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1060 Words
Matt knew it was a good thing that they had chucked it inside the house after getting it, which meant his copy wouldn’t have access to it. It wasn’t like Matt would allow his mirror to drop the house and rummage around inside for one of the only weapons they had that could reliably cut through his armor.
Twin charged twin, with magic flaring around them identically as their body and minds were empowered. Magic flared around their swords, turning two into four, and four into six, but with that, the mirror broke.
Matt’s blade first split into two copies of the fighter set of enchantments, then he switched it to his new mage set, while its copy simply made two copies of the fighter set. Then, while his double left both [Twin]s floating as flanking partners, Matt reabsorbed the fighter blade into his main sword, superimposing a portion of its associated enchantments with the mage set. He wasn’t entirely sure why it worked, but it meant that he was able to lightly split the difference between his enchantment suites.
Dual wielding with two similar sized weapons that were larger than a short sword was nearly impossible. Matt wasn’t intending on using both at the same time.
He had made a modification to his armor just for this.
With a flick of his wrist, the void sword snapped to his back as he swung his growth blade and sent a pair of [Mana s***h]es arcing out, just as his double cast three with its extra floating twin. Two sets detonated as they collided in midair, and Matt quickly swapped swords and sliced through the spare crescent of mana with his void sword before quickly returning it to his back.
He brought [Cracked Phantom Armor] up as he crossed blades with his twin, but while his copy gave the skill a wintry appearance, Matt left his in its normal form. The extra sword his copy had was met by a small dagger that he pulled off his waist with his offhand.
The resulting explosion of the dagger overloading had worked as he hoped. It destroyed the extra sword twin, and his reinforced left arm blocked most of the damage from the explosion caused by the dagger lacking a repair rune to support its durability runes.
That gave him a lead, and he pressed it.
In theory, he and his clone should be perfectly matched. After all, they had identical cultivation and buffs, and Matt didn’t even have the option of spending more mana than his duplicate to burn hotter and shorter.
And yet, everywhere they met, Matt’s clone gave way.
Strength rushed through his veins as potions empowered his body while talismans strengthened his mind and spirit.
His growth sword bore down on that of his clone’s, with the extra weight from the Heavy Iron weighing it down. The clone slowly gave way, but his twin taking the fight slowly was a trap, and he knew it.
His potions and talismans would wear off eventually, and with them, so would his main advantage over his duplicate.
The problem was that Matt, and by extension, his mirror copy, was really, really good at dragging things into endurance contests.
Matt easily had mana to spare as he pushed his clone back, and he dedicated it to his gloves. The black hole pulsed in his chest and his enchantments flared. His copy wasn’t prepared, and it stumbled backward as Matt struck forth with a full-power blow, flaring [Mage’s Retreat] to the peak of its strength.
His sword crashed into a [Bulwark], but that just locked up the skill’s use, so Matt quickly put his growth blade away on his back while pulling and stabbing out with his void blade in his off-hand.
Its black and purple point sought blood as it pierced through [Bulwark] and [Cracked Phantom Armor]. At the same time, he separated the growth sword on his back into its constituent [Sword Twin]s, sending all three blades to close in on his copy.
Reacting with admirable speed, it dropped [Bulwark] and spun to the side, dodging most of the void blade. Despite that, Matt pressed his advantage with the confidence of knowing exactly how his copy would react…probably.
He’d practiced against the lesser copies earlier in the floor, but there was no guarantee that this reflection would act the exact same way.
Still, it was a gamble that he knew he needed to take.
Just as Matt had hoped, his copy cast [Flamethrower] and directed the torrent of fire at Matt’s head.
Matt could have diverted the oncoming rush of flame with [Fire Manipulation], overpowering his copy’s own use of the spell, but his instincts said there would be a trick there that he couldn’t recognize from his previous fights with his clones. Thankfully, he didn’t intend to engage in a battle of [Fire Manipulation] with his twin. Instead of doing the predictable thing, he cast [Hail] while using his boon to direct it into something like an icy mirror of the fire spell.
It didn’t put out the flames, but it did allow him to use [Ice Manipulation] and the empowerment from his boon to cut at his copy with a rain of icy arrows.
That forced his copy to drop the fire, but Matt instantly found himself in a struggle to maintain control over his own [Hail], a reversed situation that saw him at a disadvantage when the ice got nearer to the clone than himself.
If he hadn’t anticipated exactly that, he might have been in trouble. Instead, he pulsed his Concept and [Ice Manipulation] to spread what snow had accumulated over the entire foggy battlefield.
His clone wasn’t prepared for Matt’s instant abandonment over the skill, and that gave him enough of an opportunity to throw an off-hand [Crescent Sweep] arcing toward his copy. The copy performed admirably, with a brief halo illuminating its head before it took a quarter-step to the left, taking it just barely out of reach of the void blade that would have cut it in half.
However, the maneuver took the clone directly into the barrage of [Fireball]s that was hiding in the wake of [Crescent Sweep]. Most of them were stopped by pinpoint second-layer defenses of [Cracked Phantom Armor], but one managed to detonate on a comparatively undefended portion of the armor.
- Writer
