Chapter 92: Parallel Minds

"Pitka, I think what you did was overkill."

"I never knew it became like this!"

Two of your clones sharpened their combat skills, preying upon the mindless Calamities with every brutal method possible as it gives them more 'reward' points than it should, strangely. Collecting the blood and guts of their enemies, this allows you to create another one. Then three of them begin to create more mind-wavering massacres, and then you make another, and another.

The unending cascade of murder and death ends with you creating around 35 killing machines that grows in ectasy everytime they get their hands on a hostile. As scary as it is, a maniacal laughter begins to permeate your ears.

At first they still use the basic moveset you gave to them to fight, but after an amount of time passes and their craving for reward points begins to climb, numerous movements are recorded in their hive mind's database and then sent into your mana sea.

"Decapitation, skinning, 100 thousand slices—what are they!? Serial killers!?"

"Pitka, I'm so disappointed at you."

"Why is it my fault!?"

The sentient hive mind starts to exude critical sadism. Good news is, you have 35 supersoldiers that can annihilate even an A rank Calamities with ease. And in other news, you receive a peculiar message sent to your mana sea that was supposed to be the data report from the clones.

'Mama, did I do a good job?' is the content.

'Mama!? They are calling me Mama!?'

"What's with the face?"

"...The Chi of Decidit, the hivemind, they are trying to communicate, and they are calling me Mama."

"Oh my." Lues puffs her cheeks in an attempt to contain her laughter. "So who's the dad?"

"This is not a joke! We need to find that Laum before sunset!"

"Hmm." The crimson devil caresses her chin. "We've been searching for 20 minutes, even your clones didn't find any humanoid Calamity."

Both of you soar on the battlefield that is currently being wrecked by the incarnation of devils, which is strange. Because if they are the devils, that means you're Satan.

'Why did it become like this!?'

You only have a couple of minutes left to search for the target. Time was ticking, the sun was sinking into the horizon with each minute and you can't afford to fail your first mission as a detachment. Though you're wondering what the giant explosion and sky-high massive beam of light was all about. Did the main battalion succeed in subduing the Megiddo Carmlan?

'I might want to send one of my viruses to check what's happening.'

While your physical thinking processor focuses on the search, the guardian's mind is in the task of controlling the virus while also scouting for any humanoid Calamity.

Though this is beginning to become a hassle. There is some massive stress that goes on with the way you use your dual consciousness and your seperate brain. The thing is, you're doing it all manually by yourself and although it didn't strain as much as stress but the huge amount of information made by the quantiple multitasking slowly becomes a mildly uncomfortable feeling that grows.

Dual consciousness is a passive effect given by the Flower of Perspicacity that allows you to multitask as if you have two consciousnesses. It's not parallel, your mind is only amplified to be able to do two times the task your original brain could do.

You still have around 30 minutes left to hunt for the Laum, so you decide to deal with the discomfort as fast as you can. Your consciousness strings are wider and stronger than before to the point that you can even convert mana 20 meters in radius near you. The next idea might be detrimental and fundamental at the same time.

Parallel mind, sharing your body and mana sea management with fragmented consciousness, focusing on their specific task. Thing is, you don't know if it will work like they are in unison where your multiple minds will work the same way and the same goal. The uncharted territory is scary no matter how you look at it.

The benefit is also enticing, with a separate self AKA parallel minds or consciousness, you can maximize multitasking four times faster and more efficiently!

'For the sake of the other-self that I can slave!'

Just imagine, having just one task to do while numerous others part of you manage the extra hassle that you were supposed to deal with when you only had one consciousness.

Firstly, you rack your brain on the most efficient and the best appearing results of many methods you can do. But looking at your current knowledge about souls and consciousness, you can only cut and fragment your consciousness strings which will heavily impact your ability to control your virus vessels specifically, as you can no longer stretch out your consciousness to spy and appraise from afar. Utilizing dual consciousness to double the parallel mind splitting might be a good idea.

You stop flying.

"Hmm? Pitka?"

You abort the virus controlling your mana sea's guardian did. Forcefully, you try to modify your consciousness strings which is only possible because of how developed your soul is. The numerous strings emerge from one center, so you make the center to only hold four thicker strings and on the end of each string are the branches. While the process happens, insurmountable amounts of pain mock you of failure. The pain of plucking your own strings is equal to being diced alive hundred of times, but you have died more than thousands times already so tis' only a scratch.

Miraculously, the process is done and you notice that you're one of the four branches, having its own separate mind. The other three branches feel the same way and eventually, an inner voice can be felt from the three other parallel consciousnesses.

"Uhm, hello?"

"Woooaaaa, that is trippy as hell!"

"I would like to refrain from doing such acts again in the future."

Are what those three other parallel minds are saying at the same time, you as one of part of the branching consciousness begin to communicate with the other parallel mind.

"So, how do we operate now?"