“Elysia, are you out of your mind?!”
Mobius’s shriek echoed through the lab, but by then Elysia had already made it back to her own room.
Hearing the scream chasing after her, her eyes crinkled into crescents.
Hugging an enormous pink doll, she fixed her gaze on the stream, her pink eyes glittering.
“A one-day trip to the world of the future, hm?”
“How exciting~”
And at this moment, Xiyue had no idea her promise to Elysia—to let Elysia punish her freely—would come true, nor whether she’d be ready for it when the time came.
Back to the game’s story: Kiana, waking from the dream, had completely forgotten everything in it.
Brimming with enthusiasm, she went to find Bronya, hoping for a thrilling round of HOMU-HOMU Adventure.
The Duck couldn’t refuse a game like HOMU-HOMU Adventure—it was a soldier’s pride, after all.
And the Tuna’s attempt at provocation backfired: Bronya goaded her right back, and she ended up gaming like a maniac right before the exam.
The Duck: If Kiana leaves, she’s admitting she can’t beat Bronya’s high score.
Kiana: Brat, I will not lose to you!
The Duck: Bratnya is the strongest.
After that came Mei, hauling Kiana off.
Mei grabbed Kiana by the ear and said to her sternly.
“Every day, the second I finish making lunch, you pounce into the kitchen like a cat to sneak food.”
“Today you didn’t show up, so I knew you’d run off to sneak food somewhere.”
Then Kiana tried to weasel out of it, but Mei was not someone to be fooled—she gave Kiana a thorough lecturing.
Reviewing?
More like gaming.
“If you don’t pass this time, you’ll end up on logistics duty like a D-rank ancillary Valkyrie!”
Then, by way of Mei, more of the setting got filled in.
Watching what Mei said—nothing about it had registered before, but looking at it now.
The “logistics duty” Mei mentioned turned out to be the Captain.
She shook her head.
A Captain fit only to swab the deck barely even counted as a Valkyrie.
Then the Tuna got dragged off to the training grounds, and once again Fu Hua took over tutoring Kiana, explaining the lore around artificial Stigmata.
To the other viewers, this was something everyone already knew.
But to those from the Previous Era, artificial Stigmata were something new.
Elysia’s eyes lit up.
As a founding-elder figure of MOTH, she of course knew what MOTH currently lacked: the firepower to fight Honkai Beasts one-on-one.
Right now, taking on Honkai Beasts meant relying on modern tech and human lives to hold the line—at enormous cost.
Although Dr.
MEI had proposed the MANTIS Project around this time, the top brass had voted it down unanimously, so it never got off the ground.
If Elysia could get hold of information on artificial Stigmata and implement it within MOTH, wouldn’t that massively boost the combat power of MOTH’s warriors?
By now she already knew what that one-day trip meant.
Tamping down her excitement, she turned her gaze to Fu Hua—this girl whose face was identical to Hua’s, not just the same face but the same air about her, even the same… down there.
It really was too alike.
It made her start to wonder whether there truly could be two identical people in this world.
And just as Elysia puzzled over it, the Tuna finished her cram session with Fu Hua, then met Himeko; after Himeko came Theresa; and Xiyue, wielding the White Comet, went on a slaughtering spree.
The White Comet’s damage might be a touch low, but it had a lot of room for skillful play.
Newbies might not feel it, but veteran players picking it up again could feel it clearly.
In her past life there were plenty of Valkyries with flashy effects down the line, but some veteran players, compared to those gaudy character kits, still preferred high-skill-ceiling Valkyries—like the White Comet, like Fu Hua’s Night Squire, and so on.
“There’s not a lot of plot in this chapter—it’s mostly introducing the game’s setting and backstory.”
“Here’s a fun fact for you all: when the Tuna plays games, she’s never once beaten Bronya.
A real ‘bad at it but loves it anyway’ situation.”
Xiyue tormented a certain Tuna a little for the audience’s benefit, and hearing that, the Tuna was not pleased.
No Exams Thanks: That’s a lie!
I’ve totally won before.
Seeing this comment, Xiyue smilingly shot back.
“Oh?
But you’re not Kiana—how would you know?”
Hearing Xiyue, Kiana instinctively wanted to argue—but then she remembered that, for all the time she’d spent gaming, she really had never beaten Bronya.
Not that she’d ever admit it!
“None of your business, I just know!”
Xiyue could already picture Kiana’s impotent, raging expression.
Wants to Buy an Island: Who’d have thought a dummy girl like this would be the protagonist?
Miss Pink Elf♪: This St.
Freya Academy really is so cozy—good friends in Mei and Bronya, a diligent, responsible class monitor, a kind, caring teacher in Himeko, an adorable principal, and a beautiful campus.
Truly a place like the Elysian Realm~
Kitty Snuggles: I’d love to attend this academy too, and get to know all the people Kiana knows.
Definitely Not Embarrassing: Same here.
…
In Sundown Alley, up in a great tree, Pardo leaned against the trunk with a cat cradled in her arms, eyes shining as she watched Kiana and her friends talk, a flicker of envy crossing them.
Pardo had never gone to school.
Abandoned as a child, she was later taken in by an old scavenger who taught her a full set of skills before passing away—leaving Pardo with no one to rely on.
But Pardo drew her gaze back, looked at the cat sleeping in her arms, shook her head, crossed one leg over the other, took a bite of an apple, and said again, content.
“It’s not like I’m envious!
Free and easy is the best way to be.”
Then she returned her gaze to the stream, to that girl called Kiana.
And in another of Pardo’s timelines, in a cramped, dark room with only a single bed, a teal-haired girl sat hugging her knees against the wall, watching the stream with a dull, lifeless stare.
Watching Kiana interact with the others, the light slowly returned to her lifeless, clear eyes.
World’s Cutest: Kiana, Kiana, still gaming right before an exam—a true Kaslana dummy.
I won’t tell anyone how a certain someone secretly reads manga and binges dramas in her office during work hours.
World’s Cutest: You little—!
Miss Pink Elf♪: School life is always something to long for.
What a pity I never got to attend.
Watching the warm, sweet chatter scroll by, Xiyue thought of the scene coming up and curved her lips slightly.
She pressed on with the story.
What came next was Kiana sinking back into the dream—everything that had happened in reality, but in the dream it ran in reverse, an attempt to shatter Kiana’s psychological defenses.
Kiana and Theresa grew more and more tense watching this stretch.
No Exams Thanks: Auntie, is it really like she says—did Kiana’s mom lose to the Second Herrscher because of a problem with her?
World’s Cutest: Of course not, dummy.
During the Second Eruption, Kiana was already two years old—how could it possibly be from childbirth draining her vitality?
Chlorinated Kiana: …
The Herrscher of the Void watched her carefully laid plan get fully spilled to Kiana by this stream, and her composure started to crack.
For a moment she wanted to wipe this loathsome stream right off the screen.
In the story, the Queen went on using Theresa’s body to coax Kiana.
“Because she gave birth to you, she never recovered her vitality.
In the end, those people in Schicksal—afraid Cecilia would fail—fired a tactical missile into Siberia, hoping to make her perish together with the Second Herrscher.”
“Poor Siegfried—he couldn’t face his wife’s death, and even less could he face the daughter who’d killed her.”
“Your parents’ greatest misfortune was giving birth to you!”
Hearing Sirin’s words, the viewers couldn’t help drawing a sharp breath.
Right now, apart from Pardo and Kiana, who were children, everyone else—big and small—could clearly grasp how much information Sirin’s words carried.
The warm scene from before was gone; a faint oppression settled over the stream.
And in reality, Kiana—though deep down she didn’t believe it—found Sirin’s words full of insidious suggestion, and for a moment couldn’t tell true from false.
“Auntie, is what she’s saying true?”
By now Theresa, watching the story, was so furious she wished she could pull out the Oath of Judah and blow Sirin to bits.
What nonsense was this—what did any of it have to do with a Kiana who was only two years old?
“Absolute rubbish!”
She was about to reply to Kiana when Xiyue’s words cut in.
Seeing the stream turn a bit oppressive, Xiyue felt she ought to do something.
Looking at the screen, she quipped.
“This voice in the dream is a little dim-witted—using someone close to Kiana to deceive her.”
“At the very least, change the voice.”
“Theresa’s body is tiny enough to rival a grade-schooler’s—how could it possibly produce a sultry onee-san voice?
The dissonance is off the charts.”
“Even dummy Tuna wouldn’t fall for it—the trick’s just too shoddy!”
The instant Xiyue finished, time seemed to stop.
A moment later, two comments slowly surfaced in the chat.
World’s Cutest: ?
Chlorinated Kiana: ?