However, the moment he reached in line of sight of the mirror—a face looked back at him, and he yelled, "What the fuck, Irene!?"

"Hahhahah," her eyes curved like a crescent moon as her giggles rippled in his room. "—eh?" but her movements suddenly turned stiff, and she demanded after a pause, "Hey, stop looking at me."

Vern stared at her, dumbfounded. She wanted him to do what? Not sure if he should be angry or laugh at this, he responded, "What are you even saying? You stop looking at me! What the hell are you doing inside a mirror?"

"That's the thing! I can't stop looking?"

"W-Why?"

"I can't move."

"Why?"

"Aghh! Stop asking questions and just look away for a second."

"No! This is my room. You tell me what the hell is going on."

"Hey, I was just testing out this artifact you brought back today. How am I supposed to figure out what it does if I don't use it?"

"What's that got to do with peeping on me?"

"That's what it does! And it seems the user's frozen if someone looks back at their image." Then her face flushed red, "Now look away! I am getting embarrassed here."

"Hey, I am the one that should be embara—" Then it suddenly clicked, and Vern looked down. A horrified expression emerged on his face as he bolted towards the bathroom, dropping Duality outside.

"Hahaha"

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After combing his damp hair back, he folded the cuffs of his shirt and walked out of the bathroom. He first looked into the mirror, only to find it reflective as usual—no missy with silver hair laughed at him this time. Soon, however…

Knock Knock

Vern walked up to the door and opened it with a deadpan expression, towering over the tiny Irene, who was dressed in a delicate white dress with a high lace collar and puff sleeves that kissed her wrists.

A neatly tied bow accentuated her waist while the ruched and laced bodice hugged her figure softly. Above this ensemble, her frost hair—short this time—cascaded on either side of her face, adorned by those thin earrings.

She looked back at him like a guilty child, tapping her index fingers against each other. Vern tried hard not to let it show on his face, but he was quite taken aback by the massive shift in her overall aesthetic.

Compared to her messy poncho and artistic look last time, this felt…noble? He'd seen her in the mirror just a second ago but was far too occupied to notice any of her beauty.

Still, he narrowed his eyes and harrumphed, "Here, I thought you didn’t know how to knock."

Her fingers tapped each other faster and faster as she wet her lips and replied, "I-I was going to knock back then, you know. You were just so…focused. I didn't want to break your concentration."

Vern raised his chin and continued to look down on her, "No, you shouldn't have even attempted to peek through my mirror without asking for permission beforehand."

She pouted, "Hey! I didn't know what this pendant did, either, okay? It just showed me a bunch of mirrors, and I picked yours. How was I supposed to know that fire burns if I don't touch it!?"

Vern wanted to point out the flaw in that argument, but he shut up and sighed. It did seem like a string of honest accidents.

After half a minute of his intense glare meeting those seemingly innocent eyes, he shook his head and opened the door, welcoming her in.

"Heh. So easy…" she mumbled.

"Did you say something?" Vern countered, blocking her path. She walked right into him, headbutting his shoulder.

She struggled not to laugh, "No. No. Must be the wind."

"Thought so…"

Not locking the door to avoid any misunderstandings, he turned back. That's when she suddenly ran up to his bed and ducked down, picking up a circular paper cutout from the ground.

Caressing it gently, she lamented, "Poor thing. How much must it hurt to be punched by a naked brute." She placed it tenderly on the bed, crouched down, and rested her chin close to the paper, cooing, "There, there...it's going to be okay."

Vern's face flushed red, but he knew this would become a one-sided beating if he didn't counter swiftly. He approached the mirror with exaggerated tenderness, "Oh, the horror you've endured today. Assaulted by a voyeur, and not just any, but a shamelessly perverse one. How deeply I wish I could make it better."

"Hey! I am not perverse."

"Yes, you are."

"No—"

"You didn't need to break my concentration there. Instead of watching me unannounced, you could have just backed out."

She suddenly stood upright and countered, "Did you know it snowed today? I forgot to bring my cardigan for the tea party, and they decided to host it outside under an umbrella."

"…"

She wrapped her hands around herself and shivered in an exaggerated fashion, "I was soo cold all the time! You know what they did? Tried to offer me a red shawl. Red! I'm wearing white, for lady's sake."

Vern opened his mouth to speak, but she shut him down, "Not just that. Now that I am back, I have more work to do. Make it make sense!"

He sighed. He may have won the battle but lost the war. She was too good at controlling the flow.

"Andd, now that we're talking about work, here you go," she threw the pendant with the mirror towards him out of the blue, and Vern rushed to catch it.

"You already know what it does—peep, and its limitations—can't move if you get caught. However, there's another one. At first, it consumes your representation, but if you use it for too long, it chomps away at your very singularity." She smiled innocently, "So, don't. peep. for. too. long."

Vern rubbed at the cracked glass and rebutted after she was done with her innuendos, "Just how long did you watch me to have figured that out?"

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Haha, you're so funny, Vern." she faux laughed, hiding the smile behind her gloved hand, "We're talking about work, okay? Work. You've got to act more professional around me."

Not wishing to be swept up by her pace, he settled down on the other end of the bed and asked something unrelated, "Did you even get enough sleep today?"

If he remembered correctly, she didn't sleep the whole night and only went to sleep around eight in the morning. If she had already been to a party and back at eight in the evening, how long did that leave her?

"Huh? Is it that obvious?" she walked up to the mirror and watched her face from all angles, especially the eyes. "Ughh! It's not. Don't try to be cheeky, you towel boxer!"

Hahh. A piece of him died hearing someone call him that. Yet, he remained impassive, for showing her even a smidgen of vulnerability right now might please her too much. Then, what if she decided to always call him by that name?

No… he shuddered internally.

"Okay, Irene. You win. I will make sure not to tell anyone that you watch naked men alone in their room. Now, what else did you want to talk about?"

"Ughh, I guess I also had to inform you about a couple more things. So, the pendant you brought back is a second shade perceptual artifact. Which means you fought and won against an enemy equivalent to a second shade observer."

Then she rested her hands on the wide mirror's counter and leaned back, "You know what that means?"

Vern just tilted his head.

"It means you probably won the fight by boxing in a towel AND already have enough contribution to apply for the confidentiality ritual. Ugh, it even sounds weird as I am saying it. You've only been on two missions, and one of them wasn’t even assigned to you. How can you already be fit for the ritual? What a broken scammy system."

Oh? That sounded good. His simple brain was more than happy to see the number of shades in his gem go up. Better my gemstone than nothing, I guess.

"Great. When can we get it done? Also, why does it sound like you're jealous? Bet you only defeated a second shade enemy when you were third or something."

"I see, I see. Injured one-shade amateurs who didn't even know about observation records until yesterday really think they're the best, huh? Come fight me when you're third shade so I can bully you as a fourth shade observer."

Vern's eyes glinted with curiosity, and he leaned forward, "You already have four shades in your perception?"

"Not yet," and her lips curved upwards, "But soon."

However, right the next moment, her eyes narrowed like slits, "Anywayyy, we're not buying cabbages from a farmer's market, okay? The ritual only takes place on certain dates. You can go check out the schedule for the next one."

Vern shrugged. He already had many directions to work towards at the moment. He didn't mind if this ritual would be a while.

"Alright." she dusted her hands and walked towards the exit. "Final thing. If you don't like this artifact, you can try to replace it with something more suitable at the resource allocation hall."

"Mhm…"

She then slumped her shoulders and whined, "There's moreee workkkk."

"Hope it drowns you," replied Vern with a sweet smile.

From outside the door, she pouted and gave him a sharp stare, "Meannn."

"Goodnight, Irene. Do get some sleep today."

Her face instantly lit up, but he couldn't watch it for long as she slammed the door close. Then, from outside, he heard, "Goodnight, Vern. Get better soon."

The room turned dark, and Vern relaxed. Hoisting his legs up the bed, he mindlessly fiddled with the pendant with a smile etched on his face. Chuckling to himself after a while, he shook his head and perceived the pendant in his hand.

The moment he did so, vague, blurry, and frozen images showed up in his mind. They were all around him, including one right in front of him—his own room's mirror.

However, he quickly stopped perceiving the artifact and backed out of its world. He had no intention of trapping himself in a loop where he saw himself through the mirror using the artifact, but his eyes were also looking back at it.

Would he be stuck forever, then? Maybe not. But at least until someone else helped him out of it. Yeah, no. I am good. He also didn't want to be like Irene and peep into random people's rooms without permission.

He'd rather not be known in the Vigil as a voyeur. So, he would try later with a more controlled situation.

Shaking his head, he rested the artifact on the table next to the bed and opened its drawer to pull out his Insight Sphere.

It had been a while since he delved into the fundamentals. Unfortunately, doing so didn't induce new insights to blossom in his Thought Space.

Hmm, maybe it's because I am not pushing into uncharted aspects?

Holding the sphere on his chest like some corpse gripping a seraph effigy inside a coffin, he laid down and closed his eyes.

From inside the void of initiation, he felt all around before picking a direction and letting his mind flow.

----------------------------------------

Vern cracked his neck another time as he put together many parts laid out on the workbench. The lamp's light spilled down on gears, brackets, and crank steel stripes as he compared the measurements with his diagram occasionally.

He was no seamster, so he'd decided to make the sheathe he'd use to strap Duality on his back out of crank steel rather than some random metal or fabric. This ground-up approach to making a contraption was his style as a mechanical artist.

And was it going to be a fine piece. He'd planned the design to maximize Duality's synergy with him. It might not turn out better than something Finnesse workshop could produce, but it would definitely be leagues above riff-raff sheathes.

Unfortunately, he had to spend a big chunk of his saved-up contribution points for all this crank steel. Well, it's worth it.

Every once in a while, he used stability and instability inducement, trying to incorporate them into his routine wherever possible.

Being able to see the fulcrums and stress lines made his job far more effortless, avoiding a lot of iterative fixes he usually had to perform to get his contraptions functioning right.

Minutes turned into hours as he assembled one puzzle piece after another for the contraption. It was directly inspired by the sheathe used for Ember Edge by Kingsmen. Except it didn't include any heating capabilities, not that he needed them anyway.

The side release mechanism would allow him to slide duality out from either hand—combined or one blade at a time instead of pulling it upwards like a barbarian.

One couldn't forget about the magnetic locks and aligners. Then, there were the straps that would distribute the weight on his back as evenly as possible without hindering his movements too much. He'd used some of the blueprints lying in Vigil's workshop to make things easy for himself, but with a little work, it became a perfect match for his needs.

Grabbing the welding mask and blow-torch, he got to assembling all the little pieces together.

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.

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Phew…

Wiping the sweat off his face, Vern quickly cleaned up the workbench and picked up the sheathe—making sure it wasn't hot anymore. It didn't look very aesthetic since he had yet to polish and paint it, but damn, was he running low on time.

The pocket watch showed three. Only an hour before today's training.

Yeah, he can make it look better next time. It didn't matter as long as it was functional anyway. Because of duality's crazy length, he really needed the sheathe as soon as possible . It would be a nightmare to carry it around otherwise.

This was the only way for him to have duality with him in dire situations without being stupidly awkward rest of the time. One reason he didn't take it with him on the mission yesterday was inconvenience, after all. Such stupid factors had to be taken care of as soon as possible.

The final product was more like a sheath attached to a harness. The scabbard itself was engineered as a semi-open containment unit for a longsword, featuring a unique frame structure on one of its planar surfaces.

This frame was integrated with a series of inward-tilting, one-way latches that facilitated a rapid, secure sword placement mechanism. Upon contact, the blade would automatically align and lock into position by these precision-engineered latches.

Furthermore, it incorporated the side extraction mechanical art similar to Kingsmen. This was achieved through strategically positioned, elongated extrusions operating on a one-way slide mechanism designed for lateral sword release.

Donning both the straps of the harness and tightening them around his healed shoulders, he picked up duality. He simply held it by the merged hilt behind himself, hovering it around the scabbard's opening.

The moment he nudged it inside the sheathe, he felt the sword pulled by the magnetic force, only to snap in with a satisfying Click. Its weight was evenly distributed around his torso as he stretched while wearing it.

Hmm, maybe I can modify the straps to be more rigid next time. Noting down possible improvements in his notepad, he checked the room one final time before heading out of the mini-workshop.

Unfortunately, it was mostly empty, and no one was there to keep it maintained anymore. Clearly, Vigil had no Fundamentalists around to make full use of the facility.

Sighing, he walked out, trying to get used to the weight and always seeing duality's handle in his peripheral.

After a while, however, his steps became light, and he was more than just gratified by this contraption. It's incredible, really!

Then, suddenly, came a voice "Hey man, what's with that little sword you got there?"