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1008 Words
Liz and Aster shared a glance. “Two defense-focused tanks with no mana constraints?”
Susanne sighed and started wrapping her wound.
They should have had Matt leave the house out before they fought. She might have been able to get a nap in.
The explosion sent Matt’s copy flying, but it caught itself in midair by utilizing a wobbly Concept and dove back toward Matt while unleashing a barrage of fireballs. Matt raised a [Bulwark] inches in front of his copy, tanking the [Fireball]s against his armor as the reflection narrowly avoided slamming into the immovable barrier by teleporting to the other side of it.
Matt greeted it with a column of lightning almost as thick as his arm, but the copy raised its own [Bulwark] and blocked the talisman’s effect.
The buffs Matt had applied to himself at the start had worn off a long, long time ago, and he was even almost out of talismans entirely. Amusingly, he now had more talismans in his two Aurora Lance arrays than he did across all his other talismans and arrays combined.
He judged his copy wasn’t much better off, and was perhaps even down part of an Aurora Lance, using some of the feeder talismans as makeshift, lesser attacks. Matt’s left arm hung limply, suffering from both a sprain and a dislocation he hadn’t had the chance to fix, and missing half the fingers on its hand besides. His own copy seemed hellbent on finishing what Susanne’s reflection earlier in the floor had started. It had also disarmed him of his two growth rings, but he could retrieve them later.
If not for [Endurance], he and his mirror copy would have collapsed from simple exhaustion minutes…hours…days ago? He had no idea how long this had been going on, but he’d long since exhausted every trick he had prepared for his clone, and it had simply turned into a slugging match.
Nearly all of them had worked, but it just wouldn’t stay down. They’d both ended up getting a lot of practice with usurping elemental manipulations, and there wasn’t even a square inch of flat ground to stand on, thanks to all their attacks tearing it up.
If Matt was being poetic, it was a reflection of the two of them. Once pristine ground now broken. Hills and valleys carved out of it where they had used the floor itself as a weapon, but still there. Still functional.
Or at least Matt was.
His Folded Reflection mirror was finally checkmated.
With a last ditch burst of strength, Matt swept past the reflection with [Air Manipulation] wrapped around him, then threw his Concept at his clone beneath him, shoving it to the ground and pinning him.
Matt followed closely behind, slamming feet-first into his prone reflection, then activating his gloves to lock himself in space. His clone struggled underfoot while throwing spells at him, but Matt was unyielding. It teleported out from the trap, pushing through Matt’s spatial lock, but Matt called his void sword to hand and swung where he knew the copy would appear.
The clone materialized in the path of his attack, blade at his neck and enhanced with everything Matt had left in him.
The reflection finally broke as his copy was decapitated, and the fog around him faded.
Matt groaned in relief, staggered over to the lump of flesh that had formerly served him as three of the fingers on his left hand, and dug out his rings from the bloody mess.
Matt cursed as he saw the result of his copy’s attack. The plain silver band that served as a teleportation focus was cut nearly in half, and he could only find one half of it. Meanwhile, his mana aspecting ring had several of its crystals broken, and the metal itself was bent out of shape.
It was fixable, as the connection his spirit shared with them attested to, and because he still had the physical objects, or at least parts of them. If they ran into a growth item-based reward on floor 7, he could still empower them if he so chose. However, it effectively removed both teleportation and the ability to make new talismans from his suite of options for the rest of Minkalla.
Aster broke him out of his musings as she sauntered over to him with a questioning thought, and he gave her a few head pats in return for her concern with his good arm.
Seeing that his copy didn’t drop anything, he staggered over to his friends and made sure that most of them were okay. He was relieved by his findings until he noticed that Liz was missing her left arm…once again.
“Ahh you okay?” Matt opened his eyes to a living room. It wasn’t any particular living room, but rather a mishmash of his own, Luna’s guest living room, and even Travis and Keith’s. The coffee table was undeniably his, though. Six cups rested on it, each in their own unique Almost before he finished asking, she nodded. “Fine. Well not fine fine, but I needed to sacrifice it to give my copy a big enough wound that it couldn’t just [Blood Ragdoll] any attacks I made. Besides, the arm was only half functioning anyway, so it’s not that bad. We’ve got a spare prosthetic, anyway. I should be able to manage until we leave.”
With that said, they dispelled the reward distortion. Everyone wanted to leave the floor as quickly as possible.
Out tumbled half a dozen skills, along with a longsword similar to his own, a horse plume helmet, and six upgrade orbs.
Catching the items, everyone agreed it would be best to sort it after their test.
If worse came to worst, one of them might need the increased power if they were unable to wake up from the dreams that the floor challenge would give them.
They stepped through the distortion, and with a mental nod, Matt’s mind was whisked away.
vessel and their own unique teas.
- Writer
