Almost exactly as Dyon had predicted, a three weeks and five days passed before the clone lay at his feet, on its last breaths.
“You!” The clone gasped for breath, clearly trying to understand just how this had happened.
From the moment Dyon gave him the month long deadline, he had snorted with disdain, then had begun attacking with everything he had. But, it seemed no matter what he did, Dyon would always have a response to it.
However, that didn’t matter much to him. As long as he managed to pass the deadline Dyon had set, he would have successfully done his job in shattering Dyon’s dao heart. At that point, nothing else mattered. He could then play with Dyon at his leisure.
Unfortunately, things hadn’t gone to plan. On the first day of the fourth week, Dyon’s battle tactics abruptly changed. The clone suddenly found itself on its back foot more often than it wanted to admit. Although Dyon was definitely at a disadvantage overall, the times where the clone got caught off-guard came more and more frequently.
In the end, Dyon erupted with a burst of power he couldn’t comprehend, and before he could adjust, he had taken a fatal wound. Despite knowing that the Tower would heal him and not allow his death to occur, everything from his pain to the feeling of his life slipping away was completely real. He just couldn’t believe it.
It wasn’t that he had never lost before, it was just that Dyon was at such a massive disadvantage compared to others who took this fourth trial. In fact, it could be said that in his own boredom, he had cheated Dyon a bit.
According to the rules, he was meant to become a copy as close to Dyon as he possibly could. His true strength was far beyond Dyon’s, and even Dyon’s grand teacher, should they meet in real life, would have to speak with him in a friendly tone. However, he was constrained by the rules of this tower, so he couldn’t erupt with that power even if one of the trial takers pissed him off.
If Dyon knew this truth, he would be even more certain of his conjecture that these Epistemic Towers had more to them than he assumed. On the surface, they were supposedly his grand teacher’s creations, yet his grand teacher’s legacies were on the bottom floor while a mere trial supervisor commanded the respect of his grand teacher? What kind of concept was that?
Setting aside that mystery for now, the trial supervisor followed the rules, but he sometimes bent them a little bit to soothe his boredom. Truth be told, he really disdained the idea of conforming to the fighting styles of mere children. Every time he thought about it, he wanted to find the man who sealed him in here and fight it out to the death. However, whenever he thought about just how overwhelming a character that man was, he could only shake his head and hide his fury.
This time when he bent the rules, he became a perfect clone of Dyon, but purposefully ignored the seals on Dyon’s wills, energy cultivation and soul cultivation. By all rights, he should have been able to completely annihilate Dyon because he was essentially the greater version of him.
However, things didn’t go the way he expected… Even with the advantage, even after having Dyon at a severe disadvantage for weeks, he still lost somehow!
“You’ve been talking so much for the past month, that I guess it’s my turn to talk you to death.” Despite his words, Dyon’s words were cold. He could tell that this shameless clone was breaking some untold rules, so he was, rightfully, pissed off.
“Your cloning and copying technique is quite profound, but its imperfect. Maybe if you had your original cultivation, perfectly cloning my abilities would be child’s play, unfortunately, you were restricted to my abilities despite you breaking the rules.
“For one, in case you didn’t notice, my energy cultivation talent is terrible. Being constrained to my abilities, while also trying to copy them with a technique that falls under the energy cultivation category, weren’t you asking to lose?”
The clone twitched when he heard this. When had he ever run into such a problem? He was by far the most qualified of the fourth trial supervisors. Better yet, he was the supervisor of the God trials. What kind of genius, that could be a key wielder, would have poor energy cultivation talent? If anything, they were the most talented young men and women in the entire cosmos. Yet, this boy was telling him that his talent was poor? He really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Because of this, all of your supposed techniques that you copied from me were all flawed in one way or another. The only thing you managed to get right was what my overall combat prowess would be should my cultivation be unsealed, but that was only because your original power was stronger than mine to begin with.
“Your arrays were white, not gold, and thus weaker than mine would be. Your death intent could hardly affect me. And luckily for you, my attacking techniques were non-existent, or else you would have messed them up as well and would have made beating you even easier.
“Maybe the funniest part was that your representation of the Dragon King was laughably weak. I only pretended that it could contend with this broad sword of mine to trick you for a bit longer while I figured out how to beat you.
“From the very beginning, you weren’t worthy of being my opponent.”