Chapter 97 - Parallel

Layton opened his shut eyes to find himself alone on a beautiful tropical island, scanning around with his senses Layton found the island was deathly quiet there were no other lifeforms present except for him and plants and if he looked further away from the island towards the sea he found the sea clear no fishes no microorganisms of any kind, he had the feeling he was the only person in the world right now.

Layton was perplexed as to his current surroundings according to Minerva he should have woken up from the nightmare and before falling unconscious he was pretty sure he had already won the holy grail war.

Although he was not sure what would happen when he won but it never crossed his mind he would end up on such a weird island if anything he expected to be somewhere close to the root after all that was the whole core of the war wasn't it.

Just as Layton was lost in his thoughts a figure suddenly appeared right in front of him, before he could even catch a glimpse of the figures face a stream of information suddenly appeared in his mind diverting his attention.

It turns out the space he was currently located was an independent parallel world of the holy grail world, and the reason he was here was because he had indeed won the war and he was here for his reward.

The reward for this session of the holy grail war was special, during his descent into the world the root had captured his information and reflection of his soul all for one purpose the root created an illusory parallel existence using his memories and then through the immense energy of the whole plane it forcefully materializes the illusory existence bringing it into reality.

The creation of a parallel individual is a rare resource in the void, not all worlds are capable of splitting into different parallel timelines and even if one found a plane with world rules that allow the existence of parallel individuals, the unique rules would not work for visitors like Layton and others it was only for indigenes born and bred in the plane.

Only through special arduous means could a visitor allow the unique world rules to act on himself and even then it was a rather dangerous gamble because there was no way of telling if you as the original would be the last one standing when it is time to merge all parallel selves back into one whole.

The main use of having a different parallel self was swallowing like a type of panacea or medicine, this was done by defeating and killing one's different parallel self until you become unique, the act helps in increasing ones comprehension, plus the surviving individual inherits the talents and some important practice memories of the defeated, also the state of uniqueness is very helpful in breaking through to become a detached individual that is a level 4 existence it greatly reduces the difficulty of a breakthrough to that stage.

Apart from these, there are other uses for having different parallel selves such as creating clones or practising some other esoteric techniques like paradise trinity technique, hell's 7 sins practice and the most famous martial civilization 3 corpse technique.

Although there were other alternatives that had the effect of having a parallel self but they were either resource intensive, not easy to achieve or had some side effects, a parallel self was more natural with close to no side effects, the merger of the same parallel souls was like two puzzle pieces natural fitting into each other to form a whole making it easy to merge and use without using any other means or resources something which was impossible for other alternatives.

Although Layton did not have any special technique to practice just defeating and swallowing his parallel self was a huge benefit and if perchance he could not defeat his parallel self the root would save his life and remove the source energy that kept the created parallel self in existence.

Basically the reward had already been delivered as to whether Layton was strong enough to enjoy it to the fullest was not the concern of the organizer of the holy grail, after just the chance to meet and battle himself who had embarked another path was already precious enough.

Although this was an immense reward but Layton was feeling rather complicated at the moment his emotions were rather tangled, after all he had just learnt from Minerva during his unconsciousness that she knew he was traverser and that there was a chance his previous memories were planted by someone, that he might not even be real just a product of some false memories and soul fragments, although she also said that there was a chance he was actually a natural traverser that his dead soul had somehow travelled and actually landed in his current body but Layton just couldn't stop thinking about the possibility that he was actually fake, and now in front of his eyes a similar existence had been created to just act as a reward for him its only purpose of existence for such a short time was to disappear later, and from the information in his mind he knew the parallel self would be aware of the cruel reality, Layton was not sure exactly how to face his parallel self.

He took a deep breath suppressed his turbulent emotions and stared at the figure in front of him, it was like looking in a mirror, the same short and spiky dark black hair, the same handsome face and the same fit stature that seemed a little thin, the only difference was the colour of their eyes, since Layton had merged his haki changing it to psionic his deep brown eyes had started to change gradually becoming a pale white colour while his parallel self had deep dark eyes but there was a hint of gold in the dark gaze like a persistent flame trying to bring light to a dark world.
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