I found myself at the centre of a coliseum of some sort. There wasn't a single spectator to be seen. Since this was a battle arena, I returned my appearance to that of an adult human.

Just what am I supposed to do with my lower stats? Now that I can't access my subspace, I won't be able to directly protect them.

Honestly, I was more amazed that my stats could be lowered at all. In terms of my power, as long as my traits were still there, I was next to invincible. |Singularity|, the fusion of three ascended traits wasn't something I fully knew how to properly use other than the base traits.

Within this current body of mine there were several demons that I had sealed away. In the event I required additional mana, they would be the first ones to be sacrificed.

Since Mera hadn't summoned me, I couldn't determine her exact location. After pondering about, I decided to stick around for a bit to see what they had prepared for me.

"Alright, where's my playmate?" I announced aloud. "I'm waiting."

"Then, wait no more." A voice echoed from above.

Boom.

A monster the size of a truck crash landed some distance away.

When the dust settled, a figure of something between a mix of a spider body with twin scorpion tails greeted me. It wasn't even a demon.

Wait, wait a second... Not a demon!? You're kidding me! If I harm it, Mera's soul will be damaged. Tsk...

"What's wrong? Afraid? We're just getting started!" The same voice echoed from above.

"Shut up. Your pet is so ugly. Don't you have a sense of aesthetics?"

The voice cackled ominously. "I have more where that came from."

"I see..." Shaking my head as I said that calmly, "Grotesque just as you are. Too ashamed to show your face? You have my condolence!"

"Silence!"

From the monster's tails, two bursts of black slimy threads sprang open like a trap in my direction. However, without even flinching, I walked forward.

With |void|, the subtrait of |singularity|, active, the threads merely passed through my body.

"Are you even trying?" I said, trying to rile up the demon behind the scene.

Since I was having trouble pinpointing the voice's location, I reluctantly activated |dedicated one|. Furthermore, by my calculations, the meeting time with the Highlander Emperor should be approaching fairly soon. If I wasted any more time here playing with some weaklings, they'd think I was unpunctual. I wasn't okay with that!

Alright, here we go. Please work!

It was a multistage contingency plan I had came up with a while back. While it was neither perfect nor well thought out, I decided that this was the time to put it into action.

Better now than never.

Activate Plan Zero.

Generating secondary core...

Secondary core activated for background processing.

ID created.

Initiating parallel processing...

Retrieving and compiling data...

Initiating analysis and decode...

Pending...

Detach.

Now, I just had to buy some time.

A flurry of jabs and swipes from the monster resulted with not a single scratch on me. Apparently, that was enough to agitate the voice above.

"We're just getting started."

Sounding as cocky as I could, I said, "Really? You better send in a proper playmate, you know? This one doesn't even tick my fancy. Come on, if you won't even show your face, at least play your trump card. I seriously don't have all day to play with you."

"Hmph, arrogant fool. Why don't you look at the mirror? I have a surprise for you."

With that, the ugly monster disappeared. What came after was quite surprising. Literally, a fey being resembling my fey figure appeared. There were minor differences but overall it might as well been me.

It had flowing golden hair, and bloody red eyes. Covering its slim body was an elegant vermillion battledress, very aesthetically pleasing with elaborate patterns like magic circles as the design.

Since I hadn't confirmed its gender, I decided to just refer the devil as an it.

"That's it? If I don't attack it, and it can't touch me, isn't it boring? Can't you be a bit more creative than that? I mean, devils aren't a threat to me unless you wish to charm me?"

"Naive! Fuhahaha! In case you didn't know, we've been breeding you en mass where you cannot see. We had them kill each other, and this is the sole survivor and the best one."

"You... You're bluffing."

"Be sure to see the status for yourself."

[Level 88 Fey (plant);
Species: Strawberry Nemesis;
Physical: 699/699;
Spiritual: 788/788;
Traits: Devious, Bewitching, God Slayer, Parallel Existences, Soul Eater, Limit Breaker, Enhanced Spiritual, Enhanced Resistances, Enhanced Physical;
Abilities: Charm, Soul Rupture, Ravage, Coordinate, Rewind, Lull, Full Drive;
Blessings: Rite of Retrospection;
Description: A plant fey that is the enemy of its own kin.]

What!? What the hell? How?

What caught my attention was the presence of three nasty traits. I was familiar with |devious| but I could easily guess what |god slayer| and |soul eater| meant. Although these weren't ascended traits, one was likely a counter to someone like me and the other was likely capable of directly harming the soul. Still, I wasn't a god so it likely wouldn't have the maximum effect on me.

"How...?"

"You..." The devil murmured.

"What? Don't tell me you use the strawberries? But then you couldn't have levelled that quickly..."

"I had to eat many souls..." The devil said reluctantly.

"Wait, he said you're the last one? How many of you were there? There shouldn't be any soul cores! I only had one!"

I heard a chuckle from above, "Oh no. You see, we intercepted you the moment you entered the world. Have you forgotten? Fufuha, that's the portion of your soul we kept! As for its kin, we used the souls of the deceased. Isn't that delightful?"

"What? What non-sense!"

"You thought you knew everything? You descended from the god realm right into our palm. Ahahahaha! We are truly grateful for the opportunity to ascend to godhood! It's just unfortunate we could only obtain one seed. If you were just a tad bit earlier, perhaps you could have witnessed my ascension!"

One seed? Something isn't matching up. There's no way he's now a god. I better try to draw more information out of him. No, hold on...

Is he talking about the Seed of Life? Shit. That's the thing required for godhood. I remember! Not good. Wait, that doesn't make sense? Is it not the seed I germinated from? Something is definitely not matching up. Let's play along and see if I can gain more information and time.  

"I don't understand. If what you're saying is true, then why bother stealing a portion of my soul and allowing me to live to evolve? You could have just killed me after retrieving the seed."

"What's the fun in that? Once you've lived long enough, you'll understand! Now, go fight to your heart's content. I'm off."

The laugh of a madman echoed across the arena before slowly fading into oblivion.

Hmm? Why do I feel like he's acting? You don't just tell me all that and leave... That's not how to be a proper villain.

I don't get it anymore. What am I even doing here? I'm just being swept along in this play? Is that all it is?

"I'm sorry," the devil said regretfully. "I'll make this painless for you. I've had enough."

"I'll save you."

"You can't even save yourself."

"Mark my works. I'll definitely save you. Don't you wish to see your daughter?"

"That's but a dream. I don't have one."

"Then I'll make it a reality. Did you know? I grant wishes to people."

"..."

"I have some questions, if you don't mind answering."

"I suppose you'd deserve to know that much. Albeit, I only know what I know."

I nodded and thought, I don't know who you really are but at least you're civilized enough to answer my questions.

"That's fine. How many seeds were there originally? There should be two, right? Both of us were born into this world."

"One, and only one. We were originally one. The Seed of Life along with a portion of the soul was extracted. That became me. I was then implanted into one of the seeds they obtained from your strawberry."

"Eh, so it was my fault?"

"You were the leftover, allowed to live in that world with only fragmented memories of the original. You should have died and returned... The other side needs us."

"If I died, the demon would have stolen my soul... But the other side? We don't have the seed anymore, right?"

"The seed doesn't matter. We're not from this world. Did no one from the other side come for you?"

"You mean Smoothie?"

"Who's Smoothie?"

"An artificial intelligence..."

"Why didn't you return?"

"She was the daughter I was talking about."

"Stop fooling around! I'll kill you and send you back. Then I'll kill myself since you should be the last piece I was looking for."

"Wait! It doesn't make sense. If I was supposed to go back, when didn't god just send me back?"

Narrowing its eyes, it said, "God? What are you talking about?"

"Based on my memories, after I died, I met someone. He asked me what I want to incarnate into. And I answered, 'god.' Then I was told I'll be a strawberry plant."

"So it's like that... If you had my memories, you would have asked to be returned at once. No, that's not possible. At that point, the demons shouldn't have gotten to us."

"Actually, Smoothie said my soul was fragmented. She carried a piece of it with her into this world though I had not absorbed it yet. Perhaps parts of our memories were sealed away right before we entered that realm?"

"As much as I'd like to say it was impossible, our circumstances speaks otherwise. During that accident, a dimensional rift was likely opened, just briefly. Somehow it was connected to this world or this subspace. Using that opportunity, it could have temporarily got hold of our soul and sealed away important memories while our soul was fragmented. Then, we were sent merrily to be reincarnated through this 'god.' Upon leaving, the demon followed up with the deed."

"Ah, wait, but why us? The demons could mark anyone? There are countless numbers of souls out there."

"You forgot our origin. The world where we came from is like the realm of gods to them. Souls like our aren't on the same level. If I have to guess, the 'god' probably has an agenda of his own. Seeds of Life aren't something to be bestowed normally. Unfortunately, he's already dead though he didn't have a Seed of Life on him. Whether he was the one you saw or not, that's hard to say."

"Huh... Dead you say? So that's how you obtained that |god slayer| trait. Interesting. How does one normally reach godhood? The demon seemed to have taken quite some time to reach it from the sounds of it."

"I do not know. To you, what is a god?"

To that question, I threw a standard answer.

"Omnipotent or somewhere along that line?"

"I would say, the ability to create life."

"Oh. Well... I could do that to some degree. But it seems I've lost the ability to do so moments ago. Someone sealed my abilities, somehow."

"What?"

"Also, a good chunk of my stats have been reduced significantly. I'm considerably weakened, you know?"

"That's impossible... You shouldn't be able to create life..." Its eyes widen in disbelief.

Even so, my ability to create life had been sealed for some reason. And to top that off, I couldn't recklessly create life either and the limitations were quite severe.

"Even in my weakened state, I don't think you can actually kill me because I'm technically a divine being. As much as I'd like to converse more with you, you're affected by |devious| trait. Anything I disclose automatically feeds into the demon's network. I'm sorry. Your words and actions are not trustworthy. In the first place, I cannot confirm whether you're an ally or not. For you who is within the system to kill a god? What non-sense! It's you who don't understand a thing." I stated blatantly.

"You..."

The devil was lost for words.

Since I was unable to see any energy links nor any energy resonances between the two of us, I had to remain wary of this devil.

Perhaps this was all a trap to lure information out of me. If that was the case, I had revealed too much. Whether there was any truth to what the devil said, I couldn't confirm with the information I had available. To ascertain it, there was but one way.

I shall defeat the devil before me and examine its memories. Tampered or not, it mattered not. The origin of memories cannot be altered. The system kept all records. That was I was sure.

Mera. I'll be right there after I finish this.

Temporarily severing the contract link with Mera, I declared, "Speak no more. This act comes to a close."