MANIA

"This is…" Ivan looked around with wary eyes. For a second he and the vision of everyone else in the group had been blinded by the bright light of the teleportation tunnel. But once they regained their vision they were met by a scenery not too different from the one they were occupying before.

Another forest stood before them, one with trees of a different species than the ones in the Sea of Trees. To be specific they seemed more of a tropical variety or the trees you'd see on a postcard from the jungle.

Felis, Canis, Claire, Ari, Tio, Yue, and Shea, counting Ivan, meant that their current group was a team of eight. Ivan eyed each of his teammates before placing a palm on their shoulders, they stared at him with curiosity in their eyes before allowing him to do his thing.

Something was off. The moment he had gone through the teleportation gate he felt a sharp pain in his head, a pain that was unbearably similar to the ceremony conducted when obtaining ancient magic. As far as he knew that pain existed for two reasons, one: it was to inscribe the ancient magic and its details in the victim's brain, and two: it scanned the victim's memories to verify if they properly completed the labyrinth in a way that satisfied the Liberator's demands.

Seeing as how they just entered the dungeon the former was obviously impossible, which meant the intention of the 'attack' was for the latter. But why would the dungeon scan their memories now? If Ivan had to guess it meant that the dungeon intended on using their memories against them in some form.

So just to be safe he wanted to make sure everyone that was with him was indeed who they claim they are. Aside from the homunculi, the others of the group should have a structure similar to that of a human body. How he'd be able to verify this was through his water transmutation, it wasn't until he reached Yue that he came to a pause.

'She's more water than matter…' That was the conclusion he came to. Though masked, his thoughts went unnoticed, and as such he went down the line to check for any other irregularities.

'Shea and Ari too…' Three of the members of their group were impostors in disguise. Which was quite odd considering whether it be their mannerisms or memories that had them all, and of course, that's when Ivan realized what that memory scan had been before.

If the dungeon went so far as to create perfect copies then he wasn't going to risk finding out if their abilities had been copied as well. So as any responsible leader he went ahead and attacked the Yue as she was the strongest out of the three.

Ivan put a palm on 'Yue's' shoulder, feigning intimacy as he closed in on her face. The clone responded in kind by closing its eyes. He hesitated for a moment before steeling his resolve. 'Perhaps I'll have to apologize to the real Yue after this…'

The near-perfect replication of Yue's mannerisms caused him to hesitate momentarily, however it was his worry for the real Yue's safety that caused him to act. What he had placed onto 'Yue' was his right hand, meaning the arm adorned with his destruction tattoo was connected to her as well.

Ivan slid his hand from her shoulder to her cheek smoothly, ignoring the protests of the others who were annoyed by their intimate actions.

And then—

POP!

The last thing 'Yue' did before exploding was pucker her lips, expecting a kiss from her lover. Instead of brain and blood what had splattered on the scenery around them was an orange slime-like substance. The other girls bristled for a moment before noticing that fact as well.

"Quickly! Kill Shea and Ari, they're both fakes just like this Yue!" They executed 'Shea' without another moment of hesitation, they had only known her for a couple of days after all. Ari was another matter, she trembled and pleaded, dropping her weapon to the ground as a show of good faith.

"W-What's wrong with you guys?! I am me! How are we sure this 'Ivan' is the real one huh? I say we restrain hi—"

Her words were cut off as she exploded into a pile of goo. The girls looked at the source of the brutal death as they noticed Ivan had gotten close enough to the monster that it entered his range. Taking no chances he crushed the monster using a combination of space and gravity magic, it seemed that contrary to his expectations these copycat slimes did not match the physical strengths of the people they copied.

"Now just to be sure!" Having dealt with hundreds of slimes in his time spent in this world Ivan knew that it was standard procedure to eliminate any traces of the offender to not allow possible regeneration or assimilation.

"Tio, cinch it."

"Aye aye, master~!" Tio responded gleefully to the order, summoning an orb of fire to hurl at the quickly amassing slime. Again and again, she launched fire attacks that turned the orange slimes to ashes.

Ivan mused before praising their tenacity, fire magic while effective was still a very slow option. 'Then I suppose destruction it is.' He told Tio to step back as he activated his boundary once more, infusing the space with the destructive properties of his arm.

"...."

As if being eliminated by a black hole, every trace of the slime as well as the ground beneath it was deleted into nothingness.

"Master was that…" While Tio had an idea of what just occurred she decided it would be best to ask for an in-depth explanation both for her sake and for the others who were confused as well. Ivan hummed for a while before walking in a completely random direction, opening his mouth to explain what he believed was the situation.

"When we were transported here I felt the same invasion of my memories that occurs when ancient magic gets bestowed to us. At that point, I assumed our trial had already begun, lord and behold my transmutation picked up on some oddities of the physiology of Yue, Shea, and Ari."

Tio nodded before blinking her eyes again as if to reveal her confusion. "Thank you for clearing that up, master. However, I must ask where we are headed now? As far we know this forest could extend forever~"

"I have zero ideas ~ All I know is that eventually, I'll run into Yue and the others. The direction doesn't matter!" Claire sighed hearing those familiar words, but in the end, she had to admit what he said was the truth. Other than blasting things to draw both the attention of monsters and their comrades the best bet would be to simply press forward in hopes of running into them.

"Even if we blast everything there's no guarantee we're even in the same location." Canis muttered aloud her honest opinion. There was a chance that the others we teleported to a completely different scene, one where they wouldn't be able to hear Ivan's group no matter the ruckus.

"And by that point, we'd probably have already drawn the attraction of every monster here…" Felis knew better than to underestimate the sneakiness of the dungeon, especially after the particularly sly example that had happened beforehand.

"Hm, if it's Yue there shouldn't be a problem. In fact, I worry more for the other two than her. Especially Shea…" As for Ari she had been personally equipped and trained by himself so Ivan wasn't too worried about her other than her weakness against crowds of enemies.

"Which is why we must hurry! We'll find them eventually!" Ivan was a bit concerned by the fact that communication with the three had been cut off, which either meant they were incapacitated and unable to speak or they had lost the telepathy tools he imparted with them.

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After several hours of walking aimlessly and they finally discovered something new. A goblin village, no, it was more accurate to call it a camp. With ramshackle tents and makeshift defenses like giant stakes, the community was far too rudimentary to bestow it the title of village.

RUSTLE RUSTLE

However, what caught Ivan's attention more was the goblin that had just emerged from the bushes. Its face was full of warts, nose pointed and bent upward, disgusting green ears dripping with wax, and crud around its deep green eyes. And yet when staring at this monster Ivan felt none of the disgust or contempt he usually did.

It stared back at him with solemn eyes, none of the annoying groans or rambunctious movements as did the goblins huddled around the camp. And just as Claire was about to slit its throat with her wind blades, he stopped her.

"Leave it alone, it ain't like the others…" Even with his comment, he stared at it with wary eyes. He had hoped Claire's movements would at least send it into fear but none of that happened, instead, it continued to stare deep into his eyes without flinching a single bit.

'Wait, it couldn't be…' Ivan looked deep into its eyes, his brows furrowing as it lifted its right hand and pointed at its ring finger. It then held both of its hands to its face as if to form some protective barrier around it.

'Ring… finger… face… Ohhhhh~! So that's it' He smiled before making another mask appear from his storage, laughing before tossing it at the goblin.

"Ah-Ah-Ah, is this good?" A melodious voice resounded in the minds of everyone wearing a mask. The goblin snarled as if to laugh aloud as well, presumably facing Ivan again before turning its back to him.

"I-It can't be right…" Felis showed her disbelief clearly as the voice of her devil teacher had resounded in her head the moment the goblin adorned Ivan's brand of mask.

"...As expected of my husband. You recognized that it was me, fufufu~" Yue sounded gleeful as she spoke to the group from her mask. The goblin mimicked the actions that seemed to match up with her voice.

Whatever had happened when the group teleported here first, Yue had been turned into a monster.

"I see… so this must be the ancient magic that is kept in this dungeon!" Tio voiced out energetically. It didn't seem like a far-fetched guess anyways.

"Mm… when I opened my eyes I was in this body. All my gear was stolen, and my magic doesn't work in this body either…. Seeing that Shea or Ari aren't with you I assume the same fate must've met them?"

"Yep yep! When we woke up you Shea and Ari were a little weird in Father's eyes so he went BANG and blew you guys up~ You should've seen how surprised we were when instead of blood and guts you guys turned into orange slime!"

Ivan smiled wryly as he realized how barbaric his actions had seemed in the eyes of another person.

"Hmm, restoration magic isn't working. Then it's as we guessed, if we can't revert your body it simply means that instead of having your body altered you were transmigrated instead. Since you weren't left an option I doubt the Liberator had killed you just for this trial, odds are we'll meet your true body as we go through the trial. At that point, all it'd take is me transferring your sole back!"

Ivan's words brought some relief to Yue, who smiled under her mask before climbing atop Ivan's shoulders. She had already been a petite person so getting put into the body of a goblin less than half her original height only put her at a disadvantage.

Having cleared one mystery, the group moved on to look for the other two that likely found themselves in a new body, Deeper into the forest where the Liberator had crafted traps tailored for them.

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I'm unbelievably tired, got home from a funeral so I could get to work on this. It's so hot in my room as well, I just wanna dive into my sheets and get some rest for tomorrow's work as well. So with that let me cut this short please, for my sake that is.

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