Chapter 161

The attackers from the Celestial World had gone, and General Miralda returned to her human form.
In the meantime, I also went back to being the other me.

“…Phew.”
Those things enveloped in holy power were pretty insane. Had I not changed, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop them from taking the Orb of Control out of me.

My attacks wouldn’t have reached them, and it would be a one-sided fight.
It was impressive how the other me attacked the palm. He couldn’t have been sure about it.

And so I was glad that he had forced his way out.
After all, the memories that had returned were now shared between us.
Now I had more information to speculate.

Still, this meant that they were still uniting souls in the Celestial World.
The memories were not mine. They hadn’t been forgotten. I had never seen the place before.

“However…that means they were never able to succeed again.”

Now that I thought back on it, I had never met anyone else who had two combined souls. And I had never heard of such a thing even happening.

And not just in the Demon World, but the human world as well. All of their experiments had failed.
The other me remembered the tremendous pain.
I was thankful that it was only a memory for me. Had I actually experienced it, I would have likely gone mad.

“…Perhaps my soul was sticking out of the magic stone.”

When I tried to think of an explanation for why I didn’t remember it, that’s what I landed on.
It was very difficult for me to imagine a state where souls were haphazardly united.
And so I thought of it as our souls being too big to properly fit into the magic stone.
And the part that didn’t fit inside, was me. That’s why I didn’t remember the experiments.

Could that also explain why it had cracked when the stone was removed?
It was possible that it had become brittle after the experiments.

In any case, it was touched directly with holy power, which caused some other phenomenon, and then the crack appeared.
And once the crack appeared, the soul was able to escape.

Well, this was all my imagination.
Besides, it seemed like the other me didn’t understand what happened at that moment either.

“The Orb of Control has been removed.”
Miralda said as she leaned over Wormell.
Residents of the Demon World could not survive once the Orb of Control had been removed.

“I wasn’t watching Wormell as he fought, but if they were the same as the one I was up against, then it’s likely that his attacks were not effective.”
“And so they took him by surprise then.”
Miralda muttered ominously.

The other me had tried attacking them as well, but their holy power was able to block attacks that contained mana.
On the other hand, their hands could just slide into our bodies.

“They created a barrier with holy spears, sent holy power into it, and also enveloped themselves with holy power? That seems rather excessive.”
“I suppose they had a good reason for doing so.”

“I am not sure. By the way, is it true that they were from Research Institution Eira?”
“They had the same mark, so they must be.”

“Eira. The ones who nearly defeated Lesser High King Yamato. In that case, did they come to gather souls? This amount of damage is not too surprising, given how many men they sent.”

There was hardly anyone alive around us.
Arrows made of light had seemed to shoot in every direction. And so I wasn’t sure if the others were okay. Perhaps they were in just as hopeless a situation as we were in.

“It was a one-sided attack from the sky. There would not have been much that they could do. We were all on our guard in the main camp, due to the stakes. But they attacked this camp instead.”
Not everyone was able to deal with an attack from the sky.

And the people who were able were underrepresented in our camp.
However, I was not sure it would have made much of a difference if there were more.

We then searched for survivors, but things only continued to look worse.
Apparently, the enemy had attacked almost every part of the area within the barrier with holy power.

Miralda and the others questioned the survivors about what had happened.

In the meantime, I went over the events in my head.

I was sure that I really was their target.
They had come here to retrieve the soul of their test subject.

But why now? That question remained.

“Was it because I changed?”

No, that wouldn’t explain why it happened at this time.
After all, the other me had come out a long time ago.

Ten years had passed since I realized that there was another soul inside of me, and he had come out.
And so the only explanation, was that they had detected me because the Orb of Control had grown.

“No, perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions. But what other reason could there be?”

When we were in the Celestial World, the consciousness of the other me must have been the main one.
The men in white understood the other me.
He was the one in their records.
He was the one with the memories.

In other words, the other me was the original soul. And my soul has been fixed to his…something like that.

However, when we were born in the Demon World, I was the master.
I don’t know why, but the other me didn’t surface. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t find us.

“That would mean we escaped death.”
If the other me had been the master when we were born, they would have detected us from far away, and taken the soul along with the Orb of Control.

“No, wait. But how did they find us now?”
That was the important part.

I recalled what I had heard about the stakes of holy power.
They hammered them into the Demon World as a way of sending information back to the Celestial World.

In other words, they were not able to gain information without using them.

“So it’s because of the stake of holy power.”
Did they become certain because of that stake that was hammered in close to our camp?

I saw Halm and Miralda talking, and so I decided to ask.

“Hey. How long do these stakes of holy power last?”
“Anywhere between half a day and a full day. However, I heard that they can sometimes last for several days, if they send in enough power.”

I nodded at Halm’s answer.

Not long ago, the other me and Baltasar had fought.
What if a stake of holy power had been sent during that time?

However, it had only been for a very short while. And I immediately returned.
This would have troubled the researchers. They would have thought they found the other me, only I changed right after.

It would have been very confusing for them.
However, they remembered that the souls had been united, and then they would realize why they hadn’t been able to find us up until now.

Things would have been much easier for them had they been prepared. But they had found us so suddenly, and they were not ready.

And then the stake turned into a pillar of salt before they could locate us. And so we were lost to them once again.
It was the start of another search.

And recently, they happened to send another stake in this area, and finally found me.
Yes, me, and not the other me. However, they knew it didn’t matter this time, according to their data.
That would explain everything.

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Makai Hongi