Mirror Your Brain

His smile of victory was still on his face when a calm, curious voice echoed from the entrance of the alley behind him.

"What are you doing to that wall?"

Reyn froze. Without moving his body, he slowly, rigidly, turned his head to look over his shoulder. His eyes went wide.

Standing there at the mouth of the alley, leaning casually against the brickwork, was me. I was completely unharmed, my clothes intact, watching the scene with a detached curiosity.

A look of pure, unadulterated shock washed over Reyn's face. He whipped his head back around to look at the man he had just impaled.

The "me" that he had stabbed flickered, like a heat haze. The image turned translucent, then vanished completely, dissolving into nothing. Reyn was left standing there, his sword stabbed a good three inches into the solid brick wall of the dead-end alley.

Reyn stared at his sword, embedded in the solid brick. He looked at his empty hand where he'd felt the jolt of impact, then back at me, standing completely unharmed at the alley's entrance. The gears in his mind were turning, struggling to process the absolute deception.

"But... I hit you," he stammered, his voice a confused whisper. "I felt the impacts. The wind... it tore your clothes."

I pushed myself off the wall and walked slowly towards him, my footsteps the only sound in the alley. "You weren't fighting me. You were fighting a tangible projection. A perfect illusion. It does exactly what I will it to."

I stopped a few feet from him, glancing at his sword stuck in the wall. "If I want it to have a tunic that can be torn by your wind, it has a tunic that can be torn. If I want it to grunt in pain when you hit it, it grunts."

I met his shocked gaze. "And if I want it to stand perfectly still and let you stab it, it does that, too."

With a furious roar, Reyn gripped the hilt of his sword with both hands and wrenched it free from the wall with a spray of brick dust. He stood there, breathing heavily, but he didn't raise the weapon again. He had been completely and utterly defeated.

"As I said," I continued in the same calm tone. "I don't know anything about a thief, and I don't want any trouble."

I turned my back on him and began walking out of the alley. "I'm going to go find my companions."

I had made my point. Believing the fight to be over, I turned my back on him—a display of confident dismissal and began to walk out of the alley.

Behind me, I heard a furious grunt. Reyn was struggling to pull his sword from the brickwork, his pride clearly wounded. "Come... on!" he roared, planting his feet and pulling with all his might.

With a loud crack and a spray of shattered brick, the sword came free, taking a chunk of the wall with it.

I heard the sound and started to turn, but it was too late. Fueled by rage and humiliation, Reyn swung his sword in a wild, horizontal arc. A vicious blade of wind shot down the alley and slammed into my back.

The force of the blow was immense, throwing me off my feet and sending me sprawling onto the stone ground. Pain erupted across my back. I wasn't cut, but the impact felt like being hit by a speeding car.

I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, my head spinning. Reyn loomed over me, breathing heavily, a wild, triumphant laugh escaping his lips.

"Got you," he panted, his sword now pointed at my head. "I've finally caught the Unseen Thief."

But the man on the ground wasn't me. Not the real me.

Far from the alley, standing perfectly still in the shadow of a market awning, the actual Hayato watched the scene play out. The entire chase, the fight, the punch, the final, dramatic defeat it was all just a second, more elaborate illusion. An expendable decoy.

I had been controlling it all from a safe distance, a puppeteer pulling invisible strings. I watched as Reyn, stood triumphantly over my fallen duplicate. I saw his victorious laugh.

A long, weary sigh escaped my lips. So, even a professional resorts to a cheap shot to the back when his pride is on the line. Predictable.

The test, however, was a resounding success. The decoy had held his attention completely. Now, he thinks he's caught the "Unseen Thief." He would be distracted by that for a while.

From my hiding spot, I let the illusion on the ground in the alley simply dissipate into nothing. Then, still cloaked in my own personal invisibility, I turned and began the calm, quiet walk back to the inn.

***

I walked silently through the inn, the patrons and staff completely oblivious to my ghostly passage. Reaching the door to my room, I paused, then let the invisibility illusion drop. It wouldn't do to walk through a solid wooden door.

I turned the handle and pushed the door open, expecting an empty, quiet room where I could finally process the day's events.

Instead, I found Kerina sitting on the edge of my bed, her arms crossed, her expression one of extreme impatience. She wasn't dressed in her usual adventurer gear, she wore a simple linen blouse tucked into plain dark trousers, her boots resting neatly by the door. Her hair, usually tied back for practicality, hung loose around her shoulders in straight, dark strands that framed her sharp, watchful eyes. Out of her armor, she looked less like a famous A-Rank warrior and more like an off-duty soldier still too tense to relax.

She looked up at me, her sharp eyes scanning my unchanged, unharmed appearance. "There you are," she said, her voice tight. "Where have you been? I've been waiting for you."

I closed the door behind me, offering her a simple, placating smile. "Sorry about that," I said. "I was just taking a walk around the capital. It's quite a bit larger than the last town I was in."

I moved to the simple wooden chair in the corner and sat down, facing her. The dynamic in the room was now one of a planned meeting. "So, you said you were going to find someone to teach me. Are they coming soon?"

Kerina shook her head. "No. No one is coming." She leaned forward slightly, her expression intense. "After what happened at the Cathedral, I've decided I'll be the one to answer your questions. I will teach you."

I gave a slow nod, processing this. It was a better outcome. A direct line to a primary source was always more efficient.

The challenge, is how to ask the right questions. I need to learn the fundamentals of this world without revealing that I'm from another one entirely.

I leaned forward, mirroring her posture. "Alright then, let's start with your profession. You're a Rank-A adventurer. To a commoner like me, that's just a title. I want to understand the reality of it. Tell me about the monsters you've fought. From the weakest creature a new traveler should worry about, to the strongest thing you've ever faced."

Kerina considered my question for a moment, giving a slight nod of approval. It was a practical question.

"Alright," she began, her tone shifting to that of a seasoned professional giving a briefing. "The weakest things you'll find are what the Guild calls 'vermin-class.' Goblins, mostly. They're weak, cowardly, and only a real threat in a large horde. A few dire wolves in a pack can be trouble for a merchant, but a village guard can handle them."

She leaned back, her expression becoming more serious. "Then you move up to the real threats, the work that requires registered adventurers. Orc raiding parties on the trade roads. A stray Ogre that wanders down from the mountains. Those need a team of C-Ranks, at least. They're strong, organized, and they will kill you if you're careless."

Her gaze became distant, clearly pulling from her own memories. "At my level, A-Rank, we hunt things that can threaten entire regions. Wyverns that prey on livestock and caravans. Giants that demolish infrastructure. Last year, my party was hired to cleanse a noble's crypt that had been taken over by a Vampire Lord."

She paused, her voice dropping lower. "You asked for the strongest," she said, her expression grim. "The strongest things aren't on any request board. They're 'calamity-class.' True Dragons, ancient demons from the forgotten wars... things that armies fight, not adventurers. If you ever see something like that, you don't fight. You just run."

I leaned forward, latching onto the last, most ominous part of her explanation. "You mentioned the 'forgotten wars'," I said, phrasing my question as a curious traveler trying to understand local history. "What kind of wars were they? Human versus dragon? Or something with demons, like in the old tales?"

Kerina's expression became somber. She set her whetstone and sword aside, giving the topic her full attention. "Both," she said, her voice low. "And they're not just tales. They're why the world is the way it is."

She looked out the window, as if seeing the past. "The war against the Demon King was centuries ago. A rift was torn open, and his armies tried to swallow the entire continent. All the mortal races—humans, elves, dwarves—had to unite just to push them back and seal them away."

Her gaze grew even darker. "The Dragon War was even older, before the modern kingdoms. That wasn't a war for territory; it was a war for survival. The True Dragons saw this world as their nest and us as insects infesting it."

They called this place modern… I doubt there's even an phone.

She finally looked back at me. "They're called 'forgotten' because the peace has lasted so long that most people choose not to remember. They'd rather focus on their corporate guilds and iron smelters than the calamity-class threats sleeping just beneath the surface of the world."

To Be Continued.