Jake found himself teleported onto an identical metal disc within a small hall. Sultan, Miranda, Arnold, and Sylphie appeared together with him shortly after, and just as they stepped off the teleporter, it activated again.A familiar figure appeared, and Jake turned and gave the Unique Lifeform a look.[Fallen King – lvl 196]The level of the King was approaching peak D-grade. Unique Lifeforms were truly cheats… Then again, the King only had his race to progress while Jake had both profession and class. Furthermore, the Unique Lifeform had been busy, as far as he knew, forming an entirely new faction on their planet as well as doing his fair share of hunting. Not everyone liked being ruled, after all."You have been busy," Jake said."So have you, little Hunter. I feel the remnants of a C-grade signature upon your soul. A very recent one. Perhaps the cause of your unsightly state?"Jake was once more being reminded he was wearing tattered clothes and still had quite a bit of blood on

Jake looked on as the life of the other Jake progressed at a steady pace, far more detailed than before, and it even included sound now. In fact, it was as if Jake himself was present and standing in the room and could even move around.Many of the first memories after simulation-Jake—or sim-Jake for short—went into the foster system were of him being thrown into new environments, surrounded by other children in equally unfortunate situations.Such children tended to not be the best. They were emotionally underdeveloped and immature and often had no way of handling their situation besides acting out. So when a new kid entered a foster home of twelve kids—one younger than many of them—it was natural to make him a target.A scene like this was one of the first major things that the simulation deemed an impactful event.Sim-Jake, no more than seven years old, stood surrounded by children between the age of seven and ten. There were six of them in total. Jake was smaller than all but one

Jake watched on as his simulacrum made yet another miraculous escape by leaping out a window and rapelling down four stories before swiftly making it over the fence to the forest. The guards were a bit distracted by the gunshots from their boss earlier and had, of course, gone to investigate, only to find the man dead.Back in the forest, sim-Jake kept running as he spoke once more, a smile on his lips. "I wasn’t even paid for this one, you know? I just didn’t like the guy. He tried to hire me a year or so ago, and when I refused the job, as the target wasn’t my kind of thing, he threw a hissy fit and tried to have me killed. Naturally, he failed, and I killed the people he sent, and the idiot probably thought that was the end of it. Or not, based on the guards, but hey, I enjoy the added challenge. Sometimes you got to sneak a bit, as not even I can survive the barrage of an entire squad of gunmen. Too many bullets. Even if I can feel the trajectory of every one of them, it would be

"As we both know, the Bloodline offers abilities that are on a qualitative level at the peak of the multiverse," sim-Jake explained as he flew towards his foe, Jake easily keeping up. “Merely doing by instinct, dodging anything and everything, is simplicity itself, but that does leave one obvious flaw: attacking. Don’t get me wrong—the instinct to attack weak points is still there, but such a simple instinct may do more harm than good. When attacking, you are forcing a reaction, not being the one to react, meaning our predictive instincts are far less useful."So let me show you how I truly fight. Ultimately, that is what you are here for, isn’t it?"Jake didn’t confirm, as they both knew the answer. He stopped a bit away from the spider-like creature that had already noticed the approaching human. It was sitting on a massive web with hundreds, if not thousands of eggs beneath it. Its many eyes were shining purple as it looked at sim-Jake, but it didn’t do anything until sim-Jake step

However… even if the two Jakes would someday become one again, that day was not today or any day in the near future. For now, they were quite different. One thing they did agree on was a bit of quick experimenting, though. The first item on the list was the bone in the real world. Jake had already confirmed that sim-Jake could see everything Jake could and shared all senses, but it appeared that sim-Jake couldn’t talk to him in the outside world, so all communication had to go through the Soulspace.All detailed communication had to, at least. Jake still kind of knew what sim-Jake was thinking, and it was honestly a bit weird, as most of his thoughts were the exact same as Jake’s. However, one thing they did not agree on right away quickly appeared when the bone began ever so slowly warping and growing. Minutes passed as Jake decided to let sim-Jake do with his new "body" as he wanted, deciding that they would talk about it later.Instead, he would get a look at the system notificatio