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1132 Words
Aster was already a step away when she noticed a skill shard forming on the ground where her copy had been.
She snapped it up and stored it away as she slinked over to the edge of the cavern while she waited for the others to finish their own fights. Once she settled into a comfortable spot, she pulled out a few healing potions and [Bandage] talismans.
While she had complete confidence in the others and their abilities, she wanted to be able to pounce in and help out if they emerged from their battles wounded or vulnerable.
No one would hurt her friends anymore. Not if she could help it.
Liz thrust her spear out and took her copy in the side but was unable to draw blood from the single hit.
She pulled her spear back as the copy thrust forward with its own spear and used the haft of her weapon to block the blow.
She had already learned the futility of using blood spells against herself.
Before either of them were able to get the spell to land, the target would be close enough to easily wrest control of the opposing spell with their own [Blood Manipulation], rendering it useless. Liz did have an advantage over her reflection in that she knew a few more tricks about controlling an opposing blood mage’s spells. It wasn’t that different from stealing control over fire skills, which she’d had plenty of practice with as Torch.
It was a good thing they all came into the boss fight prepared with a handful of Matt’s offensive talismans. With them, she was able to gain an advantage by cutting deep into her mirror self’s side.
But Liz was hardly one to go down from a single wound, and neither was her reflection.
She was almost impressed with herself, if she was being honest.
Elizabeth Moore was a hard woman to kill.
Without spells, that left the mirror images deadlocked in a melee fight.
Liz had the advantage there, having drank several of her strongest safe potions before the fight, as well as benefiting from Matt’s boosting talismans. But she, and therefore her copy, was far too used to fighting stronger opponents for those boosts to be a decisive factor. To make matters worse, the longer they went on, the stronger her copy got as it mixed and consumed blood potions. And it was able to utilize even stronger potions than she could.
A sizable amount of her internal arsenal was actively harmful to Liz, where the energy of the potion was too intense for the body to handle or could result in long-term health problems if left untreated. Normally, she was able to use them in moderation, but with her body constantly at the edge of the healing cooldown at the moment, she couldn’t treat herself properly afterwards.
Meanwhile, her copy had less of an active healing cooldown than she did, and was apparently less concerned about its long-term health, allowing it to push itself further than she was willing. It wasn’t suicidal, but the reflection fought as if Luna was there with a medical team ready to undo anything it did to itself in the name of victory.
Knowing she needed to change the paradigm of their fight, Liz thrust forward once more with a [Fire Weapon] and [Water Bullet] pair.
The water spell hit her copy in the shoulder, but its armor blocked most of the attack while she used her now flaming weapon to push back the copy.
It worked for a moment, but her mirror countered with [Fire Manipulation] and tried to push the weapon away from itself using the fire on the blade as leverage.
Instead of fighting that force, Liz let the copy push the tip of the spear away and used that momentum to spin her weapon around and bring the butt into the copy’s left arm.
She felt the crack where her weapon hit the armor but didn’t think it was enough to break the arm. If the positions were reversed, it probably would have broken her arm, but her healing cooldown had been mostly over when she entered the floor, and it was only the fights here that had aggravated the regrown limb to its current state.
The copy formed its spear into a halberd with blood iron, then started building [Blood Charge] on it. Liz responded with a quick [Blood Spear], but the copy sidestepped it and dashed toward Liz with power that burned through its mana and potions.
She tried to retreat and let her copy expend resources while she defended, but it started pouring even more power into catching up to her, leading into a horizontal sweep with the halberd. It was an enormous expenditure for one blow, and Liz knew she couldn’t take it head on.
Quickly summoning [Blood Polearm Block], six floating blood copies of her spear appeared next to her. She formed her own spearhead into a partisan, with all the blood copies getting in formation to block the approaching blade.
The halberd’s head virtually exploded with blood as [Blood Charge] went off, destroying three of the six copies of her weapon and damaging the head of her material spear.
Hitting her with the halberd wasn’t the goal, however, as her copy dropped the weapon almost immediately. It took advantage of Liz’s spear being out of position by drawing a dagger and charging her directly, seeking to stab her in the neck.
Liz blocked with both of her hands they tumbled to the ground, where she and her copy struggled in a power enhanced stalemate for a moment, until she wrapped her leg around her mirror’s and twisted with all her might.
That sent them rolling just far enough for Liz to get on top and send the dagger flying. As she was about to extricate herself, her copy interlocked their arms and tried to twist Liz back to the ground.
Pain laced up her left arm in an arc of fire as her far-over-cooldown arm protested the treatment, giving her copy the opening it needed to put her in a headlock and pin her to the ground.
Liz flailed with her good right hand, trying to punch the copy even as it was behind her. She summoned blood but was countered because of how close they were. She cast [Blood Ragdoll] to no avail, and in the time where her blood was out of control, her copy took advantage of the weakness to transition from the headlock to pinning her to the ground. The copy had apparently noticed the weakness in her left arm, and had grabbed it with both hands, shoving her to the ground underfoot as it attempted to tear her arm off at the shoulder.
- Writer
