Free Web NovelChapter 25: Trial of Sylas [5]
Arthur jammed the silver key into the heavy stone door at the back of the room. The lock clicked, and the stone ground open.
He stepped inside and immediately stopped.
The entire room—walls, ceiling, and floor—was made of flawless, polished glass. The ambient silver light bounced endlessly in every direction, creating a nauseating infinite corridor.
Arthur looked at his reflection. He looked like absolute hell. Blood on his chin, his leather armor torn, and his left forearm wrapped in a crude, bloody bandage hiding the purple, poisoned veins.
He took a step forward. A hundred reflections stepped with him.
He took a second step.
The reflection in the massive central mirror didn’t move.
Arthur froze.
The reflection smirked. Then, it stepped completely out of the glass.
It was a perfect, shadowy doppelganger. It had the exact same boar-hide armor, the same ashwood bow, and the same twin steel daggers. Its skin was pitch black, but its eyes glowed with a toxic, neon green light.
"Of course," Arthur sighed, his grip tightening on his bow. "A mirror match. Peak dungeon cliché. What’s next, a chess game?"
The Shadow didn’t answer. It just raised its bow, moving with the exact same terrifying speed Arthur possessed.
Arthur’s survival instincts kicked in. He knocked an arrow and drew the string.
They fired at the exact same millisecond.
Thwip! Thwip!
Neither of them relied on their eyes. Their unnaturally high perception calculated the trajectory perfectly. Arthur pivoted his hip; the Shadow tilted its neck. The two arrows whistled past each other, harmlessly shattering against the glass walls behind them. freewebnovel.cσ๓
They fired again.
Clack!
The arrows collided dead center in mid-air, splintering into pieces.
Ranged combat is useless, Arthur realized. It has my exact reaction time.
Arthur dropped his bow and drew his steel daggers.
The Shadow mirrored the movement perfectly, tossing its bow aside and drawing its own twin blades.
They lunged at each other.
It wasn’t a fight. It was a choreographed dance of death. Steel clashed against steel, sparking violently in the mirrored room. Arthur slashed low; the Shadow parried and countered high. Arthur used his silent footsteps to try and mask his approach, but the Shadow did the exact same thing, turning the fight into a terrifying, silent blur of deadly strikes.
Because their physical parameters were absolutely identical, raw power meant nothing. It was pure, desperate skill.
Arthur faked a reverse thrust with his right hand and ducked, aiming a lethal sweep at the Shadow’s knee.
It was his best move.
But the Shadow already knew it.
The doppelganger didn’t block. It completely anticipated the dodge, stepping into Arthur’s guard, and drove its left dagger directly down into Arthur’s left shoulder.
The blade sank to the hilt, grinding against his collarbone.
"Gah!"
Arthur screamed, stumbling backward. The dagger ripped out of his flesh. A spray of hot blood hit the mirrored floor.
His entire left arm went completely numb. The weapon dropped from his useless fingers.
Arthur collapsed to one knee, clutching his bleeding shoulder. He was poisoned. He was exhausted. And now he had one arm.
The Shadow stepped forward, flipping its dagger into a downward ice-pick grip. It raised the blade, preparing to drive it straight through Arthur’s skull.
It knows everything I know, Arthur thought desperately, looking at the endless reflections surrounding them. So I have to use something a normal person would never do.
He remembered a toxic thread on the game’s forums. A glitch.
[Trait Activated: Eagle Eye (Lv.5)]
Arthur didn’t aim at the Shadow. He threw his head back and stared directly into the mirror directly behind the doppelganger, right where the glowing silver light of the room was reflecting the brightest.
Eagle Eye multiplied visual input to allow for extreme long-distance focus. When aimed directly at a concentrated, reflected light source at point-blank range, it created a massive sensory feedback loop.
A visual flashbang.
The light exploded in Arthur’s retinas.
He went instantly, completely blind. A searing white sheet covered his vision.
But the Shadow, tethered to Arthur’s active skills, was hit by the exact same blinding feedback loop.
The doppelganger flinched, its downward strike hesitating for a fraction of a second as it was plunged into sensory overload.
That fraction was all Arthur needed.
Blind, operating purely on his sharp hearing and the scuff of the Shadow’s boot on the glass, Arthur lunged upward.
He drove his remaining steel dagger forward with everything he had left.
Squelch.
The blade buried itself completely into the Shadow’s gut, ripping upward through its shadowy chest cavity.
The doppelganger froze. It let out a hollow, static hiss.
Then, it dissolved into a cloud of black ash and glowing blue data particles.
[Shadow Doppelganger Defeated. Massive EXP gained.]
[Level Up.]
[Level Up.]
Arthur didn’t even read the prompts.
His vision slowly began to clear, leaving black spots dancing in his eyes.
He staggered sideways, his boots slipping on his own blood, and collapsed heavily against the cold glass of the mirror. He clutched his shredded shoulder, gasping for air, his consciousness fading fast.
