Chapter 200: Kevin's Surprise
The people of the Current Era stared at Elysia playing tour guide with barely concealed bewilderment — clearly, they didn't know her very well yet.
The people of the Previous Era, on the other hand, watched Elysia with nothing more than mild exasperation. It wasn't as if she'd never done anything more outrageous than this. Compared to some of her past antics, pretending to be a tour guide barely even registered.
Irene swept her gaze across the assembled group and noticed a few faces were missing. She glanced toward Elysia, and Elysia, catching Irene's look, explained.
"Su and Kevin said that since their actual selves are here, they'd rather not go out. As for Hua — he merged with Hua, to help fill in her memories."
"Oh, that works out nicely." Irene nodded. That development was well within her calculations. She'd actually been wondering if she might facilitate some kind of reverse memory sync to help Fu Hua recover some of what she'd lost.
The memories of the Previous Era had been burned away so many times over — burned and re-burned, until even Little Senti's impressions of it weren't entirely complete.
Fu Hua, though, should still have retained a relatively intact set of impressions. But before Irene had gotten around to doing anything about it, they'd apparently handled it themselves — so there was nothing left to say about that.
At least there wouldn't be the absurd situation of a mental projection wandering around with no memories of its own. Fu Hua had reclaimed the memories of the Previous Era. All things considered, that was cause for celebration.
All Fu Hua would need to do was find some time to sync memories with Little Senti, and the picture would be just about complete. Whatever couldn't be recovered after that — well, nothing could be done about it. Not everything could be perfect.
Completing the objectives that mattered was enough. You couldn't force the rest.
But Irene had also noticed, scanning through the crowd, that there was one very important person missing. There was no way that particular person wouldn't want to come out — and it wasn't just Mobius. Nuwa and Fuxi weren't there either, and neither was Puppet Klein nor Klein herself.
That was a little strange. Mobius, of all people, wouldn't want to miss this — and she'd been right there in the hall just a moment ago. For her to vanish that suddenly, something was definitely up.
"Were you all waiting for me?" Just then, the portal shimmered and cycled, and Mobius stepped through. Behind her, Nuwa and Fuxi, and then Puppet Klein and Klein, each emerged carrying a crate of something.
"What's all this?" Irene looked at Mobius, her gaze traveling over the two crates in Nuwa and Fuxi's arms. "Research data, or research equipment? Hmm — you don't have physical bodies, so those things aren't much use to you, are they?"
"I'm well aware. You don't need to tell me." Mobius turned to indicate the crates Nuwa and Fuxi were carrying. "Those contain the prototype batch of the Honkai Resistance Enhancer you handed over to us earlier."
"There's also a storage device in there with the formulation methods and synthesis protocols. Once you're out, just find someone to start running experiments.
"If there are any problems, let me know and I'll revise it. As for the other one —" Mobius glanced toward the crate in Klein's arms. "That one holds DNA samples we all left behind a long time ago. They've managed to retain viability."
"You're the Herrscher of Death. You know what I'm implying. All those things I taught you back then — don't tell me you've forgotten them."
"Not at all, not at all." Irene shook her head without hesitation. She certainly remembered a lot of people — and Brother Kalpas, in particular, was definitely not the type to want to spend eternity rattling around inside someone else's head.
At some point, they were going to have to build Kalpas a body. And if Mobius had actually kept the DNA profiles from back then, that was the best possible news.
Put in a few solid days of work, see if she could get everyone's bodies sorted out. That would add several more cards to their hand in one go.
More people, more firepower — when it came time to go up against the Herrscher of the Legion, they'd be hitting that fight with a lot more force.
"The crate Puppet Klein is holding," Mobius continued, gesturing toward the smaller box in Puppet Klein's arms, "contains what's left of the metamorphic factors."
"I'm leaving anyway, and at this point there's no time to cultivate any new successors. Might as well take it all out — at least let it serve one last purpose."
"Metamorphic factors, huh." Irene nodded and accepted them. They were one of the Previous Era's most potent assets, after all. Though unawakened metamorphic factors were, at best, a reasonably effective physical enhancement — and even then, they were highly selective about who could use them.
Frankly speaking, both the metamorphic factor surgery and the MANTIS procedure came with severe side effects and highly variable outcomes.
Unless the Honkai Beast genes happened to be an exceptional match for the individual in question, neither procedure could deliver much in the way of real power. It was extremely person-dependent — and nobody could predict in advance which Honkai Beast genes might be compatible with whom.
Pardo's case, of course, was a spectacular fluke. That girl had purely and simply lucked into a Honkai Beast gene set that was an ideal match for her.
When Mobius had found out about it after the fact, she'd been thoroughly astonished — because by all conventional logic, Honkai Beast genes were extraordinarily selective.
Every test subject had to go through extensive compatibility screening beforehand, just to ensure the surgery had even the minimum viable success and stability rates. That applied to the later metamorphic factor surgeries just as much as to the earlier procedures.
And yet Pardo had somehow snuck in without anyone noticing, climbed up onto the operating table, gone through the whole surgery, and walked off it afterward completely unscathed — barely a side effect to show for it.
That was, to put it lightly, a bit too surprising. After the fact, Mobius had done some investigation — and discovered, to her further amazement, that Pardo's compatibility rating with that particular Honkai Beast's genes was genuinely extraordinary.
She'd never even been able to find a better match for Pardo afterward. It was as though fate itself had arranged it.
Ah — though of course, since it hadn't been a particularly powerful Honkai Beast, even with that exceptional compatibility rate, Pardo hadn't ended up with all that much raw power from the fusion.
From here on out, for most people it would still come down to luck and casting a wide net — the standard broad-spectrum screening to find candidates who could actually undergo the surgery.
The metamorphic factor surgery had resolved some of those issues, but the fundamental problem remained the same: without compatibility, a person could go their entire life without ever awakening a metamorphic factor.
Since the Elysian Realm had been established, Gray Serpent had smuggled in a fair number of people from the outside — but only a tiny fraction of them had managed to find a matching Honkai Beast gene among the factors Mobius had left behind.
Still, there was no point in letting it go to waste just because the odds were slim. What if one of them turned out to be a match? So Mobius had gone and gathered up every last remaining factor.
Irene gave a nod, then glanced briefly toward Theresa. If all else failed, it could be given to Theresa, or to Kosma once he had a body again — neither of them would let it go to waste.
With everyone accounted for, Irene took her place at the head of the group. But just as the others were about to head out, they realized something: every single one of the Previous Era people had fallen in line and was now standing in a queue behind Irene.
"...Do we need to queue up to leave now?" Kiana scratched her head, looking at Irene. "Why are we lining up?"
"Nothing dramatic — it was compressed on the way in." Irene gestured back at the line forming behind her. "So naturally, it has to be compressed again on the way out."
Little Senti, standing at the very end of the queue, gave Irene a thumbs-up. "Compression subroutine standing by. Is the destination folder ready?"
"Stop goofing around." Irene turned back toward Little Senti with a long-suffering look. "Come on, compression system — give it everything you've got. Let's aim for a clean run on the first try."
Irene would have preferred to send people through in batches, but the problem was that the moment she'd stepped inside, the Elysian Realm had automatically decompressed the whole lot — she'd had no way to manage it in stages. That left only one option: put Little Senti's strength to the test. Could she pull this many people through all at once?
"Relax, I've got it." Little Senti gave a firm nod, then struck a pose like a charging ram — and proceeded to sprint directly into the crowd, to the wide-eyed shock, confusion, and outright alarm of everyone from the Current Era.
Little Senti barrelled through them one by one, each person she hit disintegrating on impact — collapsing apart as though shattered — while a ghostly silhouette of each one appeared in front of her. She plowed down the whole line, and in the end swept Irene off her feet as well, the whole mass of them tumbling out through the portal.
"Ahaha." Kiana scratched her head, staring blankly at the portal, then back at the spot where the queue had been standing. "Sister Irene never stops surprising people, does she."
"I think we've gone past the point of 'surprise,' haven't we?" Mei's expression wasn't much better. "What exactly did I just witness?"
"Sister Irene got knocked flying?" Bronya's focus was conspicuously elsewhere. "So does that mean Sister Irene's head now has enough people in it to field a football team?"
"Probably still a few short for that — but definitely enough for a few rounds of mahjong." Himeko, too, had the look of someone who had never quite seen anything like this before. Though, wait — could this even count as 'seeing something new'? This was pure natural talent on Irene's part.
Multiple personalities was one thing — that wasn't unprecedented. But an entire crowd of souls taking up residence inside one person's head? That was genuinely a first.
"But is Irene really all right?" Theresa's face was creased with worry as she stared at the portal. Was Irene truly capable of bearing all of this?
"Well, she's already gone and done it, so what else is there to say?" Tesla shrugged. "Right — grab everything and take it with you. Once we help Irene get everyone's bodies sorted out, her burden will ease up a little."
"You do have to admire Miss Irene's capacity for tolerating an entire mob of people in her head." Einstein picked up the thread, though she clearly hadn't lost sight of what needed to be done. "Come on — let's not keep Miss Irene waiting outside."
Everyone nodded and filed through the portal one by one. At the far end, in the passageway beyond, Irene stood watching them all emerge. "What took you so long?"
"Because Miss Irene's little stunt just now gave everyone a fright." Einstein shrugged. "Right — next on the agenda: we need to head back to Haiyuan City for further calibration work on the Moonlight Throne. The facilities there are adequate for constructing the engine power components."
[Haiyuan City? That name sounds awfully familiar.] Mobius's voice surfaced in Irene's mind. It sounded calm enough on the surface, but Irene caught the undercurrent of excitement Mobius was carefully concealing.
Well — Mobius had spent the better part of recent years scheming about how to get herself out of here. Now that she was actually out, of course she was pleased.
Irene answered offhandedly: [It's essentially what remains of the continent that the Herrscher of Rock wrecked back in the day — specifically the site of the Eye of the Deep experiments.
[The Current Era people found it, repaired it, and repurposed it as a research base.]
[Oh, that's quite fitting.] Vill-V joined the mental channel. They all knew, of course, that some of the old research facilities were still operational — still capable of being reclaimed. These had been the Previous Era's finest scientific projects, built with enormous effort.
But by the time it had mattered, those things had been useless to them. They'd had no energy left to pursue research into the Sea of Quanta or anything of that nature.
The researchers were gone. Even knowing there was a functioning high-technology installation somewhere down there, what of it? There was no one to study it, no one who could operate it.
Their own Dr. Einstein had been swept up in it all as well — so that facility had simply been left to sit.
That the Current Era had found a use for it was a good thing.
The group emerged from the dark corridor into the open air. Before them lay the Golden Courtyard — nothing left of it now but scattered rubble and crumbling walls. Eden looked at the scene, and let out a quiet sigh.
Fifty thousand years. Even if she had used only the finest materials at the time, the fact that anything was still standing at all was more than could be expected.
Still — to see the Golden Courtyard she had poured her heart into reduced to this was, unavoidably, a little melancholy.
"You all go on ahead." Irene glanced in one particular direction, then turned back to the group. "I need to go say hello first — after all, I made off with more than half of this place's foundations. The least I can do is announce myself."
"More like you carted off the entire trial ground wholesale." Kiana glanced back at the passage they'd come through. "But is Sister Irene really going to be fine?"
"I'll be right behind you, don't worry. Go on ahead." Irene waved them off, and a pair of black-and-white wings unfurled from her back as she beat them and took to the air.
In the distance, Kevin hung quietly in place. He had nothing that needed doing at the moment, so he had simply stayed where he was and waited for them to emerge.
Seeing Irene fly toward him was no great surprise. But the moment he sensed the aura emanating from her, Kevin's brow twitched. Wait… hold on — was this right?
Irene had gone into the Elysian Realm and come back out — and just like that, she'd become Origin?! Wait, no — that didn't seem quite right either. After picking up on a trace he could never in a million years have forgotten, Kevin performed an immediate tactical lean backwards.
This couldn't be right, could it? What had Irene been doing in the Elysian Realm? How did she now also carry the aura of Finality?
The trace was faint — almost imperceptible, threaded so deeply into the Origin aura that it was nearly impossible to detect. But how could Kevin ever fail to recognize where that particular aura came from?
So what, exactly, had Irene been doing in the Elysian Realm? Was this right? Did this make any sense?
Kevin, half-convinced he was making a mistake, focused and sensed again — and the expression on his face grew stranger still. Because it wasn't just those two auras he was picking up. He was picking up a whole crowd of familiar ones.
What — Irene, did you go to the Elysian Realm and come back having packed the whole thing up and taken it with you?!
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