First of all, she didn’t just blurt out that answer on a whim.
After all, it was common knowledge that Furina was a beloved superstar in Fontaine; claiming she wasn’t Furina while sporting this appearance was simply a joke.
Besides, looking at the dying people before her… if she denied it, would they really be able to hold on…
Secondly, she truly didn’t make that answer on a whim.
After all, having the status of a god made everything a bit easier.
At worst, if she were exposed, she’d just be thrown into the Fortress of Meropide; it wasn’t exactly a concentration camp for criminals.
So, her admitting that she was Furina was carefully considered, premeditated, and…
Forget it, she just admitted it on a whim.
There was no other way.
Looking at the hopeful gleam in the girl’s eyes, and then at her weak body and gaunt cheeks—if she were to fall into despair immediately after seeing hope, fainting would be the least of her worries.
It wasn’t just her; there were those hopeful faces in the surrounding cells… how could she bear to disappoint them?
Right now, she was their last straw of hope!
Moreover, the culprits behind the serial disappearances of young girls were just a group of ordinary people; not even one of them held a Vision, so it hadn’t reached such a dangerous level.
Probably.
“It’s me,” Eris said, forcing a stiff expression as she spoke to the weak girl before her.
“I’m here.
I’m sorry to have let you all suffer.”
Expecting her to put on a lifelike performance as Furina was impossible.
Asking a grown man to instantly perform as a lifelike girl was simply too difficult.
To put it bluntly, she had only encountered Furina in a game; she hadn’t even met her in person, yet she wanted to play the part well…
Perhaps such geniuses really existed in the world, but that person was definitely not Eris.
But did it matter?
It didn’t matter; it wasn’t like it couldn’t be explained.
For example, seeing her own people die innocently, it would be perfectly normal for the Hydro Archon Furina to drop her previous flamboyant style and become serious, right?
“Lady Furina…” Aurelie struggled, trying to get up.
All these days, she had been hoping for this moment to come at every single second.
She was a very cheerful person who had taken in several homeless people—misfits in the crowd—and everyone had happily formed a theater troupe together.
Aurelie had a dream since childhood: to stand in the opera house and perform, just like Lady Furina.
She was optimistic, she was kind, and she was the salvation and pillar of support for the others, but now, she lay dying in a dark, damp cell.
Even in this state, she still shared her blanket with a companion suffering from a severe fever, and every day she would set aside most of her meager food, feeding it bit by bit to the unconscious Clécie.
Even knowing that this girl locked up with her wouldn’t live much longer, and that before the illness took her life, she would become a sacrificial victim of the evil experiments at the hands of those people.
Perhaps it would be today, at the latest by tonight.
Yet she still persisted in doing so.
Aurelie was a good person from every perspective, and anyone would be proud to have a friend like her.
However, this good person was now going to die.
Those people didn’t care about the health of their test subjects; they would just wait for whoever was near death and drag them off for experiments.
“Shh,” watching Aurelie struggle to get up, Eris placed a finger to her lips and gently shushed, signaling her to be quiet.
Then, she moved the high-speed spinning water orb in her hand behind her back and raised her now-free right hand.
A blue, unknown flower formed by condensed water currents slowly grew from the ground and bloomed.
Azure water ripples gradually spread outward from the flower as the center.
“This is…” After receiving those azure ripples, Aurelie felt the pain all over her body instantly subside.
The intermittent, painful moans of Clécie beside her also gradually vanished, replaced by the sound of relaxed snoring.
In the various surrounding cells, sounds of surprise also rang out.
At this moment, Eris stood in the center of the many cells like a star surrounded by the moon; the reverent gazes of the young girls around her put her in a great mood.
However… she looked at the unknown flower before her.
Furina’s healing as a playable character wasn’t like this.
The healing aspect of her ability, known as Salon Solitaire, was to summon the Singer of Many Waters, which did not look like a flower.
Thinking of this, she sensed her Vision’s ability and then wore a strange expression.
How to put it?
The template was there, but the core was completely blank.
Furina’s three Salon members did not appear in her abilities.
It was completely empty.
But she had an inexplicable feeling that she could completely shape three Salon members, only it wasn’t the time yet.
She had to experience some things first, realize some things, and even if she created them, they wouldn’t look like Furina’s Salon members.
Rather, they would all be shaped based on her own experiences.
In any case, these were not things to be discussed right now.
The most important thing was how to lead these young girls out of danger.
This matter was difficult, yet simple.
In short, it all depended on her improvisation on the spot.
Eris already roughly knew what the situation was.
The serial disappearances of young girls: the early part of the major Fontaine update was basically centered around this case.
Vacher from Snezhnaya and his Fontaine lover discovered primordial seawater during an archaeological exploration, and his lover was dissolved upon contact.
Yet Vacher, being from Snezhnaya, was unaffected.
After that, no one believed his story—how could a person be dissolved by water?
Under a series of blows, Vacher completely blackened.
He took the alias Marcel and started a business in Fontaine.
Relying on diluted primordial seawater, he developed the contraband substance known as les, and used the profits from selling the contraband to conduct experiments on the primordial seawater.
By kidnapping Fontaine girls the same age as his lover and dissolving them in it, he observed patterns for his research, hoping to bring his lover back.
One could only say that in the beginning, he was a pitiable man, but later on, he was a complete bastard.
And this place was likely the lair of the mastermind that the protagonist raided in the story to find evidence before putting him on trial.
Seeing that so many people were still alive now, it was likely the plot hadn’t reached that point yet.
The good news was that these criminals were all ordinary people, with no Vision holders among them.
The bad news was that even without Visions, the huge profits obtained from selling les allowed them to secretly acquire a batch of Clockwork Meka guards.
Since this was the most important lair, it wouldn’t lack such things.
Although she had a Vision in her hand, she had basically never used such a thing before; whether she could defeat those Clockwork Meka was an unknown.
But now there was no time to think; things would work out when they reached the bridge.
Listening to the rough male voices coming from the doorway at the other end of the corridor, Eris took a deep breath.
It all depended on whether she could hold her ground in this situation!
Oh Furina, you must be reliable!
Even if you’ve acted as flamboyantly as possible all these years, there must still be some majesty in the eyes of the people of Fontaine, right?
What happens next all depends on how much majesty you have in the eyes of the people of Fontaine!
Subduing the enemy without fighting was the best; after all, Eris didn’t have the confidence to actually lead so many girls to escape.
Thinking of this, Eris took a deep breath, then turned to look at Aurelie’s cell, ignoring the footsteps that were getting closer and closer.
“What’s all the noise?
What’s all the noise!” A big man and a skinny man walked in one after another.
There had been a commotion in the cells when Eris appeared earlier.
It was likely these sounds that drew them here.
“Are you looking to die right now…” The skinny man’s impatient voice came to an abrupt halt as he stepped into the cell area, and he stood there, stunned.
“Ethan, what’s wrong with you, kid?”
An impatient voice came from behind him.
“Fu-Fu-Fu-Furina…” The skinny man, Ethan, couldn’t even speak properly.
“Furina what?!” Seeing his stuttering appearance, the burly man behind him pushed him aside directly.
“Is someone making trouble…”
Then he saw the supreme Hydro Archon of Fontaine, Lady Furina, standing quietly beside a cell, with a flower condensed from water by her side emitting a faint halo, filling the entire corridor layer by layer.
“Fu-Fu-Fu-Furina…” The burly man also immediately started stuttering.
“Shut up,” Eris glanced at them sideways, then turned her head to continue looking into the cell.
The two grown men instantly shut their mouths, their eyes full of terror, their legs trembling, not daring to move a muscle.
Damn it, why would Lady Furina appear here?!
The two men looked terrified and could only cower in place, not daring to move.
To be honest, in a world where gods truly existed, in a nation ruled by a god, the words of the deity carried a lot of weight.
Even these ruthless criminals, upon seeing a deity with their own eyes, had to have weak knees.
As for running away?
A water orb descended silently from the ceiling behind them; its mere existence left them with no thoughts of resistance.
If it had been someone from the Marechaussee Phantom, or other law enforcement officers, they might have had the courage to run, but with the deity appearing in person… no one felt they could escape.
This was underwater, the Hydro Archon was right in front of them, and they, these thugs, didn’t even have Visions.
Run?
Were they out of their minds?
Seeing this, Eris felt reassured.
Next, she could only act.
Although her terrible acting skills definitely couldn’t be relied upon, she could only depend on the inertia left by Furina’s five-hundred-year rule over the people of Fontaine.
“Are these two guilty of heinous crimes?” Eris looked at Aurelie and asked with a serious expression.
“The kind that deserve death?”
Hearing this, the two people at the door felt their legs go weak and immediately knelt down, their faces full of terror.
“Spare… spare us, Lady Furina!”
But no one here paid any attention to their words.
“This… I am not Monsieur Neuvillette,” Aurelie hesitated for two seconds.
Although there was hatred in her eyes, she still said, “Such matters should be decided by Monsieur Neuvillette and the oratrice mecanique danalyse cardinale.”
“Then what do you think?” Eris continued to ask.
“I am asking for your heart.”
“I naturally wish for them to die right now,” Aurelie said, revealing a miserable smile upon hearing this.
“Katara, who was just a child who had recently come of age, was dragged out by them yesterday.
By now, she has probably already been murdered.”
“And Evelyn, Airlie… they have harmed so many people; of course, I wish for them to die!”
“But Fontaine is, after all, a nation of justice,” Aurelie said helplessly.
“Lady Furina… you wouldn’t kill them here, right?”
“They will eventually have to go to the opera house.”
Hearing this, the gazes of the young girls in the surrounding cells dimmed.
They really wished for these people to die…
“My Lady!
Lady Furina, I plead guilty, I plead guilty!” Just then, the skinny man, Ethan, hearing this, immediately shouted at the top of his lungs.
“They forced me to do it, My Lady!
I didn’t want to be like this… but I had no choice!”
Resist?
The person opposite them was a deity; resistance was impossible.
It would be better to think about how to live in the Fortress of Meropide next.
Hearing this, the burly man was dumbfounded.
He opened his mouth, wanting to plead for mercy as well, but was interrupted by a cold snort from the deity before him.
“Hmph, put away that ridiculous face; every criminal says the same thing,” Eris said coldly.
“To be honest, I have long been dissatisfied with the laws of Fontaine over these years.”
“In name, there is the death penalty, but the last person actually sentenced to death dates back nearly a hundred years.
It is precisely because of the lack of the deterrent of the death penalty that criminals have become so unscrupulous, eventually leading to such heinous cases.”
“Neuvillette is still too soft-hearted!
If the death penalty isn’t handed down this time, then what is the point of its existence?”
Although she knew that the lack of the death penalty wasn’t Neuvillette’s fault—sentencing was the business of the oratrice mecanique danalyse cardinale—that didn’t stop her from using the death penalty to scare these people.