The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 555: Performance Enhancement Through Destiny

’Training seems like the best solution for both of us.’ I look at Azraelith, who is smashing my copies to pieces. I had imagined she’d be like a dangerous beast that can’t control itself, considering what I learned in the books about what she did when she was the Demon King.

And of course, I was right. Azraelith is smart, but she’s very easy to provoke, and that’s dangerous in a fight. After all, smart enemies always provoke their opponent to gain the upper hand.

’Her strength is undoubtedly impressive, considering she doesn’t look that strong; she really can hide her power well.’ I look at the damage she’s doing to my copies with simple blows. This reminds me that I’m practically not using my fighting style anymore, nor Violet.

"Violet, are you there?" I call out to her. I have something important for her to do that will help me a lot, but it will depend entirely on her goodwill.

"..."

"What’s up? Finally remembered you have a sword? Well, know that I’m always here!! You’re the one who ignores me most of the time! So I stopped seeking your attention first! If you want me to answer, you’ll have to come to me! Because I’m not going to seek you out anymore! I have my own dignity!" she says arrogantly.

"My bad, okay? It’s just that I haven’t needed a sword, and I think the Abyss isn’t good for you either, since the magic here is dense and unstable, and you depend on magic." I’m sure using Violet here in the past wouldn’t have been a good idea.

"Fine, I’ll accept those lame excuses. So, Pandora, did you get what you wanted? You’re pretty strong now, and I’m full of magic to burn. We can finally have a fight with someone really strong," she says eagerly.

"Violet, now that I have so much magic, can’t you manifest on your own? Use that body of yours and appear here to fight directly? Because let’s face it, I barely need a weapon nowadays." She’d be more helpful if she manifested physically.

"Not to downplay you, you’re an incredible weapon, but the fact is I’m more focused on magic and my own fists. Maybe when I get my divine weapon, you’ll be much more useful, but for now, I’m really not going to use you in fights." Magic is my current focus, and I really enjoy fighting with my fists.

"..." She falls silent, as if thinking about what to say to me.

"I see. Okay, fine. Maybe I can, but it costs a lot. You’d have to use your own magic for it, because I’m not going to spend my reserve," she says, all defiant, but I just nod.

"That’s fine." I don’t mind using my magic so she can manifest physically, although I wouldn’t do it in a fight because the expense wouldn’t be worth it.

"W-Wait, you’d do that?!"

"Yes. Not in a fight, but while I’m here in my mother’s castle to get stronger, I can use my magic to manifest your body here, and then you can join the training."

"Oooohh!!! That’ll be incredible!! It’s been so long since we did anything together! I’ll show you I’m even more powerful than in the past!" She talks as if it were solely her merit, even though she largely depends on my magic, growing stronger based on my power.

"Okay, okay, Violet. Don’t be so..."

BOOOM

"...WHAT THE FUCK!!!" Violet screams when everything explodes, reaching even here. I use a barrier so the impact doesn’t hit me as the explosion releases an immense black light and everything around turns to dust.

"What the hell was that!!!" Violet asks as I return to my normal size, showing that all my copies are dead.

"It’s Azraelith. We’re training her psychological control, but she’s terrible at it and always blows up my clones when she gets irritated beyond her limit," I tell her, watching my sister storm out of the training area, furious. We’ve been at this for a few days now.

"Besides that, we decided it’s more productive to split the training into time blocks. Right now, I’m training her, and in a few days, she’ll get several days to train me." It’s the best way for us to train, because if we train each other at the same time, we’ll start fighting and everything will go wrong.

"Doesn’t that make the break time inefficient for improvement? Since it just disrupts the training flow?" she asks something that makes sense in most cases. If you train something for a few days and then stop for a few more days before starting again, progress is generally lost. But that doesn’t happen with beings like me and Azraelith.

"It won’t make much difference, mainly because we’re not training to increase strength, but to get rid of weaknesses and gain experience." I can’t make Azraelith stronger in terms of raw power, and I also can’t get stronger by being trained by Azraelith.

We both know that, so we decided our training is only valuable for the experience. And experience can’t be taken away just because we pause!!!

"Anyway, could you get into this sword here? I want to test something." I create a simple bastard sword using [Essence of Creation]. Because of my power, it easily became a Grade 10 Weapon, capable of rivaling most weapons in general.

"Okay."

"..." The sword takes on a black coloration with a purple glow in the center of the blade. I swing the sword, feeling how much stronger Violet has become.

"Violet, how far into the future can you see now, in the normal timelines?" Violet can see fate; seeing the future is possible for her, although with the limitation that she sees many destiny lines, so it’s impossible to know which one is correct.

"One day!" Violet says this with immense pride.

’So little...’ Violet usually only sees a few seconds into the future fate, which makes sense considering how many lines exist in that place where she observes everything. One day must be a lot, I guess.

And it’s undoubtedly useful, to the point where this ability has saved me a few times, where she chose a timeline where I avoided a fatal blow, like in the fight against Mikael.

"Perfect. So, Violet, since you’re here, how about helping me out a bit?"

"What do you need?"

"I want you to manipulate one day of destiny, every day. Look for destiny lines where me and Azraelith learn faster because we chose the right training, and always choose them, so we have the greatest possible evolution in our training." When I say this, Violet falls silent.

"That’s genius, but also dangerous, Pandora. If I keep choosing specific destiny lines non-stop, a lot of them will start to disappear, and maybe that will lead to an unavoidable bad future."

"That’s fine. I trust you with my life. We’re connected in the end, right? I’ll give you a vote of confidence that you’ll be able to create the future I want." Violet won’t be giving me power; she’ll just choose the training and methods that are most efficient for me and Azraelith.

I have thousands of plans and methods for training with Azraelith, but most of those plans will certainly go wrong. What I want is for Violet to simply ignore all the failed plans and always make me choose the best one.

And fortunately, I know this won’t anger the Avatars of the Primordial Goddess who deal with things like Time, for example, because this is a power that comes from a weapon made from a piece of the Primordial Goddess herself.

I can manipulate destiny now. It’s not that high-level, but I could do what I asked Violet to do. But if I did it myself, it would definitely anger the avatars of time and entropy.

I’m being very careful. The complete fundamentals of creation have given me a better "margin" to know what the limit is that I shouldn’t cross and, best of all, who can cross those limits for me.

And believe it or not, Violet can cross almost all the limits, being a piece of the Primordial Goddess. Which is ironic, and I don’t know if that was a flaw of the avatars, who don’t know how to deal with it, or if it was intentional and they never thought anyone would use it because these weapons are so rare.

"So, Pandora, I’m going to start now! The best training for tomorrow isn’t just insulting that girl!! From what I see here, the best training is to remain in total silence and poke at her from all sides, provoking her in silence!!" She explains, even though it’s not really necessary.

’So that idea would work?’ It was one of the plans, but I was going to ignore it because it seemed pretty weak, since the focus is to stress Azraelith but not provoke her too much, so she can adjust slowly.

"Violet, can you somehow know what Azraelith will do when it’s her turn to train me?" I’m anxious and nervous about that. She seems pretty pissed at me, and I’m sure she’ll get her revenge.

"No, it’s too far away. Plus, time in the Abyss is confusing!! I just tried to see the destiny lines, and each one is at an absurd distance from the other, while others are stuck together and entangled with others!!"

’That makes sense.’ It’s a complicated environment, but I’m making progress, so I can’t complain too much.

"Hey... Violet... my children. Can you get any information about them from here?"

"..."

"Some things, but it’s very hard. I can tell you they’re fine. Besides, not that much time has passed on the planet! You don’t need to worry!" When she says that, I smile, satisfied, moving forward to test new things with Violet.