As Jordie went about the task of comforting baby Minos, the System decided to pipe up.
[Congratulations, the host has unlocked the skill: "Giant's Strength" due to increasing affinity with Minos. Please refer to the skill page at your earliest convenience.]
'I un-wait...did I unlock it myself or did you do it for me?'
[...]
'Oh now you're being all mysterious and mystical? How convenient...speaking of convenience...'
While Jordie comforted Minos,bouncing him up and down while gently patting his back, he suddenly noticed that out of the corner of his eye a strange snake-like thing attempting to slither away.
At this point, Minos was closing to falling asleep and Jordie didn't want to disturb him by heavily stomping on the mimic's tail out of the blue.
'Unless...'
Jordie continued to bounce baby Minos within his arms, slowly walking closer and closer to the slithering mimic. Once he got close enough, Jordie suddenly hopped up in rhythm with his bounces of baby Minos and landed with a thump on the mimic's tail.
"Hop and...stomp!"
"Eep!"
"That thing is still alive?!," Marianne exclaimed in alarm.
The silver rattle mimic began to rapidly flail about in an attempt to free it's tail from Jordie's boot heel. Unsurprisingly it wasn't able to due to Jordie's recently unlocked skill and having been shaken like a rattle earlier.
"What in the name of the gods is that thing?"
"I think it's a mimic, but no mimic I've seen before...," George commented while scratching his chin.
As the mimic kept flailing about, Jordie used [Analyze] on it to figure out this thing's deal.
_________________________________________________
Classification: Aberration
Species: Mimic
Subspecies: Precious Metal Mimic - Silver
Level: 6
Grade: C
Attribute: Earth
Description: Mimics are type of shape-shifting monster that disguise them as various types of mundane and inanimate objects as a mean of luring prey. The shape and materials they can mimic are highly dependent on their environment, because they need to have seen an object before in order to mimic and consume materials in order to get the feel right. Precious Metal Mimics however can circumvent that second requirement, but are also stuck as being able to mimic objects made of the precious metal that they're now made of.
_________________________________________________
George and Marianne stared at the flailing mimic, curious as to what Jordie was planning to do now that he had basically captured it.
"So what are you going to do with it?," Marianne asked first, "It looked pretty intimidating before, but now..."
"I say sell it," George commented, "This things looks to be made of silver and I know rich types and collectors love weird stuff like this. If it's too much of a hassle to bring it back alive, you could just kill it and sell the corpse. You'd get less, but it's also less likely to try and kill us or escape."
At George's rather cold words, the mimic began to flail even harder.
'Hey System, got any means to carry around captured monsters?'
When Jordie was given the brain dump treatment, he learned that this world didn't have a means of easily transporting captured wild monsters.
Contracted monsters could be handled via habitat disks due to some weird magical interaction between the tamer, the monster and the item, but that didn't apply to wild monsters. Jordie wasn't sure about the semantics, but he remembered it had something to do with "aura interference causing a repelling effect." There were apparently some magical treasures that could store any wild monsters, but they were very few of them in market circulation.
'Wait a minute...'
Using his mind, Jordie accessed the Systems' store page and began to look up cages. Weirdly enough, the System did in-fact sell cages and for a weirdly large and specific types of creatures.
'A...a succubus what now?'
[Host does not need to worry about it, succubi are only found in the Infernal Realms or in the employ of unsavory individuals.]
'Of course they are...'
Jordie filtered through the results until he found the cages designed specifically designed for mimics. The cage he needed was a size small, but the price was the rest of his gold, in essence sixty dollars.
'What the heck?! That much money for a cage? The Beast-class ones were cheaper!'
[Containing a mimic requires specialized cages or collars that actively suppresses a mimics' ability to shape change. The runework alone is enough to drive most people insane, it's worth the price.]
'I...fine, if George is right I can probably recoup my losses. It'll be added to my backpack right?'
[Just confirm the purchase and the mimic cage will automatically be added.]
A few mental commands later, Jordie's gold had disappeared from his Inventory and a wonky-looking bugcage was added to his backpack.
"Marianne, can you give me my backpack and hold Minos for me? I think I have something that can help."
"Oh? Sure."
Jordie delicately placed Minos into Marianne's arms as she handed the backpack to him. It was a slow, very careful process.
"Careful he's heavy."
Marianne repositioned her arms in order to properly hold Minos without accidentally waking him. Once Minos was in a comfortable position, he let out a little yawn. Marianne's face melted at sheer amount of cuteness radiating from this sight and sound.
Jordie went through the motions of fishing in his backpack before pulling out his recently acquired mimic cage. It looked a bit like an insect cage made of bamboo. He handed his backpack back to George to hold and readied himself to capture the mimic.
The Precious Metal Mimic reminded Jordie of a snake or an eel as it flailed about. At this moment he remembered a random video he watched once about eel farming and how they prepared fresh ones.
'Wonder if mimics taste like eel...'
With the cage in one hand, Jordie squatted down, keeping his foot on the mimic's tail, and grabbed it by it's "neck". He did this to make sure it wouldn't bite him or sting him as he tried to move it.
"And...three!"