“Leila!”
She almost lost her footing and didn’t respond when I called out. Something was wrong. The fire dragon was right behind her, but she just stood there in a stupor. I pulled out the Shield of Champions and charged toward the fire dragon.
I barely made it in time. Flames roared around the edges of my shield, but its A-Grade Fire Resistance held out.
“Ugh,” said the double. “You’re so annoying! I’m leaving!”
“Don’t you dare run away!” I shouted after her.
But it was useless. I couldn’t leave Leila like this. Something was clearly wrong with her.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I feel…like I’m burning up…”
I touched Leila’s forehead. She definitely had a fever. I checked things out with my Discerning Eye and found something that shocked me.
Body Temperature +5 Degrees
Having a temperature of just one or two degrees above normal could cause problems, but five degrees? That was dangerous! The fake Olivia must have done something. How crafty! I broke the offending skill quickly, as it didn’t cost much LP.
“She messed with your abilities. I’ve fixed things, but you need to rest until your temperature comes down. I’m going after her.”
“The moment I’m better, I’ll be right behind you,” Leila said weakly.
I didn’t doubt it. For now, I left her on the bridge and chased after the double. She was skipping away as though she didn’t have a care in the world, so I soon caught up with her. To be fair, she didn’t really need to run. She’d already wiped out the rest of my party.
“Oh, no!” she cried as I got closer. “Looks like someone’s going to catch me!”
“And yet you’ve stopped moving,” I observed.
“Of course,” she said. “This place is perfect for a fight.”
She was right—it was a big level section of road with nobody around. Before she could attack, I checked my abilities. The last thing I wanted was for her to break some skill or another without me noticing. And there was one thing that I absolutely could not let her destroy.
“Worrying about whether I’ll break your ability to Get Creative?” she asked.
“Wh-what?! No!”
“Ah ha ha ha ha! What a reaction! Truly, I’m convinced! Don’t worry, I don’t intend to break your precious skill, and anyway, it would cost too much LP.”
What a relief! Good to know the gift my master had given me didn’t come cheap. Get Creative was my primary skill. Losing it would be a total disaster.
On the bright side, the fake Olivia didn’t have any weapons now. That meant close combat was the obvious option, but unfortunately, my Sacrifice buff had worn off. Of course, I could have just remade the skills and sacrificed them again, but I had a feeling that the time had come to bite the bullet and sacrifice something more powerful. While I was struggling to work out what to do, the fake Olivia vanished.
“Huh? Where’d she go?!”
I looked around, but she was nowhere to be seen, and there was nowhere she could be hiding. Wait! Above me!
I looked up to see Fireballs raining down from the sky. Was her plan to stay out of my way and rain magic down from above? It was a good strategy. With all her fire magic skills, the Fireballs were huge.
I dodged out of the way, missing the first, then barely escaping the second. As the third came blazing toward me, I suddenly felt strange. I had to keep running, but I felt slower somehow. I just managed to avoid the third fireball, but it grazed my clothes, and that was enough for the fire to spread. I hit the ground and rolled until it went out.
“That’s weird…”
I checked out my skills and realized she’d given me Heavy. I erased it quickly and fired another Stone Bullet at Fake Olivia as she descended back toward the ground. But just before the stone hit her, it made an impossible curve and boomeranged back at me.
“Gah?!”
There was no way to avoid it, so I ended up eating my own attack. My whole body ached. I was so confused. What had she done?! I hadn’t seen her cast a spell or anything. Was the problem with the skill itself?
Stone Bullet: Consumes magic to generate and fire a stone of five inches to three feet in diameter. It then returns to the caster.
She had changed it!
“Oh, you figured it out?” asked the double. “You shot one at me back on the bridge. And you seemed comfortable with it, so I figured you’d try it again.”
Damn it, she was too clever! And observant. And she probably had at least some of my master’s vast combat experience. But the most frustrating thing was how much better than me she was at using these skills.
“You can always just give up,” she taunted. “I’ll let you live. I mean, it’ll be a pathetic and miserable life, but still a life.”
“I’m not afraid of living a pathetic and miserable life,” I shouted back. “I’m the third son of a baronet—I’ve tasted more misery in my life than most commoners. But I’m still going to defeat you.”
“Because you want to save your precious master?” she teased.
“She’s suffering. She deserves better.”
“She’s weak. And the strong make use of the weak.”
She was wrong. My master wasn’t weak at all.
“She changed my life,” I said. “I’m going to save her, no matter what it takes!”
I sacrificed my S-Grade Archery skill and tried not to think about the 3,500 LP it had cost me to make it. It was only one skill, and the buff would only last for a minute, but I could tell right away that the power it gave me was on a whole different level from before.
A Lightning Strike surged through my fingers and leaped out into the air. Its range had doubled, and it reached the fake Olivia with ease. Of course, there was no way she’d let such an obvious attack touch her, but I’d planned for that. I just needed some time to get in close, and with my increased physical strength, a single leap took me exactly where I wanted to be.
“Do you expect me to swoon over how fast you are?” she asked.
She stuck out two fingers and stabbed them toward my eyes.
Willowy Dodge!
I smacked the double in the belly with the flat of my sword and used the momentum to push myself out of the way. It threw her off balance, and I saw the moment of panic on her face. By the time our eyes met, I’d already made my move.
Power Slash!
I put all my strength behind it. In the end, it was more than enough to take her down.
“Auuugh?!”
It didn’t feel like cutting down a human. It was more like severing through metal. As I stood back, the double’s hands turned to chains. Soon, the whole of her body was just links of metal that were no longer pretending to be my master.
“I curse you,” the thing spluttered with the last of its strength. “I curse you to…”
I couldn’t hear the rest, but it didn’t matter. It was over. The chains dissolved into rust and melted back down into the earth.
“Curse me all you like,” I said. “I have a friend who can break them.”
And besides, my thoughts were already elsewhere. As the last of the rust blew away, I turned and ran back toward a certain room inside the hidden dungeon.