NOVEL WEB Chapter 41: The Flaw in Perfection
The grand chamber on the ground floor of the Tower of Trials was silent save for the faint hum of power radiating from the fused golem. The being, a perfect synthesis of Jin-woo and Cid, stood as a mirror to their own potential. Its left side, the Monarch half, was a deep, absorbing shadow. Its right side, the Eminence half, was a swirling, unpredictable nebula of energy.
The golem didn't wait. It moved, its speed a blur that perfectly matched their own. It lunged forward, not at one of them, but at the space between them, its two swords—one of shadow, one of slime—slashing in a pincer motion designed to cleave them both in half.
It was the exact, perfect tactical move to engage two opponents at once.
Jin-woo and Cid split apart, dodging the attack with practiced ease. The golem's blades cut through empty air, but it did not overcommit. Its recovery was flawless, its stance instantly resetting to a perfect defensive posture.
"It fights with your tactical precision," Cid noted aloud, a grin playing on his lips.
"And it has your unpredictable feints," Jin-woo retorted, watching as the golem's form subtly shifted, preparing for a dozen possible follow-up attacks at once.
They engaged. The next few minutes were a blur of motion, a dance of perfectly matched opponents. When Jin-woo summoned a shadow soldier, the golem's Monarch half would summon an identical one to counter it. When Cid morphed his arm into a whip-like tendril of slime, the golem's Eminence half would do the same, parrying the blow perfectly.
Every move they made was met with an equal and opposite reaction. Every feint was seen through. Every attack was parried. They were fighting a mirror, and a stalemate was the only possible outcome. They were not gaining ground, nor were they losing it.
From their cages in the void outside, Iris and Woo Jin-chul watched the battle unfold.
"It's... perfectly synchronized," Woo Jin-chul breathed, his trained eyes barely able to keep up. "Every time Monarch-nim or that boy attacks, the golem seems to know what they're going to do a second before they do it."
"It's not predicting their moves," Iris corrected, her own genius-level swordsmanship allowing her to see the deeper truth. "It's a reflection. The golem isn't deciding to counter them. Its very nature is to be their counter. They cannot win by attacking it directly. It's like trying to punch your own reflection in the water."
Back in the chamber, Jin-woo and Cid leaped back, creating distance. The golem stood impassively in the center of the room, its dual swords held at a ready stance.
Jin-woo considered the insane proposal. An illogical action. A move with no tactical benefit. A flaw in the performance. It was a strategy only Cid could have conceived. And it was their only option.
Cid's mental voice was filled with glee.
There was a long, painful silence on the resonance link.
Jin-woo felt a piece of his soul die. He, the Shadow Monarch, who had faced down gods and cosmic horrors, was being asked to defeat an enemy by face-planting in front of it.
The plan, as absurd as it was, was set.
"Let's end this!" Cid yelled, for the golem's benefit. He charged forward, his slime sword held high, a picture of aggressive intent.
The golem's Eminence half responded in kind, mirroring Cid's charge.
"Now, Jin-woo!" Cid roared.
Jin-woo charged from the other side, his shadow blade ready. The golem's Monarch half turned to meet him, its movements a perfect echo of his own.
They were about to converge in a three-way clash. The golem was perfectly positioned to counter them both simultaneously. Its logic was flawless.
Then, just as he reached the golem, Jin-woo did it. He deliberately caught his foot on the perfectly smooth floor and, with a commitment that brought him immense psychic pain, threw himself forward into a clumsy, undignified stumble, completely abandoning his attack.
The golem's Monarch half, whose entire existence was tied to mirroring Jin-woo's actions, was suddenly faced with a paradox. Its directive was to execute the perfect counter to Jin-woo's attack. But Jin-woo was no longer attacking. He was... falling. What is the perfect tactical response to an opponent deliberately falling on their face?
The golem's logic engine, for the first time, faltered. A flicker of static seemed to run through its form. Its Monarch half tried to replicate Jin-woo's stumble, while its Eminence half was still committed to countering Cid's charge. The two halves of its being were now given contradictory commands. Its perfect synchronicity was broken.
CRACK.
A tiny, almost invisible fissure appeared down the center of the golem's body, where the two halves met. Its movements became jerky, disjointed.
And in that single moment of hesitation, that single moment of logical failure, Cid struck.
He wasn't aiming for the golem.
His charge carried him past the faltering machine, and he plunged his slime sword deep into the floor of the chamber.
"A perfect stage," Cid declared, "is also a perfect prison!"
He poured his power not into an explosion, but into a manipulation. The liquid-metal nature of his slime flowed into the very structure of the floor, not to destroy it, but to... corrupt it. To introduce an element of chaos.
The perfectly smooth, star-lit floor began to warp and bubble. It became uneven, unpredictable. The golem, its balance already compromised, now found itself standing on a surface that defied logic, that shifted and buckled beneath its feet.
Its perfect footing was gone. Its perfect stance was broken.
The crack down its center widened.
"A reflection cannot exist without a perfect mirror," Jin-woo said, pushing himself up from the floor, his dignity deeply wounded but his purpose clear.
He summoned a single entity from his shadow. Not a warrior. Not a beast. He summoned the Weaver Drone.
The Drone, a being of cold, hard logic, looked at the golem, a being of perfect, mirrored logic.
"Drone 001," Jin-woo commanded. "Run a diagnostic. Find the flaw in its source code."
The Drone's red eye glowed. It fired a beam of pure data at the struggling golem. It wasn't an attack. It was a flood of debugging queries. It was one machine analyzing another.
The golem, already struggling with the paradox of Jin-woo's fall and the chaotic floor, was now being assaulted by a stream of pure information that highlighted its own core contradiction.
The crack spread, and with a final, screeching sound of tortured metal and failing logic, the golem shattered. It didn't explode. It simply fell apart into a million shards of inert, silver-blue metal, its perfect form collapsing now that its perfect logic was broken.
In the center of the room, a single, glowing orb of light descended from the ceiling. A staircase of pure starlight formed, leading up to the next floor.
They had won. Not with power, but with absurdity.
Cid walked over to Jin-woo and patted him on the back.
Jin-woo just looked at him, his expression utterly dead.
The first trial was over. They had proven they were worthy of their own story, by being willing to completely ruin it.