She had been in this place for a couple of weeks already, in that time she had found a few things. First of all...That bloody moon didn't want to move, it always stayed at the same spot and it was always looking down on her.
No matter what part of the city she moved to, if she looked up the bloody thing would be above her.
Number two:
This place was always night, no sun ever rose on the horizon... Nor was she able to find the city limits, after some point, the buildings made a natural barricade that prevented her from getting above them. She did try to climb them once...
But there were some live cables braided at the top that discharged lighting at her when she tried to go above a certain threshold, and while she was immune to the flames...
She didn't want to test if she would be immune to lighting.
Number three:
The warm motes of light didn't come as often as before, some days she wouldn't get a single one...Sometimes it would take several days, there was this week when she didn't get a single one even...
But they would always return.
Number four:
She had been in this place longer than she remembered, and this was more tricky to find out, her cellphone had a timer on it, and when she turned it on it was running and the number was [691,253] seconds.
A quick math operation came with around 8 days and some, she turned it off and counted in her mind, then after a whole minute had passed by she turned the cellphone on again. The time matched with her mental calculations...
So at the very least, she had been in this place for eight days.
How could she be so sure? When she saw the timmer running she got a flashback of a memory, a memory of someone giving her the cellphone with the timmer open and of her starting it...
And that was it, so that meant someone had been with her, but she couldn't remember their faces nor names. She had the inkling that it had been a kid...
But no evidence across her travels had found anyone else in this place, and that brings up to the next finding...
Number Five:
She wasn't getting hungry or thirsty.
This one was...more dangerous, it meant that either she was getting nourishment from something here...Or that this wasn't quite a real place. If it was the first then it would be fine, it could mean these black flames were nourishing her somehow.
If it was the second...Then that would be more problematic to solve, it would mean she either was in a fever dream (And all her testing seemed to think of this place as something real) or those flames were some kind of magic-demonic-alien shenanigans that had kidnaped her to another dimension.
....
"No way it's aliens right Stabby?" She asked looking down at the spear in her hand.
At some point, she had started to refer to the spear as Stabby...She originally called it Tabby as a diminutive of [Tabitha] but since she may find someone called like that and it could get awkward...She decided to call the spear Stabby. It was self-explanatory if nothing else.
The spear had become important to her since it helped her in her search for supplies, the spear continued to siphon the dark flames whenever she brought the thing near an open flame, and sleeping with it had become a habit at this point. You know a girl, a spear, and a rag(former lab coat) normal stuff.
So far she had explored most of the things in the outer layer of the city and a couple in the middle layer, but today was special.
"Today we return to the obnoxious building, what do you think we will find Stabby?" She was going back to the first building she woke up in.
Why? Because most of the motes of light seemed to point that way, there was something there.
Also because one day she woke up and in one of her pockets was an ID with the same emblem that the building had.
The name was charred and the photo was blank, but everything else was there. It also had a microchip on it that should open some doors...And since most of the buildings here had electricity (Somehow) she wanted to see what was behind door number 1.
"What? No way..." She answered to the spear, "You overthink it, I probably didn't notice the ID card in the conspicuous front pocket I use to store things...Yeah, totally not going nuts from solitude."
The spear was getting cheeky too, implying she was going crazy, she wasn't alone, she had stabby!
But she would need to put her in time out, since she was rude telling her that she was crazy, "Anyway, you stay in your room till I call you okay?" And with practiced ease, she threw the thing against the shadow of a trash can.
The spear flew true and sank into the shadows, she had learned that her loyal Stabby could sink into shadows and return at her call, the thing needed a shadow to sink into, so it couldn't sink into a light bulb.
She learned that the hard way when she stabbed a light bulb, at least she didn't get electrocuted that way...Stabby was good at isolating lighting it seemed, even if she had seen sparks of lighting in her hands while panicking...
And she was barefoot...And was standing on a metallic floor...That wasn't grounded...
So surely Stabby had isolated the current!
Yeah, no reason why she would be immune to dark ominous flames, debris, and then also to lighting!
Yeah...
"I do need to talk to someone live..." Sighed Elizabeth while walking towards the skyscraper.
She was getting tired of this already.
She missed...Something.
The warm motes of light only served to remind her of this, that she was missing something, and it nagged at her, it bothered her while trying to sleep. And while sleeping in the black flames soothed her, she had noticed it also made her more lethargic, that was the main reason she kept stabby around.
But the main reason she sent her away was another thing she found one morning, "Okay you know the drill Smoky, get to it." Elizabeth said extending her hand towards the bigger cluster of black flames around.
These started shaking and then, one by one small clumps of black flames started dancing towards her, they in turn congregathed around her and jumped at her hand.
She almost immediately felt a rush course her body and her cheeks blushed at the euphoria, "Hmm...." it was as if the black flames nourished something within her, and letting a breath she didn't know she was holding, the black flames started burning hotter.
All around her the black flames danced more, shone more, and in the sky, the bloody moon dimmed, as if clouds wanted to hide it if only for a second.
She had found that like Stabby, she could absorb the black flames, and when doing so she could make those effects, this was the reason she had the theory that the black flames nourished her. The rush she got from absorbing them...
And the reason she kept going at it was how the bloody moon seemed to diminish in color with each attempt she made. It wasn't much, hell, it was probably a drop in the ocean. But she knew the bloody moon was losing color.
[She knew it.]
"Welcome to the HQ of The Saintsworth's Conglomerate on Terra Invicta." She stopped absorbing them as soon as the speakers brought her from her musings.
She had kept walking towards this building, and like all the other times she passed by, she noticed how the building had less and less black flames around it.
She wasn't sure why or how, but the more black flames she absorbed the less this building burned. "Bio-Scanning in progress..." And the fewer black flames it held, the more functions it seemed to recover. "Warning, body dysmorphia detected...Biosignature of ■■■■■■■■■ Saintsworths detected. Body measures conflict with current Scan... Do you wish to update the measures?"
And this was the reason she hadn't returned, the thing seemed to think her body was different from what it had in stock, and she had run away the first time it reported it...
She...Wasn't sure what to think about it, "Update the measures." But she needed to check, so she bit the bullet and spoke, her voice low and unsure.
"Updating biosignature of Alexanders Saintsworths to new model...Registered as Elizabeth Starbright. Welcome home." The machine welcomed her back.
It also said the full name of the person she hadn't been able to hear before, Alexanders Saintsworths...
The Blonde Scion of The Saintsworths Clan, also a whimsical asshole that went and did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. From oppressing someone for the fun of it to building a whole city in the middle of a swamp to prove a point.
And...How was she able to recall those tidbits of information? "What?" Elizabeth suddenly felt the world was spinning, in front of her was a lab coat and the ceiling of the reception.
She could make the form of an eagle, the emblem of the Saintsworths. The eagle eternally searching for knowledge...
And the scroll that symbolized the knowledge they wanted to safekeep.
Her head was inundated by tons of information that she should not know...The name of the planet, the name of the city, the name of the building...The name of all the multiple scions of the branch clans...The name of her secretary...[His secretary].
"My...Name...Is...Elizabeth...Starbright...Not...I will not....be....tainted....by.....[this]...[again]" She said with clenched teeth as she held her head with both hands.
She closed her eyes as the room seemed to continue spinning around, and while tasting the flavor of ozone in the air she lost consciousness.
Before hitting the floor she tried to open her eyes, and for a second...For the barest amount of a second, she could swear she had seen the face of a yellow-eyed kid looking down at her, he was dressed in a pristine white coat and a smirk on his face.
He waved at her and gave her a thumbs up.
Afterward....She lost consciousness.
She would kick him after waking up. She wasn't sure why it annoyed her that much, but she was going to kick him.
--------------------------------------------
"IT WAS HOW LONG?!?" Elizabeth screamed after waking up, her phone was reading almost two months since
quickly checked herself and found that her body was normal, but the counter in her phone was a grim reminder that her condition was anything but normal.
She had woken up in a normal room this time, unlike the first time, when she woke up in a ruined laboratory, this time she woke up dressed in comfy pajamas sleeping in a silky bed with a fluffy blanket atop her.
She ditched the blanket and rushed towards the bathroom, how did she know where the bathroom was? She didn't want to think about it.
She only had one thing in her mind right now "...I'm still me..." Elizabeth said while looking at her reflection, her face was panicked, and her eyes darted all over her body making sure everything was like before.
She left a relieved breath when she noticed that she was as before, returning to the bed and sitting on it she noticed how on the chair was a set of clothing, a pair of boots, jeans, a blouse and jacket, gloves, a backpack, and finally a pair of obsidian swords.
And then on the other side, atop an end table was the clothing she had been using, her cargo shorts and tank top, and a lonely lab coat...No longer ragged mind you. But still a stark contrast.
She...Wasn't sure what to make out of it, the jeans would be surely more helpful and the boots could mean that she would no longer need to mind where she stood. But on the other hand...
She was used to moving around without having to be restricted in her movements, the jeans would limit how far she could move, and the boots would mean that while she would no longer need to mind where she stood... She would lose tactile sensation from her feet and that made her think of her options.
In the end, she decided to go halfway there, she picked up her cargo shorts and the blouse and ditched the jeans but kept the boots, she would need to be civilized at some point after all.
She however decided to carry on the labcoat, in the end, she was dressed using parts from here and there, the cargo shorts and the lab survived from her initial clothing. Now the blouse and the boots were added to it, it made her look weird since the lab coat didn't seem to mesh quite well with this ensemble.
But if someone found a problem with her they would need to stop hiding and complain to her!
...No one came tho.
Instead, she exited the room and found....another elevator and an emergency exit, she frowned at that, this hallway only had a utility closet, some kind of security room, and the elevator and stairs. And even the stairs seemed to have been forced to be there.
Walking towards the security office she suddenly was aware that the guy that should be there owed her a couple of bucks..."What?" That...shouldn't be possible.
She tried to recall how that had happened but the memory faded as soon as she tried to prod her mind, memory after memory they seemed to dissolve one by one, leaving only vague recollections of skills.
She was pretty sure she now knew exactly how electrolysis worked and a way to make it more efficient for example, and had even a complex formula to turn the moisture in the air into hydrogen for multiple uses.
She was painfully aware of what parts of her mana needed to work in what way to create a current of electricity and...."Huh? Mana?" That made her stop on the spot.
"What is mana?" She wondered aloud as more memories came rushing back to her, multiple tests and tables depicting how that energy interacted with the world.
The test result of some samples interacting and using it to increase their muscle mass, examples of wonderful applications and ways those made powers akin to those found in anime and manga.
And reports of biopsies and autopsies of said test subjects, she almost puked as those memories came back to her, and wondered why her hands looked like that in those memories.
Only to see the reflection in the memory...The reflection of an older man looking with interest and glee at the scalpel.
She turned her head to the security booth and looked at her reflection on the crystal, her eyes were turning yellow... She grounded herself and focused on her name...
"I'm Elizabeth Starbright..." She said as if in a chant, focusing on her breathing and looking at her reflection to make sure it didn't change again.
Her eyes slowly but surely started to turn blue and the memory at the back of her head blurred, the face of the man dissipated and only the knowledge remained.
The knowledge of a [Mana Core] as the man called it, a crystalized form of [Mana] deep within the body, somehow embedded in the middle of the heart, but not affecting how it worked.
Meaning one couldn't transplant one...Not that the memories didn't speak of trying, she had plenty of those at the back of her mind.
But she ignored them, dismissed them, Burned them away with her thunder.
She didn't want to know more about that man, she kept what was valuable, skills and muscle memory, she felt her body becoming [more], but even so, she still was Elizabeth.
"I'm Elizabeth Starbright..." She said to herself.
And so she walked towards the elevator and it started moving downwards...
At the bottom, the door opened once more and she found herself in a pair of gigantic metallic doors destroyed, almost as if an explosion had gone behind the doors, inside she found a ruined garden, the trunk of a burnt tree in the middle and the rest of dry flowers around.
She walked thankful to her new boots and in front of the tree trunk found a tablet with a message waiting to be played, so with some trepidation, she pushed the play button.
["If you made it here...Then congratulations...You either managed to keep being you...Or we forgot something important meaning this is quite awkward..."] The video started playing showing the image of the same blonde kid she saw before losing consciousness before.
["Either way I will pretend you survived Elizabeth, so congratulations...You are what I wished for but couldn't manage."] The kid started applauding at the camera with a smile on his face.
["Now...If you still are listening then this means that something didn't go quite right, and so you are searching for answers...So here is a resume of things."] The kid it seems, knew her.
["My name is Alexanders Saintsworth...I...Don't really matter that much at this point do I?"] And the blonde kid seemed to find that amusing as he laughed to himself.
She had heard that name before, it was the name of the big boss that the building kept thinking she was...Didn't the building say something about how her biosignature should match his?
["I died around what...21 years ago? Hard to tell, time doesn't work quite well...Anyway, I made a mistake and the city ruins you see around are what became my world...This isn't my world mind you...This is a reflection of it."] Alexanders started speaking, dread climbing to her. If he was dead...Then was this hell?
["Afterwards when the world ended I was offered a deal...I would reincarnate in a new world and fix things that one of my clansmen ruined...In exchange they would let me return to the past to fix my mistakes..."] Alexanders spoke as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. To get a deal for a second chance.
["I refused the deal, I asked for my soul to be stripped of anything that made me who I was. And then they would get to ask again...That is where you come into place...You are what I ended as when all my memories, my life, my experiences got stripped..."] He giggled as a little kid who was telling the funniest joke ["And you asked to be born without a shred of talent or power, to be average..."]
Rude!
"Being normal was the normal thing to ask when someone asked you to go save a world!" Elizabeth defended herself in the video.
Only to blush at the fact that she was talking to a recording.
["Being normal is the normal thing to ask huh..."] But Alexanders answered her nonetheless. ["I guess you had the right of it, anyway...Afterward, my clansmen got pregnant and your soul got stuck in her, because of course the world would get funny ideas."]
So her mother was the clansman who ruined the world? Yikes.
["And what left of me got sent back to my former world to atone...A couple months later Catherine came for help since her pregnancy was at risk, so I sneaked what was left of me in the soul of her unborn child and escaped my personal hell...Your mana was too strong and your body too weak, your Soul was tempering itself to withstand it, but we misunderstood that as if your soul was failing apart from stress...So we patched it."] Alexanders showed an image of an azure crystal with cracks surrounded by black tar.
["I patched it creating a frame...A System if you will, I had experience doing so when I ruined my world...Then I got contacted by the local god of your world asking if she could use my template...So I accepted so long I could get a body for me and my sister...I accepted the Skill that she asked me to put in you and called it a day. "] And the image turned from the azure crystal into a new obsidian gem hovering over the azure crystal.
The obsidian one superposed the azure gem and so, the image now only showed the black gem in place. [" Should have read the small letters...You ended up being part of my soul...And the skill was a trojan horse, she took my system and made it her own...Then her former plans backfired and someone took control of your body..."] The screen turned to a recording.
A video of a blonde girl being slowly covered by red cracks and her eyes turned red, a video of said blonde girl flirting with any man that was close to her, and then ended with her being punched at slowly turned into motes of light.
"Crap...I really died..." She pinched herself again and found it hurt, crappy hell that makes the feelings not go away.
["Luckily we managed to pull a fast one thanks to your mother and father."] The video rewinded again, this time focusing on a green-eyed blonde woman and a black-haired man with azure eyes.
["Your mother struck your soul from your body. And stole the body of a powerful girl whose soul was weak..."] The woman in the video used some kind of magic on the body of the corrupted blonde...On her body.
And another video showed an azure blob of energy leaving her body and flying toward the body of a black-haired girl who was surrounded by a mass of black flames.
["Then came the fun part...You see...That body now had three different souls...Yours...Mine....And the original owner...Now the original owner wasn't a problem, she didn't have the talent nor wishes to fulfill..."] The camera hovered over the sleeping girl and outright dismissed her.
That...didn't quite sit right with her.
["Don't get me wrong, she was powerful, but only because her body was good. You had the mana and talent while I had the skills and experiences...Realistically only both of us could fight for the body."] Alexanders continued speaking.
Crap...She was dead...That asshole had killed her and was consuming her, wasn't he?
["But you decided to give Chloe a chance...You told her what was happening and what would happen afterward...I had already surrendered to my destiny anyway."] She...didn't see that one coming.
But...wasn't he...An asshole?
["And that girl..."] Alexanders started laughing like a madman here as if it was the funniest joke ever [" She decided to fuse all of us together so that whoever ended up would be a little of everyone...."]
Oh...that was nice of her, but if that was the case then why couldn't she...
["Of course that is not how this works...And while I accepted the deal she offered I prepared myself to obliterate her Soul and make my best effort to rebuild your soul while nesting mine somewhere safe to be reborn at later convenience."] Alexanders smirked.
Oh...
He was an asshole after all...
["And then I got blindsided by that brat...She didn't fulfill her end of the promise, when she noticed how I was preparing my skill to do so, she used her own to stabilize your soul...Not stabilize herself, not destroy me...But to stabilize your foundation...So that you would absorb us all..."] Alexanders was genuinely smiling, a genuine smile of someone who was happy with what they had gotten in their Christmas this year.
["So there, your soul got stabilized...I couldn't tamper with it...Then your Mother came around and made a divine decree to empower Chloe...So your soul gestated and started its own rebirth, your own power rebuilt the soulscape and this in turn molded the body..."] Alexanders video turned into an image of the black-haired's girl body slowly shaping itself to look like her body. ["And Chloe made sure you survived above all...My memories got lost as your self re-affirmed itself...You will inherit some form of my skill meshed with the one Chloe had...You will get some of my soul bits, maybe talent? Maybe tenacity? I for one don't know...This is the last vestige of Alexanders Saintsworths..."]
The holopad changed and turned into a yellow sapphire ["And you shall not have it..."] And it suddenly crumbled into sand, leaving her alone in the ruined underground park.
She....felt nostalgic by being here, as if she knew what this place was...And yet...
The nudging at the end of her [Soul] didn't seem to know why, a sensation of cold caressed her face, and when she touched it, she found that she was crying.
But she didn't feel sadness, it was as if something within her soul was crying...
She now knew more about herself true, she knew from where she had come, what made her [Soul]...And now she had a suspicion about where she was...
She knew where everything in this city was, didn't know why or how, but knew exactly what she needed to find...
She knew where the [Hidden Library] was, and what book she needed to search to confirm her theories...
She was going to investigate about [Soulscapes] and how to interact with them.
She had been in this place for a couple of weeks already, in that time she had found a few things. First of all...That bloody moon didn't want to move, it always stayed at the same spot and it was always looking down on her.
No matter what part of the city she moved to, if she looked up the bloody thing would be above her.
Number two:
This place was always night, no sun ever rose on the horizon... Nor was she able to find the city limits, after some point, the buildings made a natural barricade that prevented her from getting above them. She did try to climb them once...
But there were some live cables braided at the top that discharged lighting at her when she tried to go above a certain threshold, and while she was immune to the flames...
She didn't want to test if she would be immune to lighting.
Number three:
The warm motes of light didn't come as often as before, some days she wouldn't get a single one...Sometimes it would take several days, there was this week when she didn't get a single one even...
But they would always return.
Number four:
She had been in this place longer than she remembered, and this was more tricky to find out, her cellphone had a timer on it, and when she turned it on it was running and the number was [691,253] seconds.
A quick math operation came with around 8 days and some, she turned it off and counted in her mind, then after a whole minute had passed by she turned the cellphone on again. The time matched with her mental calculations...
So at the very least, she had been in this place for eight days.
How could she be so sure? When she saw the timmer running she got a flashback of a memory, a memory of someone giving her the cellphone with the timmer open and of her starting it...
And that was it, so that meant someone had been with her, but she couldn't remember their faces nor names. She had the inkling that it had been a kid...
But no evidence across her travels had found anyone else in this place, and that brings up to the next finding...
Number Five:
She wasn't getting hungry or thirsty.
This one was...more dangerous, it meant that either she was getting nourishment from something here...Or that this wasn't quite a real place. If it was the first then it would be fine, it could mean these black flames were nourishing her somehow.
If it was the second...Then that would be more problematic to solve, it would mean she either was in a fever dream (And all her testing seemed to think of this place as something real) or those flames were some kind of magic-demonic-alien shenanigans that had kidnaped her to another dimension.
....
"No way it's aliens right Stabby?" She asked looking down at the spear in her hand.
At some point, she had started to refer to the spear as Stabby...She originally called it Tabby as a diminutive of [Tabitha] but since she may find someone called like that and it could get awkward...She decided to call the spear Stabby. It was self-explanatory if nothing else.
The spear had become important to her since it helped her in her search for supplies, the spear continued to siphon the dark flames whenever she brought the thing near an open flame, and sleeping with it had become a habit at this point. You know a girl, a spear, and a rag(former lab coat) normal stuff.
So far she had explored most of the things in the outer layer of the city and a couple in the middle layer, but today was special.
"Today we return to the obnoxious building, what do you think we will find Stabby?" She was going back to the first building she woke up in.
Why? Because most of the motes of light seemed to point that way, there was something there.
Also because one day she woke up and in one of her pockets was an ID with the same emblem that the building had.
The name was charred and the photo was blank, but everything else was there. It also had a microchip on it that should open some doors...And since most of the buildings here had electricity (Somehow) she wanted to see what was behind door number 1.
"What? No way..." She answered to the spear, "You overthink it, I probably didn't notice the ID card in the conspicuous front pocket I use to store things...Yeah, totally not going nuts from solitude."
The spear was getting cheeky too, implying she was going crazy, she wasn't alone, she had stabby!
But she would need to put her in time out, since she was rude telling her that she was crazy, "Anyway, you stay in your room till I call you okay?" And with practiced ease, she threw the thing against the shadow of a trash can.
The spear flew true and sank into the shadows, she had learned that her loyal Stabby could sink into shadows and return at her call, the thing needed a shadow to sink into, so it couldn't sink into a light bulb.
She learned that the hard way when she stabbed a light bulb, at least she didn't get electrocuted that way...Stabby was good at isolating lighting it seemed, even if she had seen sparks of lighting in her hands while panicking...
And she was barefoot...And was standing on a metallic floor...That wasn't grounded...
So surely Stabby had isolated the current!
Yeah, no reason why she would be immune to dark ominous flames, debris, and then also to lighting!
Yeah...
"I do need to talk to someone live..." Sighed Elizabeth while walking towards the skyscraper.
She was getting tired of this already.
She missed...Something.
The warm motes of light only served to remind her of this, that she was missing something, and it nagged at her, it bothered her while trying to sleep. And while sleeping in the black flames soothed her, she had noticed it also made her more lethargic, that was the main reason she kept stabby around.
But the main reason she sent her away was another thing she found one morning, "Okay you know the drill Smoky, get to it." Elizabeth said extending her hand towards the bigger cluster of black flames around.
These started shaking and then, one by one small clumps of black flames started dancing towards her, they in turn congregathed around her and jumped at her hand.
She almost immediately felt a rush course her body and her cheeks blushed at the euphoria, "Hmm...." it was as if the black flames nourished something within her, and letting a breath she didn't know she was holding, the black flames started burning hotter.
All around her the black flames danced more, shone more, and in the sky, the bloody moon dimmed, as if clouds wanted to hide it if only for a second.
She had found that like Stabby, she could absorb the black flames, and when doing so she could make those effects, this was the reason she had the theory that the black flames nourished her. The rush she got from absorbing them...
And the reason she kept going at it was how the bloody moon seemed to diminish in color with each attempt she made. It wasn't much, hell, it was probably a drop in the ocean. But she knew the bloody moon was losing color.
[She knew it.]
"Welcome to the HQ of The Saintsworth's Conglomerate on Terra Invicta." She stopped absorbing them as soon as the speakers brought her from her musings.
She had kept walking towards this building, and like all the other times she passed by, she noticed how the building had less and less black flames around it.
She wasn't sure why or how, but the more black flames she absorbed the less this building burned. "Bio-Scanning in progress..." And the fewer black flames it held, the more functions it seemed to recover. "Warning, body dysmorphia detected...Biosignature of ■■■■■■■■■ Saintsworths detected. Body measures conflict with current Scan... Do you wish to update the measures?"
And this was the reason she hadn't returned, the thing seemed to think her body was different from what it had in stock, and she had run away the first time it reported it...
She...Wasn't sure what to think about it, "Update the measures." But she needed to check, so she bit the bullet and spoke, her voice low and unsure.
"Updating biosignature of Alexanders Saintsworths to new model...Registered as Elizabeth Starbright. Welcome home." The machine welcomed her back.
It also said the full name of the person she hadn't been able to hear before, Alexanders Saintsworths...
The Blonde Scion of The Saintsworths Clan, also a whimsical asshole that went and did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. From oppressing someone for the fun of it to building a whole city in the middle of a swamp to prove a point.
And...How was she able to recall those tidbits of information? "What?" Elizabeth suddenly felt the world was spinning, in front of her was a lab coat and the ceiling of the reception.
She could make the form of an eagle, the emblem of the Saintsworths. The eagle eternally searching for knowledge...
And the scroll that symbolized the knowledge they wanted to safekeep.
Her head was inundated by tons of information that she should not know...The name of the planet, the name of the city, the name of the building...The name of all the multiple scions of the branch clans...The name of her secretary...[His secretary].
"My...Name...Is...Elizabeth...Starbright...Not...I will not....be....tainted....by.....[this]...[again]" She said with clenched teeth as she held her head with both hands.
She closed her eyes as the room seemed to continue spinning around, and while tasting the flavor of ozone in the air she lost consciousness.
Before hitting the floor she tried to open her eyes, and for a second...For the barest amount of a second, she could swear she had seen the face of a yellow-eyed kid looking down at her, he was dressed in a pristine white coat and a smirk on his face.
He waved at her and gave her a thumbs up.
Afterward....She lost consciousness.
She would kick him after waking up. She wasn't sure why it annoyed her that much, but she was going to kick him.
--------------------------------------------
"IT WAS HOW LONG?!?" Elizabeth screamed after waking up, her phone was reading almost two months since
quickly checked herself and found that her body was normal, but the counter in her phone was a grim reminder that her condition was anything but normal.
She had woken up in a normal room this time, unlike the first time, when she woke up in a ruined laboratory, this time she woke up dressed in comfy pajamas sleeping in a silky bed with a fluffy blanket atop her.
She ditched the blanket and rushed towards the bathroom, how did she know where the bathroom was? She didn't want to think about it.
She only had one thing in her mind right now "...I'm still me..." Elizabeth said while looking at her reflection, her face was panicked, and her eyes darted all over her body making sure everything was like before.
She left a relieved breath when she noticed that she was as before, returning to the bed and sitting on it she noticed how on the chair was a set of clothing, a pair of boots, jeans, a blouse and jacket, gloves, a backpack, and finally a pair of obsidian swords.
And then on the other side, atop an end table was the clothing she had been using, her cargo shorts and tank top, and a lonely lab coat...No longer ragged mind you. But still a stark contrast.
She...Wasn't sure what to make out of it, the jeans would be surely more helpful and the boots could mean that she would no longer need to mind where she stood. But on the other hand...
She was used to moving around without having to be restricted in her movements, the jeans would limit how far she could move, and the boots would mean that while she would no longer need to mind where she stood... She would lose tactile sensation from her feet and that made her think of her options.
In the end, she decided to go halfway there, she picked up her cargo shorts and the blouse and ditched the jeans but kept the boots, she would need to be civilized at some point after all.
She however decided to carry on the labcoat, in the end, she was dressed using parts from here and there, the cargo shorts and the lab survived from her initial clothing. Now the blouse and the boots were added to it, it made her look weird since the lab coat didn't seem to mesh quite well with this ensemble.
But if someone found a problem with her they would need to stop hiding and complain to her!
...No one came tho.
Instead, she exited the room and found....another elevator and an emergency exit, she frowned at that, this hallway only had a utility closet, some kind of security room, and the elevator and stairs. And even the stairs seemed to have been forced to be there.
Walking towards the security office she suddenly was aware that the guy that should be there owed her a couple of bucks..."What?" That...shouldn't be possible.
She tried to recall how that had happened but the memory faded as soon as she tried to prod her mind, memory after memory they seemed to dissolve one by one, leaving only vague recollections of skills.
She was pretty sure she now knew exactly how electrolysis worked and a way to make it more efficient for example, and had even a complex formula to turn the moisture in the air into hydrogen for multiple uses.
She was painfully aware of what parts of her mana needed to work in what way to create a current of electricity and...."Huh? Mana?" That made her stop on the spot.
"What is mana?" She wondered aloud as more memories came rushing back to her, multiple tests and tables depicting how that energy interacted with the world.
The test result of some samples interacting and using it to increase their muscle mass, examples of wonderful applications and ways those made powers akin to those found in anime and manga.
And reports of biopsies and autopsies of said test subjects, she almost puked as those memories came back to her, and wondered why her hands looked like that in those memories.
Only to see the reflection in the memory...The reflection of an older man looking with interest and glee at the scalpel.
She turned her head to the security booth and looked at her reflection on the crystal, her eyes were turning yellow... She grounded herself and focused on her name...
"I'm Elizabeth Starbright..." She said as if in a chant, focusing on her breathing and looking at her reflection to make sure it didn't change again.
Her eyes slowly but surely started to turn blue and the memory at the back of her head blurred, the face of the man dissipated and only the knowledge remained.
The knowledge of a [Mana Core] as the man called it, a crystalized form of [Mana] deep within the body, somehow embedded in the middle of the heart, but not affecting how it worked.
Meaning one couldn't transplant one...Not that the memories didn't speak of trying, she had plenty of those at the back of her mind.
But she ignored them, dismissed them, Burned them away with her thunder.
She didn't want to know more about that man, she kept what was valuable, skills and muscle memory, she felt her body becoming [more], but even so, she still was Elizabeth.
"I'm Elizabeth Starbright..." She said to herself.
And so she walked towards the elevator and it started moving downwards...
At the bottom, the door opened once more and she found herself in a pair of gigantic metallic doors destroyed, almost as if an explosion had gone behind the doors, inside she found a ruined garden, the trunk of a burnt tree in the middle and the rest of dry flowers around.
She walked thankful to her new boots and in front of the tree trunk found a tablet with a message waiting to be played, so with some trepidation, she pushed the play button.
["If you made it here...Then congratulations...You either managed to keep being you...Or we forgot something important meaning this is quite awkward..."] The video started playing showing the image of the same blonde kid she saw before losing consciousness before.
["Either way I will pretend you survived Elizabeth, so congratulations...You are what I wished for but couldn't manage."] The kid started applauding at the camera with a smile on his face.
["Now...If you still are listening then this means that something didn't go quite right, and so you are searching for answers...So here is a resume of things."] The kid it seems, knew her.
["My name is Alexanders Saintsworth...I...Don't really matter that much at this point do I?"] And the blonde kid seemed to find that amusing as he laughed to himself.
She had heard that name before, it was the name of the big boss that the building kept thinking she was...Didn't the building say something about how her biosignature should match his?
["I died around what...21 years ago? Hard to tell, time doesn't work quite well...Anyway, I made a mistake and the city ruins you see around are what became my world...This isn't my world mind you...This is a reflection of it."] Alexanders started speaking, dread climbing to her. If he was dead...Then was this hell?
["Afterwards when the world ended I was offered a deal...I would reincarnate in a new world and fix things that one of my clansmen ruined...In exchange they would let me return to the past to fix my mistakes..."] Alexanders spoke as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. To get a deal for a second chance.
["I refused the deal, I asked for my soul to be stripped of anything that made me who I was. And then they would get to ask again...That is where you come into place...You are what I ended as when all my memories, my life, my experiences got stripped..."] He giggled as a little kid who was telling the funniest joke ["And you asked to be born without a shred of talent or power, to be average..."]
Rude!
"Being normal was the normal thing to ask when someone asked you to go save a world!" Elizabeth defended herself in the video.
Only to blush at the fact that she was talking to a recording.
["Being normal is the normal thing to ask huh..."] But Alexanders answered her nonetheless. ["I guess you had the right of it, anyway...Afterward, my clansmen got pregnant and your soul got stuck in her, because of course the world would get funny ideas."]
So her mother was the clansman who ruined the world? Yikes.
["And what left of me got sent back to my former world to atone...A couple months later Catherine came for help since her pregnancy was at risk, so I sneaked what was left of me in the soul of her unborn child and escaped my personal hell...Your mana was too strong and your body too weak, your Soul was tempering itself to withstand it, but we misunderstood that as if your soul was failing apart from stress...So we patched it."] Alexanders showed an image of an azure crystal with cracks surrounded by black tar.
["I patched it creating a frame...A System if you will, I had experience doing so when I ruined my world...Then I got contacted by the local god of your world asking if she could use my template...So I accepted so long I could get a body for me and my sister...I accepted the Skill that she asked me to put in you and called it a day. "] And the image turned from the azure crystal into a new obsidian gem hovering over the azure crystal.
The obsidian one superposed the azure gem and so, the image now only showed the black gem in place. [" Should have read the small letters...You ended up being part of my soul...And the skill was a trojan horse, she took my system and made it her own...Then her former plans backfired and someone took control of your body..."] The screen turned to a recording.
A video of a blonde girl being slowly covered by red cracks and her eyes turned red, a video of said blonde girl flirting with any man that was close to her, and then ended with her being punched at slowly turned into motes of light.
"Crap...I really died..." She pinched herself again and found it hurt, crappy hell that makes the feelings not go away.
["Luckily we managed to pull a fast one thanks to your mother and father."] The video rewinded again, this time focusing on a green-eyed blonde woman and a black-haired man with azure eyes.
["Your mother struck your soul from your body. And stole the body of a powerful girl whose soul was weak..."] The woman in the video used some kind of magic on the body of the corrupted blonde...On her body.
And another video showed an azure blob of energy leaving her body and flying toward the body of a black-haired girl who was surrounded by a mass of black flames.
["Then came the fun part...You see...That body now had three different souls...Yours...Mine....And the original owner...Now the original owner wasn't a problem, she didn't have the talent nor wishes to fulfill..."] The camera hovered over the sleeping girl and outright dismissed her.
That...didn't quite sit right with her.
["Don't get me wrong, she was powerful, but only because her body was good. You had the mana and talent while I had the skills and experiences...Realistically only both of us could fight for the body."] Alexanders continued speaking.
Crap...She was dead...That asshole had killed her and was consuming her, wasn't he?
["But you decided to give Chloe a chance...You told her what was happening and what would happen afterward...I had already surrendered to my destiny anyway."] She...didn't see that one coming.
But...wasn't he...An asshole?
["And that girl..."] Alexanders started laughing like a madman here as if it was the funniest joke ever [" She decided to fuse all of us together so that whoever ended up would be a little of everyone...."]
Oh...that was nice of her, but if that was the case then why couldn't she...
["Of course that is not how this works...And while I accepted the deal she offered I prepared myself to obliterate her Soul and make my best effort to rebuild your soul while nesting mine somewhere safe to be reborn at later convenience."] Alexanders smirked.
Oh...
He was an asshole after all...
["And then I got blindsided by that brat...She didn't fulfill her end of the promise, when she noticed how I was preparing my skill to do so, she used her own to stabilize your soul...Not stabilize herself, not destroy me...But to stabilize your foundation...So that you would absorb us all..."] Alexanders was genuinely smiling, a genuine smile of someone who was happy with what they had gotten in their Christmas this year.
["So there, your soul got stabilized...I couldn't tamper with it...Then your Mother came around and made a divine decree to empower Chloe...So your soul gestated and started its own rebirth, your own power rebuilt the soulscape and this in turn molded the body..."] Alexanders video turned into an image of the black-haired's girl body slowly shaping itself to look like her body. ["And Chloe made sure you survived above all...My memories got lost as your self re-affirmed itself...You will inherit some form of my skill meshed with the one Chloe had...You will get some of my soul bits, maybe talent? Maybe tenacity? I for one don't know...This is the last vestige of Alexanders Saintsworths..."]
The holopad changed and turned into a yellow sapphire ["And you shall not have it..."] And it suddenly crumbled into sand, leaving her alone in the ruined underground park.
She....felt nostalgic by being here, as if she knew what this place was...And yet...
The nudging at the end of her [Soul] didn't seem to know why, a sensation of cold caressed her face, and when she touched it, she found that she was crying.
But she didn't feel sadness, it was as if something within her soul was crying...
She now knew more about herself true, she knew from where she had come, what made her [Soul]...And now she had a suspicion about where she was...
She knew where everything in this city was, didn't know why or how, but knew exactly what she needed to find...
She knew where the [Hidden Library] was, and what book she needed to search to confirm her theories...
She was going to investigate about [Soulscapes] and how to interact with them.
