The two figures lying on the ground suddenly jolted awake.
"?!"
"What happened?" *2
"Where is this?" *2
"My voice, why..." *2
"And this body!" *2
"Who are you, Blue-haired girl? Why are you copying me?"
"Hmph. Where did this red-haired wild girl come from? You're not even wearing clothes! How shameless!"
Right from the start, the red-and-blue duo achieved the astonishing Xyz score of four identical lines. Given time, they would surely become two more promising Hope players.
[Judging by this, though, neither of them seemed to be missing their emotional side like I was.]
Watching the two start bickering again after only a few sentences, the Golden-haired girl checked off another guess in her mind.
After another round of verbal sparring, the two little red-and-blue girls finally calmed down and began observing their surroundings.
Then, they immediately noticed the golden figure standing nearby, silently watching them the whole time.
"Holy crap! There's another person here?!" *2
Their Xyz score increased again.
"Nice to meet you, my other two selves." The golden-haired girl spoke calmly, yet dropped a bombshell.
Sure enough, the two froze upon hearing that. The Red Phantom Spirit could not help opening her mouth at once.
"Hah? What nonsense are you spouting, you blonde—" The Red-haired girl's question abruptly stopped.
An indescribable sense of familiarity seeped out from the depths of her soul, telling her who the person before her was.
"Exactly what you think."
The Golden Phantom Spirit nodded. If the other girl was also "herself," she should have been able to grasp the situation easily from that sentence alone.
"We were originally one, but some force split us into three independent individuals."
"You're my dad's illegitimate daughter!"
Golden Phantom Spirit: "..."
The differences between the individuals exceeded her expectations somewhat, and having her explanation cut off midway like that was not a pleasant feeling either.
"We're the same person?!"
The Red Phantom Spirit, who had not expected the other girl's words to be so explosive, was completely dumbfounded.
"Y-you, you suspicious person, what are you talking about?! How could I possibly be..."
"Quiet. Give me your hands."
Abandoning the time-consuming and inefficient method of explaining the situation with words, the Golden Phantom Spirit chose a more direct approach.
Though still confused, the two little girls obediently held out their hands.
Her tone had not been harsh, but they simply did not dare disobey. It was as if some unseen force was suppressing them.
The Golden Phantom Spirit took both little hands, one in each of hers.
In an instant, a faint resonance between their souls shot through all three of them like an electric current.
"Eh?! This feeling... It's incredibly weak, but it really feels like our souls are connected."
The sensation of "I don't know why, but a soul connection should feel like this" greatly surprised the Red Phantom Spirit.
"More precisely, it is the residual pull left behind after a once-complete soul was torn apart."
The Blue Phantom Spirit frowned. "But that makes no scientific sense at all..."
The golden-haired girl released their hands, allowing the lingering connection to gradually fade into the air.
"Tell me about your memories. Do you remember what happened before you lost consciousness?"
"Ah! I-I remember dueling, and then suddenly, whoosh, everything went white, and after that I don't remember anything."
The Red Phantom Spirit answered honestly, even making an exaggerated gesture to go with it.
"Mm, my memories are about the same as this red one's." The Blue Phantom Spirit nodded with her arms folded.
"What about you?"
"As for me... I actually retained a little awareness of what happened afterward.
I could feel my soul being split into three parts by that light." The Golden Phantom Spirit recalled the moment before she lost consciousness.
"How is that possible?
By your logic, my original soul was split into three pieces, so how am I still alive?
And how do I still have complete consciousness?"
The Red Phantom Spirit still found it hard to believe.
"And if that's what you mean, then you and this blue one were both split off from me?!"
[She instinctively sees herself as the main body. So after the split, each of us really did become an independent subjective individual.]
The Golden Phantom Spirit realized this from the other girl's words.
This separation was a true division, not some "one main body, two sub-bodies, three-in-one" clone arrangement. Every one of them was an independent entity.
Incomplete souls could not exist for long, much less have any future. Thus, they could only weave themselves back into cocoons and wait to emerge as brand-new lives.
[Then it really was you who rewove our life cocoons... Three Phantom Gods.]
Thinking that, the Golden Phantom Spirit lifted a strand of her golden hair again and held it before her eyes.
The Blue Phantom Spirit, who had remained silent beside her, similarly grabbed a lock of her blue hair, rolled it between her fingers, then began nodding to herself.
So, seeing this, the Red Phantom Spirit—left out and feeling completely out of place—simply picked up her own hair and started examining it too.
2000 YEARS LATER...
Perhaps playing with her hair had become too boring, because the Red Phantom Spirit began impatiently looking for someone to talk to.
But she did not really dare disturb the Golden Phantom Spirit, who was clearly deep in thought, so she could only poke the blue girl she had never liked.
"Hey, what are you nodding about over there? Did you figure something out?"
"Hmph. Even though we are both 'me,' is there really such a gap in intelligence?
It seems the parts of my soul that were foolish and mediocre were expelled to form you."
Interrupted from her thoughts, the Blue Phantom Spirit rolled her eyes and mocked her without any courtesy.
"Huh?
What are you so smug about, you rude blue-haired bastard? You were just yelling about how 'this isn't scientific!' too."
Naturally, the Red Phantom Spirit refused to back down. She loudly protested and copied the Blue Phantom Spirit's earlier tone to mock her in return.
"And what do you mean, foolish? What do you mean, mediocre? You little shrimp, explain yourself!"
"You're so noisy. Shut up, you red-haired loudspeaker.
Sure enough, after losing me—the part responsible for calmness and wisdom—you cannot even manage simple thought anymore."
"You...!"
"You can save the foolish spectacle of arguing with yourselves for later. Shall we return to the matter at hand?"
The Golden Phantom Spirit, whose train of thought had also been interrupted, ended the dispute with her distinctive voice.
"As you can see, a faint connection still remains between us, who were once the same person.
This is probably because our souls only separated recently, and our respective new souls have yet to fully take shape.
But I can feel those connections slowly weakening.
At this point, I cannot even sense your emotions anymore. From that, it appears we truly are developing into complete, independent individuals."
The Golden Phantom Spirit presented her hypothesis based on the clues at hand.
"So, our current state is something like meiosis.
Our 'nuclei'—that is, our souls—split apart and then regrew into new, complete cells.
Then, due to certain factors, they differentiated into different forms." The Blue-aligned Phantom Spirit summarized it in her own terms.
"Huh?"
The Red Phantom Spirit replied with her face becoming a reaction meme.
"That's right. And according to my guess, those 'certain factors' were the power of the Three Phantom Gods.
The proof is that our current faces are almost identical to the Three Phantom Gods figurines that were placed right in front of us that day."
Kindly overlooking the Red Reckless Girl's utterly bewildered expression, the Golden Phantom Spirit continued her explanation.
"The gods' power fused with our incomplete souls and made them whole.
But because one adult soul was divided into three small parts, our bodies and ages also became younger, which is why we look like this now."
Only then did the two little red-and-blue girls belatedly turn their attention back to their own bodies. They began feeling themselves up and down in front of a rock beside them that could, for some reason, "just happen" to serve as a mirror.
Seeing the two busy moving around without saying anything, the Golden Phantom Spirit continued.
"As for why we have these faces now, perhaps it was simply the gods' bad taste.
Or perhaps, while reshaping our souls, the divine power saw a convenient template nearby and used it directly.
Or perhaps gods and humans simply look like this after merging."
Finally, after thoroughly examining herself from every angle, the Red-aligned Phantom Spirit was the first to stop and gave a rather wise, simple summary.
"You two are making it way too complicated. Meiosis, cell-soul fusion, whatever—wasn't it just the Three Phantom Gods screwing us over?
Tch. If I'd known, I wouldn't have randomly recited those lines. Since when did these Egyptian gods enforce the law across borders?!"
"Mm, that is more or less the situation.
But calling it a punishment would not be entirely accurate."
Seeing that the other girl had roughly understood, the Golden Phantom Spirit did not offer further explanation. Instead, she planned to bring up something else important that the others would also find interesting.
"What do you mean? You're happy about turning into this? I like girl cards, but that doesn't mean I want to become one!
That was my lifeline! My little brother who had followed me through thick and thin for decades!
Why the hell did I have to make female versions of the Three Phantom Gods back then?! Wuuugh! Wuuugh~~~"
Misunderstanding her, the Red Reckless Girl let out a motorcycle-like wail and was about to roll around on the ground.
[So it was not just her body that became smaller. Did her mind become that of a child too?]
"Wasn't making them female versions in the first place just because her little head controlled her big head?
Now the little head is gone. I suppose that is karma." The Blue Phantom Spirit took the opportunity to add another stab.
"You two, why do you look like you don't care at all?!
That was, that was my little brother—more important than even a cheat ability after transmigrating!"
The red motorcycle stopped rolling around and stared incomprehensibly into the speaker's eyes, trying to see whether she truly meant it.
"It may take some time to adapt, but in the end, it was just an organ I barely used except for going to the bathroom. If it is gone, it is gone."
Her tone remained utterly unconcerned.
The Red Phantom Spirit's pale golden eyes were full of disbelief. Their souls had only just separated, yet the other girl's cold words had already made her feel the gulf between them.
[Did the old me... really have a side like this?] The Red Phantom Spirit felt a trace of unfamiliarity toward "herself."
A light clap interrupted her wandering thoughts.
"All right. When I said it was not exactly a punishment, I was not referring to the matter of our sex. I meant this..."
As she spoke, the Golden Phantom Spirit held out one hand.