Shapeshifter

The mud on the ground wriggled little by little. Crippled by devastating injuries and hindered by the still-raging Law energy, the enraged "mud" could not even maintain a stable shape. It could only crawl slowly across the ground while hurling meaningless curses, looking for all the world like a worm whose limbs had been torn away.

"This is... a Legendary Shapeshifter? It appears to have been magically modified, and it calls itself Archmage Kariuske's ultimate creation. It was probably an experimental subject left behind in the ruins of the magic tower."

Punk stared coldly at the writhing mud on the ground and could not help muttering his speculation about the origins of this "thing."

Clearly, the creature that had just disguised itself as Smile could not have entered from outside the magic tower. Otherwise, it could not have lain in ambush here, waiting for adventurers to arrive. Moreover, since it could imitate Smile's appearance and most of her personality, Punk guessed that this thing likely possessed some ability to access parts of the Morningstar Magic Tower's surveillance systems.

"So... that beam of white light was triggered by you as well? Quite impressive. You used Tide of Radiance to block everyone's senses, then secretly replaced the weakest, Smile. That both weakened our combat strength and made the following ambush more convenient... Judging from how smoothly this entire operation was executed, you must have been planning it for a very long time."

As he impassively laid out the mud's plan, an indescribable chill crept into Punk's flat tone.

After the earlier Legendary Magic attack, the Legendary Mage had already understood that this magically modified Shapeshifter possessed virtually no frontal defensive or combat ability. Its only strength lay in its near-perfect replication of soul auras. This disguise, which probably reached the level of