Insomniac Player

The final guardian didn’t move its dagger. "You agree with me?"

"Mostly."

"Then stop fighting."

"No."

Something small crossed the copy’s face, a frown Damien recognized instantly because he wore it himself whenever the evidence refused to support a conclusion he’d already decided on.

"You’re afraid to fight."

"Yes."

"You survive behind stronger people."

"Yes."

"You’re just attentive. Not brilliant or genius people call you."

"That one explains several things about me, actually."

The false blade pressed closer. A thin line opened under his jaw. "You’re nobody, alone."

He turned that one over.

Take every person out of the equation, and yeah, I get weaker.

That wasn’t a revelation. That was just what removing your allies did to anyone.

"You expected that to hurt more?" He kept his voice even despite the blade.

Its eyes narrowed. "Why doesn’t it?"

"It did."

"Did?"

"Then you kept talking."

His right hand rested near the copy’s planted foot. His dagger sat well out of reach. Shadow Imitation was ready. Shadow Dash still counted down. None of it mattered with a blade sitting under his throat.

The guardian knew every escape he’d ever pulled off before. It expected him to wait, the way he always waited, for a clean opening.

He stopped waiting.

He caught its ankle and twisted with everything Boss Killer had loaded into his arms. It lost balance mid-motion, the blade dragging across his neck instead of into it, and he drove his forehead straight into its mouth.

Silver teeth scattered across the platform. They rolled apart from each other.

He reached his dagger first. It rose, touched its torn lip, looked at the silver dust on its fingers. "That was reckless."

"I’ve heard worse."

"You could have died."

"You were already trying to kill me."

Something had shifted.

Maybe his stats? No. The 10% from the title sat exactly where it had been. Then his wounds? Still burning, still bleeding, still unbearable. Not even the guardian’s memory of him, still complete, still perfect.

I want it dead, he realized, and the thought landed strange in his own chest, unfamiliar.

He’d killed before. Goblins, wolves, knights, monsters, the Lord of Ironfall, all of them fallen to this same blade. Every time, killing had been necessary, a condition for surviving or for clearing a path forward, and he’d never once enjoyed it, rarely even chosen it when running was still an option on the table.

Running was an option right now too. He could surrender. Walk out. Instead, he looked at the face that had spent the last ten minutes turning every bond he had into dependence and every careful decision he’d ever made into cowardice, and something in him refused to let it keep breathing.

For the first time, he didn’t just accept that this thing had to die. He wanted to be the one who killed it.

The guardian read it on his face. "You think anger makes you different from me?"

"I’m not angry."

"Heh, then what? Is it hormone imbalance?"

He raised the First Blood Dagger. "I’m done depending on anyone else in this room."

He attacked. It dodged the first thrust, already predicting the turn of his wrist, already moving to counter the cut it expected toward its stomach.

This time he punched it instead, breaking its nose and sending it sliding across the glass. It recovered fast, and they closed again.

He stopped trying to outthink his own memories. He threw simple attacks and let raw strength decide the rest. A direct cut forced a block. The block pulled its arm wide. He drove his stronger knee into the exposed ribs underneath it.

It retreated. He followed.

It cut his forearm. He took the hit and answered with a strike to its shoulder. It opened his coat near the heart. He drove it back with an elbow. It understood every technique he threw at it. What it didn’t understand was why he’d stopped protecting himself the way he used to.

"You’re trading injuries," it said.

"Observant, for a doppelganger."

"You’ll die first. You entered this fight already wounded."

"Then kill me."

Its expression tightened at that, because the criticism underneath it had been true the whole time. He was afraid. He leaned on other people. Paying attention came more naturally to him than actually fighting did. None of that meant he had to lose tonight.

A coward can still move forward. An ordinary person can still see what needs doing. Someone who’s been carried can still stand alone when nobody’s left to carry him.

The copy knew everything he’d already done. It had no idea what he’d decide next. They circled under the hanging reflections.

The Shadow Dash timer crept toward zero. The guardian’s eyes flicked toward the nearest patch of dark.

He caught the calculation instantly. It was his own logic, running backward through someone else’s head. The second the skill returned, they’d both have it, and it expected him to pick some irregular destination now that the obvious routes had already failed once.

It watched the smallest shadows on the platform. It moved. He didn’t trigger the skill at all.

He threw the dagger instead. Its aim had already started turning toward an incoming shadow, and the real blade caught its left hand and pinned it flat to one of the suspended memory panels.

It tore free before he reached it, silver spilling across the black glass.

➤[Replicated Shadow Imitation activated.]

It vanished entirely. He closed his eyes.

Nocturnal Eyes gave him nothing against this, sight didn’t matter anymore. He listened to the platform instead, and heard no step, no breath, no motion of any kind.

He knew exactly what it wanted. His wounded right side was still the softest target on his body. His ruined leg still cut his ability to turn left. It would come from the rear-right, wait for his attention to drift, and put the blade straight through his ribs.

That’s what I’d do.

He turned left anyway.

The hidden blade caught his back instead. Pain exploded under his shoulder and tore the air out of his lungs.

It reappeared behind him from the rear-left, one full step ahead of the obvious answer, because it had known he’d know the obvious answer too.

The tower thought one layer deeper than I did.

He smiled through the blade already in his body. "Found you."

He locked his left arm around its weapon wrist. It tried to pull free. His extra strength held it in place. He drove the back of his skull into its face, twisted, and closed a hand around its throat. It hit his ribs twice, and something cracked under the second hit. He didn’t let go.

His own dagger sat several meters off. He shoved the guardian toward it. It understood the plan instantly and kicked his wounded thigh, twisting for the escape.

He let the leg buckle. They went down together. His hand found the First Blood Dagger first.

It caught his wrist before he could finish the motion. Equal skill against equal skill, its clean body fighting his ten-percent edge, both arms shaking as the blade turned in slow motion, degree by degree, toward its own chest.

"Without the title," it whispered, "you lose this."

He forced the point closer anyway. "Good thing you didn’t get one. Cry about it."

It shifted its hips hard, nearly reversing the whole hold. He stopped resisting the motion entirely, and for one instant its own force carried it forward past where it wanted to be.

He let go of the dagger. Its focus chased the falling weapon on reflex.

He caught it with his other hand instead, clumsy, slower than anything stored in his memory of how this should go, nothing like a trained switch at all. The blade went in under its ribs anyway.

He drove it deeper, past the resistance, until the wolf-fang point found its heart.

It froze. Their faces sat inches apart.

"You got lucky," it said.

He could barely breathe around his own ribs. "Didn’t you say I pay attention?"

He twisted the blade. The whole thing cracked.

Silver lines spread up across its face, his own face, starting from the chest and climbing. For one second it looked less hostile than simply tired.

Then it broke apart into a storm of mirrored fragments, and he fell through the middle of them.

His knees hit the platform. The wound in his back opened wider, and one side of his chest refused to expand all the way. He planted the dagger against the floor just to stay upright.

The white sky turned blue with system light.

➤[Floor 10 cleared.]

➤[Boss eliminated.]

➤[Level increased: 31 → 32.]

➤[Available Stat Points: 36.]

➤[Trial of the Borrowed Self completed.]

One final window opened.

➤[Skill acquired: Doppelganger (Lv. 1)]

➤[Effect: Creates one duplicate identical to the user in appearance.]

➤[Duration: 00:01:00.]

➤[The duplicate’s attributes, abilities, behavioral accuracy, and duration will increase with skill level.]

➤[Cooldown: 24:00:00.]

"I just killed ten of those things. Why would I ever want one of my own?"

The system didn’t revise its decision. The black platform started turning transparent underneath him.

➤[Title effect ended: Boss Killer.]

The extra strength drained out of his body all at once. His arm gave out, and his shoulder hit the floor.

➤[Return transfer initiated.]

The tower disappeared. Cold evening air replaced the white sky, and he fell out of the standing mirror into the plaza outside Viremont.

John crossed the outer ring before the military scanners had even finished confirming the entry restrictions had lifted. He caught Damien with one arm and cradled his head with the other, moving with a gentleness that didn’t match a man his size at all.

"MEDIC!"

Dust actually shook loose off nearby windows. Sir Martin and a waiting medical unit rushed in behind him, and behind all of them, the silver gate cracked straight down the center and collapsed into harmless light.

Martin’s eyes moved over the wounds one by one, something clearly bothering him about the count.

Why hasn’t the system healed any of this, Damien wondered distantly, too tired to ask out loud.

"What happened in there?" John demanded.

"I fought myself."

"I know that much. Did you kill it?"

He looked at the empty air where the gate used to be. "I’m the one still standing out here."

John’s mustache dropped. "That’s not an answer."

"The other one’s in pieces."

"Better answer. We’ll talk after."

The medics lifted him onto a floating stretcher, healing light spreading across his side and back, slowing the bleeding without touching the pain underneath it.

Martin walked alongside. "You cleared a legendary-ranked gate. One that killed several experienced players who tried it before you."

He let his head fall back against the stretcher. "They were probably less annoying than I am."

John gripped the stretcher rail like someone might try to steal it out from under him.

Damien closed his eyes, not to sleep, sleep still wanted nothing to do with him, but because the lights hanging over the plaza had gotten unnecessarily bright.

He’d walked into that tower believing survival meant being cleverer than every threat put in front of him. He walked out knowing something a lot less impressive and a lot more useful instead.

I can be afraid and still move forward. I can need people and still stand alone when it counts. I can be ordinary, and attentive, and alive.

For now, that was enough.

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