Chapter 0088: Masashi’s Reflection

When the blinding light of the portal faded from Masashi's vision, he realized that he was standing alone in a corridor of two meters in height by two meters in width.

It was straight, narrow, and meant for only one person to pass through. The walls were the same as the cave of whispers they were in earlier.

Each surface reflected him perfectly. He started walking forward as the portal behind him faded to reveal the same icy wall as the rest of the corridor.

The pressure of the path was much more psychological in nature than it was physical. Each of Masashi's steps echoed as if in rhythm with his heartbeat. Urging him to doubt himself and give up.

Gamer's Mind already negated any mental influence even if it was as simple as being tired. That was how overpowered it was. Even an average person, as long as they had Gamer's Mind, could keep doing the same thing for years without stopping, given that the body was able to support it.

The theme of this dungeon was the mind and Gamer's Mind was the perfect counter to every one of the trials and tests of this dungeon.

This was why Masashi decided to listen to Mai's suggestion to suppress Gamer's Mind for the duration of the insecurity-filled whispers section. It helped him get past his insecurities without needing the ability for them.

Finally, he was standing in front of a large pillar inside a huge room that seemed to be reaching infinitely into the sky. The room didn't seem to have a ceiling. At least as far as Masashi's [Observation Haki] could reach.

Masashi looked at his reflection in the mirror-like pillar. He was wearing loose army pants along with a black hoodie, one of the only ones that were left from Mai's unhesitant stealing of his hoodies. Its hood was up, covering his golden blonde hair that matched Yue's shiny blonde. One would only be able to view his angular jaw, mouth, and nose through the cover of the hood. His sky-blue eyes seem as if they are piercing through the darkness of the hood.

He notices the mouth of his reflection move, "Isn't it boring?"

"What?"

"Existing without a purpose."

Masashi's reflection suddenly changed colors completely. Looking like the antithesis of Masashi. With horribly tacky blue hair which ironically reminded Masashi of Mai's beautiful eyes, a white hoodie, and army pants with different tones of grey. The 'Anti-Masashi' walked out. It had golden eyes to contrast Masashi's sky-blue ones.

"Holy fuck, aren't you a try-hard! It's as if you have to look the complete opposite of me. Shouldn't your skin be black to completely complement your look though?"

The reflection got tongue-tied at Masashi's words. It was expecting a rebuttal or something but Masashi finding fault in its design was the last thing that the shadow expected.

"What? Cat got your tongue?" Masashi mocked the shadow and shot toward it at full speed with his swords in hand.

The shadow, as if expecting the attack counters with its swords that are white in color.

Masashi engages the shadow in swordplay. He swiped its legs with one sword and as it jumped in the air, he slashed the other sword at it while it was still in the air.

The shadow parries Masahi's attack with its sword and uses the momentum from his attack to flip back to create some distance.

But as it lands on the ground, Masashi is already upon it with both his swords raised in the air, ready to chop them down on the shadow.

It uses one of its swords to block the attack while swiping the other at Masashi's chest. Masashi pulled back a little from the shadow but the shadow pressed its advantage and goes after Masashi.

They start a routine of attack, block, parry, and counter for a few minutes before Masashi feints an attack to the shadow's waist.

When it brings one of its swords to block, Masashi redirects the trajectory to its chest while attacking it in the same motion using his other sword.

The shadow can block one of Masashi's attacks but the other attack slashed it in its chest.

"You- You're using me as a whetstone!" After fighting for so much time, the shadow finally realizes Masashi's ploy.

Masashi presses his advantage and pushes the shadow back into a corner.

"Of course, I am. You're the perfect opponent to fix my swordplay flaws." Masashi was deliberately holding back on going all out since he saw countless mistakes in the shadow's fighting style and that meant that those mistakes were his own.

After realizing that Masashi wasn't even taking it seriously, the shadow started relying on magic along with its swordplay.

It had already realized that Masashi had some kind of mental protection since it wasn't able to glean any information about him from the magic of the dungeon. It also concluded that there was no point in trying to attack Masashi's mental weaknesses. His only weakness was Mai and that was the only thing that the shadow could capitalize on.

"Tell me, what would you do without her?" The shadow threw a fireball at Masashi along with a slash of its sword.

Masashi parried the sword attack with one of his swords and cut through the flame with his other, still adamant about not using magic, and said, "Nothing. I'll probably die."

The leftover flame left a few embers on his hoodie that Masashi ignored.

"Exactly, you're no less than a monster. Without her, no one would accept you. You cling to her, knowing that the rest of the world would reject you."

"You think I care?"

The shadow sent spikes of ice at Masahi coupled with the slashing of its swords. Masashi relied on his [Observation Haki] and jumped through the spikes with a flip and brought down his swords at the copy.

Two of the spikes ripped through Masashi's hoodie without touching his body.

"What you have for her is not love. It's nothing more than dependence. You are so dependent on her that without her you're nothing." They kept trading blow after blow while the shadow tried to destabilize Masashi's mind.

"You're damn right about that. She's my everything and if anything ever happened to her I don't think I would survive."

Masashi's copy used earth magic to destabilize Masashi's footing but he jumped up and slashed at the copy, disrupting its rhythm.

Using the copy as a platform he jumped over it and slashed at its back. The copy barely blocked Masashi's attack but his second sword was already on him and nicked its shoulder.

"You don't think there's a problem with that?"

"Nope." Masashi pushes his advantage again but the copy summons a ring of fire magic to push him back.

Masashi jumped above the ring of fire and tried to attack the shadow again.

"Still not going to use any magic?" It taunted while blocking Masashi's blows.

"How would that be any fun?"

"What?"

"I can handle myself against you going all out, that itself tells me that you are already weaker than me. That's how good I am bitch."

Due to [Gamer's Mind], no matter what the shadow used to rile Masashi up, it was useless.

Masashi kept going and ignored its words. Getting used to dodging the magic attacks while slashing at it.

For a while, Masashi was on the backpedal since he was solely focusing on his swordplay while the shadow was using all the tricks in his arsenal. It helped that he knew about all of those tricks.

The shadow started getting desperate, seeing as how Masashi was completely ignoring its taunts.

The mechanism that it was based on was that if the challenger overcame their weakness, the shadow would get weaker and if they refused to face their weakness, the shadow would get stronger.

But Masashi was completely ignoring the theme of this section and was getting stronger himself while acknowledging his weaknesses but also refusing to do anything about them.

"You're a perfect training partner, you think I'd let you go easy?" Masashi's bloodthirsty smile sends shivers down the copy's spine.

'What the hell, I'm nothing like this monster.' The shadow finally realized that the dungeon never actually read through their core personalities.

'They took this whole dungeon like a joke.' The shadow lamented its fate. But it was a construct created by the dungeon, its purpose was to stop/ and if possible, corrupt Masashi. It wasn't going to give up.

The shadow started pressing its advantage while it was still there. It started increasing its mana output and started using more large-scale magic attacks in conjunction with its swords.

Soon enough Masashi's hoodie was completely ripped off him, revealing the Armor of Damnation underneath.

It was at this point that things started taking a turn in the fight. Masashi was able to overpower the magic spells with just his swordplay and his technique was getting more and more refined.

The level of his passive ability [Swordplay] had also started increasing. This was the first time it had increased ever since it hit a bottleneck in the previous world. Finally, Masashi was able to fight someone on equal terms and that's what completely propelled his technique forward.

"Tell me don't you want to see how Mai is doing with her trial?" The shadow was just grasping at straws at this point.

As it blocked Masashi's sword again and tried its best to keep him back it conjured a screen within the ice wall.

That screen showed a bloody Mai completely being suppressed by her copy, she kept getting attacked so heavily that even her Armor of Salvation was damaged.

That bloody scene didn't make a dent in Masashi's mentality, although it did annoy him to see this kind of cheap effort on the dungeon's part.

"Let's finish this," He muttered under his breath.

"Paradigm Sword Style, Sword 1: Dual Cresent Slash"

The next moment Masashi's swords cut through the shadow's head in a crescent slash before it could even react.

This attack was the culmination of Masashi's gains in the fight against his shadow. It wasn't a perfect technique yet, but it was an actual technique that he made himself and he was damn proud of himself for it.

This was a sign of him breaking through his swordsmanship bottleneck. It'll become much easier to get even more attacks after this.

"I guess [Gamer's Mind] kinda fucks this trial over. Only Yue will be the one who'd have to try hard for her trial then."

Masashi noticed a section of the wall crumbling to reveal the path forward and goes through it.