The Path of Ascension 7: A LitRPG Adventure

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His copy was blown backward with the force of the talismans, and Matt nearly lost his grip on his sword as it reverberated with the explosion. His reflection, meanwhile, broke through Matt’s spatial lock even as he flew backward, activating a talisman array of his own and several self-buffing talismans to match Matt’s own preparations.

A familiar pattern of swords rained from the sky as space was locked once more.

The twin jumped forward, and Matt was forced to redirect his mana to his self-buffs to escape. He danced to the side, slipping through a small gap in the swords around him to avoid a [Mana Charge] from his copy, and followed up with a [Fire Bolt]. The copy grabbed one of the falling swords and jerked it into the path of the skill, weakening the projectile enough that it splashed harmlessly off of its target’s armor.

By the way the reflection was acting, Matt could tell that it was directing a fair bit of mana to regeneration, trying to recover from the wounds he’d inflicted.

He wanted to pull out his Aurora Lance and blast his clone to bits, and he was certain that his reflection had the same thought. However, that particular attack was firmly not an option for this battle. There were too many ways its activation could go catastrophically wrong for the caster, and while unlikely to happen over the course of a normal battle, both Matt and his copy intimately knew all the ways it could fail, and how exactly to trigger them.

He was fortunate, really, that his copy wasn’t willing to sacrifice itself just to kill him.

Matt shot a carefully timed [Cracked Mana Spear] at his reflection, forcing it to dodge directly into the path of a sword as it fell from the sky. It clanged off the copy’s armor but still threw the reflection off of its rhythm, which Matt eagerly capitalized on with his void sword. He concentrated his gravity gauntlets and Concept entirely in the blade to make it truly inescapable.

Mana flared as his copy brought up a [Bulwark] lengthwise, deflecting the blade to the side. Matt dropped the sword, then shifted his gravity to his glove, and what started as a sword slice ended as a punch. The reflection’s head cracked back, and Matt imbalanced his Concept and gravity to apply a powerful rotation to his copy. It practically backflipped, recovering with a bit of wobbly [Air Manipulation] to lift itself into the air, and [Cracked Phantom Armor] grew even more ornate as mirror Matt put a solid two-thirds of his regeneration into the skill. The [Sword Rain] wasn’t quite done yet, but his copy was able to reinforce its armor wherever the last few blades were striking, just as Matt was able to.

Matt wrenched control over the air his copy was using to fly, throwing most of his regeneration into the skill, and pulled. He watched as his copy was forced to redirect nearly all its mana to not being tossed around like a ragdoll, while [Cracked Phantom Armor] instantly lost its decoration and dimmed in a way only Matt could spot, which told him the copy had dropped the second layer of the spell.

His copy had two things working against it as they struggled for the winds. The first was that Matt had more practice with his boon-enhanced [Air Manipulation], and knew if not all, then at least more ways he could leverage its added finesse to great effect. The second was the three percent extra power provided from his enchantments.

Three percent, in all honesty, wasn’t much. But even when dealing with thousands of mana per second, sixty mana a second was a lot. Enough to tip the scales for anyone.

Even as Matt’s copy grounded itself and diverted more mana to controlling the air around him, Matt responded with his own [Cracked Mana Spear].

The copy tried to move and tried to block but taking mana from [Air Manipulation] meant that Matt would buffet him around, and the reflection wasn’t able to block with Matt’s Concept bearing down on him. In the end, he abandoned defense in favor of offense, and responded with a [Cracked Mana Spear] of his own.

Matt’s own beam struck his copy in its wounded shoulder, and the return attack lanced through Matt’s calf with a bolt of pain. His AI helpfully informed him that his leg was now missing most of its muscle tissue and was practically useless.

There were no good injuries, but fighting yourself was basically about damage control, and he would take the exchange of his copy’s right arm for a little mobility.

The copy silently withdrew, shifted its longsword to his left hand, and started slinging spells.

A smart move.

While Matt had trained to be able to use his sword in his off hand, he wasn’t ambidextrous by any means, and the copy clearly knew that.

Still, Matt wasn’t afraid of a fight with spells.

While [Cracked Mana Spear] was strong, it had its limitations. Namely its spiritual strain. And with the condition his spirit had been in when they first entered the floor, Matt suspected that his copy had about fifteen to twenty more seconds of spell usage left.

Matt smiled as he cast [Ice Manipulation] to grab the nearby ice and send it back at his copy.

Minkalla might be a forge, but he was good tempered steel thanks to Luna’s decades of training.

Despite the danger, he was having fun.

9

Susanne looked at the copy of herself and knew this would be a brutal fight. Not that fighting against a reflection of yourself was ever easy.

As she sized herself up, she pulled off her mask and her reflection did the same. They looked into each other’s eyes, a burned and scarred gaze meeting unblemished skin, and both of them knew that they could win. She wasn’t fighting Queen here, she was fighting Susanne, and there would be no tricks to hide that truth. If she couldn’t face this reality, if she couldn’t best her past, she didn’t deserve to be here.