Chapter 309: Chapter 309: Infiltrating the Underworld_1
"What sort of sophistry is this?" Aiden frowned upon hearing these words. "Be it Melindale or Melissa, they are just another identity of yours, aren’t they?"
Is this the legendary act of choosing a jiaobei tree person and what does it have to do with me, Lu Xun? You want to catch Xu Xian, but my name is Xu Hanwen?
In Aiden’s eyes, these identities were nothing more than aliases for the "Conspiracy Goddess" before him.
"They really can’t be considered the same person as me. If Melissa used her power to create someone with thoughts identical to yours, would you admit that individual is you?" Melifilia countered calmly.
"Indeed, I wouldn’t admit it, but don’t try to switch concepts on me. Intentionally creating a split-off of yourself implies that you’re responsible for the actions that your alter ego will take in the future," Aiden retorted. "By the way, with such abilities, you could create thousands of alter egos. It can’t be that in every corner of this world there are many ’Melifilia’s causing trouble, right?"
"Don’t make me sound like a virus spreading everywhere, I don’t create ’another self’ recklessly," Melifilia said while moving a chess piece. "With my understanding of ’myself,’ if I were a mere mortal, I would definitely do everything possible to snatch power from the original entity."
"That does sound quite reasonable," Aiden agreed with this remark. "So that is why you split the power of ’desire’?"
Melifilia always had schemes up her sleeve, and naturally, her created alter egos were no different.
"Dividing power is a troublesome matter, the other individual has to undergo another promotion ceremony to assimilate the power. But only then will the other ’me’ be willing to do the same things as me on equal footing, and reunite with me at the appropriate moment," Melifilia replied.
"So that means, Melissa is actually Melindale?" Aiden asked.
"Not exactly, strictly speaking Melindale has already died, and Melissa... in your words, is my second-generational alter ego, who can, to some extent, only be regarded as the successor to Melindale. Melindale, after provoking the ruler of ’death,’ had her body directly destroyed. Although she left a backup plan for resurrection, it failed, leaving her power in the remains of a mortal. This individual whimsically disrupted the plan of the Grim Reaper, which although interesting, also brought considerable trouble for me."
"What trouble?" Aiden inquired.
As for Melindale’s end, he actually had an idea.
In the end, Melindale tried to resurrect using the body of a nameless witch, but the nameless witch, after handing over everything to her successor, seemed to have left Banquet Forest and committed suicide, thus preventing Melindale’s resurrection.
It seems that Melindale’s power, along with the unsuccessful full erosion of the nameless witch’s spirit needed for resurrection, was left in the remains of the nameless witch and eventually recovered by the original "Conspiracy Goddess."
"The confrontation between Melindale and the Grim Reaper resulted in harm to both sides. In a last-ditch effort, Melindale eroded the spirit of the Reaper, while the Reaper killed the body of Melindale and exhausted all his strength to banish her soul," Melifilia provided an answer.
"Banished?"
"He banished Melindale’s soul to the underworld. The underworld controlled by the ruler of ’death’ is not on the same level as mere felons using ’death’ power; it’s a vast pasture of souls that’s passed down through generations, accumulating ten of thousands of the deceased killed by the ruler of ’death,’ and this underworld can even extend beyond the world, sporadically summoning the souls of the dead from other worlds. Although Melindale left a last-ditch backup for resurrection with a fragment of her spirit and transferred her power before death, most of her soul was still confined to the underworld," Melifilia paused here. "Although I eventually recovered Melindale’s power, I didn’t regain her complete memories. To retrieve her soul, I had to find a way to infiltrate the underworld governed by the ’death’ power."
"Is it necessary to go to that extent?" Aiden looked puzzled. "After recovering the power of ’desire,’ you could just directly create another alter ego."
"But in that case, I wouldn’t be able to attain Melindale’s memories," Melifilia smiled. "After Melindale failed to resurrect, her memories remained only in the banished soul."
"Just to recover an alter ego’s memory, you died once?" Aiden was startled.
The underworld created by the Grim Reaper should only be accessible to the deceased.
"Basically, every ’power’ ruler has ways to transcend life and death. It wasn’t such a difficult task for me; my power allows my spirit to completely leave the body and exist like a ghost created by necromancy, finding a way into the underworld took me a long time," Melifilia responded nonchalantly. "I abandoned a living body and found a way to sneak into the underworld controlled by the Grim Reaper, thus I retrieved Melindale’s soul along with her memories. It took me over a hundred years in total—but this was important to me, you should still remember what I’ve always been searching for, right?"
"Power and pleasure?" Aiden seemed to understand. "Splitting off another self, is it to gather power more efficiently and to seek amusement everywhere?"
"You’re beginning to understand me, which is gratifying," Melifilia laughed heartily.
"Forgive me for not comprehending; you provoked the Grim Reaper and ended up killing yourself, that’s simply going too far," Aiden shook his head. "You’re just cleaning up after another self."
"But there was a gain. It was the experience of infiltrating the underworld that allowed me to find the channel for summoning souls from another world," Melifilia gazed into Aiden’s eyes. "That’s why you had the opportunity to come to this world."
"Well then, thank you very much," Aiden replied in an utterly flat tone.
"Furthermore, during the process of looking for a way to infiltrate the underworld, I had brief contact with a cult that worships the Grim Reaper. It was at that time that humans inside that cult became aware of another ruler’s existence."
"The Blood Moon Cult? I see, that man, he also learned of your existence within the cult, that’s why he directly led the humans from the cult to join you," Aiden discerned Melifilia’s hint.
"Correct, that man found the offering that allowed my disembodied self to descend into this current vessel. As for what happened afterward... you probably understand it quite well."
