“What happened when I collapsed? Didn’t you check my memory data?”
Little Herta asked Herta while running a self-diagnostic.
After waking up, she had been rather worried that Herta might read her memories.
First, although she quite liked her identity as Little Herta in this life, she still possessed memories of her previous life.
It wouldn’t be strange if Herta mistook her for something like a heliobus.
Second, some of the things in her memories were quite dangerous, such as the Iron Curtain, Finality, the boundaries of knowledge, and the secrets of the Aeons.
She wasn’t sure what effect spreading such information would have on this world.
“I checked. It was encrypted, and I couldn’t crack it. You didn’t know?”
Herta admitted it without hesitation.
She had indeed tried to inspect and read Little Herta’s memory data, but strangely enough, Little Herta’s core had been encrypted.
Moreover, it had been imbued with the powers of Erudition and an unknown Path.
She had even enlisted Ruan Mei’s help, but despite the two geniuses’ extensive efforts, they couldn’t find so much as a clue to cracking it.
So she had simply chosen to wake Little Herta, observe her reaction, and have her run a self-diagnostic.
“I didn’t detect any encryption.”
Little Herta breathed a sigh of relief at Herta’s answer, but she also felt somewhat uneasy.
She hadn’t detected any encryption program in her core.
Her body, on the other hand…
“Did you upgrade my body’s hardware? Wait, why is my hair short now? And where did the boost from my upgrade go?”
She discovered that aside from her core, her body’s specifications were more than one tier higher than before.
Her hair, which had been as long as that of every other Herta Puppet, was now short.
Most importantly, the boost from her ‘Upgrade Configuration’ had reset to zero!
“There wasn’t enough material for the hair. Your boost automatically vanished after twenty-four hours. So how exactly does this ability of yours work?”
Herta had recorded the process of Little Herta’s boost gradually decreasing until it disappeared.
Each boost had been exactly fifty percent, and comparative calculations showed that each one lasted precisely twenty-four system hours.
“I’m not sure either. It just works like this—’Upgrade Configuration!’ Huh?”
Little Herta shouted the phrase, but Upgrade Configuration didn’t activate.
After a moment of surprise, she realized she didn’t have enough Skill Points.
“Here.”
Before Little Herta could speak, Herta held a packet of Trick Snacks out to her.
Little Herta didn’t hesitate.
She tore it open, wolfed down the contents, then shouted,
“Upgrade Configuration!”
“Well?”
Herta turned to Ruan Mei, who had remained silent beside her.
“A peculiar power. Its properties match the energy of the unknown Path attached to the Intellitron core. No, perhaps we need to overturn our previous hypothesis.”
Ruan Mei stepped forward, lifted Little Herta’s chin with one hand, and examined her face from side to side before continuing,
“It isn’t the power of a Path. I detected no Path spectrum, yet despite lacking one, it displays energy characteristics resembling various Paths, including Harmony, Destruction, Trailblaze, and Erudition. Incredible.”
Smack!
Once Ruan Mei finished speaking, Little Herta slapped away the finger beneath her chin and stared at her with a (ᗜ ˰ ᗜ) expression.
“Could you stop examining me like I’m an object? It’s really rude! And how did you detect that?”
Ruan Mei’s movements had been gentle, but her tone and attitude were those of someone evaluating an object.
Little Herta’s fondness for ‘Big Sister Ruan Mei’ dropped.
At the same time, Little Herta was quite curious about how she had performed the detection.
She hadn’t seen any instruments, nor had she felt herself being scanned.
“My apologies. I failed to consider your feelings. As for the detection method, do you remember the pastry you just ate?”
“Huh? You—”
Hearing Ruan Mei’s answer, Little Herta took half a step back and nearly entered Spinosaurus mode to hiss at her.
But when she saw Ruan Mei’s apologetic yet utterly ‘inhuman’ demeanor, she merely smacked her lips and said,
“Forget it.”
Even if she got angry, Ruan Mei would probably only know why she was angry without being able to understand the feeling itself.
She should eat fewer of Ruan Mei’s pastries in the future.
To think they even worked on Intellitrons.
“Imaginary energy possessing the properties of several Paths. That does sound like a subject worth studying.”
Herta nodded from the side.
She offered no comment on the interaction between Ruan Mei and Little Herta, merely sharing her thoughts on Ruan Mei’s test results before continuing,
“More importantly, 4423, you still haven’t answered my question.”
“What happened when you collapsed?”
Herta repeated the question she had asked when telling Little Herta to run a self-diagnostic.
“When I collapsed…”
Little Herta scratched her head, carefully recalled what had happened, then organized her thoughts and said,
“I detected a space whose meaning I couldn’t calculate.”
“It was Imaginary Space,” Herta corrected.
“Then I established a direct connection with a machine inside that had incredible computing power. It even asked me a few questions.”
Herta grabbed Little Herta by the shoulders and pressed her,
“What did it feel like to connect directly with Them?”
“What did They ask you?”
The first question came from Ruan Mei, and the second from Herta.
Both geniuses looked extremely excited.
Even they couldn’t meet Nous whenever they pleased, much less establish a direct connection with Them.
In that case, it was no surprise that neither genius had been able to crack the encryption on the little one’s core.
Nous had encrypted it.
“Well… I could detect Their calculations, but I couldn’t interfere with them. As for what They asked…”
Little Herta thought for a moment before saying,
“They asked how worlds on the Imaginary Tree were born and whether I could create a world. Those were the only two questions.”
Little Herta chose to conceal Nous’s first question—’What is Honkai?’—because she couldn’t explain the answer she had given Them.
“For the first question, I said you could fish a world out of the quantum realm and attach it to the tree. I didn’t answer the second before They severed the connection.”
“Hm? Fish a world out of the quantum realm and attach it? How would you attach it?”
Herta couldn’t understand what Little Herta meant.
What about the intermediate steps?
What data and method would be used for the connection?
How did one fish out a world?
“No idea.”
Little Herta spread her hands.
She truly didn’t know.
All she knew was that Otto and the Doctor Nagamitsu of Earth had used the Second Divine Key—the Key of Space—to connect a World Bubble, the one inside Bianka, to the Imaginary Tree.
The Sugars, who couldn’t defeat the Sky People and had constantly fled with their world, had also mastered this technology.
“But after I answered the first question, the big machine spent a while calculating the birth, destruction, and rebirth of worlds. I have the data cached. Do you want it?”
Although she didn’t know the specific theory, she had witnessed Nous perform those calculations.
“Quickly! Export it! Now!”
It was a record of the Erudition Aeon calculating the universe and its worlds.
If Herta hadn’t been an organic life-form, she would have wanted Little Herta to import it directly into her brain.
★ ★ ★
T/N: If you spot mistranslation, do tell me!