In a brightly lit sealed room, Lucius removed the hood from Kiana's head.
Kiana's consciousness gradually cleared, and she slowly opened those crimson eyes.
Intense light stabbed at her, causing Kiana to involuntarily squint. Tears unconsciously seeped from those red pupils.
Once she had adjusted to the bright light before her, she found three figures standing there in the illumination.
Kiana blinked and realized these three were her companions.
Lucius stood in the center, with Bronya and Shigure Kira flanking him on either side.
What they had in common was that all three were staring at her with malicious intent.
"What are you doing..."
Kiana was puzzled. She instinctively tried to stand up, but quickly found she had been tied to the chair with rope.
"Wait, why am I tied up?"
Just as she was about to struggle free, Lucius pressed down on her shoulders with both hands. Then she heard him say:
"Quick, tell us where you've hidden our Kiana!"
(ー_ー)!!
Hearing Lucius's words, Kiana was quite speechless.
"What weird game are you playing now? Stop messing around and untie me already..."
And after hearing her words, Bronya, who stood behind Lucius in a strange pose, said:
"As expected... she won't admit it. Looks like we'll need to use some cruel methods. I happen to know a bit about interrogation techniques."
Hearing her words, Shigure Kira beside her couldn't help retorting.
"Don't make us sound like some kind of villainous organization's interrogators!"
Listening to Shigure Kira and Bronya's exchange, Kiana felt completely baffled.
"Wait, what are you talking about?"
Looking at Kiana's face full of confusion, Lucius sighed and said: "Shicksal, I know it's you. Release Kiana's consciousness."
"So what on earth are you all talking about? How could I not be myself?"
Hearing Kiana's words, a cold smile pulled at Lucius's lips.
"No need to display that crude disguise anymore. I could tell at a glance you're not human!"
"Still daring to talk back at this point—looks like I'll have to discipline you!"
Then he rummaged through his system inventory and produced a plate of exquisitely crafted, appetizing sweets.
"These are pastries made by Mei. 'Kiana,' do you dare eat them?"
Looking at the beautifully presented sweets before her, tears of unworthiness flowed from the corners of Kiana's mouth.
"They look so good..."
Seeing Kiana's reaction, everyone present finally confirmed it.
"Just as I thought—you're not Kiana!"
Hearing the certainty in Lucius's words, an unhappy expression appeared on Kiana's face.
"Lucius, this joke isn't funny. If you keep this up, I really am going to get angry."
"In that case, please enjoy these sweets filled with Mei's affection!"
"Open your mouth."
Saying this, he was about to stuff the sweets in his hand into Kiana's mouth.
"You're going to feed me sweets?"
The displeasure on Kiana's face instantly vanished, replaced by a happy smile.
"Alright, Lucius, I've decided to forgive you... ahh~"
Kiana opened her little mouth, and Lucius casually tossed the sweets in his hand inside.
As the sweets entered her mouth, Kiana's little face began moving.
"Mmm mmm mmm..."
But soon, she found the expected sweetness didn't appear. Instead, an extreme bitterness filled her mouth.
This bitterness was savagely assaulting her taste buds, trying to travel through her sense of taste to violently assault her brain.
Kiana's expression began contorting wildly. Those crimson pupils shook violently, then shook again, finally shattering like broken glass.
The next moment, the crimson in her eyes dispersed, and the ocean-blue color resurfaced.
Kiana blinked, looked at the people before her, her face full of confusion.
"Huh? How did I get here? Weren't we just having a meal together?"
To this, Lucius pressed down on her shoulder and said with feeling: "There was a bit of an accident. It's complicated to explain..."
Before Lucius could finish speaking, Kiana felt nausea rising from her stomach.
Then she instantly broke free of the ropes, ran to the bathroom, and vomited a rainbow-colored stream.
...
After Kiana finished rinsing her mouth, everyone regathered, surrounding Kiana in the middle.
"So you're saying you really don't remember what just happened, Kiana?" Lucius asked.
Kiana tapped her head with her finger, her face troubled. "Who understands what you're all talking about..."
But soon she noticed shocked and suspicious expressions appearing on her companions' faces.
"Wh-what's wrong?"
Bronya remained silent, Shigure Kira looked astonished, and only Lucius wore a strange expression as he produced a mirror and handed it to her.
"See for yourself."
Kiana accepted the mirror with confusion, but froze when she saw her appearance in it.
One of her beautiful blue eyes had been stained with a crimson color. The left eye remained as brilliant as a sapphire, but the right eye seemed soaked in fresh blood, radiating an eerie crimson glow.
"Wh-what's going on?"
Kiana was shocked at her current appearance.
At this moment, she found her body was no longer under her control and began talking to itself.
"So disgusting... so disgusting... this is an absolute desecration of sweets!"
"By the way... who am I again?"
"I think I'm called Kiana..."
"No no, I'm not Kiana..."
"Wait, that's not right either. Am I really not Kiana?"
"Hiss... I remember now. I think I'm an alien, called Brown Sugar."
Kiana felt an extra consciousness had appeared in her mind. This consciousness had seized control of her body and was using her mouth to say nonsensical things.
This annoyed her considerably. Instinctively she seized back control of her body, then questioned the other consciousness in her mind:
"Who are you?!"
"Why are you in my head?!"
Hearing Kiana's questioning, the alien individual "Brown Sugar" in her mind instinctively replied:
"I'm Kiana... no wait, I mean... I'm Brown Sugar."
Brown Sugar's voice seemed tearful.
"Right now, I seem to have completely taken on your shape... I'm done for. I've become a fool."
...
"You're saying that something went wrong with your symbiosis with Kiana, causing you to take on her shape?" Lucius asked.
Since they needed to question this alien individual, with Kiana's agreement, Brown Sugar temporarily took over control of the body.
After taking over, Kiana's eyes—which had returned to blue—were once again stained with crimson, making her entire being look extremely sinister.
But contrary to the aura she displayed, Brown Sugar behaved extremely obediently. She sat properly with excellent posture, appearing very well-mannered.
Hearing Lucius's question, Brown Sugar explained:
"Kiana's consciousness is unbelievably resilient. Even in the Candy House's records, there has never been an individual like this."
"Our alien symbiosis mutually influences the host, but her spirit is too resilient—it simply cannot be influenced."
"The moment I was swallowed by her, my consciousness was crushed by hers."
"To survive, I could only use her consciousness as a template to piece myself back together."
Speaking of this, Brown Sugar's expression was tearful.
"I'm done for now. I've completely become a fool."
The moment these words left her mouth, the crimson in her pupils instantly receded, replaced by an rather irritated ocean-blue.
"You annoying alien, who are you calling a fool?! Get out of my body right now!"
Kiana was, unusually, furious.
Lucius quickly moved to calm her down, then asked the Brown Sugar symbiotic with her:
"So can you leave Kiana's body first?"
Kiana was the protagonist he had chosen for the production. Having an extra alien symbiote had completely derailed from the script!
No matter what, he had to wrench this derailed script back on track.
But hearing Lucius's words, Brown Sugar's voice—similar to Kiana's—emerged from Kiana's body, carrying a sobbing tone.
"I can't go back anymore. If I leave this vessel, I'll shatter."
"I'm very useful. Please, don't make me leave."
Lucius looked at Kiana and found her face also showed conflict.
Lucius was about to say something, but when he glanced at the system panel, he noticed some changes. His expression gradually became strange.
So, facing the conflicted Kiana, Lucius said:
"How about we keep her temporarily? A alien symbiote is quite useful—it can grant you near-immortality."
Because of their consciousness connection, Kiana could feel Brown Sugar's helplessness and fear.
Learning that driving her out would result in the other party's death, she felt somewhat reluctant.
In the end, Kiana nodded with some frustration:
"Fine. You can stay here temporarily. Just don't cause me trouble."
"And..." Kiana gritted her teeth and said fiercely, "Don't call me a fool!"
Brown Sugar was so moved she was about to cry.
"Thank you so much, kind Kiana."
After temporarily deciding Brown Sugar's fate, Lucius could finally discuss some serious matters with her.
"Brown Sugar, you should be able to contact the Candy House, right?"
"I can... wait, you know about the Candy House?" Brown Sugar's voice expressed considerable surprise.
Lucius didn't answer, only smiled and said: "Can you help me relay a message? I'd like to speak with your Elder Konpeito."
"Well..."
Brown Sugar hesitated somewhat. According to her moral code, Lucius had persuaded Kiana to take her in, so she should repay him.
But the alien species adhered to the principle of not participating in civilization's conflicts. She worried that establishing contact with Lucius might drag her people into Honkai disasters.
However, Brown Sugar didn't hesitate long, because just as she was thinking, the surrounding scenery suddenly changed.
In the blink of an eye, Lucius and Kiana found themselves in a space-like setting.
Brilliant stars were scattered in all four directions of heaven and earth, yet they stood on this void as if on solid ground.
Then, as a flash of light appeared, a rice cake materialized before them from thin air.
This rice cake floated in a circle, then hovered before Lucius and Kiana.
The two saw that standing on the frost-covered rice cake was a black blob holding a walking stick.
"Greetings to you both, friends from the human world."
An elderly voice came from the black blob before them, giving an impression of kindness and warmth.
Seeing the black blob before him, Lucius was somewhat surprised.
"You're Elder Konpeito? This power to transform heaven and earth... is this your Divine Key capable of interfering with dimensional forces?"
Hearing Lucius's question, the alien elder named Konpeito was also surprised.
"Friend from the human world, how did you learn of our greatest secret?"
The Candy House and Silver Key—these two Divine Keys were the alien species' greatest trump cards. There was no way outsiders could know about them.
"To be honest, I'm a time traveler from fifty thousand years in the future."
"What you're experiencing now is merely the path I've already walked..."
Before Lucius could finish speaking, Kiana had already grabbed him and shrunk to one side, muttering quietly:
"Lucius, I know you're a reincarnator, but will anyone really believe you if you say it like that?"
"These alien don't look like fools either..."
However, after hearing Lucius's words, Elder Konpeito showed a look of sudden understanding.
Leaning on his cane, he murmured to himself:
"I see, so that's how it is!"
"That explains it, that explains it..."
"Huh?" Kiana felt her little face could barely hold together. She couldn't help asking: "You... believe it just like that?"
Elder Konpeito sighed with emotion:
"Something so absurd must be true."
Seeing Elder Konpeito believe it so readily, Lucius also found it rather strange.
As an elder who had lived for who knows how many years, Elder Konpeito naturally perceived their thoughts.
"Our Candy House detected some fluctuations in the solar system's time flow not long ago, but found no anomalies when we searched."
"I imagine you descended to this era at that time..."
But hearing this explanation, Lucius held a skeptical attitude. Although his system was unreliable, it shouldn't be detectable by the Outer Key, right?
No matter how you thought about it, there couldn't possibly be a system that incompetent, right?
So Lucius pressed further: "Elder Konpeito, when exactly did you detect the temporal anomaly?"
Elder Konpeito thought for a moment and replied: "Calculated by your Earth civilization's time, it should be about ten years ago from this current point in time."
Ten years ago?
Hearing this answer, Lucius decisively ruled himself out. He had arrived in this world much earlier than that.
But the question arose—if it wasn't him, what else could have affected time?
You had to understand, time was an authority exclusive to the Herrscher of Finality.
It couldn't be that the God of Earth from fifty thousand years in the future had attacked to this point, could it?
But Lucius also thought that if the other party could truly reach this point in time, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
Unfortunately, such a probability was infinitesimally small.
Mentally noting the temporal anomaly from ten years ago, Lucius temporarily set aside this topic.
"Elder Konpeito, you should have seen through this—everything I've done has indeed been to meet you."
"More precisely, I have a matter I'd like to ask for your help with."
But hearing Lucius's words, Elder Konpeito sighed lightly.
"Young human, since you know something of our Sugar species, you should also know we are merely observers."
"This is our philosophy and also our way of survival that has allowed us to exist peacefully until now."
Lucius said: "Even if I have a way to completely resolve Honkai, end this never-ending cycle, and allow your stalled civilization to continue forward?"
Elder Konpeito thought for a moment, then shook his head while leaning on his cane.
"Honkai cannot be defeated. The countless civilizations destroyed by Honkai as numerous as grains of sand recorded over hundreds of millions of years in the Candy House have already proven this."
"Perhaps you have great confidence in yourself, but young human, trust me—in the Candy House's records, there have been far too many like you."
"But now, they along with their civilizations have long since become mere lines of text in the records."
"And their tombstones may rest on some lifeless planet in this solar system."
Lucius was unsurprised by Elder Konpeito's answer. For a civilization that measured time in units of hundreds of millions of years, they had witnessed far too much.
Having seen so much, naturally they had become numb.
"I come from fifty thousand years in the future. That is an era where Honkai has been completely transcended."
"..."
After Lucius spoke these words, the scene fell into silence.
After a long while, Elder Konpeito finally said slowly: "Honkai... was transcended? Honestly, child, that's not funny."
Past experience told Elder Konpeito this was fundamentally impossible.
"Fifty thousand years in the future, an individual most compatible with Finality in all history will be born. She will take up Finality's authority and end this never-ending cycle."
"And I borrowed her power fifty thousand years in the future, paying an enormous price to arrive at this point in time."
"What I seek is to bring the Herrscher of Finality to their knees in this era, and reclaim from them everything I hold dear."
"Elder, you should know—time is an authority belonging to Finality."
For Lucius, proving his words was actually quite simple.
In this world, time belonged to Finality's authority. The fact that he could arrive at a point fifty thousand years in the past was itself the most indisputable evidence.
Sure enough, after hearing Lucius's answer, Elder Konpeito fell into long contemplation, finally sighing with emotion.
"To be able to transcend Honkai... truly an incredible achievement."
"Young human, speak your purpose. We still won't interfere with this era's human civilization, but we can provide some assistance for the future you've promised."
Hearing Elder Konpeito's reply, Lucius smiled and said: "I'd like to borrow your Outer Key."
Elder Konpeito wasn't surprised by Lucius's request.
"I suppose the only thing we can offer is the Outer Key."
"The Honkai on Earth is gathering at an abnormal rate. The birth of the next Herrscher is likely not far off. Are you planning to use it to fight the soon-to-be-born Herrscher?"
"No. Fighting and killing is too wasteful. It has a more important role."
"Oh?" Elder Konpeito was somewhat curious. "Are you planning to use it to research dimensional power?"
"Not that either."
"Our film crew is still missing a key prop. The Outer Key is perfect for it."
"..."
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