[SS 2.68] Now There's Two of Them (Part 1/5) (Patreon)

[You have spent 14,408 Essence to reach Puck Lv.22]

Woof, that was a lot of levels at once. The surge of power and pleasure that came from obtaining fifteen levels in one go nearly knocked Angelica off her feet. Once the joy subsided, she focused up again, hopefully about to have a lot more to be jazzed about. Part of her was still doubtful about her next purchase compared to buying Conceal, but made a promise to herself that she’d do her utmost to obtain the Skill naturally once she had this new power figured out. And if not, she’d definitely make it the next on the purchase list. 

[You have spent 13 GP to unlock Active Skill: Duplicate Lv.1 | GP remaining: 2]

[Competence, Creativity heftily increased]

[Competence has improved from Threat to Shrewd]

[Potential improvement to Fabrication and Egoism Attunements are incalculable and cannot be rationally distributed]

[Fabrication Attunement randomly increased]

[Egoism Attunement chaotically increased]

[Egoism Attunement has improved from Aware to Embraced]

Incalculable, what? Randomly and chaotically increased? Was the DGS on the fritz again? Well, she hadn’t gotten a specific error message, so despite what it was saying, it must fall in line with the system’s processes. Well, whatever, as long as everything still went up instead of down. If there were decreases, she’d be at the Demon Services Office in a heartbeat asking to speak to a manager within seconds. And… Egoism had certainly increased, having jumped two Attunement ranks in one go. Chaotic indeed.

The fact that Duplicate was even an Egoism Skill didn’t fall in line with her expectations when she first read the name. Her initial guess was that it was an advanced version of Reprint, or possibly had to do with the initial creation process, that maybe when making something, she’d create two instead of one. While somewhat in the right area, she ended up still pretty far from the mark. Apparently, some of her confusion came from the word itself, thinking of the verb version “to make a copy of” instead of the noun version, “a copy or ‘duplicate’ of something.”

As for what the duplicate was… Angelica wasted no time and activated the magic after checking her Health and MP, to make sure both were at good levels. She then closed her eyes to focus on the conjuration, and when she opened them again, she saw herself, a perfect copy of herself standing before her. Well, actually it wasn’t quite perfect. The look on her own face was hard to witness, since it was indeed her, but a very clearly dumber version of her, with no thoughts, no ambitions, and felt like she’d start drooling at any second; a complete and utter simpleton.

So that prompted her to read through Duplicate’s description once more. She’d just read it again before buying it. But like cooking something and then immediately throwing the box away after being confident she’d memorized the recipe, she had to dig it out of the trash again to double check something. 

[Active Skill: Duplicate Lv.1 | Experience what it's like to be a Summoner with a Demon servant of your own, except the Demon is you, a copy of you! The Duplicate will follow your Orders up to varying degrees of complexity. They will be a perfect replica of yourself upon creation, including appearance and Skills at their current levels. However, their intelligence and ability to use said Skills will scale. Under normal circumstances, you can only create a single Duplicate at a time]

[Health and MP will be capped at the amount spent for their creation, but the copy will be able to restore them using equivalent scaling. Skill, Worth, and Attunements can be trained by the Duplicate, however, the progress will not be transferred to you unless they are reabsorbed properly]

[Reabsorption can only be achieved by physical touch. This will transfer progress at a scaling penalty, any remaining Health and MP in full, along with any distinct knowledge gained by the copy. Direct Duplicate memories will not be transferred via reabsorption]

[If a Duplicate is killed, all progress and remaining MP will be lost. However, you will receive a brief memory from the copy leading up to their death. Duplicates may be remotely killed at any time. They will also be automatically killed if you swap planes of existence]

[Warning: Your Duplicate will spawn with your exact personality, only varying based on its current level of intelligence and maturity. Make sure you can get along with your current self before purchasing this Skill. Additionally, the personality of the copy may skew in line with their own experiences. It is advised to not let a Duplicate live for long enough that they establish a sense of self]

[Cost: 20% of current Health and MP. Additional may be spent if desired. All aspects scale with Skill Level, Competence, Creativity, Fabrication Attunement, and Egoism Attunement. Additional Unlock Requirements: Symbiotic Egoism Attunement OR Embraced Fabrication Attunement AND Reprint Lv.5 (met)]

There was definitely a lot in that Skill description, the longest one she’d encountered by roughly double. But the thing she’d sought to confirm was the intelligence aspect. At Lv.1, the Duplicate would be stupid as scuff, and the way to improve it was to train the Skill. To train the Skill, she needed to Order the clone to do things. But what could it even do with such a brain-dead intellect? 

Angelica was honestly struggling with how to start. Hmm, well obviously having a copy of herself was absurdly useful, incalculable as the DGS put it. But the primary reason for getting it was so that Merlina and Gelic could exist at the same time. So maybe she should start there and see what she was working with. Interestingly, when she cast the Skill, it had silently asked her if she wanted to use her current human form or her original Puck form. So she went with her current usual self—everyday Angelica. But when she scried the copy, she got something different.

[Demon | Alias: Gelic | Demon Rank: Puck Lv.22 / 30 | Cult: Zebub | Duplicate (Only you can see this innately. Shares detection scaling with Masquerading Transfiguration)]

Hmm, interesting. So if someone saw through the Duplicate’s disguise, they’d both know it was fake and that they were a clone. Which would likely be immediate now, since the imbecile clearly wasn’t using Identity Fraud despite apparently being capable of good Transfiguration. Or maybe it wasn’t, maybe that came from the prompt when the clone was created. She’d work on that, but first, a simple question. “What is your name?”

“…An…gelic…a…Hal…low” It answered slowly and hesitantly, almost like it was unsure. In its current form, the identity was fine to most who would ask, but Angelica suspected it would be a problem. 

“Please disable Transfiguration and go to your default Puck form.” She gave the first official Order, though tried to word it like a more friendly request. If she came across as too demanding, she wouldn’t be surprised if the Duplicate got overwhelmed. It was her after all, so it wouldn’t be surprising if it didn’t deal well with pressure or overbearing authority. Then there was the master-servant aspect. Would the clone be inflicted with Order Obligation if it didn’t oblige, just like a normal Demon? Well, she wouldn’t find out currently, since it obeyed.

Honestly, this was when it hit Angelica just how small her Puck form really was. When she was in it, with the low-line of sight, she didn’t feel so puny. But, yeah… it was honestly pretty unthreatening, even with the long pointy claws and bug mask that would make most squeamish people go “eep.” Crazy to think that the little bug girl was apparently gaining some renown when it felt like she could be squished by an oversized fly swatter. At least when she scried the Duplicate this time, all the information was accurate. But when she asked its name again, the answer was disheartening.

“Angel…ica Hall…ow.” It answered a bit more confidently this time. Except that was a huge issue. First, her Demon self should absolutely not be going around spouting her True Name like that. And second, it clearly wasn’t smart enough to know that those were no-no words that she absolutely could not say when in any Demon form at all. That made Angelica groan. Was this what it was like raising a child, or maybe a freshly born Imp? Having to invest enough time and energy into making sure they were smart enough to not get themselves killed, or worse, her killed?

“Please turn into Merlina.” She moved forward with the next test, wanting to see if the Duplicate could transfigure properly on its own.

“Who that?”

With another sigh, Angelica shifted to her Merlina persona. “This.”

“Oh yeah!” The Pucks masked eyes lit up, as if she suddenly remembered, and its body began to shift. 

“Ugh…” Angelica squeezed the bridge of her nose, doing her best not to lose her patience. It was hard to fault the basically baby version of herself. Her frustration stemmed from how incapable the Skill was at its base level. The Duplicate had become Merlina… mostly. The shape was right, but the details were very bland, like an artist first learning to draw but didn’t yet understand shading and texture. It certainly wouldn’t pass. But also… apparently she needed to specify clothes.

A naked but accurate version of herself would honestly have been less jarring. Again, the general shape was mostly right, but none of the details. It was just sort of sheer blocky flesh, as if the human shape had been roughly sculpted out of clay in the same skin color. 

“Could you please copy the clothes too?”

“Okay!” The mouth that looked like it was missing a few polygons agreed to the request. But rather than donning any outfits, the outer shell of its pottery-like body painted to roughly match the colors of what she was wearing. The few times Angelica had played games when she was younger at a friend's house, the characters honestly sort of looked like this—what would be classified as retro these days. It definitely wasn’t passing the test, to modern day comparisons or real life. 

“Angelica Hallow.” Once again, when asked her name, she spat out the real deal without a care. At least it came out decently this time.

“Please activate Identity Fraud with Merlina as your Summoner Alias.” And hey, it worked, sort of. Apparently, she needed to be more specific, since only the Alias had changed. One at a time, she had to instruct the copy of herself to change each option until she finally got to what it should be.

[Human | Alias: Merlina | Summoner Rank: Novice | Abstainer | Duplicate]

Despite the listings all being correct, her Detect Falsehoods Skill quivered. If she pushed it all, she knew the lie would break, and she’d see the real thing. There was just no way that at its current transfigurative capabilities that anyone of any species could ever believe she was a regular human. However, the name test produced a different result.

“My name is Ang- Mer- huh? What is my name?” With Identity Fraud active, that apparently was causing the clone to have an identity crisis, unable to comprehend that they had two different names. So yeah, that definitely wouldn’t work. In its current state, the Duplicate failed in all aspects, and was not suited for its purposes. Angelica tried to get her to swap back to her normal human form, what the copy looked like when it was first created, but it simply couldn’t.

“I’m sorry, but looks like I’ll have to start over.” She reached out her hand and touched the Duplicate. It vanished, killed as the DGS would say, but really was more like she was reclaiming a temporarily split part of herself. She got back the missing Health and MP she’d expended to create it, meaning there was no actual loss at all. 

Since the only Skill it had used was Transfiguration—poorly, at that—and since it was transferred at a reduced rate she wasn’t clued in on, her experience for the Skill didn’t increase at all. As for knowledge, well, the clone had learned nothing that Angelica didn’t already know, so there was nothing to be shared. But there was an increase at least.

[Duplicate Lv.3]

It was definitely important to note that her experience for the Skill didn’t budge until the Duplicate stopped existing, meaning that for the Skill to improve, she couldn’t have a clone live forever. There were no Worth or Attunement increases, which she honestly didn’t question. In no way had she really improved with her clone's current level of functionality. Hell, if anything, that version of her was more of a liability which should honestly decrease her stats just by existing. She honestly felt a bit bad about having ended its life so fast, but it was a mercy for all of them. Okay, let’s try again.

Duplicate Angelica appeared once again, and this time, there was a bit of hope. While still not clearly all there, it had a bit more life in its eyes, awareness of its existence. She’d avoid the identity issues this go ‘round, and stuck to what the Skill was really meant for, to see how well the copy could perform basic Orders and hopefully get some more significant improvement. “Do you think you could wash the dishes?” It was the first simple task that came to mind, and if the Duplicate ended up breaking them, that was fine. She was probably due for some higher quality replacements anyways. 

“I don’t…” Ugh, really? It would be hard to find something simpler than that. Standing there and breathing for a while, could that count as Orders that would give experience? Maybe simple exercise or attempting to count. Except, there was apparently more to the answer. “…want to.”

“You don’t want to?” The Duplicate shook its head. Since Angelica had phrased it as a question instead of a command, apparently, it had a choice in the matter. She could definitely tweak it back to a direct Order, but because this was still progress, she decided to play along for now. Maybe there’d be improvement either way. “What do you want to do then?

“I want to…” Duplicate Angelica glanced around the room until something caught its eye. “I want to pet the cat!”

Angelica’s groan shifted halfway to a huffing laugh as she shrugged. It was definitely her clone after all. “Fine. Pet Cherub for a few minutes, carefully and gently, stopping early if he is getting annoyed.”

The clone eagerly shuffled her way over to the bed and began petting Cherub softly. At least it had enough intelligence to know how to do so without hurting him. And in fact, he happily leaned into it as he roused from his slumber. There was a bit of concern on his face when he suddenly realized there were two of his master, making him sniff the Duplicate, but he stopped caring a second later since the pets were good.

Good grief, Angelica shook her head as she watched the pair, and couldn’t help but join in. Cherub was in kitty heaven being scritched by four hands, and the clone was clearly having the best experience of its very short life. But Angelica couldn’t help but feel tired, even though she’d only been working on this Skill for a few minutes.

At this point, she’d committed to this course, if for no other reason than to not regret her purchase. Pathos had already messaged her about coming back in to touch up the Freelancer Circles, but that would have to wait. She was going to be training Duplicate until the other her could act as her stand-in. Actually, that could take weeks. So at the very least, she needed to get her clone to be able to function properly as a believable person, even if it wasn’t quite on par with the intricacies of her complete self. And just by the interactions so far, it was going to be a lot of work.