Chapter 196: Doppelganger

There was something that I had noticed these last few months with dual sync. Leaving aside the fact that I think it seems to take longer and longer when you swap skills with the same person, is that you can swap the same skill more than once.

The first time I noticed this was thanks to Elena. The first time we exchanged was her affinity for darkness, and on my part the affinity for lightning. Two months later, one morning I noticed that Elena had the plant affinity ability, which was the first one I had exchanged with Alice. When I looked at my status, I noticed that the affinity to darkness had advanced to rank A.

I don’t know about other skills, but I more or less understand what is required to bring the affinities at least up to rank (S).

I was sure I hadn’t done enough to move that affinity up, and that’s when I noticed that, when this skill swap is done, if I already have the skill, it strengthens it.

Luck or not, after only two weeks we had a third exchange, which doesn’t let me fully understand if the time between these exchanges was really increasing, or if I was just very unlucky with its randomness, since elena is the only one it happened with, three times and Alice only once.

I wouldn’t have noticed this exchange if it wasn’t because I usually check the girls’ progress from time to time, and I noticed that Elena now had the “Heiress (B)” skill.

And when I looked at my status I didn’t find anything different, but after trying a few things I noticed that, although it didn’t go up in rank, my affinity for darkness was more fluid.

I could handle it better and instinctively knew that, if we made another exchange and I received the affinity for darkness, it would go up in rank. Although it doesn’t specify, I felt it should now be something like ’Affinity with darkness (A+)’.

’Haaah, how I wish a system-chan would explain all this to me, or at least that useless Qetesh would be more collaborative.’

[[fuck you]]

“….”

Yeah, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, That aside, if that function still works above rank (S), then it would be really important in the future.

But back on topic: if my ability went up yesterday, it means I had a dual sync with one of the girls who already possessed parallel thinking.

The only two who had it were Alice and Astrid, and, in fact, now I feel like I can activate a third mind. But it’s no use if I have to create only two Doppelgangers with only thirty percent and no abilities.

Antony had the skill at rank (A) and, if I remembered correctly, he could make two Doppelgangers with all his stats.

Both Doppelgangers were as fast as he was when they ran. I didn’t know if he originally came in that rank from birth or if he somehow upgraded it at some point.

I got to thinking what the requirement might be. I had never needed more than one clone and, although I could create more by reducing his strength, I always just needed one to replace me. It was the first time I had thought, how I could make it ascend….

“Oh!”

And I just realized a possibility I had overlooked.

“It’s kind of silly, but we’ve actually never tried it, have we?”

“That’s right, let’s go out and try it.”

A possible solution came to mind. Considering the skills I had so far promoted, such as Resonance, which I promoted twice, I realized that, in a way, their requirement was to push the skill to the limit, adding more and more people.

This aligns with affinities, which you must push to the limit of their rank to promote them. Not all skills shared this logic, but I could give Doppelgänger a try.

Doppelgänger certainly is a powerful skill: it allows you to create a clone by sacrificing all your mana, and creates a mana being with all your stats and appearance.

It is an ability that defies all common sense. Even early on, when mana was not my strong suit, the clone possessed all my strength and could last a full day if I did nothing.

There is a glaring lack of logic here, since, with only having approximately 30 mana, I could create a being with my full strength and even an ability.

But that’s the way skills are. Just like the Resonance power of the twins: that extra energy that is not drawn from the other person, but seems to be generated out of thin air.

These abilities, the more I analyze them, the more absurd they seem to me. And they are not even the most illogical ones in my inherited memories.

The point is that most of the time I used him for him to have abilities, like affinity for light, which was part of my facade as Seraphina, or with morphogenesis when I needed his support in specific tasks like on certain nights… ehm, well, the point is that I didn’t need him for anything else and I never tested him thoroughly.

The only time I tried something different was to check if he could act as a fourth person in resonance.

However, this failed: the doppelganger could copy the ability, but could not be affected by it, even when I created it in the middle of the resonance.

It always retains my base strength, and so far it was the only thing I thought it could be useful to me, besides replacing my identity.

Sure, I could sacrifice strength to split it and create two clones with 30 strength each, but I felt they would be less useful. Besides, one of them would end up as a mindless puppet, since I only had a parallel thought before

what I thought now that I needed manpower is that if I activated the Doppelgänger ability, being the doppelganger, what would happen, would it activate or would it become unusable like resonance?

And now in a secluded alley, with no onlookers and barriers so we wouldn’t be disturbed, I watched as my doppelganger was about to activate the Doppelgänger skill, and to my surprise….

“Fuck, it did work!”

There I was, watching my Doppelganger create another clone of us in its original form, as these clones come with that design passively.

I immediately directed my new extra thought into him. And suddenly I now had three perspectives.

Getting used to having two had already been complicated at the beginning, but once mastered, the third one was not difficult and I handled it normally. I relegated those two additional perspectives to the back burner of my attention and concentrated solely on my own.

I carefully analyzed the second Doppelgänger created by the Doppelgänger.

“Okay, but there’s a problem…” I muttered, looking at the new Doppelgänger.

“If the strength is only 50%…”

It was an improvement, all things considered, but still the third one couldn’t copy any skills.

“Haaah, it’s a fiasco…. No, wait.”

At that moment, I came up with another idea. Although it was my Doppelgänger who met the ascension requirements to begin with, I am, originally, the possessor of the skills. To check, I looked at my status:

————————————————

Name: Seraphina Silvercrest

Race: Human

Rank: Intermediate Transformation

Gender: Female

Stats:

Strength: 183

Mana: 190

Agility: 175

Defense: 89

Vitality: 179

Skills:

Purification (Ω)

Morphogenesis (A)

Eyes of Lust (A)

Dual Synchrony (A)

Protection of Lust (A)

Heiress (A)

Affinity with Plants (A)

Affinity with Darkness (A)

Affinity with Light (A)

Doppelgänger (A)

Parallel Thinking (A)

Affinity with Runes (B)

Resonance (B)

Pheromones (B)

Affinity with Lightning (B)

Fertility Control (B)

Demonization (C)

Heavy Weapons Mastery (D)

Affinity with Spears (D)

Enchantment (E)

Corruption (F)

Affinity for Light (EX) – sealed

———————————————————

Indeed, I had moved up in rank. I was now (A) . I thought how useful it would be if I had my personal system, “system-chan”, that would tell me and notify me exactly the conditions and timing of promotion. I vowed to get the legacies as soon as possible.

I returned the extra parallel thought and also eliminated the second Doppelganger. Then, I sacrificed 100% of my mana again and tried to visualize myself creating another Doppelganger with all my power.

Usually, no matter how hard I tried, there was always something blocking me. But this time, as if I was activating the ability as I normally do, it worked, as if there wasn’t already a Doppelganger created.

I created the usual emotionless Doppelganger, and immediately transferred back the parallel thought and….

“Good! Now this is perfect!”

My Doppelganger, doing a self-test, confirmed that I was at 100% and could use an ability. I thought about recharging my mana to maximum and seeing if I could create another Doppelganger or check what would happen if that Doppelganger created another one.

But I discovered that only one Doppelganger can use the same ability at a time. Thus, while the first Doppelganger could create a fourth Doppelganger with 50% power, due to some strange limitation that I don’t understand, the second Doppelganger could not copy the Doppelganger ability, unless the first Doppelganger deactivated it and stopped copying it.

In the end, two Doppelgangers with 100% of my stats and one skill, and a third with 50% of my strength, without any skill, became the limit of this skill. Without any clue to promote it again, I just hope that more girls will get it, like Selene, and that I will ascend through synchronization.

At that time, my Doppelganger was swapping skills to test if any other skill, which I had never used before while using Doppelganger, could rank up.

Sadly, no other skills were ever promoted again. I guess this is more due to the specific workings of this skill.

The world of abilities is complicated, and even with all the memories I have I can’t quite understand the logic behind them. I don’t know why beings in this world are born with them or why only the gods can create and bestow them. I just hope the future will bring me answers.

..

“Well, now then, it’s time to get going.”

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