I stood in the middle of a massive field. The Asphons had planted it with some sort of grain that was a staple of their food, similar to how wheat was back on Earth. Similar to wheat, this grain also grew on a long stalk that let it sway in the breeze, but that’s where the similarities ended. While wheat had a few seeds at its very tip, this grain had its seeds evenly spread along the entirety of its three-meter tall stalk. The stalk itself was an odd, iridescent purple and about as thick as a thumb, while the seeds were about the size of an eyeball with a light green coloration. Apparently, they’d turn red eventually, signifying that they were ready to be harvested.

  While mildly interesting, I wasn’t here because I had taken an interest in farming. About half an hour earlier I’d accepted another village quest.

  New Quest!

  A massive swarm of Locusts is headed towards the village. If nothing is done, the swarm will consume everything in its path, razing the fields clean.

  Goals:

  - Either divert or destroy the swarm of Locusts.

  - No more than 20% of damage caused to the fields.

  Rewards:

  - 2 Level ups

  - 5 Mutation points

  - 10 Attribute points

  - 2 Skill points

  The rewards for the quest were rather generic, but I wouldn’t be saying no to mutation points. It was also the first time I’d seen skill points as a possible reward. I was used to only getting those from leveling up. I suspected that the reward felt a bit low because the quest was of a lower difficulty. And truly, dealing with a swarm of locusts wasn’t exactly a problem for me. Some more physical monsters might struggle with it, but I felt like that was me being ignorant of what those could achieve. As for mages, well, there were tons of ways to deal with the problem.

  An earth mage could probably completely encase the fields so that the locusts couldn’t get to them. Air mages could wall off the entire area, while fire mages only needed a few well-placed fire spells to light up the entire swarm. As for me, I decided to go with the pesticide option, which is to say, poison mist.

  Of course, this wasn’t exactly an ideal solution, since I’d be putting the Asphons in danger. And, after a short test I found out that due to my crystalized poison passive, the mist even managed to poison and kill the grain. So, for the first time, I’d asked for the assistance of the Asphons. They were quite limited in how they could assist me directly, meaning they couldn’t help me exterminate the locusts. But, since they had a few skilled air mages, I’d asked them to protect the village and the fields by making sure the poison mist would be blown away before it could do any damage to something it wasn’t meant to.

  Of course, I’d considered that I could go out to meet the swarm, but as it turned out, several smaller swarms were converging on the village. As such it had been deemed easier to face them here. They traveled fast and would be here any minute. Everybody was at their designated location and ready to react as soon as the first locust came into sight.

  A few more minutes of waiting later I could hear a low humming that grew in intensity, heralding the literal hundreds of thousands of locusts surrounding the village. Taking that as my cue, I teleported high above the village and spread my wings. Soon after, I could see the air mages cast their spells, wrapping the village in a protective dome of whipping winds. Happy to see that everything was going according to plan, I started to charge up the poison mist spell. Some guesstimating led me to believe that I would need to charge it with about twenty thousand mana to cover the entire village.

  As I was nearing that magical number the swarm suddenly roiled into view. Tightly packed masses of black came into view and approached with surprising speed, the archive quickly revealing that each of the swarms was a tier six monster called Devouring Locust Swarm. The way the seemingly united masses shifted and moved reminded me of videos I’d seen in the past of big flocks of birds, dialed up to eleven. When I judged that I needed to release my spell or risk the swarms slamming into the shields of wind, I had packed 22k mana into it and the colorless gas exploded outwards, quickly covering the entirety of the village.

  As soon as individual locusts made contact with the mist they dropped out of the air, unmoving, causing me to question what was going on. A quick glide to where the locusts were dropping out of the sky like literal flies quickly revealed why they were dying so fast.

  All of them were tier-zero!

  This simple fact quickly made me realize just why this quest was considered “easy” by the system. Even a more physical traveler could dispatch a mass of tier-zero monsters with laughable ease. There was no issue with dispatching the monsters themselves, making the challenge of the quest being able to take them out quickly before they could do too much damage. It was a bit odd that a collection of tier-zero monsters somehow made up a tier-six monster, but I decided not to think about it too much.

  The locusts continued to throw themselves at my gas for about ten minutes, necessitating a second cast of poison mist since the air mages below contributed to the mist dispersing faster than usual. Still, they mindlessly flew to their deaths, forming what could be mistaken for a wall around the entire village, their bodies stacked up to form large piles. Soon after the last locust fell, I received the notification that I’d completed the quest.

  I put the ten attribute points into intelligence for once, making it so that both wisdom and intelligence were now above one thousand. I quickly checked my DP, but sadly they only went up by six. While tier-zero monsters tended to not give any DP, I was hoping that things would be different for some reason. Still, at this point, I’d saved up over 120k worth of DP, which was more than enough to buy the skill levels I planned to buy before descending to the next layer. I’d even get to go on a bit of a shopping spree once the shop upgraded.

  From my place in the sky, I eyed the literal wall of locusts, debating whether or not to eat them. Since I’d only gotten six DP, I seriously doubted that I’d get thousands of attribute points from eating them. These thoughts of laziness were quickly banished. The village would need help cleaning them up either way and who knows, maybe I’d get something for eating this many monsters in a short amount of time?

  I quickly landed and offered to clean up the locusts, which the village chief more than happily accepted. Time to go shovel a bunch of junk food down the gullet!

  I stared at the quest notification cursing the system to high heavens. This had to be the most fucked up quest I’d received yet. I had just accepted the quest, and there were already negative consequences. I looked at the other occupants of the room, which as per usual consisted of Nimma’s team and the village chief, trying to think of a way to break the bad news to them.

  New Quest!

  Three Doppelgangers (T8) have invaded the village, they will each kill one of the residents when night falls. They have already assumed the identities of three villagers by killing them. It is up to you to find and stop them before too many die.

  Goals:

  - Find and destroy the three Doppelgangers.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  - You will automatically lose the quest after five days have passed and a single Doppelganger still lives.

  Rewards:

  - 2 Level ups

  - Spell: Detect Disguise (B)

  - 1 mutation point for every day left on the timer upon completion.

  The reward felt like salt in the wound, since I could really, really use it right about now. The worst part was that we couldn’t just call somebody over who knew the spell. Since the goal of the quest was to find and kill the three monsters, having an asphon find them for me would definitely count as them rendering too much help.

  “Okay, first off, I have some bad news…” I quickly explained what was going on and everybody reacted just about the same way as I did. The village had just lost three of its people and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

  “Do you have any reliable methods to figure out who the doppelgangers are?” The village chief asked me, visibly distressed.

  “I’m not sure about the reliable bit,” I said, scrolling through the extensive list of skills and mutations I had. “There’s certainly some that I could see working, but I won’t know until I actually try. Best case scenario the archive of asphon will label them as Doppelgangers, but I have the odd feeling that it’s not going to be that easy…”

  “For now, I’ll just have to take a look at everybody and see if anything works out, but it’s going to be difficult to make sure that I get a good look at every single asphon in the village…”

  “I should be able to gather everyone in one place, I am the village chief, after all,” the chief suggested. “I simply ask that you do your best to find them as quickly as possible, farming is intensive work, and the more time we miss due to this… situation, the more we’ll fall behind schedule.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, unable to offer more concrete reassurance. “How many people live here anyway?”

  “Four hundred and eighty-six,” the reply came almost immediately. “Plus, there are some guards that come from the city for their shift.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to instate a lockdown as well,” Nimma joined the conversation. “While I think it’s unlikely that the Doppelgangers would leave the village, we should make sure that they can’t.”

  “You think we could use that to smoke them out?” I asked, the thought coming to me almost as a surprise. “Make everyone leave the village and see if the system prevents them from leaving?”

  “Maybe?” Nimma said, thinking about it seriously. “Wouldn’t hurt to try. For now, I think we can assume that all of us in this room are the only ones who are safe to exclude from suspicion. You three start patrolling the village outskirts and send back any patrol you meet on the way. I’ll stay with Gary.”

  Nimma gave out a few commands to the rest of her team, while I was going over my abilities over and over again trying to figure out what could help me, but sadly, my detection abilities were quite lacking. Worst case scenario I could spend some mutation points to get a mutation that could help me, although that would take time and waste points. And even then, I wasn’t certain a low-tier sensory mutation would help me sniff out tier-eight monsters actively trying to disguise themselves.

  After Redax, Andrius, and Orbos left the room, Nimma and the chief started discussing how they would go about gathering the entire village population in one spot and where the best place to do so would be. I wasn’t terribly interested in what sounded like a logistics nightmare and instead took the opportunity to find out more about Doppelgangers. As I’d been taught back in Lophan, I used the archive of asphon to look up the information on Doppelgangers, specifically on the eighth-tier, since there appeared to be several versions of different tiers.

  Doppelganger (T8)

  A rare offshoot of the slime evolution path, not to be confused with the mimic slime. While in their slime form, they do not like to move. They are usually ambush predators, waiting for their opportunity instead of actually searching out a victim. Special mutations allow them to disintegrate the body of their victim completely, as well as absorb all of their memories. Once they transform, they become a perfect copy.

  The usual blurb of text roughly describing the monster didn’t really help me all that much. The only thing it told me was that it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to tell them apart from their victims. Questioning the people would be useless. Fortunately, I could also query the archive for more information, such as usual skills, mutations, strengths, and weaknesses.

  Their most glaring weakness was that they could be dispatched rather easily if spotted before a successful ambush. They were slow and their main way of disabling their victims was a powerful paralyzing skill that allowed them to dissolve their prey while it was still alive. A few ranged attacks could take care of them easily. The problems started once they took somebody's place. The most reliable way to smoke them out were high-tier detection spells, which I unfortunately didn’t have access to. They could hold their transformation for five to seven days, which would explain why the quest failed after five.

  There were odd experiments one could do, but they were mostly unverified or not guaranteed to work since two different doppelgangers would have different skills and mutations from each other.

  “Gary? Hey, Gary!”

  “Huh?” I looked up from the system screen in front of me to see the chief and Nimma stare me down. “Apologies, I was looking up the Doppelgangers in the archive. Did you figure out how to gather everyone?”

  “We did, and we’re ready to start,” Nimma nodded, standing up from her chair. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to do anything until everybody is confirmed to be present.”

  “Sounds like my kind of plan,” I hopped off my chair and started following Nimma, I couldn’t go wrong that way.

  Nimma and the village chief had somehow managed to get the entire population of the village out on a road between two of their fields. This village was cultivating underground vegetables, so I wasn’t sure what they were growing, but the parts sticking out of the ground were weirdly colorful. Ignoring the fields for a second, it was quite the sight seeing over four hundred asphons neatly lined up on a road.

  They hadn’t been told exactly what was going on to avoid needless accusations and paranoia. The people were calm for now, but there was visible unrest as they could obviously tell something was going on. Hopefully, this would be over fast and we could all go back to our regular lives, otherwise, this whole thing might turn ugly.

  After a final count, the chief confirmed that everybody was present and it was finally my time to shine. Or crash and burn. For now, I decided on the simplest method, which was taking a quick look at everyone with the archive. I slowly made my way down the long line, hoping against all hope that it would be that easy. Yet, with every asphon I passed, I began to lose hope. Sure, the archive was an EX-ranked skill, but it wasn’t exactly used to sniff out monsters actively trying to disguise themselves.

  I was about three-fourths down the line when I got an unexpected hit. Not from the archive, but from my passive: Hidden Radar. It was a skill that I mostly forgot about since I couldn’t influence it in any way and it hadn’t triggered at all since I got it. But now, accompanied by a system message, there was an asphon with a neat yellow outline, clearly labeled as a Doppelganger.

  I tried to not stare at them too much, giving Nimma a predetermined signal with one of my tentacles. She jotted down something after a quick discussion with the chief and I continued on my merry way down the line. Not willing to let the opportunity pass entirely I tested out a few things. First, I tried to see if my void feelers could tell the monster apart from the asphons around it. Sadly, the doppelganger looked the same as the others around it, which is to say, they were holes in the void I could perceive.

  Second, I used a skill that I practically hadn’t used since I’d gotten it after evolving into a royal voidling: Void Pressure. It was supposedly a signature skill of royal voidlings and allowed me to exert a fraction of the presence of the void, whatever that meant. The little experimenting I did with it proved it to be largely useless, which was surprising given that it was S-ranked. It didn’t hold all that much effect when I used it near monsters, barely slowing them down a tad. The asphon volunteers I tested it on, aka Nimma’s team, got affected a lot more, experiencing slight fear and getting quite paranoid.

  My best guess was that more intelligent beings were affected more and that this ability would grow stronger with me. After all, I was barely a fledgling royal, fresh off the press.

  Much to my relief, the effect was almost immediate. Most of the Asphons within range of the ability, which was a good twenty-meter radius, got quite anxious. Lots of swishing tails, cramped-looking stances, heads on a swivel to look for what was causing the discomfort, and even a few almost daring to break the line. Yet, there the Doppelganger stood, ramrod straight, almost confused about what had gotten into the people around it.

  Game over, Doppelgangers!

  I eagerly told Nimma about my discovery and both her and the chief breathed a sigh of relief. Still, in order to not alert the other two monsters I leisurely made my way to the end of the line. Luckily the skill didn’t have a cooldown or any limit on its usage so I could use it as much as I wanted. Well, it was still practically useless in every other situation, but this came in handy now.

  Once again I made my way down the line, keeping up the void pressure the entire time. I felt a bit bad for the asphons since this was almost a light form of torture, but since I was going at a good pace, nobody had to be scared for more than a minute. Not a bad price to pay to smoke out the hidden assassins in their midst, if you ask me. I breathed a sigh of relief once I’d successfully identified the third doppelganger but made my way down the line anyway in case there was some sort of fluke. Wouldn’t want to accuse and kill an innocent asphon, after all.

  A few minutes later we took the “Asphons” in question behind the shed, if you know what I mean. They tried to play us for fools up to the very last moment, but they were quite easily dispatched by some well-placed spells. According to the chief, all three of them were regular farmhands and while he offered to inform their families by himself, I felt it prudent that I would at least join him, even if I wasn’t looking forward to doing it.

  And just like that, I got a new spell, five more mutation points, and a notification that I’d completed a bonus objective. Next up: city-tier quests!