Three years is a long time to think over a lot of things. When you're like me, a caged creature with nothing to do, you tend to think about a great many things over that span of time. The overwhelming majority of those things are what one would guess, and it's been on the forefront of my mind every single day. A plan.

At first, this plan amounted to little more than a waning desire. About two months had passed since the incident, my wounds still relatively fresh. I killed a man involuntarily, unconsciously. I hadn't completely come to grips with that, feeling what little humanity I had left had finally decanted from my body like oil from water. Before I even knew it, I had resigned myself to a near mechanical, hopeless existence of consuming and vomiting the consumed back out.

"Hey, you."

I didn't know their name or if they even had one. I might've truly given up had it not been there. Even if the empty, toneless playbacks didn't give a damn about how I ended up, it never ignored me when I called—at least that's what I felt it sounded like.

[...]

"Why am I seeing things I shouldn't?"

It's something that's bothered me ever since I killed that man. More precisely, what happened after I arrived in this new place. Occasionally, while spacing out inside of my tank, or in the corner of my cell, visions of unknown origins and places would invade my thoughts. Some were dark places with those visual aberrations, others large vats of liquid I couldn't see through. The most peculiar of these had to be a clear container outside of which I could see the light of what I could only describe as the "Sun". None of them looked familiar. For all I knew, they could've been another world my half-delusional state of being fabricated to keep me sane. The other explanation instilled within me a deep melancholy: I'm seeing somewhere outside of here. And if there was an "out of here", I wasn't getting there.

In the past, I asked the voice how to use these 'skills' that I've been given and it readily answered. So, after some reflection, I decided to ask about these phenomena. The first of many questions I would later bombard it with.

[Notice: Revealing hidden attributes of the skill "Mass Division". Updating summary...]

[Notice: Updated summary reveals that the attributes responsible for aforementioned symptoms include Vestigial Perception, Vestigial Motor Control inherited from skill "Rudimentary Locomotion", and Vestigial Skill Control. No further results found.]

Vestigial? Could it be referring to the waste I leave behind after using [Mass Division]?

I turned my skepticism toward one of said blobs, the leftovers from another arbitrary fusion of semi-recognizable features. They gave me a queer one today. It had scales and a bunch of flagella that were honestly disturbing when it slid across the floor with them. It wasn't a threat just like the rest, and went down without a struggle since it was smaller and weaker than I.

The waste proved to be my only way to interact with what constituted 'me'. Blurry, emanating a hue a bit like an overly-ripe peach skin. About the same size as myself, give or take the size of what I used [Predate] on. Contrary to my initial beliefs, they didn't seem to possess the same sentience that I have. Rather, they didn't budge an inch after snapping the thin film between us after using [Mass Division]. I had assumed all that. According to the voice, they could be far more than I could've imagined.

Through mindless repetition, I'd grown accustomed to making them, finding the whole process transiently satisfying, as though filling a bucket with a hole in it. Though it didn't begin like this. I dreaded going back to 'that' day, not knowing what I was doing, as though I couldn't control myself. But, seeing as how I lacked any control over what direction my life took anyway, I shook that little bit of naivety out in exchange for a healthy dose of apathy. Besides, I doubt these people are willing to risk coming close after predation is used.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Do you mean that what I'm seeing is where these things are?"

[Notice: Highly probable.]

That confirms it then. Somehow, I can see what these things can and, if what the voice said is true, It might be possible to control them. Motor and skill control... the question was how to make use of that knowledge.

I began with a simple thought experiment. There must be some kind of link between these... I'll call them "clones" from now on, and myself. The only connection to this and my experience were those somewhat random visions I receive from them, although weak and ethereal smudges around the edges of my perception. With that in mind, I set myself to focusing on these connections. It proved a more difficult task than anticipated. Whenever a particularly clear connection came in, I couldn't fully grasp onto it before it faded. It took several months before I overcame that first hurdle. And when I finally did, after many, many a failed attempt, I finally made a breakthrough.

[Notice: Gathering data points... verifying authenticity of divergent skill "Clone Telepathy"... Complete. Results show a 98% probability for divergence success.]

[Notice: Beginning award cycle...]

All of my efforts yielded something I half-expected. Doing repeatable actions seemed to net me some kind of progress toward new skills, with the exception of previously earned skills. I wasn't sure why the voice mentioned it being a divergence, and still don't. But more importantly, when yet another faint mirage of somewhere flitted into view, I decided test it.

A disorientation quite unlike any I experienced until now, worse than my first baby steps with [Rudimentary Locomotion], took hold of my senses. The tank walls and fluid twisted about each other in vertigo, compressed and supplanted by the weight of a new perspective.

This is...

I remember this place. Faintly. Probably one of the jumbled fragments left behind after my dissection. The room with the altar, the endless ceiling and floor. I'm back where everything started. And I was one of those clones, laid alongside several others atop the altar. My surroundings seemed to be entirely empty, not a single robed person anywhere.

[Notice: Two minutes remaining.]

[Clone Telepathy], as it turns out, has a time limit per clone with an absurdly long cooldown of ten days per use. I initially hoped I could use this skill to switch to one of my clones permanently. That would be too convenient though. Past experience would tell me that much.

Not wanting to put the clone on cooldown unnecessarily, I closed the connection. I didn't see much purpose to staying there, nothing but painful memories. Opting for instead another opportunity.

Hmm? There seems to be a pattern here.

Around two hours spaced every clone's signal apart.

Odd. Could it be something's interfering?

However, I was far more intent on the skill itself and didn't pay much attention to it afterward.

Most of the clones didn't provide me with very much. Those that could sense anything were locked away inside their storage tanks or vats of pink liquid I couldn't see through. That was, until several dozen more attempts later.

The first thing I noticed from this clone's point of view was that my line of 'sight' stood considerably higher than it normally did, and far narrower in scope that it once was. I was moving, though not in a container. I was in a familiar set of winding halls, striding quickly toward a set of double doors.

Striding? But I don't have legs...

It took some time for it all to sink in. Then it hit me, as 'My' hand raised toward the green gem set in the wall, and I entered that room again. Only this time I could plainly see that the endless voids that once warped reality weren't quite voids but a shifting veil of... something. It reflected the inside of the room, the altar and its dais, and the face of a bastard far too familiar to forget, even after everything I once knew shredded to oblivion.

You...!

The one that took everything away from me. That old man. But, why is he here now? How am I here...?

"Lord Ninth, is everything alright?" A timid mewl sounded uncomfortably close by, giving me quite the scare. After all this time, I wasn't expecting I'd ever hear anyone besides the voice in my mind, and so clearly at that.

My lips moved of their own accord, alarming me even more than the nettling voice did, "Of course it is, why would it not?"

"N-no reason at all your excellence. I merely wished to express my congratulations on your wondrous recovery."

I let out a nauseating scoff, dismissing the wheedling white-robed man beside me.

"Hmph, and I'm told I'm insufferable."

The words escaped my mouth before I could try to contain them. Frankly, I couldn't control anything, much less my mouth. As though an oppressive hand forced me back from those faculties, restraining my every thought to move.

I... this can't be...

As my attention involuntarily turned toward the altar, I vaguely intuited the horrifying truth mirrored in the rippling curtains.

How am I the old man?