The World Is Full of Surprises
We had gathered in a noisy, bustling crowd around the treasure chest, but unlike the usual chaos, we didn’t rush to open it right away.
According to the elf, the box sometimes bounced away on its own and escaped. Given her cautious opinion that we should rule out the existence of a Mimic, I decided to check first.
“By the way, how exactly are we supposed to confirm whether it’s a Mimic or not? And if it is, what do we do?”
“What? Could it be that even this basic question never occurred to you? You lowlife…”
“You already said it so harshly, I won’t even bother commenting.”
At this point, what exactly did I expect from the elf?
Of course, this was my second time seeing a treasure chest, and I only knew about Mimics from RPG games. Still, I was being cautious but decided to tap it lightly with my hammer to test it.
Light Hammer Strike
Knock, knock.
I had left it untouched for so long that I figured it would have corroded from the poison, but the dull sound coming from the hammer didn’t match that idea.
“Do you two know any way to tell a Mimic apart?”
“…Just open it. I was planning to smash it if it was a Mimic.”
“Hmm, I don’t have anything specific either… If I try something, the other party members always tell me, ‘Saintess, please rest!’”
“Ah.”
Apparently, a queen-bee party exists everywhere.
Of course, Leo and Nemea weren’t evil parasites on the party members, but I could already picture the scene in my head too clearly.
“Should I test it with some holy power first?”
Holy Power Blast
Nemea waved her flag lightly, scattering holy power all around. Despite absorbing it like a scarecrow exposed to the blazing summer sun, the chest showed no reaction.
Just as everyone relaxed and prepared to open it, the elf suddenly spotted something and stopped us.
“Wait a minute, something feels off here!”
“What? Where… huh?”
Leo and I, who had been tilting our heads on the opposite side of the elf and Nemea, immediately circled around to the front of the chest.
“Where is it off?”
“Right here! Right here! It wasn’t like this before!”
“Yes, it looked completely fine until the holy power hit it…”
The tips of the elves’ fingers pointed to a spot on the chest where the color had darkened and parts of it were already rotting.
It looked completely different from the normal shape we had seen earlier, like the front and back of a coin.
“Could it be a Mimic?”
“The odds have definitely increased.”
The group shrank back in preparation for a fight, but instead of joining them, I carefully circled the chest like before and lifted my hammer.
“So there are more than a few strange details, huh.”
“What do you mean?”
“This box. Why does it only appear after clearing a dungeon?”
“Because it’s a dungeon, right? Clearing dungeons gives rewards. That’s common sense. Even if you’re a dungeon newbie, what kind of question is that?”
There was something suspicious about dismissing it as “just because it’s a dungeon.”
Last time, the dungeon had been so far from common sense that it produced a Juggernaut, yet somehow the common sense that “clearing a dungeon produces a treasure chest” had stayed intact.
The elves looked at me, the dungeon-newbie who was asking these questions to veteran adventurers, with a smile that screamed “how much you must be curious right now.” But I ignored it and kept asking the elves.
“Also, clearing it makes the dungeon calm for a few months… Wait, Mimic! Did you catch it?”
“Of course I did. After beating it a few times, it vomited out the reward it swallowed and ran away again.”
“I’ve been thinking. Could it really have been a Mimic?”
“What?”
Seeing the elf tilt her head in confusion, I immediately swung the hammer I had been holding high.
-1 HP
Crash—!
“W-What are you doing?! There’s a reward over there!”
“…”
“Even if it’s damaged, it often just spits out random junk, but…”
Countless eyes turned toward me as I kept slamming the hammer down, ready to smash the box at any moment.
Instead of surprise, the elf crossed her arms and simply watched me with calm eyes.
“This is just a theory, but maybe this chest isn’t the dungeon’s core.”
“The dungeon’s core… its nucleus?”
“There are creatures that, when threatened by predators, cut off parts of their own bodies or scatter their intestines to escape. Could this chest be pretending to be a reward to protect itself from predators?”
Sea Cucumber Defense Theory
Indeed, sea cucumbers have a habit of spraying their intestines at predators, so the theory wasn’t entirely baseless.
If the Mimic didn’t actually exist and this chest was a living creature that served as the nucleus of the dungeon, then…
“That makes sense. It’s hard to dismiss as nonsense. Usually it would lure in Walkers or spray poison to defend itself, and once all those defenses were broken…”
“…it would hand over parts of the things it held as ‘rewards,’”
“then hide in the darkness again, grow stronger, create new dungeons, and expand its territory.”
Instant dungeons that appeared suddenly hadn’t grown enough yet. Since they had only been around for a few days and weren’t even fully born, it wasn’t surprising that they could appear and collapse so easily.
Of course, it was just a theory, so I decided to confirm it by smashing the chest right in front of me.
If it had contained a Record Plate like last time, I would have sulked for days, but I didn’t feel like coming back to this poisoned, hellish place again. I hoped my theory was correct.
Final Hammer Blow
Crack—!
“It cracked! Now then, one more hard strike…”
The hammer once again split the wood as it carved a deep crater into the lid. Just as I was about to smash the entire thing in one blow,
-2 HP
Squish—!!
“Ugh, catch it!”
“W-What is that black thing?!”
“Poison! Oh my god, this concentration is nothing like the ones spreading through the dungeon! Why is the dungeon’s poison inside?!”
“…”
With Nemea’s holy power, the poison and the tendrils that shot out formed the sound of sizzling meat on a hot plate and disappeared into ashes.
Even though I was prepared for something sudden, my reflexes were fast. But the poison was so intense that my arms lost all strength.
“Ugh…”
“Leo’s arms…?!”
“Because they touched the poison directly… Wait, wait! I’ll heal you right now!”
“…”
While I sat there in pain and dizziness, Leo raised two fists glowing with holy power and started pummeling the chest.
Knock, clang— boom! Smash—!
“How dare… how dare… how dare…”
The afterimages of her fists swung so fast and powerfully that it looked like she had multiple arms, like a thousand-armed Avalokitesvara. Even through the toxic clouds, they shone brightly.
Soon the treasure chest was nothing but tattered rags. I could only faintly sense that it was just an old box, its body swollen like it was trying one last desperate gasp.
“Is it going to self-destruct?!”
“Sister! Come here quickly!”
Holy Dome Overload
Pop—!
The toxic clouds rushed in to fill the area around Nemea like a dome made of holy power. In its last desperate struggle, the chest slowly turned to ash and vanished behind the poison.
I finally let out a sigh of relief.
“This really looks like it needs therapy.”
“Can it be fixed?”
“What do you think I am?! This much… hehe, after a few sessions of therapy… ah?”
“…”
Nemea gave me a lewd smile while I kept opening and closing my fists.
But just as she was about to say something, she suddenly opened her eyes wide like she had found something and scanned the surroundings.
“Hey, was it like this from the beginning?”
“No… it was completely barren and in ruins just a moment ago. It was basically the definition of a dungeon…”
As we looked around, what we saw wasn’t a single speck of dirt inside a pristine hospital. The dark, decayed building that had been spewing poison and a foul stench moments ago had been destroyed by the poison and dungeon nucleus. It now stood exactly as it did when ancient humans still used it.
The elves’ eyes blazed like the sun.
“This—this is a major discovery! A major discovery! I never imagined there was a way like this! This is what clearing a dungeon is supposed to be! That’s why junk always came out of the chest!”
Almost immediately, they pulled out their cameras and started snapping photos.
I approached the spot where the chest had been. The moment it disappeared, it had scattered something across the ground.
While the elves were distracted, I secretly rummaged through the pile of junk, hoping to steal something.
“Wait, why is this coming out of here?”
“Ooh…”
“What?! Another amazing discovery? What is that?”
“This… I’ll tell you later.”
“You remembered something else! Great, then let’s finish filming first…!!”
The elf was curious about the item in my hand, but she was too excited about the ancient human medical facility to care. She ran around the hospital without a single bit of etiquette, chest puffed out.
I quickly searched the rest of the junk, grabbed the item in my hand along with what looked like healthy batteries, stuffed everything into my pockets, and looked around.
I wondered if there wasn’t even a single healthy gauze or a clean nurse’s uniform to be found.