Alistair slowly got up to his feet. The adrenaline rush of dying had faded by that point. Now, he was more feeling the shock of facing himself.
“So that’s what she meant by the last one being ‘special,’” Alistair grumbled. Unlike before, there was no one else in the pure white waiting room. Since this was his sixth death, he’d have to wait for a whole six hours. Six hours where George and the rest of the Devil Kings were roaming free.
As for his own metrics, he was worse than the so-called future of the Disputed Shard, who hadn’t died a single time against his own clone. How was such a thing possible?
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Dev’rox butted in.
Alistair had been practicing mental control with nue to prevent the imp from reading his thoughts so cleanly, but clearly, it wasn’t working. “Explain,” he ordered.
“It is good for your mental development to produce the explanation yourself. Now answer.”
Alistair stroked his chin, giving in to his partner. “It truly felt like an exact replica of myself. Of course, there have to be stipulations, right? First off, it’s definitely better than me in some way I don’t understand yet. If we were truly evenly matched, then it wouldn’t be that hard to just get lucky. Also, I’m guessing the clone can’t use my finishing Skill to start off since that wouldn’t be a realistic. If I didn’t have to care about my own life, I would do crazy starting moves, so there is some self-preservation there. If it’s an exact replication of how I would act…”
A light went off in Alistair’s brain. “Then I just have to get better than my old self? And… that guy was able to adapt so fast he got better than his old self before he could get killed. That’s scary.”
Dev’rox chuckled. “Those are the type of talents you’re going to have to face soon enough. So let’s brainstorm some strategies. Luckily, you have me on your side.”
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At the exact six hour mark, Alistair was teleported back into the arena. He timed this moment to a microsecond, exploding with [Dash] right away.
> Skill Upgraded: [Dash] (Tier 4 Beginner Skill): Run across long distances in a single step through enhancing your body with Mana—adding a shadow of nue to confuse foes. Flicker, Airwalking. Mana Cost: 35. Upgradeable (0/200).
Alistair hadn’t realized how close his most used Skill was to the next tier before using it. In motion, he sadly felt no difference in speed, but upon arrival, a shadow of himself composed of nue appeared upside down at a strange angle, as if stuck to the ceiling. It was funny, as this nue shadow took its energy from Alistair’s mental reserves, but it also replicated his presence, just like the clone.
I think it would be more effective against an enemy that wasn’t myself, Alistair thought. To the clone, it would only take a small amount of brainpower to realize the shadow from the real deal.
Alistair went for the kill. It was a strategy that he wouldn’t have thought of himself, owing it to the imp, so he was hoping that his doppelganger wouldn’t think of it—if it thought at all and wasn’t a Pathfinder faux.
Alistair activated [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment].
The other Alistair pounced right away. Like the OG expected, the clone instinctively understood what the one second gap in activation time meant. As an ancient voice chanted its blessed name in a sublime language, the copy pounced on Alistair. The copy crossed his forearms and slashed with a [Hand of Karma] and [Blood Hand], intent on eliminating his opponent in one blow before the finishing Skill fully manifested.
Dev’rox shielded his host, invoking an arcane array in front of and behind Alistair. The array connected the two spaces together, eliding Alistair from the space and therefore the incoming attack. For a moment, the opposing [Hand of Karma] struggled against the array, but with a push from the imp, it went through nonetheless.
Alistair could tell Dev’rox put a lot of Mana into his spell and silently thanked him for his efforts. In the meantime, the Avalokiteśvara avatar fully formed, its resplendent coral and gold body fueled to the brim by what felt like was unceasing Dao energy. How would his other self deal with such an attack?
Dozens of palms flew at the other Alistair. The chants of the Great Compassion Dharani filled the air, giving the entire force field cage a golden aura of resplendent peace and love, calming him into a serene mental state.
What Alistair wasn’t expecting was his clone’s next step. It looked as if in the moment his slashing attack failed, he moved to defense. The first step was drawing into a state that Alistair had not attempted yet—Black Impermanence, one of the three stages split out of the Kai’tazake Mutra. A chill spread through the air even faster than the speed of the arcing palms of justice. True finality.
Black Impermanence was based of the Chinese psychopomp, but it did not invoke a Dao of Death, instead drawing its meaning from Alistair’s Ghost Node and Justice Node. A black halo surrounded the replica, especially in the irises, which looked like the corona of a solar eclipse. Alistair could tell right away that this state would be a beast on offense, adding lethality to all attacks, but the clone had a more unique plan.
A [Draconic Roar] bellowed from the other Alistair’s lungs, streaks of force affinity Mana straining as it collided with the all-encompassing silo of [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment].
As expected, it was no match for the finishing Skill. Still, a solid 15% of the hands got destroyed by the roar. Right as the attack was about to land, Alistair felt a sudden chill, as if all the heat vanished in a moment.
Then the palms struck. One after another, every third of a second, golden and coral energy flowed out in waves. Each shockwave rattled the other Alistair with the smiting hand of justice.
Alistair frowned.
The eastern gong sound that reverberated with each blow was but a fraction of the volume it had against Oracle. The golden shockwaves were muted and contained but a fraction of the energy.
He had spotted the other Alistair’s defensive technique—combining the skin-tight proto-Domain expansion with Black Impermanence. Yet that shouldn’t have reduced the actual impact of the attack, only the consequences to his body.
He would have time to figure things out as the clone prepared his own [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment]. Seeing as Alistair was out of cards to play, he sat there and took the skill head-on.
In the final moments before he “died,” Alistair came to the pertinent realization.
Justice? Oh, shit.
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Alistair paced around the waiting room, slamming his fist against the impermeable white walls. Thankfully, they were constructed in such a way that he didn’t feel any jolt on impact, so he could smash them as hard as he wanted.
“My Skill’s useless!” Alistair said, throwing his hands in the air. “I feel like I’ve been scammed.”
“Come on now, don’t start spiraling,” Dev’rox said. “It’s far from useless. It just seems to be far more effective when used on villains. Makes sense, considering its name and description.”
Alistair hadn’t even considered that possibility before, but it made all too much sense. It was like an extreme version of how his “Good Samaritan” Badge made him stronger against repropate evildoers.
“This type of training always feels so artificial,” Alistair complained on an unrelated note. “Doesn’t it dull your instincts, to have a situation where death is so meaningless?”
“The Pathfinder AI has accounted for that mentally,” Dev’rox said. “I should know, dealing frontier brats for tens of thousands of years. You’ve been through these types of trials before. Now, things aren’t as bad as they seem, are they?”
Alistair scoffed. “I know what you mean. He can’t Bodhisattva me, just like I can’t to him. But he’s slightly better than me at everything, so that doesn’t matter. I can literally feel it. Anything that I do against him, he’s going to anticipate and do even better.”
His pace slowed, and Alistair stroked his chin. There was a slight stubble there—having been trapped there for over twenty hours would do that. Funnily enough, the speed of hair growth was one of the few unchanged things about his physiology. Nowadays, he used the sharp claws of Devilsbane Gauntlets to shave.
“We spent six hours perfecting that strategy, using my knowledge of myself to see what I would do in each scenario. An imperfect accounting of my abilities led to my loss, though obviously we can’t be sure I wouldn’t have come up with some ingenious solution. The main issue that I see is this—besides a rush like that unleashing all my trump cards to create artificial surprise, I really have nothing if he’s truly better than me in every conceivable way. That leaves one last solution. I have to rapidly improve in one, low time cost domain, and surpass myself. That must have been what the first place guy did.”
“Well reasoned. My spawnlord would give you a ten hellfire lashing reprieve for that rational conclusion. The only question is, what can we get you up to snuff in within a reasonable time frame?”
Time. Alistair couldn’t forget that key element. Technically, if he spent enough time absorbing the ambient Mana, which was honestly quite abundant and condensed, he could get to level 60 and then steamroll his past self with higher stats, but that could take weeks. Weeks that he didn’t have.
It wasn’t clear how teams vs. a solo run like himself worked, but he had an inkling it would be easier. Everything about the sectors up until now made it patently obvious that teamwork was the name of the game. Every challenge that he had faced would have been easier with allies like his sister, Oliver, Alfred and his brother, and, of course, Alexandra, by his side. He could perfectly imagine the synergy of their approach. Too bad he was all alone.
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Not to get too sidetracked, Alistair’s main reason for caring about time was returning. The quicker George completed the Grand Dungeon compared to himself, the more time the leader of the Devil Kings would have to raise hell on Earth.
This time, he won’t hold anything back. The Iceman was less active before for reasons still not entirely understood, but [Armageddon] was ramping up. There was no way that he wouldn’t be afoot with the third wave coming up.
“[Dash],” Alistair said. “The other Alistair doesn’t have my upgraded version of [Dash]. He seemed to see through it quite easily, however.”
“There’s a foothold.” Dev’rox said. With their close bond, Alistair could feel the unsaid words. Not quite good enough.
“If I’m going to center my strategy around my improved [Dash], trying to increase my speed might be the way to go.”
“That’s all well and merry, but how would you go about doing that.”
Alistair frowned. “Maybe if I could somehow orient my mind to see myself as evil, I could trigger “Good Samaritan” into giving me my Agility and Intelligence bonus.”
Unlike his base stats, it seemed like the Pathfinder AI allowed for temporary bonuses to go above his current bodily limitations. He had been wondering for quite some time about whether that kind of stat manipulation could be useful for other purposes, but he put that thought aside for the moment.
“It’s not as easy as that,” Dev’rox said. “With everything I know about cultivation, a Badge like that is operating at both a personal and metaphysical level. You won’t be able to fool it with tricks, at least of that level.”
“There has to be something. We have seven hours. If we come up empty handed, that’s an embarrassment.”
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Alistair’s third attempt at beating himself was an exercise in survival.
Fake Alistair matched real Alistair blow for blow in a surprisingly mellow opening sequence. Or not so surprising, as he had anticipated the lull in energy. It definitely seemed like the doppelganger escalated the fight in accordance with Alistair’s effort. Not that the thing was ever going easy, but he obviously wasn’t going all out from the start.
That didn’t matter. In every aspect of fighting, he was slightly superior.
Alistair let his battle-honed instincts take over, throwing punch after kick in strange angles, taking advantage of the terrain. He would vary his speeds, going for a fast flying knee, before switching into a clinch and trying to go for a throw.
His other side was always a half step ahead. In every exchange, he had the slight upper hand. A glancing punch against him was a direct hit on Alistair. A partially checked leg kick on him was a direct hit to the calf for Alistair. The accumulation of blows slowly dealt damage, on top of Spiritual Fighter’s Echo.
Alistair was already unused to using the new power offensively, so it was no wonder it was an issue defensively. Even after the tiniest of blows landed on him, he would be slightly thrown off by a coral echo repeating the attack 0.5 seconds later.
His new passive Skill, [Steel Body], didn’t even cover that part. Still, he was thankful for it. Though it increased the length of his torturous defeat, it gave him more time to adapt.
Alistair tried his hardest. Simply put, there was nothing he could do. His other self was always one step ahead, always a little faster and stronger. It was really weird, to be honest. Like how one’s brain always believed it had free will, Alistair always felt like he should have been able to outsmart or outspeed or outskill his opponent, but it always fell short.
Somehow, it felt even more devastating than when Red Harmonia effortlessly defeated him. That was a gap in talent, at least at the time, like the heavens and the earth. This was more like your older brother always beating you no matter what.
He could have upped the burners, slipping into Tranquil Mind or Infinite Arsenal. But that would have only been matched at an even higher level. Instead, he employed Dev’rox.
Alistair focused as much as he could on his connection to Dev’rox. This didn’t grant him an advantage necessarily; while the doppelganger lacked an identifiable spiritual companion, he replicated the imp’s powers as a generic spatial power.
But he wasn’t trying to outmaneuver his opponent in that moment. He only needed to hold on and wait. Execute the strategy.
Alistair spit out blood and a tooth as a perfect replica of his own Devilsbane Gauntlets caved his jaw in. After ten minutes of back and forth hand-to-hand combat, he was slowing down. The doppelganger’s advantages were growing as the accumulated damage took its toll on Alistair. At the beginning of their fight he was only a step behind, but now he was a whole marathon away.
Dev’rox appeared and intercepted a punch with one of his teleportation circuits, but the punch came back through a shadowy array. Alistair wasn’t the only one to abuse space. Gritting his teeth, he tried to put up a hand to block, but a deep gash in his shoulder slowed him down. The [Frozen Claw] connected with his eyes.
The pain didn’t last for long as Alistair died for the eight time. But not before he upgraded [Ghost Whispers] to Tier 4.
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Alistair came into the next series of attempts with no dreams of victory. Still, he didn’t squander them, knowing that each moment was precious on the outside.
> [Ghost Whispers] (Tier 4 Journeyman Passive Skill): Gather the spiritual energy of the dead to fuel your own power, while also granting communication with ghosts and other spectral entities. Creates a two-way mental link that allows for seamless communication. Upgradeable (0/200).
There was a single new sentence in one of his oldest remaining Skills. While there was already a well-established link between him and Dev’rox, Tier 4 of [Ghost Whispers] was at a different level. It was as if their minds were one, increasing both of their processing speed to the level of both of them combined.
Alistair’s stats were also bolstered more than usual from drawing upon Dev’rox, though as just one ghost, he didn’t offer that much of a bonus. But every point counted when he was facing a clone of himself.
In his next five deaths, Alistair came closer and closer to victory. Through his seamless integration with Dev’rox, manipulating space became second nature. Alistair abused all kinds of angles and sudden attacks, blending his new [Dash] to throw the other Alistair off.
He caught the replica with his best blow in any of their bouts, a question mark kick to the face. Alistair’s Fall of Fleet boots knocked a tooth out of his opponent. Unfortunately, that escalation of violence led to the other Alistair using his own [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Justice].
Alistair copied his own copy’s defensive technique—overlaying Black Impermanence with a local proto-Domain, but he was a tenth of a second behind in the application. With a thunderous [Dash], the replica rushed ahead of his own finishing Skill and took Alistair by surprise with a [Hand of Karma].
The threads of Fate twisted in turmoil as the clone threw him by the neck up to the ceiling of the blue force dome. The impact of [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Justice] thrust him into the force field over and over. The Skill itself wasn’t the winner—the trauma of hitting his head against the impermeable barrier was the coup de grace.
When Alistair woke up, he almost still felt dizzy from being rocked so many times. And a bit of despair. Would he himself have come up with that idea, knowing that [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Justice] wasn’t as effective against non-evil enemies? To use the environment like that?
Without even saying any words, Dev’rox showed him some memories of his fights. Their bond had deepened with Tier 4 of [Ghost Whispers], allowing him to send more abstract ideas and emotions. Interestingly, he also found that despite the improved link via [Ghost Whispers], he could more easily block specific thoughts to the imp, offering more control.
“You play too much,” Dev’rox said. “I’m confident that you’re confident you’ll figure this out.”
“I’m not as arrogant as you think I am, Dev’rox,” Alistair shot back. “I might be confident I’ll eventually win, but time is of the essence here. It’s been over four days now, with all of my deaths. The more times I die, the more time we have to wait between each bout.”
“More time to practice. Get your routine down to a science. What are the three pillars of your victory you so academically declared before?”
Alistair kipped up to his feet and started shadow boxing. “My improved [Dash], you, and my martial arts.”
“Don’t let this get to your head,” Dev’rox said, “but those fighting-addicted monks from the Holy Ravine seemed to think you had a modicum of talent in that area. I know you can get better.”
Alistair wanted to protest that his talent in that arena was mainly due to the Pathfinder AI’s imbued talent, but he knew there was some truth to this. Maybe that was true at first, but he had put his blood, sweat, and tears into mastering the fundamentals.
Without a doubt, he was the most skilled martial artist on Earth at this point. Since coming back from the suppressed state in the valley, Alistair had felt invincible with his fists. No one could contest him, he knew that. Mentally, he hadn’t prepared for an opponent to outmatch him in his own domain so soon.
Alistair was but on one step forward on the marathon to the pinnacle. Improvements couldn’t come as easy as before, but they were nowhere near an impassable barrier.
For the next fourteen hours, he fought himself in his mind’s eye, over and over and over. When the time came, he was ready.
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Ready to get his ass beat once again.
The start was better—somewhat. Once again, they exchanged blows in close quarters, not employing any named Skills as even they would be too slow.
Alistair tried using the stolid moves of the Silver Comet Sect. While he had never been officially instructed in them, he picked it up along the way. He put his entire body into a right cross, charging forward into a clinch. The punch missed, but he managed to grab on to his replica’s Mammothskin Raiment.
The two of them were almost equally matched, vying for throws and knees. Alistair knew he was at a slight strength disadvantage, but he was able to make up for that with superior leverage. Almost all the time he spent practicing, he had devoted specifically to throws.
Even getting the timing a hundredth of a second faster let the real Alistair take the lead. When the fake shifted his weight the slightest amount backward, Alistair pounced, using all of his strength to push his opponent backward and knock him over.
In turn, the replica made a sudden shift of weight forward. Alistair stepped and performed a perfectly executed head and arm throw. He had markedly improved his skill with throw, also called a seoi nage, which he had used against Apol-Xin to great effect.
The fake Alistair flew several meters down because of the lack of an actual flow, colliding against the force field delineating their arena from the outside. The alien spectators buzzed for Alistair’s most impactful blow of the match.
Alistair dropped down, [Dashing] off an imagined floor and propelling himself toward the prone Alistair. With one gauntleted hand, he produced [Force Fist], and in the other, [Hand of Karma].
Since it was his best opportunity yet, he burned a substantial portion of his positive Karma into the latter Skill. The glow of the crimson energy was almost blinding as he burnt the threads of Fate to his will. As Dev’rox said—Fate was one model of reality. In this destiny, the victor would be him.
Alistair’s confidence came to a screeching halt as he heard the sacred name of Avalokiteśvara chanted. It won’t go off in time, he thought. Caution imprinted itself on him as a fraction of nue split off to form an illusory mind shadow.
To his surprise, his replica [Dashed] upward. As he rushed toward the real Alistair, he encased an elbow in a Dao energy-infused [Frozen Claw]. Just from the sheer aura of the Skill, Alistair could tell he used a substantial amount of his Ghost Node.
By the time Alistair realized what was going on, it was too late. The elbow connected with Alistair’s [Force Fist] at the same time that [Hand of Karma] met the clone’s off arm. Instead of activating a Skill to try to circumvent the Karmic effect, he intertwined his fingers with his original’s like a lover.
Even as the [Hand of Karma] worked its magic and the clone’s spiritual pathways short circuited and the threads of Fate cut off, he refused to let go of Alistair’s hand with an iron grip.
A shadow overcame the clone’s eyes and skin. Black Impermanence. The division of the Kai’tazake Mutra was like a membrane sealing off half of the Karmic effect. Alistair rapidly stabbed his doppelganger with successive [Blood Hand] spearhands to no avail. Black Impermanence let the other Alistair take out an advance on his own life, subverting the damage he was taking for as long as he could hold out for.
The crashing hands of justice came down from above. In a stroke of genius, the other Alistair had used the [Frozen Claw] to send out massive chunks of ice above Alistair’s back, which [Thousand-Armed Bodhisattva Judgment] used as projectiles. Spear-like icicles impaled themselves through Alistair’s robes and into his abdomen.
Alistair tried as long as he could to hold out, employing the copy’s Black Impermanence technique to mitigate damage, but it was too late.
Alistair’s consciousness faded away just a moment before his opponent would have died. In his last thoughts, he congratulated himself on the closest bout yet.