3 Not a system

"Me?" Young Blake was confused for a moment, then, his eyes lit up as he excitedly stared at the person in front of him. The process of aging had come to a dead halt in the Abyss. Death due to old age was not a problem because in there, those kinds of deaths were not brutal enough to be present in the Abyss. If the person aged to become old, they would not be able to struggle against the Abyss. What was the purpose of the Abyss if one would not struggle only to see its uselessness in the end?

This all means that Blake (abyssal) still had the same appearance he had five years less than a century ago. He was permanently stuck with his sixteen year self, until now. He could finally turn seventeen next year!

Only he knew how much troubles he had gone through in the Abyss just because of his appearance. He was the unluckiest of guys. The Abyss only swallowed people in their primes. Too old? Well, I will spare you. Got limited lifespan anyways.

Too young? Can wait, can wait.

This was the attitude of the Abyss. It sucked people in batches and over the span of thirty years, had already swallowed the whole world. The old were left to die and the young were exposed to much more.

Blake was not the only exception to the rule but these exceptions could be counted on one's hands. He had already (forcefully) forgotten that embarrassing memory so there is no way anyone could get their hands on the info regarding the reason behind that exception.

"Yes, you", Blake (abyssal) tried to smile gently.

"Looks like my future isn't bright...", young Blake sighed. Even before the invasion, Blake had a queer personality. He was not like other kids his age. Sometimes, he would be more childish than children but on others, even he would doubt his own age.

"How many years I have?"

"Half a decade"

"What do I need to do?"

"I have no idea"

"What do you mean?"

"The plan didn't have two Blakes." Blake (abyssal) let out a sinister grin.

"You're going to get rid of me?" young Blake burrowed his brows.

"Hahaha! What if I say yes?" Blake (abyssal) laughed in a menacing manner.

Hearing this, young Blake let out a sigh of relief. "Come on, let's go home" he tugged at his oversized schoolbag as he marched forward.

It was mid June, summer. The sun seemed to have received extra salary and was doing its work more energetically. With the temperature over 45c, nobody would want to be out in the open, directly under the sun even for a second.

If someone said anything related to going out, perhaps the first thing the next person would do would be to send the person off to the nearest mental hospital saying, "there, you wanted to be out, have fun!"

Young Blake stopped after a few steps when he noticed his future self was not following him.

"Hm?"

"Wait"

Young Blake turned around to face against his future self.

"Not killing you doesn't mean you are safe", Blake (abyssal) gently smiled as a demonic aura enveloped the both of them. Killing intent endlessly flowed out from him. Young Blake could not just feel it, he could see it! The killing intent was so dense that he could actually see it! It had actually materialized!

He started to back away when he saw a weirdly dark light flashing brilliantly in his (abyssal) palm. He did not have any positive feelings towards this string of events.

How could he escape from his future, though?

With a step, he covered all the distance between them, gently striking his palm right at his heart. Directly at the heart! The palm penetrated through the skin, tore through the flesh and pierced through the bones as it literally struck the heart.

Eh?

It was not a strike. He had grabbed his heart and with a pull, the hand was out from his body, back in the air... With the heart gripped inside.

He did not have the time to think when he felt himself being pulled. Every part of his being was pulled into a void and he was not even able to resist. That was the last till he held onto his consciousness, blacking out.

...

A few minutes later, Blake arrived back home, had lunch with his parents and then went into his room to do his homework.

?!!

'Where am I?'

'In our room'

'Huh?... What did you do to me?'

'We were one and the same from the start, I just literally made the 'one' part come true.'

'What about the 'same' part?'

'What I've experienced personally can't compare to the memories you'll have access to. Treat it like a split personality disorder'

'More like 'Yu-Gi-Oh!' ?'

'Yeah, something similar', he remembered the anime even after all those years because the two's minds had synced with each other quite well.

'What happened to the bodies?'

'They both combined into one. We can transmute from the 10 year old one to the 16 year old one freely'

'What will we do now?'

'The technique has expended much of my soul power because I had to carry all the burden. Merging bodies is no simple task. Has many limitations. Age, constitution, personality, shape and size... Many things must be taken into account. Any extreme differences may disrupt the process, creating various problems ranging from deformed parts to inhumane mutations. Thankfully, we were one and the same. I will let you take over for the meanwhile.' Since the communication didn't require the vocals, Blake could speak more freely.

'Isn't our difference in age considered extreme?'

'We were born on the same date'.

'Oh'

'You can browse through my memories so try to skim through as much as you can in your free time. I'm shutting down.'

'You ain't a system'