The Gift of Loot Chapter 23: Chapter 23: Boss Fight!

Read chapter 23 of The Gift of Loot by Jack_Golightly on NovelPedia.

There were now over forty mimics waiting for them in the boss room. Thomas wondered if there had been that many originally and Zach had just gone on a burning spree earlier—likely—or if the boss had figured out that the two of them would return and had doubled the amount. Either way, it was a large room, so even that many mimics didn't make it feel crowded, but it would be daunting if they all decided to attack at once. Oh yes, and the faces of the mimics had changed to those of Zach and Thomas. Though Zach still looked like his old volcano demon self, which was interesting . It meant that the boss couldn't see what was going on outside of this room. It probably didn't know their plan. Thomas closed the door and turned back to Zach. "Okay." He quickly explained the situation, adding, "You have full permission to kill me." "And myself, I guess," Zach said. "I promise to try to make it quick and painless." "I don't know why it bothered to change the mimics to our faces." Thomas frowned. "The only reason I can tell what's going on is through my healing sight. It has to know that we can't see anything." "Oh right, I forgot to tell you — this darkness is totally not natural," Zach said. "It was definitely added to the dungeon later on." "What?!" he exclaimed. "You could have mentioned that before." "Sorry, bro." Thomas exhaled and reminded himself that it really wasn't important right now. Well, it was important, but they had a job to do and couldn't get distracted. "Alright," Thomas said. "Are you ready?" Zach readjusted his grip on the katana. "Nope," he said. "Let's do this." They walked into the room. Almost immediately, one of the Thomases stepped forward. It seemed that this version wasn't just going to stand there to be passively killed like the previous mimics. "Straight ahead, two steps, then on your nine o'clock," Thomas said tensely. Zach obeyed his instructions, stepping forward and bringing the sword down in a controlled diagonal sweep that cut the fake Thomas completely in half. It splashed into mimic goo. Meanwhile, Thomas made a show of backing up until his shoulders hit the nearest wall. "I'm going to call these out from a safe place," Thomas said, probably a little too loudly. "This dungeon boss can't keep spawning these things forever. You probably weakened it with all the ones you killed before." "Heard," Zach said. "Great. Three steps forward, then stab directly ahead." Zach complied, and with a quick twist that for some reason created a breeze, he killed a false Zach mimic in the same way. Thankfully, the false-Zach hadn't tried to fire blast him. Thomas conveniently didn't mention that the mimics he destroyed were instantly replaced by others. As he directed Zach to kill one after another, Thomas moved to the far left wall and made sure to direct Zach followed a killing path that seemed to randomly take them toward the back left as well. It was going swimmingly right up to the point where the mimics stopped being quite so passive. They waited until Zach was right in the middle of them. Then one of the fake Thomases shouted in an exact replica of his voice: "No wait, I'm not fake!" He held up his hands. "Zach, stop!" Zach visibly twitched and took a half-step back, but his sword strike was already in motion, and it cut across the fake Thomas's throat. The fake Thomas made some truly terrible sputtering sounds as it died. "That was a fake Thomas," real Thomas called helpfully. "No wait, I'm not a fake," said another fake Thomas, about eight feet from Zach's right. "Nope, kill that one," Thomas said. "No, don't!" the fake Thomas cried, just before Zach's sword swept through him. Now all the mimics were shifting to resemble Thomases, and they started babbling different directions at the man — some giving him bad advice, while others were straight up begging for their lives. Thomas wasn't quite sure why they weren't fighting back, but he suspected this was a prelude to an actual attack. The mimic boss probably