Chapter 11: Improvements.

  Lucas finally found a safe, isolated crevice after backtracking for about half an hour. He settled into the rather large hole after making sure no other creature was in it or around the area.

  ‘Okay… Let’s see what changed after my level-up. Status.’

  ————

  [STATUS]

  Name: Lucas Maverick

  Species: Mimic

  Tier: 0

  Level: 2

  Essence: Freedom

  Achievements: [Anomaly]

  Attributes:

  ?Physique: 1(+)

  ?Spirit: 1(+)

  ?Mind: 1(+)

  Skills:

  ?Guide [Special]

  ?Mimicry [Level 1]

  ?Leech [Level 2]

  ?Spirit sense [Level 2]

  Attribute points: 1

  ————

  ‘Hmm… I have a single attribute point now. And with the ‘+’ signs near each attribute , it's safe to assume I can add it to any of them.’

  Lucas reasoned.

  ‘But which one should I place a point in? Let's see… Physique should be my overall physical capabilities. Mind should be my mental abilities. As for Spirit… I’m not so sure…’

  ‘For now, it doesn't really matter. Let’s just figure out which attribute is the most useful first... Physique—if my assumptions are correct— is the best choice at the moment. It should be able to help me get stronger and faster. It might even help me control my body better if it’s an overall improvement to my body. So, let’s go with Physique.’

  With his choice made, Lucas decisively focused on his attribute us screen and placed his attribute point into Physique. He immediately felt a strange energy painfully fill the center of his body, his normally jelly-like flesh began to harden at his core while his body began to rapidly expand and… boil. His monochrome perception immediately shut down and his world became pitch black.

  ‘Arrgh!! What is happening!?’

  From a third-person point of view, it looked like the hole Lucas was in began to absorb all the surrounding light and heat as the temperature of the surrounding area dropped considerably. Frost began to build up on the crevice’s entrance, causing the nook to look and feel like a death zone. The air within grew thin and stale as if the life of the cavern was being drawn into him.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  This phenomenon and rapid changes were excruciatingly painful for Lucas. He felt like every fiber of his being was being hammered and stretched out in every direction as if his every molecule was being remade atom by atom.

  His soft jelly-like flesh writhed in pain and seemed to evaporate away in wisps of smoke. Yet somehow, he grew larger. The energy being channeled through him enhanced his regenerative abilities dramatically, reshaping, reforging, and restoring him cell by cell.

  The pain intensified as he grew larger, his body straining against the confines of the crevice. What had initially seemed like a spacious hiding spot now felt suffocatingly small, barely capable of containing his expanding form.

  As seconds of agony ticked by at a glacial pace, Lucas clung to consciousness with every last shred of determination. His motivation wasn't driven by a rational fear of being devoured by some cavern creature - his pain was too all-consuming for such coherent thoughts. Instead, his will to stay awake was a primal, instinctual response, a desperate attempt to exert some semblance of control over his suffering.

  Eventually, the harrowing pain began to subside, his body began to shrink as well. About a minute later, he had returned to his original size but he was definitely not the same mimic.

  As he still felt some phantom pain from the whole ordeal, the disoriented Lucas tried to get his bearings. A small tendril plopped to his side on the now melting frozen floor. But his mind failed to register the cold or the wetness. As his perception came back to him, he couldn’t help but curse.

  ‘Fuck… What just happened?’

  Going from normalcy to insane amounts of pain back to normalcy gave Lucas an extreme whiplash. As he tried to piece things together, he reached out his tendril to get out of the crevice to air out his thoughts, a habit he had as a human.

  CRACK

  Instead of the usual silent “step”, his tendril impaled the tough rock with a sharp crack. This immediately drew Lucas’ attention to the tendril. He pulled it out of the hole he had made and “looked” at it in surprise and amazement.

  ‘Seems I was right, Physique is definitely related to my constitution and strength. But I didn't think one point would make such a big difference.’

  He then proceeded to gently crawl out of the chilly hole, taking note of how much lighter his body felt. Each step he took was brimming with power.

  ‘With this improvement, defending myself should be much easier. Let’s see just how much stronger I have gotten.’

  Lucas had never felt such a drastic jump in power in his entire life. Given his current situation, almost everything he had experienced and done so far felt like a fleeting fever dream or rather, a haunting nightmare. But this? This made him feel empowered in a way he had never felt before.

  ‘If I can keep growing stronger at such a rate, why should I be scared of any of these creatures?’

  With a quite literal pep in his step, Lucas shot out of the crevice. His perception expanded almost twice as much as it previously did. This improvement left him stunned as he stuck to the side of the wall. He could even feel the faint shifts in the air as he stood trying to wrap his head around how this happened.

  ‘Well, how sharp your senses are is based on the organ you used for said sense right? So, since Physique seems to improve the body overall it makes sense that my senses are sharper than before… right?’ Lucas thought, trying to rationalize this sudden change.

  Even though all of this was still very new to him, Lucas tried to understand everything that happened to him as logically as he could. He knew that his efforts were most likely futile but, he still had to make an attempt at rationalizing because that was his only reliable tool in his current situation… minus the weaponizeable tendrils and rapid healing.

  ‘Wonder if I can level up [Spirit sense] again?... Meh, I will do that later, let’s take these enhanced tendrils for a spin!!’

  Filled with excitement, Lucas crawled across the cavern wall at a fanatic pace. With his eight appendages moving in perfect synchrony, like a finely tuned mechanism, Lucas had begun to adapt to his new form.

  The initial struggles to control his strength had given way to a growing sense of fluidity and coordination, as he became increasingly accustomed to his enhanced capabilities.

  With a burst of speed, Lucas launched himself forward in a massive horizontal leap, rapidly building momentum as he hurtled through the air. Mid-flight, he generated a thicker, longer tendril that trailed behind him like a whip. As his momentum began to wane, Lucas expertly used the tendril to swing across the wall, leveraging his velocity to cover even greater distances.

  Each swing propelled him further into the cavern, he began to hear the familiar chittering chaos of the myriad cavern inhabitants. His swinging came to a safe stop as he clung to the wall in contemplation.

  ‘Should I go in stealthy or… say fuck it? Stealth is safer but I have to level up and to do so I need to experiment. I didn't have time to consider how level-ups work. But I do have one hint though—killing others. Let’s put that theory to the test. After all, it's kill or be killed out here.’

  With confidence overflowing, Lucas set off to guarantee his survival not noticing his mindset had undergone a fundamental shift to something more primal.