Mimic Awakening

Chapter 3: First Meal

One day, for unknown reasons, a young man finds himself reincarnated in the body of a mimic.

Thud. Thud.

Blindly, literally, following the other mimics, he hops his body repeatedly to transport himself step by step. Although he cannot see, he can still hear and smell, relatively better than he was a human. Even if he bumped into the wall or the other mimics, it did not physically hurt him that much.

As he wanders around, he discovers that he actually has a tongue. It is long and slender, stretching quite a distance from his mouth and he can move it freely however he wants.

For that reason, he is able to determine that he has rows of sharp teeth and a fleshy interior, which he thinks is this monster’s weak spot. He also notices that the floor and walls are quite hot when his tongue touches them. Surprisingly, it is not hot enough to burn.

Since mimics are solitary monsters in fiction, they are going everywhere, and he does not know where to go. Tracking a random path, he begins his exploration to the unknown.

After what seems to be minutes of aimlessly hopping and wandering, a strong scent of death suddenly slaps his nonexistent nose. It is not something pungent or rotten, but something burning.

(! What’s that smell? And it’s strong. Maybe mimics have stronger senses to compensate for the blindness? Also, why is it...so appetizing?)

Curious where the smell comes from, he quickly follows it and ends up bumping into something fleshy. Based on the intensity of the smell, he can tell that this is the source of it. He pokes it with my tongue and gets a lick of it.

(Burn flesh. No, it’s more like toasted, but by what? This doesn’t feel like a human being, so it seems it’s a dead monster.)

Crunch. Chomp.

As he is examining the corpse, the sounds of somebody chewing flesh reach my ears. His brethren, the fellow mimics, are apparently in the middle of feasting on this dead monster.

Grrr...

Swayed by the munching sounds and the smell, his stomach lets out a growl. He is obviously starving. Probably because of his sudden change, he is having second thoughts about whether he should consider the dead monster the first meal of his new body. He does not even know what kind of creature it is.

Pulling all the courage he has, he slowly opens his mouth. Since he cannot morph his body to extend his mouth, he leans forward to intentionally lose his balance and his teeth successfully burrow into the flesh. He closes his mouth with force and he gets a bite of the corpse.

Munch.

(Bleh. Although the outside flesh is slightly cooked, the inside is still raw. Other than that, the metallic taste of blood still overwhelms the unbutchered meat. I don’t know if it’s because I am a monster now, but it doesn’t taste that bad.)

The meat may not be good for human consumption, but he is not one currently, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem at all. Given that this is all he has right now, he cannot exactly complain. He is not desperate; he is just acting based on his current body’s natural instincts. After my first bite, I proceed to bite another after another.

Munch. Chomp.

Together with his fellow mimics, they slowly consume the corpse. The loud and sloppy sounds of our dining is breaking the silence of this place. He and his brethren continue to scavenge this oasis of a monster. They are like the opportunistic marine creatures around a dead whale on the ocean floor.

He constantly moves around to eat the other parts of this monster. Other than the meat, he also takes a bite of the internal organs. He even forces myself to break a bone, which breaks after exerting enough biting force.

When he gets to the part he thinks to be the head of the monster, he takes a bite of it and rips the dead monster’s face from the skull. As soon as he swallows it, suddenly...

(Hm?)

He notices that the surroundings he is seeing change. It is supposed to be pitch black, and then it gradually becomes brighter and brighter as if light is being poured into the void. From the looks of it, he excitedly thinks that he is regaining his vision back.

(Can I see now?)

The darkness eventually fades in his vision as it is slowly getting replaced by blurry lights. After a few seconds, his vision is completely restored, and at last, he can finally see. However, the first thing he sees is the faceless head of the monster he just ate.

(What the— that startles me.)

Before him is the head of a dead monster, faceless, and blood gushes out from it. For some reason, the blood boils after being exposed to the air for some time. He deduces that the air around him is actually hot enough to boil water, explaining the cooked skin of the carcass.

Aside from the face, he notices that one of its eyes is missing. He thinks he remembers swallowing something spherical just now. He concludes that he has eaten the eye. That gives him an idea of what just happened.

(In games, mimics are known to copy inanimate objects such as a treasure chest. In other works of fiction, a mimic could even shapeshift to. If I am the latter, I must have gained vision or eyes after eating this monster’s eyes.)

To think deeply about it, he turns his body around and finds himself in front of a massive and impossibly wide corridor. Along the walls, he finds the massive opening of the room where he and his fellow mimics came from. However, he can feel that something is not right. He realizes he cannot pinpoint where the source of light that gives him a somewhat clear vision of his surroundings is.

(This place is supposed to be pitch black without a light source, but I can see that the blood is red and the walls are black. It is as if I am wearing a highly advanced night-vision device that greatly enhances ambient visible light or converts infrared light to visible light. Perhaps that monster had night vision, and I happened to take it besides the vision.)

Speaking of the monster, he turns around and looks at the entirety of the monster, which is still being eaten by his kind. After stepping back a few, he gets a good view of the monster.

It is huge and massive. He does not have something to use as a reference for length right now, so he cannot say how big it is. The monster has hairy dark pink skin and is completely naked, so he knows it’s a male. Even though its face has been ripped off, its prominent features, like its pig-like ears, are still there.

Given the clues he has gathered, there is one monster I can think of.

(An orc, huh?) Another fantasy staple.

After identifying the monster, he continues studying his own body. Using his tongue, he finds that he has two relatively small eyes in the middle of my upper part, which the lid of the mimic, just about his mouth. He also discovers that he can relocate his eyes to any part of his body, but he usually sticks them to the front for more comfortable binocular vision.

Aside from his physical body, he needs to know what his body is capable of. On the record, one of his abilities is to replicate the things he has eaten, like the eyes of the orc just now. To prove his theory, he tries to change his exterior to that of an orc’s skin, but it looks quite grotesque and makes his vulnerable to attacks, so he undoes it.

It seems like he can obtain others’ abilities if he had consumed them, such as the night vision. When he eats the orc’s ears, he notices that his hearing significantly becomes more sensitive and sharper. The more he eats, the stronger his abilities get, he excitedly thinks.

Looking at his brethren, he cannot say if they all have that ability as he fails to see some dramatic changes in them. Perhaps this ability is exclusively unique to him like those special abilities of Isekai protagonists.

(Maybe reincarnated is real after all and this is my unique skill.) frёewebnoѵēl.com

Since he does not know how dangerous this new world can be, he will devour everything to get stronger in order to survive and thrive. Determined for his survival, he goes back to the orc’s body and continues eating it.

As he is eating its gut, his mouth suddenly bites something small and hard. He knows it is definitely not a bone. He picks it up with his tongue and takes a look at it.

(What is this?)