Steven watched as the ants scurried down the hill towards him. He cast Partial Mimicry: Rat Tail on both arms below his elbows, extending his range and allowing him to use his tail arms as whips. When the red dust of his transformation settled, he empowered both tails with absorption and found two suitable targets to increase his attributes. The two ants were both on either sides of the group, one worker and one soldier, but close enough together that he could easily crack both of them at the same time.

He lashed out with the tails and yelped as the ants jumped at him. The tails missed completely, and he felt a bit embarrassed at his reaction to the insects jumping at him. The first wave of six ants landed on him, followed shortly by the remaining four, and he felt multiple stinging sensations from the soldier ants. It wasn’t painful, but not comfortable either.

As he looked down at the front of his body to see ten ants hanging off him, he dismissed his mimicries, which dislodged the few ants that had latched on to his arms. The dislodged ants clambered up his legs a short ways and bit into his pants. All of the ants had grappled onto him with their pincers, but he could only feel the stings of the soldiers.

He reached down and grabbed one of each type in a fist, empowering his hands with absorption, and crushed the insect’s midsections. Watching as the head and abdomen of the crushed ants tumble to the ground and turn into the red dust that was sucked into his implant, he felt the telltale signs that his attributes were increased at the same time as hearing a light chime of a dungeon notification.

The stinging sensation disappeared, and he inspected a soldier ant on his shoulder. The stinger was clearly embedded in his skin still, he just felt no pain from it.

“Enough playing around,” he told himself, and swatted each ant. They all popped under his palm and left a yellowish goo with little bits of chitin hanging off him.

He tapped on his implant and ignored the status page as he swiped over to his quests.

Quests

Defeat the swarm

Progress: N/A

Reward: Armor (Pants)

There were a couple of firsts in the quest screen. It didn’t show his progress like it did with the rats. He had no idea how long he would be squishing ants before he was finished. He had already defeated a group, and could see no more coming from the hill.

It also had his first reward. He was beginning to believe that the mana and whatever remains of the monsters were rewards enough for the dungeon, so he was glad to see he can get something useful from the actual dungeon quests. Before long he probably won’t need armor, but it was a welcome addition to his lacking equipment. He would at least be able to look like he was a fighter in a crazy dungeon afterlife.

Swiping over to his status page, he looked at his new attribute totals.

Strength - 25 (25)

Dexterity - 24 (24)

Endurance - 26 (26)

Intelligence - 11 (11)

Wisdom - 11 (11)

Pain - 1.2 (.7)

He did some quick math in his head. According to Garth’s descriptions of attribute gains and levels for the different class rarities, if Steven had a unique class he would be around level 10. It was absurdly high for this floor, but he wasn’t sure how it stacked up in the long run. Unique classes might actually end up with higher attributes than him, especially if they specialize. He didn’t get to choose where his points went.

It wasn’t really a problem he needed to concern himself with either. He wasn’t in competition with the other people in the dungeon to see if he could be the strongest. As a jack of all trades, so to speak, he should need to focus more on how he would use his abilities. The old man’s note had said his strength had something to do with his imagination. That idea was still floating around his head, but he hadn’t figured out what the man wanted to convey.

Before closing his interface, he swiped over to his Mimicry Codex and opened the mimicries tab to see the new additions.

Rat (Basic) - Absorbed on Floor 0

Rat Tail (Dexterity)

Rat Claw (Strength)

Giant Desert Ant (Worker) - Absorbed on Floor 2

Pincer (Strength)

Giant Desert Ant (Soldier) - Absorbed on Floor 2

Ant Stinger (Strength/Wisdom)

He made a mental note to go through his Mimicry Codex in his free time to see if he can change the formatting of the page. In the weeks to come, he might have dozens of different mimicries and growths, and there was a lot of information on the page he didn’t find useful. Hopefully he could change the format, if not, he could still live with this.

Strangely, the pincer mimicry didn’t have the ant prefix, but the stinger did. He was also a bit confused as to why the ant stinger also had wisdom as a governing attribute. He didn’t have the time to experiment or give it much thought, as the next wave of tan ants were scurrying down the side of the hill towards him.

He dismissed his interface and counted thirty ants coming at him. It was time to do more squashing.

“Better yet!” He said, and focused on his hands. He cast Partial Mimicry: Pincer and watched his hands below his wrist explode in a cloud of red dust that reformed into pincers. The pincers were flat and in line with his wrist, allowing him to twist his arm to change the angle of the pincer. A flex of his forearm muscles allowed for vertical movement on the wrist, just like his normal hand. It took him a second to figure out how to open and close the pincer. It was similar to spreading and closing his fingers, but he had hoped it was more like opening and closing a fist.

The pincers were tan, he guessed since they came from a tan ant, and hard like the insect’s shell. He looked to the inside of the pincer and saw that there were two rows of serration on each side that would meet each other when he closed the pincer, though he was unsure if it was sharp enough to cut. The pincer was close to an inch thick. It would definitely allow him to grab and grip, and with enough force, crush.

He could work with it, and backed away from the oncoming ants. They had almost made it to the point where the previous group jumped. Putting a bit more distance between the group and himself, he smirked and held out a pincer with his palm facing the ants. He spread the pincer.

“Live long, and prosper.”

The ants continued their advance as he stood there.

“Uncultured,” he sighed, and jumped into the group of ants. The ants responded by jumping at him and attempting to clamber up his pants. He grabbed the ants one at a time in each pincer and crushed their midsections. Each time he closed his mimicry it caused the ants to fall out of his pincers in two pieces, and he grabbed at more before the remains made it to the sand.

He made quick work of the thirty ants, as they mindlessly jumped and climbed onto him. He didn’t even have to move around, and the ants didn’t have a chance to sting or pinch him as his pincers moved in a blur. After the final two ants were snapped in half he dismissed his mimicries.

He liked the pincers, but he wasn’t practiced enough to take out more than one with a pincer at a time. Using the two pincers still made it quick and only fifteen pinches took care of the whole group. He wanted to go faster.

It only took a few minutes of waiting before the next wave of ants poured out the top of the hill. Steven didn’t even attempt to count them, as they didn’t follow the pattern he expected. The first ants that had emerged in the wave had made it to the flat sand before the ants stopped coming out of the top. He had moved back twenty or thirty feet during the fight with the previous group of ants, and he moved back another twenty feet while the moving carpet of insects was swarming at him.

He focused on both of his arms from the shoulder down and cast Partial Mimicry: Rat Tail. After the dust cleared, the ants were close enough to be snapped at by the whip like tails. They seemed to be moving faster than the previous groups.

He began to mindlessly fling the rat tails in wide horizontal arcs into the sand. Each swipe knocked away a cluster of ants, and they were replaced quickly enough that he had no break between swipes. He didn’t know if he was killing all the ants that the tails hit, but he started noticing a build up of ant corpses and insect body parts across the sandy ground.

Inadvertently, he had made a small trench of sand that the tails had removed. The ants had started to use the trench for cover and would jump out at him in between tail swipes. Steven easily popped these out of mid-air, but it allowed a break in his swings that the ants used to surge towards him.

So he started a new strategy of taking a few steps back before swiping with the tails, and would take another few steps back within a minute. Steven had mindlessly swatted at the ants for what he felt like was hours. By the time he was finished, he had backed completely across the flat sand and halfway up the dune that had the Red Eye.

He was dripping in sweat and panting hard when he saw the entire top of the mountainous ant hill begin to crumble, spilling outward like an avalanche. He focused on the avalanche of sand, and watched as it spilled forth onto the flat sand then continued to spread in his direction.

Steven groaned when he realized what he was seeing. He needed a less tiring way to deal with these critters. If this were to continue the way it has been, he would run out of steam long before he ran out of ants.