Do Entities Dream Of Crystal Sheep? (Endbringer Lewd Worm CYOA) Chapter 6 (Patreon)

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Chapter 6


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[Evelyn]

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Silence shrouded the husk of what was once called a ‘city’.  Sterile white rubble blanketed everything in a manner eerily akin to  snow. At the places right beneath the Tower, the buildings and overgrown  trees were all ground to dust under the weight of its collapse; all of  it was now nothing more than a sea of white.
The silence stretched out for a few moments more, before a small patch in the center suddenly began to tremble.

And then the ground burst open In an explosion of force and stone, blown  away by the unfurling of a multitude of unearthly blade-like wings.

“Fucking hell-” Evy exclaimed. And just like that the eerie, smothering silence was broken.
Evy paused for a moment, taking in the scene for what it was. It was at  this point that she noticed the Pod silently hovering behind her. Her  ire quickly returned and the annoyed woman started to swipe at it,  trying and failing to swat the frantically moving pod out of the air.
“Stay still and take it like a man, you defective soap-box!”

“Negative. This pod is not a ‘man’. Additionally, this pod is programmed  to prioritize its own safety and any damaging action will be taken as  hostility. However, this pod is willing to compromise, and apologize to  artificial human Evy for making her feel uncomfortable.”

Evy scowled at it for a moment, not really willing to let it go.  Eventually, the irate woman forced herself to relax and sighed. “Okay,  pod. I accept your apology. It’s no use arguing with you anyways. How  about you recover our little ‘heroes’ so we can get down to business,  yeah?”

“Agreement.” The pod answered, before turning to move towards the distance.

Evy turned to survey her surroundings once more, her mind conspicuously  blank at the sight such destruction. “ Feels weird, not being able to do  anything about this...  Then again, all this power might be getting to  my head if I thought I'd be able to solve everything. Huh.”
Evy shook her head and turned to face her larger counterpart as it stood behind her, a redheaded twin securely held in each arm.

Evy just raised her hands. [Evelyn] stared for a moment, and nodded as  she moved Devola to a smaller wing by her hip, which in turn secured the  girl tightly by wrapping around her.. The endbringer proceeded to pick  up the disgruntled woman like an angry kitten, before adjusting her into  a better grip for her comfort.
Then massive wings beat once more, propelling the inhuman weapon of mass destruction along her passengers into the sky.

-x-
[9S]​

9S woke up to the sounds of chirping birds and a bright blue sky.

“Huh?” For a moment, his mind was empty of all thought as he stared  blankly at the clouds idly floating by. But then he started to remember. 9S flailed around as he rose into a seating position, before frantically running towards the edge of the building.

“The tower…” He spoke in a voice so filled with exhaustion and triumph that he could hardly recognize it as it his own.

“It’s over… it’s finally over.” His voice was cracked and slightly  hysterical, but the tears that ran down his face were of joy and sorrow  in equal measure.
“The war, the machines. After all this time, it’s finally over.” He  should have been celebrating, happy that he had fulfilled the greatest,  most heartfelt wish of every android on the planet, but the only thing  he felt was a great emptiness gnawing at his heart. True, he felt a  little bit of triumph at his victory, for driving the machines away, for  killing that fucking bitch.

But then why was he back here, alive, without a purpose, without a home  and without… 2B. 9S closed his eyes as memories started to resurface.  Memories that for all intents and purposes, should have been lost.

‘2B… it was truly an honor to fight with you. Truly.’
‘The honor was mine.‘
His eyes snapped open. “Oh… these are my memories… all of them.” Even the ones he had lost when he wasn't able to backup his data to the Bunker in time.

“I wished you could see this 2B. We finally won.”

“But then again, I wouldn’t have wanted you to see me like this.” He raised his arm to stare at his stump- wait, what?

To his bafflement, he was greeted with the sight of two relatively pristine, undamaged and most importantly, whole, hands.

“Wait, how did- Did pod manage to create a backup? But When?” The ‘how’ was left silent though. By that time 9S came to the realization that he was fairly certain that the red that overwhelmed his mind in those final moments was most certainly the  logic virus. He knew all too well what the pods were capable of, but  purging him of the logic virus at such a late stage, while also  preserving his memories? That was a little bit beyond them. He would  have called it a miracle, if he didn't see the irony in the fact that he  might also be the only android in the world who didn’t want it.

9S clenched his hands, and the sound of the faux-leather in his gloves creaking never felt so loud in the silence as it did while he stared at the vast swathes of white in the distance where a gargantuan tower once stood.

He sighed.

“Thankfully 9S, you still can. After all, 2B is right here, yes?” A feminine voice rang out from behind.

The startled scanner model spun around, his anger flaring, only to for it be drowned out by hope, confusion, and finally fear.

A few feet behind him, a gynoid leaned against the wall, her posture  paradoxically both relaxed and tense. She looked awfully similar to a  Yorha model, but 9S felt that there was something decidedly off  about her. For one thing, she was wearing personalized human clothing,  something he only saw the resistance androids do. There was a reason  even the rogue Yorha soldiers kept their uniforms; ‘Normal’ clothing was  simply not designed to deal with the heat and strain put on it by their  advanced combat systems the same way Yorha uniforms were. But even  then, he couldn’t tell what model she was either.

‘I would have mistaken her for a new model, but command would have announced something about it at the very least. And I hadn’t heard anything of the like  before… The Bunker fell.’ But no, that wasn’t what bothered him.
There was a quality to her skin and her hair and her startling blue eyes that unnerved him.
The unease only intensified after he subtly did a basic wide range scan and came back with nothing. 9S's hackles rose but after staring at her for a few moments longer, he saw that she was content to simply do nothing.

He decided that she wasn’t a threat for now but 9S kept her in field of  vision all the same, even as he turned to face the figure lying on the  floor.

His breath caught in his throat. “2B,” His friend, his companion, the  only family he had left in this world, lay there on the ground seemingly  untarnished by the tragedy that befell her.

The not-Yorha gynoid followed his gaze, and snorted. His  attention snapped back to the woman and his eyes narrowed. Before he  could say anything though, she started to speak.

“Yeah, the pods were all dramatic and sappy and had the two of you lying  against each other so that it'd be the first thing you see when you  woke up. I guess they didn’t count on the fact that you’d roll around  and wake up on the ‘wrong side of the bed’ so to speak.” She laughed  lightly at that. “It was fun watching you angsting around like an edgy  teenager for a while, but you just didn’t stop, so I had to call  you out.” She shrugged. “Wait, if you were a human, you’d be around 19,  so I guess-” He tuned out the annoying gynoid as she continued to spout  nonsense, and rushed towards 2B, making sure to keep himself between her  and the stranger in case she attacked. 9S also had to determine if this  was the genuine 2B, or if it was a mockery like the ones made by the fucking machines.
So far his scans returned a positive and a relieving lack of any logic  viruses or meddling. He’d have to check again with the pod once it  returned but for now, 9S found solace in fact that anything of 2B  survived at all.

Eventually, he decided that it was time to address the glaring question.  “Who are you, and why don’t you show up in my scans?” Well, she DID  show up, but so far all the results were either inconclusive or they  were just plain wrong. Like, how could she possibly have a crystal the size of an island lodged in her brain? 9S resolved to sit down and re-calibrate the entire thing at the next opportunity.

The woman tilted her head inquisitively, before nodding. “Ah. I’m sorry,  I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Evy, and I don’t show up in  your scans because I’m human. Or, at least the body I’m currently using is.”

9S froze, before his eyes narrowed into pinpricks as his anger boiled.  “Do you think this is FUNNY? What could possibly drive you to joke ab-”  9S’s rant was cut off as the woman took out an antique knife, like the  ones he'd seen in the documentaries and made a small cut on her palm.  Then she threw the knife. 9S caught it, idly noting that the wound  healed nearly instantly and when he turned his attention to the knife in  his question, he nearly dropped it in surprise.

“That… that isn’t.”

“No, it isn’t.” the woman, the human confirmed. “That is human blood.”

9S had never been so lost as he was at that moment. He simply didn’t  know what to do, what to even think, at the impossibility standing  before him.
Not after learning all that he had.
“Where were you?” He asked finally, tired. “How are you even alive?  Here?” And then his eyes narrowed again as he caught onto a particular  detail. “And what do you mean by ‘this body?’”

She beamed at him. “You caught on quickly. As you suspect, I am Indeed  not truly human.. not anymore at least. You are most likely aware of the  existence of parallel worlds with the whole mess the white chlorination  syndrome caused, yes? Well, I'm from a world whose history diverged  drastically a long, long time ago. I was once a ‘normal’ human girl, but  I ended up usurping the mind of an alien super-weapon somewhere along  the way. This." She said as she gestured at her body. "This is just a  ‘fork’ of my mind created so that I could interact with you without  having the situation instantly escalating into violence. As for why I’m  here? Well-”

And then the artificial human started to go on to weave the most ridiculous, depressing and convoluted story he had ever heard.

-x-
​

“-And that’s why I came here to recruit some help. I wouldn’t be wrong  to assume that the androids here would like this opportunity, yes? I’d  tone down the fanaticism a lot if you don’t want to scare people off,  but otherwise, there are a lot of people who would like your help. I’d  go to the council of humanity for help but I disagree quite vehemently  with their… practices and how they treat their subordinates. I  don’t need to explain why, now do I?” It was 9S’s turn to laugh, but  unlike hers it was a harsh, broken thing.

“No. No you don’t.”

Evy sighed. “Well, I was planning on getting Yorha and the androids in  the local resistance camps to band together. That would be enough to  start things up, and it would be well within Yorha’s capabilities to  provide us with as much manpower as we need if they had access to a  massive amount of resources-”

“Yorha can’t help you.” 9S spat out venomously. “Are you blind, or can you simply not see that Yorha is dead! The bunker is destroyed! What you’re looking for isn’t here anymore!”  He was screaming by the end of it, and Evy looked at him wide-eyed in  confusion before realization finally seemed to dawn on her.

“Damn it, Evy, why does this always happen? Ugh.” She mumbled. 9S  was certain she didn’t intend for him to hear that, but before he could  reply, she continued. “Well, 9S, the thing about being an  extra-dimensional eldritch abomination, is that sometimes, death isn’t  always an obstacle anymore.” She grinned, and this time, there was  something decidedly predatory about it. “After all, you and 2B can  attest to that, can’t you?”

9S scowled. “It was you? What about the pods?”

Evy pushed herself off the wall, before she started stretching and  rolling her neck. “They were about to try something admittedly very risky to recover your memories but I had a better alternative.”

“I see.” 9S replied as he stared at her contemplatively.

Evy smiled. “So would you be willing to give me a chance? To see how this turns out?” she asked as she extended a hand to him.

9S was taken aback at the gesture, but only for a moment. Then, he extended his hands as well.

Both of them.

Evy looked at him confused for a moment, before her eyes widened as the world faded away into nothingness.

-x-​

When awareness returned to his mind in what 9S recognized as the all too  familiar hacking interface, he took a moment to take stock of himself.  His consciousness had materialized into a well defined spectral image of  himself, and he was a bit startled at how detailed and smooth it was to  move here. That was a testament to how powerful Evy was as a  ‘computer’. Each individual movement he made in this place was recorded  with more data than he had seen in his entire lifetime.
It reminded him of how small he was in the grand scheme of things.

“I may have bitten off more than I could chew here.”

“No shit Sherlock.” Evy’s voice rang out from behind him. 9S spun around  to face his opponent, but the sight before him overwhelmed his mind  with awe and terror in equal measure.
‘Evy’ stood in the middle of a white, rectangular platform and stared at  him with an eyebrow raised. However, the consciousness that represented  her identity was only a flickering image, a projection so thin and  fragile that 9S’s form was several times stronger than it, here in her  own mind.
However, it was the rest of it that startled him.

Yes, ‘Evy’ was only a thin projection, but it was merely an extension of a winged thing in  the distance that set off every single self preservation instinct he  had with such intensity that he nearly terminated his ‘hacking attempt’  right then and there. But what was above her startled him the most.

He had entered the machine network a few times before, and one thing he  noticed was how the data and consciousness stored within the network  took the form of a ‘sea’ of cubical units floating in the ‘sky’ above  him with the sheer mass of the data it contained within. If that was the  case, then the literal planets of data that floated above them in the distance spoke volumes of what ‘Evy’ was capable of should she so wish it.

“So who’s Sherlock? I’ve heard him being mentioned in some of the older documentaries.”

Evy looked at him in incomprehension, and then she proceeded to sigh.  “Of course you don’t know who Sherlock Holmes is. After we’re done with  this mess, I’ll have to introduce you to the wonders of the internet.”

Unbeknownst to 9S, Evy was panicking.

While she was indeed in a position of power, the ‘high ground’ so to  speak, she had absolutely no defenses in place against this vector of  attack. From her inherited memories, and the details her counterpart had  been streaming to her, many beings had tried to hack a shard before.  AI, memetic abominations, and a plethora other things that most likely  should not be named have tried, and failed.
It was, however, the first time an Entity had been hacked through what [Evelyn] could only identify as the Soul. Her human half was frozen in dumbfounded horror, while her ‘shard brain’ exulted in the sheer novelty of it.

Only the sheer versatility of the tools at her disposal and her  counterpart’s vast records of facing technopathic organisms saved her  when 9S’s avatar used her moment of distraction to attack. Evy flailed  as she stumbled backwards and tried to conjure up the strongest mental  barrier she could imagine. The thing is, she needed an image to work  with, and in that moment, the first thing to pop up in her mind was a  cherished memory of her watching her first anime back in high school.  There wasn’t anything special about it, and she hated the show itself  but those moments of confusion, awe and dissatisfaction left enough of  an impression that she managed to latch onto it.

And that, was how the characteristic octagonal ripples of an A.T.  field spread out in front of her, cutting 9S off as he ran into it with  the same intensity as that of a car meeting a boulder.

Evelyn knew that the field was not real; it was only a mental  projection, but in this place where her mind unconsciously associated it  with the concept of a ‘barrier’, it might as well have been the real  thing. Evy also suspected that the only reason it was so strong was  because her counterpart was literally throwing a vast majority of her processing power in an attempt to study the phenomenon.

Evy sighed as 9S stared daggers at her from across the barrier, and decided to sit down.

“Why are you fighting me 9S? I think I get it but I really can’t  understand what you’re gone through. I can’t even imagine the pain and  suffering you’ve undergone all these years for a purpose you’ve only  recently figured out was a lie. I get that me bringing up something so  similar so soon might have set you off, but we can’t resolve our issues  unless we communicate.”

9S glared at her, but he quickly came to the conclusion that there wasn’t really anything he could do at the moment either.

“Ok. I’m listening. Show me proof of your sincerity.” Evy just nodded  and motioned her hand towards her counterpart. Many cubes of data  floated down between them, before unfolding into memories. And that, was  how 9S discovered the aftermath of the cataclysm that went down in  Earth Bet, and balked at the sheer scale of it.

“This is what I need you for. And there are many other worlds just like this one.” She answered.

9S scrutinized her for a long time in the silence, before he eventually asked.
“Why are you doing this? If you knew about my world, you must have many  other alternatives. Why us? I don’t believe for a second that you’re  altruistic enough to do this for no reason. I just want to know why.”

Evy hummed. “Well, to give you a better idea, I’ll take you as an example.” She said, pointing a finger at the disgruntled android.
“You are an android, but for all that you’re ‘artificial’, you think,  you feel, you act... You have your own desires, your own goals. I'd say  you're about as human as the genuine article. Did you know that humanity  was once terrified at the very idea of artificial intelligence?  We were so scared of the idea that our own creations would render us  useless and take our place, we were so scared of the future, that we went so far as to make horror movies about it. But then here you are.”  She waved her hands around, gesturing at 9S. “Humans don’t have a  reason for our existence, we don’t have a predetermined purpose that we  know of, so we are forced to search for one.”

“However, the very idea that the only reason you exist is to  fulfill a predetermined purpose, is in itself dehumanizing. People are  meant to seek and discover their own purpose, not the other way around!  But then, what would that make us?”
“You did serve a purpose, you were a tool in every sense of the term,  you had a function, a well defined reason for your existence. But then  the question arises as to why your creators allowed the capacity for  emotion if that was the case. Why did they go to such lengths to give  the five senses to a mere ‘tool’ when they weren't really required at  all? It’s something to think about, isn’t it? Well, I’m in the same  boat. Only, I did this to myself, inadvertently as it may have  been.“ She paused. Evy had been trying to explain the feelings bubbling  in her heart but no matter how she said it, she couldn't seem to be able  to convey it the way she wanted to. Ironically, for all her talk about  communication, Evy was never really that good at it herself.

“I am a woman with far too much power and yet not nearly enough of it. I  left my entire life behind me when I got this power, and yet I have no  conceivable way of getting my life back. The only option I do have is to  move forward and make something of myself, or to rot away in some  hellhole depressed and lonely. So, here I am, wandering around aimlessly  without anything to drive me forward other than my directives, directives that force me to grant the wishes of others and fulfill their wildest sexual fantasies.” She spat.
“You know how that feels, well not the sexual fantasies but the rest.  Well, I wish you didn’t but you are one of the few people I can relate  to right now. Right now I have nothing, I’m a tool without a purpose. -
“I’m a woman with nothing to return to. The only things I do have to drive me forward are my powers and my memories. I have access to  worlds so amazing and wonderful that it would make you cry, worlds that  are so dangerous and cruel that the one I came from could be considered pleasant.  Then there are places so fucked up that I can’t help but want to accept  the role my body was designed for and wash it all away in hellfire and  ruin.”

“Maybe it's my hubris speaking, maybe it's just me going on a power trip  after I received enough power to literally blow planets apart, where  before I would struggle to even finish a dozen push-ups. There is so  much I can accomplish in these worlds with my power, but there are also  so many problems there. I can’t fix everyone’s problems for them,  that’d be pointless, but there are things where my strength would be  really useful. Worlds where my assistance could shift the balance  drastically.
I want to fight, I want to study magic and get better at discovering and  assimilating all the new and wonderfully weird shit out there. I want  to learn the secrets of the universe and along the way, I want to help  the people I know of and meet. Is that so bad? It's from a part of me  that is something distinctly inhuman, and a part of me that still thinks  this all just a convoluted nightmare.

But, it's also the only part of me that has any direction in the first place. The only thing I as an individual desire, is to move forward.” Evy smiled bitterly.

“We could fight each other to the bitter end and continue this pointless  spiral, or we could give each other a chance, give ourselves a chance,  to carve out a better future. It might not be perfect, and prone to dumb  decisions but things in reality are hardly ever perfect.”

“So, are you willing to work with me?”

They stared at each other for some time, before finally, 9S nodded, and proceeded to exit the ‘hacking space’.
“So.” He asked. “What are you going to do?”

Evy smiled, and for the first time since he had met her, 9S thought that it looked genuine. “I’m gonna revive Yorha.”

-x-
[Evelyn]​

Silence drenched the streets of what could generously be called a  ‘city’. A white ‘snow’, or ‘salt’ covered the vicinity, where the Tower  once stood.
However, the city itself was only a superficial reproduction of an era  that had ended aeons ago. It was painstakingly preserved true, but it  served no purpose ; it was merely a stage, a prop to enact a fantasy.  And while the ‘snow’ that bathed the landscape did resemble the  salt that resulted from the fateful day that doomed humanity oh so long  ago, it too was only a facsimile, a superficial element that set the  stage for a play that cycled back to its beginning once more.

[Evelyn] couldn't help but find it distasteful. She didn’t really feel  emotions like her ‘human’ half did. Well, she technically could since  shards were indeed capable of reproducing the feeling of ‘emotion’  after long term exposure to a human host, but she couldn’t really  develop something she already had now could she? It was still there but  she was forced to have it split away from her and into its own separate  fork to manage the hormones and emotions of a ‘real’ human body.
It’s not as if she could shove the entirety of her consciousness into a tiny human brain without making it explode.

But even then, [Evelyn] could only feel something that would be best  described as disgust as she stared at this world. Her human half thought  that this world would be ‘perfect’ for a cycle. The endbringer could  understand where she was coming from, after all a world of endless  conflict had its own appeal. However, her judgement was biassed and her  conclusions were formed from incomplete data provided from a perspective  designed to emphasize drama. Yes the Entities were callous, wasteful and uncreative, but they weren’t stupid. There was a reason they  managed to defeat civilizations far superior to their own and  assimilate their strength into the collective. There was a reason the  older shards had access to powers her human self could only describe as godlike. There was a reason they managed to create [Sting]. Given the opportunity, [Evelyn] herself could get around her own issues with ‘creativity’ quite easily, even without the memories of a young human adult crammed into her data storage.

However, [Evelyn] wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, since it gave the Endbringer the greatest boon of all: Insight, and a brand new perspective that changed everything.  It was also why she disliked this place so much. This pointless spiral  into doom, this repetitive cycle that played out the same story every  single time, this stagnation that lasted for ten millennia… She hated  all of it and for the first time, [Evelyn] as a shard felt emotion of her own accord.

Disgust.

She referenced her experiences as a complete gestalt, and managed to  understood her feelings it a little bit better. She didn’t want to feel  or experience stagnation like this; There was nothing to be learnt here.

Her very existence was centered around evolution ; to be more effective,  more efficient… to become better than what she had been before. Even  her kind’s ‘infamous’ desire to grasp negentropy was only the means to  an end. To stave off the end, to multiply and to simply become more.

To have more time.

Her human self would most likely consider it ironic, but to her, it was just simple logic.

And that, brought her to something her counterpart had considered a  ‘minor’ detail about this world. ‘Maso’. It wasn’t anything new, as the  Entities had encountered similar substances before, but this particular  variant had.. Potential. Potential that could be abused really, really  well with her current tools.

There were many sources of power [Evelyn] could easily access to buff  herself up but the strongest of them all were understandably locked  behind a wall of danger that was appropriate for the power acquired.  Things like the infinity stones and such were simply not worth the  effort to collect at this point in time. Not when there were better  alternatives that were relatively easier to acquire.
In the same vein, ingrained strength was usually barred from her. She  didn’t have an actual human body to hone and train Qi or the like, and  harnessing her soul properly in her current state had more risks than  benefits, and actually increasing the potency of such a power would be  increasingly difficult even after acquiring it. The same applied to  magic.

Usually.

However, maso particles were unique in that they were a physical  expression of spiritual phenomena. A trans-dimensional particle that  could bridge the gap between multiple realms in a way that was all too  familiar to the endbringer. However, as eldritch as the particle was, it  was an actual, physical fundamental unit in the same vein as atoms and  molecules…

Which meant that she could reproduce it using her [Domain].

…which meant technically, [Evelyn] had access to an infinite supply of potent, multidimensional magic that could affect the soul.

Evy had instructed her to upgrade herself, and [Evelyn] was all too happy to comply.

She leveraged her domain to affect herself, literally submerging herself  with maso particles. having created it herself, [Evelyn] realized that  she had a degree of control over how each clump of the stuff behaved. It  used her overarching intelligence and intent as guidelines; a fact that  also confirmed her theory that the watchers could indeed affect the world through the maso particles they left behind without directly interfering in any way, shape or form..

Which might explain the deal with the red girls now that she thought  about it. That final fantasy event really had interesting implications.

Having created it from her own Domain, [Evelyn]’s own brand of the stuff treated her as the origin so she had the same administrative privileges over the  substance the Watchers did, which meant that she could freely shift it  between different states of mass and energy as she pleased.

Evelyn saturated herself with maso particles. she used it to fill the  empty spaces in her crystal lattices, and within her superficial  flesh... When she ran out of places that were physically available, she  shut off a vast majority of her process in order to free up as much  processing power as possible, before using the newly gained power to  supercharge the limited omniscience she possessed within her domain.  Evelyn even established a link with Queen Administrator to draw upon her  vast ability to multitask in exchange for letting her observe what she  was doing and to repeat the procedure on the larger shard in case she  succeeded.

After getting ready, Evelyn proceeded to flex her [Domain] once more,  this time to fill maso particles into all the inter-atomic and  inter-molecular spaces she could find. The best thing was that due to  how maso could exist in a state with negligible mass and across multiple  dimensions, it didn’t even alter her chemical composition. All of these  factors combined allowed her to store an astronomical amount of ‘magic’  within her own body, to the point where she could be said to be made out  of the stuff. In fact, it now out-massed her original volume several  times over and increased her density to rival a hyper-dense neutron star  with how tightly packed it was… and that was without considering her  defensive endbringer layering.

At some point, [Evelyn] underwent what she could only describe as an  ‘ascension’ and she became aware of things that she had been blind to  before. Things that she was fairly sure she didn’t have the tools or  ability to detect. However, she forced herself to stop when she found  her magic trying to integrate herself into the natural order of the  world. While the latter would literally turn her into a magic god, it  would both bind her to that one specific world, and also cripple her  ability to act as a sapient entity. No, while it provided her with  immense benefits, it was unwise to follow this particular path for more  power. But that was fine. The multiverse was vast, and she had ample  time to come up with another approach.

For now, [Evelyn] basked in the [Joy] of a successful [Upgrade].

The best part of it was that maso had no actual weight unless she willed  it, so it basically let her get away with physical indestructibility  without many repercussions. She would have a harder time shape-shifting  but that was a sacrifice she was willing to overlook in the face of the  benefits it provided.

At some point, [Evelyn] managed to raise her physical durability into  something that went far beyond what even a fully grown entity was  capable of deploying. (Mainly since they lacked access to infinite  resources to produce said particles and the inability to invest in said  process rather than being actually incapable of it.)
Her body was so close to being truly indestructible that it got to a  point where things like the Siberian, or even an artificial black hole,  wouldn't do much other than bounce off or severely inconvenience her.
In fact, the Siberian would be an apt comparison to describe her current  situation, In defensive and reality warping ability at least; she  lacked the capability pure annihilation the projection did, and she  didn’t see a way to improve herself from this point anytime in the  foreseeable future..

Her 'build' as it were was far too tanky and didn't have nearly as much  offensive options as she'd like but at least with this, she shored up on  all her defenses. The best thing about it was that she could use the  maso in her body it to resist reality warping effects, mostly by  drowning it out in 'white noise' with her own. And it wasn't as if she  lacked 'claws' either, she simply didn't have the same potency as an all  or nothing 'perfect'  power-set, but [Evelyn] figured that magic and  reality warping bullshit made up for that in spades.

Just as she was finishing up, [Evelyn] realized that the maso particles  led to an esoteric pseudo-dimension that she had difficulty even  comprehending. She wouldn't have detected it under normal circumstances,  even with her tools as a shard (especially with them) but with how  sensitive she was to eldritch influences at the moment, [Evelyn]  couldn't help but be curious as to what it was.
It sort of felt like her [Domain] but it was both too alien for her to  comprehend while also being far more familiar and intimate than it had  any right to be. The closest interpretation of its nature she could  figure out, was that it was an 'ideal' - a realm/place/object/person  that represented everything that she was, and everything that she could  be. It was truly infinite in scope but severely limited in how much she  could consciously influence, or even observe.

She could barely make out, or understand what was inside it, but even  the mere thought of altering it in any way, shape or form was  hard-locked by her anomalous restrictions with far more vigor than  anything else she had ever encountered so far.

There was going to be no getting around it.

A [query] to herself netted her a surprising answer. She was touching  what was apparently the outermost shell surrounding her 'soul'. Any  further inquiries were fruitless since she simply lacked a reference for  more answers or insights.

Huh.

She couldn't alter any of it, but if this was indeed her soul... Evelyn  shifted her focus away from the 'developed' parts, but not enough to  catch sight of the infinite 'potential' that surrounded it since it was a  cognitohazard of the highest order.
Thinking back on it, the only reason she wasn't limited to only perceiving  the developed parts in the first place, was because the maso particles  seemed to be leaking into the outside for some reason... Evelyn did not  know the ramifications and potential consequences of such a situation,  so she created a secondary directive to check up on it periodically and  labelled it as important.

Then she retreated from what was apparently the fringes of her soul, and  stayed still for a moment. [Evelyn] determined that such things were  better left to her human half and resolved to fix the 'leak'. Since she  couldn't 'plug' her soul, Evelyn switched her sights to her Domain and peered into the dimension it was connected to... a dimension completely under her control.

She promptly created a hyper-dense mass of maso-particles the size of a star, and watched as it ignited into a literal sun.

...That should replenish her reserves of maso as soon as they were depleted, leak or no leak.

At least with this, her sacrifices would be worth it. Even with the  occasional ‘mental blocks’ getting in the way, the amount of self  editing [Evelyn] could perform because of the ‘changer’ perk messing  with her nature as a shard was nothing to scoff at. It was a technical  loophole that gave her administrative access to her own body, even if  the power was limited by her relatively meager processing capabilities  when compared to the older shards. However, by filling her body with  these… maso particles, it somehow ‘solidified’ her body in a way that  went beyond the physical. She instinctively knew that while she was  still able to scatter herself into her constituent wing fragments, she  was now significantly hindered in how much she could alter her ‘whole’  body now.

It seems that the maso-particles had stabilized her external appearance  as the ‘shape’ of her ego. Or something. [Evelyn] wasn't sure, and there  was only so much she could extrapolate without being a dedicated  thinker.

The implications were… troubling, yes, but she left it to her fully restored self to figure out. For now, [Evelyn] was content.

Just for the sake of redundancy, and in case something went wrong,  [Evelyn] also had her domain start the construction of an entire spare  endbringer body, a perfect duplicate of her current form within it…  while also carefully isolating it from any stray maso particles produced  by the ‘magic sun’ burning inside her.

It was then she ran into another issue. While she had infinite resources  and the necessary blueprints, [Evelyn] Lacked the multitasking  capabilities necessary to undertake such a complicated procedure without  sacrificing processing power back on Earth.
She thought of a good way to solve the issue, and her mind was brought  to the split fragment of her mind managing the human body known as  ‘Evy’… But no, Evy took up very few resources to run, and it was not a  good idea to create even more forks without having assimilated the  already split one. So, she decided against it for now.

Her body, while similar to the other shards, was made very differently  due to the ‘coreless’ perk. While it aided her survivability a lot, it  made it harder to simply just manufacture more processors and such since  her ‘flesh and blood’ was less specialized and was far more…  homogeneous than was practical for such purposes. Hopefully, she could  improve that with the additional mass from having a spare body at her  disposal. She also noted to have herself learn ‘magic spells’ like  thought acceleration, and memory partition sounded very, very useful.

However, she still decided to set up a very simple but dedicated  ‘program’ to manage the action automatically in the background. It’ll  take a few weeks for it to complete without manual assistance, but she  wasn’t in a hurry at the moment anyways so that was enough for now.

Feeling the accomplishment of a job well done, Evelyn retreated from her  hyper focused state feeling tired, and realized that she had severely  over-strained her processors, which spoke of the sheer difficulty of  what she had done since those things were ridiculous. Even so, she  completed her objective, so all was well.  There was no possible way for  Evy to be unsatisfied now, since there was no better way to conceivably  'upgrade' herself.

For the first time since their separation, [Evelyn] felt joy, and hoped  Evy would come up with such interesting objectives more often.

-x-​

Evy noticed the difference immediately. [Evelyn] looked the same, but  the change was noticeable immediately. There was an imperceptible weight  to her every movement, a conceptual might that distorted the very world  around her. It was as if a god was walking the world, and every single  action had an unfathomable intent behind it... which was bullshit since  Evy could see her counterpart wagging her tail. Even as her face  remained neutral, she could almost see the satisfaction bleeding off of  her form.

Evelyn's form was based off of the Simurgh, a fact that was obvious with  how her hair and wings, and skin were a uniform platinum white. Now,  her 'skin' appeared more... human, being a little more 'pinker' than it  used to be, but she had the distinct impression that it was NOT because  the endbringer suddenly decided that having blood running under it was a  good idea. Her hair and wings were bleached an eerie shade that was far  too similar to the salt-white coloring of the Tower for her liking, and  the sharp edges of her form and the shadows cast by her many wings  exposed a subtle red glow that wasn't noticeable at first, but got  increasingly harder to ignore the longer she observed it.
Her breasts were also glowing a bit and her skin seemed shinier than it had any right to be, as if it was rubbed in oil.

What the hell?

If before, she could only be called an eldritch abomination because of  her form and behavior, now, she could be called one because she  literally had a near-imperceptible aura that screamed 'monstrosity from  beyond human understanding', and set off warning bells and instincts she  never knew existed.

"Oh no... what did you do?" Evy asked.

"I have finished upgrading myself!" she explained, a hint of joy coloring her voice. Evy blanched.

-x-

[The Firmament]​

Somewhere, in a realm of carmine crystals and an abyssal sky, Taylor Hebert opened her eyes once more

-x-​