<Alex, Real - All Dead? Is It Permanent?, 3rd Floor of a Burnt Out Art Gallery>

The crazed undead hammer-crest was far less mobile now that it didn't have any lower legs, but because they'd effectively shortened both sides by the same amount, it was adapting quickly.

John spoiled its initial charge—which had actually taken the three melee members of their group by surprise—with a well-placed blast from his shotgun.

Still, the group had been able to keep up when the thing had been in top form, and now it was quite hampered, comparatively speaking. So, after that initial surprise, they were having a better time of it. That didn't mean it would go down easily, however.

Alex continued to observe the odd flow of energy through the hammer and back to the creature, and if anything, it had increased both in speed and strength.

It was only in a momentary pause that Alex noticed something critical. This was after Natasha had skewered it for the umpteenth time, and Grant had embedded his hammer in the side, both having to jump back to avoid the returning, massive hammer-stroke from the hammer-crest. After all, it had proven to be able to shatter Natasha's Force Shield with too much ease to trust that to stop the blow.

As to what he noticed? The hammer was looking more and more damaged, and not only in places that made sense, given their fight.

It wasn't anywhere close to being destroyed, but it looked worn, like it had been well used for decades since its creation. Even the base of the handle—which Alex was absolutely sure none of them had hit—showed knicks and cuts.

"The hammer! Get the hammer out of its hands."

In that moment, Alex learned just how much his companions trusted him. He'd been a bit bumbling, and not all of his ideas or plans worked out well, but he'd shown himself to be a quick-thinker, and someone who noticed what many don't.

It was likely because of that that Grant acted as he did.

The bigger man jumped forward, switching out for his massive sledge and bringing it around, striking straight for the wooden hammer.

His swing hit true, catching the underside of the head, slamming the odd wooden weapon from the hammer-crest's hands, but it also spun him around, showing his back to the undead creature.

Their enemy didn't leave the opening alone, striking with all its power. The fist that had previously hit so hard lashing out.

Natasha tried to spear the creature to prevent the strike, not trusting her Force Shield to protect their friend.

The punch landed, eliciting a loud crack and… doing almost nothing else.

Her spear slipped into its chest, almost unopposed, bringing forth a fountain of blood when Natasha twisted and wrenched it free.

Grant barked out a laugh, working his shoulders even as the hammer-crest tumbled back, already dead.

"That big mohawk-mullet man got a kink out." Grant laughed again. "That's been bugging me for days."

After a moment, everyone turned to Alex, causing the man to shrug. They clearly wanted an explanation as to how he'd known. "There was power moving through it and its hammer, that reminded me of one of my skills. I think something about the hammer was giving it strength and power. It also seemed like the hammer was absorbing damage for it, or something similar."

They all turned to look at the fallen weapon, but it was withering, seemingly having been tied to the hammer-crest in some inextricable way.

"Well…" John cleared his throat. "Let's keep that in mind, if we see any more of these odd creatures."

The Initiates all nodded in agreement.

There was a long moment of silence before they each fell into their after-battle rhythms.

John checked over his guns, his shotgun and pistols all. Natasha and Alex examined the edges and points of their weapons, and Grant checked the heft on his hammers, ensuring the handles hadn't cracked, and that he could still keep a good grip.

This time he muttered to himself, and Alex caught it. "Blunt is best, nothing to get ruined before it breaks."

Alex huffed a laugh, eliciting a grin from the man, showing that he'd likely meant to be overhead.

After their weapons were verified as functional, they each spot-checked one another for injury or contamination, reminding Alex to ash the hammer-crest.

He was grateful to find that—now that the creature was no longer moving about—it was as easy to dust as any other undead.

That done, Natasha Inventoried the results, and they all took a moment to eat some food and drink some water. Though, in Grant's case, the man had found something equivalent to Gatorade powder in one of the grocery stores. He'd mixed that into his canteen, and he was downing the results.

Alex was a bit jealous, if he were being honest. He'd only drank such things a few times when he was in a far more active time of his life, and he'd always found that they made him far more able to keep going.

Grant seemed to sense something, because he glanced toward Alex and hesitated. "Do… you want some of the powder? There's quite a bit back at the base, so you can get your own can—they even have quite a few flavors, so you can have your pick—but until then, you can have some of mine."

Alex cleared his throat, feeling a bit bad about whatever face he'd been making at the guy. "Oh… sure. Thanks, Grant."

Grant shrugged. "It's fine. I'd rather have you in top form than keep a bit more of this magic blue powder for myself."

Natasha snorted and rolled her eyes at the men's antics but didn't comment.

John just shook his head before addressing the Russian woman. "Don't knock it. If I was on the front lines, I'd want some. It really can be like magic, how much it helps, under the right circumstances."

She just held up her hands. "Fine, fine. I didn't say anything."

They finished their very short break in good humor, not willing to have the System send anything further at them.

They did consider using it to bait out more of the enemies from above, but they had no way of knowing if the waves of 'get on with it' monsters were being spawned by the System rather than drawn from what was already there.

If it was the latter, staying in place and taking all comers could be the right call, but if it was the former, they'd just be wearing themselves out and making the quest unnecessarily harder.

I do hope that things are more 'real world' once we're out of the tutorial. I don't know that I want to permanently shift my thinking to video game logic…

Regardless, they were all ready to go in less than three minutes after the hammer-crest was ashed, Alex leading the way to the open archway to the stairs, leading up.

"Two more floors?"

The others nodded, Natasha checking her edge again, and John switching back to his two hand-guns, Inventorying his shotgun.

"Let's do this." He checked his lights given the dimness of the stairwell and began slowly walking up the stairs. They could have probably seen without the lights, and it might have given them a bit of a surprise advantage, if the way was open above or if there were any enemies within, but the benefit of being able to see well far eclipsed the potential of a possible advantage.

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As it turned out, it was a very good thing that they'd gone with the lights.

Alex stopped on the first landing and switch-back, frowning at the next step. "Natasha… is that step… odd?"

Natasha, who had been right behind him, moved her gaze downward and she frowned as well. "It's… paler? It almost seems to be slightly sagging too. Skip it?"

"I think so, but…" Alex stretched out with his dadao and poked the step. As he did so, the slight pressure cut a thin line into it, causing an upwelling of black blood, proving it wasn't concrete at all.

Teeth extended on either side and the entire thing snapped closed on the sword like a bear-trap.

Grant shuddered, John shifted away while remaining on the landing, and Natasha's eyes widened in surprise.

The result of the inward force was the thing cutting itself all the way through on edge of Alex's weapon.

There was a degraded step beneath the thing, seeming to have been corroded out of the way. The creature itself was letting out a keening whimper, even as black blood and caustic, almost-green something flowing out of the slit cut by the weapon.

Alex's eyes widened for two reasons. The first, most obvious one was at the presence of what seemed to be in the 'mimic' family, pretending to be a step. The second was far more pressing, however.

If it was secreting an acid of some sort, that couldn't be good for his sword. He jerked it back before flicking the blade to the side to remove most of the gross. Then, pulling a rag from his Inventory, he frantically scrubbed the remaining goop free. "Soggy waffles! Give me a moment."

The blade was already pitted and the edge uneven. The dark green metal, where he'd repaired it before, had held up better, but not by much.

The rag was smoking, and he threw it to the side. Where a bit of acid had gotten on his skin, he felt a bit of a sting, but hesitated, looking down at the tiny drops on the back of his hand.

Given that the mimic-stair-thing was likely trying to eat flesh, it didn't make sense for it to be an acid that didn't dissolve those things. Even so, his skin was holding up better than both the rag and the steel, but he could see the upper layers starting to dissolve, and the tingle and itch told him not to leave it.

Yeah… Let's get this off.

He scraped off the acid on the wall even as his Basic Resistance (Acid) leveled up, hitting level 4.

Attribute Level-Up: Basic Resistance - Acid Level 3 → Level 4

He looked back to the mimic, ignoring the slowly fading sizzle from the facade beside him. His Analyze went off at his prompting.

Just a Step Level ??

Alex gave the whimpering, twitching 'step' a flat look. "Yeah, no. Let's try that again."

This time, he focused more closely, feeling an odd resistance that seemed to almost try to deflect his Analyze. He pushed through it easily, now that he knew to do so, getting a different result.

Undead, Simple Mimic Level ??

He sighed. The Level indicator was essentially useless. His Danger Sense gave a much better result. He wished that he—

Notice: Do you wish to alter how your Analyze displays information?

Y/N?

Alex's eyes widened. "Yes."

Undead, Simple Mimic Danger Level: Discovered, Minimal

He grinned. "Now, that's wonderful."

He briefly described what he'd done, and while the others didn't have Danger Sense, they did have other skills that seemed to be able to subtly influence how Analyze functioned.

That got him thinking about skills and attributes. "I leveled my acid resistance from that thing…"

Natasha gave him a flat look. "No, Alex."

He jerked slightly. "Huh? What?"

"I said no."

"No… what?" He frowned at the woman.

"You can't keep it as a pet. You can't keep it with you to help train your resistance."

"But…"

She gave him an unamused look.

"Fine…" How had she known what he was thinking? He hadn't even truly thought it yet?

She seemed to notice something change on his face, because she snorted, shook her head, and sighed. "I have a husband and son, Alex. I know how men's minds work."

He grimaced. "Fine, fine." Still… "Are you all willing to give me a minute?"

The others grunted, keeping a wary eye on the undead mimic.

Alex tentatively reached forward, poking it and sending a hundred Life into it, not to kill, and certainly not to heal. Learn.

He then stepped back, and waited for the creature to slowly bleed out and eat itself with its own acid. It also didn't seem to like his Life running through it very much, but it wasn't seeming to actually cause damage, at least not to its HP.

A moment later, it died, and Alex grunted. "It was (Simple) after all, that wasn't just a part of its name?"

Natasha grunted as well. "What level?"

"Fifteen." He stepped forward, drawing his Life back into himself. He grinned as he got the hoped for notification, though its contents were entirely unexpected.

System Notice: New Attribute Acquired

Basic Resistance - Examination (Lvl 1)

Details: Innate ability to hide your true nature. Your Magical Fortitude and Level have a minor boost when opposing magical analysis or examination.

Description: You have fought creatures inured against magical analysis, and you decided that's a pretty cool racial trait they have. In fact, it would be nice if you could have it for yourself.

You may choose a fictitious label that will be presented to those who attempt to learn your nature. The difficulty for others to determine it is false, as well as that to pierce through to the truth, is determined by their Level and Magical Power, tested against your Level and Magical Fortitude. The formula is tilted in your favor.

Apology Tutorial Addendum: Alex… Really?

A primary purpose of Initiations is to get Initiates to trust the System…

Sigh.

I suppose it's on us for including mimics then, eh? Glad it wasn't my idea. Have fun, and good luck.

Alex grinned broadly, he could practically hear whoever added the addendum rubbing at their temples before they just shrugged and gave up. They'd even typed out 'sigh'... or however they input the message contents.

He had a vague sense that he needed to 'set' his false results, but it was hardly the time to go into detail, so he simply vaguely thought: NotAlex, Level 1, Harmless, Human.

He had no idea if the order mattered, but he sent those four things vaguely at the new attribute, and they seemed to be accepted, so he counted it as successful.

"What has you grinning like a madman? And please don't make me regret asking…" Natasha was rubbing at her neck with one hand, the other still firmly holding her spear.

He explained what he'd gotten to them.

John snorted, shaking his head, but Grant started laughing.

That caused the whole group to turn his way.

"What?" He frowned, looking around in obvious confusion. "Don't you see?"

Alex slowly shook his head, and the other two seemed to be in a similar camp.

"Not only is this broken on the face of it, because we can Analyze for free, letting you train your resistance and us train our Analyze skills against such disguises, but think about it, Alex. In a world so dependent on the System, don't you think that being able to spoof your outward facing System-given 'description' might allow for some pretty amazing things? Even if not now, eventually?"

Alex's eyes widened, remembering how often he'd helped suss out proper security architecture in his pre-System work. For anything that used magical analysis for access or anything else, this could give him options.

"Grant?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

The man laughed. "You're not my type."

Alex glanced up, his mind coming back to their quest. "I'll continue up. You all Analyze me as we go, but don't forget why we're here."

That sobered the group, and they all nodded.

In that moment, he felt a vague, cold tingle. Alex shivered, and John's eyebrow quirked up. "You felt that?"

Alex cocked his head to one side. "You Analyzed me?"

"Yeah."

Another tingle danced across his skin, and he looked back and forth between Natasha and Grant.

John cleared his throat. "Me again."

"Well." Alex smiled. "That is a pleasant addition." And he meant it too. "Though, it does demonstrate that it's possible to sense Analyze. We need to be more careful about using the skill on 'unaware' enemies."

They all nodded.

"Alright. Let's go. Two more floors."

"Two more floors." Grant responded, taking up his position at the rear of their group.

Alex proceeded up the stairs, tingles practically coating his whole body as his companions did as he'd asked and Analyzed away.

Still, his mind was on what lay ahead, and the undead they still had to face.

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