The spear cut through the air like a silver lightning bolt, its trajectory perfect.
The weapon impacted exactly where Ren had aimed, cleanly piercing the pulsating core of the abomination. The tip sank deep into the glowing mass with barely any resistance.
An ear-splitting shriek reverberated throughout the chamber, so high-pitched that Ren felt as if his head might explode. The creature writhed violently while the spear remained firmly embedded in its center.
Ren landed in the abandoned backpacks. Without losing a second, his hands found the bow and quiver of arrows he had left behind. His fingers closed around the weapon while he was already nocking an arrow in case a follow-up shot was needed.
But it was merely an excessive precaution.
"Should be enough," he murmured, his mushrooms pulsing as he assessed the damage caused. "The spear went directly through the core. Any moment now it should..."
He stopped abruptly, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. Something wasn't right. The creature continued writhing, yes, but its agony seemed... contained.
It wasn't the reaction of a being whose vital core had been destroyed. There was no catastrophic energy release, no cascading failure of its systems.
The abomination shook again, and the spear fell to the ground with an almost metallic clang, its bright tip stained with a purple fluid. But where the destroyed core should have been, where there should have been catastrophic damage...
"That can't be," Ren whispered, understanding hitting him like a sledgehammer. "The core..."
His eyes frantically scanned the creature's segmented body, and then he saw it. Or rather, he saw them.
Energy pulsations now appeared at multiple points on its body: small cores glowing beneath its plates, strategically distributed along its segments. Each one pulsed with the same sickly purple light, creating a hypnotic rhythm of illumination across the monster's form.
"It was an illusion," Ren realized, a drop of cold sweat running down his temple as he tensed an arrow in his bow. "The core was a fake."
The beast seemed to react to his discovery. The multiple cores pulsed, changing position with greater speed, as if mocking him. The purple light they emitted intensified in brightness, projecting distorted shadows on the chamber walls that seemed to dance with malevolent purpose.
"It has advanced mimetic capabilities," Ren quickly analyzed while backing away, keeping the arrow drawn. "It doesn't just absorb physical characteristics from its prey, but also their abilities. The illusion of the hole we fell through..."
His mind worked at full speed. What beast in the area could generate such convincing illusions? None of the Bronze-rank creatures it had absorbed possessed that capability at such a level of complexity.
"The illusion of a mimic insect projected onto a living mineral," he murmured. "So, something like a 'living illusion'?"
The abyssal beast, as if having understood that its trick had been discovered, emitted a metallic screech that seemed to tear the air itself.
Its segments began to contract and expand in a hypnotic rhythm, and before Ren's eyes, the creature began to change. The transformation was both fascinating and horrifying, like watching a nightmare reshape itself into something worse.
The tentacles extended again, now moving with more erratic and unpredictable patterns. Some merged together to form thicker appendages while others split into finer, whip-like structures that cracked the air with each movement.
The plates covering its body reorganized, some fusing while others divided. The tentacles transformed into more solid structures, resembling barbed harpoons more than the absorptive appendages they had been moments before. The head, that nightmare of combined features, contracted upon itself before expanding into a new configuration even more terrifying.
"It's adapting," Ren realized with horror. "It's evolving in response to the encounter."
The multiple cores were now visible to the naked eye, pulsing beneath transparent plates that had previously been opaque. They shifted position constantly, never remaining in the same place for more than a second, making targeting any single one nearly impossible.
Ren released an arrow tipped with a greater worm's tooth, not a lesser worm's tooth like his first planned arrows.
The teeth of the greater worm were capable of penetrating one rank higher, in this case Silver. The projectile whistled through the air and embedded directly into one of the visible cores, but not very deep. The creature shuddered, the arrow fell away, and the wound began to close almost immediately, purple light knitting the damaged tissue together.
"Accelerated regeneration," Ren prepared another arrow, his mind desperately evaluating strategies. "I need to attack all the possible cores, I have no way to damage it quickly enough to prevent regeneration."
The hydra roared within him, eager to face this abomination with Ren at full strength. But Ren knew that, even with his beast enhanced by the mushroom's light and the ring, the power difference was too great. A direct confrontation would be suicide.
The abomination seemed to perceive his dilemma. The segments of its body finished compacting, conferring greater power to its movements.
The creature launched forward with terrifying speed, its head converted into a lethal projectile. Ren barely had time to throw himself to the side, avoiding direct impact by millimeters. The floor where he had been standing shattered, fragments of corrupted living mineral and earth flying in all directions.
"Too close," he gasped, rolling to stand again, his muscles protesting the sudden movement.
The beast gave him no time to recover. With a fluid movement, it retracted its spear-head and charged again. This time, Ren jumped to the other side, feeling the displacement of air brush his face as the head passed beside him.
The impact against the chamber wall was devastating. The rock cracked, fragments of stone and crystal falling like rain onto the floor.
Ren dodged two more attacks, each more precise than the last. The creature was learning, calculating his movements, gradually reducing his maneuvering space. With each charge, more sections of the chamber were destroyed.
Jumping to avoid a new attack, Ren noticed something strange. When crystal fragments fell from the walls and ceiling, some of the multiple cores he had seen seemed to flicker, as if their image suffered interference.
"The crystals," he murmured to himself, an idea forming in his mind while dodging another devastating charge. His eyes darted around the chamber, noting how the light played across the crystalline surfaces embedded in the walls.
As he landed after the jump, one of the creature's tentacles reached him, grazing his leg.
The effect was immediate and painful: an unnatural cold that penetrated to the bone, draining his vital energy.
Ren cut the tentacle with his claws, but the damage was done. His leg felt numb, more light energy reconfiguring to heal it, diverting precious resources from his combat capabilities.
However, the observation had been worth the price. Each time a crystal fragment fell from the chamber's structure, the illusions flickered momentarily, revealing inconsistencies in what should have been solid form.
"The crystals are amplifying and reflecting the illusory capability," Ren understood while evading another attack by centimeters. "They're part of the system."
If he could break the illusion, perhaps he could find the true core.