broke, but the ceramic mask broke down the middle with loud, shattering clang.

He ended up retiring his black skull mask that night, seeing as the array etched on the inside was split in half and was no longer functional. Galahad was gonna need to find another way to hide his identity once he leaves the dungeon later on.

At the same time, He pulled his arm away from the shard-covered claw while trying to not pay attention to the sensation of the muscles being ripped apart. All that mattered in that moment was getting free to get one decent attack at the monster in order to stop it from beating the absolute shit out of him.

Unfortunately, his right hand still had a hole in it and his left arm now had a large chunk removed just below the shoulder. He needed to get to the mana orbs in his bag; he originally had wanted to get the orbs out of his bag before the fight started back up to heal his hand and some spilled out onto the dirt. Galahad took what he could get at this point.

[ Do you wish to consume Mana Orb? ] popped up the moment he was thrown in the air, so he waited till the mimic was right up into his face to start his retaliation.

'Yes, and please hurry the fuck up.' Galahad gritted his teeth as he dove forward, grabbing the monster before it could regain balance.

He might not have been able to grab all the orbs from the bag, but there was enough to stop the profuse bleeding of his arm and hand. At least temporarily, giving Galahad an extra five minutes before he'd need to be concerned about bleeding to death again.

They both toppled over and started rolling on the ground. As they struggled, a glass popping noise went off a few time and a blue smoke joined in. Galahad had him locked in a bear hug around the midsection and elbows. If the monster wanted to escape, it needed to start changing shape.

Which is exactly what it did.

Galahad kept a tight squeeze, but it didn't stop all the muscle sinews beneath the skin from wriggling it's way to the mimic's neck. He could feel the bones of the fake rib cage breaking with his strength, but it didn't matter when the monster was making itself a new way to attack.

In a matter of moments, the mimic's legs thinned down to little poles with bony feet and its neck was now longer than the torso. It starting to slither its newly moved muscles to poise the head in the air like a cobra.

It launched its fang-filled head into Galahad's back, tearing at his armor in an attempt to sever his spinal cord so Galahad would release his crushing grip.

'Let's see who can find the vital spots first.' Galahad thought as he felt the metal plate on his back hold up for a little while, putting it there was the only reason his spine wasn't torn apart in a instant. He didn't let go of the torso and arms until the arms bones he held down started snapping too, only then did he let go and try to final the universal weakness every monster had.

The mana orb within.

Galahad straightened out the fingers on the hand that hadn't been stabbed, aiming at the demon's chest. Without wasting a second, his glove returned back into his skin at the same time he jammed his entire hand into its chest, just below the sternum.

Once he got past the skin, he found the inner workings of the mimic very squishy and notably a lot more fluid than anything else. It didn't occur to him until later that the mimic had redirected all its muscle tissue towards its neck and shoulder to build foundation his attacks needed to stem from, otherwise the bite and slashing wouldn't be able to gather enough force for the powerful impacts.

Mimic Heath was surprised Galahad would go so far as to dig inside his chest, but he didn't let up the assault on Galahad's back. Whoever managed to reach the other's weakness first would ultimately win the fight, so neither one let up on their attacks.

In a few seconds, the muscles gathering in the mimic's jaws managed to crush the metal plate and tear it off like a cheap sticker.

Galahad could feel the air against his bare skin, his chances of survival were dropping down within each microsecond the mimic reeled back for its final blow.

[ Do you wish to consume Mana Orb? ]

Without skipping a heartbeat, Galahad was confirming to consume the orb he just managed to feel with his index finger. A suppressed popping sound could be heard inside the mimic, declaring Galahad the winner.

As if someone just pulled the plug on the mimic's consciousness, it went completely limp as everything flopped to the floor. It's dense head now swollen with most of its muscle used to bend the metal had landed on the floor with a heavy thud. The fight was over, and only Galahad was getting to walk away.

Galahad slowly picked himself up and immediately walked over to his bag, grabbing the remaining orbs he didn't spill on the floor.

He could fill the whole pile of them in his hand, activating the blue spheres to explode and begin scabbing over his remaining wounds. As he did it, Galahad held them up to the gaping hole in his arm and slice running along his palm, trying to hurry up the process the best he could.

Galahad sighed in relief, as the remaining orbs in his palm fixed the wounds with heavy scabs and left only small remnants of pain behind. The last trace of the blue smoke wrapped around to his chest wound and most recently scratched up back.

The crushed metal plate hung like a sorry excuse for a cape, crippled to nothing more than ball of shredded metal that disappointed Galahad greatly.

At the end of his fight against the mimics, he lost a great deal of armor. His leather armored torso piece and fairly new pauldron were destroyed beyond the point of any self repair.

It was one thing for him to get a couple scratched here and there, they always faded later on. When the armor sat beneath his skin and reappeared, a light scar from the damage would sit in the same spot on the armor. Now he had to pick up the shredded pieces of his armor that were scattered about the tunnel floor.

'Lovely, had I know this would have happened, i wouldn't have bothered to stay and chat with the locals.' Galahad grumbled.

Mimics were a dastardly species of demons, known to torment with their food before devouring it. No one knew for sure why they put on various disguised before killing adventurers, but they certainly knew how to use it against them.

The only unique skills they had was being capable of changing their appearance into anything living or inanimate object they'd seen; they were a form of sentient muscle and nerve tissue. The most dangerous part was their ability to turn their body into all sorts of weapons, the only advantage against them was fire or inflicting enough pain that they couldn't focus on changing their forms.

Galahad took a deep breath and snuffed Fury and Fyre, leaving the only source of light to the raw crystals in the walls. The timer started and was rapidly going down towards the end, assuming his anger had something to do with the accelerated burnout of Chi. Once he let the skill go, his body ached a lot more than he expected. He felt he was going to be very sore in the morning.

During his initial rage, Galahad had no problem killing the deceitful bastards before him. Now his mind cooled down and he could hardly look at the sorry shape his fake friends were in. They might not have been his actual friends, but their voices and wails of agony were too accurate to not phase through painfully through his heart. He put the sword away and scanned the carnage to find one that wasn't about to shortly die and could talk.

Galahad had no reason to fight the mimic's in the beginning. He could have just left using the return spell, but something was bothering him to the point that he needed to figure out how it was possible.

Mimics were elusive and intelligent enough to pick up on human languages, they used the voices and words of their illusion to bring down the sense of danger their prey might have. Just hearing the voice of a loved one or acquaintance could lure the mind into a false sense of security, just before getting enveloped by distorted jaws of shapeshifting monster teeth.

But they could only do it with things they seen, so how could they become his friends if he was the only one standing there. He stayed to find out why.

Surprisingly, the Victor mimic was the only one that wasn't entirely dead, although he barely made the cut. His blood loss and torn open stomach was making any movement a struggle that brought his death even closer. If the Mycroft mimic hadn't stopped seizing, he probably would have tried to see if that one was capable of saying anything.

Additionally, its face was displaying all the fear and terror Galahad had never seen on the real Victor's face before. Victor never had much of say with facial expressions, he'd only furrow his eyebrows or raise them to convey his point, something the mimic wasn't doing. He had no problem disassociating its face from the real thing, so it was a lucky coincidence for him.

Not so lucky for the mimic though, it was the first time Galahad saw terror in a monster's eyes.