The Mimic Mayor
The place where the Mimic had taken us—what should I call it? The Void, or the Afterlife? Whatever it was, it was clearly a space one arrived at after death, and an inexplicable unease lingered in the air. Still, it was bearable. The small presence at my side filled the vast emptiness completely.
Then, with the sound of a whistle, Baengnae's presence vanished. I felt relief wash over me.
So the Cat's gift worked…
Thank goodness. Looking back, it hadn't been a rational decision at all. The patrons had already proven they could even reverse death. That meant the Cat's gift was obviously far beyond anything a Stage 3 attack could compare to. Yet I had still chosen to charge into the fifth floor alone, a move that was little more than a reckless gamble.
Stress from the event… That excuse felt too pathetic even to me.
I had clearly lost my mind.
Not like me at all.
But ironically, that impulsive action had turned out to be the right call. This wasn't some empty self-justification. Even after capturing Altos, the boss round hadn't ended. If the entire force had stormed the fifth floor with the resolve to die, we might have triggered an instant game over.
So the last remaining purple dwarf hadn't been Altos after all?
No, it had definitely been Altos. The letter the noble dwarf from the first floor had sent was still spread open on the desk where they had been enjoying their banquet. That led to only one conclusion: the "Mayor" mentioned in the quest had never been the dwarf merchant Altos.
And that conclusion had already been proposed before. After compiling various pieces of information, Han Yua had analyzed that the quest's "Mayor" was not Altos. But I had been blinded by my own information.
That first dwarf guest…!
People tend to trust information they obtain themselves more than what they hear from others. The moment the guest dwarf told me the Mayor was Altos, I had latched onto those words completely.
It's my fault. I have nothing to say.
Anyway, Han Yua's hypothesis went like this: the city we were in was a place modeled after a real city that had once existed. The foundation of her theory had come from a message sent by a Chinese user.
Among the users invited to the dwarf city, there had been someone who claimed to be a Chinese journalist. He said he felt an inexplicable familiarity with the city's layout. The streets, the buildings, the arrangement of decorations—everything carried the atmosphere of a place he had visited before. While gathering information to resolve that question, he finally reached a conclusion.
This is a place I know.
It was also a city that had once been the scene of quite a sensational incident. It was the same city he had gone to for a story three years earlier. His purpose had been to cover the cult that was rampant in the city at the time. But he had been driven out. His aggressive reporting style had clashed with the locals' hostility toward outsiders, earning him the displeasure of the city's upper echelons.
About a month after he left, the incident broke. The city's mayor had sacrificed two hundred of his own relatives in a ritual to summon a god. Even though it was a remote city, the memory had stayed with him because he had visited it.
The user had passed this information to Han Yua. He had collected all sorts of details, almost as if trying to prove he wasn't insane. And while trying to spread the truth of it all, he had ultimately lost his life.
Now, belatedly, I offer my apology. Honestly, the fact that he was Chinese had made me trust him even less. I'm sorry. You were a true journalist, whoever you were. Of course, it only feels regrettable now that it's come to light. At the time, countless theories had been flying around, and no one could tell which was correct. So that Chinese user must have collected information even more aggressively to prove his words were right.
Then came the information that drove the final nail in.
High-quality material provided by one of Han Yua's patrons had brought related stories to the forefront. The information her patron gave concerned the true nature of the dwarfs. What exactly were the dwarfs? There had actually been plenty of hints.
The slime pufferfish from [Special Menu] had the trait of mimicking the surrounding terrain. The mandrake from [Chatty Ingredients] had acted out a target's past based on the other party's memories. And the octopus from [Corrupted Source] had replicated the user themselves. The common trait running through all of them was imitation. That was the true essence of the dwarfs.
Strictly speaking, even calling them dwarfs was incorrect. They were imitations of humanity. That was why they only appeared similar to us on the outside—their essence was something slightly different.
Combining all this information, Han Yua had reached her final conclusion:
1. The ripple effect from the tournament had caused the difficulty of the Stage 3 boss to rise abnormally.
2. As a result, the power of imitation had grown stronger, and it had replicated an event that matched the round's keyword.
3. Ultimately, the "Mayor" the quest referred to was the mayor of this city—the mastermind behind the cult incident.
When I first saw that report, I had thought it was a stretch. The first two points were plausible enough. But with a dwarf mayor named Altos standing right there, why would there be another one?
I should have realized I was wrong when we rescued the people from the first floor. The building had been called a human livestock pen, yet there had only been thirteen hostages in total. The name "human livestock pen" had been given to the prison-like structure the cult mayor had built for human sacrifice.
But something still felt missing. Han Yua's hypothesis didn't explain why humans from Earth had been here in the first place.
There has to be more…
Yet none of the information her patron provided mentioned anything about that. It felt like they were hiding something.
And just as my thoughts reached that point, the void began to fill with color. My thirty minutes were up.
A terrible pain, as if my entire body were burning, struck me in an instant.
"Kgh… Krrgh…"
The melting from the light beam had stopped, but my already liquefied body was screaming. Pain intense enough to drive me mad seized every inch of me.
This… This won't be fixed without round-clear recovery, will it? It's only been a little while since I recovered from the giant, and now this again…
I staggered to my feet with difficulty. So this was what it felt like to be dying. I heard the sound of someone coming up from the fifth floor. A small zombie. I forced my face into a smile.
"Did you… sleep well?"
Baengnae ran over and clung to my thigh. The melted skin of my leg stuck to her here and there.
"Hey… You're getting flesh on you. Let go."
"Baengnae was scared."
Unlike Baengnae, who had recovered almost perfectly thanks to [Regenerative Cells], I looked like a slime pufferfish. I dragged over a nearby chair and sat down. Honestly, standing was difficult with how little strength I had in my legs.
"It'll be… it'll be fine soon."
I patted Baengnae's head. At least the gauntlet kept my flesh from sticking to her when I touched her.
"You know what? They were having a banquet all by themselves up here. The bastards. Now that they're gone, let's eat everything ourselves."
"Sniff."
"Hurry up."
"Madda."
While Baengnae ate the purple dwarfs, I took a short rest. I needed to move again soon. The battle was still raging on the lower floors. Resting could wait until after we moved to the next round and recovered. There was plenty of time.
After eating the high-ranking dwarfs, Baengnae recovered like a brand-new zombie. That was the advantage of being a zombie. If I could recover by eating them too, I'd want to chew them raw right now.
The regular nobles besides the purple dwarfs were turned into zombies. I needed tall subordinates to support me. When we reached the fourth floor, the front line was holding far better than I'd feared. With the high-ranking dwarfs dead, the laborers alone couldn't push back the ever-increasing number of zombies. We had seized the momentum.
"Baengnae, break through. Let's go down."
"Madda."
With the fully recovered Baengnae joining the fray, the balance that had barely been maintained collapsed. The front line pushed forward, driving the dwarfs down to the lower floors. Of course, the situation wasn't entirely pleasant. Of the five zombie dogs, only two remained, and Boots was missing three arms. No matter how weak the dwarfs were, if they kept coming in sheer numbers, damage would inevitably accumulate.
No… Should I say we held them off cheaply?
The dwarfs kept being pushed back. Without the nobles, they lacked firepower, and with us occupying the third and second floors, their supplies were cut off. In the end, they changed tactics—retreating outside the building and attempting to surround us from a wider perimeter. Tactically, it was the correct decision. If we fought outside, we wouldn't last even an hour before dying. But I had no intention of going out.
"First… let's make up for our losses."
I left only a few zombies at the entrance and sent Baengnae and the higher-ranking zombies to the second floor. It was time to eat as much meat as they wanted. Sitting at the entrance, I soon saw a round-bellied Baengnae crawling down the stairs on all fours.
"Um, Baengnae came."
She had never looked this full no matter how much she ate before. I couldn't even imagine how much she had consumed. Behind her, the dogs and Boots came down the stairs with satisfied strides. Especially Boots—his expression was practically that of a Buddha. He must have been thrilled to feast without Baengnae controlling the meat this time.
"Looks like everyone ate well. Now let's switch and have the remaining dwarf zombies eat what's left."
At my words, Baengnae tilted her head.
"No meat."
"What…? Don't tell me you four ate everything that was filling up the entire second floor?"
I was shocked. Maybe these guys had some kind of pocket dimension in their stomachs. Actually, now that I thought about it, Baengnae did have the [Surplus Stomach] skill.
"Well… As long as you ate well, that's what matters."
I pressed the send button on the message I'd been writing. It was addressed to Han Yua. There was no reason to put other users through the same experience. They wouldn't have the Cat's gift, after all. I mentioned the possibility of hostages on the first floor but also detailed the dangers of the fifth floor. Saving people was a good thing, but doing it sloppily would mean death for both the hostages and the users. I added a request to judge based on realistic standards rather than emotion.
There was nothing more I could do now.
"Alright, let's go. I'm sick of Stage 3 already."
The place where the mayor had been discovered in the real incident was the underground chamber beneath the human livestock pen. And the door leading there was supposedly hidden behind the stairs going up to the second floor. When we checked, there was indeed a small iron door. We descended the stairs slowly.
Squelch— Squelch—
A dark, damp space. The moment we opened the door, a foul stench of rot filled the air, growing stronger the further down we went. When the smell reached its peak, we arrived at a wide, ominous chamber.
This is it.
The space beneath the human livestock pen. In the center, ritual circles for human sacrifice were crudely drawn in bright red blood. Corpses were piled up like mountains around them. The stench came from those bodies decaying.
Disgusting…
As expected, even after sacrificing all his relatives, no god had appeared. So had the mayor realized the truth and repented? Of course not. He had decided the offering was insufficient. After capturing and killing even more people, his long tail was finally revealed and he was arrested. But the mayor died before he could stand trial. No one had murdered him. He had contracted food poisoning after chewing on the corpses he had sacrificed raw. Perhaps it was divine punishment.
Maybe this round had been a survival-type quest after all. This underground space wasn't equipped with facilities for normal human living. And above were the dwarfs. If the mayor had been here, he probably wouldn't have lasted two weeks—whether from food poisoning or being caught by the dwarfs.
Just a hypothesis, of course…
At the sound of our approach, someone raised their head from among the corpses. The figure looked at us and shouted.
"Oh… You've come! You've come! I knew you would come!"
It was the mayor. His appearance closely matched the description Han Yua had received. The man danced with joy, clapping his hands and laughing loudly as he declared that he had been right all along.
What a terrible human being.
He was obviously a replica. The real mayor had died in reality long ago. A replica with the same genetic structure as a human… I looked at Baengnae. A zombie with a genetic structure similar to a human's.
"Baengnae. Can you still eat more?"
"Madda."
"Then let's have dessert."
I had once believed that even if something was a replica, if it possessed human memories, it deserved respect. But that thing wasn't a person. If Kang Chan had been a replica, would I have just left him to die? No. If that mayor had been an actual human, would I have saved him? No. My mind felt clear. What mattered wasn't whether the genetic composition was similar to humanity or not. Humanity. That was something more valuable than being human itself.
Baengnae charged forward and tore into the back of his neck. The mayor screamed and struggled. The other zombies joined in, mercilessly biting and tearing at his body one by one.
Crunch— Chomp. Chomp.
Just like the relatives he had eaten, he was chewed apart by beings with human teeth and vanished from this world.
Quest Completed
Han Yua had been right. Even with such an altruistic heart, there was a reason she was the master of a Stage 7 guild. Along with the notification, strength drained from my entire body. The tension and anxiety that had been holding me together collapsed all at once.
Haah… This was exhausting as hell.
With the last of my strength, I pressed the combat complete button and lost consciousness. The world turned black once more.
Lick— Lick—
When I opened my eyes, two dog beastkin were licking my face vigorously. As I sat up, they spoke.
"I licked you, so Master woke up!"
"Idiot. I was the one who woke Master. You just whined from the side."
I'm… their master?
I rubbed my eyes and looked at them more carefully. They were zombie dog beastkin. It seemed I had safely advanced to Stage 4.