“How is it going, Fourth Mirror?”
“Lady Herta has already received our distress signal.
I’m still working on the exact coordinates of the Great Tomb—it’s buried far too deep!”
Around Fourth Mirror, clusters of data streams were rapidly flickering and flowing.
“Wait, Miss—I found it!”
“Then initiate Warp immediately!”
“No, Miss, because…!”
“Because, unfortunately, both lovely young ladies…”
A mechanized figure slowly appeared before Xian Ling and Cyrene.
In an instant, their nearly fading bodies solidified once again.
“Your journey ends here.”
“Damn it…”
Xian Ling frowned and pulled Cyrene behind her.
“Ah, it’s PhiLia093, and a Memokeeper lady who infiltrated the Scepter.”
Lygus’s gaze swept over Cyrene, then lingered on Xian Ling for a few seconds.
For some reason, he felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity and closeness toward this girl—but he could not figure out why.
After all, with Lygus’s authority within the Scepter, he could scan Xian Ling’s condition in an instant.
Without a doubt, she was just an ordinary Memetic Girl, at most somewhat accomplished on the Path of Remembrance.
The only odd point was that her consciousness seemed slightly mismatched with her body—but that was not unusual for a Memokeeper.
Memetic bodies could be reshaped at will, and many seemingly mature Memokeeper women actually had mental states no different from ordinary girls.
After quickly running through several possibilities, Lygus chose not to pursue the matter further.
Even if that strange familiarity did come from Xian Ling’s consciousness, he could not extract it for research—setting aside whether Herta would agree, even he himself seemed to instinctively resist the idea.
So he turned his attention back to Xian Ling.
“To be able to find a breakthrough in such a short time—worthy of Lady Herta’s…
junior.
However, I’m curious.
Why PhiLia093?”
“I thought you would choose to bring out the Chrysos Heir who holds legislative authority, thereby obtaining access rights to the Ultimate Protocol’s write permissions.”
“Oh, you mean Chrydella…” Xian Ling thought for a moment.
“Actually, I did bring her out.
You can just look down and see her.”
“Hm?”
Lygus instinctively lowered his gaze—only then realizing it was a kind of high-level joke.
“Miss Xian Ling, your personality is… The source of this chapter is g.com.
quite humorous.
But it would be best not to say such things in front of that little empress.”
“Perhaps you could accept my invitation instead.
Once we move Beyond Myth, we can slowly discuss your understanding of Amphoreus.”
“Damn—Fourth Mirror!”
“Miss, I’m already initiating Warp…”
“It’s useless, Miss Xian Ling.”
Lygus raised both hands, as if preparing to clap.
“If this were any other data world, the processing terminal of this mirror would indeed be enough to let you roam freely.
Unfortunately, this is the world of the Quatorzain Algebraic Expression.”
As he spoke, Lygus brought his hands together and clapped lightly.
A faint, imperceptible wave instantly swept through the trio, freezing them in place and forcibly halting the Warp Procedure.
“To be honest, I’m quite interested in you, Miss Xian Ling.
From the Scepter’s logs, you don’t seem to be ignorant of Amphoreus—in fact, your intelligence may even surpass Herta’s…”
Looking at the immobilized Xian Ling, Lygus slowly walked up to her and placed a hand on her head.
“So, let me take a look at your memories…
hm?”
“They’re not here anymore?
When…
no, that’s not right.
She was never here to begin with.
Was my memory altered?”
A trace of surprise flashed through Lygus’s eyes.
As is well known, Memokepers of the Path of Remembrance are a highly specialized existence.
While they cannot defeat stronger enemies head-on, their survival abilities are unmatched—99% of beings in the cosmos can do nothing against them.
Yet this seemingly ordinary Memetic Girl—aside from being cute—had completely overturned Lygus’s understanding.
As a Memokeeper, her lifeform should have been fragile, but in exchange, her “hissing ability” was absurdly overpowered.
Realizing there was no one in front of him at all, Lygus immediately became alert and turned toward Cyrene and Fourth Mirror.
“No one there either…
has my memory become unreliable?
A girl who invades memory…
a rare development path.”
“However, merely invading Lycurgus is far from enough.”
Lygus chuckled softly.
In the original scenario when tracking March 7th, he had used this method before—creating a duplicate intelligence body to cross-check reality through rigid data comparison, determining whether his cognition had been altered by Enigmata or Remembrance.
However, his underestimation of Xian Ling had caused him not to use it immediately.
And as it turned out, Xian Ling’s newly developed ability—far inferior to Evernight’s—was indeed insufficient.
The moment the second Lygus appeared, discrepancies between the two bodies exposed her position.
Still…
her objective had already been achieved.
“One sent away…
but you actually chose to send PhiLia093 away first?
Interesting.
Now I’m even more curious—what exactly did you discover in just one week?”
“This time, you won’t escape.”
“Miss, go!”
Fourth Mirror’s body suddenly erupted with a burst of multicolored radiance.
Given her authority, she could not surpass Lygus, so she chose an ancient method of escape support.
After triggering the Warp Procedure on Xian Ling, Fourth Mirror immediately released all stored data—flooding the space with indiscriminate computational pollution.
A DDoS attack.
“What a loyal creation…
sigh.
If only my creations were like this, I wouldn’t have so many troubles.”
Seeing Fourth Mirror’s self-sacrifice, Lygus’s tone carried a hint of nostalgia.
He would have preferred his own creations to be obedient little companions, rather than rebellious “Intelligentsia Path children.”
“However…
I already said it.
In a world constructed by the Quatorzain Algebraic Expression, attacks based on nine-character algorithms don’t have high priority.”
With the ease of catching a kitten, one Lygus handled the excess data, while another quickly locked onto Xian Ling’s position.
In just moments, multiple duplicates of Lygus appeared—each prepared to eliminate uncertainty and ensure capture.
But at the instant his hand touched Xian Ling and began a deep scan—
A gaze from beyond Amphoreus caused Lygus to freeze.
That was…
the gaze of Fuli.
★ ★ ★
T/N: If you spot mistranslation, do tell me.
★ ★ ★
Shilling time!