Webnovel's Extra: Reincarnated With a Copy Ability-Chapter 20: Identity [2]

"Maya! Maya!"

Dreyden barely thought—he just moved.

Thanks to his recent boost in physical stats, he caught up to Maya in the hallway before she could sprint any farther. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and pulled her into a tight hold.

"T-this... it can’t be real... It can’t be!"

She muttered to herself, voice trembling, completely ignoring the students starting to gather around them.

They stared, whispering.

A red-haired girl sobbing and struggling in the arms of a Class A student—it was the kind of scene that drew attention fast.

Dreyden’s eyes swept over them once, then shifted his grip, turning Maya so he could lift her in a bridal carry. She thrashed weakly, lost in her panic.

One student couldn’t take it anymore.

Seeing a beautiful girl being carried away while clearly distressed, he squeezed through the small crowd and spread his arms wide.

"Hey! What do you think you’re doing? Put the girl down!"

From his angle, he couldn’t even see Dreyden’s face—just Maya in his arms.

Dreyden tilted his head slightly.

The temperature in the hallway rose.

His pupils glowed faintly as he activated Eyes of Truth, not to analyze—but to intimidate.

"Disappear," he said flatly.

The boy froze.

His eyes dropped, just for a second, to the little display on Dreyden’s uniform—his name, his rank.

His throat moved in a hard swallow.

Without another word, he stepped aside.

The crowd parted after him, no one daring to stand in the way as Dreyden continued down the hallway with Maya in his arms.

How could they?

They were terrified.

While his feet carried him on instinct, Dreyden’s mind was spinning.

He didn’t know exactly what had happened inside Maya’s skill, but he had a guess.

She found something out.

Something about this world.

Or about Lucas’s fate as the "protagonist".

The countless variations—fan characters, altered events, new people—had already twisted the original script. Whatever identity Maya had just assimilated... it was no longer Xia Qinqiu.

I have to calm her down and get the full story...

He reached his room, opened the door with his shoulder, and shut it behind them.

Click.

He locked it.

He knew a simple lock wouldn’t stop a strong esper. But right now, it wasn’t about security.

It was about stopping her from bolting again.

Turning around, he saw Maya trembling on the bed, arms wrapped around herself as if the world might shatter at any second.

"Maya," he called, kneeling in front of her and gently taking her shaking hands. "Hey. Look at me."

"This isn’t real," she whispered. "You... you aren’t real!"

She yanked her hands back and pressed them against his face as if trying to prove herself wrong through touch alone.

Relief flickered across her features when she felt his warmth, his skin, his breath.

He squeezed her left hand and pressed his cheek against it.

"I’m here. You can feel me, right? How could this not be real?"

"You shouldn’t exist..." Her voice broke. "Why is this happening? Why is this happening!?"

"Maya, listen to me—"

"How can this not be real!?"

Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes again, overflowing.

"Maya—"

"I’m not real!?"

Her voice rose another octave, cracked with despair.

"Maya!"

"My future... is it already decided? What kind of life is that!?"

Dreyden clenched his right fist, nails digging into his palm.

"Maya..." His voice came out low, rough.

"Why did he have to kill my entire family!?" she shouted, eyes wild. "Just for his entertainment!?"

"Maya... please, listen to me!"

She didn’t seem to hear him at all.

She looked around the room again, breathing too fast, then fixed her eyes on him.

"You are real. You exist." She threw herself at him and hugged him tightly, fingers knotting in his shirt. "You have to be real... I don’t know what I would do if—"

"I am real," Dreyden cut in, hugging her back firmly.

"Lucas!!" she suddenly blurted, jerking away from him as if something had just clicked. "He must know, I—I have to—"

She started rambling again, words tumbling into each other, ignoring everything he said.

Each failed attempt to calm her twisted something in his chest.

This isn’t working...

He grabbed both of her hands again and pulled her close.

"Maya!"

No response.

"Listen to me!"

She kept muttering, more to herself than to him.

Seeing that nothing he said was getting through, Dreyden gritted his teeth, tugged her forward—

And kissed her.

"Can you show me your skill’s status?"

After I managed to calm Maya down, silence settled over the room like a heavy blanket.

Yeah.

I’ll admit it.

It wasn’t the most rational method.

But hey, it works in movies all the time. Why not try it?

After a while, her breathing steadied. Her eyes cleared. She returned to herself—mostly.

But there was a clear difference.

Her presence felt slightly off.

Her personality had shifted by just a few degrees.

"Sure," she said, nodding as she opened her status and made her skill visible to me.

===== Skills =====

[Reality Manipulation: Identity {10}]

An offshoot of the original Reality skill. It is capable of assimilating the identity of anyone in any universe. The user acquires the memories and abilities of the assimilated identity.

Assimilated Identities:

Wendy McGust (100%)

From Universe 0. Wendy is a 17-year-old girl who loves reading novelkisss. Closed off due to her parents’ deaths, she found refuge in her favorite story: The Saint and the Swordsman.

===== Status =====

I blinked.

Assimilating an identity was supposed to be a long, gradual process.

But for this new identity, Maya had already reached 100%.

"Wendy McGust..." I murmured.

Her eyes flicked to me when I said the name.

After some time talking and asking careful questions, I’d formed a theory.

Now I needed confirmation.

I took her hands and scooted a little closer, staring into her eyes.

Her cheeks reddened a little at the sudden closeness.

"Maya," I asked quietly, "does the name ’The Dance of Power’ mean anything to you?"

Her eyes widened.

Her mouth fell open.

"H-how did you..."

Yeah.

That confirmed it.

Wendy McGust was probably someone like me.

A reader of The Dance of Power.

Before, things were already complicated.

Now they were worse.

Maya wasn’t just a character with an overpowered ability anymore.

She was conscious.

She knew the world was based on a novelkiss.

Worse—she thought this was the exact world of the novel, not just a world inspired by it.

"So it’s true," she said suddenly.

Her voice surprised me—not shaking, not hysterical.

Just... heavy.

"Is this world really just a novel?"

"Yes and no," I replied with a sigh, flopping backward onto the bed and staring at the ceiling. "Calm down first. I’ll explain."

"So you’re like me?" she asked. "But how did you find out?"

"I found a phone," I said. "With two hundred Chapters of a novel called The Dance of Power in a notes app."

Maya frowned, thinking.

With all of Wendy’s reading experience now mixed into her personality, she clearly had an idea where this was going.

Dreyden is important in this version too...

She remembered a story Wendy had read once—where the protagonist reads a novel on his phone, and then that novel becomes reality.

After a short silence, she rubbed her temples.

"And why didn’t you tell me earlier?"

"Look at how you reacted just now," I said, sitting up again. "Do you really think you would’ve believed me if I’d told you? Or worse—handled it well?"

Maya quieted down.

He wasn’t wrong.

"It’s... a lot," she admitted softly.

After a moment, she dropped her gaze to her hands and asked:

"So... you helped me because you already knew about my ability?"

Sadness crept into her expression as she stared at her fingers instead of my face.

I took a deep breath.

I’d been dreading that question.

"In part, yes," I said honestly. "At first, it was because I knew how important your ability would be."

She flinched slightly—but I continued.

"But I got attached to you the moment I saw you crying in my bed. Because you were just like me."

Her eyes lifted, surprised.

"Alone," I said simply.

"I saw myself in you. And that made me want to help even more. The more time we spent together, the more I understood how special you are—ability or not."

I placed both hands on her shoulders and pulled her into a hug.

"If you want," I said quietly, "I can distance myself. I can stop involving you. But know this—I won’t do it because I want to."

Warmth spread across my back.

Maya’s tears soaked through my shirt.

"I... I don’t think I could willingly distance myself from you," she whispered, pulling away to wipe her face. "I thought about leaving you at first too."

I smiled.

"I’d be disappointed if you hadn’t thought about it."

"You idiot," she muttered, cheeks puffing a little. "Now you owe me a favor."

"Yes, ma’am," I replied immediately. "I promise I won’t refuse."

Seeing her smile again, I couldn’t help smiling back.

Her eyes briefly dipped to my lips then shot back up, her face turning red.

"Are you thinking about the kiss?" I teased, a sly grin forming.

"You fool!"

She grabbed a pillow and threw it at my face.

"Why did you kiss me!? There were a million other ways to calm me down!"

"The important thing is that it worked," I said, tossing the pillow back at her. "Don’t pretend you didn’t like it, redhead."

"In your dreams!" she snapped, crossing her arms and turning away, her ears red.

"Alright, alright. I won’t do it again," I said, raising my hands in surrender when she glared at me like an angry tomato. "Let’s talk about important things now."

I moved to sit beside her. She turned back, seeing the seriousness in my expression, and straightened up.

"How many Chapters did this Wendy read?" I asked.

"What kind of question is that?" Maya raised an eyebrow. "She read all of them."

"...So," I asked, throat a little dry, "does Lucas get a happy ending?"

She could hear the anxiety in my voice.

For Wendy, The Dance of Power had been a novel that left a mark.

In her own words, it was "the worst ending she’d ever read."

The story started strong and stayed strong. The author handled worldbuilding, characters, tension—everything—very well.

But in the final arc, his inability to handle endings became painfully obvious.

"Not really," Maya said at last, her face darkening as the lines of the novel resurfaced in her memory. "The author kills everyone in the end. Lucas, Raisel, Alice..." She swallowed, hand drifting unconsciously to her abdomen. "...Even me."

She remembered it vividly.

The description of her own death.

The spear of life, piercing her from stomach to skull and tearing her apart.

I went silent.

I’d only read a few arcs. I didn’t know how many total Chapters there were or how it truly ended.

But no matter how I looked at it, a bad ending didn’t fit.

I’d thought the author wasn’t that crazy.

Apparently, I was wrong.

"Did the author ever explain it?" I asked.

"He said he was incapable of writing a satisfying happy ending that matched the rest of the story," Maya said, voice hollow. "So he did the opposite instead."

She let out a humorless laugh.

"That’s the funny part. Because he was afraid of writing a bad happy ending, he killed all of us. What a joke."

A bitter taste rose at the back of my throat.

I got up from the bed and started pacing.

Maybe... that’s why I’m here.

Why someone wanted a different ending.

I didn’t know.

If things had been cloudy before, now at least I had a vague direction.

That direction... was Maya.

"Maya," I said, grabbing my phone and opening a new group chat with just the two of us. "Write everything down. Everything you remember about the novel. Don’t leave anything out."

With a reader’s instincts, she understood immediately.

She started typing quickly, fingers flying over the digital keyboard.

I stood there, watching the redhead concentrate, line after line of spoilers and details pouring into the chat.

I didn’t know yet whether this change—Maya awakening Wendy’s consciousness—would be good or bad for her.

But one thing was clear:

My plans had to change.

Drastically.

"The League of Shadows’ schedule just got shorter..." I muttered under my breath, trying out Maya’s new passive-circulation method as I resumed training my magic control.