Walking down the street, Li Mu was in extremely high spirits.
Although he had nearly been crushed to death in Eden’s embrace just a moment ago, he had gotten the money he needed.
His funding problem was now completely solved.
Next, he could finally set up MEI Corp and complete the check-in mission.
He soon arrived back at Mei’s house and excitedly elbowed the door open.
“Mei, our family is rich now!” However, unlike the usual welcome he received from Mei upon returning, this time he found an unexpected yet not entirely surprising person in the house.
A girl with white hair and blue eyes was sitting quietly on the sofa.
—It was none other than his good friend, Kiana.
At that moment, she looked at Li Mu, disguised as Ryoma, who had just returned from outside, and was at a complete loss for what to do.
Just then, Mei, who was preparing the meal, came out of the kitchen wearing an apron and holding an empty plate.
Seeing Li Mu had returned, she explained to him: “Father, this is my classmate, Kiana.
She helps me out a lot, so I thought I’d invite her over for dinner.” Then, she turned to Kiana and said, “Kiana, this is…” Before Mei could finish, Li Mu cut in.
“Well now, this young lady looks familiar.” Ignoring the strange looks from both Mei and Kiana, Li Mu walked over to Kiana with a smile and looked her over.
Kiana shot to her feet, looking at the man before her with extreme apprehension.
Although this father of Mei’s had a smile that could put anyone at ease, she couldn’t shake the feeling—perhaps it was just her imagination—that there was a hint of mischief in it.
“He…
hello…?” Kiana replied awkwardly.
Li Mu pretended to look her up and down before asking, “What is your relationship to Siegfried?” Kiana subconsciously answered, “He is my father…” The moment the words left her mouth, she knew she had messed up.
If Mei’s father knew her own father, then he would certainly know that her father only had one son.
Sure enough, after she spoke, she saw the expression on Mei’s father’s face turn cold.
“My dear niece, your father Siegfried and I are old friends of many years.
I never thought he would do something like this!” “Huh?” “Don’t you worry.
I know it’s not your fault, it’s that bastard Siegfried’s!” Li Mu feigned anger.
“The next time I see him, I’ll definitely give him a beating!” “How dare he cheat on Cecilia behind her back!
This is a betrayal of true love!” “Huh?” Seeing Li Mu suddenly fly into a rage, Kiana hurriedly tried to explain, “You’ve got it wrong!
I’m not my dad’s illegitimate daughter!” In the end, after Kiana spouted some flimsy explanation full of holes about dark family secrets, Li Mu ‘believed’ her story that she was, in fact, the daughter of Siegfried and Cecilia, but her identity had been hidden due to family infighting.
The two of them sat on the sofa, chatting face-to-face while they waited for Mei to finish cooking.
Looking at this man who she was supposedly meeting for the first time, Kiana had a strange sense of familiarity, as if she had met him somewhere before.
“There, there, big niece.
Call me Uncle.” The single ahoge on top of Kiana’s head suddenly shot up.
She stared blankly at Li Mu, her face filled with suspicion.
Given his seniority, it was normal to call him ‘uncle’, but for some reason, she had a nagging feeling that if she did, she would inexplicably be putting herself beneath him, and it felt extremely unpleasant.
Just as she was trying to figure out how to respond, Mei’s timely appearance saved her.
She brought the dishes to the table.
Kiana breathed a silent sigh of relief and then looked at the food Mei had prepared.
She had run into Mei at Eden’s concert earlier.
Then things went haywire, and Eden was kidnapped by a group of robbers.
After being questioned by the authorities and cleared, the audience members were released.
She had originally planned to go home after the concert, but she got carried away chatting with Mei and somehow ended up agreeing to come over for dinner.
Seeing how confident Mei is, her cooking can’t be that bad, right?
To that, Li Mu’s answer was: A single meal can net me 10 Crystals.
This is simply delicious.
This month alone, he had earned nearly 1,000 Crystals just from eating Mei’s three meals a day.
It was no exaggeration to say that while he was nominally Mei’s father, in reality, Mei was his sugar mama!
Crystals were crucial.
The entire fate of the Previous Era depended on them.
Li Mu had never forgotten about the impending Third Great Honkai Eruption.
In the Previous Era, the Third Eruption was far more devastating than in the Current Era, covering the entirety of East Asia and causing hundreds of millions of casualties.
To prevent this disaster, he could either eliminate the Herrscher of Thunder the moment she was born.
Or, Li Mu had another, more feasible plan: replace her with a controllable Herrscher who possessed a human heart.
And as it happened, Li Mu knew exactly how to obtain a Herrscher that was not controlled by the Cocoon of Finality.
He looked at his system panel.
[Moon’s Origin and Finality – Prologue: Escape from Nagazora] [Stage Reward: Herrscher of Thunder Character Card] [Status: Incomplete] As a stage reward for the main story quests, completing all the check-in missions in a chapter would unlock the reward—character cards for all thirteen Herrschers, including the Herrscher of Finality.
But this was where the downside of bugging the system to start 50,000 years early became apparent.
If the system had activated 50,000 years later, he could have just followed the main plot, waited for Raiden Mei to awaken and send all of Nagazora City into the sky, checked in, and received the Herrscher of Thunder Character Card.
But this was the Previous Era.
The current Mei didn’t have a Herrscher Gem inside her, and the Cocoon of Finality’s choice of Herrscher was unpredictable.
To complete the mission, he had to make Mei acquire the power of the Herrscher of Thunder and take on the fate of Raiden Mei.
Li Mu’s idea was to directly load the Herrscher of Thunder Character Card onto Mei, bypassing the Cocoon of Finality’s mechanism for this era and simultaneously replacing this era’s Herrscher of Thunder.
The problem was, to get the Herrscher of Thunder Character Card, he had to complete the mission to get the stage reward.
And to complete the mission to get the reward, he had to load the Herrscher of Thunder Character Card onto Mei.
It was a classic catch-22.
But as the saying goes, heaven never seals off all paths.
If he was determined to find a way, a path would appear at his feet!
And he had indeed found a solution in the system’s shop.
[Herrscher Experience Card (Thunder)] [Price: 3000 Crystals / 30 minutes] The shop sold experience cards for every Herrscher except Finality and Origin, but the full character cards could only be unlocked after completing the stage missions.
The moment he saw this, Li Mu knew he was golden.
A time limit?
Was a time limit important?
Not at all!
Never mind thirty minutes, even if it was only for thirty seconds, the user would be a true Herrscher while it was active, possessing the qualification to connect directly to the Cocoon of Finality.
So, let’s say, just for the sake of argument…
The very moment the Cocoon of Finality chooses its Herrscher, he immediately activates the experience card, lets Mei snatch the position, and seizes the authority.
Once the experience card expires, the position and authority granted by the system will disappear, but the position and authority snatched from the Cocoon will remain.
Mei will still be a Herrscher.
At that point, would the Cocoon just pinch its nose and accept it, or would it get angry and take the position and authority back?
The answer was obvious.
The Cocoon of Finality, just like this crappy system, was a rigid dullard!
“In that case, the Cocoon of Finality will just have to suffer a bit.” However, becoming a Herrscher was just the beginning.
There was a more important problem to solve: how to give the Herrscher a human heart.
It was important to remember that the Herrschers of this era lacked the “Flower of Humanity.” They were truly emotionless vanguards of the Honkai.
If he didn’t solve this problem, humanity would get elbowed to death by a Herrscher Mei.
Just the thought of that…
tsk.
So how to solve it?
The answer, of course, was to brew Elysia into a soup (laughs).
Of course, that was just a joke.
As the director of this play, Li Mu had no taste for dark and gritty plotlines.
If possible, he would do his best to weave a healthy, bright, positive, and joyful happy end.
So, back to the question, how could he give a Herrscher humanity?
The answer was to time it perfectly, arranging the usurpation of the Herrscher’s authority to coincide with the end of the [Prologue: Escape from Nagazora] check-in mission.
Within the thirty minutes the experience card was active, he would speedrun through the plots of [Kiana & Mei: First Rooftop Battle], [Encountering Bronya], and [Hyperion Descends from the Sky], completing the [Prologue: Escape from Nagazora] check-in and successfully obtaining the [Stage Reward: Herrscher of Thunder Character Card].
Once he had the character card, before the thirty-minute experience card expired, he would install the Herrscher of Thunder Character Card onto Mei.
And thus, a Herrscher of Thunder with a human heart would be born.
It was simply a matter of feeding on the Cocoon of Finality first, then feeding on the system.
A perfect, closed loop.
Now that he had the funds to build MEI Corp, the next step was to get it built and complete the check-in.
And the construction of St.
Freya also needed to be moved up the schedule…
Soon, Mei had served all the dishes, and the three of them took their seats.
Looking at the food on the table—not lavish, but by no means shabby, and perfect in color and aroma—Kiana nodded to herself.
The presentation is excellent.
It looks very appetizing.
The taste surely can’t be that bad.
But Li Mu knew better: the more vibrant the mushroom, the more poisonous it is.
His heart trembled, and he sighed silently, forcing his fingers to pick up his chopsticks.
Whether or not the hundreds of millions of people in East Asia could survive this Great Honkai Eruption depended on whether he could save up enough Crystals in time.
And right now, the biggest source of Crystals was Mei’s cooking.
Therefore, having Mei was equivalent to having the strength of a hundred people!
He picked up a piece of tofu with his chopsticks.
The moment it went down, he felt his stomach begin to spasm, as if someone was repeatedly punching it.
But his expression remained unchanged as he stuffed more food into his mouth.
After eating Mei’s cooking for so many days, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t made any progress.
At the very least, his resistance had greatly increased.
But perhaps his encouragement had been effective, because Mei had become more and more interested in honing her culinary skills recently.
The good news: her cooking skills had improved.
The bad news: they had improved in the wrong direction.
As he ate, tears began to stream down Li Mu’s face.
“Father, why are you crying?” “It’s…
it’s just too delicious.” Kiana looked at Li Mu, who wore an expression of pure bliss, like a background character in a gourmet anime.
Could it really be that good?
A sense of anticipation rose in her heart.
Kiana scooped up a piece of white, jade-like tofu and put it in her mouth.
Chew, chew, chew.
Kiana’s body went rigid.
The hand holding the spoon began to tremble uncontrollably.
Clatter!
The spoon fell to the floor.
Then, she fell straight backward.
Thump!
Kiana collapsed onto the floor, unconscious.
Her eyes were spinning in swirls, and a mochi-like soul seemed to fly from her mouth.
“Kiana!!!” —o—