Chapter 941: Hallway of Reflections [Bonus 7]
When Rishia stepped onto Floor 4 with Arthur, she was met with a world of white, and ahead of her stretched a hallway with full-length mirrors lining both walls.
"White, huh? Who do you think is responsible for this floor? I vote Wyndella," Arthur asked as they walked down the hall, and hearing him, Rishia shook her head without turning toward him.
"No, I think it’s Lord Barda. There’s not a single trace of ambient creation law energy, completely ruling out the possibility of this being Lady Wyndella. I also don’t feel any restriction on my Weapon Authorities, so I don’t think it’s Lord Gervod."
At her response, Arthur nodded and said, "Barda, huh? If it’s Barda’s floor, then the theme is surely related to time and space. For starters, I guess all the enemies here are going to be fast as fuck, due to, you know, time acceleration."
Rishia nodded in agreement, and Arthur continued, "If we encounter any enemies here, then the space theme might give them some kind of intangibility or damage redirection, or they might simply be more durable."
Rishia nodded silently again, turning a corner, and as she spotted a set of double doors at the end of the hall, Arthur went on, "Well, in that case, I’ll be counting on you to use Beneath Dark Tides on them. Strip away some of their defence so we can deal more damage."
When he said this, Rishia was about to nod again as usual, but she froze, her eyes narrowing slightly as she turned to look at Arthur behind her.
"How do you know the name of that technique?"
Arthur stopped, blinking in confusion as he looked toward Rishia, and asked, "Know the name of what technique?"
"Beneath Dark Tides, the one you just mentioned," Rishia replied. "I’ve never named that technique any time I’ve used it against you, so how do you know its name?"
"Oh, that? Berlal told me," Arthur said, slipping his hand into his pocket as he continued walking forward toward the doors ahead.
Rishia was silent for a moment after he spoke, then finally responded.
"Lady Berlal, huh? It’s understandable she knows of the technique, but that’s not my main concern. Why do you think I can use it as I am right now?
I’m positive I only told you that I unlocked my Polearm Authority and my Unique Darkness Authority after Floor 3. I never said anything about unlocking Beneath Dark Tides, and you should know as well that simply unlocking an Authority does not mean that all the techniques under that Authority are automatically unlocked, too. We have to unlock them with separate runestones.
So why did you say you were counting on me to use that like you knew I’d unlocked it already?"
"Um, aren’t you reading into this a bit too much?" Arthur asked, stopping and turning toward Rishia with a worried look. "I mean, I only just said the name of a technique of yours that Berlal told me about, which she said was useful for reducing the speed and defensive power of enemies caught within its range."
"Am I reading into it a bit too much?" Rishia repeated, one eyebrow raised. "Well, pardon me, my experience with illusions on the previous floor has left me a little more cautious."
Looking around them, she continued, "Plus, this is Lord Barda’s floor, and given his personality, I have even more reason to be careful. We still haven’t figured out why the walls around us are mirrors. Given the theme of time and space, it might lead to some sort of mirror dimens..."
Rishia paused midway through saying the word ’dimension’, her eyes widening slightly as realisation hit. She then looked back at Arthur and slowly turned her gaze toward his reflection on the mirror wall beside him.
She stared at the reflection in silence for a moment, then shifted her gaze to the other wall on his left, examining that reflection as well.
"Rishia?" Arthur called out to her, glancing at his own reflections with a confused look, wondering what she was searching for.
But Rishia didn’t respond. She silently activated her Clairveil eyes, alternating her gaze between Arthur and the two reflections on either side of him.
She repeated this over and over, her pupils moving extremely fast, until at one point, the moment she looked away from Arthur to his reflection, the reflection waved at her.
The Arthur standing in front of her wasn’t waving.
If so, how could his reflection wave at her?
’Unless it’s not a reflection.’
Rishia shifted her gaze back to Arthur, who looked equally surprised to see his own reflection acting independently.
Without hesitation, Rishia raised her right palm and snapped her fingers. Immediately, three lightning bolts shot from her fingers, aimed at the two reflections and Arthur at the same time.
"Wha—?!"
All three reacted differently to evade or block the lightning bolts, and seeing this, Rishia formed three orbs of lightning above her fingers, shaping them into arrows aimed at the three Arthurs as she asked,
"Now then, which one of you is the mirror copy? Or are all three of you mirror copies?"
Before they could answer, she heard Arthur’s voice echo from behind her, asking, "Who said we were just three?"
She spun around and saw reflections of Arthur on both walls behind her, even though no one was standing there to create them.
At the same time, the ceiling above flashed with light and became a mirror, revealing another Arthur looking down at her from within it, waving as he said, "What if there were six of us, and not just three?"
Rishia remained calm, alternating her gaze between all of them. She then turned and started walking back toward the entrance of the hallway.
However, when she stepped through the entrance, she didn’t find herself outside Floor 4 as expected, but inside a twelve-sided chamber with a dome-shaped roof made entirely of shattered mirrors.
On six of the twelve sides of the chamber, with one gap between each, was an image of Arthur, each one performing a completely different action from the others. They were all on elevated platforms about 2 metres above the ground where Rishia was standing, but because of the distance, she didn’t have to crane her neck to see them.
"Hello there, Rishia," one said, waving at her.
"Hmm? Oh, she figured out we got switched?" another said, rising from the bed he had been lying on and yawning.
"Yeah, she figured it out because one of us decided not to play along," a third said, pointing at the fourth.
At this, another, glaring at the one being pointed at, said, "You just had to wave at her, didn’t you?"
The one who had waved at Rishia earlier and allowed her to confirm something was off simply laughed.
Just then, a flash of light appeared in another mirror wall, and a seventh Arthur emerged, looking around in confusion before speaking.
"Oh? She already figured out the one with her was fake?"
With another flash of light, an eighth one appeared and said, "Yeah. One of us just had to spoil the show."
He spoke while glaring at the one who had waved at Rishia, but that one ignored the glare and spoke to Rishia.
"Well, you’ve probably realised that your Arthur got switched when you entered this floor."
"You dolt, don’t tell her when the switch happened!"
Despite being scolded by one of the Arthurs, the one speaking to her ignored it and continued speaking evenly.
"This Floor has two goals. First, realise that your Arthur has been switched, and second, out of all of us here, figure out which one is your Arthur," he said, gesturing toward the other Arthurs in the mirror walls.
At that moment, flashes of light appeared on the remaining sides of the hall, and two more Arthurs materialised simultaneously, both glancing around at the others, who waved and welcomed them.
"All of us are here, so the challenge officially begins," one of the newcomers said. "One of us here is the real Arthur. Or at least, he’s real to you. Figure out which one that is."
After he spoke, all twelve of them fixed their gazes on Rishia, watching her intently without a word.
Rishia, in the centre of the hall, also remained silent, her gaze shifting only between the twelve Arthurs, each looking exactly the same.
The one who had waved at her earlier, whose position she had noted, spoke to her again.
"The answer is very obvious, Rishia. Just look at us, and you’ll see which one is the real one."
"Dude, you’re saying too much," another immediately chided. "Don’t spoon-feed her the answer."
"Exactly," a third added. "This is supposed to be a test, and she’s meant to improve from the experience."
The words they spoke made Rishia narrow her eyes slightly.
From what that one Arthur had said, she could figure out which one was the fake just by ’looking at them’, but it was clearly not that simple.
She’d only gone on a gut feeling earlier and had happened to be correct that a mirror copy was among them. To begin with, them being mirror copies was simply her assumption.
"Exactly what are you?" Rishia asked, hoping to get a clue that could help her escape this predicament.
"Hmm? Now that I think about it, we haven’t explained that part, have we?" one of them replied, and at this, the last two to join nodded.
Suddenly, the twelve mirror walls flashed with light, and when the light faded, nothing seemed to have changed.
"Oh, we got shuffled?" one of them said, highlighting the change that Rishia hadn’t noticed since all had been in the same positions when the light died down.
"Yeah, we got shuffled," another confirmed. "But anyway, back to her question about what we are."
"Well, it’s simple. We’re parallel timeline versions of ’Arthur Vaughn’. All except one of us here are Arthurs that couldn’t be. Your goal is to figure out which Arthur that is. Simple enough, right?"
’There’s nothing simple about that,’ Rishia thought.
It sounded like something a temporal manipulator would handle best, and for all her talents, Rishia was not a temporal manipulator.
’But Lord Barda wouldn’t make an impossible trial, meaning there has to be a way to figure out which one is correct.’
She thought back to the words one of the Arthurs had said earlier, about how ’looking at them’ would let her see which was different, and immediately realised that her Clairveil Eyes were the key.
The problem was that she didn’t know exactly what to focus on to distinguish the main timeline version from the parallel ones.
’Where’s the one who waved at me earlier?’
