After all, he wasn't a mage who could use magical spells anytime, anywhere. As a knight, all he could do was protect and fight.
With that thought in mind, Xilǐ'er turned his gaze to the silver mirror.
The next moment, he felt his heart stop beating!
The composed face he had imagined did not appear. After removing his helmet, Xilǐ'er was shocked to find that there was nothing above his neck!
Even more terrifying was that his instinctive attempt to rotate his neck had absolutely no effect, and from his own perspective...
Xilǐ'er stopped what he was doing, supporting his helmet with his left hand and barely waving his right hand through the observation window.
A right hand has appeared in my field of vision!
A shiver ran through Xilǐ'er's body as his left hand slipped into his helmet, hitting the bottom directly, his thumb even touching the clearly patterned observation window.
What?
My own head... where did my own head go?
"Ah, ah!"
In that instant, the valiant knight felt breathless, let out two soft cries, and fell headlong from his horse.
Where did his body go?
Where is his head?
What's wrong with him?
Two heads, one on top of the other, peeked out from behind the mirror. Ed and Seraphina watched Xilǐ'er writhe in agony.
Seraphina was a little confused:
Was his reaction too extreme?
Ed sighed:
"What if one day you discovered that you weren't actually Red Dragon, but a fire lizard..."
"Okay, that's enough."
Seraphina's tone was flat, but Ed sensed that the Little Green leaves were already turning a bit yellow.
That's basically the gist of it. Hope you understand.
Ed said nothing more, only looking at Xilǐ'er convulsing on the ground, never expecting that the mirror test would actually work.
This famous test was originally used on animals in Ed's hometown to determine whether they could recognize their own reflection in a mirror.
Now that Ed is using it on Xilǐ'er, it's essentially no different.
Xilǐ'er clearly passed the mirror test, but was unwilling to accept the result.
Fortunately, it's better than completely disbelieving that I've become something other than human.
Just as Ed was pondering this, Xilǐ'er's cries, emanating from his fallen horse, began to distort:
"Your Grace... I... will certainly fulfill... my mission!"
Ed looked at Seraphina:
Have you ever heard of the name Duke Frostblade?
Dragon Girl shook her head:
"No, I've never heard of it before the Demonic Tide, and I've never heard of it after the Demonic Tide."
Ed nodded; he was now fairly certain that Duke Frostblade was now a part of history.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Xilǐ'er continued to tremble and wail as if having an epileptic seizure, as if a massive amount of memories were washing over his soul:
"Aaaaaah, kill me! Kill me, please!"
There was really nothing to interpret in that sentence, but Ed continued listening, and soon he heard the part that truly interested him.
After several seconds of meaningless babbling, the knight on the ground suddenly stopped trembling.
His tone had lost its previous agitation and turned icy:
"Knight Xilǐ'er, by order of the Eternal Twin Kings, is to conquer the Graycast Corridor."
ah?
Ed felt his brain Overload. "Don't you know about the Eternal Domain? What are you pretending to be stupid in front of Gray for?"
Also, what the heck are "Twin Kings "? Do these things really appear outside of the game?
Ed was puzzled, but quickly found a more reasonable explanation.
If there was a problem with Xilǐ'er's resurrection, the problem must be that he accidentally selected the wrong save file during his resurrection and loaded a save file from over two hundred years ago.
The mirror-looking action is like a fast-forwarded scene after a save file has been misloaded, restoring Xilǐ'er's perception of time to the latest save file.
So, what era's Xilǐ'er is the Xilǐ'er standing before me now?
While Ed was thinking, Xilǐ'er had already stood up from the ground.
He looked at himself in the mirror, put his helmet back on his neck, and then looked at Ed and the other man. He had neither the murderous intent of Duke Xilǐ'er nor the coldness he had shown when he spoke of conquering the Graycast Corridor.
"My special circumstances may have caused you trouble... Gentlemen, please tell me what year it is..."
Ed and Seraphina exchanged a glance, feeling that things were developing in a rather inexplicable way.
It's like a madman throwing a tantrum for ages, then suddenly recovering and telling everyone not to worry about it—it's a bit hard to accept.
August 12th, 908 AD (Royal Calendar)
Ed announced the current date of the World of Disorder.
"It's been... so long."
The knight sighed, but Ed seemed quite interested.
Since Seraphina was right beside him, and there was no need to worry about Xilǐ'er suddenly turning on him, Ed boldly asked:
Who exactly are you?
The knight leaned against his warhorse, gently stroking its neck through its armor.
"I am not the knight Xilǐ'er, I am merely his armor."
"The real Xilǐ'er died more than two hundred years ago; to be precise, he died on the very day he met the Amber Dragon."
This sounds like a sad story...
Xilǐ'er said with reminiscence:
"The probability of encountering Amber Dragon on the mainland is very small, but not zero. At the end of the year Xilǐ'er set out to seek help, he encountered an Amber Dragon in a wilderness. Normally, such a powerful creature would not care about a small character like Xilǐ'er, but... Xilǐ'er actually dared to draw his sword against the dragon, which made the dragon very interested."
" Amber Dragon collects anything that interests it, so the moment Xilǐ'er encountered the dragon and piqued its interest, his body became immobile, and he could only remain in the position of riding his warhorse with his sword drawn."
"But he did not die immediately. His Solidification body became a prison for his soul. Xilǐ'er's soul could only look out through a narrow observation window, day after day, year after year, until his soul died."
"When the Eternal Domain was established, the blessings of one of the Twin Kings were spread across the land, and those amber that had been Solidification were finally freed. But it was too late for Xilǐ'er; the flesh beneath his armor had long since rotted away. The blessing that should have belonged to him then fell upon me... and that's how I gained life."
"But I am merely a suit of armor, so I can only do my best to imitate the Xilǐ'er of the past."
The knight patted his warhorse:
"It's the same."
After hearing the story, Ed was speechless for a moment. Since coming to this world, he had always been the one making up stories for others. This was the first time he had ever been told such a story by a suit of armor.
Ed looked at Xilǐ'er's armor:
"Then what about your memory?"
The armor replied:
"The more damaged I was at the time of my death, the more blurred my self-awareness will be after I am resurrected, and I will always feel that I am Xilǐ'er. Once I recognize myself, I will quickly recall things I have forgotten, and looking in the mirror is indeed a way to accelerate self-awareness."