I waited for my swimming vision to settle as I held my head.

  When it did, I saw two identical people. Me and me.

  Short and messy blond hair; yellow reptilian eyes; black facial markings; and black-and-yellow scales on their arms, legs, and tails. Both had my gray shorts and shirt, along with a short cloak.

  I blinked.

  Felt like looking into two mirrors simultaneously.

  “…What?”

  My voice came out doubled – two different pitches overlaid on top of each other.

  The dissonant echo traveled down the chasm to my left… no, my right?

  I tried standing up, careful to keep my eyes on the me’s.

  But the ground felt off. My left leg caught on something, while my other left leg had no trouble finding purchase.

  …Wait, what?

  I looked down.

  I saw two grounds littered with rocks, arranged differently for each. In the corner of one of my visions, I saw the remnants of the ice the snake had created, slowly dissolving and melting away.

  I kicked the stone blocking my left leg.

  Smack.

  “Ow!”

  It hit me in the left leg.

  The other me.

  Realization finally dawned as I looked back up in horror at me and myself.

  ““Oh, no… You are… me…”” we said.

  We stared at each other for a second, before remembering the likely culprit behind this situation.

  Both of us pulled out the new skill we had created right before this.

  Then immediately recoiled from it.

  It looked wrong.

  The art bulged out and writhed. It had two featureless faces stuck together, clearly trying to tear themselves apart, mouths open into a scream and eyes twisted in pain. A bright green rim – completely different from the faded green of Uncommons – but the same lattice pattern as the Epic essence. A white title, rather than the normal black.

  [Soul Split]

  I gulped, realizing I must have made a grave mistake. Even ignoring the abnormal appearance, that name sounded way too ominous. And worst of all, unlike any other freshly crafted skill, I had no idea what exactly it did. None of the usual intuition.

  What rarity was this even?

  Not the light blue of Rares, not the shiny dark blue of Very Rares, not the purple of Epics, and not even the gold of Legendaries!

  Although, it had the same pattern as the Epic essence… and I had used an Epic essence in crafting it, so was it an Epic skill?

  Why did it look so messed up then?

  …The corrupted essence. Had to be.

  I glanced at myself and myself in trepidation. Then I finally noticed that my two bodies had some differences.

  We squinted, then crawled closer, studying each other.

  One of us – the new body, I assumed – had a softer and rounder face, silkier hair, and…

  It was a girl.

  A real girl – not just someone pretending to be one to dodge the cultists.

  Something in me clenched and unclenched.

  Why? Had I been pretending for so long that the skill decided to mess with me?

  I had no idea how to feel about this.

  “I am… a girl? No, not you! Me! No, I mean…!”

  We groaned.

  Oh, I hated this so much… Why had I used that damn corrupted essence?

  Was this permanent? Would I just… have two bodies now?

  I really hoped not.

  “Echooo… Echooo… Echooo…” I absentmindedly murmured, trying to distract myself from the dread building up in my gut.

  Then an earth-shaking roar suddenly ripped through the room and we surged to our feet, automatically looking left in alarm.

  “Hey! What?”

  I saw the corridor, still empty as ever.

  At the same time though, I also saw the dark pit and the two new paths behind us.

  Both bodies let out a groan.

  No dangers yet, but…

  I tried turning my other body to face the corridor as well.

  Both bodies ended up turning and facing each other again instead.

  ….Oh boy.

  I clenched my four fists and then tried really hard to act separately.

  Body one turned left, while body two jittered in place, resisting the left turn.

  Body two turned right. I kept body one still.

  The hallway in front of me remained empty. No signs of a giant monster trying to eat us.

  Oh, this was horrible.

  If merely moving took this much effort, I couldn’t see us surviving this.

  Should have listened to the warning…

  Too late now.

  Well, better get going. If we were destined to die in this place, we would at least die fighting.

  Now, which way…? Probably not the new paths if I wanted out of here. Though maybe it didn’t matter since the rift had shifted… Whatever, let’s just go back where I’d come from.

  With that decided, two legs stepped forward in perfect sync. The other two followed like a mirror of one another.

  My four eyes darted around the dirt and rocks forming the hallway and the various pipes and valves decorating the ceiling. It felt confusing at first, since each set of my eyes landed on a slightly different spot, but I quickly learned to adjust so we always looked at the same place.

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  Then it occurred to me that I could try looking into two different places. That way, I could cover my own flank! Yeah, there had to be some kind of upside to this cursed skill!

  I immediately began trying to do that.

  Moving both bodies independently proved to be a challenge, but if nothing else, the long corridor gave me ample time to practice. It only took a few minutes of walking until I sort of managed it. The only problem being, I had to focus on moving one while keeping the other still, and then do it the other way around. Couldn’t move both in different directions at once.

  But I was sure I could learn how to do it – I was already starting to – but that would take time. Time that I didn’t have right now.

  Then as I tried too hard to separate the two bodies’ actions, my head began to ache and then I stuttered and blanked out.

  And in the process, I tripped.

  One of me did, at least.

  And as I tried to catch myself, I only ended up tripping with my other body as well, which confused me and made the recovery of my first body fail miserably.

  …

  “We’re so screeeeewed,” we whined as we climbed back up on our feet and brushed off the mud.

  It didn’t help.

  Looking at ourselves, we needed a shower and a change of clothes really bad.

  With a double sigh, we turned the corner and were greeted with an opening instead of the earlier crossroad. That didn’t reassure us in the slightest.

  We walked out into a large sprawling area filled with vegetation, pools of liquid, metallic pipes snaking through the place like a scattered spiderweb, and a musty smell that tickled our noses. A murky glass wall cut through the place to our right, signifying the edge of the rift.

  A careful glance around revealed no monsters. Yet.

  “Okay. We need a plan,” my first body – let’s call him One – managed to say while the other one’s – Two’s – lips only twitched.

  “How about we follow the roars? There could be people that way,” Two suggested.

  “Or it could just be a big monster eating small monsters again.”

  “Eugh, yeah… This place is nuts.”

  Felt a bit weird to have a literal conversation with myself out loud… but also oddly satisfying?

  Double weird.

  Heh, double. Fitting.

  We giggled.

  A growl from the side interrupted us.

  We whirled around and spotted a clawed toad that blended in with its surroundings already leaping in our direction from where I’d perched near the side wall.

  We screamed, whipped out a card each and used it at the same time.

  [Tricky Trail] [Tricky Trail]

  Two balls of light erupted from our hands, and to our horror, immediately bumped into each other.

  But instead of exploding in our faces, the projectiles merged and continued as a single attack with a double helix trail behind it.

  It swept our assailant out of the air, carried it into the nearest mound of soil and then boom!

  “Gaaaah?!”

  A pressure of air hit us and we stumbled as gore spray-painted the impact zone and showered the surroundings in dirt.

  We stared, mouths open.

  We had just used the skill twice! Oh! So that was the advantage of this cursed skill! Both of us could use our skills independent of each other!

  And moreover, even at double its power, [Tricky Trail] shouldn’t have been that powerful. I’d felt like times four, rather than times two.

  The dust settled and an essence zipped out of the bloody puddle toward us. Once it reached us, it spun in place and then split into two identical copies. Each of us caught one of them.

  Our grin got even wider as we admired the essence cards.

  Light blue rim – Rare – and art of a brick wall. A face poked out in the middle, revealing that part of the wall was actually a cloak painted to look exactly like the wall behind it.

  ◆Camouflage◆

  …Times two!

  Not only did we both have a separate deck of cards, but it looked like whenever one of us got an essence, both of us got it! I’d never heard of that happening! Even if two people killed a monster together, the essence would choose only one of them!

  “Awesome!” we both cheered and pulled out our newest skill again.

  Unnerving as ever with how it wriggled, but we could now easily see it as an Epic. Maybe even higher?

  With this, we could quit being street performers and become rift hunters for real instead!

  Although that could risk drawing attention from… them.

  We grimaced and finally stood up. A quick scan of our surroundings revealed no more monsters.

  Then a thought occurred to us and we brought up the essence out again.

  “Hey, can we both craft different skills?” One asked.

  “I dunno, we should try it.”

  “But this is our only good essence… Should we just use the Common ones?”

  “Or we could try to blow up more monsters. Get better essences.”

  “I don’t know about that… We might die next time…”

  “But making too many Commons is bweh too. You know what happens to a bloated deck…”

  “Well, we could upgrade them later, but yeah, I don’t want to just make whatever…”

  “We should still make something. It’s useless to have a Rare essence if we don’t make anything out of it.”

  ““Hmm…””

  And then another thought popped into our heads.

  “…Hey.”

  “…Yeah?”

  “What happens if one of us dies?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”

  “How about we never find out?”

  “Sounds like a top idea.”

  But for that, we needed to both get out of this place alive.

  We moved to stand back to back and took out our entire decks. Both of us had identical ones.

  First…

  [Soul Split] gave us a second body with another set of cards, duplicated essences we got, and from what we’d seen, made our other skills stronger when both bodies used them at the same time. The downside, controlling both bodies at the same time was hard – but doable. We were getting better at it with every passing moment.

  Next, we had our [Tricky Trail]s. Both still felt cold and heavy in our hands from earlier use. With the text and the rim grayed out and the art faded, we knew we couldn’t use them at least for a few more seconds. Still, these were our main form of attack and if we were to survive this place, we had to use them carefully.

  Then, each of us had their own [Healing Light]. An Uncommon skill with a dull green rim and art featuring a glowing hand. Useful if one of us got hurt. Maybe even life-saving if we could combine them like the [Tricky Trail]s. We would keep that in mind.

  Finally, we had our [Transfrogify] to confuse the enemy for a moment in exchange for becoming a frog ourselves. It had come in clutch against that snake, though it usually just hindered us.

  But…

  “Hey, if I use [Transfrogify], you won’t turn into a frog, right?” One asked.

  “No idea. But it would make sense.”

  “That means one of us can [Transfrogify] a monster and the other can finish it with [Tricky Trail].”

  “You know what? That sounds like a top plan! Awesome combo potential here!”

  Both of us grinned and turned to each other after putting away our decks.

  “Let’s do this, then! We’re totally getting out of here!”

  “Hell yeah!”

  I high-fived myself.

  It felt amazing.

  The dull metallic clang above us, not so much.