Descending Into A Novel

Chapter 192: 192:Version 2

Ellen quietly hummed a tune to herself, every once in a while. She had to cover her mouth in order to hide her giggling.

"Hehehe..."

Just remembering Raymond’s appearance was funny, like a little puppy. It was very...cute...!

She shook her head, feeling a blush appear on her face again at that last word. Her expression abruptly changing from glee into self denial in an instant.

Ahh...it felt like the relationship between the two of them had changed drastically ever since he woke up from his coma. When in actuality, it had more or less remained the same—the only change being they had gotten a little closer. There were just a few ’peaks’ here and there that completely tipped the scale. Like saying the average was 2-3 purely because there was one lone individual at the thousand mark.

A little angel of her appeared on her right shoulder, while a little devil appeared on the other shoulder.

One shouted ’You should take better care of him!’ , while the other shouted back ’but seeing his reactions when teased is so cute!’

Ellen quietly nodded along to the arguments made by both. Truly very compelling!

Now that the Raymond issue had been dealt with, she was now currently heading to deal with another Raymond issue.

’He’s been going to the training hall nearly everyday now, he’s definitely not going there for training.’

Her Raymond sense was activating once more, telling her that there would definitely be something amusing inside. She knew him well after all, he could be hard working when there was a guaranteed reward. But trying to make himself work hard was nearly impossible. Usually, Ellen had to dangle the promise of a few treats here and there.

Walking on the path that lead towards the training hall, she unknowingly stepped on a engraving spell made by Raymond. Something tailor made to detect only her. Unaware that her presence had already been detected.

Inside the training hall, alarms blared. Forcing a deeply asleep clone awake again.

"What the hell is...Ellen?!"

She had been pulling all-nighters for the past week in order to speed up a project she and the original had been working on. Even with the original however, progress was still pretty slow since this was a difficult thing to try and create at their weakened states.

Setting that aside, the constant lack of sleep may have made her extremely fatigued. But just seeing the warnings of Ellen approaching was enough to cleanly wipe all of it away.

"Damn it...where the hell are you original?!"

Oh wait, looking through her past memories (aka the current present). It seemed currently, the original was busy sparring with all of the other special class students in an attempt to busy his mind. Leaving her completely alone to fend for herself.

She cursed the original.

Even if she understood the reasoning behind it, she was still in massive trouble because of it!

So what if you feel out of sorts?! My existence is at stake here! I’m just a clone!

The worst part was that she couldn’t even leave the training room!

Being spotted like this in the academy was bound to cause problems, and while she was confident enough in her magic to not get caught by anyone below the fourth years. She wasn’t sure whether the academy magic detectors would actually enable her, the original had to get permission in order to use magic first, and having the two of them there would likely mess something up with their identical mana signatures. Either way, she wasn’t taking any chances with leaving this room.

But she could use her magic inside however...

Six spells circles immediately appeared around and on her body. The limit of her current multi-casting ability. Which was one more then the original, if he attempted to cast the same spells.

Invisibility, illusions, camouflage, scent removal, noise removal, presence removal, if this clone could use her higher level time and dimension isolation spells she would have.

And for the final step, she kicked and messed up her bedding. Before quietly laying on the floor and covering herself with it in order to replicate the mess.

Creak

The way the door opened was like a straight up horror movie, her shoes quietly clicking against the floor as Ellen walked in.

"Anyone home~?"

Hiding under the mound of objects, pillows and blankets, the clone put a hand to her mouth. Barely even daring to breathe.

"Hmm...that’s strange."

Ellen didn’t have a perfect photographic memory like Raymond did, but she could definitely remember that the entire place was vastly different. Compared to last time, when Raymond reactivated his second circle. It was actually simultaneously <anno data-annotation-id="4e197e06-ac7e-4cf9-809c-26260f5b3a00" data-title="cleanlier">cleanlier¹</anno> and messier at the same time.

There were a few more random packages and objects littered about, but there was a certain order to the mess now.

Dangerous things went there, soft things went there, and random stuff went there. Very intuitive, very Raymond-like. Each separated into its own pile which was suspiciously large enough to hide a person.

Looking through the miscellaneous pile, her eyes quietly caught onto something.

She muttered quietly, "Isn’t this Erin’s?"

A red dragon toy, Ellen specifically remembered Raymond buying this for Erin. Since red dragon toys seemed to be the only type of toys she liked, their whole house had an entire family of different red dragons. Plushies, figures, puzzles and coloring books were just the most common ones.

It being here meant only one of two things. Either Raymond was being a jerk and stole Erin’s toy, or Erin herself had come here and forgot about it. Raymond was practically like paper the way he folded and agreed to Erin each time she asked for anything.

And she heavily doubted it was that first option. Whereas Erin had once forgotten where she left her school bag, which she was wearing.

The plot was thickening now, even Erin was hiding this secret from her. She had never said anything about coming to this training room ever.

She picked up a leftover ice cream container. The insides had been thoroughly emptied out, but based on this condensation. It couldn’t have been older then a day.

And Raymond had been with her for the entirety of yesterday and the day before...

"Seems like someone’s still inside~"

Hidden underneath the pile, the clone almost let out a whimper.

Ellen smiled, her eyes glimmering as she finally decided to activate her innate power.

All around her, numerous paths of a vivid blue appeared. Floating in the air like silk threads, the ends leading to a different object each. Most noticeably however, was the massive aura of red that seemed to be leaking out from underneath the largest pile.

Even Audrina, who specialized in stealthing was unable to hide from Ellen’s innate power. It wasn’t until she became the new Grand Duchess of Wrath did she finally have the capability to do so, until then. Her best solution was to literally just stay out of her range of vision. Her eyes were capable of seeing through illusions as well after all.

Raymond possessed spells capable of hiding himself from her, as evident from his years of stalking them—but he had already admitted to her that he couldn’t actually cast the same spells now in his weakened state. Seeing the red aura, that almost perfectly matched Raymond’s. She could only smile in delight.

But Ellen was the type of person that liked to play with her food before eating. (Metaphorically, not literally.)

Winding her up leg, she infused some mana into her body before kicking over a different pile.

"What’s inside pile number one~!"

CRASH!

Her kick was enough to send some of the trash flying through the air and into the wall opposite it.

Perhaps it was just her imagination, but Ellen could almost perceive some movement from within the pile with the unknown individual. As if said individual was shaking in terror.

She moved on to the next one. "What’s inside pile number 2~?"

Inside, the clone shut her eyes tightly. Holding her breath as she curled up like how Audrina usually slept.

’Pleasepleasepleaseplease’

"..."

The clone quietly opened an eye, the pressing weight on her entire body gone as the lights in the room shone down on her.

Looking up, she made eye contact with the demon that stood over her. Her kaleidoscopic eyes glimmering as they stared back at her, a smile that could only be described as terrifying on her face. Looking more demonic then actual demons.

’I’m invisible, she can’t see me. I’m invisible, she can’t see me. I’m invisible,she can’t see me...’

She desperately shut her eyes, mentally reciting in her head the fact that she was still invisible for the mental strength it provided her.

Her spells were all still working perfectly, she should be completely invisible from this demon.

"I can see you."

"!!!"

Her hands instantly formed an incantation, her fingers straightened, using her thumb to hold back her ring finger as she mobilized the mana in her cores.

"Too late!"

When it came to close quarters, how could the casting speed of a mage possibly beat a warrior’s reflexes?

In one swift motion, Ellen grabbed her wrists and stopped her from casting. Lifting her up almost like a ragdoll. Akin to a cat lifting up a kitten by the back of the neck.

She threatened her, "If you don’t release your spells right now. I’m going to report this to the academy."

That was an even worse case scenario for the clone. It was bad if Ellen knew, since she would at least understand the importance of keeping this a secret. But if she just reported it to the academy first, without any chance to hide it at all for Raymond. Then the whole world would practically be aware! Raymond already disliked all of the attention on him, but this was an outcome he didn’t want to see at all!

Gritting her teeth, she dispersed her spells. Letting Ellen finally see what exactly she was holding.

Ellen could only see a red outline and the blue pathing leading towards her body after all, she couldn’t actually see what she looked like. She just knee that there was a person currently in her hand.

Now that she finally caught a glimpse however, her eyes almost immediately lit up. The corners of her lips curling upwards like a cat, her Raymond senses really hadn’t failed her after all. After yesterday, to think that there was something like this waiting for her...

"Oh my~"

Her words alone were enough to strike terror into her heart.

Like a meek little prey, and a predator that ruled the jungle. Like a lamb on the chopping block. Like a fish in a barrel. Like an Audrina trying to hide from a Thomas. There was no escape.

<annotations style="display: none;">this word feels wack im ngl</annotations>

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