Chapter 237
When Tatsuro and Ai entered through the door they opened together, there was only a pure white space stretching out before them.
And after all the other mbers had entered their assigned areas, the open doors closed by themselves.
Then the pure white space began to shimr, and eventually, the place started changing into a rough rocky surface.
It transford into a very large cavern-like place with stagnant, damp cold air, like a listone cave.
And furthermore, a monster that hadn't been there monts ago was floating in the middle of this cave-like room.
"What's that? A soap bubble?"
"It seems to be a monster, but..."
The monster was transparent, a huge floating existence about three ters in size, like a soap bubble.
Despite having a body that looked like it would fly away with a breath or break with a touch, the amount of magical power and spirit power visible to Tatsuro's spirit eyes exceeded that of the powerful monsters they had encountered so far in this dungeon.
"I don't quite understand, but it might be good at both magic and physical techniques. Its spirit power and magical power are about equal."
"Can you tell what kind of skills it has?"
"...It only has three skills. However, they're both colors I've never seen before, so I don't know the details. But I feel like one is a recovery type."
"Only three skills? And one is recovery? That's creepy in its own way."
"Yeah. I'm scanning it too, but make sure you don't miss any warnings from your danger detection on your end."
"Yeah. I know."
Having fought monsters many tis to get this far, both of them watched the monster with their guard at maximum despite its weak appearance.
They thought about making a preemptive strike, but prioritized observation since they didn't know what the enemy was capable of.
As they waited, the monster's spirit power and magical power began to overflow.
Seeing this through his spirit eyes, Tatsuro shared information with Ai through ntal communication (Telepathy) while they both prepared to move imdiately no matter what might co.
Suddenly, the soap bubble changed into a sphere densely covered with small mirror surfaces, like a disco ball.
Then in the next instant, it changed shape again, becoming squishy and taking the form of a girl.
"The color and texture are still mirror-like, but that height and shape..."
"...It looks like ——Here it cos!"
"——!?"
Almost simultaneously with Ai's words, a mirror-surfaced fist that looked exactly like Ai's ca rushing toward Tatsuro's face.
Ai quickly deflected it with one left hand, then delivered a high kick with her right leg, but that was also deflected by the enemy.
"This is——"
As Ai drew her jewel sword in surprise, the opponent also grew a mirror-surfaced sword identical to the jeweled sword from its body and grabbed it, leading to an almost simultaneous clash.
Their strength was nearly equal.
The original Ai was slightly stronger, but not enough to overwhelm one-sidedly—if this had been a one-on-one fight, the situation would have been deadlocked.
However, Ai wasn't the only one here.
Tatsuro imdiately pulled the rifle staff's trigger to activate all twelve sub-cores, aid the barrel at the fake Ai, and instantly fired a thin, compressed laser-focused on penetrating power.
"This——!"
"─────"
"What!?"
"Huh!?"
But the monster, which had instantly transford half its body vertically into the sa form as Tatsuro, took out an identical staff and blocked it by deploying a twelve-attribute barrier.
Furthermore, Tatsuro's spirit eyes could see the convergence of magical power for a combination of explosion and light magic.
"──Ai!"
"─Yes!!"
As Ai received this information through ntal communication and heard her na called, she grabbed Tatsuro and retreated backward at full power.
Then the monster fired a massive explosion spell at the spot where it and Ai had been locked in combat—at its own feet.
DOGOOOOOOON!
Even Tatsuro and the others, who had already retreated over a hundred ters back, were caught in the blast wave. The two stared in amazent at where the monster had been, given the power of the explosion.
"The monster's presence is gone."
"Did it self-destruct and die?"
"I don't know. I'm checking now, but..."
Tatsuro activated his spirit eyes and scanning magic, and as a precaution, created several clusters of light, fire, and Dispel magical power floating around, giving them will through spirit magic.
"Form groups of three, one of each type, and search the surroundings. If you detect anything other than and Ai, incinerate it with lasers without rcy."
At his command, the three colors of magical power floated together in clusters and spread out around them, carrying out Tatsuro's orders.
As he increased the number through spirit magic while checking the surroundings, he found thousands of responses identical to the monster from earlier, but much smaller.
And these were beginning to gather with clear intent, combining with nearby ones to increase their mass.
And when they were detected by Tatsuro's spirit magic, they were incinerated by lasers and dispersed again.
Analyzing this, Tatsuro furrowed his brow.
"So that's why it could use magic that would catch itself in the blast. Still, this is troubleso."
"Can't we just destroy them one by one once they gather to so extent?"
"No. Looking at how it disperses from our spirit magic attacks when the body receives a certain amount of impact, it scatters into pieces too small to see. So while it looks like it's disappearing from our attacks, in reality, we're barely doing any damage. Furthermore, even if parts are lost, it can regenerate as long as microscopic fragnts of its body remain. The only saving grace is that judging from how it's not attacking at all, it seems unable to use its copying ability with an incomplete body. Still, it's troubleso..."
"Ugh. Then how can we defeat it?"
"The quickest way would be to nullify its skills with [Level Eater]. Otherwise, we'd need to wait until it completely reforms into one mass and then finish it with a single high-output attack that won't let it disperse. But——"
"Since it can copy us and our weapons so precisely and even use their abilities, it would be difficult to land either [Level Eater] or a high-output attack?"
"Exactly."
From how it had nearly identical sword and martial arts skills to Ai, and nearly identical staff and magic skills to Tatsuro.
This made it clear that it could create slightly inferior copies and use them freely.
So the stronger our skills and better our equipnt, the stronger it becos.
"I wonder if it copied [Level Eater] too? If so, we can't carelessly get close."
"...I don't know, but I think it hasn't."
"Really?"
Seeing that he seed to have so confidence rather than just speculation, Ai asked the reason with surprise.
"Rember when we fought the dungeon in the extra stage?"
"Yeah. I rember clearly."
"At that ti, we were put into virtual bodies, right? And when that happened, rember how it said it couldn't recreate my [Level Eater] and Leah's [All-Seeing Eyes]?"
"Ah- It did say that. Sothing about them being too complex to work without a real body. ——I see. If even the dungeon couldn't recreate those skills, a being created by it couldn't possibly copy them."
"That's what I think. But we still can't be optimistic, so let's stay cautious."
After finishing their analysis and gathering information about the monster, the next question beca how to defeat it.
The enemy might be fine fighting indefinitely, but we have a thirty-minute ti limit.
It would be disastrous if we wasted ti and got disqualified just because we ran out of ti.
"So, I'm thinking of trying to hit it with [Level Eater] when it's about to completely reform."
"Won't it work on those fragnts that are gradually getting bigger over there?"
"Using it on an incomplete state might have unpredictable results. I want to prioritize what we're sure will work right now."
"Got it."
About a minute and a half after this conversation ended.
The monster had largely returned to its original soap bubble size, and the last three large masses were moving toward each other, seeking to combine.
Using analysis magic to calculate the central point where they would likely combine based on their speed, Tatsuro blew out a black sphere tid to hit just as they rged.
As they predicted, when the three pieces combined, [Level Eater] entered into the monster.
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Level: 101
Skills: [Mirror Copy 10], [Dispersion Evasion], [Super Regeneration]
---------------------------------
"What!? None of the skill levels are gone!"
"Eh!?"
While the high level was surprising, Tatsuro couldn't hide his shock at being unable to nullify the skills, which was their main objective.
However, the monster wouldn't consider such things.
Quickly changing from a soap bubble to a mirror ball again, it transford into an eerie object with its right half in Tatsuro's form and left half in Ai's form.
Then the right half began using magic with a staff in hand, while the left half used a fake arm to shoot arrows.
Ai had been waiting next to Tatsuro ready to carry him, so she instantly snatched him away and dodged the arrows.
And Tatsuro also quickly adapted, canceling [Level Eater] since maintaining it had beco difficult with the increased distance.
While being carried in Ai's arms, he watched the enemy's magic with his spirit eyes while constructing anti-magic and attack magic.
"What should we do, Tatsuro?"
"Plan B. Total annihilation with high-output attacks is our only option."
"But to land a high-output strike, we need to pin it down. If we're going to do sothing like that, we need preparation too... But it's dangerous for either of us to handle it alone, right?"
"Yeah. I can't keep up with its speed at all, and it's too dangerous for you since it can use all my magic. And even if we start charging up now, once it's completely gathered, it might dodge with reflexes as good as yours. So there's a possibility it would be a wasted shot──ah"
While dispelling with anti-magic the opponent's explosion-attribute laser and the cold wind of mixed wind and ice magic, Tatsuro also fired several lasers as a check.
But though not as fast as Tatsuro, the enemy still completed anti-magic and neutralized them.
Observing this while being carried in Ai's arms, Tatsuro made a bitter face.
"Hmm. If we could just stop its movent for a few seconds without making it disperse... Can you think of anything, Tatsuro?"
"I can think of several ways to contain it without impact using my magic, but since they can use exactly the sa magic as , they'd probably neutralize it imdiately."
Whether trying to freeze it in ice or bury it in earth, they would probably handle it themselves quickly with anti-magic or sothing similar.
"Co to think of it, I wonder if it can copy my beast spirit technique's Dragon Pants? Strictly speaking, that's not just my power alone, so even if it can copy skills, it shouldn't be able to do that."
"If we're talking about that, my spirit magic is the sa."
Tatsuro tried creating many ice magic spheres as a test and used spirit magic on all of them, asking them to freeze the monster while changing techniques to avoid being dispelled against.
The enemy, without using spirit magic at all, seed to realize anti-magic would be difficult and forcefully scattered them instead.
At that ti, it also used the left half of its body in Ai's form but showed no sign of using beast spirit techniques.
Of course, they didn't conclude it couldn't use beast spirit techniques or spirit magic just from that.
But beast spirit techniques are powerful, and spirit magic is effective for increasing the number of attacks.
If it could use them, it would have been better to use them against Tatsuro's spirit magic earlier.
In fact, now it had to deal with being partially frozen.
Considering these observations, Tatsuro began to devise a new strategy.
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