Vampire: World of Blood
Chapter 215 215: Spawnhood IV

'Ohhh, she's asleep...

A mysterious voice echoed in Merciless's mind, low and distant yet impossibly close. Every time it spoke, his immaterial heart pulsed with a deep, resonant energy... a power that wasn't physical but something far more profound.

Or rather something more conceptual.

It rippled through him like a vibration in the fabric of his very being.

Merciless did not reply, although he listened.

As the voice continued to speak.

Praisin Anastasia even more.

'You know, Big Me, I can feel it... She's so damn cool! Haha! It's been so long since I've seen something like this up close; it's actually refreshing.'

The voice said, praising Anastasia.

It sounds almost childish in it's praise, yet behind that childish demeanor, their was unrefined chaos within its voice.

'Someone like her is so useful to have around; even when her eyes were closed, I could still feel her watching. Everywhere, in every direction within her reach. And it wasn't just here; she was looking into other places too. Places beyond normal space, or what you'd probably call a higher perception of the fundamental reality around her... seeing through Aether is such a useful power to have, hehehe... you really need to train your Aether more.'

'It must be comforting to have someone who can peer into the very concept of time and space and watch how things will shift and move.'

The voice continues to praise Anastasia, and Merciless just stays on the side as he listens intently and when it stops.

Merciless finally steps in, putting in his 2-cent on the matter.

"You know, you've been weirdly talkative lately. Out of the hundreds of voices in my head, yours is loud, almost too loud. Didn't we fuse into one when I ate you and the others? How did you manage to stay independent like this?"

This was indeed a valid question, but the answer Merciless got back surprised him a little.

'Hmm... I am the core of your Immaterial Heart... That makes me the prime conscious core of Shared Collective. Since I have the strongest mind in the collective by default, of course, being something that was once, or maybe always a part of you, those other noisy pests will never drown me out.'

Mercy said to Merciless.

As he continued.

'Kihihihihi… Besides, the moment we became one, you and I slipped into a state of duality, both separate and together. How strange, isn't it? This… peculiar thing inside you made it possible. Ah, Correspondence… that's your true form now, Merciless. How fascinating... it would seem Correspondence accepted the Merciless side of me rather than Mercy, so your kind of the very prime idea of both the Duality of Mercy and Merciless, good for you.'

He let the words hang in the air, his voice soft but unsettling.

As continued to speak.

'I have fragments of memory about it, but they're so… hazy, shrugg!! Ah, cons of being a mere fragment... All I truly know is that our existence—yours, mine—is nothing but a placeholder. My identity, Mercy's identity... is nothing more than a mere mask, spreading like a rot through this little fruit.'

Mercy explained, but Merciless already knew this much, since they share memories as one and two, yet as neither or either.

Yet still one, despite the contradiction.

His comment only continued further, as Mercy said.

'It seems you, the Merciless side of me, have become the mind of this chaos called Correspondence. That leaves me as the placeholder, the mother variant of all other Mercy variants.'

'But you? You're the only Merciless that currently exists, because there is no other strand of this thing called Correspondence. To something like you, Mercy Morgan is nothing more than a mask to hide your true self behind.'

'Hehehe.... How sad... I got disown for a better version of myself; well, either way, it is what it is.'

The conversation was brief, but its weight lingered. Mercy stayed silent, lost in his thoughts, while Merciless simply went along for the ride. They'd been flying for about three days now, give or take.

Ana, on the other hand, seemed to have grown bored with the endless journey and had fallen asleep.

At that moment, Merciless found himself deep in thought, trying to figure out a way to deal with the Protector. The truth was, he didn't have a plan; well, he did, but its not much of a plan if it isn't full proof.

And Mercy, one of the many voices in his head, began to speak once more.

'Say, Big me?! Are you planning on using that? On the protector...

The question was simple, but Merciless understood what his younger child-like self was getting at.

He replied back to Mercy.

"Yeah... I've been holding onto this for a while. Everyone knows that only an Authority can take down another Authority, but here's the thing: I don't have one. I'm not a Spawn, so an Authority is out of the question. What I do have, though, is an Arbiter's Blessing."

Merciless said, annoucing a special Trump card he has been hiding for a while now.

"It's not as strong as an Authority, but it's close in its own way. Think of it like this: if authorities are the ultimate cheat codes of creation so much so they are seen as powers that can only be called miracles, then a Blessing is more like a custom mod for the game. It doesn't break the rules outright; it bends them and twists them to its own logic."

"The power of a blessing really depends on what it's designed to do, and the stronger the blessing, the more it can defy the usual limits of existence's systematic set up. Birthrights are basically the same things as blessings, but blessings are superior; they are basically a pay-to-win kind of power in the grand scheme of things."

"And typically speaking, a blessing is basically a portion of a Spawn's power given form in their chosen arbiter as a supernatrual ability within them that aligns with their personality."

Said Merciless to Mercy.

"And in my case, I got my blessings from the Mother of Lies. Most of them are immaterial powers tied to the line of the Origin, since AE is a Spawn from the Origin's bloodline. But yeah... I'll admit, I have one Arbiter's Blessing with me that, at the very least, gives me a fighting chance."

Merciless admits, while Mercy listens and responds back as such.

'Ohohoho! So that's your grand plan, is it? Bringing those two along? How very quaint! I can see the logic, sure, but do you honestly believe they'll be enough to stand against a Protector?'

Mercy said, as he went on praising Merciless.

'Ah, don't get me wrong; your plan has a certain brilliance to it! After all, what better counter to an Authority than nothingness itself, the ultimate force of chaos's undoing? Magical natures, born of the primal essence, are the true antithesis of authorities. For the mere fact that Chaos and Nothingness were crafted as natural enemies, destined to harm each other in their endless cycle of predation.'

'You see, chaos from the outside seeks to invade constructs of the apogee's, the embodiment of creation and destruction, or primordial nothingness, as that is what each Apogee is the Everdark is, primordial nothingness. Why? Because all things stem from nothingness. Nothingness is the origin of creation and its inevitable end, which is destruction. Meanwhile, the chaos outside... it is a primordial force like nothingness that represents discord, a greedy abstraction yearning for form. Chaos cannot exist as something material, but it hungers... no, craves to gain a shape."

Mercy explain.

As he continues.

'That's why it invades and corrupts apogees. Chaos has the unique ability to parasitize cosmological systems within Apogees, to overwrite their very essence and bend them to its will in their own image or idea. By doing so, it taps into primordial nothingness power of creation and destruction, carving out its own spectrum of totality within the Apogee itself, where it can finally become something more than a formless abstraction.'

'But you'd do well to remember, just as nothingness is the antithesis of chaos, the same holds true in reverse. Chaos itself is the antithesis of nothingness. These two primordial forces are like fire and water, locked in eternal opposition. Equal in strength, they cancel each other out, their conflict perpetually unresolved as they cannot correspond with each other.'

Explain Mercy, but of course, Merciless, learn this from Mercy memories and other people's memories as well, mostly the queen in this case.

But that is why he needs Lucy and Ophelia; for one, his last arbiter blessing was special, very special, unique even.

But it had special conditions, the first of which was the most important.

One to use the power of his 5th blessing, he needs a vessel, but not only a strong vessel, but a female one at that.

Secondly, their personalities need to match up with certain memories inside immaterial heart.

Thirdly, the woman in question has to be dead, or freshly killed, or rather, there has to be no soul in the body of the woman, and Lucy and Opeliah were both vampires, beings without a soul; they fit every bill for his plan to take on the protector.

But the strongest vessel here was Anastasia, so she was the MVP, and as such, she was going to play a vital role in the downfall of the protector.

However, there was a problem, and Mercy called him out on it.

'That's all well and good, but you do realize the limitations of 'Flashback-Reincarnation,' don't you?... The power itself relies on how many vessels you have, and each vessel can only hold a single soul fragment at a time. These fragments are put into a state of constant flashback and last no more than 60 seconds before the memories and essence fade completely and cast out of the vessel body.'

'With a power like this, for a short while, you can summon one of your witches from the Shared Collective, but only temporarily. You'll need to play your cards right, though. So, tell me, who exactly do you plan on summoning first?'

Merciless took a moment to think, and his decision was already clear.

"I want to summon the Witch of Advice Unissa. They say that any advice she gives will come true, but only if she herself believes that the advice can be certain in the context of the situation... so a power like hers would most likely give me a fighting chance."

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