Hero Scout

"Remember, while you have a corpse you will have the power to perfectly replicate it. Such is the power of your species of Mimic. The memories, the skills, the abilities and the stats will all be yours. Leaving the corpse behind will lose you those abilities, but you"ll gain the option of taking a new corpse in its place."

Thump. Something hit the ground hard in the hallway, Kenji tentatively put down his soup and stared wide-eyed at the door.

"One last thing, your progression. Like the other seventeen evil souls, you can improve any stat or skill by mastering it. Accomplishing difficult feats, expanding your comprehension, and training hard, provide the most experience points, in that order. But each of you will have a unique way to level your special components. For you, that means evolution, to handle more bodies or new skills entirely. To do so you must scout out heroes for me, and fulfil the obligations of the cla.s.s "Hero Scout". Your job is then to grow their grade as much as you can, and when you leave them to their own devices you will gain XP based on how far they have come. Understand?"

"I-I understand." Kenji turned away, thinking fast, mind turning blank as he saw his reflection in the mirror.

He looked like a tiny old man with flickering green eyes, wearing a street urchin"s black sc.r.a.ps for clothing, and he had a mound bulging out the back of his neck. At that moment it hit him, was he really that old guy in the mirror? That mimic...that was him?

Where was the chin his mother used to say was so manly? Or the hair that he had always worried would recede early, like what happened to hisfather?

"Kenji, the guard outside the door is dead. The Holy Knight that rules this keep is definitely hero material, and one of your rivals is out to get him. You don"t have much time," the woman spoke with neat tones, as if everything was in order, and she couldn"t see the red liquid spilling out from below the door. As if she didn"t address a sixteen-year-old that looked like he was six hundred.

Kenji took a deep breath. Then another. And a third.

"Leave it to me."

Kenji strode to the door and pulled it open, the quiet guard now forever silent as blood gushed from beneath his helm. No visible wound, not even a dent in the well-maintained iron plate armour. It seemed that the attacker had ignored the large man"s defences completely.

Casting his hands wide, Kenji pushed them against the corpse, his cloth, his chains and his everything else melting as he pulled himself over the body and had it sink down into a small s.p.a.ce within. When all was done only the blood remained. About two-thirds of his internal s.p.a.ce was now filled up with the body, his weapons and his armour.

"Sorry Mr Guard, I didn"t know things would go this way," Kenji whispered, reformed into an especially bow backed elder. The weight of the death-haunted him far more than any video game in the past. This...it just didn"t feel like an NPC death, this felt like the gurgling corpse of a man. Of someone who once had life in his eyes, and dreams in his heart.

"You can store other stuff in there of course, like this cane," she said. Handing him the cane, Kenji"s bulging back became easier to move around. Quickly he slid the cane into his chest, vanishing wherever everything else had gone.

"But s.p.a.ce is limited without fulfilling your special missions. Now, morph into the guard quickly, or else when I release this serving girl she"ll think you killed him."

Kenji shook his arms, concentrated, and looked up at her one last time.

"Is it going to hurt?"

She smiled down at him, "No, it won"t hurt. So hurry."

"What"s your name?" Kenji said, absolutely not so he could buy time. Not in the slightest. Kenji just couldn"t help being a gentleman was all.

"I don"t have one."

"Well, you can call me Kenji. Mind if I call you Noir? You remind me of the cool detectives from-"

"Kenji, hurry." Noir snapped, her cheeks ever so softly blushing scarlet.

With a sharp breath, Kenji focused, his body twisting, changing, and in rapid bursts, transformed into a fully armed and armoured guardsman. Memories flooded him; a quiet family and a life filled with solemn duty. His arms and legs slowly adjusted to their own muscle-memory, and were filled with the endless days of training, while the list of the guard"s favourite fighting moves nudged their way into Kenji"s head.

Along with these memories arrived a song that the guard had heard last night at the tavern. The tune was quite catchy, and as it had been stuck in the guard"s head for the last two days, it was now stuck in Kenji"s head.
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"Mm mMMMm m." Kenji said confused, as he towered over Noir, shocked to find the man had no tongue. No wonder he had been so quiet. Because of his inability to speak, Kenji had mistaken him for a d.i.c.k. Silently, Kenji clasped the man"s hands together and offered him a prayer in apology.

Noir laughed like tinkling silver chimes. Kenji shot her an annoyed look, not knowing what was so funny about his situation.

"See you around, Kenji," she said, her eyes rolling back into her head as she collapsed on the floor.

Kenji didn"t wait for her to get up, he was already stumbling down the hallway. It took a few steps to get used to having power in his legs again, legs with more strength than he had ever had in his previous life. Each bound pushed his grin wider, even as the sorrow within his heart deepened. With the slightest rasp, Kenji"s blade was pulled free, oiled and shined. Whoever had slit Mr Guard"s throat, Kenji would make them regret it. With Mr Guard"s steel no less.

But Arthur, the kind boyish knight. He at least Kenji swore to save.

"MMM MmmM" Kenji said, his heroic statement no doubt something that would have been remembered for a thousand years were it actually spoken aloud. No matter, he would just have to show them his conviction instead.