Chapter 1229 - 1230: The Self

The faint feeling of falling and the feeling of going up at the same time made her feel as though she were being stretched and pulled in every direction. A hollow laugh rose in her throat before dying there.

Anguish and joy existed here, in this world, in this hell, in this paradise. Seras had seen many possibilities. She had lived many lives. Some of them were happy ones, and some of them were horrible. Now, she was no longer sure what was real and what wasn’t.

Seras looked around her and found that she had returned to the beginning.

"Oh," she whispered, almost as if she had not just been sent back to the very beginning of her journey, as if all the efforts she had made and all the horrors she had endured had never mattered.

Her gaze fell upon a young knight. Half of his face was blown away, his organs hanging from his body, and yet somehow he was still alive, as if having one’s innards hanging out was the natural state of a human being and they were the ones who were wrong for thinking otherwise.

He was very much alive. In fact, he wasn’t even injured.

This was simply his state.

She didn’t remember his name. It was because she had never asked. Seras didn’t want to know any of their names because if she did, watching them die would become harder on her mind.

But what did that matter?

Death didn’t rule here.

The Abyss did.

The dead came back every day, just as the living left.

This place had made her scream, cry, and beg to die many, many, many times, and yet each time, it gave her the will to continue.

It was kind, yet crueler than she could even imagine.

For all those who sought miracles, this was the place to be. Those who rejected the world and its cruelty, yet still raged because they wanted something different, then the Abyss was where they must be.

The Abyss wasn’t intentionally cruel. She knew that. It wasn’t intentional about anything.

It was just an eye.

This eye was what an entity used to view the world, the omniverse, and within this eye, the omniverse and everything within it was reflected back.

The eyes were the windows to the soul, so what was felt here were the emotions of the entity whose eye this was.

This eye wanted to see beauty, but the omniverse was filled with such ugliness that only the ugliness was blinding.

This eye had seen infinite suffering, infinite tragedy, and just once, it wanted joy to win.

It wanted good to win.

This was why it raged.

Because it still hoped.

But hope was fleeting, and soon, it accepted it.

Even so, it raged.

If life was only suffering and then death, why were we born for fleeting and temporary joy?

Seras was sure she had gone mad a long time ago, because why else would she try to interpret this chaos, this madness, as anything more than a cosmic force beyond her comprehension?

The sounds of monsters crawling out from beneath the sky continent echoed through the surroundings. The sounds of troops fighting them followed, along with the roar of battle and the screams of soldiers struggling to survive.

Seras stood still for a moment.

Then she took out her sword again.

She would repeat the cycle.

The Tomb of Lesser Gods was near. She could almost taste it.

She turned to face the monster behind her, her sword scraping against an entity that looked as though it had been made entirely from hair. Its eyes were red, their pupils narrow like those of snakes. It had the lips of a monkey, while a wide mouth like that of a human woman opened across its belly.

Crash!

A burst of deadly magic exploded from Seras’s body.

She lunged forward.

Her fist slammed into the creature’s face with enough force to distort its features before she drove it into the ground. Her boots dug into the earth as she pinned the monster beneath her, and without giving it a chance to recover, she raised her sword and drove the blade straight through the mouth on its belly.

The creature convulsed once.

Then it stopped moving.

Seras’s breathing was heavy as she slowly withdrew her sword. Blood and strange black fluids dripped from the blade as she lifted her head and looked toward the darkness of the Abyss, where light traveled only to be consumed, glowing brightly before disappearing into the endless dark.

That was when she saw it.

Or rather, she saw that familiar face.

Coming out of the light.

When she saw that face, Seras froze for a moment.

A figure stepped out of the radiance.

It was a woman with ashen hair streaked with red. She wore the same armor as Seras and held the same sword in her hand.

Seras was looking at herself.

The other Seras frowned.

She said exactly what Seras was thinking.

"Is this a mimic or a doppelganger?"

The moment those words left the other woman’s mouth, Seras’s eyes flashed.

She immediately lowered her body into a battle stance, her sword held firmly before her.

The other Seras reacted in exactly the same way.

She lowered herself into the same stance and stared at the woman before her.

"What are you?"

"What am I? I’m Seras Blade. I should be asking you that."

Seras wasn’t sure what this thing was.

"You think you’re me...?"

The other Seras sounded confused, but there was alarm beneath her voice.

Without waiting for an answer, she swung her sword.

Seras met the attack head-on.

Their swords clashed with a sharp metallic sound, and neither woman gave the other an inch. They both reached out at the same time, each grabbing for the other’s hair, both reacting in exactly the same manner because they were thinking the same thoughts.

They were the same person.

The same instincts.

The same reactions.

Both women were pushed backward, their feet scraping across the ground as they separated.

At that moment, the battle with the monster ended.

Seras glanced toward her men.

"Reorganize!"

"Reorganize!"

Both Seras gave the order at exactly the same time.

The moment they heard the other speak, their expressions grew cold.

"Be careful. There’s a doppelganger here."

"Be careful. There’s a doppelganger here."

They said the same words together.

Seras paused