Chapter 134 - Awakening

Original Nuwa awakes amidst a serene feeling of mental relaxation. She smiles as she watches Mother Nyx fade from her soul entirely. Her eyes subsequently glaze over as she feels a rush of new memories that exist in her consciousness. It all comes to her at once, all 18 years of life that she missed. There's no process where she watches through them and can digest them one by one. It is like she was there all along.. but she was not. She had been turned off.

By all rights, she should be freaking out for having her own body denied to her, but she.. is somehow surprisingly OK with it? Snek Nuwa got to experience exactly the kind of normal childhood life she had always dreamed of having without the manipulations of the [System] subtly influencing her to think lewdly, suggesting her to take actions to seek power, and slowly turning her into the selfish, extremely rational hedonist that she had become.

'So this is what it feels to have a normal childhood.. hmmm. It feels weird.. to not always think about myself or how to manipulate those around me, but it feels good. Even though my Snek Nuwa side is kind of dumb, I understand now. I would be unable to fully comprehend true love without grasping the sacrifices that myself as Snek Nuwa would be able to make for the sake of our Big Bro Zag. I love him so much. Thank you, Mother Nyx, for sparing me and giving me this opportunity. I love you too.'

+80% synchronization of Dao Core

Nuwa's Dao Core, which is currently two hemispheres with a bar between them, begins to squeeze back together. What Nyx had accomplished is far more valuable than any Olympian's Boon! This breakthrough will allow her to return to comprehending the Dao of Sex instead of being stuck at a bottleneck.

[Bisected Dao Core of Sex] - synchronization at 100%! -> [Dao Core of Sex]

Somehow, Nyx had made it so that Original Nuwa and Snek Nuwa were seamlessly combined into a single consciousness. She had understood the breakthrough that Nuwa had wanted and gave it to her, although it was not without cost.

[System] had all but raised Nuwa due to her neglectful and workaholic parents in her first life. It had ingrained upon her psyche the importance of being rational and selfish. In fact, Nuwa had subconsciously taken the [System] as a role model due its smarts. A terrible choice to say the least.

At one point, she even held a disdain for most feelings themselves.. like they were beneath her status as a sex-goddess-in-training. In her mind, the only feelings she should allow herself to experience are pleasure and happiness. The others are unnecessary. This was an extraordinarily naive view for her to have and that phase did pass, but the subconscious disdain for feelings as a sign of weakness stayed. It was the primary cause of how she became as highly rational as she did.

Thinking vs feeling in response to stressful environmental stimuli are both influenced by habit. Snek Nuwa would habitually feel first, then think in response to a stressful event. Original Nuwa would habitually think first, then feel. Not only that, she would go even farther and habitually suppress her feelings so that she could think the entire time. Spiritually, her habits of thought themselves had not been balanced, but now that has changed.

Nuwa feels warm all over as she is bathed momentarily in the flow of the Dao, which seems to want her to wake up and have sex with her Big Bro Zag, but she chooses not to follow it.. for now. Her other family back in the Avatar Record must be eagerly awaiting her message. That took precedence over her own selfish gratification.

Nuwa tries to summon her [Smartphone] in her soul and it appears, much to her glee. She opens up the chat server named "I miss you <3" and puts her hand to her mouth, emotional with happiness. 'Zina.. my daughter. She's so beautiful. Tulen grew up so much!'

Her face has a big smile, but when she opens the "Pinned Messages" and sees long-form yearly letters from each of her children and Azula to her, she breaks down into tears. 'Oh babies, my babies. I am a bad mommy..'

Nuwa starts typing, but then she stops and erases. She feels compelled to read through all the letters before messaging them that she's OK. Otherwise, she wouldn't know shit about their lives when they try chatting with her for the first time. She wants to be as present in their lives as a long-distance parent can be. Even her father, Hades, was at least present and always watching, despite barely interacting with her. This leads her to understand that to make up for her lack of physical presence, she has to interact with them frequently and give them lots of affection.

Nuwa reads carefully through the lives of her children. Azula wrote update letters on them monthly until they turned 2 and 3 respectively. Then she started writing yearly until they were 7, when they started writing their own letters. Between laughter and tears at their unedited spelling errors and the attached cute gifs of them blowing kisses into the camera, Nuwa feels like she can read through these for days on end.

All of these.. are only for her! As guilty as she is about her absence, her negative feelings are overwhelmed by happiness for how loved she is by Azula and her children. Soon, she makes it to present day where Tulen is talking about how he is enjoying life among the Sun Warriors after he had a failed relationship with a peasant girl.

Zina's demi-human features are easier to hide so, unlike Tulen who only roams remote villages, she likes to party it up in Republic City. Apparently, she's living with Katara and even helping to design the rules for a new competitive sport called 'Pro-bending'. Life has moved on in the Record of Avatar.

What really drives this point home for Nuwa is when she sees Zina's message, "RIP UNCLE AANG.. you will be dearly missed T_T". She freezes up and remembers the last time she saw Aang, in a Spirit Realm meeting talking about renovations to Air Temple Island and how much he loves spending time with Tenzin. One of her best friends.. died from a bomb while trying to stop conflict between rival gangs. Sighing heavily, she realizes that it must have been preordained by Fate itself. Even if he did not die from wounds caused by alternate Azula and the battle with Ozai like he did in canon, he would still have suffered some accident to cause his early death in his middle ages. The World's Will needs Korra to be the Avatar.

'It really is unfair for Katara.. poor girl. At least he's still spiritually alive in the Avatar cycle. Unfortunately, neither she or I can have any more of that good dick. I only got to feel it once, huh?'

She reads further. Apparently Toph became really close to Aang due to teaching him metalbending and how often they worked together in protecting the City from bad actors. She put on a mask and went on a crazy murder spree against the gangs involved before leaving Republic City and leaving her resignation letter with Lin. No one in the Gang saw her after that, but Nuwa has an idea of where she might be. 'She must have entered isolation in the swamplands around the World Tree.'

'Thankfully, everyone else is doing OK. Oh no wait, my darling Mother Pea has really aged a lot. I ought to let her know I am fine soon. Holy shit, Dan got even hunkier when I expected him to be an otaku with a dad bod. Oh it's because Ty Li is modeling for the Peaknights.. Wow, well I guess it is easy money in a low technology world where drawings and books are the best form of porn consumption.'

'Zuko and Mai are doing well. Aiwei and June got together and are doing well. I never did get to fuck him, did I? What a shame. Sokka and Yue are still trying to work things out between their tribes. I suspect that will come to a head with Unalaq. I'd better warn them. We could capture or kill him in advance. There's no way I will let that immature brat, Korra, let Aang's spiritual body get killed like what happened in canon.'

'Ty La.. oh no. Jet went to jail for being an equalist conspirator. Looks like he was a good boyfriend for a while, until his predisposition for fanaticism came back in a mid-life crisis. Ty Lo, Ty Lu, and Ty Ly are doing well with Kuei. That is good. I missed so much after I died there. Is this a sign that I should prepare myself for their mortality?! I can't deal with that right now. Let me get back to what is most important.'

She has to type it out. Inside her own soul, there's no way to transmit voice or video to the [Smartphone]. Neither does she want to have them worry about how her looks and voice are different for now by waking up and recording herself. Nuwa starts typing, but she has no idea what to say. What is she supposed to say after 18 years of absence? Eventually, she decides there is no right answer and types out "Hi, sorry it took so long @Azula."

She types out a more suitable follow-up right away because the earlier message had been quite pathetic. "I miss you too <3! Just finished reading the letters and I am overwhelmed. Tulen, my strong baby boy, I am sorry. Zina, my beautiful baby girl, I am sorry to you too. Will you forgive me? ;-;"

She private messages her Mother Pea, whose username she finds in the Gang's channel and says, "Hey mom! Sorry it took me so long to message. How are you doing? I am doing great over here. I hope you are not working so much. Want to play a game of chess?"

Then she goes to privately message Azula about the Naruto-like World she had been describing in her letters. "Babe, try not to freak out about this, but in my first life.. I read a story. It was a story about the World of Avatar and it followed Aang's adventures to defeat the Fire Nation. Most of the people in the gang were in it too. It was a sad story in some ways. Yue had died and become a Spirit. Aang had failed the first invasion of the Fire Nation Capital. The alternate version of you had never betrayed the Fire Nation and almost killed Aang. Eventually, Aang wins, but you do not have a happy ending."

"The reason I am saying this, and try to keep an open mind here.. is that I believe there are an infinite amount of worlds out there and some of these worlds have versions of you or me in love or even as enemies. There are likely books about us too, so it's not strange that I somehow appeared in a world that closely matched a book that I read, although it is strange how exactly it matched the book. This is why I could predict future events so accurately! It sounds crazy though, right? That's why I never told anyone. They would only start to question their existence pointlessly."

"Your Shinobi World reminds me of another book I had read, called Naruto. Let me know if you follow my reasoning. Some of the knowledge of the future that I know from the book might help you out like it helped me for the Avatar World. I know you are downplaying how dangerous that world is and I don't want anything to happen to you. So please.. be careful. I love you."

'I know what she is after. She is doing this to raise her strength, but the Naruto world? That place is scary. It looks like she is getting stronger fast, but the danger is too high! Fuck, it would be useless to run too since the people there already know she is from Fire World. I have to prepare her and send her a lot of nudes for encouragement! That's what I'll do. I hope she likes snakes.'

Nuwa checks her chats again. 'Hmm.. seems like it's night time there since they aren't responding. It is kind of confusing to be in the perpetual Night of the Underworld.'

Nuwa looks at her soul. There is a sphere with a string around it as well as a cloud, her [Dao Core of Sex], the Dao String, and her collected life essence energy respectively. There is also a purplish-black tar-like substance sealing the locked up area where the [System] lives. Sensing that the Dao String is far more docile, either because of her breakthrough, because of all the Gods around her, or her demigod body, she decides she could use the extra power of additional Strings if she is going to help Zagreus.

Nuwa pulls the free-floating LEE around the Core and forges another 15 Dao Strings. It does not take her long since they do not offer any resistance. The new Strings wrap around her Dao Core tightly and make it look like a rubber band ball.

-15m LEE, Total: 1.38m LEE

Nuwavatar mode is already fairly strong, but now she feels that her Nuwavatar form is invincible. This is only a temporary high. Her 1-string Nuwavatar was low-t3 and though she doesn't know how strong the 16-string Nuwavatar would be, she highly doubts its ability to handle peak-t3 demigods like Megaera and Achilles. They are both far stronger than tailed beasts.

To other t3 individuals, the Allure that Nuwavatar utilizes would have minimal effects on them. At most, it might cause them to hesitate and weaken their blows, similar to the effects of the blessings provided by Aphrodite. At most, her 16-string Nuwavatar mode might be able to handle Zag when he lacks his Olympian Boons.

'Hang on! This is the Hades Record.. I don't even have a spiritual body, much less chakra or chi. Bending won't work here.. I cannot even go into Nuwavatar mode!'

Nuwa frowns and decides to figure out the answers to these problems at a later time. It is times like these that she would ask the [System] and it would have a perfect answer, but.. oh well. No one misses it anyway.

Nuwa's consciousness returns to her body. She opens her eyes. Original Nuwa and Snek Nuwa have merged perfectly so she is not disoriented by the new range of vision. She looks at her slumbering big brother with love and guilt. 'I have procrastinated thinking about this long enough.. How will I explain to Zag that I am both his sister and an Outsider? Or to Azula that I love her and another? I am not sure.. but I have a feeling that love is love and it shouldn't matter.'

(A/N: ~ I can see clearly now the rain is gone ~)

(A/N: https://discord.gg/VD3C2BFPAu)