The fleet that had deployed in battle formation, bearing down on Belobog—at its head was the integrated-conglomerate-class starship, the Amber Guardian.
The instant the core cabin's satellite captured the image of the witch-girl in the black dress wearing a pointed magic hat, alongside the black-dressed puppet, the entire cabin fell into a brief silence.
"She's really pretty!"
"Is she the magical girl from the intel—the one who plundered the IPC's starships and unlawfully detained the employees and the armed escort?"
"Why do I feel like she looks so familiar?"
"Are you an idiot? It's a time like this and you're still ogling a beauty?! The point is that puppet girl!"
"Hiss——! Am I seeing things? Or has all the overtime given me hallucinations?"
"It's Madam Herta, the 83rd seat of the Genius Society!"
"Madam Herta? The Madam Herta whom even the IPC's top brass have to book an appointment months in advance just for a chance to meet once?!"
"This is insane! Absolutely insane!"
"This is impossible—could someone be impersonating her?"
"Wait! The intel said a super-hacker breached the starship's defense system—could that have been Madam Herta? A Genius made her move—no wonder... Oh my god, she's looking this way!"
At a certain instant, the moment the first question was raised, the entire cabin seemed to erupt!
The employees whispered to one another, murmuring and gossiping every which way, and in a flash the cabin broke into an uproar.
The same scene was playing out inside every warship that was observing Goethe Manor via satellite.
The employees had merely wanted to see what the audacious Nameless and leader of the civilization who dared provoke the IPC looked like—never expecting to catch sight of Madam Herta herself.
Black dress, purple eyes, tea-brown hair, beret—any IPC employee who failed to recognize this cute and proud-looking girl could file their resignation on the spot.
"How could she be here?"
The clamor of his subordinates carried over, yet Oswaldo had no mind to pay it any heed.
Unlike the vast majority of employees, who were staring at the puppet, his gaze was fixed firmly on the tea-brown-haired beauty holding a staff and wearing the pointed witch's hat.
First of all, this woman absolutely could not be the magical girl who had frozen the starships, the one Bryce had described.
Because if she had only shown the intent, with half a sentence Bryce would have bundled up those few starships—employees included—and handed them all over to her.
"To think her main body has come in person."
Oswaldo's gaze was extraordinarily grave, his brows tightly knit, unable to conceal his astonishment:
Just as Herta had said, those throughout the Galaxy Universe who had the honor of an audience with her main body, while perhaps not countable on one's fingers, were exceedingly few.
The IPC employees only knew The Herta, but as the head of the Market Development Department, Oswaldo had had the privilege of beholding her main body during a high-level audience with Madam Herta.
Oswaldo's gaze shifted to the gray-haired youth conversing with Madam Herta's main body; from the manner of their chatting, the two were clearly well acquainted.
There was no doubt—Madam Herta had been summoned here by the other party.
"Bryce, that idiot—what kind of background check did he even do?"
Oswaldo couldn't help cursing.
No wonder Caelus was so brazenly unafraid—it turned out he had Madam Herta backing him up!
That Gray-hair Nameless must have something seriously wrong with his head—you can shake loose Herta's main body, so couldn't you have had her put in a word with the IPC earlier?
The IPC would surely give Madam Herta face—nobody would offend a Genius over the resources of a single planet, a thick thigh the IPC had gone to great lengths to latch onto.
And yet that Gray-hair insisted on waiting until the goddamn enforcement fleet had pulled right up to the doorstep before calling someone in—f*ck!
Oswaldo muttered a string of curses, his ugly expression shifting back and forth, by turns gloomy and bright:
"Does that brat still want to make trouble?"
Even given the present situation, if Madam Herta stepped forward and declared that this planet was under her protection, Oswaldo would have to swallow his frustration and turn the fleet back around.
After all, Caelus had not yet caused the IPC any substantial losses.
As for those few starships, they amounted to nothing at all—he'd just treat them as a little gift to Madam Herta.
Oswaldo's leading the fleet on this personal expedition was, in essence, the IPC's thunderous response to having its authority trampled—any existence that dared challenge the order of capital had to have its reverence re-inscribed by the radiance of the star-destroyer cannon.
But the moment that petite figure appeared on the bridge's monitoring screen, the situation became entirely different; in front of Madam Herta, the verb 'to provoke' needed to be redefined.
However, this privilege had a settlement boundary; if that reckless greenhorn named Caelus failed to read the situation and dared keep counter-collecting along that unreasonable debt contract, then even Madam Herta's face would be of no use.
The IPC and Herta had a cooperative relationship of deeply intertwined interests yet equal power.
Oswaldo did not believe she would go to the mat with the IPC over a single Nameless.
So as long as Caelus obstinately persisted in his own way, Oswaldo could seize the opportunity to teach him a lesson.
Then he'd smooth things over with Madam Herta and simply acquire Jarilo-VI's Geomarrow ore through normal means.
Just as Oswaldo was deliberating at light-speed in his mind and formulating his next course of action, a change in the satellite-monitoring feed interrupted his thoughts.
"Has the satellite been hacked?"
Seeing the scene of Madam Herta, wearing the golden pearl earring, fusing with another girl, Oswaldo's first reaction was that the satellite had been hacked and was broadcasting a fake, synthesized image.
"Pull up the raw data of that footage at once."
"Boss, the data shows no anomalies."
"Could it be one of Herta's new projects? Notify the fleet to stand by; until we get a clear picture of the situation, do not activate the gravitational anchors for now..."
Oswaldo gnashed his teeth.
A Genius—even a Genius had to rely on the shelter of Preservation's wall!
"One day..."
His words broke off abruptly; Oswaldo's pupils stirred slightly—on the monitoring screen, after that group stepped onto the strange platform the fused girl had constructed, they decomposed like a data stream into hundreds of millions of light-particles and vanished in the blink of an eye.
"Scan the entire planet! Now!"
"Mobilizing all satellite resources... Wait!"
The technical officer's voice suddenly leapt an octave: "They—they're right——"
So fast?
Oswaldo's brow twitched, and he quickly understood the reason.
Without any need for satellite monitoring, he could now see with his naked eye the girl fused from Madam Herta, as well as the gray-haired and pink-haired Nameless.
Oswaldo pondered for two seconds, and just as he was about to first negotiate with that unknown girl——
In the next second, a formless, intangible pressure crushed down upon the firmament within a single breath, like morning dew running into a storm-tsunami spanning heaven and earth.
In that instant, not only Oswaldo but all the IPC personnel across the entire fleet had their throats seized by that abyss-deep, sea-vast oppressive force; their bodies stiffened, and their pupils, reflecting the direction of the girl, contracted to pinpoints.
Everyone instinctively raised their heads, gazing toward the source that snapped the strings of their nerves—That was! That was!——
...
Let us rewind time by one minute.
Bronita moved everyone to the front of the IPC fleet.
"Is this teleportation? Or spatial displacement?"
Stelle crouched at the edge of the circular platform, straining to test whether she could pry a piece off—no luck—then opened her mouth and bit down on it; it wouldn't give either, so she stood back up and asked.
"Just modifying reality coordinates, that's all. Aether Editing really is a handy ability—no wonder that little Wolf-Duck is so arrogant."
Smiling, Bronita played with her exquisite strands of hair, and while at it manually added to herself the sparkly, glittering bling-bling effects that anime use to accentuate a character's temperament and beauty.
Fine motes of starlight bloomed out of thin air, swirling and dancing along with her movements, weaving a dreamlike halo around her.
Most astonishing of all, these lights seemed alive, knowing how to match her temperament—when she was haughty they turned into cold silver radiance, and when she was playful they became leaping, colorful glimmers.
"Mirror."
"Huh?"
Mirror No. 4's surface tilted its body, clearly not expecting to be suddenly called upon.
"From now on, you are to record my state every single moment, every single second."
Bronita tapped the mirror's frame lightly with her fingertip, her tone carrying an unquestionable arrogance:
"Until the moment I come apart."
Unlike the gentleness with which she spoke to Star Rail, at this moment her voice was steeped in Herta-style haughtiness and that casual 'I say it, so you do it' air.
"Uh, this... b-but, Madam..."
Mirror No. 4 flickered, stammering.
Although the lady before it had been formed by Madam Herta fusing with someone else, she had personally declared that she was not Herta.
As Madam Herta's exclusive assistant, should it or should it not obey the orders of this unfamiliar existence?
This confusion lingered in its processor for only 0.07 seconds; when a familiar low-level access key surged like a tide into its core system, all hesitation instantly transformed into absolute submission.
"Esteemed, great Madam Bronita, your humble Mirror No. 4 has awaited you for a long while, ever ready to offer you its loyal service."
"Hoh~"
Such an about-face in attitude made Caelus burst out laughing:
"Mirror, I suggest you rename yourself Adros."
"Does this name carry any special meaning?"
Considering Madam Bronita's just-now wall-slam-and-kiss move, Mirror No. 4 was quite polite to Caelus.
"It's also the name of a mirror—one that is extremely loyal to its master."
A simp-mirror for the lord of besties—simp to the very end, and you'll have it all!
"Did you hear that? From now on you'll be called Adrose."
Bronita knew Caelus was joking with his suggestion, but she figured this new name wasn't bad either, so offhandedly she used her creator privileges to change the host's name.
Because Mirror No. 4's AI leaned feminine, it was called Adrose.
"Yes."
Adrose grew excited—of all its siblings, it alone had been granted a name by Herta... er, Madam Bronita; once it got back, it could really show off!
"Madam Bronita, I have one more question—your current state partially exceeds the observable threshold."
The mirror's surface distorted for an instant: "The existing protocols cannot fully record your energy signature, and none of the scanning matrices can lock onto a stable recording baseline."
"Oh, I forgot about that."
Bronita snapped her fingers.
Fluorescent-blue light-particles, following a mathematical rhythm, wove layer upon layer of topological structures in the air, geometry folding in on itself, completing within a single second the phase transition from abstract mathematics to physical matter.
A brand-new mirror appeared.
"Dock with it."
"Huh?"
Adrose seemed to crash for an instant, the faint trembling along its edges plainly visible.
"Huh? This… th-this is!"
Its somewhat smarmy voice abruptly rose higher, carrying an unprecedented shrillness and tremor.
"What are you fussing about? So what if I make a mirror?"
Bronita answered nonchalantly.
"?"
A question mark appeared across the mirror's surface.
It did indeed have several siblings, all assistants created by Madam Herta—but even Madam Herta needed all sorts of instruments in the laboratory!
What the hell are you hand-crafting from scratch?!
The scene before it utterly exceeded its scope of comprehension—with a mere casual wave of her hand, Bronita had just added it another sibling?!
"This power really does suit me."
Bronita examined her dainty hand narcissistically: "In the name of Reason, it encompasses every possibility of the imaginary, turning that which does not exist into reality."
Within those silver-purple eyes, it seemed thousands upon thousands of formulas interwove, data flowing through.
A question: how terrifying would it be for a Genius to possess the Herrscher of Reason's Authority?
BOOM!!!
A thing thunderous yet as light and weightless as falling snow filled all directions, as if a storm existing in another world were sweeping through, a formless, colorless tsunami surging up right here.
——By a single gaze.
Topaz's face went deathly pale; she felt the exact same pressure as Oswaldo, and gazed up at the starry sky in disbelief.
It was a mechanical head; in its center, what appeared to be an eye glowing with red light was in fact an ear, and the surface of the head was covered with intricate circuits and gears.
"[Erudition]——Nous!"
Topaz couldn't help murmuring aloud.
"Yo~ Machine-head, should I say long time no see, or nice to meet you for the first time?"
Bronita swept her hair back behind her ear, her silver-purple eyes fixed on [Erudition], her gaze brimming with the fervor of a research scholar beholding knowledge.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉