As I was recharging [Multi-Layered Barrier], two things happened at the same time. The first was that the marlin started spewing out hundreds of those water bullets that were able to cut us like wet paper. The second thing was that a fraction of a second later, I felt the other me warping us on top of the fish.

  A magical circuit flashed to life in front of us, and then a bubble of solid space surrounded the marlin, the water bullets hitting the hardened space and cracking it a bit before it reformed.

  He poured our MP into the spell, and I felt the spatial sphere start to contract. The fish inside of it must have sensed the increase in pressure, because it started trashing around inside it, using that skill that transformed its fins into blades, trying to cut into space.

  ‘A little help?’ I heard from the other me.

  I didn’t need to ask what he needed. I reached to the sphere with my mind and, with [Spatial Manipulation], pressed down on it.

  The fish increased its resistance, probably in distress from the water pressure increasing and trying to crush it.

  Another magical circuit flashed to life, and our MP was starting to get low. The newest spell worked in tandem with our efforts and multiplied the force we were exerting on the shell.

  The fish jerked as it imploded in on itself due to its internal pressure not being able to resist the external one.

  The moment it blood started to dissolve into the water around it was the moment both of us dropped everything we were holding. If we were on the ground, I’m sure we would’ve collapsed, instead, we just floated in place, staring at the imploded fish.

  I couldn’t even sigh because our current biology didn’t allow me to do so.

  ‘So,’ I sent to the other me. ‘What now?’

  Before he could answer, we suddenly were in a dry, empty room. The lack of water in the room made us start to choke immediately.

  I was going to trigger [Genetic Dysphoria] to return to my true body, but a look at my second head gave me pause. What was going to happen when we went back to my original body, with a single mind?

  The thought of one of us disappearing was scary, but I knew if I didn’t do anything, both of us were going to die asphyxiated.

  We both triggered the skill at the same time, which was rather fortunate, as the moment I tried to use it, I felt how it was slightly different from before. Both my consciousness needed to accept to trigger the skill before it did anything. It was something to watch out for in the future.

  My body went limp and I saw as both my heads, now blobs of flesh, approached one another. A splitting headache assaulted my mind as our heads merged. I sensed [Mathematical Cortex] disengage itself. I could feel how sore it was from the abuse I subjected it to.

  When I recovered, I was back in my true form and with a new understanding of what happened.

  At first, I thought my mind was copied and sustained by the skill, being the original and a copy. But now, with both sets of memories of the last couple of minutes inside my mind, I had understood.

  While the skill did copy my mind, it actually split it in half and simulated the missing half. Both versions of me were the original, and both were the copy… Urgh, just thinking about it was giving me a headache.

  I looked around the room, distracting myself from the confusing new knowledge that I could create clones of my mind without them being clones.

  The room was circular, with around 10 meters in diameters. It was being illuminated by some strange purple algae that floated inside cylindrical tanks filled with water and glowed. In the center of the room was an hourglass halfway filled with sand. My skill told me I had about 10 minutes until the sand finished falling through the tiny gap in the glass.

  On the other side of the hourglass, Opposite to me, were two archways. Walking towards them allowed me to see that one had a stairway going downwards, and the other upwards.

  “Finally, I can leave this place,” I said out loud. I was exhausted, both mentally and physically, and my MP reserves were low. I’ve been going through floor after floor after floor for the past four days nonstop, all I wanted to do was to sleep.

  Without thinking much, I started ascending the stairway. It led me to another circular room, this one much smaller and with a chest in the middle of the room.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I was stunned at the visage of a chest in the middle of the room, inside of a dungeon. This made me remember those dungeon crawler games too much, and I used [Appraisal] on the chest almost instinctively. Who knows, maybe I would finally meet one of those mimics Jack hates so much.

  [Chest for when delvers beat Gorgi]

  …

  …

  …

  I blinked and used the skill again.

  [Chest for when delvers beat Gorgi]

  Huh. I was starting to understand how much dungeons can bend reality.

  I approached it and opened the chest. Inside it was a single rapier.

  [Flowfish Rapier - I placed [Iron Fin] on it]

  …

  …

  …

  It’s not a game, it’s not a game, it’s not a game.

  Shaking my head at the description the dungeon clearly placed on the items, I picked up the rapier and looked at it.

  It looked a lot like the nose of the marlin I fought on the last floor, with the hilt having a white, bony texture. It was a rather simple rapier, though I wasn’t an expert on rapiers or anything.

  Trying to push some of my magicules into it, I sensed them being absorbed by the rapier, and the whole blade turned the same white the fins of the marlin took whenever it used that cutting skill.

  I stopped the magicules, and the blade returned to normal after a few more moments.

  I decided to take it with me. At least I could sell it and gain some money. It’s not like I had any with me at the moment. The money Farahio left me with was kind of abandoned in Brostin, on another continent.

  I held the sword with my mouth and walked to the other set of stairs on the other side of the room and climbed them, eventually exiting the dungeon in the same place I entered. A look behind me confirmed the stairs I took to climb here had vanished, replaced with the same stairs I first descended into the dungeon.

  It was night, and the bigger moon was starting to get in front of the smaller one. A lunar eclipse, where one moon is covered by the other, was going to happen in the next few days.

  I looked around. I was close to a cliff with the ocean at the bottom. I stared at it for a few more moments before I passed out from exhaustion.

  ***

  I woke up with something poking my muzzle. It took me a moment for my eyes to focus on a face mere centimeters away from my eyes. I got scared and jumped backwards while putting more layers of barrier between me and whatever it was.

  “It’s not nice to scream and jump away from people, you know?” A voice that I took a second to recognize as Amity’s said.

  I blinked and looked at where I was and saw Amity, the Witch of Pride, the most powerful elf I had ever met, standing there with her arms crossed while she looked at me with a fake pout on her face.

  “S-sorry, you startled me,” I apologized to her. She nodded and picked up the sword I had dropped on my sleep, observing it.

  “Huh, not bad for a weak sword,” she said. “But kinda of small for you, isn’t it?” She extended her arms and started measuring me with the sword, probably imagining myself using it to attack, which is, honestly, a funny mental image.

  “No, I was planning to sell it later,” I explained. “I don’t even know how to use a sword. Besides, magic seems to be my forte.”

  She hummed and nodded, seemingly agreeing with me.

  “So, are you ready to go?” She asked me. It took me a moment to understand what she was referencing, but when I did, she continued speaking. “You didn’t forget about our deal, right? I would be very sad if you had. I told you about Origin Magic, and now you need to come with me to meet with Athor.”

  Yes, I remember that during my last temporal loops, in the city of Brostin, I made a deal with her that she would explain to me what Origin Magic was, and in exchange, I would need to go see whoever Athorisnamor was. [Knowledge Library] refused to tell me a single thing about the guy.

  At least now I knew that Origin Magic isn’t magic at all. It’s more like reality-bending than actual magic. At least from what I understood. And it wasn’t something anyone could do. If you weren’t prepared for it, it would shatter your soul, and you’d die. Thankfully, I had the right skills to absorb the worst of it.

  “Right. I didn’t forget about it. Just wasn’t thinking about it.” I couldn’t think about it. The sheer amount of stuff I had to do in the last days blew it out of my mind. The exhaustion didn’t help either.

  “Okay!” She beamed at my words. Why? I don’t know. “Well, let’s get going, then.”

  With a snap of her fingers, a magical circle appeared beneath us, large enough for me to fit comfortably. A second later, space warped, twisted, stretched, and compressed all around us for a few seconds, and then we were in another place. The transition happened fast enough, I hadn’t had the time to feel nauseous.

  A shadow passing over us made me look upward, and when I did, my eyes widened. A giant golden dragon was flying dozens of meters in the air. It was massive, easily 70 meters in length with a wingspan of 150 meters.

  It was flying in the direction of a massive blue wall that seemed made out of crystals… No, it was not a wall. It was a building so massive that it completely took over my view of the horizon. I could see windows of different sizes, from normal, human-sized, to truly massive, 50 meters wide, and some even taller than that. The crystals seemed to shine different colors depending on where you looked. The size of whatever it was was so big that I couldn’t even calculate it, even with [Mathematical Cortex].

  “Welcome to the Central Island!” Amity shouted a couple of meters in front of me, with her arms wide open. “I can’t wait to show you everything!”

  Amity was practically giggling and jumping from one foot to the other. “But first, Athor wants to talk to you. I don’t know why, but he seemed truly interested in this conversation.

  “Let’s go! To the Myriad Palace!” She shouted and started to walk towards the massive crystal building in the distance.