Mage? Magic Engineer!

Red Robed Rorschach did not disappear, but he grew enraged.

The connection between the original self and him was now severed, and they no longer shared a mirrored relationship. In other words, the change Red Robed Rorschach had desperately tried to avoid had irreversibly happened.

"Why would you do this? Why would you give up your Casting Ability?" Red Robed Xia’s face was livid.

Rorschach, no longer feeling any pain, said lightly, "Here, whether it’s Rorschach the Middle Level Caster or a powerless ordinary person, what difference does it make to you, who has the home-field advantage and calls yourself a Great Mage? In your own words, they’re all just ants and monkeys."

"And by doing this, I’ve confirmed one thing above all else: no matter my appearance or my body, with or without Magic Ability, I am still me. And you are not me."

Dangerous lightning coalesced in Red Robed Xia’s palm. To the now-ordinary Rorschach, he was nothing more than a fragile, drifting Soul with no power to resist.

Red Robed Xia could erase him with a single thought, and he was indeed planning to do just that. "Too bad for you, I’m still alive and well. See? I wasn’t lying. You’re not the original at all, and I don’t need you to exist."

Facing the murderous Red Robed Rorschach, the original calmly continued, "While confirming the first point, I was also betting on a second: that the Tree of Law chose *me*—the one referred to as ’Rorschach.’ Just as only ’I’ can enter the Original Layer, just as I have so many special qualities, just as I have my panel..."

"’I’ don’t need to prove to anyone that ’I am me.’ But you, from the very beginning, have been constantly trying to prove yourself, constantly begging for my acknowledgment."

"How pathetic!"

The moment he finished speaking, the tendrils of the Tree of Law connecting to the "Great Mage" emerged and detached from the red-robed Spirit Body. Then, a brilliant light converged on the black-haired original, even though he was not in his Otherworld form and possessed no Casting Ability.

This was something the red-robed Spirit Body had never anticipated. His own self-identity was also Rorschach, and he had never considered this situation, never imagined he would lose the Tree of Law’s acknowledgment.

"Just as I thought. The Tree of Law has always been bound to me. The only reason you could control it was because you were once my mirror image and you were always in the Boundary Land. But not anymore... No, from the start, you were never part of my ’self.’ You were more like a thief borrowing my identity to gain access."

The tables turned in an instant. Rorschach, with the face of his past life but the Casting Ability of his current one, acted. The links of the Tree of Law connected fully to him, while Red Robed Rorschach seemed to become an empty shell, all form and no substance.

"And... if you were really me, you would have remembered this at all times—villains die from monologuing!"

Rorschach didn’t kill the guy who had tormented him for so long. Instead, he commanded the Tree of Law to break through its limits and expand. Its branches and leaves, having already developed once from analyzing the Ancient Sage, grew anew. Now, its subterranean roots swelled, encompassing the entire Boundary Land and pushing outward against its very confines.

If Feuerbach had been there, he would have been utterly horrified. Rorschach’s mastery over this space and the Tree of Law had reached its peak; he was like the lord of a realm. Unlike a "Sub-plane discoverer" like Granor, Rorschach needed no title or acknowledgment. The Boundary Land was definitively and completely under his control.

The "virtual coordinates" of the Boundary Land began to shift, moving toward the Original Layer of the entire world. The two drew closer and closer.

One was a system representing Rorschach, its roots mixed into the order of the Otherworld; the other was a field that was the personification of the entire world’s magical order. Rorschach didn’t know what would happen if they touched, but he was certain it would be catastrophic, that the Supreme Heaven would not sit idly by, and that he would get a response.

In the endless Supreme Heaven, the eyes sketched from infinite starlight began to flicker, then closed. As these eyes shut, Red Robed Rorschach lost the foundation of his existence and began to dissipate.

"You... how did you know..." Such were his last words.

Finally, the pure Artificial Soul was dismantled by the tendrils of the Tree of Law and integrated into Rorschach’s Spirit Body, restoring the power that should have been his all along. Rorschach gradually recovered his appearance in this world, along with a Soul strength that matched, or even far surpassed, that of a Great Mage.

There was also a segment of memories and knowledge belonging to the Ancient Sage. With a thought, he chose not to accept it. Thanks to Red Robed Rorschach’s efforts, the Ancient Sage’s Magic had already been inscribed into the Tree of Law, creating nodes and links.

Transmuting Dust gathered and took shape, combining with the knowledge and memories of the Ancient Sage to manifest a smiling old man. "Aren’t you afraid of creating another Tower Spirit that will turn on its master?"

"...No. Because you depend on me for your existence. You are a product of my gaze and imagination. Though you are not a part of me, I think, therefore you are." This was just like how Red Robed Rorschach depended on the gaze of those starry eyes on Rorschach to exist.

This Ancient Sage truly had no Soul. If Rorschach stopped imagining him, he would revert to being mere memories stored within the Tree of Law. Rorschach had simply performed an Activation on these memories, allowing them to manifest in the form of a person.

The "Ancient Sage" nodded. "Correct. So you understood the true nature of that other ’Rorschach.’ Anyone else would never have thought of the generation mechanism for a ’mirror image.’"

"It was a guess," Rorschach said, shaking his head. "I could only be certain that it was related to the great being in the Supreme Heaven. You were also part of my experiment, one that successfully verified my hypothesis."

The first time Rorschach ascended beyond the sky, to a level beyond the Material Realm, he had met the gaze of a pair of eyes made of infinite starlight. And every time he had since re-entered the Original Layer, beneath the Supreme Heaven, he was certain that whether those eyes were looking at him or not, their gaze was upon him.

Red Robed Rorschach’s existence was created by those eyes, by the Great Will in the Supreme Heaven. The essence of Red Robed Rorschach was "Rorschach as seen by the great being," made manifest by using the stripped-away Artificial Soul. The Ancient Sage knew the Supreme God possessed such power—what is seen becomes reality, and reality is what is seen. By analyzing the Sage’s knowledge, Red Robed Rorschach had also become aware of this.

If the original were erased, the Great Will would not disappear, and therefore he wouldn’t either. However, he would forever have to rely on the Supreme God to maintain his own existence. That was why, unless absolutely necessary, he was unwilling to break the mirrored relationship with the original. Instead, he attempted a Reversal—he wanted to be on the "outside of the mirror," to take the dominant position and become "Rorschach’s true self."

Rorschach didn’t know all these details. His entire scheme was built on a single assumption: that his special abilities and gifts all came from a higher being, and that this being would ultimately still choose him, not the mirror image produced from the gaze of the great Other.

He didn’t even understand the true nature of the mirror image. Rorschach simply held a firm belief that his Soul had not been damaged during the separation, that what Red Robed Xia claimed had not happened.

His assumption was correct.

First, Rorschach used the [Reversing Beam] on himself, reverting to his powerless former self to destroy the mirror structure and deny that *thing* was "me."

Red Robed Rorschach indeed didn’t disappear, even after they were no longer mirror images of each other. So, Rorschach then used the entire Tree of Law and the Boundary Land as a "Siege Hammer" to charge toward the Original Layer. This was the only way he could think of to attract the Great Will’s attention. ’I can’t threaten it,’ Rorschach thought. ’I’m just saying: Hey, I noticed you’re the one pulling the strings!’

Only That Being could make Red Robed Rorschach vanish completely, just as It was the prime suspect in creating that pain in the ass in the first place.

’It’s just like bloatware. Even after you uninstall it, you still have to delete a bunch of registry entries and files...’

"But what if... the Great Will hadn’t chosen you?" the Pseudo-Ancient Sage asked, still somewhat puzzled. Its memories were constantly surfacing, and after summarizing them, it concluded that someone as bold and willing to take risks as Rorschach was an absolute rarity, especially among Casters.

"Then I’d be dead. Dead as a doornail, in fact," Rorschach said with a shrug. "I hate to admit it, just like how Red Robed Rorschach was unwilling to sever his connection to me and become completely dependent on another. Without the panel, without being chosen by the Tree of Law, I wouldn’t have made it this far. Though I still can’t be sure if the Giver and the Gazer are both that same Great Will in the Supreme Heaven."

"So I had to go all-in. If I won the bet, I’d solve this problem. If I lost... well, I was destined to be erased whether I took the gamble or not."

’I’ll take all the benefits, no questions asked. But trying to create a fake to replace me? Not happening. Of course it feels like crap to be ’the chosen one,’ but right now, I can’t even see the full picture of that great being. So I’ll just have to suck it up.’

The Ancient Sage froze for a moment, not because it was shocked by Rorschach’s words, but because its computational core was rummaging through the Sage’s memories, integrating them with its current form, and organizing them into speech. After a short while, the old man finally spoke, "In my experience, this was a trial. Congratulations on passing, Master Rorschach."