In the Pariellete district
Max was patrolling around the district carelessly and wasn't even observing anyone with even a fraction of Eric's attention. He was more like taking a stroll and enjoying the view of the city.
He had travelled to many places and stayed and worked different jobs on multiple occasions because the voice in Eric's head gave him visions of their next destination, and it just so happened that they always had a reason to leave that place every time.
However, he had never complained about it, since he was an adventurous person who chased and sought new things and always strived to live his life to the fullest while being kind and helping others first.
He had already adapted to this kind of life and didn't want his life to change to one where he settled in one place and lived a scheduled life for the rest of his time alive. However, he had become more mature as time passed, and now that he was a married man, he had to consider his wife too. She might always look angry at him and irritated and annoyed by him, but she was really caring and sweet on the inside, and he really loved to tease her. He just needed to not overdo it.
Max looked around while walking on the footpath and saw a kid about to fall with his ice cream in his hand. Suddenly, Max appeared behind him, grabbed his shoulder, and straightened him. He did it so fast that no one realized what had even happened.
Max turned around, saw an ice-cream shop, and decided to go buy some ice cream. He bought a cup of chocolate ice cream and, just when he was about to eat, his premonition of danger was suddenly triggered. He knew instantly that Eric was in danger. He immediately turned to the right, toward the district where Eric was patrolling. However, just when he was about to run, a voice entered his ears from behind: "There is no need to go." Max felt his skin crawl as he turned back, but he neither saw anyone nor was his premonition triggered.
He looked back and forth as his eyes began to glow with a purple pulse, and his pupil became a small black dot with a pattern of two tamarind-blue upside-down horns intersecting each other. He looked around but still couldn't find anyone.
He was now in a dilemma—whether to go help Eric or listen to the voice—and he was no coward or indecisive person. His friends and family came before his life, and Eric was both his family and friend. Eric was his most important person in the world.
Max turned back and ran, but he suddenly stopped after running a few metres. He looked ahead in confusion. He raised his hand and knocked on the air, and just as he suspected, there was an invisible wall here. When he knocked, the wall appeared like a thin translucent plastic cover, but it was invisible until touched, only to disappear the moment contact stopped. Max looked around and saw people coming in and out freely. "So, I am the only one trapped here," he thought self-deprecatingly. He looked around and saw that there was no premonition of danger and no one was attacking him. Why was he so sure that no one would attack him? That was because this was a trap. The trapper wouldn't have talked to him and would have already attacked. He wouldn't wait for Max to get a grasp of the surroundings. Max tried to find the person who had trapped him, but couldn't find anyone, no matter how much he tried.
He decided to do some experiments. He turned back to the wall and placed his right hand against it. Suddenly, a purple liquid with black particles in it came out from his right hand and seeped into the wall, and what came out of the wall was a green bubble. Max pulled his hand back and punched the wall; his hand went through it, but he couldn't go any further than that. "So, this is the work of an Aura user of the Dimension Pathway. He also seems to be a rank higher than me," Max concluded as he pushed his hand back and made the green bubble go back into the wall.
...
Back in the mirror room full of glass tiles, Eric was standing in the middle, his hands clenched tight and ready, his eyes now glowing with bright pink energy and four downward arrows again around his small black-dot pupil. "So, this is a domain card of the Inversion Pathway. The enemy must also be from that pathway, but what powers they have is the question."
Everywhere he looked, there were only mirror tiles in that huge room and nothing else, reflecting the room. It was good that he couldn't see his own reflection; otherwise, he would have already been confused about his position, and his vision would have become limited.
Eric stood there silently like a statue. One second passed, then two, then three, and suddenly, from the right corner behind Eric, a person came out. She was a female who looked to be in her teens, with silver eyes and lead-grey hair. She wore a silver-white skin-tight bodysuit that covered every part of her body except her face and half her neck. She had furrowed eyebrows and a fierce expression as she dashed toward him with a short sword in her right hand, ready to pierce him from the back.
Eric's danger premonition had become much weaker after coming into this domain, but luckily, this domain was a rank lower than his; otherwise, his premonition and intuition would have been completely neutralized, leaving him vulnerable to surprise attacks.
As soon as she revealed herself, Eric took action and turned back. Due to his late premonition, he could only react when she was close to him, but it was no problem. She pierced him with her short sword, but Eric actually placed his right leg in the direction of her short sword, which was coated with a layer of silver liquid with white particles. However, the particles were fewer, and the solid layer seemed less solid compared to Eric's coating on his leg. His pink liquid with black particles coated his leg like solid armour. The short sword hit his leg, but only caused some cracks to appear. Eric raised his right arm and coated it with his pink liquid, but the girl turned incorporeal as she became a reflection and entered the mirror tile beneath her. Eric didn't let go and smashed the mirror tile in which she disappeared with his coated right leg, but the broken pieces fixed themselves back into a new mirror tile.
Eric understood that he was not in an advantageous environment and had long lost the initiative. He had to play the long game, and he had no hope of anyone coming to save him. He had learned that lesson a long time ago.
Eric didn't want this fight to go on for long; the sooner he finished the fight, the better. His first idea was to escape the domain, but with him already trapped and having no means of escaping, he had cut off that plan. Next was to fight and kill the girl—that was the only thing he could do. Negotiation or talking wasn't an option here since she was clearly here to kill him. If she had wanted to talk, she wouldn't have attacked him.
It might seem like Eric had no advantages; however, he had been able to deduce something from their earlier clash just now—that she was a rank lower than him. Her domain, too, was one rank lower than his. So this was not a fight of life and death, but of who ran out of time first, and in this case, she was the one who would run out first. "But she obviously knows that—that is why she is only aiming for the vital points to finish the battle as soon as possible." Eric understood the situation and intent of the enemy and was now fully focused on the fight, and stopped thinking.
He looked around but couldn't see her anywhere. In this environment, she could hide anywhere. However, Eric was not going to just sit idly and let her attack him whenever she wanted. He could neither teleport in this domain nor ask for help from Max through telepathy using the golden liquid.
Pink flames burst out of Eric's right shoulder and extinguished as fast as it came. Eric started to float in the air and looked around, trying to find her. From his point of view, the entire room was darker, and there were multiple human-like distorted figures of black colour in every tile, looking straight at him. Hiding among those thousands of black figures was a yellow figure that was constantly moving and not necessarily looking at him. This was definitely her. Eric punched toward the mirror tile she was in, and a force went and destroyed the mirror tile, only for the girl to take no damage and the mirror tile to reform itself.
Eric smashed, punched, and kicked all the mirror tiles in the room as much as he could, but they always reformed themselves. He was wasting his energy for no reason. Even the assassin girl was confused, watching his actions from inside the mirror tiles.
Soon, Eric started to sweat and breathe heavily as he landed back on the ground and was still panting. He removed the sweat from his face using his left hand and looked around.
The girl saw an opportunity to strike when he was weakened. "This is it!" she thought, excited about completing her first real mission after all those years of training and practice. It was all going to pay off today.
She waved her hand around as multiple reflections of her formed around her, looking exactly like her with the same short sword in their hands. She coated each short sword with her reflections and sent them out to attack Eric from all directions. Eric saw every reflection clone coming at him. The first one came close and slashed at him; Eric grabbed its left arm and punched its face, making it disappear. To save himself from the second clone, which was coming to stab him from behind, he did a back-flip and, using his power, was able to stay in the air for a few more seconds. He grabbed the head of the second clone and smashed it into the ground. For the third, he made it fall by kicking its leg, and for the fourth, he uppercut it. However, what was draining was not their strength but their number, which seemed never-ending.
Seeing Eric distracted, the girl decided to finish her job once and for all.
All the reflections of Eric that were reflected by the mirror tiles came out. These reflections, however, were unlike her reflection clones and acted more like cold animals who went wild the moment they saw their target and ran toward Eric to attack and kill him with hatred in their eyes, as if he had killed their parents and children. The girl disguised herself as one of his reflections while she continued to make more and more reflection clones of herself and kept tracking him.
Eric continued to fight all her clones and kill them one by one. He looked around him from the corner of his eyes and saw hundreds of himself coming to attack him like wild animals. "Shoot! Mirror wraiths." Eric could not see his reflection in the mirror, but now that his reflections had become mirror wraiths and were coming to attack him, he could see them. However, even with his premonition alarming him nonstop, he continued to ignore the mirror wraiths as if he couldn't see them and focused on fighting the reflection clones.
Soon, hundreds of mirror wraiths started to attack Eric wildly, leaving him have cuts and bite marks everywhere. However, he only showed a confused reaction and looked around himself frantically, getting distracted and getting stabbed in his left abdomen by one of the girl's clones. His left abdomen immediately started to become a mirror, causing him immense pain to him.
The girl, who was still at a distance from him, was shocked and finally realized something. "Wait, he can't see the mirror wraiths? Haha, one more advantage for me. This mission is just too easy, and I was told to be careful of this guy. So infuriating." In her mind, she had already imagined herself killing Eric and getting praise for her success. She decided to go and finish him off with one final blow herself to make sure she had time to escape afterwards too.
She ran and got close to him. However, just as she was about to give the final blow, her premonition for danger started to go off like crazy, like an alarm clock in the morning. She felt fear and death near her. She looked at Eric's face, and he looked at her and revealed a small but wicked smile like a psychopath, Like a hunter who has seen his prey get caught in the trap he set as he opened his mouth and slowly said,
"Got you."
As he said that, Eric raised his right hand with the tip of his middle finger and thumb pressing against each other.
Snap!
With a clicking sound, Eric snapped, and an intense pressure pressed everyone to the ground. The girl tried to escape to the mirror tiles, but the remnants of the pink liquid in the increased gravity latched onto her, making her unable to use her abilities. Her entire body felt intense pressure as she screamed in pain, "Ahhhhhh!" She could hear her bones crack into dust and her inner molar teeth shatter; her nose, ears, and eyes started to bleed as her vision turned red.
After a few seconds, the pressure lifted, and she collapsed on her knees with her mouth wide open and her eyes rolled back. Golden liquid with silver particles in it seeped out of her body and started to heal her wounds, prioritizing her most fatal wounds first. Eric took out his revolver from his underarm holster, walked up to her, and put the gun in front of her head.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
He shot her three times in the head with liquid-coated bullets. The first bullet was reflected by the coating of silver-white liquid, subconsciously coated by her mind after sensing danger. The bullet reflected, but before it could even hurt Eric, it stopped in mid-air and fired itself back—this time to her left knee—and hit the mark. The second bullet was used up and didn't hurt, but almost broke the coating, and the third coated bullet not only broke the coating but also hit her head. It didn't kill her, and she had now recovered enough to regain consciousness and look at Eric with a disdainful look. Of course, she would—she had been tricked and had fallen into his trap, ending up in this state.
She was now bent on escaping. It was clear that she couldn't keep fighting. She used her golden liquid and teleported to the ceiling, and was just about to turn into a reflection when she realized she couldn't. She looked at her shoulder and saw it ablaze in pink flames. Then she looked down and saw Eric with his right hand raised, looking coldly at her with an expressionless face.
On the verge of her death, she felt oddly at peace. She had her whole life ahead of her—so many things she wanted to try, to go to, to explore, to experience. What remained was a lingering sense of regret for underestimating her target and falling into his trap, costing her her life.
"Damn it! No wonder I was told to be careful of him. He first acted like he was completely trapped and panicking, caused pointless destruction, and made himself look tired, making me let my guard down. He led me into his trap by acting as if he couldn't see the mirror wraiths, making me come close to him, only for him to finish the job, making me go to his area of attack and hit me with all he had! Damn it! I am sorry, Mother. I couldn't fulfil your promise. May we meet again in the afterlife," as her life flashed before her eyes.
Eric slowly clenched his right hand and squeezed like he was squeezing something hard. The more he squeezed, the more pressure the girl felt on her head until Eric's hand fully clenched, causing her head to explode like a watermelon and scatter white brain matter around.
As her headless and lifeless body fell on the ground, the domain dissipated and became the card with the broken-mirror photo on it, and burned away as its ashes blew away with the wind.