Chapter 1499: Lizard-Men

Rosie seemed to hesitate about firing at a possible ally. If Arthur was mistaken, she would crush any chance for Juan to emerge victorious. Her hesitation ended when she saw the two Juans were at each other’s throats.

A spear of fire emerged atop her hand, and with a command, it launched at the Juan that Arthur pointed out. It struck him in the chest and made him fly a distance before slamming into a tree.

The fire burned away his armor and then his flesh. He screamed in pain as he cursed at Rosie, making the mage believe she had made a mistake. The others turned toward her with shock, and for a long moment, looked at her in accusation.

An inhuman scream brought back their attention to the collapsed man, whose appearance flickered between Juan and a sickly, gray, lanky creature that seemed two meters tall. It was as thin as a tree branch, making him look like a bipedal snake.

The mimic revealed itself to the group. After a short pause, everyone pounced on the creature. Its life ended before it could flee or take the shape of another human.

Everyone was once again left terrified of this forest. It was the second creature that had turned them against one another and confused them. As the mimic lay dead, its body gave chills to the people.

"It can replicate abilities, memories, and appearances for a short duration of time. There would be no way for us to tell which one is the real deal. We need to walk in pairs and be responsible for each other," Yuran said as he studied the creature.

"Rosie... thank you..." Juan said as he looked at the mage. "I really thought that I was about to die, and it would take my life over."

"If you died, we would know that it was the mimic," Beatrice corrected him. "But yes, you would’ve been dead."

Juan looked shaken to the core. Rosie wanted to interject, gesturing toward Arthur as if to credit him for spotting the mimic, but the others began assigning pairs. In the end, Arthur was paired with Rosie since the two of them would stay at the back.

The Fangs also had a mage, but the woman was a class called Magic Ranger, similar to Yuran’s Magic Gunman. Her arsenal of spells was a mix of melee and ranged attacks, allowing her to offer support and spells at crucial moments.

After the conversation died down, Fay turned back toward Rosie. "How did you know it was the mimic?"

"He told me," Rosie said as she looked at Arthur.

Everyone once again turned toward Arthur, the porter who should have been nothing but a corpse by now. His enigmatic presence had saved the group countless times, more than they even realized.

Fay took one look at Arthur, nodded toward him, and turned back toward the group. It seemed that since he had used the skill, it was expected of him to help identify the mimics.

The fights became increasingly hard from then on, as the mimics would either confuse them or ambush them with numbers. Before they could even see the enemy, they had already taken their forms and forced the party to fight against themselves.

Arthur did his best to point out which person was a mimic or not, but when the fights got chaotic and thirty mimics appeared, it got increasingly more difficult.

In the end, he took out fruits that the parties had brought with them into the dungeon and began hurling them at the real people in his group. It allowed the fight to be easier since they began to understand who was an ally and who was not.

The mage-ranger came forward after Arthur used the fruits and not-so-kindly offered him an item that blasted paint. It was one they used earlier in the maze to keep track of the shifting tunnels, and Arthur only shrugged as he took it.

From then on, the fights became easier. The monsters dropped countless cores and items, making the somber attitude of the party turn joyful.

Rosie was walking next to him after they were done looting another group of mimics when she raised the question. "How come there aren’t any mimics of you?" she asked with confusion.

"Maybe because I’m too weak," Arthur answered.

"That’s nonsense. They can see our memories and will know that you are the only one who can expose them, but they never tried to confuse us by taking your form or even attacking you in the chaos."

Arthur didn’t want to admit that a mimic did try to take his form earlier in the battle. He was surprised to see another Arthur standing in front of him, but things quickly went downhill from there.

The mimic-Arthur began letting out strange cries and sobs as it grabbed its head. Then, without another word, the mimic grabbed a dagger from a mimic-Juan and killed itself.

Arthur didn’t know what to comment on that, and the notion that a monster had seen his memory or tried to replicate his abilities and ended up killing itself... was terrifying.

After that, the mimics seemed to treat him as the plague, even ones who never tried to emulate him. This led Arthur to believe that the mimics were of a collective mind where they shared information and memories.

Rosie was upset that he ignored her questions, but Arthur didn’t know what to answer her. Another group of mimics appeared, and Arthur began blasting paint at the other party members, who had to endure it silently.

After a few more fights with the mimics, the group reached the one-hundred-monster threshold, which allowed for the Mimic Boss to appear. It was a giant creature that looked like a gray octopus except that it had several heads containing all of their faces—except Arthur’s.

The monster began blasting their own abilities back at them as its limbs formed weapons that they used. It regenerated when cut down and even grew more abilities that the party hadn’t utilized before.

The fight was blissfully short as Fay had amplified their stats and allowed them to kill the creature before any casualties appeared. They rested again, but this time, it was more joyful after the great harvest from the mimics.

Arthur felt that their attitude was growing lax, but he didn’t want to raise notice to the matter when he didn’t even fight alongside them. In the end, he allowed them a moment of reprieve as he took a seat at the back and thought about his current situation.

This dream was taking longer than he expected, but he knew it was all about finishing what the dungeon had planned for him to begin with. He began to wonder if his actions of saving Yuran, which led to him falling into the fissure, were not what his father had planned for him.

If the reawakening of the legacy had led him to the creation of the original one, it meant that it was related to how it was created. The scholar guardian explained a lot of things when they first met, but he didn’t mention his father’s involvement.

Arthur thought of the old man for the first time in months. The words of Oriole resurfaced in his mind. His father tried to make him a savior by turning himself into a villain. It was a twisted method, but it might have worked to make Arthur worshiped in their world.

After learning so much about the gods and the Sovereign Path, Arthur understood that power came from the collective worship that he received from the people. It was a method that Yggdrasil used to allow the people to choose their rulers.

Can Arthur fight against his father’s goals, despite his twisted methods, after learning that the intent behind them was his own benefit? Did Seref know that Arthur would have to fight the gods and knew what worked and what did not?

Maybe he did succeed in turning Arthur into a savior by making Arthur hate him. It was a perspective that Arthur could understand but not forgive.

His train of thought was short-lived as the others finished their meal and rose to fight again. This time, they had more vigor after Fay distributed the loot among them. It was a well-planned gesture to ensure that no one grew greedy for the time being.

The next type of monster turned out to be some kind of lizard-men that fought with spears. Their formations and battle tactics reminded Arthur of the demi-humans, but that’s where the resemblance stopped. They were violent and spoke in hisses.

Arthur stood to the back while the others fought against them, so he could clearly see how the lizard-men, who looked like a hybrid between a snake and a human and reminded Arthur of Larza, shuffled between formations to break the rhythm of the group.

The first fight did not end in victory but with the retreat of the enemy. It was the first time that this happened, and the group stood confused and panting. As they were deciding on what to do, another squad attacked.

And thus began the hell of guerrilla warfare against their party.

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