<~> Chapter 39We tinued down the hallway. Man and Torien were walking a bit ahead of us, quietly talking with each other. They occasionally looked back but didn't say anything else to us on the mimic subject yet. From time to time Mimi chirped ht or left to lead us towards the boss room. Bel seems to trust Mimi wholeheartedly since she experienced a simir transformation herself. Mimi's oath is not to the same depth as her own but Bel probably has a better uanding of how the "uo knowingly attack or wainst their mother succubus" cuse feels. Bel also didn't actually get bitten by ohe same way Man did either though, so that probably helps.

  We walked in near silence food two hours or so without running into any other mimics or traps. I had a suspi that Mimi didn't really want us to fight the other mimics, even if she didn't seem to care that our eventual goal was to destroy the dungeon and everything in it. Eventually I felt like I o occupy myself or I would stop paying attention to my surroundings. Bel seemed focused on her surroundings still so I wao chat with the mimic a bit while I had the ce.

  Since we were walking quietly, I decided to use [Soultouched e] to speak with Mimi privately. -- " you hear me alright Mimi?" --

  -- "Yes master!" -- Mimi happily chirped though the e.

  -- "Don't call me master, Lilith is fine." --

  -- "Yes Lilith!" --

  I'm not really sure if she uands the nuance of why I prefer she use my it didn't feel like an expnation was worth the time right now. I want to get an idea of what she do and how she help.

  -- "Mimi, what kinds of skills do you have? Do you have anything that help in bat?" --

  -- "Hmm... I'm not really sure. I also haven't really looked at the new skills I received from the ges you gave me... Let's see, I now have something called [Succubus Mimiatomy] it says: 'bh bh bh old stuff, oh! succubi mimiot only are able to feed on direct sourana but also gain sustenance from lust aspect magic siphoned from pleasure during sexual enters.' then it goes into a bunch of stuff about what happens if I do and leveling up from sexual partners and stuff. So basically just like the [Mimiatomy] everyone has but with some new sex stuff in it. The w makes it sound like I don't have to eat to absorb mana anymore, just do sex things. I don't really know how to do that stuff though." --

  -- "Mimi, only mimics have [Mimiatomy] I don't know what that trait does." --

  -- "ht, you things are the first things I've seen that move around but aren't mimics. Basically it just says that we have to eat or absorb souragiaintain our bodies and grow. The reason mimics like to stay still for so long is because it takes so much magiove around. It's just easier to sit still and absorb mana for a while, at least if there's enough ambient mana floating about. That's also why different mimics don't really spend any time in the same area. Even if they didn't want to eat each other to take each other's mana, just being near one another would divide the ambient maween them." --

  -- "Mimics sound more like pnts than animals in that respect. Rather than abs sunlight and water you siphon ambient magi the air." --

  -- "Maybe, I wouldn't know." --

  -- "Any other iing skills? You mentioned something about a pocket dimension earlier." --

  -- "Well, pretty much all mimics have a racial trait called [Pocket Dimension], it lets us store magid vert things into mana so we move stuff around. Higher level mimics tend to have proportionally rger pocket dimensions, [Mimiatomy] lets us absorb mana from things we eat to grow and level, [Pocket Dimension] allows us to store anything we don't want to absht away for ter." --

  -- "So if you were to store something in your pocket dimension would you be able to retrieve it safely in the same dition it was stored in? Does food spoil?" --

  -- "Everything should e out exactly how it went in, unless we decided to absorb that mana instead of course. I don't uand what you mean by 'Does food spoil?' though. I eat anything and absorb its mana so I don't really know the difference." --

  Unfortunately I don't really have anything I test with but I'm pretty ied in this pocket dimension ability. It would be o be able to travel light but giving Mimi everything to carry would present its own risks. Not to mention I have no idea how much she o eat.

  -- "How much do you o eat a day?" --

  -- "It depends on how much ambient mana is in the area and how much I o move around. If I found an area with a good amount of stagnant mana I could just sit still and siphon mana away indefinitely, but that's b. Just from you carrying me around I've been able to fill up my mana store a few times over. That's pretty nice si means I could vert all of that mana into weight or density when I shapeshift, plus [Pocket Dimension]'s level goes up every time I fill it with mana so I've gained a few levels of that just iime you've been carrying me around. Once I stop gaining as much from that I'll start to fuhat magito my overall growth instead. But I o be careful because the amount of mana I o maintain myself grows every time I grow." --

  -- "Is it the same as leveling up?" --

  -- "Not really, I also gain levels from eating things though. It's hard to expin, it's more like I gain new skills and beore powerful the more I grow. But like I said, I o have enough mana in the area or in my stores that I don't o worry if I 't find a good sourana for a while. Otherwise I could beana starved which would put me in a frenzy until I 't support myself and go dormant." --

  -- "Does that kill you?" --

  -- "I don't think it means I'm actually dead, it just means I'm sleeping until I absorb enough mana ambiently to wake up. If that happened anywhere around here another mimic would take the opportunity to eat me though. I'm irely sure what it feels like, I've just seen it happen to the other mimics. They get too greedy or fuel their growth while another mimic is trying to eat them. Sometimes it works and they win the fight but then they 't maintain it, eventually going dormant till another mimiders by as them without aance. I don't like eating the others though so I usually just left them be. If they woke up they'd just try to eat me anyway so it wasn't worth watg them." --

  -- "Life sounds tough for mimics." --

  -- "Does it? That's just how it is here." --

  -- "So say we get out of this pd find ehat aren't other mimics. Would you be willing to fight them? you even fight something without eating them entirely?" --

  -- "Mmm, I guess I wouldn't mind fighting things other than mimics but I've never seen anything else so I don't know if it would bother me. I bsp;fight things without eating them but I don't know why I would bother if I wasn't able to e the mana from them. I would do it for you if you asked I guess but moving around a bunch would eat through my mana stores for no reason." --

  -- "Well, if something is attag us we might o defend ourselves. Plus, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find things for you to eat without fighting." --

  -- "If I get food without fighting and you carry me around a lot then I suppose I wouldn't have a problem with that I guess." --

  -- "Also, just to be clear, you're not allowed to eat Bel, Torien, Man, or myself. If we're around something hostile you could probably eat that, but don't do that in front of people you don't know." --

  -- "Okay!" --

  I don't really know how I felt about how bsé that answer was but from her personality I don't think she was actually taking what I said lightly.

  -- "What you do in a fight anywa—" --

  -- "Lilith! There's a demon mimic over there. It seems like a pretty strong ooo, it's level 15." --

  I could feel exactly where Mimi indicated through our e and saw a rge bookshelf on one wall up ahead. We weren't that close yet so I decided to let Mimi tell them so I didn't have to try and expin how I knew or how I talk to Mimi telepathically.

  -- "Good job Mimi, go ahead ahe group out loud." --

  "Hey guys! That bookshelf up there on the left is a level 15 demon mimic!." She blurted that out a bit louder than I was hoping for but we were still far enough away that it didn't seem to hear us. Actually, are mimics even able to hear in the same sense? Never mind, not important.

  I pulled my heavy two-handed sword into a ready position and caught up with the twins. "This one is a lot strohan any of the other ones we've faced so far. Do you think we should try to fight it o around?"

  "You said it was level 15 Mimi? I don't know if it's a good idea to fight it." She prepared to no arrardless, likely in case I decided we go in anyway."

  Man gripped her staff tightly but I suspect it's in anticipation rather than fear. "I say we fight it. They don't seem to use magic so robably pin it down with the four of us. A level 15 enemy will also be pretty good experience." Maybe telling her my level backfired a little, it sounds like it went into her calcutions oher we win or not.

  "Should we be taking unnecessary fights? We just want to get out of here right?" Bel asked.

  "We still have to fight the boss to get to the dungeon core. There's a pretty good ce that it'll be higher level than this demon mimiyway, that's why I think it's important to get experienow while we're retively safe," Man said.

  Torien tapped a finger on her arrow. "Hmm, that's a good point. I don't like the idea of going against a monster so much higher level than most of us but we'll have to do that anyway when we find the boss. It might be a good idea to get experience while we still run rather than when we're stu the boss room."

  I looked at Bel. "Would you be able to disable that bookcase with yic?"

  "My nature magic doesn't work particurly well in an enviro like this. If I had some seeds or something I could grow them into vines but I don't have anything like that on me right now."

  "Alright, remio buy some for you ime we're in town. Mimi, what do you think?"

  "I don't like fighting other mimics but I won't pin if you guys want to. Ially there isn't any other way around that demon mimic if you are looking for the boss room.

  Shit. I sigh. "Looks like we don't have much of a choice theing more experience is probably a good idea anyway. Man, you make a wall of fire behind it? It would be best if it didn't run from us and the mimics don't seem to like fire."

  "Fire hurts a lot..." Mimi added.

  "Sure, I do that. There's so much ambient fire magic around here holding a fire wall in pce shouldn't be too hard to do."

  I look over at Torien. "Alright, that means I'm in front, and you'll be taking pot shots with your arrows when you ." I put my hand on her shoulder. "I trust you but I'm just going to say it anyway, Please don't shoot me in the back."

  She ughed, "I'll do my best, you do have a big ass."

  The joke caught me so off guard I flushed a little, "Ahem, right. Lets do it then." I readied my sword and we began to approach the rge bookshelf.

  Saine

  Hello! This chapter we get to know Mimi better! Hopefully my indications for when they use Soultouched unication isn't too annoying while still being obvious. chapter we have some more fighting before we start getting closer to the end of the dungeon. Thanks for reading!

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