Chapter 0089: Mai’s Shadow

When the blinding light of the portal faded from Mai's vision, she found herself in a similar corridor as Masashi.

She walked to the end of the corridor to the large open room with the pillar in the middle.

She looked at her reflection within the pillar. It had an eerie smile that was not on Mai's face.

Mai was still wearing a matching hoodie as Masashi just white in color, along with black leggings that kept her agile enough. Her silky black hair was covered by the hood, making her look edgy like Masashi. Although the white color of the hoodie made her look more angelic than edgy. Her purple-blue eyes were almost shining through the cover of the hood.

She'd changed her clothes when they went back into the inner world before fighting the boss of the whisper cave.

"You do know your relationship isn't healthy, don't you?" The reflection finally spoke as it morphed into Anti-Mai and stepped out of the pillar.

It was wearing the same hoodie in black color while its lower was white in color. The reflection's hair was white, along with yellow eyes.

"It doesn't matter. We're codependent, big whoop." Mai dismissed the reflections jab at trying to make her realize the flaws in her relationship with Masashi.

"Your entire power is based on what you got from him. What did you do for yourself."

"So what? It's not like I cheated him out of anything. We'll be together for all eternity. He's the one getting the bargain. He got to be with me." Mai's narcissism oozes out as she easily dismissed anything that the shadow throws at her.

The shadow wasn't able to gleam any information from her either, just like Masashi.

This caused most of the mental manipulations of the dungeon to fail at the first step since it wasn't able to know if its words affected Mai or not.

"He doesn't-" Mai doesn't let the shadow finish its unnecessary speech and charges at it with her daggers equipped.

The shadow parries Mai's slashes perfectly since they both had the same style.

Mai takes it a step further and summons orbs of disintegration magic around her and attacks the copy with them. Though the copy perfectly counters each of those attacks and keeps going.

"I'm you with the same abilities. You cannot beat me."

"I'll see about that." Mai tries to attack it again using a combination of Air Dance and Riftwalk but the copy countered her attacks. Although she'd lost these abilities back in Orcus, she copied them again when they went back again since they were pretty useful.

"Why do you think he always takes control over you in the bedroom? He can't stand you doing what you want to de. He needs to keep you under control."

"If that's what you think then the dungeon wasn't able to truly scan me and Masashi, was it?" Mai smirks as she nicked the shadow's cheek with her blade.

The shadow is silent as it realized this problem the moment it came into existence. The copies weren't completely able to gleam the information into their personalities so the psychological attacks were nullified.

Mai used all kinds of obscure abilities that she'd collected throughout her time in Tortus but the copy had a counter to each of them.

All of her abilities were perfectly copied by the shadow, so she was forced to rely on her technique and battle experience.

Although she also fought a lot, it was mostly Masashi who did the fighting, and she focused on the defensive stuff.

So, although she was completely scratchless, her copy was too.

Every once in a while she got through its defense and nicked the copy but it was easily able to recover instantly.

Slowly though Mai was gaining the upper hand.

Although the daggers have a shorter reach, they are much more deadly due to their ability to target specific weak spots.

Though the problem was the copy's defense being impeccable. Even when it was at a disadvantage, it took the hit that could easily recover and blocked the truly lethal hits.

"You're good." Mai praised her copy.

"I'm you." The copy rolls its eyes.

"That's why I praised you. Did you think with your lousy skills I'd praise you? It's all me." Mai's inner narcissistic bitch succeeded in enraging the copy and it started using large-scale spells. Taking full advantage of the huge amount of Mana that it had.

The shadow started some of Yue's spells since Mai could also use them and attacked her with them.

Mai decided to limit herself to her dagger arts and defensive abilities since she could feel that the pressure of the fight was helping her find her flaws and correct them.

Mai was also a pretty contradictory fighter like Masashi. On one hand, she was like a tank, able to defend against even the strongest of attacks, and on the other hand, she was like an assassin. With her camouflaging abilities and her short-range mastery, she had the perfect assassination skills.

Seeing an enemy with the same skills she had only one thing to say.

"I'm such an annoying fighter, assassins usually have low health but I'm a fucking tank with all kinds of defensive abilities."

"You just realized that?" The copy smirked at Mai.

They kept fighting and throwing all kinds of obscure abilities at each other since {MIMIC} was pretty overpowered when it came to copying others' abilities.

"Don't you think that you could've found a better person if you didn't end up relying on Masashi? You guys got together due to circumstantial reasons at best."

Mai didn't answer and slashed at the copy who blocked her with an ice shield.

"You know it's true. If you didn't end up being so dependent on him you'd never have stayed with him." The copy countered using a beam of disintegration magic.

"So what?" Mai flipped to dodge the copy's beam of attack and lunged at it in an attempt to stab it.

The copy blocked her frontal attack but got goosebumps from its back. There were orbs of disintegration magic that were homing toward it. Mai decided that she's got enough practice.

"I'm dependent on him. My entire existence revolves around him. He's the only thing that I care about." Mai gets an obsessive look in her eyes as she sees the copy conjure a dark magic shield on its back.

The disintegration orbs easily get through the shield but they are delayed enough that the copy can get out of the way.

The moment the copy lands on the ground after jumping out of the way, Mai is upon it, ready with her daggers in hand and coated with a fine layer of disintegration energy as she slashes at the copy.

The copy barely gets the time to react, let alone cast a defensive spell, so it barely turns its body, leading to Mai cutting off its right forearm.

Since she'd coated her daggers with disintegration magic the copy's entire right arm disappeared from its body as the effects of disintegration magic were very lethal.

Mai pressed her advantage and started pushing back the copy who was barely able to block her attacks due to the loss of one arm.

Without two daggers to counter Mai's attacks, it was getting minor nicks all over its body.

Right now, Mai's advantage was clear as she was completely dominating the fight.

By this time a section of the wall crumbled up, revealing Masashi.

Noticing Mai's brutal fight with her copy he thought, 'I guess what that copy showed was true, it's just that it was for Mai's copy and not Mai.'

Seeing that Mai had a complete advantage he decided to mess around with her.

"Hey Mai! How about you don't kill that copy and instead we bring her back with us? We could have fun freaky threesomes." Masashi shouted out and distracted Mai.

The distraction was enough for the copy to get back from Mai's assault and get a breather.

"What the fuck, dude?" Mai curses Masashi and brings her focus back to the copy.

Meanwhile, the copy gives Masashi a pitiful look and begs him, "Please save me from her master."

"Best I could do was to give her the suggestion. You gotta convince yourself if you want to live." The instant Mai refused Masashi he completely washed his hands off of this scene.

"Well, I might as well kill myself then." This was one thing that the copy was damn sure about.

It barely blocked Mai's next attack from killing it for good.

"You know, it doesn't seem like too bad of an idea." It still tried to convince Mai even though it was sure of its failure.

After a few more minutes of its needless begging Mai finally got rid of her copy for good.

The moment the copy disappeared Mai aggressively walked toward Masashi as he opened his arms to welcome her, not bothering to read her thoughts which was a big mistake.

The next second she was holding his ear and scolding him for distracting her in the middle of her fight.

"Ow ow ow ow." Masashi has a pained look on his face just for the fuck of it. The guy's ear could get cut off and he wouldn't feel much, perks of Gamer's Mind and its pain dampeners.

"What's wrong with you, why would you distract me in the middle of the fight?"

"I'm sorry dear." Masashi looked like a henpecked chicken being scolded by Mai.

Looking at these two no one would realize that Mai was even the slightest bit submissive in bed and instead it seemed as if she completely dominates Masashi.