【SC】Endless Journey

When he woke up for the first time, his vision was filled with a boundless black rock crust.

Huge energy surged in the body, as if there was a newborn planet under the skin.His body is neither pure matter nor pure energy, but a plasma formed in extremely compressed light and heat, and has a relatively fixed image due to the gradual cooling of the surface.

There is an invisible thread in the air that connects him with the energy donor, like an invisible umbilical cord and womb.He followed the direction of the energy to find the source, and saw the huge star above his head—a meteorite formed by the extrusion and accumulation of dead cells with a shadow enough to cover the entire surface of the earth within a ten-mile radius, it also essentially gave birth to him. mother body.

"Jenovia."

A name quickly appeared in his mind.

Like all newborn beings, he has no memory of the past, but his body contains the information of billions of creatures, and he has acquired quite a lot of knowledge at the moment he was born.

He, or they, were once the biological tissue of someone left behind at the bottom of the Peking University Hollow.

At first they were only the size of a fingernail, perhaps a small fragment of skin or muscle.They absorb the overflowing stream of life at the bottom of the big cavity and grow with difficulty. For several decades, they can only barely maintain the current number of cell division and apoptosis.In the process, they gradually adapted to the higher concentration of moko, and mutated for this adaptation, and finally, after hundreds of generations, they were able to use the energy at the bottom of the large cavity more efficiently.

This kind of life continued until more than 140 years ago before a drastic change occurred.A giant moko crystal appeared at the bottom of the Peking University cave. The ultra-high concentration of moko crystals completely inhibited their proliferation, making them soon face the threat of extinction, so they were dying in a desperate situation for more than 100 years. Finally, it begins to evolve in the direction of merging with the stream of life.

The surviving cells of each generation are strengthening their tolerance and absorption ability to the demons, and the survival ability of each generation of cells as independent individuals becomes better. At the same time, they also gradually lose the ability to differentiate into specific tissues, thus It can no longer be transformed back into a whole complex life form.This evolution as a whole looks like an atavistic metamorphosis, but at the genetic level they have undoubtedly gained unprecedented enhancements, and that's when he noticed them.

……Do not.

wrong.

This is my memory, but who am I?

He was confused for a moment, but then a huge amount of information flooded into his mind, reminding him of another name.

"Sephiroth."

...By the way, this is a memory belonging to a man named Sephiroth.He is the consciousness that exists in the streams of life, the matrix from which they were once made.

The cells at the bottom of the Peking University cavity were unable to differentiate because there was no signal secreted by the main body, so they could only grow wildly as ordinary cell clusters for a long time.The man didn't care about his lost clones at first, until they evolved the ability to devour the flow of life-even though they were no longer his cells, they still carried his genes, so the theory They will respond to the call of Xenovia's reunion instinct, or they can be driven by his will.The cells themselves were useless, but if he could use them to reshape his body, he might be able to gain stronger power than before.

Even so, men don't expect much from those cell clusters.The inhibition of moko crystallization was so obvious that they had to abandon the surface for more than 100 years, and instead burrowed into the barren ice and rock crust.However, the bottom of the Great Northern Cavern is the closest place on Gaia to the core of the planet. All the life streams on the planet circulate in the abyss of the star core. These cells continue to reach the water source like the fibrous roots of plants, and finally after more than 140 years Opened up the road inside and outside the planet.

At this time, the man realized that his opportunity had come.

"Where are you taking it?!"

A call brought his thoughts back to reality.

This was the first sound he had heard since he woke up, and it was so familiar, so he quickly found the owner of the sound in his memory—it was a young man with blond hair like a chocobo tail feather, and the other party had the same Jenova's genes.

"Stop it, Sephiroth!!" the young man yelled at him.

……I see.I am Sephiroth.

He thought so, but he didn't stop moving forward.

This feeling is very subtle. In his memory, he had incomparably contradictory and complicated emotions towards youth, such as contempt, love, hatred, obsession, etc. However, these emotions are so strange to himself now.Those memories seem to be movies played in his mind. Although the perspective of the screen belongs to him, the emotions in it have nothing to do with him.

"Sephiroth—"

The young man came at him with a strong sword wind, but he blocked it easily with authentic.

The recoil force on the blade instantly shattered the opponent's internal organs, the young man spat out a mouthful of blood, and then fell straight into the rough sea.He watched indifferently as the young man was swallowed by the icy sea water, and continued to drive the parent star northward.

The other party may die, or not.He didn't care what happened to his compatriots, he just wanted to rush to Peking University as soon as possible.

That's where it all begins and ends, and he'll get all of Gaia's energy in the Void, enough fuel to propel meteors into space.After that, he will leave this dying planet, take the newborn meteor as a boat, and embark on a long journey to find the next territory.

The distance to reach the Beida void is very long, and the huge mass of the star exacerbates the difficulty of movement.In order to reduce drag, he had to move the star to the thin air stratosphere, so that it could be accelerated into Gaia's satellite orbit in the future.

After all this was done, he finally had enough time to think about himself.

Although he has confirmed his identity through youth, he is still a newly born self.At first, there was only "purpose" in his consciousness, which was driven by the instinct of Jenova's genes; only now did he start to think about "why", it seems that only by completing this logical chain can he have his own thinking .

In order to make himself more complete, he began to slowly digest the memory of the last Sephiroth.

"What am I?"—this was the first question that came to his mind.

He flipped through his memory for a long time, and found a picture of being in the laboratory when he was a child.

He was lying in the ice-cold cultivation cabin, the veins were filled with steel needles, and the high concentration of Moko was continuously infused into the body through the needles.A black-haired man wearing glasses stood outside the cabin and observed him, his long greasy hair was combed back in a bun, with a sinister sneer on his face.

Dr. Hojo—so he labeled the man in his memory—was his biological father, something he seemed to have always known but had always been reluctant to admit.

In his cognition, a man used his own sperm to impregnate a woman named Lucrecia, and infected the embryo with disaster cells from 2000 years ago, thus creating him with the Jenova gene.That means he's some kind of artificial life, just with more power and better genes.From another perspective, he is a "god" created by human beings trying to use the things in the universe.

But he soon had new doubts.

——"What is Xenovia?"

Although he had known the name shortly after his birth, he had never thought about its origin.So he dived into his memory again to find the answer.

This time he found a magic stove surrounded by mountains, and there was a closed room in the magic stove.A huge glass container stood in the center of the secret room, and inside the container was a strangely shaped silver-haired female corpse.

The woman seemed to have been corroded by some creature, countless twisted fleshy whiskers emerged from the body, and one of the largest ones led to her abdominal cavity like an umbilical cord; a metal helmet and pipelines fixed her head in the center of the container , "JENOVA" is engraved on the nameplate of the helmet.

Just as he was looking carefully at the silver-haired female corpse, the woman suddenly opened her eyes.He stepped back abruptly, but met those weird purple pupils.

"Sephiroth, my child."

Something seemed to be activated in his genes, and a huge amount of information suddenly flooded into his mind like a flood——

That was hundreds of millions of years ago, far away in another universe of stars.

In a certain distant galaxy, there is a huge star, and a planet is orbiting hundreds of millions of kilometers away from it.This planet has a suitable temperature and a stable environment, so the flow of life took root here, and countless ancient lives have been bred since then.

However, during the geological changes of hundreds of millions of years, the planet has frequently experienced glacial freezing, volcanic eruptions, and crustal movements. Batch after batch of species prospered and died on the planet, and life repeatedly evolved and was knocked back to the original point.After trying the simplest form of bacteria and the highest intelligence, most creatures still survived the fate of destruction, but Jenova stood out from it.

Jenova, as a creature with extremely strong adaptability, survived the Great Ice Age, survived the basalt eruption, and even survived the destruction brought about by other advanced civilizations, until the last 10 years of life ushered in The red giant phase of that star.Due to the expansion of the star, the surface of the planet heated up rapidly, the atmosphere was lifted by the plasma flow, and the earth gradually turned into a desert. The life flow of the planet was exhausted in the struggle against these changes, and finally only the core remained on one's last legs.

Jenova knew that the star would eventually enter the supernova explosion stage, so he decided to leave before the star died.It takes an asteroid as a boat, hollows out all the life flow of the parent star and drives it to leave the galaxy.In order to preserve its genes during interstellar travel, it even returns itself to the most basic way of existence, retaining only the instinct of growth and reproduction. This irreversible change also makes it impossible to have a unified form.

This long journey lasted for several 10 years, and finally brought it to its new home before its energy was exhausted.As soon as it landed, it was resurrected from the meteorite, and immediately began to erode the life flow of the planet, proliferating and expanding uncontrollably like a virus, and it took only tens of thousands of years to completely wither the parasitic planet.When the planet is no longer suitable for living, it creates another meteorite, and spreads itself into the universe in the same way, and it goes round and round, endlessly.

The meteor that struck Gaia 2000 years ago was neither the last nor the only seed of Jenova.It successfully took root here, and was fused into Sephiroth's body by human hands, accidentally giving birth to the most powerful Jenova in history——

"……that's me."

He took a deep breath and finally woke up from the ancient memory engraved in his genes.

He suddenly understood one thing, and that was the meaning of his existence.

He is the pinnacle of life evolution, the only hope for Xenovia from low level to high level, and then to eternity for hundreds of millions of years.As a higher creature, he has the right to use the life flow of the planet as food and plunder the energy of all life, and when all the life flow of Gaia is his, he can completely escape from the cycle of the planet, Then rule the universe in a new way.

In other words, he is the end of all things.

He and the star traveled two thousand kilometers north, and finally set foot on the land of the Northern Continent at sunset.

The original S-shaped eroded surface is lifeless, and the exposed rock crust is full of traces of the tsunami.The twilight line seems to be the only living thing here, bit by bit eating away at the daylight on the ground.

Just as he was flipping through his memories boredly, there was a sudden sound of an engine in the distance.

"Confirm the target two kilometers ahead and prepare to attack!"

The missile hit the shield at a distance of 300 meters from him, and exploded in mid-air; thunderstorms flashed in the surrounding airspace, and all the fighter jets following him were also destroyed.

"boom--"

The exploding fireball lit up the night sky, and soon fell into the sea like stars.

Since he left Midgar, the army of the Grand Duchy has been chasing him, firing rockets, missiles and even nuclear bombs at him, most of which could not even break through his shield, but instead allowed him to easily destroy half of Midgar. air power.

After solving this episode, he began to continue flying in the direction of the large void.When he passed the edge of the snow line in the Northern Continent, something suddenly flickered on the wasteland, which immediately attracted his attention—it was a lake with an area of ​​less than one square kilometer, surrounded by strange silver-white trees, and the water was like a lake. A small mirror looks extra bright under the moonlight.

Theoretically, nothing will be left on the surface when the original S-type fades away, but this lake and vegetation have survived tenaciously, which is really... unusual.

"The city of oblivion."

A name suddenly appeared in his mind.

He remembered that there should have been an ancient forest here, where he killed the last descendant of the ancient species on the planet, completely cutting off the blood of the Settra people on Gaia.The lake water and land here have a magic power that far exceeds the concentration of the atmosphere, and the nearby plants have absorbed the nutrients in the water and soil, so they are also protected to a certain extent.

Just as he was deep in thought, a cyan meteor suddenly shot out from the center of the lake below.

"boom--"

The meteor exploded the moment it touched the shield, directly illuminating the top of the forest into daylight.There was a gap in the bottom of his shield, and then it shattered into diamond-like dust, and the shock wave pushed away the surrounding clouds.

He recognized this move, someone used it to attack him in Midgar, but it was much less powerful then, and he remembered that its user was...

"It's all over!"

There was a roar from above, and an epee struck at the top of his head with the momentum of tearing the earth.He noticed it the first time, and immediately placed Zhengzong horizontally in front of him.

The moment the weapons met, he saw a pair of blue pupils full of hatred.

"Cloud Strife."

This time he finally remembered the youth's full name.

The opponent's wounds have all healed, and every cell exudes a biting murderous intent.Their weapons clashed briefly, and he flew Claude out, but the opponent quickly adjusted his posture in mid-air, and attacked him again as soon as he landed.

"...Claude."

This is the first time he has spoken since he was born.

The name rolled over the tip of his tongue, with a hint of familiarity that shouldn't have been there.Just when he was trying to capture this feeling, some memories suddenly emerged automatically - the blond-haired youth was not only implanted with Jenova's genes, but also his clone.

"...my puppet." He found a description in his memory.

Claude was stunned for a second, and suddenly gritted his teeth and rushed towards him: "Don't call me that word!"

He didn't know why the young man was enraged, he raised his hand to shake off the opponent's attack, then lowered his head and asked, "Are you here for our reunion?"

Claude didn't answer, and replaced it with a series of onslaughts like a storm.

—That's not it, he thought.

He had no intention of wasting time on fighting with Claude, so he decided to take the initiative.

He suddenly accelerated his attack speed, and the Otachi stabbed straight at the opponent's chest and abdomen. Claude immediately dodged back, but was deeply cut by the blade on his upper arm.

In the next 3 minutes, they tested each other's weaknesses by exchanging flaws. He almost pierced each other's chest a few times, but soon he found that Claude's epee was not as clumsy as it looked. The purposeful slashing quickly made his blade show signs of red heat.

He saw through Claude's intentions, and immediately took it back.

"It's useless. This knife is not real steel, and there will be no metal fatigue."

But the young man rushed to him again as if he didn't hear him, and he immediately blocked the opponent's actions with sword energy.

"Flash" - this is the counter move that really belongs to Sephiroth himself.

The silver arc instantly enveloped Claude, and the violent sword wind cut several bloodstains on the opponent's body.But the young man seemed to avoid all vital points skillfully, and the wound healed at a speed visible to the naked eye after landing.

Before Claude got up, he released several dark purple light clusters to the opponent, and the light clusters tore the space around Claude like a black hole.However, Claude immediately rolled away sideways after the ball of light landed, deftly bypassing all the areas covered by gravity, and killed him in front of him with a sharp sword light in an instant.

"boom--"

The two heavy weapons collided together, and fierce sparks burst out from the blades.

They fought more than 20 times in a few seconds, and it ended temporarily when Claude was knocked out again.This time he was sure that he broke the opponent's ulna, but Claude quickly got up from the ground as if he couldn't feel the pain, and once again raised the six poses and rushed towards him.

He looked at Claude's angry blue eyes for a moment, and finally there was a wave of fluctuation in his calm mood.

——This is a pointless battle.Dull, mechanical, and a waste of time.

The other party is like a machine, as long as it doesn't fall down, it will pester him endlessly.Although those attacks did not pose a threat to him, they could not be completely ignored - the shield was useless in front of the opponent, and it was easier to seize the opportunity between using magic. Claude's individual combat ability was comparable to his past self. He can only use cold weapons to repel the opponent.

When he realized that he had developed some kind of boredom, he suddenly wanted this duplicate body to disappear completely from before him.

"What is your wish?"

He looked down at the young man condescendingly, with one hand raised towards the new star above his head.A mass of molten matter was stripped from the star, and condensed into a huge meteorite under the blessing of the stream of life.

"—Kill me, or be killed by me?"

The blood on Claude's face faded instantly, as if he had been touched by some kind of unspeakable pain.But the other party quickly came back to his senses, and the anger in his eyes became more intense.

He waited patiently for a few seconds, but he didn't get an answer as expected, so he controlled the meteorite to hit the young man from a height of [-] kilometers away.

"boom--"

The huge explosion released several times the energy of a nuclear bomb, and the dazzling flame instantly engulfed Claude completely.

The meteorite split into countless tiny fragments halfway, turning into burning fire rain and falling to the earth.The fire rain continued to bombard the ground, melting the rock formations on the surface, stirring up debris and smoke all over the sky, and the continuous loud noise made the air vibrate crazily.

The bombardment lasted for a full minute before it was completely over, and the place under the clouds had become a purgatory on earth.

He looked down at the land under his feet from a high altitude. The forests and lakes that originally covered the surface had been replaced by craters. Hot magma spread everywhere and gathered in the depression to form a small sea of ​​burning lava.

He knew that no life could survive such an attack, so his mood gradually returned to calm.But just as he was about to leave, a blue flame suddenly shot straight into the sky.

"Do you want to run away like this?!"

Since the shield had been smashed by Claude before, this blow hit his ribs firmly.He was blown away by the scalding airflow, rolling continuously like a feather in the explosive wind, and didn't come to a complete stop until 200 meters away in the air.

He raised his head again and found that Cloud had come to him in Bahamut.The opponent's body was full of burns and wounds caused by gravel, and the situation could be described as tragic.

"...how did you survive?"

He casually blocked another attack from the young man, feeling very surprised.

Claude's injury is so serious that it is theoretically impossible to act, but he can't see the slightest influence from the opponent's actions. There must be some special force involved.

Claude didn't answer, so he began to actively observe the opponent in the next match.

He noticed that Claude's body would flash green light regularly, and after a little thought, he recognized that it was some kind of powerful gradual healing magic.But the gradual healing on the other party seems to be different from what he knows. Its healing efficiency is a bit too high. As long as the wound is not killed by one blow, it can heal within a few seconds. Such a healing rate is obviously not a normal method. .

In fact, no matter how powerful the healing magic is, the principle is roughly the same, which is to make the cells near the wound divide rapidly to achieve the degree of self-healing.If the healing speed of a magic exceeds the safety limit visible to the naked eye, it will usually have an irreversible impact on the individual.

After he figured it out, he quickly calmed down again.

"Shooting doesn't work for me, Cloud. Even if you delay me here for an hour or two, what's the difference? You can't save the planet, you can't save anyone, and you can't even save yourself."

His words seemed to hit the young man's pain point, and the other party glared at him instantly: "I don't want to save anyone, I just want to protect those things that are important to me!"

It was the first time he heard Claude's inner thoughts, and he couldn't help being a little disappointed.

They are already existences above the world. There is nothing more important in this world than capturing the flow of life and maintaining their own existence. The other party, as a copy of himself, should have the same position as him, but Claude obviously didn't realize it. Reality.

He looked down at his own kind and decided to give him one last chance.

"Nothing is important except your life." He commented coldly, "There is not much life left on the planet, and the things you guard will be destroyed sooner or later, even if you sacrifice your life for them, it is futile. But we are born to be planets The ruler of the world, if these energies are incorporated into our bodies, at least these lives can continue with us forever, so you should be with me—"

"Stop imitating Sephiroth's tone!! You don't understand anything at all!!" The young man interrupted him with a sudden growl.

There was a brief silence in the air for a few seconds.

He did have a lot of things he didn't understand, but he didn't feel that it mattered to him.

"I don't need to imitate anyone. He is in my consciousness, I am him."

There was a trace of heaviness in the young man's eyes, and he whispered: "You are not. Sephiroth is dead."

"I have his genes, his cells, his consciousness, and I am completely him from any angle."

"You just got his power and memory, but you are not him."

He narrowed his eyes slightly, a dangerous light seeped from his snake-like vertical pupils.

He didn't know why Claude kept denying his identity, which seemed to be of great significance to Claude, but he was very unhappy about it.

When he reinvented himself, he absorbed all of Sephiroth's abilities and memories, and the only part he couldn't understand was the intricate emotions.But now he finally understood something of it, and that was contempt and disgust.

"Will such self-deception make you feel better?" He raised his right hand again, deciding to take back this last chance, "By denying me, to cover up your incompetence and weakness?"

Claude's face changed suddenly, and he immediately retorted: "No, that's because—"

Before the other party had time to finish the sentence, a dazzling white light suddenly flashed.Claude spurted out a big mouthful of blood, shaking in the wind like a piece of fragile white paper, and then slowly fell to the ground.

— Heartless Angel.

The invisible energy instantly crushed the young man's internal organs, and there were even pieces of flesh throbbing in the vomited blood.

He knew that this move was not enough to kill Claude, so he mentioned Zhengzong and prepared to give him the final blow.But at the moment when he raised his hand, a loud noise suddenly came from a height of [-] kilometers away.

"boom--"

Something hit the meteorite, and a huge explosion ensued.

The explosion shattered the structure of the star, and part of the meteorite began to avalanche.These avalanche fragments are the size of small hills, accelerating downward in the friction of the atmosphere, and trillions of cubic meters of material suddenly poured from the sky.

He glanced up at the fire above, then glanced at Claude: "Is this the way you came up with?"

The young man turned over with difficulty, glanced at the catastrophic scene above, and replied angrily: "I didn't participate in this part."

"Using the energy of a giant magic spar to blow up a meteorite, what a ridiculous idea. Do you know what will happen if 3000 billion tons of matter fall to the ground from a height of [-] kilometers?"

"..."

Some falling debris has been accelerated to the point of friction and combustion with the atmosphere, and it seems that the North Continent will usher in another meteorite rain of unprecedented scale.

He looked down at Claude's gradually pale cheeks, and suddenly felt a kind of revenge-like pleasure.So he looked up to the sky again, suspended the fragments in the air, and then slowly regrouped towards the incomplete star.

The meteorite began to revolve around its core, changing from an initial iron-gray color to a red-hot molten state in a few minutes.Under his control, the fragments that had collapsed were submerged into the molten magma, swallowed up by meteorites, reorganized, and finally formed an asteroid with a diameter of up to ten kilometers.

He looked at his masterpiece with satisfaction and gave Claude an almost cruel smile.

"You think that disposing of this meteorite will solve the problem. In fact, I can recreate it at any time. And you know that any struggle to destroy me or it is futile, but you still want to violate it for some inferior lives. Against me, this is so... stupid."

Lying in the blood he vomited, Claude looked at him with eyes between anger and sadness.After a long time, the other party spoke hoarsely.

"Whether low-level or high-level, that is your definition of them... Every life has its own meaning of existence objectively. It is not that the high-level is necessarily better than the low-level, and the predator is more capable than the plundered." Exist for a long time. You are not the first to think so, and you will not be the last, but those life forms that are not as complex as Jenova appeared on the planet before her, and they will not disappear even if she perishes, so it is more What a wise creature would choose coexistence rather than destruction..."

"When you maintain your own existence by destroying other lives, have you ever thought about the meaning of your own existence?"

——It is the instinct of life.

Although he wanted to answer in this way, he stared at the still clear blue pupils of the young man, and quickly realized that this was a trap: Claude wanted to prove that his existence was not more important than other lives, so he started by denying his identity start.

When he thought he had seen through the opponent's trick, his contempt for Claude deepened.

Yes, he is the new self, without his own experience, but he has just explored this issue - he is Sephiroth, the most perfect and powerful Xenovia, so his existence has been from the moment of birth was endowed with supreme significance.

"Become the apex of all things, break through the boundaries of life, and then continue Xenovia's genes forever in this dark universe."

Knowing his answer was perfect, he flashed a triumphant smile.

However, after hearing this, Claude closed his eyes in disappointment. When he opened them again, a blue flame ten times stronger than before erupted from his body.

"You may indeed have obtained a part of him..." The other party got up from the pool of blood, removed a secondary sword from the Six Styles, and then put on a posture of holding blades with both hands, "But your current personality is just a clumsy response to him." Imitation. He never defined himself by that."

The words stung him inexplicably.

"You are just a copy of Sephiroth, you have no right to deny me!" His tone gradually mixed with a trace of imperceptible irritability, but Claude shouted in an even more irritating tone: "I have!"

He froze for a moment, and the other party had rushed towards him at the speed of a bullet.

"I know what you saw, because I saw the same thing in his memory. You just inherited Jenova's will and acted according to its instinct. That's not your true self at all!"

The frequency of the two swords suddenly increased to a higher level than before, and the slashes strengthened by Moko's energy continuously attacked his torso.He realized that his blocking was starting to become difficult, so he planned to increase the distance between the two.

But when he shook off the opponent's attack and flew into the sky, the young man called Bahamut back again, and followed his trajectory to the side.

"This is the qualification he bestowed on me. It is his curse on me. I have been forced to live with it since 200 years ago. Do you think I really want it?"

He swung a few silver arcs at Claude, but the opponent avoided them skillfully.After that, Claude jumped high again, recombined the six moves into one, and rushed towards him with a thunderous force.

"If I asked him the same question, he would never answer like this, because I know what is really important in his heart—"

When the huge energy fell on him with the sword, he subconsciously raised Zhengzong to resist.However, the heavy sword split into six at the moment of contact with him, surrounding him like a soldier formation, and then a blue afterimage shuttled repeatedly between these sharp blades like a shooting star, every time it moved His body was split open.

Obviously he is no longer a body of flesh and blood, and should not have any sense of touch, but there is a hallucinatory intense pain in his chest, as if his ribs were broken abruptly, his internal organs were torn apart, and every non-existent cell was shattering. A sharp alarm was sounded ahead.

"—The most important thing for him is his own will! That is his pride, the first and last thing he has in this world! He has his own likes and dislikes and emotions, and he never allows Jie Nova's will has replaced himself, what he wants is a world where everything he does can be dominated by his own consciousness rather than someone else's, instead of just being a puppet that Jenova uses to reproduce himself!"

When Cloud struck the final blow, he made eye contact with the opponent in overwhelming phantom pain.He saw that the other party's blue pupils were not all hatred, but also a kind of sadness that he couldn't understand, as if the person who was being torn apart by the epee was not himself, but the other party.

--why.

His mind raced wildly amidst the excruciating pain in his body.

——Why are you so attached to me?Why did you show such a sad expression when you clearly wanted to kill me?

"Because he hates you. Because he loves you."

...incomprehensible.He couldn't understand everything about Claude, he couldn't understand the emotions that Sephiroth had towards the youth, and he couldn't understand the emotions that the youth had towards himself. All of this only made him feel that he was missing something. something so important, and therefore more and more restless.

He suddenly couldn't bear this look, and a strange emotion rushed out from the depths of his soul.

--kill him.

A thought kept repeating in his mind.

He had never felt such anger and frustration before, and the blood in his whole body began to boil.

--kill him.kill him.kill him!

Such a strong emotion was strange to him, and this kind of strong desire to erase a certain existence was also strange. When he tried to understand this kind of anger and excitement, the voice sounded in his head again.

"This is hatred."

... Ahhh.I see.

Being denied by an existence smaller than himself, defeated by an existence he despises, and pityed by an existence he loathes, all these make him want to go crazy with hatred.

"You hate him, and he hates you...but he still loves you."

Something seemed to wake up in his subconscious, as if a giant beast sleeping in the deep sea was being carried by the current and slowly floating up.He had a vague premonition that once this monster surfaced, he would be overwhelmed by a huge flow of information, and he might have a different perception of the world at that time.But that feeling is still hazy at the moment, so he has to focus on solving the problem at hand.

he is falling