After seeing this memory segment, Mei chose to skip it and enter the next one.
The memories that appeared next were of Vill-V preparing a finished weapon and seeking out Kevin for testing…
After that came events from the tragedy of the Binding. With enormous sacrifice, Vill-V helped Kevin defeat the Binding.
Hm?
After experiencing this memory.
Mei discovered with surprise and doubt that she herself had been affected by the Binding?
Or rather…
While she was viewing these memories, she too was being influenced by their contents.
Although she withdrew from this memory very promptly, it still took her a long while to recover from that unbearable pain.
She looked around.
Several mirrors were scattered throughout the hall, fragmenting the space and people's reflections into chaotic parts.
Pardofelis hid beside Mei: "This place… really makes me feel uncomfortable. Mei-nee, let's get out of here quickly."
Mei said: "I suddenly had an idea. If Vill-V were to appear here, would these mirror surfaces reflect her different personalities?"
Pardofelis jumped in fright: "Mei-nee, don't make jokes like that right now. What if Vill-V-nee suddenly pops out from one of the mirrors and scares me… It feels like something she would totally do!"
Mei said: "I'm not joking. Since Vill-V's different personalities are the result of her slicing up her own mind…"
"Then in this fictional space of consciousness and memory, how exactly would these different personalities exist? Would they remain separate, or fully merge into one?"
Pardofelis said: "Umm… This sounds super complicated. I don't understand it at all. Let's just wait until we get out and have Vill-V-nee explain it herself."
Her gaze was suddenly drawn to a particular mirror: "Mei-nee, look—doesn't that mirror have a lock on it?"
Mei followed her line of sight: "Indeed… But isn't this space made entirely of memories? Why would there be a lock? Could Vill-V be hiding some secret she doesn't want anyone else to see?"
Pardofelis: "Why wonder? Just open it and find out. This kind of thing is my specialty. Mei-nee, wait just a sec."
She excitedly approached.
From who-knows-where, she produced a set of tools and began working on it.
However, as time passed, the lock remained completely unmoved. A troubled expression gradually appeared on her face.
Mei said: "Pardo, let's set this lock aside for now. We'll go investigate the other memories."
Pardofelis was unwilling to give up: "J-just wait a little longer. I promise, I'll have it open soon."
Mei said: "If you're really curious about what's locked inside, we can just ask Vill-V directly when we get back."
Pardofelis outright refused: "No way. With Vill-V-nee's personality, she might not tell the truth. This is the one thing I'm good at—if I can't even handle something small like this, how can I say I'm helping you? Don't worry, I can definitely open it."
"Mei-nee, why don't you go check the other memories first? The moment I get this lock open, I'll come find you right away."
Mei understood the current situation.
Vill-V's memories were far too chaotic; finding the specific ones from the night Kevin and Elysia disappeared was extremely difficult.
She could only hurry to check the other memories.
But as the subsequent memories appeared, she began to feel genuine terror…
Vill-V had segregated her own malice into a prison, and whenever a personality developed malice, she would cut it off and add it in—accumulating endlessly like this.
When Elysia recommended her to join Fire Moth, Vill-V even stated that as early as four or five years old, she had hated herself and attempted to split off a new personality…
Mei instantly had a guess: "Vill-V… Could the real you…"
Before the guess could leave her mouth.
"You… you?! Ah…"
Pardofelis's sudden, agonized scream rang out.
Mei hurriedly ran toward where Pardofelis was, but ahead of her appeared several mutated monsters—exactly the same as the ones she and Vill-V had tracked earlier!
No time for much thought.
Under thunderous lightning, the monsters were completely annihilated.
She rushed at top speed onto the platform and saw Pardofelis collapsed on the ground.
"Pardo!"
She hurried over and lifted Pardofelis into her arms.
"Mei…"
"…"
The pain wracking her body made it nearly impossible for Pardofelis to speak a complete sentence.
"Don't rush…" Mei quickly scanned Pardofelis's body. Nearly half of it was already covered in a faint, hazy shroud, presenting a state close to complete disorder.
"…It's okay."
Yet these words—meant to tell Pardo not to panic—only gripped the other's heart like a vise.
She jerked her body upward sharply, only to curl back in again from the excruciating pain.
"No… no…"
"Mei… Mei-nee… We have to get out of here fast!"
Mei followed her terrified gaze to the side. The once-sealed mirror had been opened with skillful technique.
But it reflected no image of the two of them—only a single ominous, shadowy mass.
"That inside… is… is…"
"It's the memory from when Boss Kevin disappeared…!"
"The one who killed Boss Kevin… was… was…"
"…"
Pardofelis's body flickered continuously. Every word was spoken with immense difficulty and pain, yet she still wanted to tell Mei the truth in her final moments.
"I already understand, Pardo. You don't need to keep talking." Mei hurriedly stopped her, speaking gently at the same time: "…Thank you."
"…Ugh… ah…"
"…Cough… heh… hehe… This is what I'm best at, after all…"
Pardofelis forced a smile: "So… let's… let's get out of here quick… okay?"
"Mei-nee…"
Mei nodded softly: "…Mm.
"Don't worry. If any danger comes, leave it to me to handle.
"Just like before… alright?"
Pardofelis's body grew more and more illusory: "Okay… okay… ah…"
"Ahh, Mei… Mei-nee… Maybe don't say things like that…"
"People always say… say this is… a… a self-fulfilling… what was it called?"
"It's like I'm really about to die… Don't scare me like that, how could that happen…"
"I've always… been really lucky…"
"Mei-nee…"
"I…"
"I… don't want to die…"
The weight in her arms vanished.
It disappeared so quickly, so completely.
For a moment, Mei didn't know how to return her posture to normal.
"…Ah."
It took a long while before she slowly began to move her arms, waving them through the air, trying to grasp something.
But not even a wisp of cold mist could be touched.
Where Pardofelis had been, only a single cold coin remained.
Mei picked up the coin…
Throughout the entire TV screen came the sound of anguished, sorrowful sobbing…
At this moment.
Every viewer was completely stunned.
But immediately afterward, the entire chat exploded.
"WTF WTF WTF!!! Pardo, why knife Pardo?! That damn director is sick in the head."
"She's just a powerless cute little thief cat, why won't they even spare her."
"I seriously!!! Fuck, I just started liking Pardo and you knife her like this?"
"AAAAAAAHHHH!! Pardo doesn't want to die, she's actually terrified of dying, why would you do this!"
"I can't take it anymore. Every time I like a character they knife her—my Ellie, my Pardo."
"Dog director, you're fucking inhuman, you piece of shit."
"My heart is shattered. This scene is seriously suffocating, Pardo…"
"This is straight-up genocidal cruelty. Is this even something a human could write? Only someone deranged would script this, right?"
"Heartache!!! It hurts so much, I really can't handle it."
"Dog director, today it's either you die or I die—we're settling this right now!"
Fire Moth rest area.
Kiana watched with unbearable heartache: "Pardo… wuwuwu… Pardo…"
Himeko let out a long sigh: "That damn director really hasn't changed at all. Such a good Pardo—how could you bring yourself to do it?"
Theresa said: "I can't even imagine how devastated Mei must feel, watching Pardo die in her arms…"
Bronya said: "Just to make Mei suffer, he kills off Pardo like that? He's clearly trying to make everyone watching suffer."
She glared fiercely at Hessian.
No choice—they wanted to hit him, but their own plot wasn't finished yet, and they were afraid he'd mess with the rest if provoked.
Pardofelis watched the scene in silence.
Because she knew very well… this was only the beginning.
The TV drama continued.
Mei sobbed sorrowfully…
If she had comrades by her side at this moment, perhaps they would gently pat her back—but say nothing.
The only thing that could soothe such an experience… was time. Words were useless.
—Yet at this precise moment, what she lacked most was precisely time.
"So… it was you…"
She didn't need to name the other person.
In the final instant before Pardofelis vanished, her eyes—overflowing with fear—had looked past Mei's shoulder, reflecting the figure behind her.
"Mm, it was me."
The betrayer Vill-V had already stepped forward: "You've seen all those memories. What excuse could I possibly make, right?"
Mei questioned furiously, barely containing her rage: "…Why Pardo?!"
Vill-V said: "Oh, that wasn't something I could control. You could call it… an accident? After all, my current target is just you."
"…"
Accident…
Those words only made Mei's anger harder to suppress.
But she had to uncover more clues.
She stared at the other: "Those memories… no matter what they contained, the people involved were either putting themselves in danger and feeling real pain, or… they were facing imprisonment."
"From the moment I began investigating… you were already using these memories to erode my strength, weren't you?"
"Because the process was so gradual—if it weren't…"
"…"
"If it weren't for Pardo, I might never have noticed…"
Vill-V said coldly: "Yes… So, screaming during a performance is really quite rude, isn't it?"
"Otherwise, watching you slowly die from your own curiosity would have been pretty entertaining."
"By the way, when did you start suspecting me?"
"Let me guess—it was probably never trust to begin with, right?"
"Don't mind it. I'm used to it. But look—even to reach the deepest part, you still had to accept my help."
Mei clenched her fists: "Now it seems that was only the beginning… right?"
Vill-V sneered: "Wrong!"
"Exchanging everything… to me, that wasn't the beginning… it was merely… groundwork."
"Hahahaha… Hahahahahaha!"
The piercing mocking laughter poured from Vill-V's mouth.
"The real performance is only now raising its curtain. How should I introduce myself to you?"
"Long time no see?"
"Or nice to meet you?"
She was the utterly malevolent Vill-V.
"What were you thinking the first time you saw me?"
"This person seems to always be lying—right?"
"So… let me ask you this. If a liar—no, a swindler—when she stops hiding her lies at all… can that be called honesty?"
"Oh! Right… You must be very confused now. Who is this person? Why is she spouting nonsense in a pitch-black place like this?"
"Ahh, sorry… Because if there weren't any voices here, it would definitely feel frightening, wouldn't it?"
"Just like… how I felt when I was first thrown in here."
"That's right—this place… is my field of vision, my world."
"Because of a ridiculous reason, I was forged into a cage for malice. From then on, for a full fifty thousand years, that darkness was the only thing in my world."
"Fifty thousand years… Can you comprehend how long that is?"
"I could hear voices from the outside, hear myself speaking… but everything was unreachable."
"In their world, time is divided into day and night by celestial bodies."
"In my world, time is only divided into endless hatred."
"Every day I longed… longed for new malice to be exiled here, to where I was."
"Someday, there would be no room left. The carefully concealed darkness would burst forth all at once, leading us all to destruction—and at the same time… granting me release."
"But the Elysian Realm operates differently from reality—it's a stagnant pool. The birth of malice requires soil and watering. So I'm afraid my sentence will never end."
"But… a person who feels despair cannot become evil."
"I am Vill-V. Even fifty thousand years of darkness couldn't do anything to me… I was waiting for the right moment, because it would always come."
"So when a Herrscher visited the Elysian Realm, do you know what I thought?"
"Unfortunately… she wasn't an Agent of Honkai. She was even overly rule-abiding—disappointing. She left without ever drawing Vill-V's attention."
"But soon, she came back. And this time…"
"She brought something else."
"For now, let's call it that. To the Elysian Realm, it would become a terrifying disaster—and I… have always been happy to fan the flames."
"Of course, Vill-V noticed its existence immediately. But because of a genius's arrogance… she mistook it for something else—the leftover fallout from that old experiment."
"She soon paid the price for her mistake. The other party easily devoured her, about to seize everything from her…"
"And it was at that moment she made her second mistake."
"She thought of a backup plan—namely… me. Yes, just like when she destroyed one of her own thought domains to escape Discipline…"
"I was treated as yet another sacrifice, to bear all its violations against her."
"For the first time in fifty thousand years, I was released—only to immediately face execution."
"For the first time in fifty thousand years, I got to see the world as it should be—the place of my birth. My reunion with it came hand in hand with death."
"But I felt no resentment."
"No matter what, how wonderful it was! In personally pushing me toward death, she… became evil instead."
"So what decision would I make?"
"Besides betrayal, could you give a better answer?"
"…Look at your expression—you don't quite believe me, do you? Let me guess… You think it had no reason to spare me?"
"Since it could easily crush Vill-V from the start, what meaning was there in having an extra helper like me?"
"The answer is… at the very beginning, of course there wasn't."
"I think it spared me only because what we desired was completely the same."
"But afterward, that was no longer the case."
"Because in this unchanging Realm, there still exists one single variable, doesn't there?"