The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

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Fighting an exact copy of yourself would, in theory, result in a fifty-fifty chance of victory or death, but Minkalla wasn’t so evil. Instead, the copies it created were based on the version of you that had entered the floor, giving you time to get used to fighting yourself, along with many chances to grow stronger.

After a whole floor without being able to truly use his skills, Matt brought his blade down with all the force he could muster. His copy was weaker, and it almost immediately gave way, just barely surviving by blocking his attack with [Cracked Phantom Armor]. Just for fun, he flexed his boon as he called up his own suit of armor, manifesting it as an icy blue and giving it a few winter-themed features. It didn’t affect the skill beyond making it look cool, but it was a new toy for him to play with, and quite a fun one at that.

The copy’s skill flickered, but he didn’t press his advantage, pulling back instead and allowing his copy to recover. The experience he’d get fighting himself would be invaluable for the end of the floor, after all.

His copy tapped into his own boosts, and Matt echoed in kind. Each of their reflections, until the final boss on the floor, were lesser in some way. Some only had a fragment of their total skills, some lacked Concepts, and very few had a full grasp of strategy and were capable of improvisation. This one, however, seemed like it was slightly weaker overall in every way, but it was an excellent introduction to the floor.

As Matt blocked a thrust and a point blank [Mana s***h], he learned about his own combat style, and tried to dissect it like an opponent would.

He was fast, nimble, and defensive, never overcommitting while also trying to bait opponents into overextending themselves. If that failed, he would just wear them down into dust. Compared to the opponents that Matt was used to fighting, his initial copy was laughably slow and weak, more like a turtle than a predator.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Matt was substantially more than just a defense-specialized melee fighter, and that apparently carried over to his reflection as well, since it unleashed a barrage of [Fireball]s at him. Matt dodged most of them but cut one in half as he closed the distance between them once again.

It was really fortunate that the copies would be lesser versions of him until the end of the floor, and that Minkalla didn’t raise them to Tier 14. The additional speed and strength alone would be a pain, but mostly, the idea of fighting himself after he got a couple more tier-ups and doubled his mana a few more times filled him with a bit of dread.

Matt had no confidence in fighting a version of himself that had 20,480 mana, versus his current 2,560 mana. It might not technically be suicide, but it would only be one step removed from it.

Even with no more than his current spell arsenal, being able to spend eight times more mana on every spell would mean his [Cracked Phantom Armor] was impossible to break through, while his physical buffing spells would be substantially more potent.

Still, it did give him a relatively easy way to be assured of a win against his reflections for the entire floor. If he broke through to Tier 12, his mana generation would double, and his copies just wouldn’t be able to keep up.

He and this current copy traded a few more blows, with Matt steadily gaining an advantage before it tried to turn the tables with a blast of [Hail], shooting it at him sideways rather than raining down from above. That proved to be a mistake, as Matt reached out with [Ice Manipulation], seizing control of the icy deluge around him. His copy fruitlessly tried to reclaim command of the spell, but Matt’s grip was absolute in comparison to this first reflection.

Matt could feel his Winter boon blossom into full effect. Thanks to the limits on skill usage on floor five, it had taken a while to fully piece together, but he’d eventually nailed down two main effects. The first was a substantial boost to his precision and control when using winter-related elements. It was most obvious with the corresponding Manipulation skills, but was present even in [Hail], as evidenced by his reflection turning it into a headlong ranged attack instead of mere hailstones falling from the sky. Secondly, any ice skills he used grew in power the longer he controlled them, and the more mana he put into them.

All around him, the ice crystals produced by [Hail] grew larger and sharper with each passing second, swirling around the pair of them like they were in the eye of a hurricane. His copy never stopped trying to break his control, until, with a passing thought, Matt directed the entire storm at his reflection. A stream of razor-sharp ice and wind punched through a subpar [Bulwark] and [Cracked Phantom Armor], bursting out the far side of his reflection’s chest and shattering it into a thousand rapidly dissolving pieces.

Minkalla might recreate their items for their copies to use, but all their equipment, items, and even consumables were fundamentally tied to the copy, and couldn’t be extracted through any means.

Though, he paused to see if his copy would drop any of his skills.

While it was only a remote possibility, getting a second [Cracked Phantom Armor] would be fantastic, so he could modify the second skill for different threats.

He was disappointed when his copy simply dropped an essence stone, but he still picked it up and put it away.

He joined Susanne off to the side, who had already finished her own fight, while he watched Liz and Aster testing their copies. Like him, neither seemed terribly concerned about killing their opponents quickly, instead getting used to the idea of fighting themselves. Liz was testing out the limits of overpowering someone’s control of their own blood, mirroring his own bouts of clashing against her with [Blood Manipulation], but given she was using her blackened arm to control her magic, it was clear that she was in an utterly dominant position.