Bailu blinked twice, her expression slightly blank.
The dragon lady who carried medicinal herbs looked at the mess all over the ground below, then turned to glance at Mr. Yang beside her, whose expression remained calm.
If she hadn't seen it wrong just now, this "Mr. Yang" had created a black hole, right?
Although Nero had already mentioned this when introducing him before, seeing it with her own eyes now was still shocking.
The two clones below didn't even have time to react before they were swallowed and crushed by the powerful gravitational force.
"He's so strong. No wonder he's Nero's companion…"
Bailu thought to herself. In her impression, Nero was already ridiculously strong. Sure enough, strong people have strong friends.
If only she could have such power someday. If that happened, the Dragon Master wouldn't be able to control her anymore.
Although because of Nero she already had more chances to come out and play now, borrowing someone else's freedom and creating your own freedom were completely different things.
If she didn't have to diagnose patients and treat illnesses on most days, Bailu would really like to follow Nero and Yanqing to learn a move or two.
Meanwhile, Mr. Yang focused his attention on the flattened area below that had been crushed by the black hole, confirming whether the two clones from earlier were still alive and whether they needed a finishing blow.
After confirming, those two clones had indeed been completely annihilated.
Only then did Mr. Yang say to Bailu, "Let's keep moving forward. Judging from the commotion just now, we aren't the only ones who encountered enemies and fought them."
"Although we don't know the enemy's purpose yet, since someone has appeared to block us, it means we're probably not far from the target."
Mr. Yang's words pulled Bailu out of her fantasy of "punching the Dragon Master and kicking the Medicine King."
"Ah? Oh."
Bailu responded half a beat late, then fiddled with Ditto.
Mr. Yang, meanwhile, looked toward the distant sky.
Not long ago, there had been an extremely violent tremor and pressure from that direction. He had personally seen a heavy ice sword, pale like moonlight, descend from the sky.
Just from visual estimation, that ice sword had to be more than a hundred meters long.
Was such a terrifying move really used by that child named Yanqing?
Mr. Yang raised the question in his mind, but soon pushed it aside.
Ditto had already continued moving forward, and Mr. Yang followed behind at an unhurried pace.
The battles of the other three groups had already ended, and now the battle of the three-srar group was also reaching its conclusion.
"March" lay on the ground to the side with a swollen face and bruised nose, her eyes rolled back as if she had already been knocked unconscious.
On the other side, Stelle swung the flaming lance in one hand and the baseball bat in the other without stopping.
At the same time, her feet kept stomping and kicking. March beside her was doing the same kind of vicious behavior.
The one currently being beaten up by the two of them was "Stelle."
As a clone, one formed through the impressions of the real Stelle and other people, "Stelle" once had a heart full of passion and confidence.
Before intercepting the real one, this was what she had thought...
'You have a baseball bat, I have one too. You have a flaming lance, if I try hard enough I could probably get one too. You have the power of the Stellaron, if I push myself I can squeeze out something similar.'
Logically speaking, on an individual level, our strength shouldn't be very different. It could even be said there's no difference at all.
Then let's talk about external support. You have teammates, I brought one too. Your teammate can use Six-Phased Ice, mine can do that as well. Mine even seems a little smarter.
That's a huge advantage.
Before the battle truly began, "Stelle" had already analyzed the gap between herself and the real one based on the information she had. The final conclusion she reached was, "The advantage is on my side."
However, once the fight actually started, she realized she couldn't even fight back.
Leaving aside the question of why her strength was weaker than the real one even though she was a clone, this copied March was way too unreliable. Even more unreliable than the real March.
She just looked a bit smarter, but when the fight started she was stupid as hell.
Less than two minutes after the battle began, she was already taken out, leaving "Stelle" to get brutally ganged up on...
"Stelle" gritted her teeth, feeling extremely frustrated, but she had no good way to vent it. The only things she could do now were take the beating or die.
As for whether she could suddenly unleash her power and teach the two in front of her a lesson... or even kill them... technically, it was possible.
However, if she handled it improperly, that would mean completely giving up the possibility of continuing the plan on the Xianzhou afterward.
The fragments had not yet been fully recovered. The Mirror Holders certainly wouldn't want that to happen. She was just a small clone after all... how could she have the authority to make such decisions?
Finally, under the constant and utterly graceless punching and kicking from Stelle and March, "Stelle" eventually gave up resisting.
As "Stelle" stopped struggling, Stelle and March finally stopped as well.
Looking at the beaten-up "Stelle" and "March" who no longer resembled human beings at all, the real Stelle quietly put away the flaming lance and baseball bat in her hands. She raised a hand and scratched her head, her expression very complicated.
"They look exactly like us. I thought it would be a tough fight, but they turned out to be so weak."
Even though she said that, Stelle was actually a bit intoxicated by the experience.
Honestly, stepping on someone and smashing them with a baseball bat felt really great. If discovering your preferred fighting style could bring such an addictive feeling, Stelle felt like she could somewhat understand why Nero liked jumping slashes so much.
"Especially this fake you… she's really like you! Even the personality is similar!" Stelle pointed at "March" and said to the real March in front of her.
March blinked after hearing Stelle's words and looked at her suspiciously. She glanced at the "March" who had been knocked down at the very start of the fight, then pointed at herself, her eyes turning incredulous.
'Like me?'
'Seriously?'
Although the appearance was indeed similar, how could she just not dodge at all and get knocked flat by a single swing of a baseball bat?
Seeing March pointing at her own face with a questioning look, Stelle nodded repeatedly to confirm that her guess was correct.
"She didn't even try to dodge…"
March felt like she understood the implication behind Stelle's words. She narrowed her eyes and said a little unhappily, "Do you think I'm stupid or something?"
"No!"
Stelle shook her head.
When it came to something like that, whether it was true or not, only an idiot would admit it directly.
…Although if it were Nero, and he really thought that, he would probably just admit it.
But that wasn't a big problem. A person is a person, and Nero is Nero. Nero can be a person, but not everyone is Nero.
"Why do you care about such a small thing?" Stelle felt that she couldn't keep arguing with March about this matter, so she quickly changed the topic. "Now that these two fakes are dealt with, let's keep going!"
"Mm." March nodded and had no objection to Stelle's suggestion. "By the way, are we still taking these two with us?"
"…." Stelle looked at the impostors lying on the ground and fell into thought. After a moment, she said, "Let's take them. I think Nero will probably like them."
"When we went to help at the factory on Jarilo-VI before, I not only discovered Cocolia being forced to work, I also saw Rift creatures that looked very similar to Sampo."
"I think Nero is very interested in this kind of free labor."
"That makes sense…", March nodded.
So the two of them tidied things up a little, tore clothes from the clones and braided them into ropes, tied up the two impostors, and then dragged them away.