Back in the Corridor:-
"HRAAAAH!"
Takson was in the air, his body a coiled spring of muscle and rage. He brought his axe down with everything he had.
Zzzzt!
The clone reacted instantly. It didn't try to dodge. Instead, mana flared around it, coalescing into a sphere of crackling electricity.
Lightning Armor.
It was a 360-degree absolute defense. A shell of high-voltage plasma that would incinerate any physical weapon that touched it.
The clone watched Takson's descent with cold, dead eyes. It saw a human with a piece of iron. It saw a moth flying into a bug zapper.
It didn't notice the faint, distortion-like shimmer coating the blade of Takson's axe.
Contact.
The axe blade met the lightning.
There was no explosion. No shower of sparks.
Pop.
The sound was soft, anticlimactic, like a soap bubble bursting. The "absolute" lightning defense simply vanished. The "Mana Breaker" enchantment had unraveled the spell's structure upon impact, dissolving the mana into harmless static.
The axe continued its downward arc, unimpeded.
BOOM!
It slammed into the clone's shoulder.
The force of the blow was tremendous. The stone floor beneath them shattered, a spiderweb of cracks spreading out from the impact point. Takson hadn't held anything back. He wasn't trying to kill it cleanly; he wanted to crush it.
The clone stumbled, its knees buckling.
What?
Its primitive AI couldn't process what had just happened. It had analyzed the human. No mana. No enchantments. Just brute strength. It should have been impossible for a piece of iron to bypass a high-level lightning ward.
A fluke?
Yes. It had to be. A structural weakness in the spell matrix. A one-in-a-million chance.
The clone recovered its balance. If magic defense failed, it would use overwhelming force.
Mana swirled in its hands, solidifying into a massive, double-bladed battle-axe. It was a perfect visual replica of Camael, the weapon Stell often used.
You got lucky, human, the clone seemed to say, its expressionless face mimicking Stell's human disguise perfectly.
And that was the Spiegel's fatal flaw.
It couldn't see past the mask. It had copied Stell's appearance, the violet hair, the soft skin, the Pseudo-Haniel disguise she wore to blend in. It hadn't copied the machine beneath. It didn't have her processing power, her sensors, or her Dimensional Engine.
It was a mana puppet wearing a human skin, fighting a man who had been trained by a god of war.
Takson saw the fake axe materialize. He saw the clone's stance. And he smiled.
"You really don't get it, do you?" he growled, wrenching his axe free. "You might look like her..."
He stepped forward, his aura flaring.
"...but you're empty."
….
Over the years, I had significantly upgraded Pseudo-Haniel. By integrating the magical theories of this world with my own technology, I had eliminated the disguise's primary weakness.
It was no longer a fragile illusion that shattered under stress. It was a persistent, layered reality. Unless I explicitly deactivated it, I appeared, down to the molecular level, to be a human girl. No sensor, magical or otherwise, could penetrate the facade.
And that was the Spiegel's fatal error.
It had tried to copy me, but its magic could only perceive the surface. It had replicated the "Human Mage," not the "Ex-Machina." It had copied the mask, ignorant of the monster beneath it.
Consequently, the clones were drastically weaker than the original. And these sub-clones? They were even more diluted. That was the only reason Takson, a human warrior, could stand toe-to-toe with a copy of a god-slaying machine.
"That weapon..."
Takson recognized the massive, double-bladed axe the clone had summoned. It was a copy of Camael, the weapon his teacher often wielded.
"You really have some nerve," he spat, his grip tightening on his own axe. "But it's just a hollow shell. Just like you."
I can do this!
Ever since the clones had retrieved his weapon, it felt different. It hummed with a strange, disruptive energy. When it had popped the lightning shield like a soap bubble, he understood. His teacher had given him an edge.
Whoosh!
The clone swung. The fake Camael tore through the air in a horizontal arc, aimed at Takson's chest. Because of the "Mana Breaker" effect, the clone had switched tactics, abandoning magical defense for pure physical aggression.
But Takson didn't retreat.
He dropped to his knees.
Screeech!
His armored greaves carved grooves into the stone floor as he slid forward, ducking under the massive blade. The wind of the swing ruffled his hair, but the steel missed him by inches.
He slid right into the clone's personal space.
The "Dead Zone."
A weapon as large as a great axe had a minimum effective range. By getting in close, right up against the clone's body, Takson rendered the massive weapon useless.
"Gotcha!"
He choked up on the haft of his axe, wielding it like a large hatchet. With a roar, he swung upward, aiming for the clone's exposed neck.
But the enemy was not a mindless beast. It possessed the combat instincts of the original, however diluted.
Realizing the great axe was a liability, the clone instantly dismissed the spell. The massive weapon dissolved into light.
Flash.
In the blink of an eye, a short sword and a small, round buckler materialized in the clone's hands.
CLANG!
"Guh?!"
Takson's upward strike slammed into the hastily summoned shield.
The impact was violent. The force reverberated back down the axe handle, numbing Takson's hands and nearly jarring the weapon from his grip.
Taking advantage of the recoil, the clone lunged forward, slamming the buckler into Takson's chest while simultaneously whipping its arm out to bat his axe away.
The axe, already loose in his numb fingers, spun out of his hand and clattered across the floor.
However, the shield paid the price. The moment it touched Takson's enchanted weapon, the mana structure collapsed. The buckler shattered into motes of light. But it had done its job.
Takson was disarmed.
The shield bash had knocked him off balance. He stumbled backward, his center of gravity lost. He needed half a second, just 0.5 seconds, to recover his stance.
But for a clone with superhuman speed, 0.5 seconds was an eternity.
In Takson's widening eyes, the tip of the clone's short sword grew larger. It was a thrust aimed straight at his heart.
Again?
Am I going to die again? Just after being saved?
No.
A fire ignited in his belly, burning hotter than his fear.
I can't repeat the same mistake. Teacher and the others... they believed in me. They left this one for me to kill.
I will not disappoint them!
….
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