TheOneWhoIsNot

Who’d expect a guy in a clown costume to be a former Awakened Hero.

Former Hero. That’s like calling someone weak for dying to Rudra.

Oh, there will be questions alright.

He never lied. You misunderstood. Also, regarding the duplicates. Only he on particular can have duplicate unique skills, and it’s also very specifically [Great Sage] and [Predator] that he has. He can’t get any more. It has to do with the way his soul interacts with reality. It doesn’t act like it’s actually present there. It acts like it’s sitting on top of it, like a sticker(his soul) on top of paper(reality). It’s why he can have a duplicate [Great Sage] and [Predator] but can’t obtain other duplicate unique skills. When he separated from Rimuru’s cloud, he took a copy of [Great Sage] and [Predator] with it. Like ink bleeding over to another piece of paper. He can’t obtain more duplicates because at that point, it’s not his soul happening to take a copy but the voice making a decision. I mentioned it in a comment before. If Mikaeeu ate Rimuru, the technicality woul fall apart and one [Great Sage] and [Predator] each would be eliminated by the voice because at that point, both duplicates are in the same layer. Why does Mikaeru’s soul have this property? That’s to be answered later, but the ability to have duplicate skills isn’t the only side effect. There are other effects. For example, his body doesn’t follow the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics for this same reason.

What? [Familial Connection] is a [Sage’s Link] subskill. It’s part of [Sage’s Link].

Best place to store this picture now that the notice it was put in is gone.

Human Mikaeru

Mary

It has to do with the voice’s laws. It’s delved into later but the reason why he can have Rimuru’s unique skills at the same time as him, despite the laws not allowing it, is his soul acts like a foreign object to the world. It’s like his soul, and as a result the skills within it, aren’t actually in that world but rather projecting onto it from elsewhere. This protects his [Great Sage] and [Predator], keeping the voice from deleting them. By eating Rimuru’s skills though, all of the sudden, now there are two [Great Sages] and [Predators] in the same place. In this situation, the technicality with his soul no longer applies and the voice can delete two of the four, leaving Mikaeru the same as before but without the benefits of [Sage’s Link]. Even if he could make use of Rimuru’s skills, the boost that Rimuru’s skills would give would be really small. [Genius] is such a potent amplifier to [Great Sage] that compared to it, another [Great Sage] is nothing. [Genius] was literally designed to be the perfect complimentary skill to [Great Sage]. The two perfectly cover each other’s weaknesses. [Genius]+[Great Sage] is thousands of times stronger than [Great Sage]+[Great Sage].

He would get weaker without an active [Sage’s Link] connection.