Chapter 222: Cooperation

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Cooperation

"You…" Gilgamesh whispered, narrowing his eyes at us and putting an edge to the words. "Who are you?"

In response, we simply smiled. Gilgamesh had seemed fairly confident that he'd seen all my tricks before, which I suppose was fair. After a few thousand years putting down heroes, odds were that he'd been around the block a few times—and if there was ever a time for people to break out their best tricks, it was after running head first into a beast of legend. He'd faced everything people had thrown at him and had clearly survived it and, like all of the Grimm, had probably learned from the experiences. If nothing else, after a few hundred years camping out in the woods, I figured he'd probably taken to coming up with solutions for various things he had and hadn't faced. He struck me as the kind of guy who thought the best way to avoid being surprised was to simply be prepared for everything.

But now he was confused, because I'd just pulled out something he hadn't thought I was capable of. I wasn't sure on how far the Grimm's senses went, but somehow I got the feeling that he had some idea of what he was looking at, and that it only made things harder to understand. However it appeared, this wasn't a cloning technique, nor was it an illusion I'd conjured to deceive his senses. It was something I was betting he'd never seen anything quite like.

He couldn't have, after all. By definition, this was something unique and personal.

It was a Semblance.

And it wasn't mine.

Of all my skills, the Hidden Heart was quite possible the one I understood the least—which was inevitable, I suppose, seeing how it concerned matters of the soul, which I seemed to constantly learn more about but never actually grasp. The skill's description, such as it was, said that I'd created and merged with a 'nascent soul', whatever that meant. I mean, that seemed like the type of thing that would have pretty significant side-effects, but the only immediate ones were that my MP doubled. Not that I could really complain about that, of course, because by and large it was pretty fucking sweet, but I'd expected more, somehow. The skill's description had even promised it, speaking of how it would demonstrate greater effects as its level increased, but nothing had happened even after relative years of training.

I suppose I hadn't really expected much. Most of my passive skills, especially the ones tied to my stats, improved at a relatively glacial pace. In the end, I'd accepted it for what it was and was thankful for what I'd gotten, putting it out of my mind. Whatever it had promised, it had shown no such results, but it wasn't as though the base effect wasn't extraordinary in its own right. I accepted it for what it was and moved on.

And then I'd obtained the Arcana and things had changed. I'd remembered who I was, who I had been, and my true name. Most of my memories were still gone, of course, but those that remained were still enough to make a difference—both in me and in me.

Even then, it had taken me a while to understand.

The Hidden Heart's real effect was doing…exactly what it said it did. It created a soul within the user—essentially a copy of their own soul, in fact—and everything else grew from there. The reason it doubled its user's MP was simply because the user was able to draw from twice the amount of 'soul' as before.

Of course, the process was probably more complicated than that, or at least I assumed more went into making a new soul than just going poof and getting one. My soul especially was pretty different, being the result of a bunch of horrific, amoral experiments, yet somehow it could make a new one on its own? Did that meant that souls split, somehow, like cells? Or was the metaphysical bulk of my soul simple large enough to draw the required 'material' from above? Or, and the thought was somewhat worrying, did it have something to do with the Qliphoth? I had, apparently, created a soul within the Kingdom…somehow. Unless I wasn't, and instead I…I had no idea.

But surprisingly, the development of that nascent soul hadn't seemed to do much to me, mechanically speaking. When I thought of benefits from my skills, I thought of improvements to my status and numerical advantages, and even after getting the Hidden Heart to level forty, nothing like that had happened. The skill had begun to level up quickly after I'd learned the Arcana, especially when combined with Sahasrara and Etz Hayim, but still, nothing had seemed to change.

It was something that had only made sense in hindsight and the truth was both disappointingly simple and amazingly complex. The benefit of the soul's development was the same as the benefit of a child's development; put simply, it was the simple fact that it grew up.

Except souls—or, at least, dual souls—grew up weird as hell. It wasn't like I started hearing voices in my head or anything; however many souls I had, I only had one brain, after all, so we just…shared it. We didn't fight over it or converse inside of it or anything, we just were. I suppose that made sense, more or less; bodies were, apparently, the things souls used to express themselves in this world; after using Ohr Ein Sof especially, I knew how big the difference was in that regard. Having two souls didn't change that in any meaningful sense, I just expressed both souls. Not that that wasn't fairly worrying in its own right; had my thought processes changed without me noticing? Had any thoughts slipped in that were more from the other half of me than from the original? I wasn't sure even I would notice if I'd been changed by it, seeing as things had gotten kind of crazy at the time; with Conquest, the revelations about the Riders and Malkuth, my dad's death, moving, all the preparations I'd undergone, and what I'd learned about myself, I'd changed more than enough for someone to slip a few things by. If I'd started thinking about things differently, there'd been plenty enough reasons.

Still, it was something worth worrying about, especially under the circumstances, and so I had.

For a few minutes or so, at least. Then I decided it probably didn't matter; my second soul was basically a copy of my original, inhabited my body, possessing my memories, experienced the world through my senses, and existed in the same space and headspace as I did. Existential worries aside, we were the same person by most metrics, literally bound so tightly that my Semblance had pooled 'our' MP; whatever differences there were between us probably didn't actually change a whole lot and it wasn't as though I could do anything about it besides. I made a mental note to keep an eye out for any major developments, shrugged, and went back to worrying about all the things trying to kill me, ruin my life, or both. If anything happened, I'd just have to rely on the Gamer's Mind to see me through; it's not like there was much else I could do.

And then the skill had maxed out, growth accelerated by…whatever was affecting it. And when it reached the highest level—or, more likely, having reached the highest level because of it—my second soul developed a Semblance of its own.

But…I didn't have time to waste explaining any of that to Gilgamesh.

Thaumiel (Active & Passive) LV1 EXP: 62.09% MP: Special

The Twins of God and the Duality of God. Thaumiel represents the shadow of Keter—not it's opposite, but it's imbalance. The nature of Keter is one of Unity; the first moment of consciousness, the light born from the darkness. It is something without concept or shape, an intangible existence that gives rise to all that follows it but which is, in its own right, formless until given shape by the Sephirot below it. And yet, at the same time, that very awareness sets Keter apart from everything else, separating it from the Light above and the nothingness that surrounds it. This contradiction is undone by the Tree of Life, however, as all paradoxes within Keter find resolution within the form given by Malkuth, balancing individuality and unity. Thaumiel, then, is simply the state of Keter in separation from Malkuth—the Dual Contending Forces and the division of that which is perfect only in Unity. This skill represents the Semblance crafted by a soul caught within the state of Thaumiel and given form by means other than Malkuth.

While Thaumiel is active, the user's twin souls may inhabit separate bodies.

All traits, skills, stats, and meters remain unchanged; the user's division paradoxically leaves the bodies identical.

While separated, the user's bodies and souls remain both connected and indistinct; any beneficial effect applied to one body automatically affects the other. At the same time, status effects are also mirrored. Should one body die, the other immediately dies as well.

While Thaumiel is active, the user's bodies may inhabit the same volume of space without reuniting or changing mass. While existing in such a state, both bodies may activate skills to affect the apparent whole and may simultaneously activate the same skill to either achieve greater effect or attack multiple targets. May have special interactions with certain skills.

This skill may only be used for short periods of time or the user risks the collapse of their forcibly divided souls.

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Current Duration: 6 minutes.

Five minutes and fifty-three seconds left. I wondered if that was enough time to kill a legendary Grimm?

There was only one way to find out.

Without saying another word, we attacked.

The first thing I did was something most people probably would have thought insane—but hell, that was my life in a nutshell.

I went hand to hand with a Grimm of Legend. We closed the distance in an instant, Fluctuating to either side of him with our fists already raised. Our power flickered and snapped once before taking form around us, catching Gilgamesh between our Aurora's. Agni flared around me, but my Aurora only affected my enemies and my other self had a fair number of ways to protect himself besides; the fire clung to him, but he didn't burn. Instead, steel began to rise from his flesh, snapping together in skintight plates that covered him from head to toe, turning his eyes to liquid silver orbs and his hair to gold. Kubera took shape around him, our divided nature bypassing the usual limits of the skill. My other Aurora shifted with it, turning into a greying mist that metalized the ground around him and then caused what little didn't melt in the flames around me to simply rust away.

Gilgamesh twitched once, perhaps grimacing as he was caught between us, but hardly slowed down. He knew that even if there were two of us now, he had the advantage of being vastly superior to us in a physical confrontation, and even with our Auras raging into a storm around him, he didn't back off. And generally speaking, that would have been the right move—I had no trouble believing he was twice as strong as I was if it came down to an arm-wrestling contest or something. But…that was the thing about teams.

We were more than the sum of our parts.

As Gilgamesh's bone-like sword cleaved towards my head, I snapped a hand up, not to block it but to guide it. I caught the side of the blade with the tip of my left hand's fingers, running the numbers in my head in an instant, and pushed upwards even as I lowered my own body. As his bladed whipped above my head, mere centimeters from driving into my skull, my other self stepped forward, knuckles cracking as he curled his metallic hands into fists. A foot came down, shattering the ground as he stepped forward into Gilgamesh, and his power shifted around him, momentarily receding into his flesh. Steel cords of muscle groaned as a network of patterns appeared on both his skin and my own, looking like nothing more than luminous circuitry—the power of Qigong and a half-dozen other skills, bolstering our strength in an instant. The blow he slammed into Gilgamesh's gut was simple, choosing overwhelming power over any kind of finesse.

But sometimes, overwhelming power was all you really needed.

The air rippled and exploded outwards, pushed away from us by the force of the blow and creating a short-lived vacuum that pulled out our flesh, eyes, hair, and clothes. It disrupted the flames around me for a moment, carving a small and empty sphere out of my Aurora before collapsing and strengthening the flames yet further. The ground didn't shatter, simply because it couldn't anymore, reduced as it was to a field of molten earth, but it rippled violently, calling up a massive wave of lava that expanded outwards from us. And Gilgamesh…

On unsteady footing and overextended as he was, there was only so much he could do. There was a sharp crack and then he was blown perhaps twenty meters backwards, feet skimming the surface of the lava as he tried to halt himself but couldn't.

Needless to say, we followed, this time relying on pure speed. We kicked off, layering our skills in an instant to create a sudden burst of acceleration that cleared the lava back down to solid earth, sending it up in a rain of fire. My counterpart moved just a moment before I did, timing it meticulously, and aimed another strike at Gilgamesh, this time targeting his face.

Knowing better than to ignore such a blow now, Gilgamesh's free hand snapped up, catching the blow moments before it connected—and though he was driven back even further by it, even unsteady as he was, he held my counterpart back easily, sword wavering for only a moment as it traced a path up to his throat.

Before the edge hit home, however, I stepped into my counterpart, shifting into his physical space—and then forced out something more than physical. As I seized control of our bodies, he Projected himself forwards, spiritual presence gathering power even as he flipped over Gilgamesh's oncoming blow. Landing on three limbs, he flickered once and materialized as Bai Hu, lashing out with his free leg the moment he regained solidity. My hands had begun moving even before we occupied the same volume, bringing them up not to protect against Gilgamesh's strike but instead to catch my own kick, letting the force push me back just outside Gilgamesh's swing before pushing back, providing the impulse to push my other self back to his feet and giving him an opening.

Gilgamesh didn't even have a chance to pull back his sword before the fist connected with his chin, lifting him fully from his feet once more and leaving him—from my admittedly warped perspective of time—momentarily suspended in midair.

I stepped forward, feet slipping through my other's Projected form and drawing it back into me as a matter of course. As I did, I felt something shift in the power I gathered—the power we gathered.

Like I said, we were more than the sum of our parts.

The hand I slammed into Gilgamesh's gut was secondary to the ten Lux Aeterna's that came with it.

For a moment, the image of Gilgamesh being struck was all I could see as all the light around us was drawn into my hand. It didn't happen the way it usually did, darkening the world but for Lux Aeterna's own light—instead, my view of the world rippled and writhed oddly, twisting and fluctuating as it seemed to be pulled into the palm of my hand like water down a drain. The world faded away in stages, though the process was literally blindingly fast, with more distant objects fading first until only Gilgamesh and I seemed to remain. My body pulsated, flesh giving way to Sahasrara even as the flames of Agni, Surya, and my Aurora were devoured by the almost crystalline sphere. After a moment, even my body started to get pulled towards it, my fingers elongating and twisting as they were drawing painfully in—

And then the sphere fractured, losing shape—and a thin line of light split the darkness. Everything that had been devoured by the sphere seemed to pour forth in the violent onslaught of twisted light and images, and at the very center of it was a narrow beam of focused power that struck Gilgamesh in the center of his chest. I could feel my other self working to keep the light coherent and intense, and it struck Gilgamesh with an inhuman amount of force, instantly accelerating the legenary Grimm to absurd speeds as it blew him away from us and back until his back struck the rising edge of the massive crater I'd made earlier and light played across it, melting everything that was illuminated by Lux Aeterna until a massive oblong shape was burnt into the earth around him.

Gilgamesh let out a low, restrained hiss as he bounced back to his feet, a hand over the bullet sized hole in his chest and eyes focusing intently on us. I looked back at him evenly, my other self literally running out of the space we'd occupied and gathering power in his hands, shaping it into the massive shape of Gungnir as he leapt up to eye level with the Grimm. Gilgamesh was already moving, a blur of dark motion who's passage left a trail of broken earth and quickly expanding fire, blowing a wide hemisphere in the slag around him. In a matter of moments, he'd closed the distance between us, clawed hands reaching towards me—

I Fluctuated, willing myself into the space my other self occupied even as I formed a Gungnir of my own. As we came to occupy the same place, our weapons came into alignment, the power within them resonating and growing. The light of Gungnir seemed to skyrocket to an even greater intensity, and when we threw it, it almost immediately lost shape, the spear changing direction almost mid-shaft. Gilgamesh dodged, blurring and racing away from the attack, zigzagging as he went—but Gungnir matched every shift with a similar change of course, lagging just behind.

Even so, the fact that he remained ahead spoke of Gilgamesh's speed.

But I wouldn't be defeated by speed alone.

I focused my gaze on Gilgamesh and power gathered behind my eyes as I activated Gorgon.

The ancient Grimm hesitated for barely a fraction of a second before breaking free of the effect—and a fraction of a second was enough. Gungnir hit home and exploded with a sound like the crash of thunder—and we Fluctuated, coming apart to target Gilgamesh within the smoke, pressing the assault.

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