CHAPTER 881: ALYSS’ NIGHTMARE

Alyss blinked her eyes.

She felt the breeze on her face, the distant howls.

The fog obscuring her view from all sides.

She glanced down at the marble white stone beneath her feet, the path that never seemed to change no matter how many turns she takes.

Stretching her body, she couldn’t quite get used to this sensation.

There wasn’t this... sense of restriction.

Even with her physical powers weakened, her movements weren’t ’held back’ by the golden chains.

In this dream, her body was ’free’.

But the biggest change of all... She couldn’t sense her connection to Alice.

Alice could sense the tether but she couldn’t.

In this Nightmare, Alyss couldn’t tell if her twin was alive or dead. What was she feeling? What was she thinking?

Everything felt so foreign for her.

"Alice..." Alyss mumbled. Looking at the path around her, she clenched the Embryo and made her way towards the next camp.

Was this how normal people felt?

Such...

"Emptiness." Alyss sighed.

Or perhaps she simply wasn’t normal anymore.

Not in the sense of her power being abnormally high or that her martial senses were good.

But normality in the fact that she felt like she couldn’t function without Alice.

She had become dependent on her twin.

Their relationship has been rather... strange to say the least.

All along she thought she was the abnormal one created by Nyer, locked away and sealed. Forced to take on the brunt of the experiments when Alice couldn’t handle it anymore.

There was a sense of hatred at first. Indignation at the fact that she had to suffer.

Why?

Why did she have to suffer the worst of it when Alice didn’t want to anymore?

She sat in the darkness, watching Alice.

When Kaden broke Alice out, Alyss’s presence was thinner than ever.

She rarely appeared only giving power every now and then.

In those moments, Alyss truly felt like she was nothing but a battery to Alice.

Was her fate to be used as a source of power? Was that the end?

Her monstrous form, the manifestation of her rage. The burning desire to turn everything to ash.

And then came the inverted world when they confronted one another.

She came face to face with Alice and...

Her existence was acknowledged.

A small smile crept onto Alyss’s face.

Ever since that day, she stopped being merely a spectator, a battery.

In a sense, she was given an identity.

Alyss.

Ironic considering she was what people would call the ’original’.

Some might even question why she was fine with having her name usurped by Alice.

Shouldn’t the monster born from the syringe be the one called Alyss?

Sounds the same but different in spelling.

Just like Alice.

They looked the same, had the same memories.

But fundamentally, Alice was someone else.

She was someone new, a child still learning her place in this world.

Still growing.

She was not Alice Zenia.

She is Alice Agnelia.

And...

Alyss herself is still Alyss Zenia.

She knew that Allura would probably give her the same surname if she asked. And she knew that Alice would offer the same.

They were ’twins’ after all. Two sides of the same coin.

However...

It didn’t feel right for her.

She... Can’t deny the fact that she still thinks about the happy memories before everything turned out the way it did.

Her brother is trying to redeem himself right now, journeying with his master.

But could the same be said for her other sibling and her father? Would they repent?

And even if he did, how could he repent for everything the Zenia family has done?

But could she deny her father from trying if he did?

So many ifs and buts.

"I haven’t even confirmed if he would repent or not." Alyss scratched her hair.

When one is... as idle as she is, one tends to overthink a lot of things.

Of course, that wasn’t her blaming Alice.

Their situation was simply unique in the fact that only one of them can control the body at a time.

Hence why she spends most of these days feeling rather lethargic.

Closing her eyes, Alyss listened to the movements in the fog.

She kept herself still. Not a single ripple of movement aside from what’s allowed by the wind.

"Huu..." Letting out a calm breath, she entered a defensive stance with her hands in front of her.

Calm water stance.

A lesser version of the Zone that she quickly created having realised her base stats were reduced.

In this stance, she calms all emotions, all movements.

Like the surface of the water, she absorbs information from her surroundings.She pushes her senses to the max. If sight was obscured by the fog, she’ll simply rely on everything else.

Hearing, taste, touch, smell.

The gentle wind does not cause the surface to ripple.

But if an animal or insect was to touch the surface, even if it’s a leaf...

A ripple will naturally form.

Alyss snapped her eyes open.

*BANG!!!

Twisting her body, she avoided a cleaver slamming down from above.

Following the momentum of her movement, she kicked up with her right foot, breaking the attacker’s stance!

With the guard now open, she pressed her palm against its stomach.

While Alice chose a half caster half fighter class, Alyss chose differently.

Her energy wasn’t used for spells.

Instead, it was used to set herself into a buff state!

*RUMBLE!!!

Flames burst out from her fists as she activated her buff.

*BANG!!!

Slamming her fist into the beast’s stomach, a scorched fist print could be seen but she wasn’t done.

A second punch.

Third.

Weaving to the right, she spun her body and slammed her heel into the beast’s lower back.

Once again, flames burst out as she dropped into a hand stand.

Glaring at the beast, flames coated her body and she kicked up with the full strength of her body.

*CRACK!!!

A torrent of flames burst out as the initial impact snapped the beast’s spine in half while the flames scorched everything else.

Landed on the ground and standing up gracefully, Alyss didn’t even bend down to pick up the Embryo.

Instead, she simply stomped her foot down, causing the crystal to jump into the air and caught it.

Holding it against the air, she squinted her eyes and smiled.

A different colour. Even though her surroundings looked the same, the beasts were getting stronger thus the drops were better.

"Seems like I can enhance my stats again." She chuckled.

Like Alice, she had also maxed out everything before progressing.

Even though they were worlds apart, even though they couldn’t sense each other, their choices were still the same.

She might hesitate. She might overthink.

She might get bored, she might get frustrated.

But she’ll never lose her trust in Alice.

She trusts that Alice will do fine, she trusts that she’ll be able to find a way out. She trusts that if she were go down the wrong path, hesitate where she’s not meant to, Alice will be there to pull her back.

And...

If Alice was to do the same, she’ll also be there to pull her back.

That’s their connections.

Twins who will forever help one another.

Of course, she’ll be too embarrassed to say this in front of Alice.

If she was to say such sentimental things, Alice might tease her about it till the end of days.

Thinking about her twin, Alyss couldn’t help but chuckle.

The more she interacted with this world, the more she learned.

Her love of mead. Her love of fashion, her excitement when discovering a new place.

And once everything was over, she’ll be able to figure out her own dream.

What she wanted to accomplish as her own person.

Alyss looked forward to that day.

*BANG!!!

Her body shot backwards like a sling shot.

With her right hand, she gripped at a robed figure’s throat. They gagged and clawed at Alyss’s arm but she refused to budge.

"H-how!?" The robed figure gasped as his eyes stared at Alyss in shock.

With the distance between them, she shouldn’t have sensed his presence! He was even making sure to conceal himself!

Then he saw it. Her eyes were closed.

Alyss tapped her ear lightly, then her nose.

She stuck out her tongue and tapped her own tongue.

"There are more senses to just sight. The rustling of your clothes, your breath against the fog." Alyss smiled as she slowly opened her eyes.

"Tell me..." She trailed off as the robed figure trembled.

He felt goosebumps across his body as he kicked and flailed to escape Alyss’s grasp.

"Ah~ So you do feel fear after all. You’re not like those mindless beasts are you? And yet it seems like you lurkers go after your fellow humans who unfortunately find themselves in this realm.

"Such a shame. But I wonder, does an ex-human like you drop Embryos?" Alyss tilted her head with a wide smile.

Her eyes were eerily calm and without reflection.

The lurker felt as though his soul was about to be sucked away when the temperature began to rise.

His pupils constricted in panic, his legs kicked harder than ever.

*TSSSS!!!!

A hissing sound began to rise with flames appearing on Alyss’s arm. Maintaining a firm grip, she dug her fingers into his throat, burning away at the flesh slowly.

Until finally, her fingers touched his spine.

The lurker lost the strength to kick but his body twitched from the pain.

Seeing that no more pain could be inflicted onto him, she pulled her left arm back and punched a hole through his stomach with the flames consuming his body.

Within the ash of his remains, Alyss noticed a small glimmer.

A crystal.

Not quite big enough to be an Embryo but... it looked to be made from the same material...