---o---
"I see. So Miracles can be linked... What do you think this is, a string of light bulbs?!"
After listening to the little sprite's explanation, Chen Li nodded thoughtfully.
[Then I Ask You] had worked its magic once again.
While sending private messages to Guinaifen and the others, reminding them to collect resurrection fragments, Chen Li had used the Miracle Card's newly replenished charge. This time, his question was: What Source Texts do you know?
After the usage count returned to zero, a little sprite began to appear by Chen Li's side, peeking over his shoulder. Because of the nature of his question, the sprite could now rearrange any Source Text it knew into sentences to show him. This meant that the sprite could now communicate with Chen Li outside of the system's remark section.
However, because it was still using Source Text for its "danmaku" commentary, and because Source Text carried an immense amount of information, the sprite could send frequent messages, but Chen Li couldn't watch them frequently. He would often forget what the sprite had just said.
[Ma Dongmei]
"Ma what mei?"
[Ma Dongmei]
"What dong mei?"
It was basically like that.
According to Miracle, the reason he had received two closely related commissions in a row was due to the "Miracle Link Effect." The second commission had appeared because of the first. If Chen Li were to try and contact the issuer of the second commission now, he would likely get no response, because the person was long dead.
Of course, a Miracle is never so inconvenient. For an additional five crystals, Chen Li could successfully establish a connection with Kallen, allowing him to travel to a point in time when she was still alive.
But the little sprite didn't recommend this, because doing so would mean he'd miss the show.
That was the main reason. Other, secondary reasons included, but were not limited to: ["Reviving Kallen after she is already dead is what constitutes a miracle. Your interference would cause you to lose out on even more Miracle Crystals"], and ["If you change Kallen's fate 500 years ago, it might alter Otto's fate, leading to him willingly dying of old age, leaving Schicksal without a successor, unable to resist the Honkai, and causing the world to be destroyed and the cycle to restart prematurely"], etc.
Chen Li had a strong feeling that the "secondary reasons" the sprite mentioned were actually the primary ones.
"So I'm basically profiting from the dead?"
[The living's money, returned in full; the dead's money, a 70/30 split.]
[Don't have a guilty conscience. If you lose money, you can always earn it back. If you lose your conscience, you can earn a lot more.]
"Don't send your comments so fast. How do you spell 'returned in full' again?" Chen Li scratched his head.
[Returned in Full (Source Text Version)]
"Oh."
Chen Li didn't particularly enjoy seeing the sprite send idioms, as it overloaded his brain. Writing an idiom in Source Text made the already information-dense language even more so. Compressing a long phrase like "to give back the original amount, to return exactly what was taken" into just four characters... it was normal to not be able to remember it.
Right now, Chen Li felt like a foreigner just starting to learn Chinese, terrified of idioms and classical allusions. These things were like hyperlinks: they looked short, but you only realized how much content they held after you clicked on them. Mending the pen after the sheep are lost, Lord Ye's love of dragons, the old man at the frontier loses his horse...
Of course, there were benefits. Learning these idioms allowed Chen Li to spend fewer crystals to inscribe more Source Text.
"Alright, then I'll choose to contact Otto... no, wait, that's not dramatic enough. Let me think, how can I give Otto a big surprise?" Chen Li began to ponder.
He admired Otto as a person, but the only good Otto was a dead Otto. Chen Li wanted to earn Otto's crystals, but he also wanted to watch Otto's drama. Was there a way to have both?
Yes, my friends, there is! There are a total of nine such methods!
That method was to neither teleport to the Current Era of Honkai Impact 3rd through the Herrscher of the Void nor through Otto, but to arrive there by using the "Challenge a Herrscher" option that appears after teleporting to the Honkai world.
However, choosing the First Herrscher of the Current Era wasn't appropriate, as the timeline was too early. It wasn't that Chen Li insisted on watching the world follow the original plot; he did it because as long as he didn't mess with the plot, the world wouldn't be destroyed. The possibility of him casually dropping a bag of trash during the First Herrscher era and causing the destruction of the entire Current Era was extremely small, but not zero. Not unless he fixed that timeline as a permanent one where he could make real-time corrections.
But Chen Li preferred the modern setting of the Current Era.
So, the target of his challenge would have to be the Second Herrscher. Because he could actually beat the Second Herrscher.
However, challenging the Second Herrscher didn't necessarily mean he would face Sirin. He would be challenging a random instance within the concept of the Second Herrscher. He might face Sirin, he might face the Queen, or he might face Kiana. The only thing he could choose was which Herrscher to challenge, not which era's Second Herrscher.
[How about tossing a few more crystals to test if your thoughts can determine the type of Miracle Commission you receive, Master?]
"Good point. I also want to know if getting resurrection-related commissions right after I wanted one was a coincidence or an inevitability."
Chen Li nodded and casually tossed out three more crystals. If this was a new feature of the Fame system, he needed to pay more attention to it.
But as it turned out, the fact that the last two commissions had matched his request was indeed a coincidence, because the next three had nothing to do with resurrection at all.
[Gaming]: I want to be able to play games freely even in Heaven.Client: Gabriel Reward: 15 Crystals Risk: Low
[Go Home]: Help Aqua return to Heaven.Client: Aqua Reward: 10 ~ 50 Crystals Risk: Low ~ Extremely High
[Something Exciting]: Add some excitement to my boring daily life! Let Haruhi Suzumiya find aliens, time travelers, or espers!Client: Haruhi Suzumiya Reward: 10 ~ 150 Crystals Risk: Low ~ Extremely High
"..."
These three commissions had nothing to do with resurrection, but all three clients seemed capable of resurrecting others.
Gabriel Tenma White. The protagonist of Gabriel DropOut. The top graduate of Angel School. She descended to the mortal realm for further training, but after coming into contact with human society, she gradually devolved into a shut-in. As an angel, Gabriel possessed divine power, and resurrection might just be one of her abilities.
Aqua, from KonoSuba: God's Blessing on this Wonderful World!. She is the goddess of water who guides young humans who have died, but was forcibly brought to another world by Kazuma Satou as his "cheat item." As the goddess of water, Aqua had resurrected Kazuma more than once in the story. Reviving people was like a game to her.
And Haruhi Suzumiya was an even bigger heavyweight. The female protagonist of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series. For some unknown reason, she possesses the divine power to change the world and make her "wishes come true," which has attracted the attention of aliens, time travelers, and espers. But she herself is completely unaware of it, which makes things quite complicated. In other words, if she believed that drinking milk could revive someone, then drinking milk would revive someone.
However, looking at the latter two clients made Chen Li's skin crawl. After all, their risk level could go up to "Extremely High."
Chen Li estimated that the risk in Aqua's commission was because if she returned to Heaven, then Kazuma, who went to the other world, might really never be able to defeat the Demon King. Theoretically, if Kazuma hadn't chosen Aqua, he could have speedrun the other world. But if Aqua took up his "cheat item" slot and then bailed, how was Kazuma supposed to play? Of course, if Aqua left, Kazuma might have ended up becoming rich and famous, but it wouldn't be a good thing for the world.
All one could say was... damn it, Aqua!
And Haruhi Suzumiya's was even simpler... if Chen Li just gave her one of the mutually assured destruction buttons that Sparkle had been carelessly tossing around and told her that pressing it would destroy the world, it would lead to some grand entertainment.
[You there?]
[You there?]
[You there?]
Chen Li typed out the same opening line three times.
For these three relatively "low-maintenance" clients, Chen Li didn't bother to abridge the introduction to the Curio Forger.
Unfortunately, the first to respond was not the one he was most looking forward to, Gabriel. In his eyes, Gabriel's commission was basically a freebie. All he had to do was send her a Friends Circle terminal. She could play whatever games she wanted, and it would give Kaguya a new gaming partner after she was done with Silver Wolf. An angel and an immortal from Hourai... who knows which one would outlast the other.
But the first to reply was Haruhi Suzumiya.
[Haruhi Suzumiya]: Curio Forger? The message that just came through said you can forge all sorts of new items, right? Forge one for me to see!
[Dad]: ...Before that, I'd like to ask how you managed to digest the information from The Guide to Forging Curios so quickly?
Chen Li was very curious about this.
[Haruhi Suzumiya]: Huh? Message? I don't know, I just understood it instantly. So enough talk, just forge a Curio and let me see! I'm bored out of my mind right now!
"???"
Should I say, as expected of Haruhi Suzumiya?
Chen Li didn't mind her self-centered way of talking; that was just her personality. Extremely competitive, with a "the world revolves around me" attitude. In any case, as long as he could earn crystals, it was fine.
With others, Chen Li could say, "If you don't want a Curio forged, there are plenty of others who do." But he couldn't do that with Haruhi, because he planned to leech off her.
Just as described earlier, Haruhi Suzumiya herself possessed the divine power to make wishes come true. So, as long as he could make her believe in the miraculous nature of him, the Curio Forger, he could casually toss her an apple, claim it was a golden apple that could grant any wish, and it might just count as a Curio and earn him Miracle Crystals.
The acquisition of Miracle Crystals wasn't based on how many crystals he spent on a Curio, but on how many miracles the recipient could create with it after he gave it to them.
After the Aeon of Equilibrium, Chen Li had found another target to fleece.
But first... he needed to prove that he could actually forge a Curio.
Chen Li's gaze swept around, and he finally chose to give her [Mom's Tablecloth] as a welcome gift.
---o---