Swarming Sovereignty

When Lia reoriented herself from the transfer, she found herself lying in her bed in her room. The…room she had back at her parent’s house, when she wasn’t at the academy.

 

…Amelia had been upgraded to “obscenely powerful”? When Lia had a proper, humanoid, mouth she’d have to ask what exactly Amelia’s Job was, because there was no way it was “Witch” like she claimed.

Still, as she looked around, she found her room was…way too perfectly recreated. Everything was accurate down to the smallest detail; the claw marks in her bedframe that she had made in her sleep were there, and a quick check revealed her diary was still under the loose floorboard, and it even had the correct contents in it.

It was exactly as it had been the last time Lia had seen it, and that meant it must have been recreated from her memories; there was no way her family would have left it untouched. If nothing else, they would have cleaned up the clutter she had left on the floor before leaving for the academy.

More importantly, there was a note pinned to the door, at eye level for her rat body. First task! It read. You need to pass yourself off as a person well enough to get out of the house! I’ve prepared a dummy that resembles your old body and can be piloted via earth magic, just tap the paper and you’ll be ready to go!

I’ve got some…fake people programmed to act like your family, all you have to do is get out of the house and then you should have the Title!

That was…unsettling, but Lia tapped the paper anyway, and watched in amazement as an incredibly lifelike replica of her old body appeared to her side. She was…well, just like Lia had remembered herself; she was short and built rather averagely, not exactly thin, not exactly fat, but most definitely not in shape. The replica even had some of the pudge that she had been starting to put on towards the end of her time at the academy.

She was dressed in a jacket and pants, a cap on her head. Poking out from the cap were her fox ears, as well as long, auburn hair that had been tied into a ponytail. Her tail was hidden in her pants, like she had preferred to keep it; it had been a constant source of embarrassment for her.

For foxkin, the number and bushiness of theirs tails directly related to their magic power, and her single tail was rather scruffy and lackluster, no matter what she tried to do with it. She…couldn’t help but wonder what it would look like if she had the magic power she had now. She was proficient in multiple types of magic, and her Magic and Magic Defense were tied for her best stat, along with her Mental Fortitude.

Surely, she would have a tail worth showing off…right? But…that was just wishful thinking. Right now, she only had the knotted rat’s tail, and it wasn’t very pleasant to look at. So, heaving an internal sigh, Lia began poking at the replica with her magic, trying to figure out how to move it.

And, after a few minutes, she was able to get it moving. It was cumbersome and difficult, but she only needed to keep it going for the minute or so it would take to get outside. She used Spiderclimb to scramble up the replica and tuck herself inside of the jacket, then had it push down on the handle, open the door and walk out.

She maneuvered it down the hall and towards the entryway, but was stopped by her father’s voice coming from the main room. It…sounded exactly like him, and looked like him too, but there was…something missing. She couldn’t tell what exactly was wrong, but the fake was…dull, almost lifeless. It was knitting, like her father always did, but the movements were…inhuman, like how a golem would move.

“Lia, dear, where are you going?” It asked. “It’s your break! Come spend some time with your family!”

She shook the replica’s head and sped up, reaching the door as she heard her fake father stand up from its knitting. Not wasting any more time, she threw open the door, then slammed it behind her, heart pounding in her chest.

 

…What did the name of that Title have to do with anything? It was strange, but the system was known to give names that didn’t always make sense, so she just ignored it and turned her attention to the streets.

And, true to Amelia’s word, they were filled with foxes. They seemed…normal enough, but there were a lot of them. Thinking back, she had received a Title for killing enough rats in a short period of time, so she would…probably get a similar one if she slaughtered enough of these foxes.

It was a little distasteful, doing this when it wasn’t strictly necessary for survival, but…in the end they were dungeon monsters, and dungeon monsters were always hostile to people. She wriggled her way out of the jacket, and made a beeline for the nearest fox.

It noticed her when she was about halfway to it, and it was more than happy to rush towards her, teeth bared. In response, Lia hit it with a spell that overloaded its brain with sensation, driving in the pain with a Mindspike just in case it was beefier than she expected. And, to her surprise, the Mindspike alone killed the fox, leaving her running towards a corpse.

She dismissed the windows she got on its death, and turned to her next target. She kept on this pace for quite some time, barely pausing between her kills until, eventually, she got another Title.

 

That was the fox related Title down. It was nearly identical to the one she had obtained for killing a lot of rats. Now she just needed to convert a lot of them, if her evolution into a rat queen was any indication.

But before she did that, she wanted a safe place to store them in, so they didn’t get attacked while they were vulnerable. And there was no better place to do that than her own house. It totally wasn’t because she was uncomfortable with the idea of a fake wearing her father’s face and wanted to kill it as soon as possible.

She walked back through the streets, somewhat surprised at just how many foxes she had killed. It didn’t feel like it had been that many, but…she had just sort of been wandering from fox to fox and there really hadn’t been a break in them, so…she must have just lost track of time.

It took her a few minutes to walk back to her house, where the replica was still waiting. She used it to open the door, and waltzed right back in, leaving the replica on the front steps.

“Lia, are you back already?” The fake father asked. “We need to have a talk about your behavior.”

Yeah, no. Lia thought. She tried to hit the fake with mind magic, but found that the spell fizzled and slid off of…whatever the fake was. It was probably a golem of some sort; Lia couldn’t think of anything else that was immune to mind magic, not off of the top of her head.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem to notice her attack, either. So, she tried again, this time using a large chunk of her Mana to encase it in an earthen shell before beginning to constrict. She could feel it push back on her spell, attempting to thrash and break free of the spell. Every time it came close to breaking, however, Lia poured a little bit more Mana into the spell, reinforcing it.

It was a game of chicken; if her Mana ran out before she killed the thing, she’d be put into a rather disadvantageous position. But, fortunately, as her reserves got lower, her Mana regeneration increased, allowing her to squeeze out a few more precious seconds as the faker’s struggles grew ever weaker.

But it wasn’t enough. Her Mana ran dry, and the earth surrounding the fake crumbled. Perhaps if she hadn’t spent a lot of time using spells to kill foxes, she would have had been able to finish the job, but that wasn’t the case, and she was now staring down a rather incensed fake father.

To her surprise, it ignored her completely, and dashed for the front door. It was moving unsteadily, like it wasn’t used to walking, but it passed her by and grabbed the replica on the steps. “Lia, are you alright?! Speak to me! Lia!”

Lia felt a twinge of guilt as she snuck up on the faker, climbing up the wall of her house before dropping down on it, using Power Attack to deliver a huge blow to the back of its neck. It lurched, and then stopped moving completely, crumpling as it died.

She didn’t level up from that, but she wasn’t terribly surprised. She was nearly level thirty after killing all of those bees, so her next level was going to take a bit of time. Still…fake or not, she felt bad after –

 

Well, that was nice, but she still felt bad about killing a replica of her dad. She thought it would be fine because it was just a fake, but…her dad had been her rock, after her mother died, and that it appeared that she couldn’t really handle fighting against something that looked like him. She was lucky that there weren’t replicas of her siblings, too, because that would have been…too much.

They would be first on her conversion list, she decided. Once she was out into the world and could keep a humanoid form, she’d figure out some way to extract them and get them into the swarm. She didn’t want to even have to think about trying to fight against the real deals.

But right now, she was in a dungeon, and she was tired. She hadn’t slept in a long time, and she had exerted herself more than she had thought wandering the streets and then killing the fake. So, she used what little Mana she had regained to have her replica walk inside and shut the door, then headed back to her room. The door was still open from when she had left, so she walked in, climbed up her bed, nestled herself onto one of her pillows, and nodded off to sleep.

---

Lia stretched as she woke up, letting out a small yawn. To her surprise, she was greeted by a couple of windows.

 

Handy, that. Wouldn’t directly help her in combat, but if she got injured and didn’t level up soon after, this would really help speed her recovery. But the time for rest was over; she needed to get to converting foxes. She wanted to spend as little time as possible in this dungeon so she could get back to her swarm.

She wasn’t worried that they would be in trouble without her, Rose was sure to be able to take care of that, but she was just…lonely. Even more so after running into the fake version of her father.

She got up and left her room, used the replica of herself to open the front door, and stepped out onto the street. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, indicating that she had been napping for somewhere in the realm of four to six hours, provided the false sun the dungeon used moved like the real sun.

The streets were empty, devoid even of corpses, including that of her fake father, much to Lia’s relief. She stepped out and began to wander down the street, looking for any more prey. Seeing none immediately visible, she began heading towards the bakery she used to buy bread from every morning; Amelia likely had hidden one of the challenge things in there, and it was as good a direction as any to look for more foxes.

She encountered two on her way, and they were easily immobilized and covered in modeling wax. She briefly considered hauling them back to her house before deciding that it was more trouble than it was worth when she was this far away from it. She’d just have them stay there once they had finished converting.

There wasn’t anything particularly exciting in their conversion options, so she just got them converting into foot soldiers and continued walking. When she reached the bakery, she found a small bag with a note attached sitting out front.

Here’s another challenge! It read. This one’s pretty simple! Just use the coin in here to buy something and you’ll be good! The shopkeeper won’t attack you, so don’t worry about that, either!

Lia bit off the cord that was keeping the bag closed, and, sure enough, a single silver coin was inside. She paused for a moment before grabbing it in her teeth and making her way towards the shop’s entrance, where a her-sized flap had been installed to allow her access.

She went through the flap, causing a small bell to ring. “Be right with ya!” A gruff voice said. After a moment, the owner came out from the back of the store. “Here for bread again?” He asked, barely giving her a second glance. “Just leave the coin on the ground and I’ll go get some from the back.”

Lia dropped the coin and backed up, and the shopkeeper bent down below the counter and pulled out a miniature loaf of bread before coming out front and dropping it in front of her. “Pleasure doing business with you as always. Feel free to eat it here, if you would like.” He said, picking up her coin before heading back to the back of the store.

As Lia gnawed on the bread, she looked over the windows she had received.

 

That had been…way too easy. The other Title had been easy too, now that she thought about it. If this kept up…she would be limited by experience rather than requirements, which was a nice change of pace.

So, she finished her bread and set out from the shop, ready to find the next place of interest and get that much closer to being humanoid once again.