Chapter 21: Upgrade

Standing alone in the dark, Thomas allowed himself one genuine moment of grief for Zach. It hadn’t escaped his notice that one of Zach’s last acts was to push Thomas to the door when the chandelier had fallen between them. He had been his friend, and Thomas wasn’t a guy who collected many friends.

Thomas sniffed, wiped his eyes, and then pinched the bridge of his nose hard, forcing himself to store those emotions away. He’d take them out later, but he was in big trouble and couldn’t afford to grieve.

Despite his resolve, his oh-so-helpful brain provided other memories: his nephews, who would wonder what had happened to their uncle. Of Derek, who needed him to fix his damn hand.

No.

Thomas needed to survive this. He wasn’t going to stand in the dark and wait for death. He was going to go down fighting if he went down at all.

He had no way to see where he was, but he might have options.

He took inventory by touch. As he’d halfway expected, the head of his axe was gone. Maybe the chandelier had taken it. Now he just had a long stick.

Sticks had uses for a blind man.

And he had other weapons. One touch confirmed that his curved dagger with the sheath was still at his belt, as was the penknife. After a moment’s thought, he took out the curved dagger. It had a slightly longer blade than the penknife. Plus, he wasn’t sure how much use a ghost of a mimic would be in a fight.

These are just level one monsters, he told himself. He’d been killing level one monsters for, gosh, four whole days now. Individually, they were manageable. The danger was in their numbers. They were attracted to noise and chaos.

So no noise, or chaos.

Carefully, he grabbed the axe handle and pushed it forward along the ground. He moved at a glacial pace. No need to get cocky, and no need to rush.

Cautious of making noise, he tapped very, very gently, and when he hit something, he’d immediately back up two steps. If it was a mimic, that was enough to awaken it and start its attack, where his Foresight would kick in. Then he would see its shape and react.

His dagger, his lovely dagger, which he absolutely loved—cut everything.

Unfortunately, it seemed that every single piece of furniture he hit was actually a mimic.

The first one was a couch, which was scary, seeing as it was eight feet long, but that meant it moved slowly. It also died quickly. Only three slashes, and it melted into a giant puddle of goo.

The very worst part was kneeling in the goo, which was body-heat warm—ugh—and groping around in it for loot.

Thomas was not going to leave anything useful behind.

Jackpot! He found three mana crystals. Without light to see, he couldn’t determine what type they were or their grade, but he’d just earned these crystals, damn it. Gathering loot, as silly as it was, made him feel like he was winning.

His next kill was a step-stool that seemed to have been placed in the middle of the floor. It dropped one crystal, and once again he felt that shock of recognition as his fingers touched it.

What were these things? In the Mantis Cave dungeon, he’d thought of them as ‘Teen drama vampire mana’ because they were so glittery as they shifted from one color to another, but then he’d actually absorbed one to reach level 2.

With a frown, he checked his status again.

Adaptation subaspect. Had that been an adaptation mana crystal?

Gee, he sure would like to ping the System to confirm his guess, but it turned out he needed actual light to read the tags.

With a shrug, Thomas placed the crystal in his storage bag and continued on.

He had a bad moment when he ran into a pool table, which turned out to be not a pool table, and had three pool cues, which, of course, also turned out to be mimics. Oh, and the pool balls, which shockingly were also mimics. The 8 ball had been a real hassle.

But Thomas had seen the attacks coming and had backed up two or three steps to give the mimics room to lunge. The pool cues tended to get in each other’s way and abandoned their attack mid-strike to clack at each other angrily, leaving the giant table.

The pool table reared up fully vertical, dumping off the mimic pool balls, which started to scuttle across the floor like giant spiders.

Thomas caught all of this in flashes as his Combat Foresight only gave him the ghostly outlines when the creatures began their attacks. At least the pool table was a big target, and he went after it, flailing his curved dagger like he was in a slasher movie. All the while, he high-stepped ridiculously so none of the pool balls crawled up his legs. Luckily, he was able to damage the pool table enough for it to collapse into buckets of goo.

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He stomped down on the pool balls as they lunged for him. The eight ball was smarter than the rest and dodged while attacking. It took out a chunk of his tennis shoe before the end.

Meanwhile, the pool cues had razor-sharp teeth on the other side and were definitely more of a challenge. He ended up killing them by making big slash Xs in the air that struck true more through luck than anything else.

But not before the last one managed to nail his arm, sawing into his flesh with… saw-like teeth. It was agony and exactly as horrific as it sounded.

In that moment, something flickered through his awareness. It was like… connection. Only faint and wrong-feeling.

Thomas didn’t have time to dwell as he quickly switched the grip on his dagger to his off-hand and started stabbing at the thing, just trying to get it off him. He came close to stabbing his own arm but managed to hit the mimic pool cue instead. It melted into goo, and he heard a crystal clatter to the ground.