Zein City. Gate of 1st mental hospital.
"Out finally!"
Look at the sunset, Jack couldn't feel better.
"I am Out!"
"I am free!"
"Hooray! We are free!Free at last!"
" Water, I need water!"
"Free juice! I love extracted juice!"
"..."
In Jack's brain, dozens of identical voices echo at the same time, like many old village ladies squeeze into his head. So noisy to death!
They are Jack's echoed self. Now all in one body.
Two months ago, Jack found himself reborn in this strange parallel world. There are hundreds of races who believe martial supremacy.
What's more, he 'd also gained an uncanny ability: soulspawn.
Each dawn, a new duplicate split from him. It is as effortlessly as a hen laying eggs.
But these echoes only retain half his attributes of abilities, and couldn't spawn further copies.
Yet in all else, intellect, flesh ,even souls,they mirrored him perfectly.
The senses and memories interlinked, as in a hyper-threaded processor.
At the beginning, Jack felt so strange about the superpower. He had to conceal them all by folded into his own form. The echoes chattered ceaselessly, soon making Jack look like madness.
His parents, mistaking his muttering for madness, had him committed. And he was checked into mental hospital for two months.
"Where's my sister?" He kicked a pebble. "She promised a welcome feast tonight."
Damn.
His dead phone screen glared back.
As the sun's last sliver vanished, Jack decided to walk down the hill. He walked towards home, fallowing the winding road.
The hospital located at a remote peak. Few travelers at day time, and at night is there no one but ghost.
Jack made himself at the foothills. He paused to hitchhike, when movement caught his eye: a girl crouched beneath a streetlamp, her back to him.
Her shoulders shuddered as if weeping.
Crows cawed overhead. Shadows deepened. Somewhere, a branch snapped.
Jack turned away immediately.
A few steps ahead, she turned up under another lamp.
He pretended not seeing her and keep walking forward.
At the third lamp, she waited there again, crying loudly, sharpened, like infant shrieks.
"Excuse me."
Jack sidestepped her, with a little anger on his face.
"Huh." She teleported in front of him, back to him and blocking the road.
"Enough!"
Jack had no patience at the end.
"Kakaka..." Her head automatically twisted 180 degrees. A grin split her face ear to ear. She smiled at him sweetly.
Then her body expanded, hundreds of feet and hands stretched through her body. Hundreds of hundreds, like a porcupine. Faces cycled across her head:old man, child, woman...like a kaleidoscope.
Bang!
The girl expanded the height as high as nearly ten meters. Then she stepped her right foot on the ground,quaked.
"Sumimasen!"
"I might spoke a little loudly!"
Jack backpedaled, face calmed while guts churned.
An eldritch beast! In the city outskirts! Unheard of it.
"Woo, Calling God won't save you!"
"The first boss fight leaving the novice village?"
"Just a eldritch beast. Let me kick it!"
Words off, one echoed self separated from Jack and lunged. He slid beneath the beast like a greased blade.
The creature's belly yawned open suddenly as a maw. Unfortunately, the echoed self slid himself directly into it, exactly whole and all.
Burp.
It hiccuped, staring at him, puzzle in its shifting eyes.
How strange! The man remained there, yet it just swallowed one.
"Attack together!" Jack shouted.
A dozen echoes charged the eldritch beast.
The beast froze. Is this… heaven?
Its many arms grabbed echoes, shoving them into its mouth like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
"Now!"
While the beast feasted, Jack moved. Fast as a black blur.
THUD!
His fist slammed the beast's skull. The creature was caught off guard. Its big body crashed down.
This punch held the combined strength of of echoes. It's a trick he invented in the hospital. The power could last as long as 30 seconds. Then came weakness.
Twenty seconds left!
Jack lunged ahead to finish the last hit.
The beast's belly-mouth opened. A vacuum force sucked echoes toward it. The echoed self pushed against each other, legs scrambling. After another ten clones lost, Jack finally broke free.
Then He collapsed and limp like a frog on the ground. Came then the weakness hour.
The beast stood there wobbly. It pat its belly, never had it felt so well.
And never would it overate one day just by eating one man like that.
"Guard!"
The rest echoes all came out. Some hoisted Jack and ran. Others sacrificed themselves to buy some time.
The beast keep eating, swallowing, one by one,even stuffed. Anyway, it's rare for it to have such a time to feed itself like this.
Clean plate rule, absolutely!
Gurgle...
After eating another few more echoes, the belly came some noises.
"Woo..", it vomited and spilled out twisted and broken arms and legs. It had too many Jacks swallowed.
Boom!
A few seconds later, the huge beast fell, lay there still, not moving a finger.
There remained more then twenty echoes, who were ready to feed them to the beast, staring at each other, stunned.
Soon the earlier left echoes carried Jack back again.
"Playing dead?"
"It? It more like for us to play dead."
"Died from overeating?"
"Serve it right. It swallow us too many."
"Awesome!We killed an Eldritch Beast by feeding it!"
"Is that… impressive?"
"Why not? We beat it by ourselves. The real self."
Jack circled it and said,"Let's open it and find the soul core."
No knives. So they sharpened those bones from the vomit pile.
Soon they find a black orb, as big as an egg.
"Just as I thought, it has a soul core."
It's cold to touch.
"Let go home!"
The echoes hoisted Jack again in a ragged column. They chanted "One Two One", and vanished into the night.
Ten minutes later. A man in blue-white uniform knelt by the corpse.
"Agent Three reporting."
"Escaped S-class Eldritch Beast deceased. Soul Core missing."
"Cell decay suggests alpha-reagent exposure."
A woman's voice crackled: "Retrieve the Core."
"Copy."
The agent sniffed air. Tracked Jack's path.