Like the lounge, the spa was the epitome of luxury and class.

  My heavy footfalls reverberated off the marble floors. The smell of eucalyptus was almost overpowering here and cloyingly sweet, as though it were attempting to mask something rancid. Soft, recessed lighting bounced off the vaulted ceiling overhead and cast strange reflections on the perfectly placid surface of an enormous pool, which dominated the center of the room. Padded lounge chairs, arranged in neat rows, lined either side of the pool, and off to the right was a large sauna, its glass doors revealing empty wooden benches.

  On the left was a darkened hallway, with a posted sign that read Restrooms / Showers.

  I felt a faint stab of greed.

  One of the growing issues at the store was the lack of proper bathing facilities. Although I’d added a laundromat—stolen from Hotel Hell on the fifth floor—we just had too many people crammed into one area without enough toilets to accommodate them all. And without showers, the BO lingering inside the store was officially becoming a health concern. If I could bottle that stench and weaponize it, I was pretty sure it would qualify as a biohazard under the guidelines of the Genva convention.

  Annexing the spa could solve so many problems.

  The thought made me feel shitty, though. Here I was, hunting down a bunch of missing Howlers who were probably dead because of me, and all I could think about was what a great find this place was.

  I quickly pushed the thought away as I caught sight of something at the far end of the room, suspended in a shadowy corner just above lazy tendrils of steam, curling upward from the hot tub below. The lighting was poor, and I was pretty sure there was some vague illusion masking whatever was back there. I squinted and looked for a moment longer, and then the low-level glamour fizzled and died. Dissipating like a fart in the wind.

  I’d half-expected to find some sort of giant monster lurking in the gloom, waiting to descend with legs clicking and fangs barred.

  Instead, I found five silken cocoons. Or rather, bodies, wrapped tight in gossamer threads that glistened wetly. Their forms were barely discernible beneath the delicate, shimmering layers of silk, but there was a tuft of fur here or a tail poking out there. Definitely Fenrir and the rest of the missing Howlers, though there was no way to tell if they were alive or dead. Not from here.

  At least one of the cocoons seemed to be twitching, though, which was a good sign.

  “Any idea where the Brood Matriarch would be?” I asked Croc while surveying the space. The entire area pulsed with a faint red light like an infected wound. Chances were high that the Brood Matriarch was a True-Transmorphic Mimic like Croc, which meant it could be anything inside the room. And unlike Juvenile Monomorphic Mimics, True-Transmorphic Mimics could genuinely transform into metal, stone, or any other material they choose.

  I was guessing the Brood Matriarch would also be quite a bit bigger than the baby mimics below.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Croc replied with a shrug. “Though, I’d say it’s either one of those padded chairs or maybe even the entire sauna.” The dog waved a paw toward the glass fronted enclosure. “That’s what I would do, if I had a hankering to eat Delvers. Just turn myself into the sauna, then let unsuspecting victims just walk right into my mouth. A very convenient meal delivery service if you think about it.”

  I grunted. That was diabolical. And brilliant. Not for the first time, I found myself exceptionally glad that Croc was on our side.

  I leveled my hand and unleashed a jet of burning fire water which carved right through one of the glass panels before smashing through a bench and drilling into the wooden wall. Nothing. No reaction at all. Any damage I did wouldn’t last long, since the Backrooms organically healed itself, but the test proved the sauna wasn’t the Brood Matriarch. I took a moment and did the same to the loungers, effortlessly sawing through each one with my Hydro Fracking Blast.

  More nothing. That was interesting.

  Out of an abundance of caution—and because there was no such thing as overkill—I cast StainSlayer Maelstrom in the center of the room, dousing anything else I may have missed or overlooked. But the military-grade super bleach just fell harmlessly into the pool in a gentle cascade of pitter-patters before finally petering out.

  As far as I could tell, the room was clear.

  That didn’t really make me feel any better.

  “Maybe it’s in the showers?” Croc suggested, seeming almost as confused as I felt. “Or it could be a toilet. Toilets make great mimics, you know. I lost a Delver named Samuel to a toilet mimic right here on the fourth floor, if you can believe it. I told Sam to be careful, but he just couldn’t hold it and happened to pick the wrong stall. It was an unlucky break. By which I mean both of his legs broke simultaneously as the toilet folded him in two.”

  “Yeah,” I replied flatly, thinking about the Janitorial Handyman that had almost killed me in the Lobby. It hadn’t actually been a mimic in the truest sense of the word, but the effect had been the same. “I know about those from personal experience.”

  “Is it because of your hemorrhoids?” Croc asked. “I heard Jakob say that hemorrhoids can make you go to the bathroom a lot. Or maybe that was IBS?”

  “Still don’t have hemorrhoids,” I grumbled, before turning my gaze back toward the silk cocoons at the far end of the room. “We need to hunt down the Brood Matriarch but let’s cut those guys loose first. They might all be dead, but maybe not. Time could still be a factor.”

  With a thought, I directed Drumbo to push forward along the righthand side of the pool, while Synthia took the lefthand route. Croc moved to follow after Drumbo, but I raised a hand and singled for the mimic to wait. Even though we’d cleared the room as best as we could, something still felt subtly off to me. I wasn’t sure what, exactly, just some nagging gut instinct, screaming that we weren’t alone.

  That something was wrong.

  Drumbo made it almost to the end of the pool, when the Brood Matriarch finally struck.

  In the span of a footstep, the entirety of the swimming pool surged upward and out, a watery tentacle as thick as my arm wrapping around the Horror, before lifting him into the air with supernatural strength. More flailing limbs exploded from the flowing mass of water and a huge mouth crammed full of razor-sharp teeth formed beneath a huge watery eye.

  Dweller 0.4728A – Mature True-Transmorphic Mimic (Brood Matriarch) [Level 28]

  There’s something deeply wrong with the water here. It moves when it shouldn’t, pulses like it’s breathing, and if you listen closely, you can hear the soft, rhythmic clicking of a thousand unseen teeth just beneath the surface. This isn’t a puddle. It’s a predator. A mama bear with a thousand cubs to feed, and you just waltzed into its den.

  Brood Matriarch Mimics are apex shapeshifters, fully capable of mimicking not just form, but material—stone, steel, even living tissue. Mature Mimics often specialize and this one has chosen water. At will, she can transform into an amorphous, ever-shifting mass of pure liquid hiding in plain sight, waiting for something stupid enough to dive right in. She is both nurturer and executioner, her entire body a birthing pool for an endless swarm of hatchlings, who start out no larger than a coin, but grow rapidly.

  Step into her domain, and she won’t strike right away—not until she’s certain escape is impossible. Then, the surface tension snaps and suddenly you’re being dragged under, the life choked from your lungs as she rips you apart an inch at a time to feed her ravenous brood. You were never swimming. You were drowning in a mother’s love.

  Well, Croc had been half right about the Matriarch.

  She’d taken a form which would, indeed, entice Delvers to literally throw themselves into her mouth—or, in this case, cannonball into her mouth. And even though I’d cast StainSlayer Maelstrom, she was a True-Transmorphic Mimic, which meant she didn’t just look like water, she was water. Sentient water, maybe, but water all the same. I’d never been a very good student and chemistry had always been one of my weaker subjects, but I’d learned enough to know that water wasn’t organic.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  StainSlayer Maelstrom, for all its raw destructive power, only worked on organic compounds.

  Drumbo bellowed in defiance and lashed out with his angle grinder attachment, but it simply burbled harmlessly into the watery limb, sending up a rooster tail of droplets. Then he struck with his gauntlet, which didn’t fare any better. Both attacks didn’t even cause the Brood Matriarch’s Health Bar to appear, which was extremely disconcerting. In her current form, she was essentially a water elemental and, clearly, she had some sort of rudimentary resistance against physical, non-magic attacks.

  On the other side of the pool, Synthia lurched up into the air, held aloft by her hair tentacles. She thrust one hand forward and activated Charbroil Inferno. Her arm shimmered and morphed, forming the blackened end of a barbeque smokestack before belching out a blazing orange-white column of flame. The fire washed over the Brood Matriarch and curls of steam rose as the surface coating of water promptly boiled off. The mimci’s health bar finally appeared and though the fire attack was technically doing damage, it wasn’t much.

  That confirmed my theory that only elemental or magical attacks would deal damage—Synthia just happened to have the worst possible Relic to use against a mimic made entirely of water.

  I already knew that StainSlayer Maelstrom wouldn’t do anything, and I doubted Hydro Fracking Blast would be much better, but I gave it a shot anyway. The potent beam of water punched a hole through the monster, but like Charbroil Inferno, it did virtually no damage. Not much of a surprise, since the attack was a combination of water and fire—two things that would be hugely ineffective against a water elemental.

  The creature roared in rage, then turned and vomited a column of water that slammed into Synthia and knocked her back into the wall with bone breaking force.

  I just stared for a second, feeling frustrated and flabbergasted in equal parts. This thing was only level 28—damn near fifteen levels beneath me. Killing it should’ve been a walk in the park, yet here it was kicking our asses ten ways from Sunday. It made me realize that I had a few glaring blind spots in my current build. Sure, I was extremely powerful, especially for my relative level, but against the right enemy, with the right Relics?

  It was a firm reminder that no one was invincible.

  I triggered Fault Spikes and hurled a pair of razor-sharp earthen spikes that did just as little damage as my other attacks. Suddenly, I wished that Jakob had tagged along. As a chemist, I was sure he would know how to beat this thing. I barred my teeth in frustration and tried a different tact, this time casting Existential Dread. This particular Relic hadn’t done much good against the Sunnysiders of the 24th floor, but I had high hopes that the Matriarch wouldn’t have much by way of mental protection.

  The spell hit and for the briefest moment I felt a wall of resistance as the Matriarch’s will pushed back against my own. I was level forty-two, though, with a Grit score well-above fifty and my will was like an iron fist. Her resistance lasted for all of a second before it crumbled and Existential Dread settled over her like a weighted blanket. The mimic faltered then seemed to fold in on itself and freeze. The tentacle holding Drumbo went slack, and my Horror dropped like a stone, landing with a thud in the now empty pool basin.

  Existential Dread wouldn’t give us long, about twenty seconds, but that was just enough of a breather to come up with a game plan.

  “Physical attacks don’t work against this thing!” I yelled at Croc. “And all my current Relics aren’t doing Jack-shit. What do we do here?”

  “I don’t know, Dan,” Croc replied sounding more than a little panicked. “I didn’t even realize we could do that. Turn into an element, I mean.”

  “Well, now you know!” I yelled back, already frantically opening my Spatial Store to search for a Relic that might be able to help. “Try to turn into a lightning elemental or something!”

  “I’ll do my best,” Croc said, though the mimic sounded extremely uncertain.

  Meanwhile, Synthia was back on her feet and unleashing a fresh firestorm against the momentarily frozen mimic. Drumbo was likewise going ham, though this time the Horror was launching a flurry of wind blades from his lawn-mower torso which actually dealt a decent amount of damage.

  After a few seconds of searching, I found what I was looking for. A Rare-grade Relic called Venomous Payload Bolt, which I’d looted off the corpse of an elite Swarmling in the Tinytots Preschool. I swapped it out with Fault Spike, then immediately launched a viscous, oozing orb of black and green venom. During my fight against the Swarmlings, this same stuff had eaten through my arm like acid. It wasn’t quite as potent as StainSlayer Maelstrom, but it also didn’t have the same limitations.

  The toxic orb shot directly into the Matriarch’s gullet and the effect was immediate. The pain from the attack seemed to finally break the giant mimic out of Existential Dread and its health slowly began to drop as the venomous payload began to disperse. Tendrils of black and green toxin mixed with the creature’s watery form, turning it cloudy. The Matriarch howled, its tentacles spasming wildly as the venom ate its life from the inside out.

  That sure as shit got its attention.

  Unfortunately, the Relic was only level 1 and had a thirty second cooldown before I could cast it again.

  “How we doing with that whole lightning elemental thing?” I asked, stealing a look toward Croc.

  “Not going so great,” the mimic replied, sounding flustered.

  I could see why. Instead of a badass monster made of crackling bolts of electricity, the enormous grizzly bear was now made entirely of balloons. Like one enormous balloon animal.

  “This is the best I can do,” Croc added apologetically. “If I do this with my hands,” it said, furiously rubbing its balloon paws together, “then I think I might be able to give it a little static electric shock.”

  “Keep trying,” I yelled as the Matriarch charged straight toward me like an angry bull.

  The creature moved with unnatural speed and grace, flowing like the water it was, and there really wasn’t anywhere for me to go. A huge tentacle lashed out and I dove beneath it, rolling across the marble tile, before coming back to my feet. Another tentacle came roaring down from above, and I darted left, avoiding the blow my inches—

  Only to find another huge, water limb waiting for me.

  It snaked around my waist, hoisted me into the air, and squeezed so tightly that it pushed the air from my lungs and threatened to turn all my bones into pulp. White stars danced across my vision, and I thought for a second that I might black out on the spot. Then I activated Neural Slipstream and the horrendous pressure around my chest and stomach vanished as I turned into a being of pure thought.

  For the next five seconds, I was invisible, intangible, and 90% resistant to all forms of damage, both melee and magical—though direct telepathic and psychic damage increased by 50%. That was a risk I was more than willing to take, since the Matriarch had been about two seconds away from liquifying my organs. The other great thing about Neural Slipstream, however, was that it made me fast with a capital F. For the five second duration of the spell, time seemed to slow as I moved at six times my normal speed.

  The one downside was that I couldn’t do any direct damage while in thought form, but at least I had a little room to breathe. To think.

  I slipped away from the Matriarch, the cogs in my head cranking away.

  Although Venomous Payload was working, the creature was still above seventy percent health. If I could draw the fight out long enough, I could probably spam the spell enough to eventually whittle her down and finish the job. Still, it would probably take at least three or four minutes—though a constant stream of wind blades from Drumbo might shave a minute or so off from that time. It wasn’t a great plan and lacked my normal level of finesse, but sometimes you just had to play the cards you were dealt.

  I slipped further back, giving myself a little extra space, but froze when I saw something shimmer deep within the Matriarch. It looked like a glimmering crystal.

  I hadn’t seen the object before because it was crystal clear and blended almost seamlessly with the mimic’s watery form. But the crystalline structure stood out in sharp contrast against the ribbons of black and green toxin now swirling through the creature’s body.

  I’d spent enough time butchering and harvesting mimic corpses to know right away what I was looking at: a Mimicore Node. That core, no larger than a robin’s egg, was the source of a mimic’s transformative power. It connected directly to a network of nerves, mana channels, and sensory receptors which allowed the mimic to assume almost any form. But I also knew that damage to the core could prevent a mimic from transforming at all—or at least impair its ability significantly.

  That’s likely what had happened to Croc at an early age.

  Under normal circumstances, there was no way to attack the node directly—it was usually buried beneath layers of thick muscle and bone. But since the creature was water? My odds seemed better. Still not great, but better. If I could damage that node, maybe I could force the Matriarch into its true form, which would make it susceptible to the rest of my spells.

  I pulled my demolition screwdriver from my tool belt and hurled it toward the Matriarch with a strand of telekinetic power. Although I couldn’t cast offensive spells while using Neural Slipstream, Psychic Sovereignty wasn’t technically classified as an offensive spell. As the screwdriver left my hand it became corporeal once again—a homing arrow of steel and plastic, flying straight toward the core.

  As fast as the tool moved, however, the mimic moved even faster.

  A second before the weapon landed, the Matriarch’s form rippled, and a single section of hardened ice solidified along the surface of the monster’s skin. It deflected the screwdriver and sent it spinning away before clattering across the marble tiles. I sent more and more weapons flying toward the monster using Psychic Sovereignty, but each time one of the tools got close to landing, a new patch of ice formed, blocking the damage.

  This thing was damn near immune to all of my magical attacks and my physical attacks too. The fact that she was working so hard to protect her Mimicore Node, though, told me I was on the right track. If I could damage that, I could damage her. And that’s when I knew exactly what I needed to do. Although she had managed to block everything I’d thrown at her so far, there was one attack that she couldn’t block. But I needed to act now before the Neural Slipstream lapsed and my window of opportunity closed.

  “Let’s get some!” I bellowed, diving headfirst into the creature’s watery stomach.