Realising her situation, Eleanor halted. An overwhelming urge rose in her throat... the urge to scream, to make a sound, any sound, simply to prove that she existed within this void. She forced it down, straightening her spine, her hands clenched rigidly at her sides.
She tried to think, to reason, to diate the situation, but the void offered no point of focus. Her thoughts echoed back at her, growing louder, stretched and distorted by the suffocating silence.
Fragnts of her earlier life began drifting to the surface. One mory returned with painful, fra-by-fra clarity: an ordinary, insignificant day from her days of being a werewolf... the day she entered Tom Raynor’s laboratory.
Tom Raynor had made several fundantal and enduring contributions to computer science and engineering: Random Access mory, Virtual mory, Multiprogramming, High-Level Languages. His work had paved the way for the Kingdom’s earliest pioneering computers, and eventually the world’s. When others joined the wave of developnt and carried it further, he withdrew to the Raynor Clan’s ancestral land, continuing his work in secret.
Tragically, he was assassinated at a young age. Despite all their efforts, the Raynor Clan never uncovered the culprit. The world had entered the information age, yet no Raynor pursued information technology after Tom’s death. The clan was losing ground in the new era of business. It was for this reason that Fiona Raynor approached Eleanor and asked whether she might attempt to advance the projects Tom had left behind.
While Eleanor was recovering from childbirth and learning the responsibilities of being an Elizabeth, she had found the abandoned projects. Many were no more than theories, limited by the technology of their ti. She had been intrigued by the possibility of completing them in her own way. So, when Fiona declared her ready to step into the world of business, Eleanor founded Heimdall Inc. and Orionix SpaceTech Inc. in the United States.
Most of the projects her companies undertook had been conceived by Tom Raynor. She had rely adapted them to the technologies of the information age and made them her own. Eleanor’s mind drifted back to those days... learning information technology while caring for her precious daughter, Freya.
Abruptly, she returned to herself and realised she had drifted too far from the present mont. She was still standing in the sa spot, motionless for far too long.
"What is the purpose of this trial? Judging from the previous levels, it must be sothing ant to improve . But what? There’s no tir. How am I supposed to reach the next level?" she wondered.
With no answer coming from anywhere, her own thoughts rose to fill the silence. "There’s no tir here. The ti I spent drifting must have been more than ten minutes. Which ans ti is stretched, just like in the last level. But without a tir, I can’t asure ten minutes. And there’s no prompt like before, no explanation of the goal. If there is a goal, then what is it?"
She muttered to herself as she thought it through. "No matter how fast I walk, the door never gets any closer. It’s as if I’m making no progress at all... yet it’s still right there in front of . And my mind keeps wandering without my permission. That ans this is a trial of the mind."
After a mont of contemplation, she resolved to keep walking towards the door, even if it felt like she was going nowhere. The only viable conclusion was that this level demanded her focus... to hold her mind steady on her goal, even while it faltered.
With a heavy sigh, she set off again. She fixed her gaze on the door ahead. Even as her thoughts drifted involuntarily, she forced herself forward, step by step, like a machine following its programming.
"How long have I been here? A day? A week?" Eleanor had no sense of ti. Her body felt no hunger or thirst, unlike in the previous level, but her mind clawed for stimulation like an addict craving its fix. She found herself counting her own heartbeats... each dull thud a mockingly slow trono stretched across an empty eternity. She forced her focus upon herself, silent and tense, like a frantic panther pacing inside a cage made of nothing. The glowing door never drew nearer; it hovered at the sa distance, a taunting star pinned in a white sky.
She felt no pain, no fear... only the grinding weight of ti itself, pressing on her like a mountain. Her sanity was the resource being drained, minute by minute, scraped thin by the unbearable void. This white room was not designed to break her body; it was ant to erase her mind through pure, suffocating nothingness.
Yet she continued. Step after step, slower with each passing mont. Her mind dulled, her body dragged, but she kept going. And then, without warning, she found herself standing before the glowing white door.
She did not know when she had reached it. Only that it was suddenly there, right in front of her. In disbelief, she reached out and pushed. As before, the door opened, inviting her into the next trial.
There was no joy in clearing this level... only another door, another unknown. But as she crossed the threshold, she froze.
She was staring at herself.
On the opposite side of the room stood her exact likeness, facing her as though she were a living mirror. The air was still and sharply silent, charged with a faint tension that made the fine hairs on her arms rise.
It wasn’t a rough imitation. It was perfect... her height, her posture, the steady glint in its eyes. It wore the academy uniform exactly as she did, and it stood with the sa effortless readiness she felt rooted in her own bones.
She understood this level at once: she was ant to fight her own doppelgänger. If it followed the rules of countless gas, then her opponent would possess all her abilities and skills. She simply had to outdo herself.
Without a word, Eleanor activated Mind Acceleration. The world stretched into slow motion, her perception sharpening until every minute detail of the doppelgänger’s stance beca vivid. She saw the faint tension in its lead leg, the subtle shift of weight. A low kick, she predicted... followed by a straight punch. She slipped into a Thunder Style counter, her body blurring as she used Speed Phantom to glide inside the imagined kick, her fist snapping towards the copy’s jaw, crackling with the force of Voltaic Strikes.
The doppelgänger moved.
It was a motion so brutally efficient and so shockingly economical that it bypassed her prediction entirely. It didn’t block. It didn’t dodge. It simply wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Instead of launching a kick, it made a minute twist of its torso, and Eleanor’s electrified strike cut through empty air where its head had been a heartbeat before. In the sa fluid instant, its hand wrapped in a tighter, quieter corona of lightning tapped her sternum.
A surge of paralysing agony ripped through her. It wasn’t strength that felled her, but precision. The doppelgänger had channelled Lightning Touch not as a blunt attack, but as a neurological disruptor, targeting a specific nerve cluster with clinical exactness. Eleanor staggered back, breath snagging, her Storm Heart hamring as it scrambled to counteract the disruption.
"Impossible. I saw the attack. How is my doppelgänger performing better than ? That’s infuriating. I’m the original here. All right?" she thought bitterly as she braced herself for the next exchange.
She tried again, forcing Overdrive Focus into her veins. Her speed and reflexes ignited, the world thickening into syrup while she alone moved with sharp, liquid ease. She beca a storm of afterimages... Thunder Style Phantom Arts splitting her into three illusory versions that converged from different angles. She was the true threat, concealed among them, closing the distance in a flash of lightning with Bolt Step, her Killing Precision guiding a knife-hand strike towards the doppelgänger’s throat.
A faint glow blossod on the centre of the copy’s forehead... Eye of Wisdom. It didn’t so much as glance at the phantoms. Its attention remained fixed on her and her alone, seeing through the deception with contemptuous clarity. As she struck, it slipped past her attack like water flowing around a stone, its hand executing the Internal Feasting Phantom. The blow wasn’t forceful, yet a needle-fine spike of energy lanced through her guard, piercing muscle and driving straight into the core of her shoulder joint.
There was a sickening pop. Her arm went limp, dead weight hanging at her side.
Eleanor cried out, more in fury than pain. She had always used the Internal Feasting Phantom as a finisher against foes already collapsing. Her doppelgänger had employed it as a surgical opening, dismantling her with rciless precision.
Panic clawed at her. She hurled a Lightning Projectile... not the basic sphere, but the overcharged, area-of-effect variant, a blast ant to swallow the battlefield in raw electricity and force her opponent back.
The doppelgänger didn’t move. It simply raised a hand.
Eleanor’s Energy Comprehension flared with shock as she felt sothing she’d never experienced: her own projectile wasn’t absorbed, nor deflected. It was unravelled. The chaotic orb of lightning compacted, twisted, refined in its palm into a thread-thin beam of incandescent white energy. Then it fired it back at her.
The beam sliced through the fabric of her robe, carving a burning line across her ribs with surgical cruelty.
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