Insomniac Player

➤[The blade remembers every hand that failed to guide it.]

➤[Power speaks loudest when doubt knows its true name.]

➤[The body cannot outrun the violence it taught itself.]

Damien read all three slowly. Each one fit its entrant, tailored to their exact history or their exact fighting style. That meant the gate had studied every person before it ever let them cross.

Maybe it copies more than just what’s on the surface.

"Why me?" he asked.

"Because you cleared the Rusted Blade by learning its rules instead of overpowering its army. You survived the tutorial through planning, not raw strength. At Tycho, you understood the Hollow Giant adaptation before players far above your level did. You watch first. Everyone else swings first."

John answered before Damien could. "He also nearly dies with impressive consistency."

"That describes most successful players."

"Not while I’m standing next to them."

"You can’t stand next to him in there."

The room went quiet, and Damien understood, in that silence, exactly what this assignment actually was.

His whole reputation so far had been built standing next to someone stronger. John in the tutorial. Four terrifying women at the Rusted Blade. A wall of high-level defenders during Tycho. Even the Broken Road investigation had been solved by twelve skilled martial artists far above his own level, with him mostly narrating their own conclusions back at them.

The Doppelganger Gate stripped every one of those people away. It would cleanly test whether he could function without any of them standing beside him.

He picked an awfully efficient way to measure that. He didn’t love that Martin had found it.

"What’s the clearing condition?"

"Unknown until entry."

"Reward?"

"Unknown."

"Environment inside?"

"Doppelgangers."

"Extremely useful report."

"Everyone who could’ve made it more useful is dead or badly beaten."

That killed the joke stone. Damien went back to the three tailored lines. The gate had shown training, doubt, and violence, one word each, aimed at exactly the right target. If it copied stats, sending John in would just create something John’s own level. Sending someone powerful might genuinely be worse than sending someone weak.

But if it copied skills too, his own duplicate would come out swinging Shadow Dash and Shadow Imitation right back at him. Maybe Nocturnal Eyes. Maybe the Nightwalker fragment itself, whatever that actually meant once mirrored back at him from the outside.

The army didn’t know that detail. Neither did Martin.

"Can it inspect hidden classes?"

Something sharpened briefly behind Martin’s eyes, though he didn’t push back on the question. "Assume it can inspect anything the system recognizes at all."

Dangerous. Also, genuinely useful. If the gate copied his Nightwalker abilities, he’d finally get to watch them from the outside, maybe catch a weakness or a function he’d never once understood about his own class.

Or it kills me with the exact thing I never understood.

John set one enormous hand on his shoulder.

"There will be other missions."

Damien knew exactly what that meant underneath it. Refusing wouldn’t break the new contract. Martin had picked a mission that fit his mind perfectly, but a good fit wasn’t the same thing as safety.

"Why hasn’t the army just sealed the district and waited it out?"

"We have," Martin said. "The gate can break anywhere from seconds to years from now. We don’t get to choose the timeline."

A new projection opened.

➤[Estimated Gatebreak: Unknown]

"What comes out if it breaks?"

"The energy pattern suggests it starts producing copies of anyone nearby. If it breaks close to Viremont, we could be facing thousands of civilians duplicated with hostile intent all at once."

John’s grip on Damien’s shoulder tightened slightly. "Move the civilians, then."

"Evacuation’s already underway. But a variable gate breaking could expand its copying radius well past the district itself. We can’t predict where that limit actually sits."

Damien looked out the office window at the soldiers crossing the yard below, none of them aware that somewhere past those outer walls, a mirror was quietly learning their faces one at a time.

"Payment?" he asked.

John stared at him. "That’s your concern right now?"

"If I’m about to risk getting murdered by myself, I’d like to at least not do it for free."

Martin almost smiled. Almost. "Five thousand gold on clearance. Any personal reward the system grants directly stays entirely yours. Ownership of the stabilized gate afterward gets negotiated separately, if a claim ever comes up."

More money than he’d owned before he’d had to borrow the First Sanctuary registration fee off John in the first place.

"Take a thousand off that and send it to Mr. John."

John frowned. "For what?"

"The Murim registration fee."

"That was a gift."

"I borrowed it."

"From a rich person."

"You said you hated rich people."

"Only the richer ones."

"Then accepting repayment should improve your mood considerably."

Martin cleared his throat before the argument could settle in permanently. "Are you accepting the mission?"

The decision sat uncomfortably in his chest. That didn’t make it complicated.

"I accept."

John closed his eyes. "Of course you do."

The mission window opened.

➤[Military Freelancer Mission Accepted: Clear the Trial of Borrowed Self] ➤[Maximum Entry: 01] ➤[Failure may result in death.]

"The system keeps adding that last line like it’s still a surprise every time."

Martin rose. "A transport is ready."

"Now?" John demanded.

"For reconnaissance. He enters whenever he’s actually prepared."

John pointed at Damien. "He eats first."

"I already ate breakfast."

"A proper meal."

"The gate doesn’t care about my diet."

"Your duplicate might. I refuse to let an evil version of you have better nutrition than the original."

Martin turned toward the door fast, possibly so neither of them would catch whatever his face was doing.

◇◇◇

Two hours later, an armored aerial transport dropped into the abandoned district east of Viremont.

Empty towers ringed a sunken plaza in silence. Military barriers sealed off every road leading in, and scanning equipment formed three concentric rings around a structure sitting dead center. The Doppelganger Gate stood upright without any visible support, three meters tall, framed in dull silver, its surface a perfect, unbroken reflection.

Damien stepped out of the transport.

His reflection stepped out of the gate at the same instant.

It wore his black hair, his tired face, his ordinary clothes, matched his exact posture, right down to the faint dark circles under both eyes. But Damien hadn’t reached the plaza yet.

The reflection already had.

John came out behind him, and the gate’s surface immediately clouded over. A notification chimed above the plaza for everyone to hear.

➤[Entry capacity exceeded.] ➤[Only one may approach.]

John stopped hard at the outer ring. Damien kept walking alone, the plaza colder than the transport had been, wind pulling faint dust across the stone under his boots.

Each step brought the false Damien closer from the other side of the glass. Neither of them looked away once.

At ten meters, a private message opened just for him.

➤[Candidate recognized: Damien.] ➤[You have spent your life without sleep.]

He stopped walking. The reflection didn’t. It kept coming until its face pressed flat against the inner surface of the mirror.

Then it closed its eyes and smiled, slow and easy, like a man finally settling into a good dream after years of waiting for one.

➤[Will you enter alone?]

Damien drew the First Blood Dagger, the grip cold and familiar in his hand.

Behind him, John said nothing at all. For once in his life, there was no joke left, no warning, nothing to argue about.

Damien pressed Yes.

The reflection’s eyes opened. The mirror swallowed him whole.

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