Chapter 23
—Ivy and Kira stood helplessly in the middle of around thirty clones produced by Larx. There was no exit and no time left to make any move. Ivy tries using Laser-Focus to their advantage, but nothing else presents itself.
It seemed they were led into a trap by Larx in the end.
"What the hell? How many clones can you even make?" Kira yells to Larx, shifting her hair to the other side of her face.
"Beats me, actually, but the clones themselves start losing quality after the thirtieth, so that's my capacity limit for now!" Larx says back to Kira.
Without him knowing, Larx just fell into a trap as well. Kira uses All-Knowing-Eye to see if Larx is telling the truth, seeing into his mind for a split second.
'Shut up, you idiot! You're just telling these attractive females your entire plans!' Larx thinks.
'But they're so cute! The emo one especially!' Larx also thinks.
'Doesn't matter!' Larx thinks as well.
Kira used All-Knowing-Eye at the wrong time and falls silent, embarrassed that their enemy finds her attractive.
"Did you get any details on how his power *really* works?" Ivy asks, knowing Kira's plan.
"N-no..." Kira says with a flustered face, incredibly pissed off at this point.
Ivy looks away from Kira and back at Larx, who also seems to be struggling with something. After taking a hiatus, Larx preps himself for an actual attack. All hell broke loose when his player tag,
"Ok, enough with the chit-chat! Let's see how you guys fare against me and my army!" Larx announces, jumping backward.
His clones formed around him in a circular form, all jumping to his side. After only a couple of seconds, Ivy loses track of Larx amongst his clones. Kira also loses track of Larx very fast, realizing this was his plan all along.
"He's gonna camouflage with himself?" Ivy whispers to herself.
More and more clones sprung to Larx's side, and after all thirty clones appeared next to him, every single Larx in the area ran a pattern around Ivy and Kira, shuffling each other like a deck of cards. Everything about the clones was identical to the original, even his guitar weapon. Ivy and Kira were going to have a hard time distinguishing the original from all of these fakes, for sure.
"They're all rushing around like a pack of dogs..." Kira mumbles.
"Do you know which one's the real Larx?" Ivy asks.
"No, not a clue. For a metalhead, this guy is pretty dang smart, getting rid of his player name and dodging into a crowd of look-alikes..." Kira responds, still darting her eyes around at all of the many Larx's running around them.
At this moment, every single clone stops in its tracks. They look directly at Ivy and Kira with the same smirk, showing a cocky attitude and a sarcastic aura.
'Even if he's smart, he's still a douchebag.' Ivy thinks.
"Ok! Let's play a game instead! If you can guess which one I am, I'll let you guys beat me!" Every single Larx clone says.
Ivy's laser focus wasn't coming in handy since it helped track where someone was using the life in natural fauna. There were still thirty different Larx's around them, and pinpointing all thirty of them wasn't going to help.
"I have no clue what to do... How about you?" Ivy asks Kira, turning towards her.
Kira was silent and had her hair back to normal, with her left eye closed tightly. That green aura that appears around her—whenever she uses her Aspect—was surrounding her eyes. Ivy didn't expect an answer and let Kira do whatever she had planned, as It looked serious.
'If I combine All-Seeing-Eye and the strategy Ivy is using to concentrate...' Kira thinks, 'Then I can use a new move..."
Kira opens her left eye in a flash, checking all around her and around Ivy as well, keeping close attention to the clones around them. In her vision, Aspect helped locate signs of evil energy, which is tied directly to her usage of umbral energy.
In the Nexus, There are two unique kinds of element Aspect users, and they coincide together as opposites.
Those being umbral and radiant Aspects.
Umbral users tend to have special skills such as 'dark arts' or be classified as 'dark magic' in other MMOs. These users have tricks and moves that defy law and order and can be among the most potent Aspects when appropriately used.
Radiant users are also formidable opponents, having a higher sense of knowledge and integrity. There are a couple of rotten eggs, but usually, these users have moves and skills that are are the fastest and most powerful in the game. They usually counteract umbral users.
Kira's umbral Aspect acts as an organ. To her, it gives off an energy that she manipulates into and onto her body, creating new limbs, enhancing senses, and other abilities like reading other people's minds. Right now, she's pushing her boundaries, creating a brand new skill in the process. With her umbral powers relating so much to Aspect information, she can spot and detect player Aspect usage on a mass scale. This move is called...
'«All-Seeing-Eye»!!"
Using this new move, Kira can detect the force of power between each clone. Doing lets her know how strong each one is, both in raw strength and in health. Aspect flowed in between each one, which made this process even accessible.
'I can see Aspect clearly like this!' Kira thinks, astonished at her new ability, 'Now to check each Larx to see if more Aspect is flowing in one!'
Ivy spectated Kira as his eyes gleamed a new shade of dark green, with a vibrant hue of it spreading all across her body. Ivy imagined what owning an umbral Aspect would feel like in the first place as Kira scouted the area around them.
Looking at each Larx in the vicinity of Ivy and her, Kira notices one Larx in the front practically overflowing with Aspect, which gave off a red flag. Kira points the finger at the Larx in front of her with confidence.
"Found ya," She mumbles.
There was silence as the Larx that was singled out kept completely still, not replying to Kira's allegation that he was—indeed—the real Larx.
Then panic ensued.
'*HOW DOES SHE KNOW*?!' Larx thinks frantically to himself, "Wait! Maybe it was just a lucky guess! *Yeah*! She doesn't have a clue!"
"Are you just gonna sit there or admit defeat?" Kira asks.
'*NOO*!' Larx thinks.
The real Larx starts to pace over closer to Ivy and Kira. He had a defeated face and was slouching. Ivy believed this whole confrontation was over.
"F-fine, you got me, but how did you just do that?" Larx asks.
"It's a secret. Now give up so we can be one player closer to winning." Kira responds.
For a moment, no player said anything, waiting for a response from Larx. Even he was silent. Then, one of his clones takes a step closer to them.
"About that..." Larx says, holding up his guitar over his head.
"I'm the only one left! I killed everyone else! And I'm gonna kill you too!" Larx says, commanding every single one of his clones at Ivy and Kira.
"Figures you wouldn't play fair!" Ivy says, jumping back to reassess the situation.
The thirty clones at Larx's disposal were all rushing at Ivy and Kira, trying to cause damage. Even though Larx just a minute ago had made them do some game to win this fight, they had no idea he had finished every other prospect in the arena.
Ivy concentrates as she reaches for several arrows in her quiver and lines them up on her drawstring, releasing them into the air in one rapid motion.
"Triple threat!" She exclaims.
The arrows whiz best Kira and land into the clones near her. They die in an almost evaporated manner, slowly fading in a gas implosion.
Kira backed off as well due to the excessive force of numbers at Larxs command. Each clone had a weapon just like he did, and if every other prospect has fallen to this guy, the clones must have an equal damage output to the original Larx.
"Ivy, duck!" Kira calls out.
Ivy obeys Kira's command and gets as far down as possible. Three Larx clones all jumped at her, which she dodged just in time. They all start to swing for Ivy as she's low on the ground, but she springs up and uses the combat knife attached to each limb of her bow to decapitate two of the clones. The other gets an arrow right into his skull as Ivy grips her bow tightly with a fast reaction speed.
Kira looks over to a large group of clones packed together and starts to use her Aspect.
"All-Seeing-Eye!" She exclaims.
Looking over to the group of clones, Kira notices the faint increase of Aspect in the middle of it, which means her suspicions were confirmed.
"Ivy! He's in the middle of that group or there!" Kira says.
'How?!' Larx thinks to himself.
Now knowing the real Larx is cowering behind his goons, Kira shifts the barrel of her weapon at him. After stabilizing and taking note of the wind, Kira shoots bolts over at the real Larx.
Larx dodges and more of his clones die, again with only one shot. Larx knows he's in a wrong spot, as these players he's facing are formidable and are holding back against his attack strategy.
'It was bad enough the goth girl can see I'm the real one,' Larx thinks, 'But that longbow chick has a killer accuracy!'
As Larx is running around among his clones, his eyes widen as he feels something puncture the left side of his body. He looks down and starts to feel a slight pain swell from his chest up to his shoulder. Ivy had just launched an arrow into him successfully.
The pain was too much for LArx to continue moving, and Kira knew exactly where he was anyway. Ivy saw Kira's targeting and noted it, which meant they both knew which Larx was the real one!
'Not like this...' Larx thinks, gripping his guitar ferociously.
As Ivy and Kira close in on his position, the rest of his clones that were alive start to charge them. Kira and Ivy both squint their eyes and prepare for a final attack.
Kira starts to run ahead of Ivy, shooting a bolt from her crossbow into a clone in front of them. After this, she ducks down, loading another bolt into her weapon. Ivy sees her strategy and runs up to her. Ivy jumps over Kira in one fluid motion, twisting her body to be horizontal in a corkscrew. Ivy had already grabbed an arrow from her quiver and was drawing back to launch it at another clone.
At the same time, with Ivy being above Kira, they shoot a projectile into different clones.
Ivy lands back onto the ground and rolls to break her fall. Kira follows up and starts to run to her aide while loading another bolt in her crossbow.
"Are you good?" Kira asks.
"Yeah! I think we should—" Ivy responds but stops as she looks around her.
Taking a look around, Ivy and Kira realized something strange about the rest of the clones that were alive.
They seemed to be fading out of existence and turning into that gas-looking material like when they die. The gas that forms rushes over to Larx, who was on one knee at this point. He had just forcefully taken the arrow out of his side, and his HP was dripping out of his wound.
"Ok... you got me..." Larx says, still flinching at the pain in his side.
Ivy felt a strong sense of remorse for a moment, seeing someone react to pain this way. Sometimes she forgets to remember that this is just the game simulating pain.
It was a hard act to accept for most players that whatever damage they seemed to cause wasn't real, which is why becoming a professional player in the Nexus is next to becoming a star athlete. Not only do you have to have game knowledge and leverage your own skills, but feeling pain and inflicting it is a mental barrier players have to overcome alone.
Larx tried to get back up and looked at his opponents. A Mythril-tipped arrow greets him. Ivy stares him down with a sense of determination unrivaled as she clutches her bow.
"So you killed everyone else?" She asks.
"Y-yes..." Larx says, still feeling the pain on his left side, "I still don't believe that I've lost either..."
"Really? Look around you!" Kira says in anger, dropping her quiet act altogether.
It was true. Larx really didn't have any means of escape or repositioning. He was held at gunpoint, so to speak. Ivy and Kira had both of their sights on him with their weapons clearly drawn if he made a move.
"Don't think that that'll be the last time we meet in battle..." Larx mumbles.
"Don't think this is the last time you're gonna lose, I suppose..." Ivy says, letting go of her bow's string and sending her arrow straight into Larx's head.
As expected, Larx died immediately. His HP had reached zero, resulting in Ivy and Kira's supposed victory. There was a delay in celebration as Ivy and Kira didn't fully realize that they had just made it into the Slayer's Pack, but when they realized, they were frantic.
"We did it!!!" Ivy shouts
"Yes!" Kira says.