The Twenty Fifth

When I reached the inside of the lab, I found Lydia experimenting with a potion while having a sad look on her face. When she saw me her frown turned into a smile in a matter of seconds.

"Lydia I have an assignment for you, I want you to commit yourself to this so I need you to prepare yourself." When I said this she visibly jumped back before nodding without saying anything.

When she did I grabbed a flask from a table, then I made a small cut on my arm, and let the blood flow into it. While this process was happening Lydia's eyes were shining, she was drooling, and breathing heavily. Note to self, avoid giving too much blood to Lydia, who knows what she would do with any extra of it. What I wanted her to do was examine the exact properties my blood may have so I could see what I can do with it.

When I handed her the vial her face turned sad and almost on the verge of tears before pulling herself together. Apparently she needed to completely max out her Alchemy skill before she could use it. I calmed her down and assured her that it was ok that she couldn't work with it right away. I waved Lydia off then set off to find Adela and Celeste. After I left the mansion I found them in the training field fighting their dummy golems.

Nobody around here knows how to relax apparently but, I did tell them they could do whatever on their free day so I guess this is their choice. When I arrived at the field I sat down to watch and was greeted with a new screen for the first time in a while.

[Would you like to upgrade all Dummy Golems to Mirror Golems? This will require Mana from linked subordinates instead of the Creator.]

I blinked in surprise and for good reason too. This is the first thing I will make that doesn't require mana from me. I ran over to Adela and Celeste in an instant and stopped them so I could test this 'Mirror Golem'. I hovered my hand over the two dummy golems and they started shining with bright white light as Mana flowed from Adela and Celeste into them. When the light faded the golems looked exactly like Adela and Celeste except they had completely silver bodies. I started smiling as I was shivering in excitement with what I just discovered.

I wonder how strong they would become from fighting exact copies of each other's mirror golems. For the first time in a while I changed up how they trained and had the duo fight the other's Mirror Golem. Adela picked up a greataxe, Celeste equipped gauntlets embedded with short swords, and the golems just 'mirrored' them. Before making the rest of the dummy golems into mirror golems, I decided to watch the two for a bit.

First up was Adela against Mirror Celeste. Adela seemed like she would be at a strong disadvantage using an axe against her, and much to my surprise I was deathly wrong. She used the axe in a much different way than I thought she would. She spun the axe while switching it in between each hand.

As Adela was doing this, she swung the axe while spinning it towards the fast moving Mirror Celeste. It looked like she was going to dodge but in under a second it seemed like Adela casted a skill where she let go of her axe, while it was in mid air, ducked behind the golem, and roundhouse kicked it into the axe.

When Mirror Celeste was kicked into the axe Adela re-grabbed it and slammed it down into the ground. This caused a giant crater in the ground and it was slowly fixed up. As I thought the match was already over, Mirror Celeste disappeared from my sight for a split second before she knocked Adela back with a blow to the gut.

Adela started bleeding from her side before the wound was quickly healed from the ambient mana in the air. Within the pocket dimension, my mana that flows through the air heals all wounds of myself and my subordinates. This allows them to constantly train without stopping. The golems however have to rebuild them after being destroyed.

The reconstruction speed of the mirror golems was tremendously faster than their previous forms. Half of Mirror Celeste's body was gone but was regenerating so fast that I couldn't even believe my eyes. What kind of monstrosity did I just create? When Adela fully recovered the two charged each other but this time they collided instead of a one sided destruction.

Funny enough Celeste's eyes were shining while watching the intense match unfolding before us. I looked in the direction of Mirror Celeste and she had the same shine in her eyes as strikes were flying back and forth between her and Adela, from slashes, to kicks, punches, even headbutts.

The two were thinking of one thing right now, and that was to win no matter the cost. Since death wasn't on the line, the two of them didn't hold back and used every skill they could to try to get an advantage over each other. Adela attempted to utilize the same skill she did earlier but this time it missed completely as Mirror Celeste used her speed to break out of the skill and overturn Adela with a solid knee to her chin followed by a slash across the back.

Before I even noticed the amount of spectators they had increased. Elaine, Mary, Dan, Sicarius, and Divinus sat around me to watch. All five of them looked like they were going to fall off of their seats for how close to the edge they were as they watched the fight. Looks like I will have to convert all of the Dummy Golems so I could get them to calm down later. Parts of Mirror Celeste were flying all over the place before flying back to their original place at increasing speeds.

Adela didn't look tired at all but instead looked like she was having the time of her life. The battlefield is filled with craters that are slowly fixed while the fight is still going on along with it being cleaned of all the blood. Another hour into the fight a dramatic change happened with Adela. She started to glow with an orange light as she charged Mirror Celeste. When they clashed this time, Adela's axe had an explosive impact and blew Mirror Celeste to bits.

It looks like it's finally over after that and it will take time for her to regenerate from that, or so I thought. Just as Adela was walking away the tiny bits of the golem flew into the air and formed Mirror Celeste in seconds before she got ready to fight again. Holy fuck, that is absurd. At first she couldn't even regenerate like that, but it just got faster, and faster, until it could get to the point where she could regenerate from nothing. The fight itself lasted three hours before this happened. Adela was visibly tired at this point, it looks like that skill took a lot out of her.