With his declaration, claiming the ice as his, the frozen wasteland crumbled, and Kayn was teleported away.
Kayn blinked, and he found himself back in the ice room, with yet another door in front of him.
"More trial? I thought I had gained the ice affinity and completed the trial…"
But Kayn wasn't the rule-maker of the trial. Instead of wasting his time trying to figure out what he needed to do, Kayn just opened the door and walked inside.
This time, what greeted Kayn was an arena, one that looked like the colosseum he saw on Earth. But of course, it was completely made out of ice.
With the colosseum as the setting, Kayn wasn't surprised to see that he found an enemy standing right in front of him.
What surprised him the most was how his enemy looked.
The demon stood above 2 meters tall, it had four arms, a pair of large wings, and a snake tail on its back.
"Isn't that… me…?"
The demon was the exact copy of Kayn, but instead of the red skin that he currently had, the demon's skin was grey, the same color as the ice demon.
"So this is that kind of situation where I need to defeat myself with a philosophical quest-"
Kayn's words were cut off as he saw his reflection raised on its four palms and manifested a familiar spell.
"Ice Spear."
"Shit! It can do that too!?" Already knowing what kind of spell he would be dealing with, Kayn ran as he dodged the ice spears flying towards him.
The second he could stop, Kayn cast his strengthening spell, which fortunately still worked despite the majority of his mana being of the ice attribute.
With his strengthened body, the ice spear his reflection shot out became much easier for him to dodge.
Seeing the increased speed of its enemy, the clone raised another palm and cast yet another ice spear with it, doubling the number of ice spears that Kayn needed to dodge.
But he remembered clearly how the ice demon fought; he knew that the ice spears could be coming from anywhere, and he still managed to dodge the double ice spear spell with ease.
"Come on! Is this all that you can do?"
As if answering Kayn's question, the reflection began raising another arm, his third arm.
"Wait, wait, wait, you can't actually do that, can you???"
The reflection opened the third arm's palm and cast another ice spear spell.
"Fuck, it could! That's cheating! This is bullshit! Why have I never thought of doing that before!?"
With the third ice spear spell coming into the fray, Kayn had an even harder time dodging between the ice spears, but with the mobility his enhanced body had, it was still barely doable.
If the reflection had actually used the ice spear spells consecutively instead of casting them at the same time, then Kayn would sooner or later be defeated, as he couldn't keep running away forever.
But the reflection just cast all three at the same time, giving Kayn time to breathe between the spells being cast, albeit only a few seconds.
And in those seconds of calmness, Kayn analyzed his reflection quietly from head to toe.
"It didn't seem to have any other difference than me, other than the fact that it could use the cheat-like casting method of the ice demon, and it was far more proficient than I am in using the ice magic."
Kayn felt the ice affinity mana coursing throughout his body. He knew that if he wanted to, he could cast the ice spikes that he had failed to cast before by using the manual casting method, but he didn't.
With his reflection being able to cast magic in a second without manually writing the sequence of the spell, Kayn's way of casting spells was just inferior.
'I need to learn how to do that!' Kayn thought to himself as he began dodging another set of the ice spear spell.
Even while dodging, Kayn kept taking a closer look at his reflection, studying how it could also cast spells without spelling out the runes one by one.
And when there was another gap in the reflection's barrage of ice spears, Kayn opened up his palms and formed the ice spear rune, all in one go, just like his reflection and the ice demon.
As the runes began appearing in the front of his palm in a complete form, Kayn's lips rose to a smile.
"I did it!"
Drawing a whole set of runes in one go without going through the strokes manually was mentally harder, but it wasn't impossible, and Kayn did it in his first try.
The runes glowed brightly, and it was about to disappear as the spell would manifest into the world.
However, just at the last moment, the runes once again crumbled into pieces, manifesting nothing other than Kayn's bafflement.
"Why!?" Kayn cried as he began dodging the ice spear once more.
But instead of complaining in his head, Kayn took an even closer look at the ice reflection.
He tried casting the spell again on another chance, but he failed once more.
'What am I missing…?'
Kayn recalled the time when the ice demon used his ice spells and the way his reflection used them.
It took him a few more rotations of spells until he finally got it.
'Both the reflection's spell and the ice demon's were spelled out the same, but the resulting spell wasn't the same.
They didn't specify from which direction the spell would be coming in, but they kept changing directions even with the same spell runes.
They must be using something when they cast their spells.. They must have planted their intentions when they manifested the runes…
That's it!'
The next time another chance arrived, Kayn quickly raised his palm and began forming the rune for ice spear once more.
This time, instead of only thinking of forming the runes, he actually thought about how the ice spear would form, where it would form, and in what direction it would be flying to.
And just like that, the ice spear runes appeared bright and strong in front of Kayn's palm before disappearing into the world.
Ice spears began appearing in front of Kayn, but they weren't aimed towards him this time.
Instead, the ice spear flew forward, straight towards his ice reflection.
Seeing the incoming attack, the reflection conjured ice spears of its own and crashed against Kayn's ice spear, making the spells cancel each other out.
"I really did it this time!"
'And it was even easier to form the runes when I imagined the spell vividly rather than the manual method!'
Kayn then stared at his own reflection, made of ice, and rooted his feet into the ground, challenging the ice reflection with its own game.
"Let's see which one of us is better at casting spells!" Kayn said as he raised all four of his arms, ready to cast spells with all four of them.