'The only thing that I don't understand is how they smuggled the weapons in and out of the office. Dimensional amulets don't work in the City Hall and most of the artifacts are as big as my arm.'
The answer came when the body of the woman split in two like a watermelon, revealing a short staff in place of her spine, an amulet where her heart was supposed to be, and a chainmail floating in the middle of her chest.
The creature had no internal organs or bones. Under the skin, there was what looked like a bright blue gooey substance where the missing artifact had been stored. The gelatinous substance was dense enough to keep everything in place without making the chainmail clink.
The Doppelganger didn't show any sign of discomfort as it took the artifacts out of its body and cleaned them from the residual goo with darkness magic.
'That's amazing/disgusting!' Manohar and Phloria respectively thought. 'An intelligent creature capable of using magic who seems to be immune to pain.'
Only after the Doppelganger opened the safe using the Countess' code, proving her involvement in the theft, and stored the weapons back into the armory did the two mages come out of their hiding spot.
Until that moment, there had been no proof that she had helped the Marquis since the previously stolen artifacts had already been returned and the ones still missing had been taken out by using the Marquis' code.
Now, however, Jirni would be able to arrest them both and there was no way to justify how the shapeshifter knew their personal codes without their help. On top of that, they had to wait for the creature to seal the vault shut or it would have had the entire Kingdom's arsenal at its disposal.
"You're under experiment, I mean, under arrest!" Manohar said as a part of the library lined against the wall burst in a shower of sparks, revealing to be a hard-light construct behind which he and Phloria lay in ambush.
The room had no place where two adults could hide so the Mad Professor had just made the library a bit longer from either side, hoping that between the darkness in the room and the urgency of the mission the creature wouldn't notice the discrepancy.
A hard-light cube as hard as stone trapped the Doppelganger, leaving it no way out.
"Let's inform Mom, I mean, your mother that we are done and that they can-"
The creature showed no sign of fear or panic. It simply punched the construct, making a small crack appear on the surface of the cube.
"Your effort is as fascinating as it is pointless." Manohar waved his hand, sending a strand of mana that repaired the damage. "It seems that our specimen is way much heavier than it looks, Beanpole."
"I have a real name!" Phloria yelled while never stopping weaving spells with her mind. "Don't lower your guard and think. How can a woman that size have such strength?"
Unlike the Professor, she knew that a shapeshifter's size might be misleading. If it knew how to use gravity fusion, the creature could weigh several tons and no one would notice until it was too late.
"Easy. Enhanced mass." Manohar replied with a smug expression. "Yet you are underestimating me and overestimating our opponent. With that level of strength, I can fix any damage it makes to moment a-"
"Good to know." The creature replied, making the Mad Professor choke on his words.
Not just because he had been expecting a dumb creature born only to follow orders like Jirni had described whereas the Doppelganger sounded sarcastic and confident. But also because new sets of arms kept popping from its back, joining the onslaught.
The creature hit the cube from every direction, covering its surface with a web of cracks that destabilized the construct's integrity too quickly for Manohar to close them.
The cube shattered but the Mad Professor lay another construct in front of the door and windows, to keep the creature from escaping.
Yet the Doppelganger didn't mind the new setback, it just charged forward while activating its bloodline ability, Chimeric Body.
The Doppelganger grew tall enough to graze the ceiling with its snake-like head while its body was covered in Dragon scales and the tail of a Scorpicore came out of the small of its back.
It had now four arms as long and muscular as those of a Vanara, a gorilla type Emperor Beast, and each one of its twenty fingers ended with the one-meter (3.3 feet) long claws typical of a Rezar.
"This is unexpected." Manohar said as the creature spat out acid from its mouth, the tail' sting lunged at him, and the four arms blocked every conceivable escape route.
Due to the elemental blocking arrays, the Mad Professor couldn't fly nor Blink to safety, leaving him at the mercy of his opponent.
He activated many of the spells engraved on his clothes at once, using a tier three Light Mastery spell to conjure a heat ray that vaporized the acid and entered the open mouth of the beast, burning it from the inside.
His tier five Light Mastery spell, Can't Touch This, conjured six hands of light. The first four stopped the creature's arms, another intercepted the tail, and the last struck at the abdomen of the Chimaera so hard that its body deformed on impact.
Or so Manohar thought until he realized that the creature had simply turned its density to that of a liquid to spread and disperse the strength of the attack. The holes in the snake-like head and neck closed without leaving any trace of damage while the trapped limbs simply extended forward to resume their attack, ignoring their restrictions.
Luckily for Manohar, Phloria didn't miss the openings that the Doppelganger's countermeasures had created. After extending themselves, the limbs had become thinner and had spaced the layers of Dragon scales enough for Phloria's estoc to reach the flesh underneath.
She blocked the tail with Reaver while a hail of frozen shards cut the Vanara arms to shreds and hit the still gelatinous main body of the creature, making it explode like a water balloon.
"Not bad." Manohar said. "But that's not enough to win this battle. If we allow it to reform in such an enclosed space, we'll be at too much a disadvantage. We need-"
"Ice and Darkness!" Phloria cut him short.
She conjured a snowstorm to make the liquid that comprised the Doppelganger's body sluggish and a hail of darkness bullets to destroy it for good. Phloria and Manohar couldn't use fire without hurting each other.
On top of that, with air and earth magic sealed there was only so much they could do.
"Exactly! You would have made a good healer." Manohar unleashed a barrage of heat rays to check whether the creature suffered cold or heat more.
Much to his surprise, the Doppelganger's body would make bubbles but not burn. Also, unlike cold, heat didn't slow down either its movements or its recovery.
"I should have listened to my own advice." He grumbled while snapping his fingers.
The heat rays turned into bullets of darkness that joined Phloria's onslaught and turned most of the fragments of the Doppelganger into dust.
