Aisen only needed a glance to understand.
This was him from one of his many cycles in the Dark Souls world—an Aisen who had abandoned every other path and thrown himself completely into the study of sorcery.
As the group leader, summoning doppelgängers carried no cooldown restriction for him. So he kept buying Possibility Doppelgängers, and one after another they manifested in succession—
A cleric in plain robes, a sacred chime in hand, devoted solely to the path of miracles.
A mage holding a staff sprouting an enormous soul crystal, drunk on the mysteries of crystal sorcery.
A minimalist expert with nothing but an old-fashioned katana slung at the waist, dressed in simple cloth—someone who pursued parries and footwork to their absolute limit.
Towering, burly men. Lithe, athletic women. Small draconic humanoids with dragon traits…
Some faces were strikingly handsome, some utterly ordinary, and some bore the eldritch aspect of an ancient god—enough to make anyone's sanity meter plummet.
All of them were him.
Versions of him from countless past cycles.
"Boring," he muttered.
With a casual wave of his hand, every figure vanished at his dismissal.
In a raucous izakaya, Tsunade tipped her head back and drained the last mouthful of sake in her cup.
Then she used the Body Flicker Technique—her outline blurred, and in the next instant she was standing in a silent back alley.
After confirming no one was around, she paid the points.
Another Tsunade appeared within the cramped alley.
The same long blonde hair. Similar facial contours.
But the temperament was worlds apart.
The original Tsunade's boldness and wild, unrestrained edge were nowhere to be found in this doppelgänger.
Instead, she radiated a kind of maternal warmth—her brows and eyes relaxed, gentle, tolerant, as if she could hold the whole world in her arms.
Even her figure was fuller, softer, more rounded than Tsunade's own.
"This…?!" Tsunade gasped.
The last trace of drunken haze in her mind evaporated instantly.
She raised a hand, gathered chakra in her palm, and lightly pressed it against the doppelgänger's abdomen—slightly rounded, with the unmistakable softness of real flesh.
Chakra fed the information back to her in a flood.
From the shape of the pelvis, to the abdominal musculature, to the traces of stretched ligaments…
Tsunade reached a conclusion.
This body had given birth at least twice.
"Was it Dan?" she whispered, trembling without even realizing it.
"In some world… we had children? More than one…?"
No one answered.
In that narrow, silent alley, only her ragged breathing remained.
Golden hair fell forward, hiding her expression.
She kept her hand where it was, fingertips registering that yielding warmth—yet her body was rigid, like a statue.
After a long time, Tsunade slowly pulled her hand back.
She didn't look at that doppelgänger—carrying the weight of another possible life—even once.
Exhausted, she waved her hand and dispelled it.
The alley became empty again.
Tsunade dragged her heavy steps back into the noisy izakaya and dropped into her seat as if nothing had happened.
Without even looking, she grabbed the half-full bottle of strong liquor on the table, tipped it up, and drank straight from the mouth—hard.
Back in the run-down apartment, Sakiko glanced at her father, curled back up under the bedding, unconscious and insensible once more.
This clearly wasn't a suitable place to test Possibility Doppelgänger.
So she left the building and stepped out onto the street.
She took out her phone and opened the Otherworld Navigation App.
[A palace has been detected nearby. Palace Ruler: Toyokawa Seikoku.]
[Enter?]
[Yes / No]
Her fingertip didn't hesitate for even a second.
She pressed [Yes] hard.
Space rippled with a violent, visible distortion. The scenery in front of her twisted—then rebuilt itself.
The filthy, decrepit apartment complex disappeared.
In its place rose a massive Japanese-style palace—grim, magnificent, and steeped in ill omen.
The sky was no longer clear. It was smothered under congealed blood-red hues and rolling, heavy cloud banks.
Toyokawa Seikoku's palace in the cognitive world corresponded, in reality, to that very apartment building.
Last time, she had forced her way into the palace from inside the apartment. That was why she'd been trapped on the Failed One's Stairway.
But as long as she stayed on the outer perimeter of the palace, she could use the Otherworld Navigation App to enter the cognitive world safely—
and because she was in a "safe" state, she could return to reality at any time through the app.
Here, she didn't need to worry about leaving traces.
She didn't need to fear alerting anyone.
It was the perfect test field.
She paid the points.
Another Sakiko appeared before her.
This doppelgänger was nothing like her own slender frame—her posture stood straight like a pine, packed with restrained power.
A sharply tailored black suit made her look even colder, more severe.
In her left hand, she gripped a long, archaic katana.
Most striking of all were her eyes—
golden irises that looked as if they would never go out.
Sakiko closed her eyes, focused, and carefully read the feedback streaming from the doppelgänger.
This possible version of herself was a half-dragon, half-human existence—a "hybrid," born of a powerful draconic bloodline.
That bloodline granted her terrifying physical capabilities far beyond human limits: strength, speed, and recovery.
More crucially, she possessed a bloodline-refinement technique called Rampage Blood.
By deliberately weakening the human will and activating draconic genes into heightened expression, it could unleash monstrous combat power in a short burst.
But the price was steep—
the murderous intent rooted in those draconic genes would erode a hybrid's rational mind.
Each use of Rampage Blood would shorten lifespan, accelerating the hybrid's degeneration into a Dead Servitor.
"So in this state… is the doppelgänger completely immune to the corruption of murderous intent?"
"Or does it lose control the moment Rampage Blood is activated?"
"Or will that murderous intent feed back into me—into the original body?"
Sakiko analyzed calmly, her brows knitting almost despite herself.
The risk was too high.
She wouldn't test it here. She decided she would wait until the group leader had free time, and try under his supervision.
At worst, she would be completely swallowed by murderous intent, become a Dead Servitor—
and then the group leader could rewind the world and restore her.
At the same time, she sensed that the doppelgänger also wielded a Word Spirit ability called Lordflame.
By chanting dragon script to invoke rules, it could erupt in an instant with terrifying high-temperature fire and explosive force—devastatingly destructive.
Sakiko's thoughts raced.
This doppelgänger's individual combat power—strength, speed, regeneration, and Lordflame's long-range annihilation—would absolutely crush the Persona she had only just awakened, Icarus.
If she combined close-quarters slaughter in Rampage Blood with Lordflame bombardment…
could she use it to defeat her father's Shadow?
She reached a conclusion:
"…Probably not."
Under the four shackles—Hierarchy, Failure, Betrayal, Solitude—her power could only be expressed at one-sixteenth, while her father's Shadow would be amplified sixteenfold.
At best, it was a faint hope.
Unless she could reach strength at least 256 times greater than her father's Shadow, she wouldn't even be able to break even under the rule suppression.
To actually win, she would likely need 500 to 1000 times the power.
So the urgent priority remained the same:
She had to break the rules of the four shackles.
Sakiko waved a hand, dismissing the hybrid doppelgänger.
She took one more look at the palace—made even more feral and oppressive under blood-red skies and churning clouds—
then used the Otherworld Navigation App to return to reality.
Space rippled again. The sinister palace receded like a tide.
The real world's decrepit apartment building filled her view once more.
After everyone experienced Possibility Doppelgänger, the group chat erupted into intense discussion.
Join here to read ahead.
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TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter50)
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I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter50)
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