Harper couldn’t believe they’d hidden this feature from him. Or maybe they didn’t, and it simply wasn’t available where they were before. Then again, he had respawned inside the colosseum entryway when Marik first killed him. Why wouldn’t he be able to move his spawn?

He looked over to Kate, the woman that had guided him to his room. She had an ability similar to his clone, except in her case she had to manually control both bodies. It was called Hive Mind. He knew because he’d heard her use it. Apparently, she’d recently received it and was trying to use it to run both the bar and the inn simultaneously.

Due to how recently she’d received it, her speech came out stuttered. Not only that, every now and then he would hear a glass downstairs shatter. This was inevitably followed by fluid cursing from both forms.

“So you’re telling me all I have to do to swap spawns is go to sleep?” He chose to leave out the fact that a Warden forcibly changed his spawn to a new location. “It was that simple this whole time?”

“Y-y-yep.” A clatter of glasses came from downstairs. “Void damn it! Sorry, sorry.” Her rear hands began miming moving glasses around. Kate looked at something in the other perspective, then suddenly locked eyes with him. “T-t-this is a-all you can a-afford for now. D-do some w-w-work around t-town and you’ll m-m-make more than e-enough to—”Another glass hit the ground. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, get it the fuck together, Kate!” A breath. “Go the fuck to sleep, do some work, get some money. No, not you Noah, stop sleeping on my fucking bar. Well, maybe if you won more fights, you’d have more money, huh? As it stands, you can’t even afford the piss poor excuse of a room this schmuck is staying in.” She gestured at Harper. “No, not you!”

Harper raised a hand slowly, fearing she would yell at him. “Um, I understand now. Would you mind leaving my room so I can sleep? I’m very tired.”

Her eyes locked onto his again. Her arms resumed moving things around. “What’s that? Sorry, a bit hard to understand you when eight different people are talking to me! Thank you. Now, what was that?”

He stopped shielding his face long enough to speak. “I said, would you mind leaving so I can sleep? I’m very tired.”

“Oh, my bad, of course!” She started to walk out of the room, bumped into nothing, and the clattering resumed. “Fucking son of a Christmas whore!” She continued swearing as she fully swapped perspectives, leaving the room and curtsying at the door before shutting it.

“Well that was… an experience.” He walked over and laid down on his bed. “Wow. This is somehow worse than laying on the cold ground. Hang on a minute.” He tried laying down on the floor. “Yeah, this is somehow better. What the fuck?” He pulled the sheets from the bed, just about the only comfortable thing on it, and went to sleep.

* * *

In the dead of night, he was awoken by the feeling of an enormous foot hitting his ribs, followed by a clanging as someone tripped into the metal bed. He quickly got to a standing position and summoned his warhammer, ready to take down whoever was trying to attack him.

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Instead of an attacker, he saw his traveling companion Malgren tangled in the bed. He sighed, put his warhammer aside, and helped him out of the bed. Almost immediately afterwards, Malgren punched him in the face. It shocked him, knocking him to the ground, yet it didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as expected.

“Void Touch!” He kicked at Malgren’s leg, causing a significant chunk of it to disappear.

Void Touch(Rank 1) RP: 7/10 > 8/10

Malgren collapsed to the ground screaming, at which point Harper scrambled to his feet, grabbing his warhammer. He slammed it down full force into the man’s chest, caving it in. He stilled almost immediately.

A few seconds later, exactly what he expected happened. Malgren’s corpse shrank and changed forms until it mirrored Harper exactly. The corpse, surprisingly, did not vanish into dust. Instead, it slowly pooled blood on the floor. He took a step back to avoid standing in it.

Warhammer(Rank 0) RP: 0/10 > 1/10

Harper sighed and unsummoned his warhammer. He then sat down on his bed and looked down at the corpse. It had been the first time in a while that he’d seen his own corpse. Well, technically it was Brooke’s corpse, but it hardly mattered. It looked just like him.

“Clone.”

Clone(Rank 6) RP: 1/10 > 2/10

He made sure to shunt Brooke out of his front, grabbing his arms and restraining them immediately. The man didn’t even try to resist. He seemed defeated, weakened somehow.

Despite his better judgement, he decided to speak to the man. “Brooke?”

Brooke raised his head. “Oh, is that what you called me? Let me guess your thought process: ‘I’m not going to Brooke this level of disrespect.’ You’re such a vindictive bastard.”

“Why aren’t you trying to get away? I know you’re much stronger than this, stronger than me. This is almost… too easy.” He let the man go, but Brooke made no attempts to attack him.

Brooke turned to face him. His face was dead, expressionless. “I’m not the one in charge anymore.”

Harper’s brow furrowed. “Do I control you now?”

Brooke smirked. “Of course not.” His smile died again. “You don’t realize it yet, but you’ve never been in control. They are.”

Harper felt a pain shoot through the back of his neck, and suddenly he was looking up at Brooke. He couldn’t feel anything, and he felt weak. So very weak.

Brooke looked down on him. “Like I said when we first met. See you soon.”

* * *

Harper cracked his eyes open to a mint blue-green light in his eyes. He slammed a fist against the back wall of the fridge.

“Damn it! Don’t I get to have any peace on this fucking planet?!” He stomped out of his icy fridge and kicked it over.

The light in it flickered before going out. The heat of the jungle encroached. Darkness flooded his surroundings.

Dread clamped onto his heart. “Wait, no no no no no!” He rushed over and picked up the fridge. The light remained off. “Fuck!”

He stood for a long moment, hanging his head. Eventually, he clenched his fists and turned around. He raised his head and looked at the yawning darkness of the jungle. He put one foot in front of the other and stomped into its blazing depths.

“Clones.”

Clone(Rank 6) RP: 2/10 > 8/10

Six clones stepped out in a circle surrounding him, matching his death march. If this jungle wanted his corpse, it would have to fight for it.