SSS Awakening: All My Clones Have Divine Bloodlines!

After she started running, Selena kept running, not because she feared those creatures would catch her if she stopped, but because she was lost in her own thoughts.

She never expected to hear those words. Especially not from a Langthon.

Her mother wanted her to have this dimensional pouch? Why? And why entrust the task to Vincent?

She didn’t know. But she wanted to find out, because after 10 years, she’d finally found some kind of lead on what might have happened to her mother and brother.

She kept running for a good while, until exhaustion finally caught up with her.

Looking back, she’d covered a considerable distance, but she was also deep in the forest now.

She found a towering tree and leaped onto one of its thick branches.

Resting her back against the trunk, she took several deep breaths, trying to steady both her breathing and the storm raging inside her heart.

It wasn’t like her to lose her composure.

The only reason she had today was the dimensional pouch in her hand.

She stared at it for a while, as if deciding what to do, then stood up, moved to the center of the thick branch, away from the trunk and the neighboring limbs, and drew a thread of mana from her body, feeding it into the pouch.

The reaction was immediate. She could sense the presence of two objects inside. One was a folded piece of paper, the other was a bracelet, a little old, worn from the look of it, clearly seen better days. But that didn’t matter to her, because the moment she noticed it, her eyes went wide, and she immediately pulled both objects back out.

Under normal circumstances, she would’ve taken her time checking the contents carefully, especially after seeing what was inside. But these weren’t normal circumstances. In the next instant, a clawed hand shot out from the branch beneath her, four thick fingers reaching to grab her.

She was already moving, snapping away, sword already in hand, ready to strike.

She’d decided to check the dimensional pouch, which meant dealing with these creatures first.

So she chose to climb higher, onto one of the tree’s thicker branches, which would limit the space these creatures had to reach her, keeping her from being caught off guard by an attack from a blind spot, and also making it easier to kill whatever came for her, since it would be forced into her direct line of attack.

The thing had barely emerged from the branch, ready to strike, when a small point of light expanded in front of it, and before it could even register what was happening, a blade punched straight through its head, killing it instantly.

Selena let out a breath of relief as she pocketed the letter still in her hand.

She had only used the bare minimum amount of mana needed to access the dimensional pouch.

That tiny amount had been enough to limit the strength of the creature that appeared, leaving it a full rank below her.

She didn’t dwell on that for long, though. She had something far more important in her hands to deal with.

She looked down at the bracelet and the folded paper in her left hand, her expression conflicted as memories drifted through her mind.

She remembered this bracelet. How could she not? It was her family’s one heirloom, the only thing her family had ever owned, since everything else belonged to their masters.

Her mother had told her, when she was little, that it was the gift her father gave her when he proposed. Not a ring, those were far out of their reach, but a bracelet, one that might have belonged to her grandmother, she wasn’t sure, and right now, that wasn’t what mattered most.

Her mother had given this bracelet to Vincent.

’Why?’ she wondered. Her mother must have died almost 10 years ago by now, which meant she’d given it to him before that.

Which meant Vincent had held onto this the entire time, only handing it over now.

That irritated her quite a bit, but she understood there was no point being angry about it.

As far as she knew, he was already dead, something that would normally have made her happy, but she couldn’t find any joy in it right now.

She stared at the bracelet for a while, lost in memory, tears forming at the edges of her eyes, but they never fell. Not because they couldn’t, but because she didn’t let them. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry anymore, wouldn’t show weakness anymore, because it only took one small weakness to end up used by others, or worse, killed by them.

She’d told herself that until she’d settled her grudges, she would never show weakness, and that held true now too, even if it was proving far harder than usual.

She calmed her aching heart, and finally her eyes settled on the folded piece of paper.

She looked at it for a moment before gathering the courage to open it.

She didn’t know what it was or who it was from. Logic told her it had to be from her mother, but if it was, what could it possibly contain?

She couldn’t bring herself to guess, so she hesitated for a moment before finally opening it.

Her eyes landed on the first line of the letter. It was addressed to her, but not from her mother, as she’d hoped and expected.

It was from Vincent.

Her eyes turned a little colder, but she didn’t stop. She wanted to know why he’d gone through the trouble of leaving this letter behind.

"I always hoped the day you’d read this would never come..."

Those were the first words. Words she brushed past at first, but soon understood why he’d written them.

The letter was short, only a few lines. The first half of it consisted of him seeming to complain about everyone, about himself, about his family, maybe regrets, maybe just something he needed to get off his chest, but that didn’t matter to her. She kept reading.

Until the actual purpose of the letter became clear.

"When your mother gave me this bracelet, I didn’t understand right away why she did it. Something I still regret to this day, because if I had understood then, maybe, just maybe, she would still be alive."

Those words hit Selena especially hard, because the meaning behind them was obvious.

They were talking about her mother’s death. But that’s when she noticed something odd. He hadn’t mentioned any journey. Only that she’d given him the bracelet.

She kept reading, and the further she went, the more a strange gleam crept into her eyes. Hatred. Rage. Murderous intent. A mix of all of it.

It was exactly as she’d suspected. Her mother hadn’t died in some accident on the way here. She’d died at the hands of Baron Langthon.

That much she’d already expected, and even so, it wasn’t easy to accept. But that wasn’t what set off her fury. That was only the beginning. What came after was what sent her over the edge.

"I thought my father had killed her for something she’d done, and I believed that for a long time, until I transferred to the academy and met the instructor who took you under his wing. Only then did I learn the real reason. He’d ordered the Langthons to get rid of your brother and your mother."

Those words were what finally broke her.

She’d trusted that man as a mentor, and as strange as she’d always found him, she never thought he’d do something like this. She felt betrayed.

She wanted to let her rage loose right then, but held herself back, partly because she understood it would only bring more trouble in her curretn situation, and partly because the letter wasn’t finished yet.

There was one last piece.

"Even with the order given, my father doesn’t seem to have followed it completely. If he had, he would have eliminated your brother right along with your mother. But he didn’t. He let him live. Even after your mother died, he never got rid of your brother. Instead, he kept him at the manor, left to bear the weight of being a slave."

The moment she read those words, the rage burning inside her seemed to freeze for an instant as her eyes went wide.

’My brother. He’s not dead?’

The information caught her off guard, and for an indeterminate stretch of time, she couldn’t think of anything else, stuck on those words alone.

’He’s alive? He’s been at the manor this whole time?’

The thought overwhelmed her, and for the first time in what felt like forever, she found a sense of joy she hadn’t felt in longer than she could remember.

The possibility that her brother might still be alive hit her in a way she never expected.

He was alive. Still at the manor, suffering under the Langthons, waiting for the day she’d finally come back for him.

That was her thought. But then her mind froze.

’The manor...’

Her eyes went blank for a moment as a piece of information she’d heard some time ago came rushing back.

The Langthon manor, the baron’s estate, the place she hated, the place that held some of the worst memories of her childhood, didn’t exist anymore.

The incident at Lirath a few months ago, the one that led to a portal opening, had destroyed the manor. And from what she’d heard, there had been no survivors.

Which meant...

If her brother had truly been there all this time...

Then he had been caught in it as well.

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