Vill-V woke beside the drafting instrument in Helixcraft.
She rubbed her disheveled hair, looked around the empty workshop, and felt a little lonely.
Elysia had been gone for nearly three years.
During those three years, Vill-V had taken over most of Elysia’s responsibilities.
On top of that, she had to manufacture Soulium for her.
Every day, she was either reviewing blueprints or reading reports.
She had not even finished school before being promoted straight into the life of an overworked corporate slave.
“Ah…” She sighed.
When she first agreed to Elysia’s terms, she had actually harbored a few private calculations of her own.
In her eyes, for the great genius Vill-V, handling such minor affairs would be effortless.
The organizational framework was already in place, and whenever she needed to make a public address, she could simply send the Lecturer onstage to shout, “If you understand, applaud,” and be done with it.
Then she would have plenty of spare time to build her own Helixcraft.
More importantly, Elysia was covering every expense.
Wasn’t this simply getting something for nothing?
Elysia, Elysia, you truly underestimated the value of a genius.
Then reality taught her a brutal lesson.
Elysia was responsible for expansion, while Vill-V was responsible for governance.
That was perfectly reasonable.
At first, that was what she had thought, and she had even felt a little secretly delighted.
To put it in ancient terms, Elysia was the great general who pacified the north, while Vill-V was the crown prince acting as regent.
Wouldn’t the realm belong to her sooner or later?
But she soon stopped laughing, because Elysia conquered far too quickly.
The underworld factions in the cities she passed through could not exactly be said to surrender at the mere sound of her approach, but they certainly shattered on contact.
The weapon of criticism could never replace criticism by weapons.
For the first time, Vill-V truly understood just how overwhelmingly Elysia’s inhuman strength crushed everyone else.
Of course, had she done nothing but destroy, Elysia would long since have been targeted by both the public and hidden sides of the European Union and attacked from every direction.
Yet through her actions, she proved that compared with those creatures immersed in depraved cults and flesh mills, the force she represented would always be more stable, more reliable, and more legitimate.
She destroyed the old underworld, then built a better ecosystem upon its ruins.
Beyond banning every gang custom that violated the most basic bounds of humanity, she used the investment provided by the Godfather to construct a complete vocational training system from nothing, periodically supplying society with skilled workers and revitalizing local industry.
Even if some local officials harbored unspeakable preferences, faced with genuine and undeniable political achievements, they could only hold their noses and accept it.
Meanwhile, a pack of reporters from across the European Union followed Elysia everywhere like moths chasing flame.
One explosive story came after another.
Over the past two years, Vill-V had seen her dominate the headlines so often that she had nearly gone numb.
“Angel of Pink Dawn.” That was the name they had given Elysia.
Vill-V believed Elysia genuinely deserved the title.
Wherever she passed, crime rates dropped sharply.
In the past, citizens outside wealthy districts had not dared venture onto the streets at night.
After Elysia left, the nighttime economy began to flourish, and naturally, Elysia, having planned ahead, claimed the majority of the profits.
More remarkably, she did not rely on legal tax avoidance.
Instead, she adhered quite faithfully to the tax laws of every nation, paying enormous sums into public coffers while also founding a large number of industries to help resolve unemployment.
Local governments were therefore more than happy to let her continue.
As for the illicit businesses that local tyrants had spent years painstakingly developing, every last one suffered a devastating blow.
Human trafficking was hit hardest.
Most participants had all four limbs crippled before entering prison.
As for the ringleaders, they generally vanished from the face of the earth and became part of some surging river.
Of course, it was not as though they had never attempted to fight back.
As far as Vill-V knew, they had first tried to smear Elysia as a power-hungry usurper with sinister intentions.
However, the major newspapers told them that the material they provided was nowhere near as explosive as what Elysia had dug out of their own strongholds, and politely declined.
The message, both overt and implied, was that they should return home and obediently await death.
A few tabloids that tried taking a more unconventional path had their windows smashed by enraged citizens and never dared cross the line again.
Later came attempts at physical elimination.
Elysia’s bounty had remained at the top of every assassination list for years, but every assassin sent after her had failed miserably without exception.
Vill-V had once watched a surveillance recording that appeared completely ordinary.
Only someone with a keen eye could recognize just how absurd its contents truly were.
During an ordinary field visit, Elysia effortlessly evaded at least eight sniper attempts, avoided four car bombs and three prearranged traffic accidents, then completed a full circuit and returned safely.
What the recording failed to capture was that she later caught every assassin who had tried to flee in a panic and casually threw them all into prison.
In brief, within the criminal underworld and the shadow districts, Elysia’s name had already become enough to stop children from crying at night.
A series of righteous deeds and legendary experiences brought Elysia immense public support.
Which left Vill-V to suffer.
Every morning, she woke and stared lifelessly at the territory that had expanded yet again.
Then she had to devote her attention to integrating every newly acquired industry into the existing production chain.
Not only that, she also had to arrange employment, reconcile accounts with branch offices, dispatch veterans from headquarters to train newcomers, and respond one by one to the many companies offering partnerships now that they had gone legitimate.
She had once imagined work and hobbies would take up ten and ninety percent of her time.
Now the ratio was nearly seventy to thirty.
Falco, look at the monster you unleashed.
Fortunately, Elysia had granted her an unlimited budget.
Vill-V supposed she was suffering and enjoying herself at the same time.
She raised her head and surveyed the workshop into which she had poured so much effort.
Countless dark-gold gears of varying sizes meshed along complex transmission shafts spanning the ceiling.
They rotated slowly, producing low, rhythmic sounds as their teeth interlocked.
Innumerable dark pipes coiled and twisted across the surrounding walls and support columns, occasionally releasing bursts of white steam.
Conductive lines embedded in the floor crossed and tangled together, streams of high-density energy flowing within them to power the pedestals and instruments scattered throughout the workshop.
Several precision mechanical arms remained hidden in the shadows, silently awaiting Vill-V’s commands.
The entire workshop was effectively an enormous mechanical lathe.
Only something of this scale could support the production of Soulium.
She had built dozens of identical workshops across the European Union.
The roaring machinery gradually fell silent.
Vill-V walked toward the finished-product area, carried out a small bottle of viscous black liquid, and poured it into a testing instrument.
Under the stimulation of electric arcs, the black liquid seemed to come alive, freely shifting between forms.
Vill-V adjusted the trigger mode.
The black liquid instantly condensed into a long rectangular brick.
She pressed a button, causing several sensor probes to insert themselves into holes prepared in advance, then turned a dial until the air heated enough to glow red.
She glanced at the monitoring panel beside her.
The displayed property data remained remarkably stable.
Afterward, she tested it under all kinds of extreme conditions.
To simulate a highly corrosive environment, she even induced a small nuclear explosion.
Every result matched the intended design.
I finally made it.
She breathed a sigh of relief and rubbed her brow.
As expected of me.
She lifted her chin and planted her hands on her hips.
It had taken her two intermittent years and a staggering amount of funding to produce only this tiny bottle.
Worse still, because the required precision was so extreme, manufacturing it not only demanded a massive factory, but production capacity remained hopelessly low.
No matter how one looked at it, the design required enormous effort for very little reward.
Yet Elysia’s concern for it was unquestionably genuine, and she was not the sort of person to lose herself in empty fantasies.
Is Honkai energy truly nothing more than energy in a high-density state?
After Elysia left, Vill-V spent some time investigating and actually uncovered a few clues.
Secretly concealed travel records, certain incidents the authorities refused to discuss, and a research institute built in the suburbs.
She sent several worker drones inside, but apart from spotting a green-haired woman who looked like an aunt, she found nothing.
Vill-V did not grow discouraged.
On the contrary, her curiosity only intensified.
Just wait.
Give me a little more time.
No question you left behind can defeat the genius Vill-V!