This world was called the Previous Era by Honkai players.
In Vill-V's eyes, however, it was no different from Earth.
Aside from the absence of miHoYo, it had almost everything else.
People were the same too.
The cunning were still cunning. The sinister were still sinister.
Vill-V had experienced that shortly after birth. It was precisely that early brush with reality that pressured her into beginning her long performance of deception.
When she had first transmigrated here, Vill-V had considered earning her first fortune by relying on games and anime from her previous life.
But after arriving, she discovered that this world's technology and culture surpassed even her former world—let alone the dull and rigid Three-Body world.
Of course, if she devoted her across-the-board genius to becoming a singer, she might even stand on the same stage as Eden.
But her energy was limited.
Each persona had its own goals.
Making money was not particularly important.
At worst, she could always cling to Eden.
But now, Conductor Vill-V, her entire body aching, suddenly felt the sting of poverty.
The organization had just taken in twenty-six people in need of rescue.
Eight of them required expensive medical equipment.
Although Expert had already worked overtime to build the necessary machines—and most materials had been procured through Harvard's laboratory channels—the subsequent costs would have to come from the organization itself.
If she kept siphoning laboratory funds, even someone as scatterbrained as Teacher Tesla would notice.
As a master of deception, Vill-V had already reached her limit by diverting ninety-five percent of the lab's budget under Tesla's nose.
"Should I go swindle Eden? No... that might interfere with key future events. Better to tell capitalists a story and trick them into funding me."
Eden had not yet risen to fame.
If Vill-V paid attention now, she could count as an early fan.
But as the future legendary singer known by all in this era, Eden would inevitably attract several Flame-Chasers around her.
For that reason, Vill-V dared not attend the fabled Eden concert.
She feared altering the storyline without meaning to.
Perhaps the carefree [Id] would not care.
But the rationally inclined [Conductor] would rather endure hardship to secure every possible advantage against Honkai.
While reviewing Kirsch's operation report, Conductor's gaze suddenly halted on a place name.
"Dusk Street? Mm. We performed a magic show there once. Our organization's first pot of gold was raised there too. But there was no trace of the Flame-Chasers back then."
"Still... that was years ago. And I'm no foggy-city detective. I'll have Ido investigate. There might be clues about the Flame-Chasers."
Turning the page, the report shifted to materials retrieved from B-3—specifically, documents transferred from S-1.
From the records, it was clear that beyond the experimental subjects at B-3, S-1 still retained several subjects that had not been relocated for various reasons.
Conductor sighed.
Rescuing B-3's subjects and judging its director would hopefully bring some comfort to the spirits of Maria and Isabella.
Though they had left behind not even a gravestone.
They might even have ended up as subjects in S-1.
This mission had been undertaken partly in hopes of rescuing them.
Yet neither B-3 nor S-1 records contained even a trace of them.
The electronic and paper records from S-1 were riddled with inconsistencies.
Conductor even suspected that from the very beginning, MOTH had never intended to preserve any verifiable documentation.
Yet the later research papers were logically structured and recorded tangible findings.
The Honkai-modified soldiers encountered at B-3 were created by grafting Honkai beast limbs onto partially mechanized human bodies, minimizing Honkai erosion as much as possible.
Even so, most soldiers would be completely consumed by Honkai within six months.
Their strength, however, was undeniable.
Honkai beast limbs were practically impervious to blades and bullets.
Submachine guns and grenades were little more than scratches against them.
Yet they possessed virtually no resistance to psychological weapons like the Chirp bombs.
As Conductor examined the biological experiment records, she was well aware that Mobius was one of MOTH's founders and had always held a leading position in research.
Mobius' academic papers were publicly purchasable in online archives.
Conductor attempted to compare them with the S-1 records to search for overlap.
Instead, she found that they appeared to be written by entirely different individuals.
There was no commonality whatsoever.
For a moment, she even wondered whether Mobius had committed academic fraud.
Of course, the more likely explanation was that S-1's documentation had not been personally written by Mobius.
With Mobius' intellect, she would not expose her true position within MOTH so easily.
Even if her reputation was already widely known inside the organization.
Vill-V had long been troubled by one question.
Who exactly was behind all this?
From from from—it must be some game developer's doing.
Of course, that was impossible.
On the grand scale, the ultimate enemy was undoubtedly Honkai.
But among humanity itself, there existed enormous evils as well.
As the Elysian Realm storyline had once implied, certain forces betrayed human nature and persecuted heroes.
They were a massive obstacle in the Previous Era's struggle against Honkai.
Vill-V had always intended to eradicate them completely before officially joining MOTH.
Yet even after toppling the deputy secretary of the European Council—a mid-to-high-level MOTH administrator—the darkness within MOTH had not thinned in the slightest.
At one point, Vill-V had nearly concluded that MOTH was a wholly evil organization.
But her knowledge of the Honkai narrative told her otherwise.
MOTH truly was humanity's final light in the Previous Era.
The contradiction left her at a loss.
After reviewing these reports, however, Conductor formed a hypothesis.
"I never thought I'd implement a Wallfacer Project in this world as well."
"Wallfacer, huh? That's my specialty. In my previous life, I was only a researcher. No chance to run. Didn't want to follow Elder Ding and offer up humanity to the droplet either. All I could do was watch the Natural Selection and spam 67. This time, it's finally my turn."
Moreover, the materials included extensive human experimentation data involving Honkai.
This provided new insight into Expert's Project Valkyrie and the Project Stigmata.
And there was one crucial piece of intelligence.
The corpse of the First Herrscher was being stored at S-1.
It seemed that [Id]'s impulsive decision had not been meaningless after all.