Chapter 251: Mirror Dungeon (2)
Hundreds of mirrors stared back at them, every reflection turning at the exact same instant. Not toward Kai, not toward Sera, not toward Elden individually.
Toward the center of the chamber.
Silence.
Kai’s grip tightened around the Fractured Blade. "...That’s unsettling."
Sera answered quietly, "I preferred the wolves."
Elden narrowed his eyes at the wall of reflections. "They’re waiting."
Nobody moved. Ten seconds passed. Nothing.
Then every reflection bowed at once, in perfect unison, and the massive stone doors ground open behind them, the sound rolling through the chamber like distant thunder.
...
The three of them stepped inside, and the room dwarfed everything they’d walked through so far. The ceiling wasn’t stone at all. It was one enormous mirror stretching across the full width of the arena, reflecting the floor below in perfect, dizzying clarity.
Crystal pillars rose from the ground in a wide circle, and each one reflected a different battlefield entirely. Kai recognized fragments in some of them. A forest. A ruined city. An icy mountain range. A volcanic valley.
Sera whispered, "...It’s remembering."
Elden shook his head slowly. "No. It’s collecting."
At the center of it all stood a lone figure, smooth crystal from head to foot, no face, no armor, no visible weapon. Only two glowing silver eyes tracking them across the chamber.
[Boss Found.]
[Reflection Monarch.]
[Level: 63.]
The system window faded. Nobody attacked. The Monarch simply watched.
...
Kai circled slowly to the left. Nothing happened.
Sera circled the opposite direction. Still nothing.
Elden studied the mirrored ceiling overhead, tilting his head. Nothing changed there either.
Kai frowned. "...Why isn’t it attacking?"
"Because it’s observing," Elden said.
The Monarch raised one hand, and tiny crystal particles drifted through the air, settling silently onto Kai’s sword, onto Sera’s shield, onto Elden’s staff.
The boss wasn’t preparing an attack.
It was recording them.
Kai smiled slowly. "...Then let’s give it something useless."
...
Kai swung deliberately awkward, a clumsy overhead strike with no real intent behind it. Sera blocked from a bad angle, leaving an obvious gap in her guard. Elden cast a spell so inefficient it barely qualified as one.
The Monarch copied every motion perfectly, down to the smallest detail.
Kai laughed. "...It fell for it."
Sera grinned. "It copies everything."
Elden said quietly, "Not everything." He pointed. "It doesn’t understand intention. It copied the movements. Not the purpose behind them."
Kai’s smile widened. "...Good."
...
Then the Monarch’s crystal body began changing shape all at once. A sword formed in one hand. Then a spear extended from another arm that hadn’t existed a second earlier. A bow materialized. A staff.
Behind it, mirror weapons started orbiting exactly like Kai’s Ashen Seal. Golden swords bloomed into existence around it, identical to Sera’s summons. Gravity runes spread across the arena floor beneath it, the same pattern Elden used.
Kai whistled. "...Now that’s cheating."
The Monarch attacked with everything at once.
...
Mirror Tempest Fang collided with Kai’s real one, the impact tearing a crystal pillar apart down its center. Kai gritted his teeth and pushed through the resistance, redirecting the clash sideways before it could throw him off balance.
Golden swords rained down from above, and Sera intercepted the volley with her shield, throwing it in a wide arc to sweep three blades out of the air before Position Swapping across the arena to catch the rest from a better angle.
Gravity doubled without warning, and Kai’s knee buckled hard toward the floor before he could brace against it.
"Elden!"
Elden was already moving, tracing the anchor rune half-buried beneath the crystal floor. He drove his staff into it before the second gravity pulse could land, shattering the rune clean in half. The pressure lifted instantly.
Arc Lances filled the air a moment later, streaking across the arena in tight formation. Kai Air Stepped through the gaps between them, weaving without slowing.
Mirror Kai used Thread Caster, silver lines shooting out to snag his ankle mid-step. Kai answered with Pulse Fist, the compressed shockwave snapping the threads before they could tighten.
Mirror Sera unleashed a wall of radiant swords, hundreds of them at once, filling half the arena with golden light.
Real Sera answered with even more, her own swords colliding with the mirror’s in a storm of clashing light that lit the whole chamber gold.
Mirror Elden flooded the floor with traps, dozens of them activating in overlapping sequence.
The real Elden dismantled them faster than they could finish arming, staff moving in short, precise strikes that found each anchor point before it could trigger.
The fight kept reshaping itself every thirty seconds or so, the Monarch abandoning one style entirely for another mid-exchange, never settling into anything long enough to be predicted outright.
Kai laughed through gritted teeth, ducking under a mirrored greatsword swing. "...It’s trying everything!"
Sera smashed aside a crystal spear thrust aimed at her ribs. "Good! I wanted a challenge!"
...
Somewhere in the chaos, Kai noticed something.
Every time the Monarch switched fighting styles, everything paused. Just barely. A fraction of a second, almost invisible if you weren’t already looking for it.
He watched for it again on the next transition, tracking the moment the mirror weapons shifted from Sera’s swords into Elden’s arc lances.
There. The same hesitation.
Because it had to decide first.
Kai shouted, "Elden!"
"I see it," Elden called back, already understanding. "It can’t use every style at once. It has to choose."
Sera grinned, blocking another strike. "So we don’t give it time to choose."
...
Everything sped up after that.
Kai abandoned any predictable pattern entirely, switching mid-swing between the Fractured Blade and Tempest Fang without warning. Sera never let the Monarch settle into a single rhythm, pressing constantly from a new angle every time it tried to reset. Elden stopped attacking directly altogether, focusing purely on destroying the mirror anchors feeding the Monarch’s transformations before they could stabilize.
One opening led straight into another. Kai drove the Monarch backward with a burst of Pulse Fist, launching it toward Sera. She caught it on her shield and redirected the momentum sideways into one of Elden’s gravity fields, which yanked it off balance and flung it directly into the path of an Arc Lance. The lance drove it forward again, straight back toward Kai.
Kai switched weapons on the fly. Tempest Fang. Pulse Fist. Fractured Blade. Bloodthorn. The Ashen Seal orbited around him, weapons striking from four directions at once.
Everything overlapped, faster than the Monarch could process. Every time it tried to switch styles to answer one attack, another was already landing before the transition finished.
Its perfect ability to copy had become the exact thing breaking it apart.
...
The Monarch made one last desperate attempt, copying Kai completely, down to his stance, his grip, the angle of his blade.
Everything matched.
Except Distortion.
Blue windows flickered faintly at the edge of Kai’s vision, and he moved half a heartbeat sooner than his own reflection had anticipated. The Monarch predicted the wrong position entirely, its mirrored strike cutting through empty air where Kai should have been standing.
Kai smiled. "...Still can’t copy that part."
Blue light gathered around his hand, and Null Fang formed in his grip, the black blade drinking in the ambient light around it.
One clean strike. The durability-denying edge sliced clean through the Monarch’s crystal chest, and cracks spread outward from the wound in branching lines.
Silence.
The Reflection Monarch looked down at the crack running through its own body.
Then it smiled. Not mockingly. Almost respectfully.
It raised one hand, and every mirror in the arena began shattering at once, thousands of reflections dissolving into scattered light.
The Monarch whispered, barely audible, "...Original."
Then it exploded into countless shimmering fragments, light scattering across the chamber and fading into nothing.
...
Silence held over the ruined arena for a long moment.
Then system windows bloomed into view.
[Boss Defeated.]
[B-Rank Dungeon Cleared.]
[Distortion Applied.]
[Drop Quality: Optimized.]
A Crystal Relic Core settled onto the floor where the Monarch had stood. Beside it, a Reflection Crown, still catching light despite nothing left to reflect it from. An Adaptive Mirror Core. A Resonance Crystal. And last, a faintly glowing Mirror Authority Fragment.
Kai crouched down and picked up the fragment last, turning it slowly in his palm. Lily was going to lose her mind over this one.
Sera dropped straight down onto the crystal floor, breathing hard. "...That was fun."
Kai laughed, gathering the rest of the drops by hand. "I knew you’d say that."
Elden adjusted his glasses, studying the last of the shattered mirrors dissolving around them. "...The dungeon wasn’t trying to defeat us."
Kai looked over. "What do you mean?"
"It was trying to become us," Elden said quietly.
Silence.
Kai looked around at the ruined arena, crystal dust still settling through the air. "...Then it failed."
Elden smiled faintly. "No." He glanced between Kai and Sera. "It became stronger."
A pause.
"...Just not stronger than three people who’ve actually fought together for months."
...
They made their way out of the dissolving dungeon a short while later, stepping through the gate just as sunlight broke over them, warm and ordinary after everything they’d just walked through. Behind them, the gate itself was already collapsing inward, light folding in on itself until nothing remained but empty air.
Another B-Rank cleared.
Another step closer to Level 70.
And another lesson carried back with them to Mythal.