Herta's Office
Frozen time, the steady ticking of machinery, eyes meeting and crossing.
Herta had originally planned to have a friendly exchange with the cat from another world, but her Simulated Universe suddenly erupted with blaring alarms.
As a result, after only a few lines of conversation with Inori Cat, Herta was forced to begin emergency repairs on the crippled Simulated Universe. When it came to anything within the Omniscient Domain's calculation range, the Lord of Silence's blade was nothing short of catastrophic.
Herta was fully immersed in the tense and thrilling task of salvaging sealed data.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the office.
March 7th: Whew. I really did not expect Miss Herta to be this scary when she gets serious. I did a pretty good job explaining, right? For a moment it even felt like she went quiet. Must have been my imagination.
Fairy Elysia: Inori! Why couldn't I move or talk just now, meow? Did something go wrong while drawing the magic circle? Drawing with a pen in your mouth as a cat is really hard, meow!
Kiyono Inori: …You were already amazing, Elysia. That was just network lag on my end caused by a server bug.
March 7th: Wait a second. What are you two talking about? It hasn't even been that long, but why does it feel like I can't join the conversation at all? Drawing and network lag. Is this some kind of drawing-guessing game? I'm really good at those!
Kiyono Inori: Um… no, it's not that kind of game.
Fairy Elysia: Hehe, it's a little secret between girls. Want to know, Little March? Be my tour guide and big sister Elysia will tell you.
March 7th: You picked the right person! Let me tell you, I'm basically half an expert on Trailblazing. Stick with me and I guarantee you the best travel experience!
Kiyono Inori: How did this suddenly skip straight to traveling? Don't forget about the Xianzhou Luofu! That place might be extremely dangerous right now. Do not go sightseeing with a carefree mindset!
Kiyono Inori: And Little March, stop holding me up by my front legs while letting this pink pig-cat rub my belly! Even if it feels nice, you're totally ganging up on me, right?
Fairy Elysia: ?
March 7th: Th-this is not bullying the beautiful girl's owner! Oh right! Group cat-petting is totally normal, you know. Elysia and I are just doing what normal girls do, meow!
Kiyono Inori: Don't escalate it while acting all serious! If you keep this up I'm blocking all sensory input! Also, how did eye contact evolve into a group chat? What kind of mechanism is this? Is this Fairy Magic too? Can Fairy Magic really do everything?
March 7th: Fairy Magic… I get it now! So Sister Elysia has hidden powers too! If even the beautiful girl's owner has hidden powers, then the only one without hidden powers is me!
Fairy Elysia: Mm-hmm. Don't let my cuteness fool you. Big sister here is a genuine magical girl.
March 7th: Huh? Wait, what? A magical girl? Really?! Can I learn that? Can I actually learn it? If I do, then I'll have hidden powers too, meow!
After Fairy Elysia smugly declared herself a magical girl, the atmosphere of the eye-contact chat instantly shifted into a disciple-seeking-teacher scenario. Meanwhile, Kiyono Inori, who was full of question marks, switched channels.
The eye-contact channel was occupied.
But the Emperor's Scepter still had its own private channel.
Kiyono Inori: Elysia! I get wanting to show off in front of junior cats, but can you really teach Fairy Magic to Little March? She's already kind of airheaded. If she gets even worse, how am I supposed to explain that to Himeko and Mr. Yang?
Fairy Elysia: W-wait, why is the beautiful girl's owner's voice suddenly playing in my head?! And hey, don't underestimate the smart, wise, and kind pink fairy!
Fairy Elysia: Hmph. I actually don't know how to teach Fairy Magic anyway. I've tried before and nobody else could learn it. Except you somehow just picked it up out of nowhere…
Fairy Elysia: But I didn't just eat snacks while traveling to another world, you know. Hehehe.
Kiyono Inori: ?
Fairy Elysia: Hehe. Want to know the answer, Little Inori? Thirty… no, fifty little cakes. Promise me fifty cakes and I'll sell you Fairy Elysia's top-secret intel!
Kiyono Inori: …
Kiyono Inori: Oh. I see.
Kiyono Inori: It was that Sumimi concert, right? While Chihaya Anon and Sumita Mana were fighting monsters, you secretly learned magical girl spells in your own way.
Fairy Elysia: ?
Fairy Elysia: Hey! How did you figure it out instantly?! No fair! My fifty cakes!
Kiyono Inori: Let's be honest, my dear Elysia. Whenever you wanted to binge-eat in cat form, I never stopped you. You've eaten at least a year's worth of a normal high schooler's allowance by now, haven't you?
Fairy Elysia: Bl-bl-blasphemy! Slander! Don't label me as a binge eater! I will never admit this! Elysia Cat ate the cakes. What does that have to do with Fairy Elysia?!
Kiyono Inori: Eating cakes was Fairy Elysia. What does that have to do with Elysia? Fine, I'll set a flag right here. One day you are absolutely going to say that. You're just running away from reality, you pink pig-cat.
Fairy Elysia: Bl-bl-blah blah. I have no idea what you're talking about, meow. Anyway, I'm going to teach Little March how to awaken magical girl powers now!
Fairy Elysia has left the Emperor's Scepter group chat.
Kiyono Inori's expression became complicated.
She called Elysia a pink pig-cat for running away, but in truth, the beautiful girl's owner was avoiding something herself.
Had she… ruined Elysia?
At the very beginning, Elysia was a clever girl in her own way.
But ever since Kiyono Inori established contact with Mobius, Elysia had Mobius thinking for her in the Previous Era, and Kiyono Inori thinking and feeding her snacks in everyday life.
Two external brains.
Now Elysia looked genuinely airheaded. It was entirely possible that Inori had unknowingly altered the worldline.
Back in the original timeline of the Previous Era, during the Fifth Honkai,
Elysia wanted to befriend Doctor Mobius, but Mobius kept her guard up, deliberately hiding a great deal of information. Her experiments were absolute taboos at the time. Their relationship could never reach the level of being someone's external brain.
Elysia might even have had to play mind games with Mobius to figure out her true goals.
Kiyono Inori: (⊙_⊙)
Realizing she might be the true culprit behind the pink pig-cat's airheadedness, the beautiful girl's owner in cat form practically turned grayscale. She did not even react to the shameless petting from the two pink-haired girls.
Simulated Universe Administrative Sync Channel
Herta: Ruan Mei, Screwllum, Stephen Lloyd, the issue at my station is resolved. Where are you all now?
Screwllum: I am pleased to hear this news, Miss Herta. Logic indicates that I am currently entangled in Imperial Advisory Council affairs. Estimated arrival will be delayed by five system hours.
Stephen Lloyd: Whew… then I'm heading home.
Ruan Mei: Video
Ruan Mei: Mm. As long as you're fine. I just discovered a miniature biological civilization in a desolate region. Quite fascinating.
Having just saved the sealed data of the Simulated Universe, Herta checked in with her colleagues and received a devastating realization.
None of them had even set out.
Seriously.
If the Lord of Silence had decided to elbow her just now, they would already be in a tug-of-war phase. Even with tricks to stall for time, at this pace, those three would have shown up one by one like sacrificial offerings.
That was the Genius Society for you.
If the space station was in danger, geniuses could theoretically gather within twelve hours.
If a Remembrance observer witnessed this, they could probably make a Light Cone titled The Most United Episode of the Genius Society.
The Erudition faction's disorganization had reached this level.
Back then, Seat No. 56, Elias Salas, invented synesthetic beacons to facilitate communication, and created the Club Scroll so geniuses could gather in a banquet dimension.
The result was tragic.
Seat No. 56 proposed the Banquet of Geniuses in his prime and distributed the scrolls across the cosmos.
Every subsequent member used the scroll at least once, but never at the same time. The banquet never happened, even after Seat No. 56 passed away.
From this perspective, one message mobilizing three geniuses was already better than ninety-nine percent of the club.
They just had reasons.
Urgent inorganic world affairs. Social anxiety. Getting distracted by interesting planets on the way.
Herta sighed deeply.
The Lord of Silence had indeed visited the station, cut that cluster of data, and left. At least, that was what the surface-level information said.
But.
Herta glanced at the cat surrounded by two pink-haired girls.
The Lord of Silence's visit time and March 7th's awakening time were perfectly anchored.
Data deletion, then awakening, less than twenty seconds apart.
Yet March 7th had not encountered the Lord of Silence at all.
Either the Lord of Silence did something to her, or something else dragged the Lord of Silence into another Erudition construct world.
Originally, Herta thought the Erudition construct came from Seat No. 4.
But the data suggested otherwise.
Her gaze locked onto the obediently being petted cat.
…
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Let me know if I got a name wrong. I know basically nothing about MyGO.