Chapter 14
"I'm the real one!! I'm the real Herman!!"
"Hey, you're not actually believing this son of a bitch, are you!? Hey, Manticore! Look with your own two eyes! That scar on my body—the mark we got while experimenting together when you were still human! Don't tell me you don't recognize it!?"
It wasn't just Manticore.
Everyone present was utterly bewildered.
"Ha... this fake bastard even copied my scar, what the hell. Come on, look at my body!!"
There were two Hermans.
That meant they were identical to the point where they couldn't be told apart.
Herman, the short-tempered mage of the Dark School.
His specialty was binding-type black magic.
He had a habit of biting his lower lip when casting magic.
The two Hermans tried to prove, by any means necessary, that they were Herman.
They strained, shouted, and used mana and stock, but the result was still that both of them were Herman.
In other words,
every magic they could use, their habits, memories, and past deeds.
The two men were alike. No, they were exactly the same.
"What the hell is this...."
"It's not magic. If it's not magic, how is this possible?"
Manticore tried every method he knew to identify the fake Herman.
He took pride in his own skill and believed that no matter how tricky the magic was, he could see through it.
But.
No matter what method he used, he couldn't produce any meaningful results.
'This is an unexplainable phenomenon.'
If there were something in this world even magic couldn't accomplish,
it would be the scene he was looking at right now.
"We need to kill this fake bastard right now!"
"That's my line! What are you all doing!? Kill this bastard!"
The party had to deal with this anomaly right away and move on.
If they didn't, the fake might kill them all while they were defenseless.
This was a clear trap set by Dreamland.
Also, this was an extreme situation.
Not only had they failed to find an escape route, they didn't know when another threat might strike.
The two Hermans were consumed by fear and rage.
It was no different from the culprit in court framing the victim for murder.
'If someone exactly like you claimed to be the real one and said you were the fake, could even the most rational person really stay calm?'
They had to get rid of that horrible feeling of disgust.
If they couldn't prove that they were the real Herman, they'd be the ones killed by their comrades!
There was one clear and simple method.
It was murder.
"What are you doing!! Help me!!"
"I'm the real Herman!!"
Unlike the Hermans, who had started fighting to the death, the party could only stand frozen.
Who the hell were they supposed to help, and who were they supposed to kill?
"What are you doing── you idiots! I'm the real Herman, so don't just stand there watching and kill that fake bastard right nowwwww!!"
"Gross, gross, gross, gross, don't look at me with that face that's exactly like mine!"
"Please die! Disappear and get the fuck lost, you goddamn piece of shit──!"
Screams filled the maze.
No one could step into that horrific, grotesque battle.
"Die, die, die, die, die!!"
"It hurts, it hurts, it huuurts!!"
The result of everyone standing by and doing nothing.
One Herman was completely dead.
…….
The black mages faced each other.
They were probably all thinking the same thing.
Sshk-
Thud.
Killing the battered Herman wasn't difficult.
The black mages wiped the blood from their hands.
The blood spilled by the two Hermans stained the puddles red.
The lifeless, hollow things lay sprawled, glaring at each other.
Even in death, they looked as if they were still harboring hatred.
…….
The silence remained unbroken for a while.
***
Dungeon Exploration, Day 7.
Herman's death.
If it had been only a simple death, it wouldn't have had this much impact, but the shocking incident they had experienced earlier had stirred up human fear.
The oldest and strongest fear is fear of the unknown.
It begins the moment something becomes incomprehensible.
Goblin, troll, or human—that's how they're designed.
That's because feeling fear is advantageous to survival.
It was a kind of biological alarm system for distinguishing predators from enemies.
He's dead.
"……Then he really died, not fake-died. What the hell was that, anyway? A grotesque thing that couldn't be explained by magic, sorcery, or any other method...."
Everyone put the investigation on the back burner.
At the rendezvous point, the black mages and Manticore openly voiced their honest feelings about yesterday's bizarre incident.
"I just checked a moment ago, and the bodies are still two."
"It's enough to make a ghost weep. Really."
Many of them had spent the night wide-eyed.
If they didn't somehow calm this fear right now, it seemed they'd never be able to rest easy.
"Should we get out of this dungeon right now?"
"We don't even have an escape scroll. You think that's possible...?"
"Fuck, the hallway itself is creepy as hell, and it's full of nothing but weird bullshit! Dammit... if I hadn't been so desperate for money, I never would have come into this creepy, gloomy dungeon!"
The human heart is truly fickle.
They had happily followed along before, but now that things were turning strange, the black mages glared at Manticore with dissatisfied expressions.
"Hey, Manticore, what are you going to do now?"
"This is the dungeon you dragged us into! Hurry up and give us a solution!"
Honestly, it was ridiculous.
Everyone knew it was a brand-new dungeon when they came in, but someone looking at this would think he'd forced them to come here.
But.
If he snapped at this exact moment and ended up fighting the black mages... well.
The end of that would definitely be bad.
"The only option we have now is to gather the magic stones and get out of the dungeon."
Manticore held back his irritation.
And when he tried to say it as nicely as possible, that effort worked.
"Damn...."
"If they didn't want to die, they'd have to get out of the dungeon like he said. Those damn puddles were visibly increasing too, so the corridor might turn into a flood before long."
'Brute-forcing our way through the dungeon with idiots like these is the best option, huh. No matter how I think about it, that's fucking awful.'
If only they could safely find the anomaly here and head straight to the core room without incident.
But the world doesn't go as expected, so the road ahead was bleak.
"From now on, we'll organize into two-person teams and move out."
"It'd be a problem if we had to go through another bizarre phenomenon like yesterday, so that's best."
"Right. Since one guy is left over, I'll take him with me."
The black mages stood up.
And they began moving without hiding their discomfort.
They prayed earnestly in their hearts.
Please let yesterday's bizarre phenomenon not happen again.
And then.
That evening, two people didn't return to the rendezvous point.
There were three newly discovered corpses.
***
Dungeon Exploration, Day 8.
By now, it wasn't just puddles—the floor was starting to flood....
"What the hell is going on here? This place is full of nothing but things I can't understand!"
There were 7 people left, including Manticore.
They all sat at the rendezvous point with troubled expressions.
Two people died yesterday.
Three corpses were found.
The party's composure was shaken by the copycat.
"I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home...."
"Fuck, you're the only one having a hard time!? Stop whining!"
"This is already a headache... if we drag this out any longer... I have a bad feeling about it."
The party dubbed that grotesque thing the copycat.
The situation was at its worst.
The maze's secret still hadn't been solved, and as time passed, the rising water made movement harder. And the copycat had appeared both the day before yesterday and yesterday.
It would probably appear today too.
'The survivors are Zeko, Belev, Dustin, Orgin, Berba, and me.'
The current maze exploration rate was 22%.
Progress was slow because their numbers had shrunk.
Everyone was afraid the copycat would appear.
From here on, it would probably only get even slower.
More than anything, they'd confirmed that even a two-person team wasn't safe.
Then, to ensure stability, they'd have to increase their numbers and reduce the number of teams.
At this rate, there was no answer.
The maze was already huge, and at this rate it would be impossible to check the whole thing even if they spent half a month.
Unless luck was on their side, that meant everyone could drown.
"I'll just go check the bodies for a bit."
"Yeah. Go ahead."
Manticore walked over to the corpse they had newly discovered yesterday.
They were truly identical to the point that you couldn't tell them apart with the naked eye.
It wasn't just the naked eye.
Everything matched.
Mana circuits, the belongings they were carrying, and...
their memories and habits too.
How could Manticore distinguish the copycat from the real one?
Manticore lay prone there and thought deeply.
Even before he became a monster, he'd always tried to cultivate the habit of thinking rationally.
There was definitely a method for everything.
Figuring out whether something could actually be done and despairing afterward can wait until after you know the method.
But.
Still, no answer came into view.
Manticore let out a small sigh.
He got to his feet and started walking.
He hadn't given up.
Thoughts like that would flash into his head later.
He decided to let his mind rest for a while.
On the way back to the rendezvous point,
Manticore, who had been walking on all fours in a daze with no thoughts in his head,
came to a sudden stop.
The copycat had already arrived at the rendezvous point.
The thing that looked like Manticore
sensed the presence and rose to its feet.
"Ah."
It stared at Manticore standing in the passageway.
At that moment.
For the first time, Manticore bitterly regretted his choice.