The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

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Only to do absolutely nothing against the implacable defense, of course. It still distracted his copy enough for the void sword to come back and cut right through [Cracked Phantom Armor] in its entirety, leaving a large, jagged cut along his copy’s upper arm.

On anyone else, it would have cut their arm clean off at least, but Matt was a touch more durable than the average Tier 11.

Fighting yourself was a pain.

It wasn’t like he enjoyed utilizing such complex chains of skills just to land a solid hit on a single target, but at the same time, it was about the only strategy he wouldn’t expect himself to use because he’d only come up with it while fighting himself recently.

Thinking about fighting yourself was also a pain.

Taking advantage of his copy finally being wounded, Matt channeled a [Wind Cutter] through his growth sword after catching and returning the void sword to his back, allowing his new enchantments to shine. The past weeks had been spent fruitfully, and with a full set of skills to work with, Matt had added three new features to his sword.

The first was a boost in cast speed to wind spells. It was sloppy, and far, far from his best work, but the four percent extra speed, and three percent extra power it gave was that much more of a boost that his copy wouldn’t have and wouldn’t expect. It would also give Matt an edge any time they clashed with [Air Manipulation], which he suspected he would seriously need.

Though three percent extra power wasn’t enough to break through his copy’s [Bulwark]. Before he could enact his next plan, Matt’s eyes went wide as mana flared around his copy’s arm in a very familiar pattern.

He didn’t usually cast [Cracked Mana Spear] this early in a fight, but perhaps his copy didn’t want to wait until Matt ground him down, incremental improvement by incremental improvement.

Of course, his copy couldn’t know that Matt had prepared for that exact eventuality. He certainly wouldn’t have any idea how to reliably stop his strongest trump card, if not for that fateful second encounter with Long Zhiyuan.

He and his AI had spent a couple of sleepless nights dissecting Matt’s haphazard battlefield [Analyze] of the Young Master’s lifesaving robe, and his hard work had paid off. The robe had an unusual form of elemental resistance, if ‘neutral mana’ could be called an element.

It blocked skills like [Mana s***h], [Mana Bolt], and [Mana Spear], making it uniquely good against Matt. It was also insanely mana-intensive to run, but while that meant Matt now knew how to overwhelm Long Zhiyuan the next time they fought, it was good news for him, as massive amounts of mana were Matt’s forte.

His version was imperfect. Not quite so shoddy as his wind enchantments, but shoddy, nonetheless. Still, he was confident in his ability to block enough of [Cracked Mana Spear] to take any remaining on his armor directly. Now that he thought about it, the enchantment might also be a good way to break through his clone’s [Cracked Phantom Armor], similar to the vampire’s former sword. The tradeoff for it was that he inherently couldn’t use any neutral-mana attacks channeled through his sword while the enchantment was active, but that was workable.

[Cracked Mana Spear] screamed through the air, the raw power of it making the hairs on the back of Matt’s neck rise and was met by Matt’s sword. The beam parted around his blade, fragmenting into a diffused beam of energy that splashed harmlessly against his armor.

He wasn’t about to just stand and take the attack like an i***t. He ducked and weaved as he drew closer, keeping his sword interposed with the beam as he tried to dodge it. Matt was far slower than most of the enemies he fought, and his copy had no issues keeping the attack trained on him, even as it danced out of Matt’s reach, keeping the armor-piercing sword far away from his armor.

Before his copy hit its spiritual strain limit, it cut the spell off and cast its own flurry of [Fireball]s at him.

Recasting [Bulwark] and rushing forward while swapping weapons, Matt tanked the spells and got in close.

Once there, he cast [Fire Weapon] on the void sword and activated his gravity gauntlets.

He quickly diverted as much power as possible to the item, pushing past their previous limits with his added enchantment, and focused it all through his Heart of the Black Hole.

From the center of his chest, a wave of gravitational force started attracting everything except himself with far more power than the gauntlets themselves could normally put out. He even enhanced the effect with several force-based talismans that he’d integrated with his glove-enhancement creation for this very purpose.

Sloppy work, but it would increase the pulling force of his gauntlets for a short while.

His copy tried to block the power with its Concept repulsion, but Matt threw his own Concept at the mirror’s.

While the boost he’d gotten to his Concept’s strength from being in space and facing down a black hole was minor, his copy needed to fight not only Matt’s Concept, but the enhanced gravity gauntlets as well. When coupled with the strain from using [Cracked Mana Spear] so early, enough minor differences made a major one.

His copy’s Concept working shattered, and Matt took advantage of the suddenly-unlocked space to pull a set of talismans from his storage. He stopped his repulsion and channeled more power through his gauntlets, meeting his copy with the tips of his blade and void blade, along with a half-dozen talismans aimed at the center of its chest.

His sword met [Cracked Phantom Armor], and the void mana from the vampire longsword and talismans came together into a devastatingly strong attack. Combined, his mirror’s armor never stood a chance, and it shattered. The successful strike left the copy with one seriously bleeding gash along its thigh, and a dozen smaller wounds from the spells that landed.