Strawberry Devil in a Fantasy World

I had been delaying this for long enough.

Today was the day I decided to finally integrate Ikebas's memories into myself. It was for that reason I isolated myself in my own room inside the Plane of Ataraxia.

The process itself was instantaneous. It belonged to me in the first place.

The reviewing process was the longest part.

I was from a different world, or perhaps, a parallel world. In that parallel world, I had a primordial soul with memories since the birth of a galaxy. I wasn't a god or anything like that but some would beg to differ. Of course, there were many others like me from that same galaxy. Our duties varied and I just happened to have one of the easier duties, that being a Courier.

I would say our duties were vital to the health of a galaxy. Many advanced civilizations would cooperate with us and requested those like us to incarnate as one of their citizens. That was how I made friends from time to time. Building friendly relationships with the central galactic civilization had one major benefit. If one of us was their citizen, the galactic centre would be instantly notified when disasters struck.

It wasn't uncommon but in times of conflict, that was when the lives of Couriers could be jeopardized. Usually in those times, Couriers would be heavily guarded because their arrival could mean the life and death of a planet which involved the Seed of Life.

Seed of Life was essentially the soul of a planet. More of them were continuously being generated at the galactic core. Only individuals like me could carry a Seed of Life within themselves. We would ferry one to whatever planets required resuscitation or rejuvenation.

It wasn't like war was the only cause of planetary devastation. Sometimes, the nearest star going through their evolution phases could completely tear off the surface of a planet. In some worst cases, a Seed of Life could sometimes be used to generate a new planet and have inhabitants migrate over, assuming we made it in time.

In this parallel world or something along that line, the system required one to possess it to become a god. Perhaps there were more uses to it than we knew. Certainly now that I thought about it, an item capable of fixing and creating a planet could definitely be abused. However, that was someone else's duty and whoever that was supposed to be didn't come for me yet.

Also, Smoothie, the artificial intelligence portion, wasn't from the galactic centre but rather an advanced civilization I had incarnated into recently. It was a human one so that was why I had my current preferences of a human body.

Since I had lost the Seed of Life I was carrying, I had failed my duty.

Right now, I only had recent memories of the previous life and my current life. Whenever I incarnated into various bodies, only a tiny amount of memories would come with me. Most of my memories and experiences were stored at the centre of the galaxy inside a database.

Ikebas was somehow able to collect a huge amount of my soul fragments on her own. Thankfully, perhaps a miracle, she didn't damage any of them with her [soul rupture] ability. There were some minor alterations but I understood the overall picture just fine. She must have taken real care when killing her kin, or my kin. If it was me, I probably would have just converted them all to pure energy and slurp them up all the same.

Interestingly enough, it seemed she wasn't able to review the contents held in those soul fragments she collected. That was my impression based on the conversation we had. Regardless, she had a huge piece of puzzle. If supposedly I died, both us were supposed to be sent back to our original world along with another fragment held by the person she contracted to. 

"Huh, so who was that god? And, who did she really kill?" Those were questions I couldn't answer.

It just so happened the fragmented soul that was me at the time carried the belief that god would chat with me after I died. I probably got it mixed up with a movie I watched. That god person must have had a good laugh.

Regardless, the reason I died was because of an accident. Whether it was truly an accident, I couldn't be sure. I didn't have enough information.

At the time, I was on a space voyage, carrying a Seed of Life with me to a battered planet unrelated to the civilization I was born in. There might have been some wars on that planet. As we approached the star system, we were suddenly engulfed in an unexpected flash of light.

That was it.

I had no memories of suffering a painful death, fortunately.

As for how that Seed of Life was stolen, Ikebas's memories couldn't be fully trusted since some pieces were conveniently missing. Then, as for my memories, there wasn't anything useful.

I knew for a fact that a Seed of Life that wasn't activated couldn't be destroyed. Only I could unseal it to activate it because it was assigned specifically to me. If going by Ikebas's memories, she apparently was able to unseal it which should have been impossible without having Smoothie's fragment and my fragment acting together. The security features on the seal should have been flawless.

"Looks like that demon god or whatever was bluffing. What was the purpose? A crime needs a motive. Why done it?"

As far as I was aware, all the fragments of my soul had been gathered in one place barring Smoothie.

Snowberry and the maids didn't contain any of my original soul energy. Their fey cores were created using mana gathered in this world, same as their soul energy which was also gathered in this world.

Supposedly if I had been killed and sent back, all the soul fragments would have been forcefully returned to galactic centre to be re-forged. Then, I'd return to my original duty after incarnating into another civilization.

Thinking back, whoever was trying to gather my first few strawberries could have been trying to break the seal. However, I unknowingly foiled their plan if that was the case.

"Everything is all coming together!"

It was an eureka moment, a depressing one at that.

Two mastermind candidates.

It was either Perdia or the unnamed demon leader or both. Of the two, De Planck was closely acquainted with both faction leaders. In that case, my next step was clear. I knew only one of their locations.

But first, I wanted to increase my power and raise my combat skills. The person I would go up against likely had the ability to send souls across worlds. I didn't know their motives but one could never be overly prepared.

|Dedicated will| had already cracked the coordinates to the second layer of the Great Labyrinth. It had been working non-stop for days while I was there with Kanoko. After that, I tasked it with searching for a method to counter time related abilities and traits.

Had this overpowering trait found any countermeasures? Not really. At least, there was none that I would attempt with any shred of confidence.

Since it was working on time related matters, I figured it would be best to have it try optimizing time related abilities. If possible, I'd like to create an ultimate ability that could be upgraded into a trait.

"Maybe I could try creating a low cost ability to perceive time?"

Anything related to time was heavy in mana cost. I was wracking my brains to find a better solution.

Without enough information, |dedicated will| couldn't come up with solutions. It had no access to the traits on my main core.

"Hmm... I wonder if |multiple existences| will let me share the traits and abilities on my main body? Let's give it a try."

Following that idea, I played around with |creator| and then gave a few commands to my second core to properly establish the priorities and links.

Lo and behold, everything was copied perfectly. Well, my stats weren't copied but I didn't plan to copy stats to begin with.

"How stupid of me. I should have done this as soon as I gained this trait. Now I can just let it do its thing on the side! Perfect. Life should be simple."

"Hmm? Did I just see something strange?"

I took another glance at my status.

"Wait a second... My mana, it's using up more than I could regenerate!? What in the world is it creating?"

Bear in mind, my mana was extremely condensed. Although it was still far off from the density of soul energy, just 10 mana from me could be used to level a mountain if I used it efficiently. Currently, my second core was eating away my mana like it was gobbling up popcorn at 15 a second.

"This isn't funny. I'm going to have to liquidate my subspace at this rate. Slow down!"

On the status display of my second core, all I could see was that new abilities were being generated faster than my eyes could follow. As they were being generated, they also fused and evolved.

Some ability names were as long as thesis statements...

What is this madness!? It might as well write research paper on its own...

Since I was afraid it could kill me when my mana reached 0, I hastily issued a command to keep my mana above 100 at all times. It probably wouldn't run out even if I left it alone but the thought of it leaving me with only 1 mana...

Next up, I decided a bit of sparring would be nice.

Asking Vorte would be interesting but he had some powerful traits. Apparently, any damages he took would be transferred to his opponents. It wasn't something I'd like to go against. Since traits couldn't be turned off, I figured it was better to try something else.

This time, I divided my main core in two, creating two consciousnesses thanks to |multiple existences|.

"Greetings, me!"

"Greetings, friend!"

"Let's have some fun, shall we?"

"Fun we shall have! Your move first."

Thus, the two of us, while using minimum amount of mana, fought wholeheartedly against one another. Well, that was, as wholeheartedly as possible with only 40 mana each.

Most of our fight was hands on combat. Occasionally, we spiced up the battle with some light fey magic. But with our high resistance to magic, it wasn't effective. Hence, time based abilities were the only ones that were useful in hands on combat.

"I caught you now!"

I landed a chop on my other self's neck after suspending time. Since my other self couldn't predict when I would use time based attack, I was able to land a clean hit.

Or, so I thought.

"No, it was you who was caught!"

My head was cleanly lopped off.

"That was a mirage?! How? Kuh, I lost. Well played, me."

"Me too. I'm amazing!"

Seriously, we weren't just playing around. We were gather data for my second core. [Time mirage] was one of the newly created abilities. This was a time delayed ability. How it worked was that I would activate it and the moment I received damage, only a tiny portion of myself would remain at the original location. At the exact moment, I would enter suspended time and be immediately repositioned some distance away. It wasn't perfect or anything but this could save my life down the road.

Sixty days came and went inside my subspace.

Sixty days was the extent I could endure. There was a limit on how much I could crack silly jokes to myself.

My subspace had suffered quite a bit during those sixty days as well, slimming down with much of its content liquidated and converted to energy.

"Aightou! I've had enough of solitary confinement. I need to recharge myself with Smoothie! Literally, anyone will do."