Finally! Finally! After years, I had a location where I could have my collar removed, and proof that removal had been done there before.

Too many times in the past, I had thought I’d been close but I’d been so far away it was laughable. But right now? My freedom was so close I could practically touch it.

As we left the building I had to force myself to stay calm. We could not afford to mess up at this juncture.

Slowly, I led us back down the stairs and past various elegantly designed brick buildings that formed the majority of the castle. Despite every corner of this place appearing near empty, I took no chances. Moving so slow was a test in self-control.

And Mia never complained. I was very grateful for her silence and willingness to go along with my safety measures when even my mind told me to run. To get it done.

But my urge to speed past everything could cause us to fail.

Heh. Fail? When we were so close to removing this damn collar? Fuck that.

We cautiously entered the correct building on the map. It corresponded to the one listed in the document.

[Warning! You are entering a prison building. Your respawn point has been automatically bound to the basement.]

I waved off the warning. As long as neither of us died, it wouldn’t matter.

We traveled down empty hallways, blocked by fortified gates. Fortunately, Mia teleported us past those to save time. Eventually, we reached a cafeteria with tables and benches that had been set up in orderly lines. Well, except for one extra table that seemed a little out of place as it blocked the straight path from the gate to the doorway.

So far, everything we’d passed had seemed, just empty. Devoid of life and movement. Empty enough to be suspicious. Empty enough to get people to let their guard down.

Even Mia had trouble staying in stealth as she took a step to move down the center of the room.

I grabbed her hand and pointed to the wall. She sighed but nodded and we once again hugged the edge of the room. We did our best to blend into the gray stone.

Carefully, step by step we crept forward. My hand reached for the door handle. That oddly placed table rushed toward me.

I dodged left, Mia dodged right. It crashed against the door but didn’t break. Instead, it grew a tongue and attempted to lick my partner.

Fuck! A Mimic!

I cast my aura of redirection. If at all possible, I needed to survive. If Ravenborn discovered my current location, she would rush to recapture me. And I wouldn’t let all our effort go to waste like that.

But this left Mia in the unenviable position as a dodging tank while I was left to heal and do damage. Honestly, this grouping was a shit. Mia should be our DPS but unless we could gain more trustworthy friends or free some of my clan members, this was the style of combat we were reduced to. At least when dealing with enemies we couldn’t one-hit kill.

Mia darted in with her swords and surprisingly, she was able to easily cut it. Was that the extra points in strength? Or something else?

The mimic still kept attacking, but the part that was cut off stayed still as if it really was just a table and not a chunk of monster.

Mia kept cutting and cutting it until it resembled a pile of toothpicks.

Then everything was still.

And the mimic corpse —or what we had assumed was the mimic corpse— did not burst into flames... Defeated enemies always burst into flames.

A chill ran down my spine. This monster we were fighting wasn’t a real mimic. And it wasn’t dead.

A bench beside Mia lifted one side high up into the air and came crashing down on her head, dealing a significant amount of damage to her.

She wobbled on her feet for a couple of seconds appearing stunned. Then, before she recovered, it knocked her into the wall like a bat.

I readied a healing arrow and shot her just before she hit the wall. As I watched her HP bar drop to twenty percent my heart nearly froze. If I’d done nothing, she would have died right then.

I swiftly sent out another healing her back up to full.

She grimaced, stared at the bench like she was going to murder a bitch, then ran after it. Only to easily chop it up, just like the table. But that still didn’t kill it.

“Fuck,” she said. Another table did the same exact maneuver as the first one — charging in and then attacking with its tongue. But we were ready for it and dodged.

This time I observed everything in the room. They all came up as mundane objects. Even the table she was fighting was just listed as Table, with low durability since they were already very old and not exactly magical.

So, what precisely was going on here? A creature that jumped from object to object, turning it into a mimic while it is inside the object? Or something else? This time, instead of paying attention to Mia, I focused on the object itself. There was something very off about it. But what?

When she finished it, I thought I saw something small and dark zipping by, but it was the same color as the shadows cast on the floor. Then a bench, that was in that same direction threw itself at her.

She bent over backward till her head touched the floor. The spinning bench missed her by a hair. Then she flipped over like it was nothing. I blinked. When had she learned that?

Then she spun and dodged a tongue lick before continuing to chop it up. At this point, I didn’t think she was even using any spells.

I focused on the shadow of the mimic bench. And that was when I realized that there were two shadows. One as static as the item itself and following the shape of it, the other one was moving in such a way that it seemed to control the bench.

Ridiculous as it was, I tried to observe the shadow.

[Guvhassar-Tainted Eldritch Shadow Mimic-Mimic. HP 80. MP 35.

Likes: Shadows. Darkness, @#$*#%?!!

Dislikes: Light, Fire, Electricity]

“Mia, use your fire against it or we’ll just keep going on like this forever. Also, start attacking the shadow instead of the item itself.”

She slashed the last bit of bench into dust and sent me a glare.

Right. She wasn’t at that point yet.

She breathed on her swords to cast Add Air. I wasn’t sure that spell would do anything to it. It was worth a shot.

The next time a table attacked her she avoided it and slashed at the shadow. I saw the percentage of the monster’s HP go down. But then it slowly started increasing. Fuck. Was it one of those monsters that constantly repaired themselves?

But Mia kept casting spells and attacking it, making those mere 100 HP take forever to go down to a reasonable level.

Eventually, it reached a point where it was at the last few percentage points, but no matter what spell she used... It. Wouldn’t. Die.

“Mia, I know you have a fire spell. You need to cast it to kill this thing.”

For a while, she ignored me and continued to slash at the table mimics that kept appearing.

“Mia! Why aren’t you casting Fire?”

“I purposefully forgot how to cast it so I can’t.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’ve never used it before, so of course I forgot! Just... I don’t know, find another way!”

I grimaced at that partial lie from her. Fire. I had to cast fire...

Cast fire my ass! I was a bard. My spells were all healing, distraction, and sound-related.

But I did have those.

I blew out an annoyed breath and took out a flare. Just as Mia managed to bring the eldritch mimic shadow down to one percent health again I activated the flare and pressed it against the shadow.

The noise it made pierced my mind. My vision dimmed. But I kept pressing the flare against the insubstantial darkness until it died. I took my hand away and the shadow burst into flames, burned, and then vanished. A few PMk separated itself from the corpse and flew into our shared inventory.

I peered at Mia.

“You need to cast that spell. Now. I don’t have enough of these flares to take out these tainted creatures.”

“But.”

“We’re a two-person team. I’ll handle the healing and some damage, but there are just the two of us, you need to learn all the magic attributes you can.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t sound right. This is a mastery-type game system where spells level. Shouldn’t I focus on one or two damage spells at most?”

I shook my head. “While that does seem to be the way to go if you have a limited amount of time, you’re forgetting something important. Spells can cap with your level.

“They have requirements past a certain point and need you to have the correct amount of intelligence and wisdom to keep leveling them. So, eventually, if you only focus on a single spell you’ll have one spell you’re awesome at that you can’t level and a bunch of useless spells that you can’t use because they’re too low leveled.

“And if you run into this situation again —where a monster needs to be killed by a certain type of element to actually die— then you need all of them to be somewhat decent. And, since you’re an assassin, you can make up for any lack of them being the best by getting as many backstabs in as possible.”

She rubbed her temples then sighed. “You’re right. But... Let’s wait until after we get back so I can review the spell in peace?”

I glared at her.

She sent me an adorable smile as if saying that it was worth a shot. Then, she shrugged and took out a book with a fire symbol on it.

After reading it for a few minutes, she put it away.

“Mia, I’m going to ask you to cast it.”

She paled and shook her head.

I knew she was scared. Every time I pushed her, I hated it... but she needed this. Our team needed this. And she, personally, needed to face this.