Ep8: An Eye Opener

"So she's waiting on the other side?" Isuka asked. One by one the group came through the portal, following the automaton as she walked onto a glimmering gold path. Around it laid darkness, the path illuminated by lamps that were placed to the side. As the walked past, Natsumi went to one and peered in. A tiny Chochin was floating around inside, her natural light acting like the lightbulb of the contraption.

"Don't touch those Natsumi, we don't know if the Lilim rigged it," Isuka said over her shoulder, Natusmi catching up with the group a the walked down the path. "I thought you said we wouldn't be teleporting into space."

"Well, you are on a path to her home aren't you?" She responded. "After walking for a bit, the castle appears. But for it to appear, no one can have second thoughts about turning back. Think of it as a sort of mantrap." Holi stopped suddenly, raising a hand to let the others behind her to pause as well. She reached her hand out, grabbing on to a knob that wasn't there.

She made a door opening motion, opening nothing to reveal another path to go on. A door-shaped hole seemed to disturb the lack of objects on the road, leading to the interior of another location. "I believe this is where we part ways."

"You're not coming with us?" Isuka asked.

"My weapons are still confiscated. I would prefer to have them when I come back truly. Dark Elf, may you take me back?" Holi said, walking back to the portal. Heathen and Night turned around, following her out. It left Isuka, Virto, and Natsumi to go in, the door closing behind them with a large crash. "Natsumi, stay at the entrance," She said, giving some extra talismans to him and a fresh writing utensil. "Watch our backs."

"Yes, Ma- Isuka." He took it and started patrolling around, looking for anything out of the ordinary at the entrance. Isuka and Virto went forward, Virto's labcoat disappearing to form a grenade launcher in his hand, the spare nanites turning into arm sleeves for him to access later. "Do you have your explosion spells?"

"If you mean ammo, then yes. I never took the storage ability out of the watch."

"That is good. The moment we see this "Di" figure, I am going to look for Kiris. Just make sure however you do it, she comes into contact with the spell." As the two walked, the walkway widening out into a large hall. Everything was sapphire blue, with yellow diamond shape started painted onto the color. Pillars lined the sides, supporting the massive weight of the room and the floors above.

"It is grand isn't it?" Came a disembodied voice. Virto immediately shot at it, sending a grenade full of the spell arching towards where the voice was. A loud poof sounded and coughing ensued, coming from where a semicircular arch of steps went up, leading to a platform in the back of the grand hall. Yellow smoke obscured her body from view, but the voice seemed to be weakening if the coughing indicated anything.

"Virto! What if that wasn't her?"

"Well, then I am sorry." A gas mask formed on Virto's head as he charged up to the smoke, popping another grenade shell out of his watch and loading it into the grenade launcher. Isuka smacked her teeth and went a different direction, looking for the room that Kiris was locked away in.

A fan formed on Virto's shoulder as it blew away the smoke, showing an elegant yet simple throne, and someone that had fallen to the ground in front of it. Her body looked composed of the same stars and dark matter that they had walked in outside, her eyes nothing but glowing blue orbs that someone could look to and tell what they were. Her hair flowed like a flower, gracefully cascading down her body onto the floor she sat on like a waterfall.

"I thought you were a lilim," Virto said through the mask. "You are a lilim, right?"

"I assume you're the Virto that I've heard so much about. A human that was isekai'ed into this world...that is something I thought I would never hear again…although, it would be fun to play with." She raised her hand to Virto's head, but nothing came, nor shot out of it. Virto waited for something to pop inside his mind or ensnare him so he couldn't move, but nothing happened. "It looks like the potion Isuka made worked."

"Who is this Isuka fellow?" She asked, looking at her hand. "This is a strange new position I find myself in, powerless against a human who combined his strengths with another. You must feel very proud of this, don't you?"

"I'm not falling for hubris. I have watched way too much television," Virto responded back.

"Not even for emotional tugging?" Her answer was another spell grenade, as she started coughing once more as it surrounded the both of them. "What is this? Spell draining? Power inhibition? A counter or blocking spell?"

"I don't know, I only made the grenade launcher. Now, where's Kiris you twat?"

"Before that, what is your favorite show? I had my tastes to, before you know….I was pulled into this world through a portal."

"..."

"What, no response? Too much of a metal bomb to drop onto you?" She asked. "Now I have your curiosity. You want to know more do you?"

"You could be lying," Virto said, pointing the muzzle to Di's forehead. "Yes I could, but why would I lie? I prefer to do my string pulling through convincing, not dragging others through the mud to reach my goals."

"This is the same person that monsterized then proceeded to kidnap a villager as what, some servant?"

"Yes, and I can see how it can be seen that way," Di said. "But haven't you ever wondered if Kiris might have actually wanted it? She didn't have to listen nor engage me when I spoke to her in her mind. She could have decided to hate me, to resent my actions, and I would have eventually faded from her memory. But she didn't; she was curious, and in the end, her true feelings won out against staying affiliated to the little bit of order that she had left in her."

"That sounds like a stretch…" Virto said.

"Then tell me...I have been around both universes for some time, and I know that things tend to be not permanent. As fleeting as an explosion."

"What do you want me to say to that?"

"What I want you to answer to that is, why haven't you pulled the trigger to renew your effect? Yoink." She plucked the grenade launcher from him, grabbing on to his watch with her other so nothing can be done.

"Shit!"

"Don't worry, as I said, I don't hurt people. Instead, I will show you…." Her eyes started glowing brighter as his vision faded, a constant stream of light pounding on his retinas as he fell asleep under her spell. Damn himself, now his forgetfulness is going to get him killed….

____________________________________________________________________________

"...rto. Virto?" Di said, bapping his cheek to wake him up. He groaned and open is eyes, seeing a certain celestial being looking down on him. "Fuck!" He said, scooting back and looking around. He saw multiple small portals, looking a bit like a screen into another place. He was able to make out people moving inside the views into other lives, seeing wildly diverse events taking place.

"This is where I watch everything that takes place before me. You would not believe it, but I discovered this place by accident." She walked up to one of herself, controlling a large ring around her. "It was like I had been here before, or a version of me was."

"What does this have to do with me?" Virto asked. One by one, he saw visions of himself as well, doing so many things that were reduced to a few seconds of screentime as it flashed before his eyes. "This is you Virto. Just like me, you seemed to have lived a bountiful life already." She moved one closer to him, showing him sitting on a lilim's lap. "This is you, accepting your position under my control."

"Impossible, I would never be seduced like that!"

"You weren't. The one that seduced you, which you also married, is here." She moved another one to him, showing a demon and a male inari kissing each other, the demon in a wedding dress, and the inari in a formal suit.

"I married a demon?"

"No no no, you were the demon."

"What! Alright, now you are pulling my leg. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm not gay."

"Oh, I thought the same about some of mine, rejecting that I ever did the things I did. But you know what you find to realize?" She makes one of her's appear, showing herself petting a dragon the size of a beach ball. "I never thought I could do this, but wouldn't you know, I now have a dragon girl under my wing...or arm. One of these things is bound to happen to you as well Virto. Some painful. Some stupid, and some...preferable, but if you try to reject all of them..."

"...Then you lose say in the matter." Virto finished, looking at everything. Still, some of the things are impossible to believe that it would happen to him. He looked up and down until he saw one of him staring at himself, his clone having pick pupils. "I cloned myself?"

"More of we, or our other "we"s. But, if you want that to be the thing…"

"I still don't trust you, but…"

"Don't worry, it won't happen immediately. But if you are ever willing to, I will be here, patiently waiting for you to play with." The imagery disappeared around them, revealing her throne and the hall that they were in again. That grenade launcher is was always there, a quick jog down the stairs. She probably won't be fast enough to stop him…

"Well, what is your choice Virto? Will you decide to play, or will you leave this path unexplored?"

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"....So then I blasted the maid with a slime spell so she'll stick to the walls. It was easy to get Kiris out then," Isuka said, walking back down the path to the portal, holding Kiris while she floated behind her, like a balloon being held by a kid. Natsumi was asleep on Virto's back, napping like the shota like he was. "Sounds like it was an easy battle to fight," Virto answered back.

"No no, it was a pretty hard task to accomplish. She started wielding a scythe, so I had to adapt to her sty…." Isuka continued on, but Virto had stopped listening. His mind was still on the image of him as a clone, and Di's offer. He wondered if she was being genuine, and she really was from the same universe as Virto was.

"So then I tried a rust spell, but it like the blade was immortal. I infer that she was as immortal as her blade appeared since she seemed to shrug off my elemental spells."

"Yeah, yes. Hey, um, I need to go check something when we get back."

"Check?"

"Refine my nanites, practice flying around, that kind of thing." He was, of course, lying. Nevertheless, it worked, and after putting Kiris to sleep, he left the house to go do his thing. Headen and Night had left, and Holi went back home after retrieving her weapons back from the library. That left the mage and the succubus, studying spells with her incubus and sleeping respectively.

So, are you ready? Di asked him as he walked through the woods. He spied a portal formed between two trees, seeing her wave her hand from the other side. "Since you seemed accepting now, I took the liberty of saving you travel."

"Don't confuse my curiosity for acceptance. I just want to cover my bases…"

"Of course, she said, stepping aside as he entered into her hall once more. "Don't you have anymore rooms in this place?"

"Only when I need them. Now then," she sat down on her seat, patting her lap for him to sit down on. "No other chair?" He asked. After she shook her head, he sighed and plopped down on her lap. "I've been waiting to do this for a long time…"

"Make a clone? Just a simple spell, right?"

"If it was as simple as that, I wouldn't have looked forward to it~" She tapped his head, Virto instantly falling asleep in Di's lap.

…..

He woke up in a new place, a location without ground, or a sky. A space filled with nothing but himself, floating like a broken piece of a satellite. Immediately he felt odd, like he as sick and his body was just not starting to fight the illness out of him. He went into a tumble, his woozy body unable to figure out what was going on. That's when he started to separate.

It was like watching mitosis, except instead of looking through a microscope, he was experiencing it himself. It was like someone was grabbing slime, and pulling only a specific part out of him. He groaned as he split into two, his other self looking paler than he was.

"More," he or they felt the voice inside his head go as the process repeated again. Confused groaning as he split again, his third self being even paler than the second. Then a fourth had been made, then a fifth...it was like looking into a requiem stand of himself, watching as even paler versions of himself were extracted like cells that forgot to carry over the original mass that let them split properly.

With each split, it felt as if he had lost blood. He couldn't keep himself upright, spinning around as he watched himself continue to replicate like he was recording a view of his recording. Pale, and even paler version came out, hundreds, thousands, until the very definition of pale was being redefined.

"It is still not deep enough...we must go deeper…" the voice waved in and out like a bad connection, his abdomen tightening as he was split more. The line of himself was starting to turn like a logarithmic graph finally growing long enough to have a curve visible in it.

Turns turned to an outward spiral has he continued to be duplicated, his unconsciousness being dug into to the limits of sheer concepts and theories. His palest self was starting to regain color, reaching beyond pale to unpale itself. It was notably in his eyes, the faintest hue of pink that could be seen dotting palest Virto's seeing orbs. He watched as the pink became more apparent, at this point reaching quadrillions of duplications. The process only ramped up from here, his eyes losing focus as he could no longer see himself from so far away. Counting the number of times a new clone was made was starting to hurt his head, the number of digits itself turning into a struggle to fully grasp. He stopped moving, focusing all his might to counting until he could no longer. He had given up, given in to the herculean task of reaching the depths of his unconsciousness as the clones kept coming. All he could do now is wait.

A new number popped in his head, G64. The number had reached high enough to only be able to be described by labels such as Graham's number, and multiplications of those labels. Soon the labels preceded his knowledge, appearing as alien to him as to any normal person. In his second try, it had passed in a fleeting moment. He could do nothing but sleep, and wait for the growing dullness in his head to end…

Before he knew it he was back in Di's lap, shifted to the side a bit. He looked up, seeing Di's eyes closed as she marinated in the success of her long-awaited task. He looked to the side, seeing the clone that the being he sat on had promised what felt like an eternity ago. He stared back like a mirror, his eyes as pink it was as possible for a human being to see. His hair was streaks of pink and white, and his color had come back into him, as if he wans't cloned into oblivion at all. Virto looked towards his nethers, seeing not sign of contact or undressing being done while he was trapped in his mind.

Maybe she really wasn't lying...