I stood there staring at the black liquid on the ground, the fragments of that sphere still in my hand.
I was waiting to see whether that thing would return, or even if another one would come out.
But even after all that waiting, nothing happened.
Using my ability, I could sense the others and the battles taking place behind these walls... perhaps they were facing the same thing.
But unlike me, I don’t think they have the ability to discover its weak point and find that small sphere.
The problem was that it was extremely small and solid, to the point that it survived the previous explosion.
After some time, I threw the fragments from my hand and pulled that small cube from my ring.
"Now I have to know how this works before they die."
...
In another room, two Elliots stood facing each other.
They were identical in everything except one thing... the eyes.
One had normal yellow eyes, while the other did not even have white in its eyes; instead, black had devoured everything.
Elliot drew in breaths that had quickened from the previous fight against his copy.
He had already destroyed it several times, but each time it returned as if nothing had happened.
And the more they exchanged blows, the stronger and smarter the copy became.
"Doesn’t this thing die?" The moment those words left his mouth, the copy was in front of him, waving a sword covered in flames.
Even his abilities had been copied by this thing.
The swords clashed and the sound of metal echoed in the sealed room. This thing was still lacking compared to Elliot, so he could still gain the upper hand in the fight.
At least for now.
Elliot tilted his sword and deflected the strike, then with his other hand gathered a small sphere of compressed lightning and launched it directly into the middle of the copy’s chest.
Lightning exploded within the copy’s body and it retreated several meters backward, while superficial burns appeared on its skin.
It made no sound.
No scream, no groan, no words.
But even those burns disappeared in an instant, and in another moment darkness devoured its sword. Then it tilted its body and swung toward Elliot, releasing an arc of pure darkness.
But Elliot did not stand idly by, of course. He swung his sword and formed an arc of light.
In the middle of the room, light and darkness collided together in a struggle to determine the victor.
But in the end, the real one won.
The arc of light tore through the darkness and reached the copy before striking its body directly, causing damage that could kill any being in a single moment.
But there, Elliot saw his copy, which had been split into two, rebuilding itself once again.
It was true that the copy’s body was slightly weaker than Elliot’s, but that no longer mattered, because no matter the damage he inflicted, it would return again as it was.
The moment the copy returned to its complete state, it appeared before Elliot in the next instant using space manipulation.
Darkness enveloped the sword as it attempted to cut Elliot, who simply avoided it and retreated backward.
’I don’t understand... this thing seems to have no weak point at all... and even entering a battle of attrition doesn’t seem like a good option,’ he thought as he avoided another slash.
In the past minutes, he had tried overwhelming it with attacks and completely dismantling its body, but in the end it always returned to its original form.
And stalling was not an option, because this thing did not seem to tire or suffer from a lack of essence... and worse, it became better in combat with every passing minute.
"Think... think," Elliot muttered as his sword passed and severed the copy’s arm.
Suddenly, a certain scene returned to Elliot’s mind. "Why didn’t I think of this?"
He remembered the scene he had seen in the battle against the Demon of Dreams, how Caius compressed essence into a single point and then released it to cause a powerful explosion.
Elliot had never thought of imitating it... why?
Well, because he didn’t need to... why would he do that when he had an arsenal of elements in his pocket?
And even now he hadn’t thought of trying it, because the power of a raw essence explosion would not give him the result he wanted.
Things like that were only good when you had no offensive abilities.
So now he decided to invent his own method... or his own explosion.
He directed another slash of light at the copy before him and destroyed part of its body while retreating backward.
At the same time, lightning crackled in his hand and began gathering together.
Elliot’s idea was to replace raw essence with lightning itself to create greater power.
Lightning is a large electrical charge passing through a narrow channel, turning it into plasma.
And what would happen if you compressed that channel further, merged it with other channels, and pressed them together?
You would produce a sphere of compressed plasma.
But saying that was easier than doing it, especially while being constantly attacked by a copy resembling you.
Elliot was now dodging his copy’s sword, completely abandoning offense and focusing only on gathering the largest amount of lightning in his palm.
This act consumed his essence extremely quickly, while many wounds formed on his body, but he did not stop condensing the plasma more and more, until he felt he could no longer control it.
At that, Elliot retreated to the edge of the room using space manipulation, and at the same time raised his hand toward his copy, launching a pure white sphere of plasma.
The sphere flew toward the copy, burning the air around it, and reached it in a single instant. It only had enough time to raise its sword before the plasma sphere while Elliot created a wall of ice around himself.
In the next moment, a massive explosion thundered, and the copy was at its center.
Trapped within the immense force of the plasma and heat that exceeded the surface of the sun dozens of times, there was no result except the complete destruction of the copy.
Even that small sphere that Elliot did not know existed from the beginning... shattered.
If this explosion were compared to Caius’s, it would seem like a real bomb beside a few small firecrackers.
It lasted for a few seconds before beginning to fade, and Elliot emerged from behind the ice, half of which had melted from the heat of the explosion.
He stared at some remnants of the liquid that survived the explosion, wondering whether the copy would return.
But the latter did not move at all.