NOVEL WEB Chapter 100
“…M-M-M-Mimi, Crazy Woman!!!”
Stella, who had collapsed on the floor, screamed as soon as she got up, hyaaah!
Five minutes later…
“You, you, YOU! You actually… Killed the Vice Headmaster…! You… you… killed a PERSON!!”
Stella, trembling, started looking around and cautiously glanced at the corpse lying on the ground.
A headless corpse.
After gagging several times at the sight, Stella staggered and tightly gripped my arm.
“What are you going to do now? Huh?! Do we need to hide the body? Will hiding it… solve everything? If no one saw it… as long as I keep my mouth shut, it should be fine… But if… if you killed the Vice Headmaster… um… oh?”
Then she tilted her head.
“…W-What is this?”
The corpse began to dissolve, squish squish.
“It’s not the Vice Headmaster.”
“…Huh?”
Tilting her head, Stella focused on the melting corpse and then looked up at me.
Tears welled in her wide-open eyes.
“It’s not even a human in the first place.”
“I can tell just by looking at it… So then… what is it? An illusion?”
“Mimicras.”
It’s the name of an intermediate monster that replicates human forms.
There’s a higher-ranked monster with the same ability called a Doppelganger.
The reason they are classified differently is simple.
A Doppelganger can mimic not only a person’s appearance but also their memories, way of speaking, and even some minor habits closely to the original, while a Mimicras cannot do that.
Everything about it is inferior to a Doppelganger.
Thus, if I, like myself… not trusting people in the first place, had a habit of observing them closely, I could differentiate them quickly.
Even if it weren’t for that.
That monster answered in a way that Leona couldn’t.
If Leona was out on an assignment, then there’s no way she could know that Pina had been kidnapped.
Along with that, the fact that the culprit was a professor at the Academy would be completely unknown to her.
But there’s one thing that bothers me.
Mimicras does not refer to a single creature.
It denotes a group of at least ten or more.
And it can only replicate the human forms it has seen ‘personally.’ To have replicated Leona’s form and her way of speaking and laughter closely…
That means.
Is Leona in the Labyrinth too?
Or is it remembering a form it saw before?
If it is, then it would have had to enter the Academy, but how could a monster have gotten in?
The former seems more likely.
At least 400 years ago, there was no Mimicras that could replicate the appearance of a human it had seen before.
However, now I also considered the latter possibility. To be precise…
I thought that there could be a Dark Mage who had tamed the Mimicras and twisted it to their liking.
The creature I had encountered a short while ago seemed to have higher intelligence than any Mimicras I knew.
It naturally embodied the appearance.
Its way of speaking, intonation, expressions, atmosphere, the movement of its ears and tail.
While it wasn’t as identical as a Doppelganger, it was roughly comparable.
Crucially.
The Mimicras, upon hearing my words, made a grimace.
It was genuine, not an act.
And it was an expression that monsters couldn’t make.
It was a change that I couldn’t understand.
Thus, I chose to leave open the latter possibility as well.
So, with that decided…
“Let’s move.”
One of them is dead. The Mimicras will realize that and come this way.
If there’s a Dark Mage controlling the Mimicras from behind, it wouldn’t end just with a Mimicras.
So we need to go somewhere with narrow passages rather than this open area.
“W-wait… What’s a Mimicras then? If it’s a monster that mimics human forms, isn’t it the same as a Doppelganger?”
Amidst all this, Stella asked a silly question.
“…You don’t know what a Mimicras is?”
“How do you know such things?”
“How do you not know such things?”
Do kids these days not know what a Mimicras is?
Well… It’s not like a Labyrinth was being created as actively as when I was around, so I guess they might not know.
Thinking about it, it’s funny.
Isn’t it ironic that they drop notes claiming that knowledge from 400 years ago is outdated, yet they don’t even know what a Mimicras is?
Kids these days… tch.
“I read it in a book. So you should study harder too. Huh? Will the girl who plans to go to the center of Gebihenum not even know what a Mimicras is?”
I said with a hint of superiority.
My knowledge is still intact and hasn’t rotted away after all.
“Ugh, you’re starting to sound like an old man again. Sigh.”
Stella narrowed her eyes and shot a glare at the half-melted corpse of the Mimicras.
And she brushed her arms as if feeling a chill.
“…But I seriously never imagined. I… I just had a normal conversation with a monster… Ugh, that’s creepy.”
“That’s why you’re a 4th Circle novice.”
“What? What does that have to do with this?”
“There’s a significant difference that a 4th Circle novice can’t understand.”
“Ugh… So annoying… Just wait a little longer. Once I hit the 5th Circle, I’ll—”
“While you’re saying that, am I just going to sit around? If you reach the 5th Circle, I’ve already hit the 6th Rank.”
Stella made a scornful face.
“Do you think reaching the 6th Rank is easy?”
“For me, it is.”
“You make it sound like you reached the 8th Rank already.”
As if about to scoff at that.
“Ugh. How can a sparrow understand the will of a phoenix?”
Rather than arguing back, I snickered and continued to walk.
“A sparrow? A phoenix…? W-What?”
For a while, Stella couldn’t understand my words, then a little later, she began to chirp like a peep peep and flail around.
*
In the wide tunnel, it turned into a narrow passage.
One path. No sounds of monsters to be heard.
“Let’s rest here for an hour.”
I stopped and rummaged through my waist bag.
“Finally…”
Already completely exhausted, Stella unceremoniously plopped down.
We had encountered many monsters on the way here.
Lizardmen, Human-Faced Bugs, Mimicras, Naga crawling up from water channels, bipedal crocodiles called Croctar, and more.
We’d met every kind of reptilian-related monsters.
Among them, the most annoying and bothersome was definitely the Mimicras.
Yurasia, Stella, Pina, Leona, Father, Uncle, Sedil, Wivir, Silina, Fabiana.
Damn, they all appeared as the figures of people I had encountered on the islands.
Of course, I killed them all.
It felt like we had been fighting almost every five minutes. So, I was also a bit worn out.
No matter how much you know it’s a monster, it’s not easy to punch a familiar face.
Fortunately, it was just punching. Unless you blasted their heads open, they would keep regenerating.
So, you had to burst their heads.
Maybe that’s why.
Stella looked like she was half out of it.
“What do you want to eat?”
“…I feel nauseous.”
“If you don’t eat now, you won’t last.”
“Ugh… then I should eat…”
As if her mana was running low, Stella, with half-closed eyes, nervously extended her trembling hand.
“What should I give you?”
“Um… something soft?”
Looking for something soft in a Labyrinth, huh?
Sure, there are some things.
Tsk, I clicked my tongue and pulled out a gigantic thermos from my waist bag, enchanted with space-expanding magic.
“…What’s that?”
“Something soft.”
Then I opened the lid of the thermos and poured the contents into a paper cup. A savory smell wafted up from the steaming steam.
“Sniff sniff… It smells amazing.”
Gulp—Stella swallowed her spit.
“But… when did you pack this?”
“Just normal preparation.”
I always keep these kinds of things ready.
You never know when something might happen.
A situation might arise requiring urgent action, just like today.
That’s why I gather necessary supplies in advance.
You could call it an obsession…
But if you ever see humans that had once engaged in cannibalism in the Labyrinth, you’d understand why anyone would develop such obsessions.
All of my comrades from 400 years ago carried one such fixation.
Among them, I was the one with food supplies.
Thanks to my emergency rations, we never went hungry. The problem was… that Luna, that gambling addict, squandered all of it.
“…You really pack this kind of stuff regularly?”
“Yup.”
I nodded and handed the cup containing the contents to Stella.
“Eat.”
“Eh… What is this?”
“Nurungji-tang.”
“Nu-Nurungji-tang?”
“Why? Don’t you like it?”
“No, not that I don’t like it… but there are other soups and stuff, right?”
“I like Nurungji-tang. And, you could say it’s a kind of soup.”
“I’m no old person…”
“If you grumble one more time, I’ll take it back?”
Stella, who was about to retort again, murmured silently and took a bite of the Nurungji-tang, slurp.
“It… tastes good. It’s savory…”
“You should eat this too.”