Tyrant.

<Reminiscence 2>

When the Tyrant came to after a week, an Archlich, an Elder Death Knight, and a Skeleton King were waiting around him.

It looked as if they were escorting the Tyrant, and also as if they were waiting to kill him while he slept.

“So, apostates.”

The moment he saw them, the Tyrant felt a strange sense of déjà vu.

The instant divine power moved without his intention, the Tyrant became an Archlich.

“Huh? Heh, heh, heh.”

The strange flow of divine power moving within him. And an understanding of magical formulas he was feeling for the first time. For the first time in a long while, the Tyrant laughed with genuine delight and cruelty.

After that, the Tyrant’s transformations continued periodically.

As time passed, the Tyrant gradually lost his own appearance, and the moment he successfully transformed into the dragon form he had seen last, black, ominous mist was wrapping around him.

“Wow, Captain. It’s me! There are three of me (?)”

“You should say three people.”

Lee Hyo-ju, still pointing out Naruan’s grammatical mistake even in this situation.

“Damn, one foolish Arun is already a handful, and now there are ten of them.”

“We’re doomed.”

“Captain, isn’t that a mental attack in another sense?”

“Exactly!”

And the other members traded jokes too. It wasn’t that they weren’t tense. They were doing this to loosen up before battle.

Of course, there were members who weren’t tense at all. Naruan was the prime example.

“Hehe, I wonder how it feels to kill myself?”

Like a baby devil, he giggled ‘heehee’ and drew Jinyeom, twitching nonstop. Like a racehorse waiting for the starting signal.

Was that side waiting for the Tyrant’s orders too? The ‘we’ over there, several times more numerous than us, also stood still and waited.

I used the ‘Check’ divine power on one of the ‘us’ on the opposite side to examine its status information.

The other doppelgangers around me were the same. Their stats were copied at roughly 50% efficiency, except for luck. The talents, powers, or ‘Ex’-rank skills received from the assigned god could not be copied.

‘Come to think of it, even ‘skill book manufacturing’ can’t do anything about ‘Ex’ skills.’

Doppelgangers wearing my face. At least three. As many as ten doppelgangers with my own skills.

“Not bad.”

At this point, wasn’t it enough that I’d almost want to ask for it myself? A chance to fight myself.

While dealing with these imperfect doppelgangers, I’d definitely gain something, whether it was a weakness or a strength.

I almost wanted to take these doppelgangers as samples and even breed them.

“Wipe them out yourselves. You won’t get confused handling the ones who look like you, right? If they approach to help before the battle is over, attack them—they’re doppelgangers. Ah! And if by some chance you lose to a knockoff, be prepared.”

Amid the flood of individual answers, Naruan’s bright, ringing voice came through.

“Captain! Captain! If we win? If we win, what will you do for us?”

“…A modest compliment?”

“…Hmph. Got it! Then we have to win!”

I patted the disappointed Naruan on the head and asked Hazel and Lee Hyo-ju to look after the others.

Then I approached the Tyrant, because the Tyrant’s face, which had been full of rage, had started to change.

His body, which had been writhing like dough in a baker’s hands, gradually took shape.

He grew a little taller, gained muscle, his hair turned black, and black armor and a long slender sword took shape. By the time I met the Tyrant just a few steps away, his transformation was complete.

“……?”

“Oh! It’s the captain!!”

“Wow!”

“Hoho, to think there are two Kim Hans. This is rather novel in its own way.”

The members were completely unfazed. It was similar to the reaction I had when I met their doppelgangers.

After I’d been on the receiving end (?) myself, I realized how disgusting it feels when someone exactly like you imitates you.

The sight of him lifting one corner of his mouth and smiling. The ‘other me’ mocking me.

Only after facing the Tyrant, wearing my face and grinning crookedly, did I realize anew how infuriating it is to be mocked.

“Damn, the more I look at it, the more irritating that mug is.”

I glared at the guy who had made me feel the bizarre irritation of being annoyed by my own face, then drew Pyosik and swung it. With all my strength, as if venting my frustration.

Pyosik was engulfed in black flames and burned. It was not Deicide, but Destruction.

Like Talis’s brute fist strikes, Pyosik rushed at the ‘other me’ in a ferocious, rough assault.

The long Pyosik, over 10 meters in length, swayed as if dancing in the air, black flames wrapped around it as it pounced—like a dragon flying through the clouds.

Whether it was defensive magic or some other power, every time the barrier surrounding the ‘other me’ clashed with Destruction, there was a ‘psshh’ sound and the guy recoiled in alarm.

The Tyrant, transformed into me, couldn’t properly use my body and was busy backing away again and again.

More precisely, he couldn’t use the slender sword in his hand.

He was barely fending it off with techniques that seemed to be magic he originally possessed, but the force currently wrapped around Pyosik was Destruction based on demon of devour, the magic-devouring demon.

Unable to control the long, flexible sword, he swung it around and even ended up cutting himself.

He was slathered in defensive magic, with the slender sword hanging limp as he darted about in a panic, and it was almost embarrassing how tense I’d been.

If he had just been an ordinary enemy, I’d have thanked him and cut his throat, and that would’ve been the end of it. He wouldn’t even have made a decent post-meal snack, but,

“…Tch!”

But because he was doing it while wearing my face, it put me in a foul mood for no good reason.

Thinking about it, that was basically a mental attack. He was waving a weapon around with my face, then doing slapstick while bleeding from all over his face and body.

“Pffft!”

“Kk-kk-kk!”

Suddenly, the members’ laughter came one after another. The reason was that guy—the Tyrant wearing my face.

After flailing around with a slender sword over 10 meters long and injuring his own body for quite a while, the fake Pyosik tangled up and wrapped around his whole body like a scene from a cartoon. Then, groaning, he finally toppled over.

Self-tied, self-bound.

The Tyrant, wearing my face, was expressing this four-character idiom with his entire body.

“What a spectacular load of crap.”

“Pwahahahaha! Kk-k-k-k. It’s the captain’s Arun version. Kk-k-k.”

“Pffft! Ho, hohoho. Hohohoho.”

“Sigh…….”

One idiot around me is enough with Arun, and Naruan alone already covers the immature ones. There was no need for an enemy to act like that too.

‘Check.’

“…Pffft! K, kk-k-k-k!!”

I realized why the Tyrant, wearing my face, was showing such out-of-place slapstick. At the same time, I burst into uncontrollable laughter.

A crucial skill was missing from the skill list.

A slender sword. To handle that flexible, sharp blade, which is even harder to control than a whip, skill ‘Weapon Mastery’ is necessary.

But unfortunately, during the process of the physical grade rising, that skill was merged into the skill ‘War God [Ex]’.

By the time the doppelganger appeared and took my form, I was almost embarrassed by how worried I’d been that it might imitate Deicide and Destruction.

“Grr! T-this can’t be! Healing Wind!!”

While I clutched my stomach and laughed, ‘the other me,’ having barely broken free of the slender sword, strongly denied reality and used a healing skill.

The overlord of the undead was recovering by using a healing skill.

That’s just how the skill category is. Even though Healing Wind had been downgraded in rank without any resistance, the overflowing mana fully restored the body.

If the skill had simply failed to manifest, that would have been one thing, but once it successfully worked and restored the body, the Tyrant only grew more confused.

He began testing other skills as well.

“Prayer of Recovery! Stealth!”

The skills worked successfully.

Stealth activated, and the guy with lower agility and luck than mine was clearly visible.

A few of the members seemed unable to see the vanished Tyrant, but most of them gathered their eyes on the semi-transparent Tyrant and marveled at him.

“Grr!! Shadow Ambush!”

How stupid—shouting a skill name out loud while in Stealth. He could use it without yelling, too.

I turned my back, predicted where he would appear, and swung Pyosik toward his neck.

“Hik! Kkh!”

Startled, the Tyrant vanished as if using Blink, then disappeared again around Yongsang.

The guy tilted his head and thought about it for a moment, then scowled deeply. After that, he glared at me with a sour face.

What nerve. He glared at me like someone who had been unfairly robbed.

“What?”

“What have you done!”

“Done what?”

“Why… why can’t I use this weapon!”

His face was red and his eyes bloodshot. He shook the fake Pyosik in one hand roughly as he argued, like a customer demanding a return.

“That is….”

The Tyrant, wearing the exact same face as me, leaned forward with an expression that said, go on, say it. An expression full of anticipation.

“…Not telling.”

“…….”

An uncomfortable silence settles. No wind blows; it is utterly still…….