The number 5 thief on the continent’s top ten list, [Mirror Thief].
She laughed at [Lockpick Thief], who had completely fallen for the heir of the hostile organization.
Oh, the world is full of pitiful people.
Citizens who work hard and get extorted by thugs.
Guards who get disciplined by their superiors for catching thugs.
Inspectors who suffer mysterious attacks when they come for inspections.
In a corrupt city, the powerless citizens and righteous people become targets of the corrupt, attacking anyone who stands against them.
“You’re not the only one who’s pitiful.”
“Stop being dramatic.”
“If you know, what can you do? Just leave it be.”
These were words that she had heard countless times in her life.
Lilia couldn’t accept that.
Why should it only be us suffering?
Why must I be the only one to endure?
Enduring is for fools.
You get beaten up without even proper revenge.
Her born rebel spirit triggered a sense of revenge.
That changed her life.
[Counterattack]
Pay back what you’ve received.
She hit the little punks who bullied her younger brother with her fists.
[Chase] – Link activation [Follow and Hit]
[Stealth] – Link activation [Ambush]
If necessary, she would chase after them to hit them and would hide all day just to strike.
Then the punks brought adult thugs.
Her brother became a loser and she realized.
I didn’t have enough power.
Revenge was insufficient if it was just paying back what you received.
You had to hit back hard.
“I’ll do the guild work. In return, teach me how to get stronger.”
“When will a little kid like you get stronger? Go home and knit some clothes. I’m not free enough to teach a kid.”
“I’m not asking you to teach me for free.”
Lilia presented a bloodstained purse.
The Thief Guild official focused on the blood rather than the money.
“Where did you get this?”
“I took it back from the punks who made my brother a loser and killed them.”
“Wow. You should go to the Assassin Guild. You’ve picked the wrong place to learn techniques?”
Revenge is enough if done once.
If you can kill the target in one go, you don’t need to have more power than them.
That’s the obsession needed by an assassin.
However, more significant revenge meant she didn’t need to worry about that after a certain point.
Adults chose to simply kill rather than beat or cripple their opponents for convenience.
Thanks to that, her revenge also took the form of inflicting the same techniques and pain that her opponent used.
Swordsmanship. Martial arts. Archery. Elemental magic. Curse magic. Alchemy.
She received information on all those who kill by various means, researching how to take them out with the same methods, applying it in practice.
Thanks to which, she unwittingly unlocked the rare function [Reflection].
A function that can be acquired by dealing the same damage in the exact same way as the opponent.
The reflection function subconsciously taught her the know-how of repeating and remembering the opponent’s attacks and returning them.
The only issue was the psychological repulsion.
Killing people isn’t easy.
Let alone killing them in the same way as criminals.
Usually, it’s not about some brutal or desperate traces.
The act of thinking in the same way as the victim, rather than the perpetrator, is also aligning one’s consciousness with that of a criminal.
‘Is this the revenge I wanted?’
Gradually losing confidence and with her growth slowing down, she still had an irrefutable reason not to stop.
She could earn money to buy potions to heal her brother by taking on jobs from the Thief Guild.
‘Ah.’
That brother of hers has died.
It was suicide.
The note blamed everything in the world.
The sister who fought for her brother only became the villain who turned him into a loser.
Perhaps it started from that day.
The day her heart had no qualms about holding darkness.
She no longer obsessed over goodness.
She was no longer afraid to be tainted by darkness.
She was even willing to commit cruel methods.
The culprit who drove her brother to become a loser and ultimately commit suicide deserved it.
It took one year for [Counterattack] to become [Reflection].
It took two years to collect enough money for potions.
However, it didn’t take three years to awaken the realm.
“You. You’ll die if you keep this up.”
“Me?”
“You are trying to forcibly replicate enemy techniques that cannot be executed by your body. It’s just a poison that kills when you attempt an impossible reproduction. A realm user like you should already know this, right?”
“I don’t care. In fact, that’s what I wanted.”
Following the dead brother in revenge, she was going to end her own life because of the side effects of that vengeance.
It was her own way of expressing atonement, trying to lose her life to the very revenge that took her brother’s.
“Is that so? You’ve lost your reason to live.”
“… ”
“Follow me. If you’re living because you can’t die, it’s okay to give time to a man you don’t know.”
The Destroyer selected her as a backup agent to assist the Warrior Party of the chosen warrior.
And Lilia witnessed.
The adventures of the Warrior Party, who repeatedly faced grave failures just like her.
Unlike Ni’alatotep, who always breezed through with cheerfulness and mischief, and Alpha, whose fists grew tough like tree rings, the Destroyer suffered in anguish with every failure.
“As you can see, the warrior is a lagging figure. Serious incidents that require a warrior’s help are always conducted secretly, and when the warrior arrives, everything is already too late.”
“Isn’t that hard?”
“Of course it is hard. But I can’t stop. There are too many bastards in this world that deserve to die. When I think about the criminals who would rejoice if I die, I can’t possibly close my eyes. In moments of crisis, it’s a matter of pride that keeps my body moving. I’ve barely survived several times.”
It was a story worthy of listening to.
“Find a reason not to die. Enemies who would rejoice if you did. A thief can only die when their enemies are defeated.”
Lilia’s heart, which had been living like a corpse, was pulled out of the darkness.
That day, the advice given by the Destroyer became Lilia’s driving force to live.
She no longer obsessed over reflection.
Now she had a reason to live long.
Instead, she became a mirror.
She began researching, developing, and mastering techniques to mimic the opponent’s skills without harming herself.
She grasped and understood over ten thousand functions.
She separated, disassembled, and recombined them.
Then one day, she realized.
Now, there was no technique in the world she couldn’t mimic.
“Thanks for everything. If I survive, see you again. If not, plant a flower on my grave.”
The reason she couldn’t die.
The man at the top of the thugs brought by the neighborhood punks.
The former number 5 thief in the continent, [Merciful Thief].
The one who manipulated all forms of cruelty an assassin could execute, completely mocking understanding and sympathy.
Lilia challenged him for the title.
And she won.
Now the title of the number 5 thief on the continent belonged to [Mirror Thief].
And now, a magician from the Red Magic Tower was challenging her.
“If you don’t want to see citizens die, reveal your main body right now. Are you saying one person dies for every second you delay?”
Burning citizens.
Burning houses.
Burning streets.
At the same time, rumors spread through the streets.
The dark organization of black sorcerers engaged in human flesh trades and corpse trafficking were trying to burn the city to eliminate evidence and use the corpses of the citizens as sacrifices to gain power and escape.
Even if the citizens panicked and were burned mercilessly, it would no longer be considered the work of the Revolutionary Army or the Red Magic Tower.
It was ridiculous.
The Mirror Thief laughed.
She laughed out loud.
Ching!
The mirrors of the street lamps.
The windows of the burning mansions.
The display cases of the shops.
Lilia laughed out loud in every reflective surface.
Fear crept into the faces of the red mages.
“I’ve cast the bait. Bring out your main body, and I’ll burn you to death. It’s really simple. How nice would it be if the world worked this simply and conveniently?”
“How cruel! You mean you don’t care about the deaths of citizens? Then let’s see if you can laugh when the main Thief Guild headquarters turns to ash. I’ll burn it down so you can’t even breathe!”
“Did you know? The former number 5 thief on the continent was Merciful Thief. A figure who forced obedience through merciless slaughter. In the end, he even raised the dead. He learned how to make someone with nothing to lose have something to lose. That man was truly a lunatic.”
Down below, [Lockpick Thief] was gradually losing time as he allowed the dismantling of the Grand Magic Barrier by the elite unit of the Revolutionary Army infiltrating underground.
Polluted water ignited, oxygen evaporated, and toxic gas began to form.
Boom!
There were explosive chain reactions occurring underground.
The magician’s tyranny was indifferent to the harm of her comrades underground.
Still, Lilia’s story didn’t stop.
“But that man lost to my hands. I detonated the corpses he had raised with a corpse explosion. And I opened the mirror. I used all the corpses he had killed. If he blocked it, I would explode. If he moved away, I would put in more corpses.”
Kaboom!
An explosion occurred underground, different in scale from anything before it, striking against areas that should not have been touched.
Manhole covers in the streets popped up in succession, shooting pillars of fire into the air.
“Did you know? Undead become more persistent and powerful the stronger their grudge is. My expertise in necromancy may have been far weaker, but it didn’t show at all. In fact, I even started to doubt if I was a genius in necromancy.”
“You crazy girl. The underground tunnels are on fire. Are you planning to chat until your guild is blown up?”
“Don’t you get it yet? What I’m waiting for. If you’ve heard the story, you should learn your lesson. They’re corpses.”
“Huh?”
“Corpses.”
Wessker felt a terrifying thought.
The Mirror Thief was strong enough even without fighting, yet she was deliberately stalling.
“The innocent souls of the citizens burned to death by your hands. The souls of the Thief Guild members, they’ve all been raised.”
They emerged from the shards of broken street lamps.
From the windows that had fallen from the mansions.
From the cracked display cases.
“The two sides of a coin. The two sides of a mirror. I really like that kind of thing. Behind the handover is the Netherworld, and there are really many vengeful spirits in this world.”
Undead began to emerge.
Dun dun!
