[SS 2.69] Now There's Two of Them (Part 2/5) (Patreon)

Two days later, Gelic watched from the shadows of an alley in her Demon form as the Duplicate of herself walked down the street. Well, the clone was currently depicting a younger version of her human self. She found it easier to deal with the whole thing by having the copy be more representative of their mental age. That made it harder for Angelica to get annoyed at the Duplicate, viewing her more as her own unique person with thoughts and feelings rather than just a less developed version of herself. And in cases like today, when out in public, it made more sense for interacting with humans who may be suspicious otherwise why a twenty-five year old sounded and acted like a child.

Currently, mini-Angelica was about six years old. Probably too young to be out on her own in the big city like this, but she did have a guardian Demon tailing her. Hopefully, there’d be no truancy officers around, because it was a school day, and the young girl was definitely skipping. Progress in her mental development had actually been pretty fast at first, but unfortunately, it had slowed down greatly after getting out of the toddler stage, and mental age wasn’t one-to-one with Skill level, or it would be a bit higher. After a painstaking couple of days, she’d gotten it up a decent amount.

[Duplicate Lv.9]

[Creativity, Competence notably increased]

[Fabrication, Egoism Attunement increased by an amount]

As for what that amount was, she had no idea. It seemed wary to properly label how much they were giving her, and since her Attunements didn’t have percentages to next Rank-up like her Skills did, she had no idea. Really, in such cases, it felt like her Growth System was entirely making it up. Duplicate felt like it should be fairly common Demon Skill, mostly because it could be gotten entirely through Egoism and no Fabrication. So anyone who was hellbent on self improvement probably came across it at some point. Maybe it was just her own weird circumstances that the DGS found so perplexing.

“Don’t wave at me.” Angelica conveyed to the Duplicate who had smiled and waved at the Demon when she saw her. She had done so mentally through the Mind-Link Skill, which as far as she was aware, was a distinct advantage that she’d have over any other Demons using Duplicate. The Skill specifically mentioned the ability to give Demons Orders like a Summoner, but it didn’t seem to follow the same Contract system. It was more just asking them to do something, and hoping they were smart enough and willing to obey. There seemed to be some level of obligation to listen, but less than a Demon would normally experience.

That also played into the warning about making sure the user got along with themself. If they were super strongheaded and unwilling to listen to anyone, even themself, it probably wasn’t a good Skill for them. Angelica, on the other hand, had full access to the suite of Summoner Skills that she could use on her Duplicate. It felt like an entirely unintended use-case, and likely only possible thanks to her Summoner Secret. 

Really, there were only a few Skills that were useful for the situation, besides being able to do more firm Orders. Mind-Link was obviously a win, though it was a struggle to get the clone to use. “Okay!” She said aloud while waving at the Puck again.

“Say it with your mind, please.”

“Okay!” She got it right that time.

The other big one was the Recall spell, and what she had used to test that the Skills worked at all, by having her teleport a few feet away from Cherub when petting time was over. Angelica could call the clone to her side whenever she wanted, and would do if her younger self failed miserably at this task and was about to make some sort of scene. 

Banish, she assumed effectively did nothing. Since she was already able to remove the clone from existence whenever she wanted, there was no real need to get it away from herself. And due to the same plane of existence limitation, even if it did send the Duplicate to hell, they would just die immediately, regardless.

Then there was Rebuke, which she hadn’t tried out yet, since it didn’t sit right with her to punish incompetence compared to actual insubordination. Hopefully, she’d never have to. Once the clone was up to a decent mental age, ideally it would understand that they were partners in this, and everything they did would be for the betterment of both of them. While the Duplicate didn’t explicitly remember its past existences, it still had Angelica’s past memories, so it should remember why it had been conjured and preferably go along with any Orders without question once it had the capability to do so.

Still, in a way, despite the deficiencies, it was like she’d gotten a free Bound Demon without using up one of her currently non-existent slots. Even if that free Demon was basically a rather weak Imp. At least since it was still technically herself, using up any of the Summoner Skills on her clone cost no MP at all. What was annoying, though, was that since she had only been giving the Duplicate very simple, easy tasks, she’d gotten almost no Summoner experience whatsoever. 

Well, today was kind of a big trial, to see how much the clone had developed. She had been given a single simple task of buying some groceries from the local store. It was probably quite the responsibility to give to a child, but if she couldn’t pull this much off, then the idea of using her for basic tasks and errands was still a dream away. It was nothing major, just catfood, some snacks, and a few frozen meals. Angelica didn’t want to give her the strain of picking out produce or any other fresh ingredients just yet. She’d even gone as far as to fully write out the specific brands for everything, to further eliminate the burden of choice. 

It really should be as easy as they came, assuming no meddling adults questioned why the kid was doing household chores on their lonesome. And things went well, mostly. The first main hurdle was avoided: the candy aisle. Did her clone even need to eat? So far, none of them had made any requests in that matter. Well, they had Health that decreased just like hers, so probably. None of them had just been alive long enough.

Second hurdle: toys. Despite being a local mart, there was still a little nook with a few toys. The Duplicate stopped and glanced at them for a while. It was just about to the point where Gelic was going to send her another mental reminder before the young girl moved on. Some actual proper shopping did occur after that. It was cute watching her push around the cart and stretch on her tippy toes to reach a few things. Fortunately, none of it was out of reach, though it would have been interesting to see how she’d handle that obstacle.

At about halfway through her shopping list, the copy got caught in an unexpected third obstacle: art supplies. Why did this grocery store have so much random stuff that wasn’t groceries? Isn’t that what megastores were for? This was definitely where a true young version of Angelica would diverge from the Duplicate. Her past child self would absolutely not give two frits about art supplies. She probably would be found in the video section begging her mom for more animations. 

“You can get it if you complete the list,” Gelic told herself. The Duplicate had been staring long and hard at a kids drawing journal that came with a pen. It was nice, and had a cute character on it, something she’d definitely pick for herself. That lit a fire under little Angelica, and she breezed through the rest of the shopping. And when she got to the checkout, of which she was forced to deal with an actual clerk instead of having a self-checkout machine, she made sure to put the journal on top of everything else to ensure it wasn’t forgotten.

“Are your parents not with you today?” the cashier asked, being a responsible steward.

The clone cleared her throat and spat out the rehearsed line. “Mom was supposed to come in with me, but she’s been in the car for a while, yelling at my dad on the phone.” Yes, perfect. It was clear, concise, and didn’t leave room for a lot of followup questions without the employee getting very uncomfortable. So the checkout continued silently from there, with the clerk giving the young girl eyes of pity the entire time. The Duplicate, on the other hand, was ecstatic, happy with the job well done and the little reward she’d gotten.

After exiting the store, she dashed over to the alley that had been designated as their meeting point, and eagerly showed off her new sketch book, as if Gelic hadn’t been tailing her the entire time and gave her permission. “Yes, it’s very pretty,” she attempted to placate the clone. “Now hold onto it tight, and try to cast Return, like we discussed.” 

Gelic wasn’t really expecting it to work, but it was best to eliminate the possibility. Except, it wasn’t eliminated, and her masked eyes probably upped a few brightness levels in surprise when her clone vanished. Since she hadn’t gotten any memories of it dying horribly, that meant it was still alive, right? Well, best to just go check. She picked up the two bags of groceries that the Duplicate had left behind and cast Return as well.

“Oomph.” Gelic found herself suddenly collapsed to her apartment’s floor, entangled with her young human clone since apparently she didn’t have the wherewithal to move out of the way. Well, at least it hadn’t caused some sort of weird splicing issue that was often the case with teleportation-type powers in fiction. That’d be horrific. “Okay, get it all put away, please.” She gave her next Order to the clone.

It was interesting that the Duplicate could use Summoner Skills. Well, the description had said that it would have access to all of them. Did that mean the clone could give herself Orders too? Would she be able to summon Demons as well? That probably wasn’t a topic even worth broaching until Angelica had a few more open Demon slots, just in case it went catastrophic or triggered another error. 

“You can do some art afterward,” Gelic promised when her small self started pouting. Speaking of, she was getting a bit behind on art herself now, since it had been a few days since she’d even touched her computer besides some brief browsing, or done anything remotely productive outside of her meetings and stuff done with Zenmoon. At least one chapter of Merlina’s Boutique was in order, and maybe a few commissions, so she shifted over to human herself and got to work while her clone very slowly placed items where they should go.

Honestly, Angelica was on the fence about letting her Duplicate do art for her. It was good that the girl was interested in it herself, which made sense, of course, but she definitely wouldn’t be on the level yet. Still, the entire point of having a clone was so that it could do the boring things while she did the fun things. But since it was also her, that meant that she too wanted to do fun things. 

At the very least, having the clone make Merlina chapters should be off limits. It was what Angelica wanted to do more than anything, so to rob herself of that just to do more Demon or Summoner or annoying human responsibilities felt stupid. But… that didn’t mean the Duplicate couldn’t help out, maybe work on backgrounds, or use her to bounce ideas, like an art assistant. And when she was up to at least an adults mentality, perhaps there wouldn’t be much harm in letting her do commissions. 

They’d been piling up a lot recently, more than Angelica could reasonably complete. So if the quality was there, why not? It was still her; her skills, her style, her artsy mind. Then they could both have a creative outlet while working on the unified goal of making Gelic a renowned artist. But they were still probably at least a dozen or so levels away before her copy would be ready for such responsibility. 

It was kind of crazy how much effort Angelica had been putting, and would continue to put into the Duplicate’s development. Since it had annoyingly not been amazing from the start, it really was sort of like raising a kid, investing in them, so that when they were old enough, they’d be capable of anything. Sort of like those parents who push their kids to be doctors or lawyers, so that they can make sure they have that safety net of stability when they’re old. She was just speedrunning that. Hopefully, it could be done in a few weeks instead of dozens of years. 

Angelica glanced over to her bed where her tiny double had hopped up after completing her latest task, and mumbled something about doing art for as long as she wanted, just to make the Order official. Not that the clone seemed to mind or care. She was in a pure blissful state, drawing in her new book with her fancy pen with Cherub laying across her lap. Damn, to be a kid again. It was also somewhat spurring a maternal instinct she didn’t know she had. No, no, big sisterly instinct. Angelica absolutely had no intent on being a mother anytime soon. Gawk could be her little brother, and the Duplicate could be her little sister. 

Along those thoughts, she should really give the kid a name. Just so that she could stop referring to it as the “duplicate/clone/copy” ad nauseum. Well, she’d give it some thought. Angelica was notoriously bad at coming up with names for characters, so it probably wasn’t going to be anything too special or absurd. She got lost in her work again and the hours drifted on. What eventually lurched her out of her own focus was another parental sort of instinct. Everything had suddenly gotten too quiet.

She jerked her head back toward the bed and let out a sigh of relief. The Duplicate had fallen asleep. She must have been really tuckered out since it was a big day for her, the longest any of the clones had been alive. As soon as Angelica stood up, Cherub roused from his slumber, perking up since it was definitely in the range of dinner time. After feeding him, Angelica sat down on the bed next to her tiny self and took a peak at what  she’d drawn.

Huh, not bad. The kid was good, a prodigy even, though it still had the unrefinement of youth. Most of them were actually of Merlina’s Boutique characters, which she really should have expected. The clone still had the same memories or imagination. Hmm, maybe she could use them—not let the art go to waste. Perhaps it could be something one of the characters drew who was of similar skill. Maybe the one-eyed bat would suddenly do some drawings and these would be the result, or another recurring character when Merlina made it back to her boutique.

Angelica gently put her hand on the Duplicate’s head and stroked her hair. “You did a good job, Angie.” Yes, that’d be a fine name for now, a derivative of her own without triggering the Holy word censor. And it suited her younger self. Maybe she’d change it once Angie reached adulthood, or let her pick her own name at that point. “Goodnight.”

[Duplicate Lv.11] 

[Competence, Creativity notably increased]

[Fabrication Attunement thoroughly increased] 

[Egoism Attunement hardly increased]

[Fraud Attunement increased]

Ugh, those Attunement increases were still so weird. Would it ever stabilize? Fraud must have come from Angie deceiving the clerk and maybe some other shoppers. It felt like she should have gotten more than a single increase, but there was the transfer penalty to consider, which probably reduced it. Her head was also suddenly filled with a minor bundle of knowledge that she didn’t know previously, mostly new items at the store she didn’t know about and their associated prices. It was the first real time her Duplicate had taught her anything, so she’d winced from the suddenness, but the feeling wasn’t bad. Maybe a huge infodump would suck more, but it was still a cool way to suddenly learn a lot. 

Angelica also hadn’t gotten much Health back at all from the reabsorption, so no wonder her clone had been so tired. Well, she’d rather take on that burden herself. So after casting the Skill again, she let out a yawn. “Welcome back, Angie.” The new version of herself stood on the floor. Like always, she had the girl Transfigure to her roughly equivalent mental age as the first Order. This time, she was about a year or so older. 

Exhaustion overcame her main body. She’d purposefully used a good chunk more Health and MP than the minimum required to cast Duplicate, since it would recharge overnight. And hopefully, it would be enough to keep the clone going while she slept. “I don’t really have much for you to do, so you can keep drawing if you want, or perhaps try some reading if you like. Just don’t mess with any settings or files on my computer, and don’t send any messages either.” 

Hopefully that’d keep her out of trouble. And if her clone did read, that could be a good way to plow through books without having to do the act herself, just get the jist of the enjoyment and what happened once the information made its way back to her mind. She went ahead and used a sleep Order, knowing she’d be too restless and worrying if someone was moving around constantly next to her while she slept. Angelica did go ahead and add a caveat to walk up immediately if Angie needed help or was about to do something catastrophic. 

With one last thought before sleep, she mumbled, “I think you’re ready. Tomorrow, we’ll go back to Zenmoon.”