Chương 11: The Last Resort

"He died protecting you, Jun!" Ariel screamed. Her throat sounded raw, tearing on the words. She jabbed a trembling finger at his chest.

"He respected you as a leader! He followed your every demand! But you abused that loyalty until he believed he was nothing without you!" Tears streaked through the dirt caked on her cheeks.

"He prioritized your life over his own. He only raised that barrier for your sake!" Jun stared down at Kofi's body. Blood pooled on the fractured pavement, soaking into the robe. For a fraction of a second, Jun's stoic facade fractured. His mouth parted, and his eyes widened in shock—perhaps even guilt. But survival on this battlefield demanded cold logic. He had no time to mourn, no luxury to feel. The impassive mask slammed back into place, sealing away the crack.

"This isn't the time to grieve, Ariel," Jun said. His tone was a flat, dead calm amidst the chaos.

"Put the corpse down. Focus on the battle."

"Corpse? The corpse has a name!" Ariel's voice pitched into a hysterical shriek. She clutched Kofi tighter against her.

"Did you ever care about him? Did you care about me? Or were we just pieces in your game?"

"That's it. I'm done. To hell with you, Jun. To hell with this level. And to hell with this survival game!" Resting a gentle palm on Kofi's forehead, she triggered her dimensional ring. His body vanished in a blur of light, tucked safely away in the storage device. She swiped a hand through the air to summon the translucent blue system interface and tapped a prompt. Ariel has left the party. Ariel has deserted the battle. The participant will be teleported to the nearest safezone until the level concludes.

Ariel dissolved into a thousand blue pixels and scattered into the wind. With her departure, the entire dynamic of the battlefield shifted. Gray noticed the shift first. Across the street, Kofi's shadow clone froze mid-stride. Its dark arm stayed cocked back, mana pooling in its wand to cast another spell. Then, the magic fizzled out. The shadowy figure melted into the cracked pavement like spilled ink. The original vessel of the shadow clone has been slain. The shadow clone has been destroyed.

The skirmish instantly devolved into a two-on-two brawl. Gray and Jun were now isolated, left to fend off their respective doppelganger. He narrowed his focus entirely on the dark mirror image standing before him, trusting Jun to handle his own. With a slash, Gray severed the cloud tendril binding his ankle and scrambled up from the asphalt. His clone refused to give him a moment to breathe. The shadow creature molded a new longsword out of tightly compressed smoke.

The instant the weapon solidified, the clone leveled the sharp tip directly at Gray's chest. The smoky blade elongated, rocketing forward. Gray twisted his hips, throwing himself to the side. The maneuver barely saved his life. Gray pushed forward to close the distance. He never made it. The rigid beam of smoke that had just pierced the air suddenly went slack. It whipped back, morphing into a thick, ropy tendril that snapped tight around Gray's chest.

The constriction hit with a bone-crushing force, forcing all the oxygen out from his lungs. His feet left the ground. With a yank, the clone whipped the tethered weapon to the side. The momentum hurled Gray through the air and sent him crashing into a brick building. The wall caved inward on impact, showering him with bricks and burying him beneath dust and debris. Across the street, Jun kept his own clone at bay with calculated, precise strikes. Yet, his gaze kept flicking toward the destruction.

He tracked Gray's brutal impact out of the corner of his eye, noting the exact trajectory and force. In truth, Jun had never stopped watching. He had been monitoring Gray's every move from the very beginning. The shadow archer's movements were growing sluggish. Sustained damage had taken its toll, leaving the dark copy battered and slow. Jun, in stark contrast, stood untouched. The layered healing spells, glass barriers, and dense bone armor had kept him in pristine condition.

He needed to execute this fading doppelganger quickly so he could help Gray survive his own mismatched fight. Jun stowed his bow. Reaching a hand to his forearm, he drew out a long, pale bone arrow. He snapped the shaft in half with a sharp crack, leaving himself with a crude, jagged shank. He sprinted toward the clone. The shadow loosed a frantic succession of arrows as he advanced, but Jun closed the distance in a heartbeat. He didn't just dodge the shots; he simply wasn't there when they flew through the air.

Thanks to his Archer Mastery skill, Jun calculated the exact trajectory of every projectile before it ever left the bowstring. It was the same mastery ability that had let him foresee the arrow that killed Kofi. He had known it would impale him the moment it was fired. But what could he have done? There simply hadn't been enough time for Kofi to drop the barrier protecting Jun and recast it around himself. Idiotic, Jun thought, grinding his teeth.

Kofi had been painfully naive to prioritize another life over his own. In this brutal new world, that kind of blind loyalty was just a drawn-out form of suicide. Or, at least, that was the cold logic Jun needed to cling to—a method of coping over the guilt of Kofi's death. Jun tackled his copy, knocking its dark bow into the air, and drove the creature hard onto its back. He plunged the bone shank into its chest, driving the makeshift blade cleanly between the ribs of its armor.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. The creature convulsed. Its hands weakly gripped the jagged bone protruding from its side. Just before the dim light in its gray-marble eyes faded out completely, its eyes narrowed into slits, glaring up at its creator with pure malice. Then, the figure dissolved, melting into the pavement and slipping back to its original place at Jun's heels.

Across the street, Gray slowly peeled his eyes open, fighting the black spots swimming in his vision. The metallic taste of blood and the dry grit of concrete coated his tongue. He brushed debris off his lap, struggling to force his dizzy brain to focus. This was nothing compared to Gwen's tackle.

"Gray! Get up! It's time to end this!" Jun's voice cut through the high-pitched ringing in Gray's ears. Gray shoved his ruined backpack off his shoulder and fumbled blindly inside for a health potion. A sharp gasp escaped his lips as agonizing pain flared across his palm. Shattered glass vials and loose daggers sliced deep into his skin. Blood immediately pooled in his hand and ran down his fingers.

"Why couldn't you just give me a dimensional backpack?!" he yelled at nobody in particular, holding his bleeding, glass-filled middle finger up to the sky. He chucked the useless bag into the rubble and forced himself to his feet. Blood trickled down his temple, stinging his eye. His muscles screamed in protest, and his legs shook violently as he fought for balance. Through the haze of pain, Gray's gaze tracked his teammate. Jun was already sprinting into position, preparing to pincer the final clone.

Jun rained arrows down on Gray's doppelganger, firing as fast as his reload skill would allow. Forced on the defensive, the shadow clone raised a dense, wall of smoke to absorb the incoming fire. Fixated entirely on the archer, the clone left its flank completely exposed. Gray seized the opportunity. He charged while the doppelganger's back was turned, his shoes pounding against the asphalt. But the creature hadn't forgotten him. Barely a second into Gray's sprint, the shadow thrust a hand backward.

A massive plume of thick, black vapor erupted directly over Gray, swallowing his surroundings. But not his vision. Confident, he pushed through the suffocating cloud, dead set on closing the distance. But he completely missed the trap. The clone had compressed a thin line of vapor, stretching it taut like a wire just inches above the pavement. Gray hit the tripwire at a full sprint. It swept his feet out from under him, and his face slammed hard into the concrete.

With its nuisance temporarily neutralized, the shadow shifted its attention back to Jun. The dark vapors swirling around the creature's left forearm surged and hardened. They rapidly condensed into a broad, rectangular riot shield that stretched all the way down to its ankles. In its right hand, it forged a fresh longsword out of densely packed cloud. Shield raised tight against its body and sword angled for a lethal thrust, the clone charged the archer. Jun quickly drew back his bowstring and fired.

The pale bone projectile struck dead center on the shield. But instead of piercing the vapor, the arrow shattered into a dozen fragments without leaving a single scratch. His arrows had cut cleanly through the freestanding smoke walls earlier, but this was vastly different. Physical contact, Jun theorized, his mind racing. The smoke constructs must gain immense durability as long as they remained physically connected to the conjurer's body.

That explains the strength of the shackles that had bound Gray earlier, as well as this impenetrable riot shield now. Yet, even facing a nearly indestructible opponent, Jun's pulse stayed steady. His speed, reflexes, and sheer dexterity far outclassed the shadow. The clone could never close the distance on him. And unlike his clumsy teammate, Jun would never let himself fall victim to a cheap trick like a smoke whip. Backpedaling smoothly to maintain his distance, Jun peered past the approaching shadow.

Through the dissipating smog, he spotted Gray bursting out of the smokescreen. Jun knew he couldn't pierce that shield to kill the shadow alone. Together, however, they might actually stand a fighting chance.

"Gray! New strategy!" Jun barked.

"We fight this thing side by side! Melee combat!" Gray gave him a sharp nod. Just as he had done with his own doppelganger, Jun summoned a bone shaft from his arm and snapped it in two, gripping the jagged shank like a dagger. The shadow paused, seeming to give a silent nod to accept the challenge. The swirling vapors of its massive riot shield shifted and shrank, condensing into a small, dense buckler strapped to its forearm. It lunged, opening the clash with a sweeping slash aimed at Jun's ribs.

Jun effortlessly sidestepped the blade. His heightened senses mapped the attack's trajectory long before the shadow swung. Survival simply wasn't his primary concern; inflicting actual, lasting damage was the real puzzle. He wasn't delusional enough to think his bone dagger could scratch that condensed buckler, especially not after his arrows had failed so miserably. Instead, Jun focused entirely on evasion.

He danced just out of reach, staying one step ahead of the shadow's relentless pursuit, refusing to overextend himself for a desperate, useless strike. Self-preservation was everything. He just needed to bide his time until Gray arrived to fulfill his role as a meat shield. Gray crept up behind the dark entity, his shoes crunching softly against the scattered debris, and swung his dagger. It was a fast strike, but he had mistakenly aimed for the side guarded by the buckler.

Catching the glint of the blade in its peripheral vision, the shadow jerked its arm upward. Gray's steel blade slammed into the condensed vapor, bouncing off without leaving a single scratch. A relentless barrage of attacks followed. Gray swung his dual daggers in a rapid rhythm, desperate to overwhelm the creature. He knocked away thrusts from the smoky longsword, but the dark copy simply mirrored his energy. It caught every one of Gray's frantic swipes with its hardened buckler. Neither fighter gained an inch.

The brawl quickly ground down into an exhausting, tense stalemate. Hanging back, Jun waited patiently for his opening. The creature occasionally dropped its guard on his side, feigning vulnerability, but Jun knew better. The doppelganger's cold, gray eyes always tracked him. It was keeping him in check. Eventually, Jun lunged for a cheap shot. He aimed his jagged bone dagger straight at the clone's exposed ribs. Predictably, the shadow leaped backward at the very last second.

Jun's blade caught nothing but empty air. The creature landed lightly on the balls of its feet, putting a safe five meters of distance between them.

"I can't do anything against that shield," Gray panted. He dragged a forearm across his brow, smearing a mixture of sweat and dirt across his skin.

"Jun, what's the strategy now?" For the first time since the battle began, Jun's mind drew a complete blank. How do you kill an enemy that adapts to everything? he thought, staring at the shadow. It possessed impenetrable defenses and seemingly unlimited utility. Jun rapidly analyzed every tactic he had left, but he couldn't formulate a single viable plan. Except for one.

"I want you to engage the target exactly as you have been," Jun ordered, keeping his voice smooth.

"This time, I'll provide supporting fire from behind with my arrows. I managed to shatter its riot shield earlier. Eventually, one of my shots will break through that buckler. The second its defense drops, you slip in and go for the killing blow."

"Got it. Sounds like a plan." Gray nodded. Gray charged the doppelganger and fell right back into the same rhythm. He still couldn't force the creature to retreat, as the dark copy parried and mirrored his footwork flawlessly. But this was fine. As long as Gray maintained the pressure, one of Jun's arrows would eventually disrupt the monster's concentration. A few yards behind Gray, Jun traded his makeshift dagger for his bow.

He pulled a fresh, pale bone arrow from his arm, nocked it on the string, and drew it back until the tight bowstring brushed against his cheek. He steadied his aim. Not at the clone. But at Gray.