After leaving Dana and Tsubaki with their new missions, I contemplated what I had experienced in this recent invasion. Part of me felt as if I was on the right track with regards to my strategy, where I forced the other party to participate in a special game of my own creation. However, the fact of the matter was that the game was too rushed and unrefined, leaving it such that I wasn’t able to find them with this method before it was too late.
In the future, it might become a plausible defensive tactic, setting up several games based on different situations, and then forcing the invaders to play those games. Depending on how the games are established, I may be able to thin their numbers before ultimately forcing the confrontation in an advantageous situation. Of course, I would have to tailor these games based on information I obtained about the attacking Keepers.
All in all, I felt that it could be a good plan if properly developed. I just wasn’t sure if it was the method most suitable for myself. In order to force this game on only a handful of people, it had taken a massive amount of divinity. After all, I was searching for a very select group within the entirety of my domain in the form of universal matchmaking. While it could be useful in select circumstances, I needed to find a way to make it more efficient in the future.
Shrugging my shoulders, I ascended back to the Admin Room and looked around. The relieved faces of Udona, Keliope, and Accalia were the first things that I saw when I got back. “Good to see you safe, boss.” Keliope said with a smile, flashing me a thumbs up.
I gave her a nod, knowing that this was the most dangerous invasion that we had faced to date. Had we delayed any longer, or if we did not have a figure like Leowynn to allow mass combat in the void, it was possible that we could have been defeated in this invasion. At the very least, I would have been forced to flee for months while I waited for the annual meeting to try and get the defense ticket.
“Did you manage to learn anything on this end?” I asked, looking at the three of them. As they had been observing the world from above the entire time, I thought that they might have had some way to observe the enemy camp and glimpse their secrets. But, it turned out that reality was not so kind.
Accalia shook her head with a faint sigh. “I tried to monitor their activities, but I wasn’t able to do so. It never came up much in the past, because the enemy was always within a certain distance from your own forces, but there appears to be a limit to what we can observe during an invasion. The first time that I was able to see their forces was when they launched their initial attack.”
I furrowed my brow, finding the situation extremely troubling. However, it made sense, in a way. If the companions in the Admin Room were capable of casually monitoring the invading forces, there would be no reason that a single Keeper could not gather all the information that they needed from one invasion. Just by devoting one of them to the task, I would have societal norms, level of technology and magic, and any special systems at play.
While I may not agree with this type of censorship from the Keeper system, there was not much that I could do about it. At the very least, it meant that other Keepers would not be able to easily get the same information on me just by watching my invading forces. “What about the technology left behind? Is there anything salvageable?”
“Ashley went off to investigate that herself.” Udona smiled from the couch. “She said that there seemed to be a few devices, but she wasn’t sure of their function without investigating them. Tubrock went with her, saying something about new composite materials that he wanted to study.”
I couldn’t help the smirk that appeared on my face when I heard that. However, there was something else that was troubling me. Looking at Keliope and Accalia, I sat down in a free chair and asked with a heavy tone. “If they hadn’t self-destructed… what would our losses be looking like?”
Silence fell over the room when I asked that question, the two beastkin girls looking at one another. Ultimately, it was Keliope that spoke first, her expression helpless. “It’s hard to say. We weren’t able to look into the world that they created for their factories. But, if we were just going by the rate of their production for troops and ships, taking into account that they created an entire realm within the void to serve as their production line…”
She shook her head. “It’s not out of the question to assume that the entire fleet would have been destroyed before you made your way to the second base. Maybe if you went all-out on your own, then you could have destroyed the worlds that they made and foiled their plans, but that is a large gamble.”
Accalia gave a nod, agreeing with Keliope’s assessment. “And we still don’t know what method they were using to keep the void monsters at bay. My assumption is that that was the first thing that they destroyed when they detected your appearance in the void. Needless to say, the enemy values their secrecy above any guarantee of winning. Merely the fact that their base was discovered was enough for them to completely give up on the invasion.”
“Which meant that if I had gone out there immediately, I could have stopped it all from happening.” I muttered quietly, shaking my head.
I felt a slight chop on the top of my head, and looked over to see Keliope glaring at me. “First of all, you didn’t know where in the void the enemy was stationing themselves. Secondly, you had no way of knowing that they would have done something like that the moment they were found. If I were the enemy, my objective in this situation would be to kill the enemy Keeper at any cost, as that would be the only way to return home.”
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Accalia quickly agreed with her ursa sister. “She’s right. The enemy this time was far too outside the norm. Their troops had no sense of self-preservation, and were more akin to organic robots than they were to living people. The thought of returning home was never an option for them, or else they would not have so quickly destroyed themselves.”
I had to agree with her there, before furrowing my brow. “What about Irena? Would she be able to find any of their souls to question?”
Keliope shrugged, unsure of the answer to that. “She left once the invasion ended as well, probably to try to do that. But like the little pup said, they’re more like robots than anything else. I wouldn’t be surprised if the enemy didn’t have a soul in the first place.”
Accalia puffed her cheeks out in a pout at being called a ‘little puppy’, but I chuckled lightly. “I guess we’ll see what everyone turns up with. Where’s Terra? It’s unusual to see the three of you together without her.”
Keliope and Udona shared a playful glance, before the latter looked at me. “She went to hide in your room. You should have seen her when you met the twins. Her face went so red that I had a hard time believing it.”
I blinked in surprise when I heard that, looking to the others for confirmation. After they gave it, I stood up and began walking towards my room. What was there for Terra to be embarrassed about, to the point where she hid herself away in her room? Was there something wrong about the twins themselves that I wasn’t able to notice, or had the others made some connection that I wasn’t aware of yet?
When I got to my room, I found a familiar lump curled up under the blankets on the bed. Rolling my eyes with a grin, I walked over and poked the bundle through the blankets, causing it to squirm. “What’s up, Terra?” I asked the little blanket monster.
Terra lifted the corner of the blanket, peering at me from within. “You met them already…” She pouted, though it was her own decision to leave them for me to meet. “They weren’t ready, yet.”
“Weren’t ready?” I questioned, sitting at the corner of the bed and watching her. “What do you mean?”
She let out a sigh, slowly pulling the blanket off of her to sit next to me. “Terra and Firma are… special. They even took me by surprise.” That was not something I could entirely believe, but I decided to listen anyway. “Actually… they’re only a single being. There is no ‘Firma’.”
I raised an eyebrow when I heard that, clearly recalling how I met two catgirls instead of one. Well, three if you counted Irena’s incarnation. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me, I think.”
Terra gave a somewhat cheeky smile, clearly seeing my expression. “She’s an anomaly. The system identified her anomaly as Split Persona. When she was born, this anomaly created a copy of her, identical in every way. That’s why they can’t tell which one is named Terra or Firma. In their mind, they are Terra, and the other one must be Firma.”
“I’m the one that created a distinction between them, by having one cultivate the power of chaos. It was an experiment I wanted to try out… but it gave results beyond my expectations.”
I gave a nod when I heard that. “Their predictive powers…”
However, Terra shook her head. “No, not that. Their power of prediction was my original goal. By combining the chaos with the divine, I wanted to touch the realm of fate through mortal powers. But… if that was all there was, those two would have been captured years ago as blasphemous beings, simply because one had the Fallen Priest class.”
“...I thought that you took special measures to avoid detection.” I admitted, looking at her in surprise. Going by her words, it wasn’t her that had ensured their survival up to this point.
“No… they did. I underestimated their anomaly. Not only are their minds and bodies perfect copies of one another, but so are their souls. And they are entirely interchangeable, to the point where I doubt neither of them remembers which body they started in. When the chaos twin was getting appraised, she would silently switch with her sister, and the results would show that they both had the same classes and levels.”
When I heard that, I felt as if a headache was coming on. “So… they’re one being in two bodies, but at the same time they’re two beings with one body? They’ve cultivated different powers, so they can’t be regarded as exactly the same anymore, yet they still can’t tell each other apart. Their minds have to be connected, but… if that were the case, wouldn’t the main mind be looking at both books when they use their power? That goes against the rule you set, right?”
Terra nodded her head. “That’s right. Their minds are connected, but separate. Subconsciously, they are the same person, but they differ on the conscious level. I was wanting to wait to introduce you to them until after they matured to godhood, but I didn’t have a choice with this invasion approaching so quickly.”
Thinking back, that didn’t quite make sense. “I didn’t sense that they were ascending to godhood, but were they really that far off?”
The felyn goddess smiled at that. “Their auras balance each other out. When one makes progress towards divinity, the other makes progress towards chaos. As their souls join on a subconscious level, that means that their divinity cannot readily be sensed. My question is this…”
“If one ascends to godhood while the other becomes a fallen god… what will happen? Will they remain two separate entities, or will they merge and become the singular being that they were originally meant to be? If they do merge, which one will they merge as? Which Terra is the true Terra, and which is the clone created by the system? And, if they merge… what will they create from the merger of a fallen god and a mortal deity? A situation like theirs’ is extremely rare, and the Keeper system won’t provide me with the answer, as it is not something you are currently ‘qualified’ to know. But… I want to know what lies at the end of their path. What happens when chaos and divinity meet in such a unique way?” There was an expectant tone in Terra’s voice that was completely unlike her normal self, and I began to understand why she was embarrassed to show me this.