Squeak had gone off to investigate the chest, and the chest had come alive. Jeremy's brave shadow wraith had then sounded the alarm and attacked the mimic with life drain.

  Perhaps if Squeak had a few weeks, this might have accomplished something.

  Jeremy figured this out from inside the mimic. The mimic's tongue had grabbed his foot and pulled him in before he could react.

  He was relatively unharmed, but his efforts to get free were unsuccessful.

  He was being crushed. The pressure on his broken bones made him want to scream, and his skin was burning. The mimic was covering him in acid, aggravating his burns. To his surprise, his health went up three points thanks to Squeak's energy transfer.

  “You're still holding your sword, Jeremy. Cut your way free!” Flint shouted. “I will not spend the rest of my existence in an underwater cavern!”

  Yeah, that's what I think about when I'm trapped in a mimic, Jeremy thought, tightening his grip on his sword and jabbing it forward with all his strength, stabbing into the mimic, then pulling back and forth in a stabbing, sawing motion.

  Cutting away at the mimic with his sword, he felt it move, but feeling no release of pressure, he kept at it. He would have to breathe soon. If not, he'd suffocate.

  Do mimics have weaknesses?

  Fire? At the bottom of a lake? No, this was not good.

  Sawing back and forth with his sword, he tried to use his crude magic to burn the mimic, and accomplished nothing. If he couldn't get out of this monster, he'd suffocate.

  He wished he'd thought to carry some poison with him, but that was in his pack that was currently floating in the cave. He did have his endless dungeon ration he'd received on his first day in the dungeon—the next best thing.

  He released his sword and pulled out the dungeon ration, which appeared in his hand. Tearing off the thin wrapper one-handed, he let go of the ration. Eat this, monster. It's got strength bonuses. He did this again and again, continuing to fill the mimic with his endless dungeon ration.

  The mimic's movements became more and more agitated until, with a groan, its giant mouth opened, vomiting up Jeremy and the many dungeon rations. Jeremy refused to be ejected, using his body to hold the chest open. Retrieving his sword, he hacked away at its elongated tongue from the inside.

  He finally cut off the mimic's tongue and hacked away at its insides until it slowly weakened and stopped moving.

  Squeak floated around the mimic's body, proud of its accomplishment.

  Jeremy swam to the top of the cave, taking breath after breath. He used up the last of his air, and to his immense annoyance, there were still no healing potions.

  “Good work, Jeremy,” Flint said. “Your technique was sloppy, but it got the job done. You need to get out of this cavern before you suffocate!”

  Starting to panic, Jeremy swam quickly back through the passage and up, and up. His vision went black before his head finally broke the surface of the lake.

  The insects attacked him instantly, but he placed his hands over his face and mouth, using tiny gaps between his fingers to breathe.

  When he recovered, he found a decent-sized rock and dove for a second time, retrieving his backpack.

  It took several more such dives before his search of the mimic cave revealed a faint vertical line the width of his thumb on one of the walls, and a loose stone in the cave with a three-tined trident shape. Acutely aware he was running out of air, he put the three-tined fork stone on top of the stone line where it fit perfectly, merging with the stone wall. With a loud crack, a door opened into a smaller chamber containing a small, less impressive-looking chest.

  This time, he didn't enter until Squeak investigated and declared it monster-free.

  He entered the cave and opened the chest.

  The chest contained six items. Four gold potions, a brightly glowing white potion, and a small leather bag the length and width of his forearm.

  He drank the white potion. He had just enough time to hear Flint shout “No!” before losing consciousness.

  He awoke floating in the underwater cave. He wondered how long he'd been out. The constant need to breathe had vanished. He checked his stat sheet.

  Blessing of the Mighty Uinguit.

  Active skill, Electric Attack.

  Passive skill, Water Breathing.

  “Are you completely insane?” Flint shouted, noticing Jeremy was awake. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Hardly,” Jeremy burbled. “I figured if anything would help me survive down here, it would be the white potion, and I was right.” It would have been impossible for any normal person to understand Jeremy's burbling, but of course, Flint had no problem.

  “You could just as easily have grown fins or gained a bone armor exterior! Not to mention suffocating during the change. Do you think before you act?”

  “Squeak!” Squeak agreed.

  “One of these days, your luck will run out,” Flint said. “Honestly, I don't know why I try.”

  Now that Jeremy could breathe water, he examined the rest of the items at his leisure.

  He grinned.

  The four gold potions were.

  Potions of greater healing.

  He drank a gold healing potion, feeling a horrible itch as his bones knit together.

  He grabbed the leather bag and did Identify.

  Bag of holding. One hundred cubic meters of storage space.

  He let out a burbling underwater laugh. Awesome.

  After making sure there wasn't anything else to find, he swam for the surface.

  The swarm covered the lake, waiting for his return. He raised his hand above the surface and focused on pushing electricity through his hand. After a bit of experimenting, he released a small burst, killing the swarm next to his hand while leaving the rest unscathed.

  Jeremy felt sick and drained.

  “You might be able to charge yourself using lightning bugs,” Flint said.

  “Yeah,” Jeremy burbled, “I was about to do that.”

  “Of course you were.”

  The lightning bugs were long, slender, bright yellow insects with wasp-like wings. Taking that into account, it shouldn't be hard to find one, but of course, it was. He floated beneath the lake until he spotted one flying overhead.

  Jeremy emerged from the lake. The lightning bug converged on him with the rest of the insects, and he submerged again, holding the lightning bug in his hand.

  As the bug released its electrical attack, Jeremy felt an unfamiliar part of him fill with electricity. After a few attacks from the bug, his unknown storage swelled to the bursting point, and with a mental chortle, he extended his hand and released his charge.

  Jeremy's hand burned from the force of the released electrical charge.

  He sank below the surface, watching as every swarm within fifty feet of him in or on the lake died.

  Within minutes, the swarm replaced the dead insects to cover the lake surface again. Jeremy sighed. This could take a while.

  Over the next day, Jeremy leveled up Electric Attack, not to mention his passive water-breathing skill. He found he could even sleep underwater now. His pre-dungeon body would have wrinkles on it by now, but with his toughened skin, that wasn't a problem.

  By the end of the day, the swarm stopped infesting the lake's surface.

  He stepped out of the lake, let the flying swarm attack him, and used his Electric Attack to kill them as they did. He stuck several lightning bugs under his shirt. The lightning bugs crawled under his clown clothes and tickled.

  ***

  “Do you think we're wearing them down?” Jeremy burbled underwater. He was working on his labyrinth puzzle to relax. He'd made it to the tenth section again, and he had to get his adventurer past twenty monsters to reach the eleventh. Squeak was roaming the cavern, killing any swarm it could find, but ready to retreat to the lake if it encountered anything dangerous.

  “Their numbers seem to be decreasing, Jeremy. However, if I were a swarm queen, I'd pull back the bulk of my forces to my cavern and wait for you to leave the safety of the lake before hitting you with everything I had.”

  “Good to see you've spent so much time thinking about how to kill me,” Jeremy replied. He moved the labyrinth adventurer a square forward.

  “It wasn't much time. And yes, you're fortunate I can't escape this dungeon without you.” Flint relaxed on a non-corporeal easy chair that rested on an equally non-corporeal floor next to Jeremy, who was floating several feet below the surface of the lake.

  Whenever Jeremy moved his adventurer, all the monsters moved as well. The further he got into the puzzle, the more complicated it became. Sometimes he saw the labyrinth in his sleep and had nightmares about being trapped inside, surrounded by monsters in an incomprehensible maze of passageways. Come to think of it, the puzzle situation was similar to his own.

  At present, there were four types of monsters in Jeremy's labyrinth puzzle. One type stayed in their territory, chasing him for a few squares before giving up; a second type would pursue Jeremy's adventurer until doors or some other barrier stopped it. A third type, small and stationary, would set up traps that would kill his adventurer if he couldn't avoid them.

  Jeremy studied his puzzle. A fourth type of monster was coming up behind him, a large but slow-moving brute type that could destroy traps or barriers, but wouldn't fit in the narrow passageways. If he could get that monster to follow close behind him, the monster would block some of his faster-moving pursuers, who wouldn't be able to get past the large monster's body.

  A second-type monster was approaching from a different passageway, trying to cut him off. Still, if he took the left passageway, the monster would have to either get past the stationary trap monster or take a side passage and go a long distance out of its way. Either way, Jeremy should be okay.

  Jeremy moved his adventurer into the left passageway. Uh oh, another trap monster. It was blocking his path.

  “If you remain stationary for the next turn,” Flint said, “the type four will block most of your pursuers as it comes after you. The type two will be blocked by the trap monster and lose one to two turns going through the trapped passageway because that's faster for the monster than going the long way around. If you take the narrow passageway right before the trap monster. The big type four monster will go through the trap monster's lair, destroying the traps with its bulk. You go through this narrow passageway, use that door to block the other monsters, then double back and get past the trap monster before it can repair its traps, and you should be safe, assuming nothing else shows up.”

  “What about the type two? It'll cut me off.”

  “The big monster will turn around and block the type two, so you should be able to escape through that side passage. Oh, watch out for that type two flyer. It's a long way off, but they move three squares a turn.”

  “I thought you weren't helping me,” Jeremy said.

  “Watching you mess up again and again is like torture,” Flint answered. “I hope you're proud of yourself. Both inside and outside the puzzle, you're fighting monsters that are completely out of your league despite having the option to quit and leave this place.”

  “This puzzle is confusing,” Jeremy said, moving the way Flint suggested. “But as for the swarm queen, I have a plan."