Location: Sector 7H - The Cloud Palace (Zhuge's Domain)
The meeting table was a slab of polished jade, set in the center of a floating pavilion. The air was filled with the scent of jasmine tea and the soft strumming of a lute played by an invisible wind spirit.
It was civilized. It was elegant. It was about to be ruined.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The sound of a heavy diesel engine echoed off the marble pillars. Atlas rode the Void-Runner bike right up the stairs, drifting the rear wheel across the delicate white tiles, leaving a thick black skid mark that ruined the feng shui instantly. He killed the engine. The silence that followed was deafening.
Atlas dismounted, kicking the kickstand down. He was wearing his "Diplomatic Suit"—which was just his leather apron over a suit of crude steel plate armor, topped with the lizard-skull mask. On his belt hung three clay canisters painted with a red "X."
"You're late," a deep, growling voice said.
Sitting at the table was Warlord Khan. The Gnoll King was massive—seven feet of muscle and grey fur. He wore armor made from the ribcages of other players he had killed. His left eye was milky white (blinded by Atlas's steam attack), and burn scars crisscrossed his snout. Behind him stood two elite Gnoll guards, snarling at Atlas.
"Traffic was bad," Atlas deadpanned, walking to the table. He didn't sit. "I had to dodge a puddle of grey goo that used to be a Level 10 Paladin."
Zhuge, seated at the head of the table, fanned himself nervously. "Gentlemen, please. This is a neutral ground. The System recognizes the [Truce Flag]."
Khan slammed his fist onto the jade table. It cracked. "Truce?!" Khan roared, pointing a claw at Atlas. "He boiled my kin! He dropped my ships! He turned my warriors into soup! And you want me to ally with this... this Tinker?!"
"Correction," Atlas said coolly. "I turned them into stew. Soup implies a thinner broth."
Khan lunged. His axe was halfway to Atlas's neck when Zhuge flicked his fan. WHOOSH. A wall of compressed air slammed Khan back into his seat. "Sit down, Warlord," Zhuge commanded, his eyes glowing blue. "Or I blow you off this island."
Khan grumbled, gripping the table edges until they powdered, but he sat.
"Good," Atlas said. he reached into his bag and pulled out a jar. He slammed it on the table. Inside was a glob of grey, viscous slime. It was vibrating. "This is why we are here. Khan, tell them what you saw."
Khan looked at the jar with genuine fear. The barbarian Warlord, who fearlessly charged steam engines, shrank back from the glass. "It was... wrong," Khan whispered. "We found a derelict ship. My scout touched the grey mud. It didn't bite him. It became him." Khan shuddered. "It copied his face. Then his voice. Then it ate him. When we tried to kill it with axes, the axe stuck. It ate the steel too."
Zhuge leaned forward, examining the sample. "A Doppelganger? A Slime variant?"
"A Mimic Brood," Atlas corrected. "A biological weapon. It has [Adaptive Regeneration]. If you hit it with swords, it learns to harden its skin. If you hit it with magic, it evolves resistance."
"So we are doomed," Zhuge summarized. "If it eats metal and resists magic, we have no counters."
"We have one counter," Atlas said. "Chemistry."
He picked up one of the clay canisters from his belt. "Khan, your fur resists magic because it disperses mana, correct?" Khan nodded warily. "The blessing of the Beast God." "And Zhuge, your wind shields deflect kinetic objects?" Zhuge nodded.
"But neither of you can stop Entropy." Atlas walked to the edge of the pavilion, overlooking a decorative pond filled with koi fish. "Physics Lesson 101: Greek Fire."
He pulled the pin on the canister and threw it into the pond. Splash. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the water began to bubble. The canister cracked. The Napalm-B mixture (Ethanol + Styrofoam-Slime + Phosphorus) reacted with the oxygen in the water.
FWROOSH.
It didn't explode. It ignited. A sheet of orange fire spread across the surface of the water. It burned violently, hissing and spitting black smoke. Zhuge stood up, horrified. "Fire... on water? That's impossible! Water extinguishes fire!"
"Not this fire," Atlas said, the orange glow reflecting in his mask. "This fire brings its own oxidizer. It sticks. It burns at 1,200 degrees Celsius. You can't wash it off. You can't magic it away. It burns until the fuel is gone."
Atlas turned to Khan. "Your fur won't save you. The fire will stick to it and melt the fat underneath." He turned to Zhuge. "Your wind will just spread the droplets, setting your whole island ablaze."
"This," Atlas pointed to the inferno, "is how we kill the Mimics. We don't fight them. We purge them."
The three leaders stared at the burning pond. The koi fish were gone. The water was boiling away into steam. It was a weapon of absolute cruelty.
Suddenly, the Global System sounded a warning. It wasn't a text notification. It was a Siren.
[WARNING. WARNING.][Sector Event Triggered.][The Mimic Brood has finished Gestation.][Invasion Wave 1: TARGET LOCKED.]
The sky turned dark grey. Zhuge looked up. "Target locked? On who?"
Atlas looked at the edge of Zhuge's island. Hundreds of grey claws hooked over the marble railing. "Us," Atlas said. "They followed the biomass. They followed Khan."
The Grey Tide
"Form ranks!" Khan bellowed. His two elite guards drew their axes. Zhuge summoned his Sylphs—twenty of them materialized from the air.
"Don't let them touch you!" Atlas shouted, revving his bike. "If they touch you, they copy your stats!"
The Mimics poured over the railing. They weren't just blobs anymore. They had evolved. They looked like Grey Gnolls—muscular, hulking beasts made of wet clay, but with the agility of wind spirits. They had eaten Khan's scouts. They had eaten Zhuge's patrol. They were hybrids.
SCREEECH.
A Mimic lunged at a Sylph. The Sylph stabbed it with a wind spear. The spear went through the Mimic's chest—and the hole simply closed up. The Mimic grabbed the Sylph. Slurp. The wind spirit turned grey. It dissolved. A second later, the Mimic sprouted translucent wings.
"It copied the flight!" Zhuge screamed. "They can fly!"
"Khan! Hold the stairs!" Atlas ordered. "Zhuge! Push them back! I need a clear shot!"
Khan didn't argue. He roared and swung his massive axe. SPLAT. He cleaved a Mimic in half. The two halves started wiggling, trying to reconnect. Khan stomped on them. "Die, goo! Die!"
Zhuge waved his fan frantically. [Great Gale]. A hurricane wind blasted the flying Mimics, pinning them against the pillars. "I can't kill them!" Zhuge yelled. "They just regenerate!"
"Clear the lane!" Atlas shouted.
He drifted the bike around, facing the mass of writhing grey monsters. He didn't use the cannons. Bullets were useless here. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a larger canister. A Jerry Can filled with the Napalm mix.
"Zhuge! Wind blast! Send this to the back line!" Atlas threw the can into the air. Zhuge understood. He refocused his wind. WHOOSH. The can flew over the heads of the Gnolls, landing in the center of the Mimic swarm.
Atlas unholstered his Overcharged Riot Stick (which he had hastily repaired with copper wire). He didn't hit a monster. He hit the puddle of fuel leaking from his bike. Spark.
A trail of fire raced across the marble floor, chasing the wind, leading right to the Jerry Can.
KA-FWOOM.
The explosion wasn't concussive; it was thermal. A wave of sticky, black-orange fire erupted, coating everything in a ten-meter radius. The Mimics screeched. It was a sound like burning plastic. They tried to regenerate, but the fire was eating their biomass faster than they could heal. They tried to run, but the napalm stuck to their legs. They flailed, melting into puddles of burning tar.
"It works!" Khan laughed, watching his enemies burn. "The fire eats them!"
But the victory was short-lived. From the smoke, a figure emerged. It was ten feet tall. It was made of grey slime, but it had plated armor. It had a backpack venting steam. And it had a cannon arm.
Atlas froze. "No..."
The Mimic didn't look like a Gnoll. It looked like the Centurion.
[Boss Alert: Mimic Centurion (Imperfect Copy).]Note: The Mimics scanned Atlas's machine during the bike ride.
The Grey Centurion raised its arm. It didn't have a steam cannon. It pressurized its own slime body. PTHOOM. A ball of hardened, pressurized slime shot out like a cannonball. It hit Khan. CRACK. Khan flew backward, crashing through a pillar. He coughed blood. "It hits... like a mountain."
"It copied the hydraulic pressure," Atlas realized. "It's a biological piston."
The Grey Centurion turned its faceless head toward Atlas. It recognized the Alpha.
"I can't fight that on the ground," Atlas calculated. "It's too heavy. And if I get close, it absorbs me."
He looked at Zhuge. "Zhuge! Can you lift me?" "Lift you? You're wearing steel plate!" "Do it! Throw me into the air!"
Zhuge gritted his teeth. "Don't blame me if you fall!" [Updraft!]
A geyser of air shot up beneath Atlas. He was launched twenty feet into the air, hovering above the burning battlefield. Time seemed to slow. Atlas looked down at the Grey Centurion. He reached into his belt. He had one Napalm grenade left. But a grenade wasn't enough for a boss.
He looked at the Void-Runner bike sitting on the stairs below. The fuel tank was half full of pure Ethanol.
"Calculated sacrifice," Atlas whispered.
He pulled out his Grappling Hook (Spider-Man tech). He fired it at his own bike. The hook caught the handlebars. "Zhuge! Drop me!"
Zhuge cut the wind. Atlas fell. As he fell, he yanked the rope. The heavy steel bike flew into the air, pulled by his momentum. Atlas swung around a pillar, releasing the rope. The bike sailed through the air, aiming directly at the Grey Centurion.
The Mimic boss looked up. It tried to catch the bike. Bad move.
Atlas, mid-fall, drew his broken Glock slide (now just a flint striker). He struck a spark against his armor. He threw the spark at the bike.
The bike hit the Centurion's chest. The fuel tank ruptured. The spark hit the vapor.
BOOM.
A mushroom cloud of blue-and-orange fire engulfed the Boss. The explosion blew the windows out of the Pagoda. Atlas landed in the pond (which was still hot but no longer burning), splashing water everywhere.
He stood up, dripping wet. In the center of the crater, the Grey Centurion was gone. There was only a pile of ash and a few pieces of melted steel tubing.
The remaining Mimics, seeing their Alpha destroyed, screeched and retreated over the edge of the island, diving back into the void.
[Battle Won.][Wave 1 Repelled.]
The Aftermath
Khan pulled himself out of the rubble, clutching his broken ribs. Zhuge slumped against a pillar, his mana exhausted. Atlas walked to the crater, mourning the loss of his bike.
"My Void-Runner," Atlas sighed. "That cost me 150 points."
Khan spat blood. "You crazy bastard. You threw a vehicle at it." "Kinetic energy plus chemical payload," Atlas shrugged. "It was the only way."
Zhuge stood up, brushing ash off his white robes. He looked at the devastation. His beautiful garden was a charred wasteland. "They are gone," Zhuge said softly. "But they will be back. And next time, they will copy that explosion."
Atlas shook his head. "They can't copy chemistry. They can copy the shape of a bomb, but they can't create the fuel inside it. That's our edge."
Atlas looked at the two leaders. "We have an alliance now. Whether you like it or not." "Khan," Atlas pointed. "You have the numbers. Your Gnolls are the infantry. You hold the ground." "Zhuge," Atlas pointed. "You have the logistics. Your wind moves us. Your magic shields us."
"And you?" Khan growled. "What do you do? You just blew up your only weapon."
Atlas looked at the sky. He realized something during the aerial maneuver. When Zhuge lifted him, he was safe. The Mimics couldn't reach him. The ground was death. The sky was safety.
"I provide the rain," Atlas said darkly. "Ground war is suicide against Mimics. We need Air Superiority."
He turned to the System interface. [Origin Points: 210] (Bonus from repelling the invasion).
"System. Access Memory: [Mad Max: Fury Road] mixed with [Da Vinci]." "Project: [The Gyrocopter]."
"I'm going to build a bomber fleet," Atlas declared. "And we are going to burn that Grey Tumor off the face of the galaxy."