Her other side’s guess was a little random, but it was the best she could imagine when she saw those golden tendrils come closer.

  There were at least five or six entwined together, and each one looked as though it was truly made of metal, forming strange shapes resembling pieces of metal that were roughly hammered into shape. However, just looking at them evoked all sorts of random memories, and more importantly, when they drew near enough, they struck some kind of invisible barrier, a wave of colourless light erupting across some unseen threshold.

  They tched onto it and began to grow, smaller tendrils erupting from the end and growing out to almost create roots in the invisible barrier.

  “… Should we have stopped that from happening?”

  “It isn’t yet harming you, so it’s best to evaluate the level of the threat and then strike with that knowledge.”

  “How do you know I’m not being harmed?”

  “Common sense. The vital thing in the mind is the mind, the will itself. We are that will. I suspect that we will be attacked by those tendrils in some manner, and if we fail to defend ourselves, then the ear-focused mindfuck will begin,” her other side spoke with that same arrogant tone, all while keeping her eyes entirely on the golden tendrils in the distance.

  “Do you have to do that?! Every time, mindfuck this, ear stuff that-”

  “Bme yourself, and more importantly, focus that frustration on the enemy. Look.”

  She pointed her free hand forward, just as phantoms seemed to emerge from the space in front of the tendril roots. There were five or six of them, but it was hard to count as, when they became more opaque and ‘real’, they turned out to be entities composed of countless rigid strands of gold that were arranged into a humanoid shape.

  What made it difficult to comprehend them was that each strand looked to be moulded into the most esoteric and confounding shapes, countless spirals and intersections that drew the eye and distracted from their true form. Thus, with them standing in a group, Bianca was easily able to imagine two or three figures getting lost amidst the confusing and impossible-looking shapes.

  “What are-”

  Her question was cut short when her other side charged forward, brandishing her bde and unleashing several crimson waves at the golden figures. The first wave hit without any intervention, crimson lightning exploding across the entire group as at least two golden shapes fell and scattered into dust, but the rest did not stand still.

  They jumped, dispying an odd nimbleness and, more importantly, a distinctly different type of movement on each one. It was as though they weren’t fighting random minions, spawned by someone’s ability, but instead other people that had their own skills and techniques.

  ‘Could they be… no, none of them seem to be moving like Xue Yaling or the others, so it’s probably not them – and when it comes to the rest of the people on the ship, then… I should keep myself safe first!’ she had to decide as she ran forward as well, unwilling to let that other side fight on her own.

  With just the figures that appeared first, she suspected that her other side could handle the situation entirely on her own, as her strikes look as powerful as those of her true Demon Queen side. Each one was flooded with might that could’ve cut through a whole forest with a single ssh, and she was unleashing them without issue. However, even without her other side to tell her, she knew that the tendrils wouldn’t stop with just those… entities.

  Indeed, even before she could get close enough to strike one of the entities, more phantoms were starting to coalesce, most in simirly humanoid shapes. Some, however, resembled animals more, rge dogs or bears and even some kind of huge serpent.

  ‘… That’s a lot of things,’ was the only thing her mind could arrive at before she unleashed her energy, coating her sword as she swung towards the nearest humanoid entity.

  Her crimson arcs were less potent, but a direct collision still split the entity in two, scattering across the empty void and lightly scorching the nearest phantoms that were coalescing into reality. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to disrupt their manifestation, and soon a series of beasts joined the fight.

  Bianca attacked as quickly as she could, sending out crimson wave after wave while remaining a safe distance from the enemy. Her mental domain seemed to make it easier to use her abilities, as all she needed to do was think of them and they’d be executed, so her movement was silky smooth, effectively teleporting from spot to spot amidst the featureless abyss each time enemies neared her.

  Her other side was handling things even more efficiently. She fought with the full ferocity that the Demon Queen could demonstrate, jumping around, alternating between swinging her bde and punching and kicking at whatever foe came her way, each strike releasing a vast bst of lightning that instantly destroyed anything it struck. She was able to be significantly more aggressive, letting herself be surrounded by golden entities only to unleash enough crimson light to obliterate them all, but even then, it wasn’t enough.

  For every entity they killed, another half a dozen manifested, and while none had yet managed to attack them, their growing numbers proved highly concerning.

  “What do we do? Do you know of a way to kill the tendrils somehow?”

  “If you don’t, why would I? We need to be stronger-”

  Her words were interrupted when the golden waves suddenly retreated, the entities stopping as golden strands manifested out of thin air. They joined pairs of the entities together, and suddenly they were brought together, each pair blending into another as their halves melted into liquid gold, reforming into new shapes and patters as each being was reconstructed.

  ‘What the fuck…’ Bianca held back from attacking, trying to figure out if this was a positive or negative, and soon she got her answer.

  As this melding finished, the number of foes had been halved, but they immediately began attacking with near-doubled ferocity. Their shapes and forms had become even harder to comprehend, but it didn’t seem to impair their attacks in the slightest.

  The various mutants – she knew no better way to describe them in this instant – were able to evade more easily, close the distance more quickly, and put the pressure onto both of them so much more easily. In less than a minute, the open space around both of them was swallowed by the golden tide, a threat that grew more intense by the moment.

  In no time at all, they ended up standing nearly back to back, barely having any freedom to move around without bumping into the other.

  “Shit! How do we kill them?” Bianca unleashed a powerful strike at the closest entity that tried to hit her, but it was absorbed by a huge bear-like paw from one side of the being, while the other was immediately used to slice at her with a cleaver.

  Her other side’s weapon stopped it and pushed the entity back while responding, “We aren’t fighting them at our full strength!”

  “What?”

  “You’re effectively split in two!” her other self leapt up and performed a spinning ssh, creating a cyclone of crimson that gave them a moment of relief, “And the effect is far greater than just halving your strength. You would need to remove that divide to be able to overcome them.”

  “Would that be enough- no, even then, how could I? You’re those parts of me that I’ve been refusing to integrate for months!” Bianca retorted, “How do you think I’ll do that?”

  “You don’t need to ‘integrate’ me entirely!” her other side raised her hand up and manifested the Abyssal Shield, countless golden shapes striking it but a moment ter, “Just accept that I am you. That there is a part to you that never had the chance to emerge back on Orbis. You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to appreciate it, you don’t need to show it all the time, you just need to accept what you know to be true!”

  That the two Biancas were one and the same. Whatever Demon Queen resided in her mind had nothing to do with the capabilities she knew she had from all those moments that her mind slipped up and forgot to keep up the ignorant act.

  She just needed to stop denying it.

  “… And then what?”

  “I’d say that you’d know, but you won’t accept that as an answer yet,” her other self gritted her teeth for a moment as the shadowy barrier got hit by another wave of attacks, each one nearly breaking through the darkness, “No more entities are appearing. Furthermore, the golden tendril seems to only have so much power. Li Wusu might be in the fifth realm, but she’s in our mind, possibly extending one of a hundred tendrils to us. We’re abnormally strong when it comes to fighting power, and in the realm of the mind, so those things combined together…”

  “If we- if I can fight her off, then I should be able to awaken,” Bianca nodded, then sighed, grasping her sword so tightly that her fingers turned white – whiter, given that she was already pale, “You… You and I, we’re…”

  She could’ve said the words themselves trivially, but she had to believe what she was saying, and while staring at her other side, it was proving rather difficult to do so. For all her efforts, the snow-white skin, the crimson eyes, the obvious aura around her… the differences felt rather start, even if Bianca’s mental body wasn’t that far off in either respect.

  Thus, she shut her eyes, even when the attacks on the Abyssal Shield were growing too intense to ignore. She forcefully shut them out and took a deep breath.

  ‘I… I have a part to me that I dislike. I sometimes even hate it, and I would rather have nothing to do with it, but… it’s me. It’s still me.’

  The golden entities had no strong will of their own. They knew only their purpose, which was to overwhelm this mental domain. Afterwards, they’d be gone, and they didn’t need to be concerned about the nexus within which they’d remain.

  Thus, when each one of them surrounded the mind they were attacking, it seemed like their task was about to cease, only for the darkness they were striking to suddenly erupt. It exploded out, smoke enveloping the entire mental ndscape for an instant, only to be torn asunder by an overwhelming storm of crimson arcs that cleared the darkness and unveiled the single figure that stood tall within.

  White hair and pale skin made her appear as the Demon Queen from before, but as her eyes opened, they cked the same resolve as the previous pale figure. Instead, they were wary and cautious, the crimson glow within her eyes being far from intense.

  Nevertheless, the lightning that manifested on her weapon sparked with far greater intensity than before, and she soon demonstrated her power via a swift horizontal ssh, her light striking the golden entities before they could react. It shattered their delicate golden frames, and the lightning that spread out struck dozens more, harming them but not outright destroying any.

  Of course, with such a provocation, they leapt in to strike, some even gathering energy at their hands or weapons and sshing out with them. In reply, the not-Demon Queen leapt, disappearing in a fsh of violet, appearing up in the sky and raising her sword into the sky, gathering her crimson all around it.

  As she slowly began to fell, energy continued to gather upon her bde, slowly enveloping her whole body as she neared the ground. At the st moment, she sshed down with all her might, unleashing the sword light in a forward wave that cleaved through the mental ndscape, clearing through the crowd of gold with ease.

  ‘I’m a lot stronger… or more precisely, I’m using my full strength, and not holding it back…’ Bianca turned around and blocked a strike from a golden entity that looked to have been merged from two humanoids, feeling the motions come so much more naturally to her than before.

  It wasn’t that she had suddenly learned how to fight – her other side, or rather, the part of herself that she constantly supressed and rejected, had little practical experience either – but she no longer hesitated before each and every motion. She needed to block the attack, and she knew that she could do so, so there was no need to hold back.

  ‘And I’m not afraid to injure anyone, not that this mental space has anyone other than me…’ she dashed forth, using her movement skill to get past a foe to deliver a diagonal strike to a figure behind it, some amalgamation of bear and bird that nevertheless nearly managed to hit her in return.

  She was better able to estimate the strength of these entities now. If she fought them in the real world, she’d estimate them to be at around the fourth realm, suggesting that even if Li Wusu was responsible – and she nearly certainly was – she wasn’t able to manifest her full strength through these entities. On the other hand, Bianca herself was stronger than usual thanks to appearing within a mental domain, which effectively brought her up to the fourth realm as well.

  Thus, the two sides were effectively equivalent, except one was far more numerous, meaning that she needed to do something to handle that number.

  ‘… I’m in a mental domain, so surely I should be able to just imagine things and make them manifest? Perhaps it wouldn’t be equivalent to the kind of power that I could normally exert, but if I can just get them all in a line…’

  She knew for a fact that her mind had some power over this pce, since she’d spawned a split copy of herself somehow, so she took advantage of the moment a golden entity lunged at her to dodge and then run out into the darkness as far as she could, seemingly being able to travel infinitely so long as she did not head towards the golden tendril in the distance.

  After going a certain distance, she stopped and turned, looking for the briefest of moments to ensure that she had a short while, then shut her eyes and focused. She had only one desire, an opportunity to hit all her foes at once, and so she imagined a great pair of walls on either side of her.

  It was hard to know what she needed to do to make her imagination come to pass, but inevitably she ended up focusing more on this mental image, the simple blocky walls turning into two rows of jagged obsidian spikes on either side of her, leading all her foes to her, reflecting crimson lightning as she raised her hands and gripped her weapon in both, focusing her energy within it once more. She couldn’t be sure that this was happening beyond her imagination, but she didn’t allow doubt to distract her, only letting her light grow more and more, the obsidian spikes rising taller and growing tougher as though in reply.

  The typical limits that she would’ve met in life didn’t apply in her head, as she imagined the light coating her sword growing infinitely, rising further and further, shaping itself into a crackling greatsword the size of a small skyscraper, an endless well of energy seeming to flow from her as she finally opened her eyes.

  Her whole mental ndscape was flooded to the brim with crimson light from her arcing energy, causing the obsidian spikes that had manifested before her to glimmer and sparkle. In between those walls stood all the golden entities she was facing, desperately running towards her down this single corridor. Their numbers seemed more intimidating than ever, but she knew that she didn’t need to fear them – for no matter what they did, they couldn’t escape this single path.

  Thus, as the fastest of the golden entities drew close, she forced her hands to move down, the initial effort seeming insurmountable, but the instant that the bance of the bde was tipped, it fell on its own, the enormous crimson construct crashing down into the obsidian trench, exploding with such vividness that she couldn’t keep her eyes open even within her own mind.

  However, she could feel a weight vanish from her chest, and as she felt the crackling crimson of her power fade from the initial burst, she could see the golden figures scattering to dust, and the tendril in the distance separating itself from the walls of her mental domain.

  She was able to rex as it pulled away, but she could also feel the grasp of consciousness slipping. That thing had clearly been vital to raising her alertness within her dream, and thus, she was starting to slip back into regur sleep. However, she didn’t want to give the ship’s captain any chances to catch her off guard again, and so she mentally urged herself to move, to wake up, to jump out of bed.

  The veil of sleep made it ever harder, but she insisted on it until the final moment, exerting herself to the fullest.

  And thus… her eyes opened, and the wall of the ship greeted her.