“Boom, boom, boom!” Jeff shouted into the microphone. The announcer pointed at the sky. His hair seed to have grown another 10 centitres in the short break, a torrent of brown, extended upwards, that was fixed in its absurd style by whatever magical hair product he was using.
“…What are you doing?” Dra asked.
“I am celebrating the return to our tournant after yet another break, and furthermore, I am celebrating that we are finally going to see today’s ga!” Jeff answered in a happily worked-up fashion.
“And you are doing it by acting like fireworks?” the lizardman probed further.
“Absolutely, yes!” the hyped host hailed.
“Okay then, carry on,” Dra sighed.
“Today, everyone, we finally will have that ga I was wanting to have for so long, and, oh it is a ga indeed!” Jeff said; “We are having a mirror match!”
It was at that mont that John snapped out of his state of admiring the feminine swing of Rave’s jawline. No idea why he had been doing that but sothing about looking at her just made him deeply happy. Looking at the announcer’s desk did not, especially with those news hanging in the air.
“What do I an by mirror match? I an a literal mirror match!” Jeff confird the Gar’s fears. “Where each team fights against a copy of themselves!”
“Now, for anyone at ho wondering how this works, let show you,” Dra added, and at a flick of his fingers, the arena below started changing.
A diagonally oriented wall split the plain field into two even halves. The lift downwards would put each of the teams on their isolated side. A quick Observe, as well as John’s experience with the material, revealed the wall to be made from Baelentium, so it was rather sturdy, to say the least. It also had been standing there for a couple thousand years.
More interesting was the crystal on the wall, located at the centre of the arena.
Smlere hit the floor with both arms raised. Having ford partially on the fly, she used her montum and considerable strength in a hamrlike strike straight to the ground. The earth trembled as a spiderweb of cracks ford around her.
John sensed the power surging through Purgatory at the aimless destruction. As far as he was concerned, whatever cards he had to pull to take himself out were justified. Only about ten-tres remained between himself and his clone.
That was when the enemy elentals decided to attack. He ignored the colour-inverted versions of both Sylph and Salamander. Their attacks hit his Mana Protection, which he had wisely stacked high before the fight, and were neutralized effortlessly.
However, the copy of Gno would be a bigger headache. The sheer weight of the moustached stone elental was sothing he couldn’t quite get through, and he didn’t possess the agility to get around her easily.
‘There is no enemy elental fusion,’ John noted as he checked on how to best solve this hindrance. If this truly was a clone of his, there should have been so Combination of elentals, especially now that he himself had used it. However, nothing of the sort happened. ‘Is it because it’s a Ga Breaker? Can the crystal not emulate?’ he asked himself questions for later.
Smlere intervened right when he needed her. With a catapult-like jump she ripped the obstacle Gno aside, fists clad in half-molten rock as she pumlled the clone. John still wasn’t out of the clear. The mont he ran by the one-sided fight, Smlere was stupendously stronger than the copy of the earth half of her, he noticed a quick movent. An attack, that he couldn’t have seen if it hadn’t been for Jack, was aiming for his back.
Under the constant barrage of the Sylph and Salamander clones, his Mana Protection was dwindling by the mont. By herself, the original tempest elental could not really fend the duo off. He realized the white blade coming out of the mirror entity's shadow for what it was: the enemy Siena had arrived.
And she was quickly blocked by his own. ‘I will do you the favour and help without being a ‘bitch’ about it,’ he heard the shadow spirit whisper as her blades crossed her clone’s. Siena left his shadow and jumped into the one of bizarro-Gno; these two would have a fight unseen by everyone else.
Not that that fight would last particularly long. John was now in reach of his double; the moustached Gar erected a shield of water over his own Mana Protection. It was a matter of fact that the enemy barrier would not have been pre-charged.
The pieces, present and needed, rushed through his mind quicker than his body could hope to move. Information off the battlefield was taken in through Jack’s eyes in a re mont. Where was the enemy Momo? Where was Nia? What was the state of Smlere? How much longer would his shield last in an unhindered barrage if he sent Gno away?
The answers clicked in his head into a series of events that needed to unfold. Then he made a second plan, then a third one. None of the plans were set in stone, if anything there were written on rubber. Elastic, allowing him to adapt to whatever situation might arise. Although only the first one allowed for him to win within the next 30 seconds, if it was executed flawlessly.
Above him, two Rave’s exchanged kicks in mid-air, just her standard flashy close-quarters-combat without any buffs or Copernicus’ help. They ca down behind him as John reached his doppelganger. ‘Sylph, go!’ he told her.
‘But, but, but, I wanna play more with myself. Uh, that sounded naughty. Also poncho-John looks fun. Audible gasp! Ponchn!’ Sylph complained and derailed herself within one mont.
Despite that, she actually flew off, following his orders. Either she had forgotten about her complaint or she just wanted to talk about sothing. Both were equally likely.
He had no ti to waste, and to the sound of Smlere and Thanas both punching with earth-shattering might at different points in the arena, he hurled his right fist at the shield of water. The mont he ca into contact with it, Undine morphed out of her item form.
First, she tried to win control over the water that ford the protective bubble. When that worked and her clone also morphed back to counteract the developnt, the two slis got tangled up. Red and blue sli mixed and separated as the two of them fought with both fists and liquidity. They were trying to encapsulate the other like amoeba while also beating the other up. It was brutal and fascinating.
John had no ti to dwell on that. He needed to crash down on the enemy mana reservoir. He boxed away at the Mana Protection of his double. Without a doubt his motions looked sluggish to anyone who was actually skilled in lee combat, but that didn’t change the fact that there was weight behind them.
His left hand flared up as Purgatory reached full-charge, adding extra fire damage to that one punch.
Not that further damage would have mattered in any way. As long as the enemy Momo was around, this John had too much mana to spend defensively. The moustached, empty face of his clone seed to taunt him despite the presud lack of emotion. The poncho-wearing double raised his hand, probably to fire a high-power attack that was ant to inflict a lot of damage to John himself.
‘I’ve got her! Yes, yes, I dooooo!’ Sylph sang and sent him an image. It was a black-haired Momo at the feet of Nia who was slowly eroding her existence with her anti-magic. He had hoped for her to be able to take the enemy mana donator out imdiately, but if Nia used her powers too quickly, she would remove herself from this plane of existence. Obviously, that was not worth it.
Undine was removed, and Momo had been taken care of. It didn’t matter if she was gone imdiately or over ti, only that her mana was no longer in the reach of the enemy. The bizarro-John’s defensive asures were taken down. One more piece…
He had to win a bit of ti. Well, win wasn’t the correct term here. He was winning, each hit at the protective barrier reinforced his advantage. The two airborne attacks he was suffering wouldn’t be enough before…
‘I have defeated m-, uhm, Gno!’ Smlere let him know; her voice was like a crackling campfire unsure to burn tempered by an amazon’s discipline. The last piece snapped into place.
John deactivated Mana Protection just as the doubles of himself, Salamander and Sylph were unleashing a barrage of attacks. The fire did next to nothing thanks to the World Ender set bonus, the air cut into his suit, and a blue shard pierced his lower abdon. It imdiately disappeared into arcane crackles.
What would have left a grueso open wound, only slightly cauterized by the arcane burn, on anyone else was fixed in a re mont thanks to Gar’s Body.
He put Purgatory directly on the shield and pulled the trigger on the stored spell. A dark glow emanated from under his palm as the shadow-infused Mana Blade tried to penetrate the defensive shell. Arcane power collided, the mana of his double quickly sank, and then it was gone.
Just as the Mana Protection had been taken care off, the blue hue disappearing and leaving only simple air between him and his double, the second was over. The Mana Blade, whose ti had been cut short by the elental property infused into it, could no longer be used to eliminate the enemy John. That, however, was not needed either. Smlere, having no further opposition to stop her, was closing in.
All John needed to do was jump to the side, and the volcano elental tackled into his clone with the might of a bulldozer. In her grip, the physically weak, unbuffed John was carried off, his weak punches hurting himself more with the heat of the lava spirit than they were a threat to Smlere.
A red firefly caught up to her and buffed the impressive Stats even further. Smlere headed for the Baelentium wall. The false John was ramd right into the immovable object with unstoppable force. His rib cage caved under the impact.
Still, with his Endurance he could take more than that. It would have been better if he hadn’t. A series of blows to his head that allowed for no counter-attacks to be taken were followed by him getting tossed into the air with just one hand.
“Terribly sorry,” Smlere apologized, “but I need to kill you!” The elental ramd her fists together, and when she pulled them apart, a rock materialized between them. It was quaking, less stone than a condensed earthquake, and Smlere threw it after the copy of her summoner.
Once it ca into contact with him, it erupted, scattering more ashes and rock than should have been possible for an object of that size. John’s plan had worked perfectly, even if he had likely been off in the timing departnt.
‘The elimination took longer than expected, and the gaps weren’t seamless,’ he told himself. ‘The buff on Smlere also wasn’t applied in the tifra I wanted.’
‘My fireflies aren’t so instantly used buff, they actually need to reach the target!’ Momo aggressively reminded him.
‘I know, just correcting my calculation,’ John replied. ‘I estimate that took us about 94 seconds since the start of the fight,’ the support inford him. That ant that the execution of his plan had been roughly 34 seconds longer than he had wanted. He would need to be more gracious with his ti allocations in the future.
With his own clone gone, they had removed more than half of the other fighters from the equation. It was only a matter of cleaning everyone else up now. Lydia was locked in a battle of will against herself, tal quivering in the air, unable to move as the two were wrestling for control. That one was the easiest to solve.
One usage of Shardbound, four rging into one, and the purple energy material plunging into the pretender’s side tipped the balance of that duel in a re mont. With Sylph’s help and Undine’s healing, Rave quickly got the better of her own clone as well.
It was so easy to mop up those weaker than himself now that he wasn’t preoccupied. For the last obstacle…
Thana and her clone were creating craters wherever they engaged. Darting over the battlefield, one of them lost in crazed laughter, the other a silent parody, they t over and over. “Thana, pin her down!” John shouted, sure that the blood mage would hear her.
Nobody in the group would be able to intervene in this fight, it was too far above their level. Damaging an immobile enemy though? More than possible.
It took Thana a couple of tries, punches taken and dished out, until her suited clone made a slight mistake. Just a slightly wrong angle, and Thana managed to grab her brunette imposter by the arm and used an improvised throw to hamr her into the ground.
John hurried over. What they were about to do was inelegant, and nobody liked treating a copy of Thana that way. Wave after wave of, for her, weak attacks rained down on the clone.
“I really hate doing this,” John let Thana know as several shards impaled her clone’s body.
“That’s nice to fucking know, now get it over with!” Thana scread back, holding her struggling clone down with all her might. The problem was that this copy had the exact sa Stats as Thana, including her absolutely absurd Endurance.
It would take a while to kill her. Nia was their best shot, but she couldn’t eliminate all of that magic so quickly. Every ti the blank used her powers, the clone dropped a few levels. Afterwards, Nia needed to readjust herself on this plane to not run the risk of fading away.
It would have been a wonder if they won this ga. The reality of Thana’s regenerative power was simply this: it took too long to take her out. Her greatest power beca their greatest weakness.
Eventually, they succeeded, but as predicted, Maximillian’s team had won themselves minutes before.
Lydia: 5, Max: 7
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