Wawok blinked in surprise. “Huh?”
It was basically a limb constructed of blue blood vessels, and it was transparent because it was made from mana.
“Hmm.”
I opened and closed the newly created hand. It moved exactly how I wanted. With no muscles or bones, it felt weightless.
“Wha…? It can’t be. How did you do that?”
After confirming what my new arm was capable of, I returned to Wegal immediately.
Dupe was after me, so going to Rila and Elvie would needlessly endanger them. Instead, I waited for my copy at the dilapidated building.
Night was wearing on, and the moon waned.
Dupe approached me from the dark. “I’m surprised you knew I’d be here.”
“There’s no way I’d fail to recognize my own presence.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
The wound I’d inflicted on Dupe wasn’t fatal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to hinder him in another fight, either.
Maintaining my new arm required mana, so I wasn’t currently using the band. Plus, it was the perfect tool to catch Dupe off guard. I’d created and dismissed the arm several times, so I could invoke it just like a skill.
“What’re you after? I doubt you only want my life.”
“You know I won’t tell you.”
Creating a whole person from an arm changed the definition of what it meant to be dead. I had no idea whether this was happening somewhere else or if I’d been specially selected for the first attempt.
The possibilities created endless questions, but Dupe wasn’t going to give anything up no matter what torture I subjected him to.
“You enjoyed today’s battle, didn’t you?” I said.
Dupe grinned. “You could tell?”
“Of course. I enjoyed it, too.”
Since our fighting styles were identical, the only option was to fight using every possible advantage—over and over. We each canceled out the other’s strengths while trying to retaliate with our own. It demanded intense concentration, and as a result, was more mentally stimulating than usual.
Dupe produced a knife from his breast pocket. It looked cheap, but considering our capabilities, it was more than sufficient.
“I waited for you and you’ve come empty-handed?” He sneered.
“I’m still my own best weapon. I don’t choose my tools, location, or target.”
“You’ll come to regret that soon enough.”
I laughed. I’d heard that line from a few people in the past.
Dupe invoked his skill.
There was no telling if he understood why I laughed as I activated Unobtrusive in response.
Our skills weren’t suited to this sort of duel. In the end, we traded places, just like last time.
Drawing closer without using Unobtrusive, Dupe swung his knife, the blade flashing silver. I dodged it by a hair, but he was already thrusting at me with a blade in his other hand.
Evidently, he intended to rely on that advantage again.
I evaded both knives, waiting for an opening, then kicked Dupe. He blocked, but the unusual method of attack caught him slightly off guard.
“‘You’ll come to regret that soon enough…’ How could you utter such a cheap line?”
Dupe’s eyebrows twitched in irritation, and he hurled a foot at me, as though to mimic my blow. I focused on evasion and blocking, kicking at the impostor to keep him in check. Neither of us got a clean hit in.
“Knowing our skill won’t be effective, we have only one choice, which makes things simple,” I said. Dupe didn’t reply, though, preferring to strike again.
That demonstrated the difference in our abilities.
My style never was to attack repeatedly.
I believed in one-hit kills.
When I struck, it meant the fight was over, whether it was with a knife or empty-handed. That’s how most of my fights went. I hardly ever resorted to exchanging blows with opponents. In all my memory, I only did that with Amy and a handful of others.
As I watched Dupe and maintained my composure, I realized how unaccustomed to drawn-out fights we were.
Initially, he employed a range of attacks, but as time wore on, he lost finesse and resorted to easily read maneuvers.
He aimed a knife at my feet, then at my neck, then made a stab with the other knife.
My opponent’s moves fell into a predictable pattern.
“Dupe, I’m going to show you something you’ll never see coming for the second time.”
I imbued the armband with mana and instantly reformed my lost limb.
“—!”
The faker hardly had time to look surprised before I punched him in the face. When my mana-fist connected with the bridge of his nose, I threw my other fist into his abdomen.
Dupe doubled over and collapsed on the spot.
“The unexpected can happen at any moment.”
“Guh!”
He had to understand the tide had turned against him. He activated Unobtrusive and vanished.
Evidently, he’d decided this was a loss and that it was better to retreat. However, I couldn’t allow him to escape.
I wasn’t the kind of person who permitted a target to slip through my fingers twice. I guessed his route of retreat perfectly and caught him by the back.
“Whenever someone tells me I’ll regret something, they end up being the one with regrets.”
“Tsk!”
Dupe was injured, but I couldn’t afford to show him mercy. Regardless of his appearance and abilities, he was a criminal in Rubens.
“Can I use it like this?”
“Oh! Oh-ho! What a great idea! Yes, you can!”
Wawok had given me his seal of approval to use my new arm for a certain kind of attack.
I triggered my skill and fed more mana into a part of my arm, firing a blue-white bullet from my right wrist.
It made a pleasing sound upon impact with Dupe’s back, knocking him a few meters away.
The bullet was pretty quick; excellent, even. Still, something at that speed shouldn’t have caught “me” so easily.
“I didn’t think you’d take the hit, even while turned away from me,” I said to Dupe.
Then something occurred to me, and I looked at my missing right hand.
Unobtrusive extended to all of me.
Apparently, even when I fired off a part of myself, the skill’s effect persisted, making the shot impossible to perceive for a few moments.
“So I’m a projectile weapon now, too… Interesting.”
Regaining my arm had unintentionally made me stronger.
“There really are two Rolands…”
I dragged Dupe back to the estate while he was unconscious, and Elvie looked between us several times. Then I tied Dupe up with some rope Elvie brought for me. I made sure the knots were secure, so he wouldn’t be able to escape.
“He’s the culprit behind the king’s assassination. I’ll leave the rest to you.”
“I understand. I’ll make preparations to throw him in the dungeons immediately.”
“If he is as capable as the knave, do you not think he will immediately escape?”
“I’m not very good at dealing with physical restraints. If you put shackles and handcuffs on him and throw him behind bars, he’ll have a tough time getting out,” I said.
“Coming from you, that has to be the truth. Still, I’d like you to inspect everything, including the guards and surveillance measures,” Elvie replied.
“Isn’t that your job?”
“But…”
Elvie lost all confidence when dealing with me.
“All right… I’ll check later.”
“Thank you.”
Elvie hurried off and had a servant bring her favorite horse. The paladin rode off for the castle.
Rila cast a sleeping spell on Dupe for good measure.
“He is quite well constructed. Are you sure he hasn’t merely assumed your form?”
“No. He definitely used Unobtrusive.”
“…I suppose you are right. When this man used his skill before me, I recalled our battle in the demon lord’s castle.”
I sat down on top of Dupe, who was lying on the ground.
“The arm you used as a back scratcher disappeared, and then he came along.” I slapped Dupe on the head. He showed no signs of waking. “He said that he came from the arm itself. I guess it could’ve been a lie, but…”
“There may yet be a technique of achieving this feat that is unknown to the both of us… I believe that to be the most natural assumption to make.”
It felt like Rila and I were going around in circles as we talked.
“If only he’d tell us…but that seems unlikely.”
Earlier, we’d roused Dupe and tried all kinds of magic on him at Rila’s suggestion, yet none of it worked.
Only the sleeping spell had any reliable effect.
“Spells can’t get him to talk, I guess.”
Rila sighed. “Perhaps that sort of magic cannot affect him.”
Demon spells were far more advanced than human ones, even down to the systematic level. And if Rila, who was the epitome of the demon world, couldn’t achieve something, then it was impossible for a human.
“We must find out how your impostor came to be and why he sought to supplant you.”
Rila and I were left with a heap of questions and not one answer.
After a while, Elvie returned to inform us she’d finished making arrangements. I handed the still-unconscious Dupe over and went to examine the dungeon where he’d be kept.
One of Elvie’s people took me to the castle basement. Once the person set a candlestick on the wall, I had a full view of everything.
There was only one jail cell. Dupe would have the entire floor to himself—more lavish treatment than I expected.
“There won’t be anyone monitoring him. We will only come down to give him food. The person in charge of that will change each day. It’ll also be irregular. We thought it might be best to keep interactions with him to a minimum. What do you think?”
“Hmm. That’s for the best, since he might try to manipulate people through conversation.”
““Can he really…?””
Rila and Elvie both looked exasperated.
“In order to do that, he’d require time and a personal relationship with the person. You’ll need to ensure he’s denied both. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for you, Elvie.”
Elvie’s subordinates shackled Dupe’s hands and feet. There were chains attached to the bindings, so his arms were always pulled taut. Next, he was blindfolded and gagged, both tied behind his head.
“These bars are made from magic-resistant material. We only learned this after the fact, but skills do not work on this metal,” a guard reported after opening the cell.
“This dungeon was created specifically to hold special people,” Elvie summarized. “It’s basically the reverse VIP treatment.”
Rila attacked the bars as a test, and they didn’t so much as budge.
“Hmph. Not bad…”
I had no qualms with the facility or how it was monitored.
Barring human error, Dupe would never get out.
“We will only leave a candle here when someone comes down. Otherwise, this place will be in total darkness. With the blindfold on, I doubt he’ll see much of anything.”