The Blob started by shooting black goop at me, which I blew away with the swing of my fan. I followed up with a [Hairpin: Azure Hairpin] but my attack turned into a chicken.

“What? What obnoxious skill have you picked up this time?”

“How do you like my [Mana Transfiguration]?”

“Great… Just what I need…”

The Blob kept turning my attacks into random objects. If that’s the case then no mana it is. I ran to the edge of the cave we were fighting in and started hurling rocks.

“Haha my armor is impenetrab…” A rock hit her in her face.

“He, stupid Imposter, there’s no armor on your face!” I kept flinging rocks at the Blob’s face. My accuracy is… in need of improvement.

“Haha where are you aiming? I’m over here!”

“This place is so Misha unfriendly! You know that physical feats are our weakness!”

“Haha why do you think I fled to this place in the middle of nowhere? Only Misha are a threat to me and Misha won’t step a foot on this continent! You were a fool to follow me here!”

More black goop got shot at me.

My game plan had changed. I used my fan to smack rocks at the imposter's face. For some reason, I was only good at smacking as my accuracy greatly improved.

“It seems you’ve picked up a useless skill too!” The blob was protecting its face with a bulky armored arm. “Do you truly think you can defeat this curse by batting rocks at me?”

My fan opened and I sent freezing wind at the Blob. This caught her by surprise and a large icicle took out one of its arms.

“Hmm, it seems my technique has a flaw as it can’t deal with ambient mana. Can you stop finding the weaknesses of my well-crafted clones and curses?” More goop flew my way.

“It’s not my fault that you have so many obvious weaknesses!” I was acting cool but I discovered that weakness by accident. But that works for me. More swings of my fan and more freezing winds and enormous icicles dug into the Blob.

“In that case it's time for my nightmare curse! Have fun fighting your worst nightmare!” A dark pulse went out and the blob turned into a puddle on the ground. It stirred and started to form. It formed into the Sarian goddess Biian.

“Oh you got to be kidding me! I have to fight this bitch again?” A mana wave went out and my hair acted as if it was made out of water. “But this bitch might be easier to deal with as she is just strong and not obnoxious.”

The fake bitch used light barriers as I was swinging my fan. I spun around and used [Hairpin: Tsunami], breaking all light and earth-based barriers.

“If it’s just a clone or imitation I can defeat her easily!” I spun around again and used [Hairpin: Azure Hairpin]. I had to jump on my fan and fly away as light-based attacks started to fill the room. I got grazed several times but these attacks just deal damage. No stupid status effects, no strange conditions, no obnoxious abilities. It feels wrong but… I’m glad that I get to fight this fake bitch over Verruka.

Light motes filled the area and I blocked the attack [Biian] by hiding behind my fan. I seized the chance to use [Slow] and [Hairpin: Mistflower Field] after the attack subsided. The next skill would be [Hairpin: Azure Mist] but the mistflower field was tearing the fake bitch to shreds.

I sat down and enjoyed watching an imitation of Biian getting shredded. I don’t believe that I have sadistic tendencies but for this stupid goddess I will go full sadist.

“Yeah, suffer like you made me suffer!”

I piled on by using another [Hairpin: Mistflower Field] and enjoyed my sadistic trip. It didn’t feel adequate for revenge though.

But this had proved something. I have no way to accurately track down Imposter. Following this mana trail is misleading. Either I create something that can separate decoy mana trials from the real one or create something that can scout ahead.

This continent is dangerous so option 2 seems like a bad idea.

The fake goddess screamed as an exploding mistflower killed her. This meant that it was time to leave.

All this is happening because the council was too lax in chasing her down. They should have sent a full force at her before she gathered this many skills. The big problem is that all these BS clones are too weak to fight me but strong enough to give the inhabitants here trouble.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The creator has to split her mana with the BS clones. So make 100 BS clones and she has to split her mana in 100. This will leave the original quite weakened. That is if she created equal distributions.

She could also make them in batches.

Split her mana in 5 and make 4 BS clones. Then split what was left and so on. This will make some BS clones way stronger than others.

Either way the imposter has to split her mana and that’s a problem as she has countless of these BS clones running around.

Assuming she is low on mana is an easy way to die. She knows that I’m coming. I might have to alter some skills to deal with this. I am unable to create completely new skills without my lab setup so I need to heavily modify spells I already know to the point that they become something completely different.

First, I need something to track her. It can’t get fooled by piles of corpses or those ugly BS clones. Secondly I need a spell to ward me from those obnoxious effects. This will be the hardest as I will have to specify what types of effects to block. It sounds as an inefficient plan now that I think of it.

I located a small glade and sat down while looking through my magic circles. Instead, I could make [Cleanse] more robust. But I also need a backup. The Imposter isn’t an idiot. She will have some way to disable my [Cleanse] when she wants to kill me. So far, she just seemed to toy with me and its pissing me off!

I need to stay calm. This might be her plan. Magic works better on a calm mind. Its one of the basics of magic. Then again… we Misha learn the basics to do anything to circumvent them. I remember how a Misha had researched magic that fuels off emotions as she was unable to keep a clear mind. It worked well but it would work better if someone channels anger while having a clear mind. Either way. I can’t use that magic so I have to keep a clear mind.

Verruka is probably confident that she can beat me but she isn’t stupid so she tries to wear me down. Why do I believe that she’s confident that she can beat me? She is inviting me to find her, probably also so she can devour my skills.

At this point, she might be strong enough to defeat me but that’s not scaring me off. She fights with ‘quantity of skills’; I fight with ‘quality of skills’. I have to prove that quality beats quantity. And for this, I need to find her first.

I opened the magic skill of [Search]. It is a very weak skill. It doesn’t get used in combat due to it’s weakness. It’s used to find lost slippers or a lost brush. Its mainly used in the household. It is very good at what it’s supposed to do, it’s just weak as it can only find relatively small inanimate objects in a small radius around the user.

I need it to find also people in a large radius. I can make it many times more stronger if I make it specific to finding just the Imposter. Sacrifice versatility for effectiveness and accuracy. It also has to account for the possibility that the Imposter might not count as a person anymore but a goopy blob.

The first step was to expand the range of [Search], it would be renamed to [Search: Imposter] after I finished. I will make sure to dedicate a section in the magic circle to finding a specific person so that I can alter it later on and use [Search: Remi], or [Search: Bea] afterward. It will ignore all other individuals and find people that match what I’m looking for.

The range needed to be enormous. I had to expand this relatively small magic circle. Adjusting the range is easy, expanding a magic circle isn’t. Expanding a magic circle requires me to deconstruct it and then reconstruct it to become larger but have the original elements relatively in the same position relating to each other. It’s quite a pain in the ass.

The new magic circle turned out big and juicy. The range got adjusted. And the infrastructure of this circle needs a lot of work. The mana flow is so slow and inefficient.

I didn’t have my lab so what would normally take just a few hours took several days. This is the reason why I try to keep my magic circles relatively similar to the original when I adjust them on the fly, it will otherwise take too long. This skill can’t be recognized as [Search] anymore.

This glade was home to some peaceful animals so nothing had disturbed me. A section of the magic circle got cleared out for later. The tiny details and functionality is up next. What will it do when I find the trail? What is the threshold of mana that it needs to alert me? how will it alert me? will it [Search] just once when I use it or will it [Search] 3 times, 5 times or 10 times to avoid false positives? Those are the types of details that need to be set to ensure that [Search: Imposter] will work but also will be reliable and comfortable and intuitive to use.

I don’t want to use [Search: Imposter] every 2 minutes for example, so it needs to be good enough to avoid that.

Several days passed again. I made sure to take breaks, practice with my fan and keep up with my beauty standards. The last section was to insert the details of the individual that I was looking for. This was the easiest part. I entered whatever I knew about the Imposter. I might have to adjust it as I learn more about her but this will do.

“[Search: Imposter] is finished! It only took me 17 days! Ok don’t get too excited Azu, you also need to make something to deal with those obnoxious effects.”

I sat back down. I had a lot of ideas but I got lazy and just baked [Cleanse] into my most used skills. It will cause my favorite attacks to also use [Cleanse] on me. so when [Cleanse] gets disabled, it will be not a big problem. I will just [Cleanse] by continuously attacking.

It was a lazy solution but the more I thought about it the more I believed that this as a genius idea.

“Haha! I have truly ascended! Nobody can match the genius of Azurra Mist!” I pointed at the sky but nobody heard me. The jungle animals looked at me as if I was a nutcase. They are not wrong and it was embarrassing.

I ignored the judging stares of the jungle animals and used [Search: Imposter]. I got a hit! So [Search: Imposter] looks for 2 things. The Imposter herself and any matching BS clones and her mana trail. A map of the area covered b [Search: Imposter] will appear in my head. The BS clones have a different color than the real one. The map also displays altitude. I had almost messed up and omitted that. It would work for a relatively flat continent like Kaledon but it won’t work on Nesher.

The trails are the same, the dummy trails have the same color as the BS clone while the real trail matches the real Imposter. The dummy trails and BS clones were purple and the real one is red.

The red trail was extremely thin and hardly noticeable. It seems [Search: Imposter] needs some tuning and I need to lower the lower limit of mana detection. But I got a hit. She can’t escape now.

“I’m coming for you bitch!”

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