Ch.207Chapter 207. Doppelganger

It’s not entirely impossible.

That was the conclusion I reached after looking in the mirror and thinking for a long time.

While Hyoseong Woo holds the dominant personality, the influence from the other personality isn’t completely absent.

Moreover, if I’ve entered the afterlife, it’s highly likely that the Pailoi personality, which is rooted in the soul, would be more prominent than Hyoseong Woo, who belongs to the living.

“…It’s gone.”

But when I entered this shadow world, what I reaffirmed was my identity as Hyoseong Woo.

No matter how many memories I have as a woman, as long as the dominant personality is male, feeling disconnected from this current body is inevitable.

Look even now—no matter how much I touch my lower body, all I feel is emptiness, isn’t that so?

“But here it is…”

Meanwhile, my once-empty chest area is now fully developed.

As I held them in my hand, I swallowed hard through my dry throat, followed by an escaping gasp of amazement.

“…Surprisingly big.”

Are they perhaps slightly larger than Irie’s or Merilyn’s?

Of course, to someone else they might just be fat, but to me with my male identity, they’re objects that create a considerable sense of perversion.

My hands gradually moved away from those breasts to the face reflected in the mirror, then began to stroke the skin covering it.

“The face is surprisingly pretty too… No, definitely beautiful.”

Beautiful? Even I found it somewhat amusing after saying it.

During my lifetime, I was so focused on mercenary work that I never really evaluated my own appearance.

But despite my strengthened male identity, to now speak as if seeing my appearance anew… No, this isn’t the time to worry about such things.

“Get it together, Hyoseong Woo. That’s not what’s important right now.”

Right, my sole purpose for coming here was to save Garam.

What matters isn’t whether I’m male or female, but what I can do and where I need to go.

“Spirit arts… can I use them?”

A spear materialized in my outstretched hand.

Judging by how weapons continued to manifest in my grasp, it seemed my abilities from reality applied here as well.

That’s fortunate—I should be able to handle any dangers that arise.

“Let’s see, next…”

Looking at the tent I was in and its contents, it appeared that activities and environments were unfolding similarly to reality.

Recognizing this, I reached for the most noticeable armor and took time to put it on.

Though different in form from what I usually wore, there was no problem wearing it.

While Hyoseong holds the dominant personality, memories and subconscious elements from Pailoi also exist to some extent.

“Ah, right. I remember now. This tent.”

When I realized the armor was quite familiar to Pailoi, I became aware that this was the tent Tachia had used during her mercenary days.

The items inside were also things that Tachia had personally used in the past… But isn’t this strange?

The shadow world I’ve entered should have no connection to Tachia, so why are things related to her so distinctly manifested around here?

“…So this place contains Tachia’s memories too.”

It didn’t take long to reach a conclusion.

The shadow world is formed from the remnants of the dead, and Tachia can certainly be called one of the dead.

Her remnants exist here, and I, having entered this world, came to this familiar place…

If that’s truly the case, what I’m about to encounter might not end with just the personal items Tachia carried.

-Waaaaaaah!

No sooner had I formed this suspicion than battle cries erupted from outside the tent.

My body tensed reflexively, and the familiar sensation that followed helped me grasp the situation.

In Tachia’s memories, she had heard such battle cries countless times.

“Kill the enemies! Wipe them all out!!!”

And that prediction was confirmed the moment I left the tent.

What unfolded before me was an intense battle between armed soldiers fighting in front of castle walls.

The shouts erupting from their mouths grew fiercer as the blood flowing on the ground darkened.

“Defend the barrier! Drive the enemy back!”

“Make rivers with their blood, and offer their heads to our lord!”

“Don’t let those barbarians invade our territory!”

“My sword and heart for Briton!!!”

Invaders trying to break down the castle walls, and soldiers fighting to defend their homeland…

Everything was unfolding exactly as it existed in my memories.

More precisely, in the memories of Tachia Pailoi, not Hyoseong Woo.

“I didn’t expect the past events to be recreated so accurately.”

Yes, what’s happening now is the memory of a defensive battle where Briton’s army fought to repel foreign invaders.

Tachia had been employed by the Briton faction, dedicating herself to driving away the foreign invaders.

I wondered what it would be like when remnants of the past gathered to construct a world… but to think the time period itself would be recreated.

“So it’s like… time travel, sort of?”

Of course, since this is a shadow world, there won’t be time paradoxes, and there are quite a few inconsistencies that suggest this isn’t an exact recreation of the past.

For instance, the location of my tent.

If the past events were accurately recreated, anyone would immediately realize how absurd it would be to leisurely pitch a tent in the middle of a battlefield.

Besides that, there were other anomalies like a cottage in the middle of the battlefield, or nobles wielding swords in battle—things that shouldn’t exist or situations that were reversed.

“A world where the past is all jumbled up… is that what this is?”

Just as I was starting to get a sense of what this afterworld felt like, something cast a shadow so large it obscured my surroundings as I exited the tent.

“Kuhehe, I’ve finally found you, Blue-Haired Reaper…!”

Cutting through the battlefield appeared a man with a massive axe.

The blood covering his body showed how many people he had personally slain on this battlefield.

“…Blue-Haired Reaper? Are you talking about me?”

Blue is blue and red is red, but what’s this Blue-Haired Reaper business?

“Haha! Surely you’re not trying to play dumb because you fear me?”

As I felt puzzled by the contradictory title, the unidentified man pointed his axe at me and shouted.

“What other woman on this battlefield has such distinctive blue hair and reeks of bloodshed?”

“…I suppose I was called that at some point.”

Back then, there were so many names used to refer to me that it wasn’t easy to remember them all, but whatever the case, since he came with a negative nickname on his lips, he certainly didn’t come with good intentions.

No, there’s no need to even ask.

Most of those who came for my head in those days were ‘that type’ anyway.

“You may have built a reputation roaming battlefields until now, but such luck ends today! By meeting me, Black Axe Blacks, your head will fall to this ground today!”

In an era where leaders waged war after war to seize power, there were generally two ways for the have-nots to rise:

Either claim more heads, or claim the head of the one who had claimed the most heads.

-Slash!

And I was one who achieved the former goal against hunters who came with the latter objective.

As one of their heads hit the ground, my sword was already poised to face the next challenger.

“So I need to survive here first before moving on, is that it?”

That was an action taken instinctively, even before my mind could process it.

The war of killing and being killed was all too familiar to me, having inherited Tachia Pailoi’s memories.

“…Might as well get on with it.”

So for this moment, not as Hyoseong Woo but as Tachia Pailoi.

-Slash!

The slaughterer’s sword began to butcher every commoner that appeared before it.

*****

The fierce invasion gradually subsided, and as the enemy troops retreated, only silence remained.

What was left behind were corpses upon corpses upon corpses… only a river of blood, blackened by the sunset, was visible.

“Uweeeck!”

The vomit that spewed from my mouth—from me who had participated in creating this scene—poured onto the last corpse I had cut down, further defiling that death.

When I realized this, two thoughts crossed my mind:

The human thought that I had desecrated death, even if they were enemies, and the inhuman thought that corpses were nothing more than pieces of meat.

“…Tachia, how did you endure this?”

Yes, even if I am now Tachia Pailoi, my identity is closer to Hyoseong Woo.

And as Hyoseong Woo, I don’t have much experience killing people. At most, I’ve only dealt with bandits who inevitably targeted the ark. For someone like me, the experience of killing hundreds of people on a battlefield couldn’t be easy to endure.

No matter how strongly I tried to embrace Tachia’s identity, my cursed ability emphasized that I was Hyoseong Woo, making such resolve meaningless.

“I’m starting to understand why something like the Red Knight appeared.”

While my sympathy for her grew—for enduring such moments of slaughter with a clear mind—I couldn’t be swayed by that, as I too had a task at hand.

Whatever the case, now that the war was over, the next step would be to find a way to reach Garam.

With that thought, I rose to my feet, when I became aware of a presence behind me.

Could there be an enemy soldier hidden among the corpses?

“How pathetic.”

No, this is different from the enemies I’ve faced so far.

And it’s a presence I can’t find in Tachia’s memories either… If anything, it feels similar to something I’ve encountered as Hyoseong Woo.

A semi-transparent, bluish body with feminine contours. The lower body and surroundings wavered incompletely like a ghost—characteristics similar to the “spirit clusters” I created through repeated spirit manifestation training.

“If you had truly inherited her personality, you would easily overcome such obstacles and move forward… Hesitating like this will hinder your progress.”

The difference is that, unlike then, this entity has distinct facial features and a blunt voice emanating from its mouth.

The sharp eyes watching me had pupils that were strikingly red, in stark contrast to the blue color forming the body.

“You, are you really the one who inherited the same personality as me?”

Facing such a being, a fleeting thought crossed my mind.

From appearance alone, it seemed slightly younger than my current self, but overall had a similar feel.

If such a being appeared borrowing a spirit’s body, there was only one possibility I could think of.

“…Are you Pailoi?”

“Don’t call me by that name.”

But what returned was a voice sharper than mere coldness.

Then, frowning, this doppelganger of mine began to utter harsh threats.

“Indeed, I am a being derived from the personality you possess, but I have no intention of claiming to be the same person as that one. Isn’t Pailoi a term you use to refer to yourself anyway?”

“Ah, that… certainly that’s true.”

Indeed, Pailoi and I have already become one.

Given that I myself am Pailoi, asking who someone else is by calling them Pailoi was erroneous from the start.

“…Then who are you?”

But if the being before me isn’t Pailoi, I have no basis for speculation.

To my question, she crossed her arms and asked in return:

“After committing such acts, do you have no inkling about who I am?”

“Huh?”

“No, if it doesn’t come to mind, forget it. For now, just know that I’m a ‘doppelganger’ created from the residue you left behind in your life, dwelling within spirit clusters.”

My doppelganger. That was how the being before me defined herself.

There seemed to be more she was hiding, but I too thought that description was more fitting than “spirit cluster.”

However, separately, something bothered me about how she described herself.

Created from the residue I left behind in my life? Is she talking about excrement?

“…Were you born in a toilet I visited?”

“You foolish one, what nonsense are you spouting in this situation…!”

-Boom!

The doppelganger’s outburst was short-lived.

Suddenly, the ground beneath me trembled, and cracks appeared across it, swallowing the corpses that filled the plain.

No, it wasn’t just the ground splitting.

The sky too…

The absurd situation unfolding before us was that cracks were etched into the sky, and those gaps were widening.

“…Has it begun?”

But unlike me who was shocked, the doppelganger seemed to have some idea of what was happening.

“What, what’s going on?!”

“Explanations later. This place will soon collapse, so hold onto your sanity.”

Of course, in a world crumbling around us, we couldn’t just calmly continue our conversation.

In the face of this natural disaster, I closed my eyes and tensed my body, bracing for the impact.

-Crash!!

In the midst of a violent shock similar to when I first entered this world, I struggled to maintain myself.