The floor trembled as The Imitator surged forward, limbs shifting and reforming like liquid steel. In its hands, a perfect replica of Noct's sword gleamed—except it shimmered with golden lines of formula runes, an evolved version of his own Numbers-based weaponry. Behind it, two more arms extended from its torso, now holding an exact facsimile of Ellen's blade and Mia's twin daggers.
It moved with terrifying precision.
CLANG!
Noct barely deflected a strike. The copy of his sword had enhanced weight and mathematical vector trails that twisted unnaturally. He skidded backward, eyes narrowing as formula symbols flickered across his own arms.
"Its mastery exceeds mine… It's predicting what I could do," he muttered.
Ellen darted forward in a flash, utilizing Severance Drive, her boots digging deep into the ground to gain momentum. Her blade whistled through the air with devastating force, aiming for the Imitator's side.
But before impact, a copy of her surged outward—a mirror version clad in armor that absorbed her full-force blow and countered with its own Severance Drive, nearly identical in execution.
Ellen gasped as she twisted her body mid-air, dodging at the last moment. "It copied my Drive perfectly—and it's faster."
Meanwhile, Mia launched forward, her form splitting into three with Mirror Bloom—two afterimages trailing behind her. The Imitator's copy of her, armed with identical daggers, didn't strike her, but the afterimages.
They clashed in a blur of steel.
Mia gritted her teeth. "It knew which was real."
"It's not just copying—it's anticipating," Noct said grimly.
The Imitator then pulsed—its body rippled and changed. It now had six arms, each wielding combinations of their weapons and mimicking potential techniques they hadn't even tried yet.
"Split it up," Noct called out. "It can't fully process multiple variables if we change patterns rapidly."
"On it!" Ellen roared.
She sprinted to the right wall and began zigzagging, building power with Severance Drive while staying unpredictable. Mia darted through the center with Mirror Bloom, attacking in erratic stabs. Noct, meanwhile, tapped into Numbers, activating Sequence Dash and Division Blink to distort his position.
For a moment, the Imitator hesitated—caught calculating too many trajectories.
"This is our shot!" Mia cried.
Noct unleashed Multiplier Edge on his sword, the force expanding geometrically with each strike. Ellen clashed with her mirror, striking with three separate Severance Drives in a single movement. Mia's afterimages encircled the golem, striking its joints from blind spots.
Cracks formed.
The Imitator's body began flickering—its mimicry stuttering.
Then it reacted… violently.
Its form retracted, and a sphere of compressed ather expanded from its core. Every copied weapon dissolved into glowing shards. A deep rumble followed.
"Back! It's changing forms!" Noct warned.
From the center, a final phase emerged—a sleek humanoid golem with a single mirrored mask and a slender obsidian sword glowing with embedded equations, runes, and memory echoes.
"This is its true self..." Ellen whispered.
"No more copies. It's us against its perfect form," Noct said, eyes narrowing.
Mia nodded, flipping her daggers into reverse grip. "Then let's show it what imperfection can do."