Back with Ren…
The spear cut through the air like a silver lightning bolt, its trajectory perfect.
The weapon impacted exactly where Ren had aimed, cleanly piercing the pulsatingre of the abomination. The tip sank deep into the glowing mass with barely any resistance.
An ear-splitting shriek reverberated throughout the chamber, so high-pitched that Ren felt as if his head might explode. The creature writhed violently while the spear remained firmly embedded in its center.
Ren landed in the abandoned backpacks. Without losing a snd, his hands found the bow and quiver of arrows he had left behind. His fingers closed around the weapon while he was already nocking an arrow in case a follow-up shot was needed.
But it was merely an excessive precaution.
"Should be enough," he murmured, his mushrooms pulsing as he assessed the damage caused. "The spear went directly through there. Any moment now it should..."
He stopped abruptly, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. Something wasn’t right. The creaturentinued writhing, yes, but its agony seemed...ntained.
It wasn’t the reaction of a being whose vitalre had been destroyed. There was no catastrophic energy release, no cascading failure of its systems.
The abomination shook again, and the spear fell to the ground with an almost metallic clang, its bright tip stained with a purple fluid. But where the destroyedre should have been, where there should have been catastrophic damage...
There was nothing.
"That can’t be," Ren whispered, understanding hitting him like a sledgehammer. "There..."
His eyes frantically scanned the creature’s segmented body, and then he saw it. Or rather, he saw them.
Energy pulsations now appeared at multiple points on its body: smallres glowing beneath its plates, strategically distributed along its segments. Each one pulsed with the same sickly purple light, creating a hypnotic rhythm of illumination across the monster’s form.
"It was an illusion," Ren realized, a drop ofld sweat running down his temple as he tensed an arrow in his bow. "There was a fake."
The beast seemed to react to his divery. The multipleres pulsed, changing position with greater speed, as if mocking him. The purple light they emitted intensified in brightness, projecting distorted shadows on the chamber walls that seemed to dance with malevolent purpose.
"It has advanced mimetic capabilities," Ren quickly analyzed while backing away, keeping the arrow drawn. "It doesn’t just absorb physical characteristics from its prey, but also their abilities. The illusion of the hole we fell through..."
His mind worked at full speed. What beast in the areauld generate suchnvincing illusions? None of the Bronze-rank creatures it had absorbed possessed that capability at such a level ofmplexity.
Unless...
"The illusion of a mimic insect projected onto a living mineral," he murmured. "So, something like a ’living illusion’?"
The abyssal beast, as if having understood that its trick had been divered, emitted a metallic screech that seemed to tear the air itself.
Its segments began tontract and expand in a hypnotic rhythm, and before Ren’s eyes, the creature began to change. The transformation was both fascinating and horrifying, like watching a nightmare reshape itself into something worse.
The tentacles extended again, now moving with more erratic and unpredictable patterns. Some merged together to form thicker appendages while others split into finer, whip-like structures that cracked the air with each movement.
The platesvering its body reorganized, some fusing while others divided. The tentacles transformed into more solid structures, resembling barbed harpoons more than the absorptive appendages they had been moments before. The head, that nightmare ofmbined features,ntracted upon itself before expanding into a newnfiguration even more terrifying.
"It’s adapting," Ren realized with horror. "It’s evolving in response to the eunter."
The multipleres were now visible to the naked eye, pulsing beneath transparent plates that had previously been opaque. They shifted positionnstantly, never remaining in the same place for more than a snd, making targeting any single one nearly impossible.
Ren released an arrow tipped with a greater worm’s tooth, not a lesser worm’s tooth like his first planned arrows.
The teeth of the greater worm were capable of penetrating one rank higher, in this case Silver. The projectile whistled through the air and embedded directly into one of the visibleres, but not very deep. The creature shuddered, the arrow fell away, and the wound began to close almost immediately, purple light knitting the damaged tissue together.
"Accelerated regeneration," Ren prepared another arrow, his mind desperately evaluating strategies. "I need to attack all the possibleres, I have no way to damage it quickly enough to prevent regeneration."
The hydra roared within him, eager to face this abomination with Ren at full strength. But Ren knew that, even with his beast enhanced by the mushroom’s light and the ring, the power difference was too great. A directnfrontation would be suicide.
The abomination seemed to perceive his dilemma. The segments of its body finishedmpacting,nferring greater power to its movements.
The creature launched forward with terrifying speed, its headnverted into a lethal projectile. Ren barely had time to throw himself to the side, avoiding direct impact by millimeters. The floor where he had been standing shattered, fragments ofrrupted living mineral and earth flying in all directions.
"Too close," he gasped, rolling to stand again, his muscles protesting the sudden movement.
The beast gave him no time to rver. With a fluid movement, it retracted its spear-head and charged again. This time, Ren jumped to the other side, feeling the displacement of air brush his face as the head passed beside him.
The impact against the chamber wall was devastating. The rock cracked, fragments of stone and crystal falling like rain onto the floor.
Ren dodged two more attacks, each more precise than the last. The creature was learning, calculating his movements, gradually reducing his maneuvering space. With each charge, more sections of the chamber were destroyed.
Jumping to avoid a new attack, Ren noticed something strange. When crystal fragments fell from the walls and ceiling, some of the multipleres he had seen seemed to flicker, as if their image suffered interference.
"The crystals," he murmured to himself, an idea forming in his mind while dodging another devastating charge. His eyes darted around the chamber, noting how the light played across the crystalline surfaces embedded in the walls.
As he landed after the jump, one of the creature’s tentacles reached him, grazing his leg.
The effect was immediate and painful: an unnaturalld that penetrated to the bone, draining his vital energy.
Ren cut the tentacle with his claws, but the damage was done. His leg felt numb, more light energy rnfiguring to heal it, diverting precious resources from hismbat capabilities.
However, the observation had been worth the price. Each time a crystal fragment fell from the chamber’s structure, the illusions flickered momentarily, revealing insistencies in what should have been solid form.
"The crystals are amplifying and reflecting the illusory capability," Ren understood while evading another attack by centimeters. "They’re part of the system."
If heuld break the illusion, perhaps heuld find the truere.
