The Nameless Extra: I Proofread This World

"Shit..."

Ruvian spat a curse in frustration as his body plunged downward at a vicious speed. Both arms shielded his face, bracing against the violent rush of wind that raked at his eyes.

From the very moment he had entered the mirror realm, he had been trapped in this state of free fall. Each time he reached a certain depth, he would punch through a strange, soft, invisible layer that blunted the force of his descent.

And speaking of which, here came another one.

Only this time, instead of phasing cleanly through it, it completely stopped him.

Splash!

Something ruptured around him with a wet, splitting splash, like he’d smashed through the surface of a lake made of glass and gel. The impact should’ve cracked his ribs. Should’ve blasted the air out of his lungs.

But strangely, it didn’t.

Ruvian didn’t feel a shred of pain at all.

Lowering his arms, Ruvian scanned his surroundings.

"Now, where the hell am I?"

The first thing he did was inspect the ground he had slammed into. And to his shock, it wasn’t the sort of ground he had been expecting.

What pooled beneath him was a dark, water-like surface. Yet within it, where his reflection should have been, there was nothing.

’Where is he?’

Ruvian was looking for his reflection, but it wasn’t there. The only thing mirrored across the liquid floor was the faint scatter of light drifting high above, like distant shards of a sky.

A prickle of unease crawled through him.

Sensing that something was out of place, Ruvian immediately went on alert. He couldn’t afford to drop his guard.

Not now, of course.

Turning, he swept his gaze across the surrounding expanse.

"..."

Then, as he glanced to his left, he caught sight of something in the distance that flickered with light.

Narrowing his eyes towards the source, he realised that the light was getting bigger.

’No, you fool, it’s getting closer!’

With a grunt, Ruvian threw himself to his right, rolling across the watery floor. The spell tore past the space where he had stood a moment ago.

It shrieked through the air with a razor hiss, close enough that he felt its heat scrape along his sleeve.

As he turned back toward the source of the magic, a streak of light slashed across the dark surface behind him.

The liquid-black plane split along the missile’s path, ripping open in a jagged line. For an instant, the watery surface beneath the strike tore apart into layers before closing itself.

Eventually, the hiss faded.

Ruvian realised what that white light was.

[Magic Missile].

Slowly, he pushed himself upright, his boots bracing hard against the unnaturally slick surface. His hand slid into his coat without hesitation and came back gripping his wand.

Only then did he look up.

Across the dark expanse, a figure was approaching.

Then, he heard a cold, contemptuous voice.

"Huh. You actually dodged that? I didn’t expect you would, not with how slow you were to grasp what it was."

Ruvian couldn’t help but frown.

"Mm... what’s with that look? Oh, don’t tell me you came here without preparing to face a clone of yourself. Gods, you are so odious. And pathetic. How does the original manage to look more insufferable than a cheap-stakes copy of his?"

The figure viciously spat. "What a waste."

The man standing before him shared everything he had—dark blue eyes, the same luminous dark hair, the same facial structure and even the exact build.

At nearly the same instant, Ruvian wiped his frown away and brought his eyes levelled. He had no intention of retreating to a few words from his shoddy duplicate.

"Ha. I see what went wrong here."

Ruvian lifted a hand and motioned toward the other him.

"What’s with the smugness on your face? You’re not an exact copy of me. All they did was just duplicate you with my flaws and bloated them. And I have never seen someone as miserable as you too. Such a pity isn’t it? To be born as a defective replica."

"Couldn’t be me."

His eyes traced lazily over the figure standing before him, who had been listening composedly without a reaction.

"Ah, I didn’t expect the original to bark a lot."

"And I didn’t expect my copy to be such a crap."

At the same moment, both of them smiled.

"Though I will say—"

"For an original—"

"For a copy—"

Their voices overlapped in perfect unison.

"—you’re rather hideous."

With identical motions, their caged fury snapping at last, both drove their wands, leveled the tips at each other’s skulls, and voiced the incantations.

"[Magic Missile]!"

*****

Dodging another streak of white light that tore past him, Ruvian felt his expression sink into a grim shadow.

He composedly rose from his crouch and loosed another [Magic Missile], sending it slashing toward his opponent’s flank with lethal intent.

However, the effort proved hollow, as the replica effortlessly slipped aside, its body shifting only a fraction to the right while the spell hissed past and scorched the empty air.

A hair’s breadth closer, and the blast would have peeled his opponent’s skin.

The failure did not surprise him at all.

Ruvian understood it clearly that this clash would never be the simple contest it pretended to be.

Victory in the immediate exchange held no meaning, and only a fool or a dullard would cling to the fantasy of defeating a perfect duplicate that possessed what its original lacked.

And Ruvian had never counted himself among fools, nor had he ever been blind to truths that stood plainly before him.

What he pursued instead was time, stretching the seconds so he could study the beast that was wearing his face.

Ruvian needed to strip apart its secrets until he grasped the single advantage that set his clone above him.

And that discovery alone would decide the outcome of this trial.

It was the ingredient to his success.

Long before he stepped into this ordeal, he had already sifted through his own flaws and could list them like sins scratched into a prison wall.

For all he knew, the copy, however, did not carry a multitude of differences. It bore only one advantage that he didn’t have.

That was all.

Because this trial’s purpose was not to overwhelm scholars with many shortcomings but to force them to confront the one absence that mattered most to them.

However, despite that fact, the bitter truth still gnawed at him.

Ruvian had always judged himself as a man of keen self awareness and relentless caution.

He prided himself as someone who was dangerous in subtle ways, difficult to read, harder to corner, and never someone to be taken lightly.

And because of that... the same things applied to the figure that wore his face.

And that was what troubled him.

While he hunted for the flaw of his own soul, he had a feeling that the imitation before him labored just as fiercely to bury it, concealing that truth with the same ruthless cunning mind.

Hence, the task of prying that truth would not be an easy one.

With a heavy sigh, Ruvian darkly smiled.

’Ha, seriously... I am my worst enemy.’

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[Chapter 60: Trials of Confrontation (3)]