A Serpent's Tale
Chapter 167: Duplicate

Chapter 167: Duplicate

We jumped through the sandy entrance and into the boss room, which was similar in both size and shape to the previous one with a sandstone colour to it.

In the middle of the whole thing was an altar with a pedestal on top of it. We held out barriers up in suspicion of a surprise attack and the sand that might still be sat atop us.

"..."

We waited for something to happen but nothing came, no surprise attacks, no sudden change in environment, nothing.

We cleared off our barriers just to be safe and moved away and over to the altar just to be safe before we dispelled out barriers. And while yes, our barriers would be useful in case of a fight, they are fairly taxing on our mana and our mental capacity if we keep them up for too long.

After making sure we were safe we gave a sigh of relief.

"So, what is this thing?" Lily asked, gesturing towards the pedestal on the altar.

"Dunno. Some sort of mystical artifact maybe?" I guessed.

"What does it do then?" She asked again.

"Not sure, but we can try to figure out what it is or does." I suggested.

"I mean..." She looked back towards the entrance and I did so as well, and we saw that it had now been closed off. "I guess we don’t have anything else to do sooo... How do we do that?"

"Well, all we can do is go up and inspect it, not really anything else here is there?"

"Yeah, I guess."

And so we started to make our way over to the altar. It was more of a square platform than an altar, and it had an angular slope surrounding the whole thing, allowing me smooth passage up the thing. It was about a metre tall and the slope extended about one and a half meters out from the main platform.

Atop the platform, which was about three metre’s wide from side to side, and in the middle of the whole thing was a square pedestal. It was rather simple in design, having two sets of small squares at the base and an empty engraving going up the main part of the thing. On the top, was what seemed like a lectern on top of it, just without the base at the bottom to hold the book on top of it.

"What is this? Is this supposed to be some sort of lectern?" Lilly questioned in confusion, not understanding what this was supposed to be.

"I’m not sure either."

"There’s no marking, inscriptions or even scratches on it at all. There’s nothing to indicate what it is." Lily observed.

With nothing else to go on, I placed my hand atop the pedestal.

That seemed like a bad idea as the thing immediately started to glow with a weird bright blue light. I tried to pry my hand away from it the moment it started glowing, but my hand seemed stuck to the pedestal for some reason and I couldn’t take it away.

Eventually I was able to pull my hand away and fell on my back because of the recoil. The light faded soon after, and when my eyesight returned, I looked up and saw someone who looked like an exact copy of me, from my colours, to my shape and my sizes.

Everything, everything about her was just like me.

"W-What?"

She opened my eyes as soon as she heard my stutter and said in a crisp, clear, and seductively salivating voice, "Well, well, well. What do we have here? A puny little insect that can’t even keep anything for herself~ How pitiful, should I just replace you perhaps?"

That was my voice, specifically my voice before it broke, and it also had this sinister undertone to it. She also spoke in a violent manner that I’ve never spoken like ever in my life.

Wait...

Did she call me an insect?

I furrowed my brows and yelled at her as I got back up, "How dare you call me an insect!"

"Heh~ Why wouldn’t I call you an insect? You’re just so insignificant to me, why would I ever call you anything else?"

In a fit of rage, I threw my fist at her.

But I wasn’t expecting her to catch it, and with as much ease as she did. All she did was casually raise her hand and caught my fist.

"Hoh? What’s this? You think you can fight me? Hehehe~ How cute~" She then proceeded to bend my wrist backwards, breaking it.

"AAAUUGGGHHH!!!!!"

I screamed in pain until the wind was knocked out of me by a punch to the gut that sent me flying into the wall.

*Crash!*

*Cough* *Cough*

I spurted a few mouthfuls of blood out as I fell to the floor. I looked up in pain at the one who did this, and she was slithering towards me with a snarky grin on her face.

"Did I forget to mention? I have twice the strength that you do. Anything you do will be pointless. I have more strength, more stamina, more POWER than you. You can’t do ANYTHING to me except die and let me become your replacement. AHAHAHAHA~"

She cackled as she ranted about her being better than me, but little did she know, Lily was about to strike as she snuck up behind her.

"AHAHAHA! Ah~ I guess it’s time to finish you off. But how should I do that though? Through sex? Or maybe~" She licked her lips as she paused before giving me a creepy thin smile. "I should devour you~"

I shuddered as my body tensed up at her words.

’Maybe... This won’t be a bad end, it’ll be karma for what I did to her...’ I thought momentarily as my body relaxed slightly.

"Fufufu~ I like that last idea, and it seems that you aren’t all opposed to the idea either~ So let’s go with that then~ Time to ea-"

She reached for my arms but before she could, she suddenly shuddered and fell to the floor, her body spasming before it went limp.

I knew that Lily had probably possessed my duplicate, hence why she suddenly fell limp and lifeless. Though, I’m not sure if she could even be called alive anymore.

I tried getting up but it just failed as my internal injuries flared up and I spat out another mouthful of blood onto the floor. Guess I’m just going to have to lay here for a while until I recover.

Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to check on my [HP] to see the damage done to me, or at least get an idea of how much damage was caused.

[HP: 64.44%]

...

That’s not good at all.

Oh well, it’s not like I can do anything about it except lay here and recover using [Regeneration]. May as well go to sleep then. Not like I’m in danger with Lily possessing the duplicates body anyways. I can sleep easy knowing that she’ll be able to take care of things.

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