Fates Parallel Chapter 419 - Singularity

“Narae, don’t wander too far!”

Jung huffed as she chased after her restless daughter. Narae was flitting from one building to another excitedly while Yoshika took them through a tour of her home. It was a bit of extra effort to maintain her spirit form avatar while all of her other aspects were busy elsewhere, but well worth the trouble.

Dae chuckled and shook his head.

“Of all the things to teach a small child, why flight? That’s just asking for trouble. I can scarcely imagine how much worse it will be if Princess Seong Haeun learns that technique from her.”

Yoshika shrugged.

“We didn’t. Kaede taught her Weightless Fist and then she just came up with that flying technique on her own. She and Haeun both have a talent for coming up with unique magic.”

“They certainly do. I still have no idea how the princess’ magic even works. She describes it as if she’s just talking to mana and asking it to do what she wants.”

“Hmm...you should try talking to Ruiling some time. Fiends—or more specifically, dragons—have their own unique kind of magic that sounds similar. Ruiling was more than happy to chat with me about it, so maybe she’ll share.”

Dae sighed.

“It’s remarkable how casually you talk about prying into secret ancestral techniques from powerful clans across the sea.”

“It’s not stealing if we ask permission. Besides, I don’t think it’s a secret so much as most fiends just aren’t interested in learning magic. I don’t know much about them yet, but they seem to put a lot of emphasis on strength.”

“Something to consider for the new academy, I suppose. Rare and powerful techniques that can’t be found elsewhere will be quite a draw.”

They continued to chat idly until they arrived at the gate into the former girl’s dormitory.

“Narae, are you ready to see big sis’ house?”

Her little sister zoomed over to hover right in front of her face.

“Yes! I can’t wait! Is it a big mansion? A castle? A whole palace?! Big brother Dae, big sis was super strong and popular right?”

Dae chuckled nervously.

“W-well, she was certainly renowned. I’ve never seen Yoshika’s house, though—there used to be a formation here that would keep boys out.”

He turned to look askance at Yoshika.

“You did disable those, right?”

“I didn’t have to—I think the demons got rid of them while they were occupying the town.”

“I suppose we’ll have to make new ones ourselves.”

Yoshika shrugged.

“Why bother? It’s not like you’re going to stop people from dating each other, and there was no shortage of same-sex couples anyway.”

Jung laughed.

“While I’m inclined to agree with you in principle, I think the Magus is right—unisex dormitories are more trouble than they are worth. Perhaps the occasional pregnancy among the students is unavoidable, but that’s not a headache you want to encourage, especially when dealing with elites from all over the world.”

Dae nodded.

“Yes, exactly. It’s not so much the act of fraternization, but the consequences that we want to avoid as much as possible.”

Narae zipped from house to house, ignoring the adults’ conversation.

“Is it this one? This one? Where’s the biggest house? Big brother Dae, which one is it?”

“I don’t know! I already told you I’ve never been here. By the way, Yoshika, why is your little sister being so familiar with me? As far as I can recall we only briefly met once.”

Yoshika shrugged, but Narae answered for herself.

“Haeun talks about you a lot. If you're her precious big brother and she’s my best friend, then you’re my big brother too.”

The logic of children—as inviolable as it was impenetrable. Yoshika shrugged helplessly.

“There you go, I guess?”

Dae pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Didn’t they only know each other for a few weeks? How did they get so close?”

“The mysteries of children. Besides, Jia and Eui had only known each other for around a week before we started cultivating together.”

“I don’t think that’s a good example to be setting...”

Yoshika couldn’t really argue with that, as much as she wanted to. She smiled as they approached her home, still just as she remembered it—although Yue’s garden had tragically failed to survive.

“Here we are! Home.”

Narae froze, looking around at the surrounding houses for comparison and frowning.

“It’s so small!”

Yoshika giggled.

“This is actually an upgrade from where we started—it’s got a bigger living space, a second bedroom, and a courtyard in the back.”

“What the heck?! You can’t live here! You’re a queen now!”

“I’m really not. We haven’t decided on a form of government yet, but I’m absolutely not starting a monarchy.”

Jung chuckled.

“An empire, then? How bold. I can just imagine the legends of Empress Yoshika’s grand rivalry with the God-Emperor of Qin.”

Yoshika shuddered, recalling the oppressive attention of the presence that had witnessed her ascension through Qin’s essence.

“Don’t even joke about that. Anyway, let’s head inside—Yue’s already waiting for us.”

She led them into the house. The singular living room was rather cramped for six people, with two small couches flanking a tea table. A simple stove for heating and cooking sat at the far end of the table, powered by mana stones—or by wood for a particularly ignorant pair of young cultivators.

There was extra space behind one of the seats with a small pantry and some clean surfaces that could be used for meal preparation—the only extra living space they’d been granted after Jia and Eui had been forced to live with Yue.

From the ‘kitchen,’ there was a sliding door leading out to the courtyard—now completely choked with weeds—and another that accessed the combination toilet and bathing room. Finally, from the living room, two hinged doors each led to separate bedrooms, each large enough for two people with no sense of privacy or one Yan Yue.

Narae was right—it was hardly a space fit for royalty, but to Yoshika, it was perfect.

Yue stood to greet them with a bow.

“About time, Yoshika. I can’t believe you’d make me wait after dropping such a cryptic hint like that.”

Yoshika smiled apologetically and returned the bow.

“Sorry! Narae kept getting distracted by every little thing.”

“What a convenient scapegoat she must make.”

Yue glanced between Kaede and Yoshika, frowning.

“Actually, I have to ask—aren’t you in five places at once right now? Unless I’ve miscounted, I thought there were only four of you. Who’s in charge of your spirit avatar?”

“All of us. We’re using the same trick as Rika’s simulacra—letting the avatar draw from our memories to act autonomously rather than directly controlling it. It was something we could do even before we created this body, but we mostly avoided it.”

Jung hummed thoughtfully as she took a seat next to Yue and served herself some tea from a pot on the stove.

“I remember you working on that with Miss Takeda all the way back in Goryeo. Back then, it required all three of you to be in constant meditation to maintain.”

Yoshika shrugged.

“We’ve grown a lot since then. Between the four of us, devoting enough idle attention to maintain a fifth presence isn’t too difficult.”

Dae pursed his lips.

“About that, Miss Yoshika. There is something that’s been bothering me since your return.”

He awkwardly hovered between taking a seat next to Kaede or leaving it for someone else until Yoshika gestured for him to take it. She was content to stand, and Narae was busying herself inspecting every last corner of the house while the adults talked.

He bowed gratefully before taking a seat and continuing.

“I’ve seen Lee Jia, An Eui, and Li Meili appearing and disappearing all over the town and its surroundings, but since the end of the battle your spirit avatar and Lady Hayakawa have consistently walked from place to place—or occasionally made use of my teleportation circle.

“I know it’s insensitive, but I feel compelled to ask—how many living bodies do you currently possess? Not avatars or constructs or illusions, real bodies rather than simple vessels in the spiritual sense.”

Yoshika and Kaede both grimaced. Dae was as astute as ever, and his question cut straight to the heart of things.

“The answer depends on a few things, but I need everyone here to promise that this doesn’t leave the room.”

They all agreed readily, and Yoshika took a deep breath before continuing.

“I’m in a bit of an odd place, right now. This spirit form is as real as Meili ever was, and if anyone denies her as a person I’ll slap them. But I can’t deny that it doesn’t really represent any specific aspect of who we are—it doesn’t even represent us as a collective anymore, since we designed it as a combination of Jia and Eui, which is only half of us now.”

Kaede took a quiet sip of tea before picking up where Yoshika left off.

“My connection to this body is only superficial. It is Kaede’s body, but not Yoshika’s—mine, but not mine. I don’t know if it’s possible to separate Kaede from Yoshika anymore, but we do intend to try. Either way, as we currently are, neither of the bodies here are ‘real’ in the sense that Dae means. The spirit form is an extra—a useful tool that we can use to represent ourself as a unified whole, while my body is essentially just a vessel. I don’t want to think of it as crudely as a reanimated corpse, but...”

Yue shook her head.

“But wait, Hyeong was just pointing out that Jia, Eui, and Meili are all using temporary avatars. If they don’t count, and neither of you count...”

Yoshika smiled ruefully.

“Then we don’t have a body at all. Like a spirit. But actually, we do have one, which is part of what we gathered everyone here to talk about. Specifically those who I want to help with the governance of Jiaguo.”

Yue cast a pointed glance in Narae’s direction, and Yoshika giggled.

“And Narae, but she’s here for another reason. For now, it will be easier if I just show you...”

Yoshika closed her eyes. There, in the very center of her home, where all the aspects of her domain intersected, she could draw on her power to shift reality itself until they were no longer sitting in the tiny domicile, but inside of her soul realm.

It looked mostly the same, though everybody felt the transition. The biggest differences were that the room seemed to expand to fit the comfort of everyone within, despite the dimensions remaining unchanged, and the teenage-looking cat spirit lazily hanging from the back of one of the couches.

“Heian!”

Narae bolted over and tackled her to the ground in a hug.

“Where have you been? I missed you!”

Heian flailed in the child’s grasp, groaning.

“Busy! I have to do big girl stuff now that I’m a big girl. Mom put me in charge of spirit stuff, so I don’t have time to play.”

Narae pouted.

“That’s no fair! How come you got taller when you’re still younger than me?”

Heian picked herself up off the ground and prised herself from Narae’s grip before crossing her arms and nodding sagely.

“Because I’m wiser.”

Yoshika flicked her across the forehead.

“You’ve barely had to do anything more difficult than nap in here since we got back. Don’t be a bad friend—you can make some time for Narae.”

Heian rubbed her forehead, grumbling.

“Mmn, I don’t trust her.”

As if on cue, another presence rushed into the room. The formless moon spirit flowed like water, swirling around Yue excitedly. Despite Yoshika’s best efforts, she hadn’t been able to get very far in her attempts to communicate with or understand the moon spirit. Her best guess was that it had been away from human influence for so long that it had become a sort of raw and primordial being of unfettered emotion.

At the very least, it hadn’t done any harm.

Yue sighed miserably as it invaded her domain, doing what Yoshika could only describe as the spiritual equivalent of nipping at her playfully.

“Why is it always me? Bother someone else for a change!”

Yoshika chuckled.

“Sorry, I should have warned you. I still have a connection to the place it came from, but it doesn’t seem eager to go home. I think she likes you.”

“I wish she had a better way to communicate it than smothering me.”

“Maybe you can teach her. Heian and Iseul both had to practice quite a bit before they could communicate as well as they do now.”

Yue bit her thumbnail pensively.

“Maybe...I admit I do feel some sort of indescribable affinity with this spirit, but that’s a matter for later. You mentioned a treasury?”

Yoshika and Kaede nodded.

“We’re in luck. Jiaguo isn’t entirely without resources. The first and most obvious is pretty closely linked with our conversation earlier—the Sovereign’s Tear.”

With an effort of will, Yoshika expanded the space between the couches, replacing the quaint little tea table with a glowing jade dais. Above the dais floated a perfectly spherical orb, glowing a light pink color and roughly the size of two fists held together. A red tear-drop-shaped gemstone floated around it in a lazy orbit.

“This is me. My only ‘real’ body, at the moment. I figured it out after talking to Jianmo and Yang Qiu about magical cores. I’ve only been able to survive after having all of my bodies destroyed because my sense of self—the part of me that makes me who I am—is attached to this.”

Narae stared at the dais with starry eyes, but even she didn’t dare approach it. Yoshika was doing her best to hold the Tear’s overwhelming power at bay, but it was still palpable to everyone present.

They all stared at it, awestruck, while Yoshika continued her explanation.

“This is why I was stuck before. It took every bit of focus we had, but now the Tear’s essence flows through me, and from me into the soul realm, and from the soul realm into our world. Jiaguo isn’t just a leyline nexus anymore—it’s the leyline nexus.”

Yue tore her eyes away from the gem to look at Yoshika, her eyes widening as comprehension dawned on her face.

“The source of all essence in the entire world—and you’ve jammed yourself into the font as a living tap. Yoshika, I know I said I was finished being surprised by you, but you’ve truly outdone yourself.”

Dae scratched his cheek, chuckling awkwardly.

“W-well, I suppose that will make the academy an attractive place for cultivators.”

Yue shook her head.

“Forget about that! What happens when Yoshika’s essence replaces everything else? Is her domain going to encompass the entire world?”

“In theory, perhaps, but that would take eons, and by then—”

Yoshika shook her head.

“Yue’s right. As long as I’m tied to the Tear like this, I’ll be the source of all new essence in the world. We’ll have to find a way to destroy the divine seal to give all that essence a place to go—probably the Void, the greedy thing—but I don’t plan on having this world draw essence from the divine realm, even then.”

Dae blinked.

“What are you saying?”

“This is an absolute secret. I normally wouldn't breathe a word of it to anybody, but I'm counting on you all to help me build Jiaguo from nothing, and you can't do that effectively if you aren't aware of my goals and motivations.”

Jung reached out and placed her hand over Yoshika’s.

“It’s alright, sweetie—you know you have our support, no matter what.”

Yoshika nodded.

“Thank you. The truth is, I came to a decision after facing The Bloody Sovereign.”

She met each of their gazes in turn, steeling her resolve.

“I intend to become the Sovereign of this world.”