While keeping Sa under control, the original plans were also progressing in an orderly fashion.
Among them, naturally, was the Theresa Synthesis Plan that had been set from the very beginning.
At Francis's estate, seated at a table beneath the grapevines, Lucius looked at Kallen before him and couldn't help falling into deep thought.
Because right now the system interface displaying Kallen's information seemed to have run into a small problem. The screen showed:
[Storyline Character: Theresa?@?＃?/ Kallen?￥?@?＆]
Clearly, the system had become confused about which character the little white dumpling in front of him was supposed to belong to.
But for Lucius, who had long since come to know this dim-witted system and all its glitchy tendencies, this was entirely unremarkable — and he had no intention of dealing with the error message.
After all, the series of check-in tasks related to Theresa had already been unlocked, which meant the error wasn't affecting the system's actual operation. As long as it could still run, there was no point fussing over it.
And compared to the system's minor error, what truly surprised him was actually Kallen herself.
Because the figure standing before him was no longer the little white dumpling of about ten years old from before — it was a significantly larger white dumpling who had taken on the full build of a young woman!
Even Kallen herself seemed fascinated by this, currently holding up a mirror and studying her own appearance with great curiosity, murmuring to herself: "So you can actually grow up after an artificial Herrscher transformation? Who knew."
Yes — the reason little Kallen had become big Kallen was because Lucius had wanted to test the power of her artificial Herrscher descent.
A few days prior, Kallen had climbed onto Mobius's operating table and undergone the fusion surgery to integrate the Vishnu Super Mutation Factor.
For most people, fusion surgery with a Super Mutation Factor was not quite "certain death" — but it was close enough to "nine deaths, one survival" that survival came down entirely to whether your luck held.
But for Kallen, who simultaneously carried the power of the Binding Authority and the strength of a pseudo-deity, undergoing Super Mutation Factor fusion surgery was essentially just taking a nap on Mobius's operating table. The most dangerous part of the whole affair was actually Mobius herself, who very much wanted to keep Kallen behind for further research.
And so, after a surgery that went off without a single hitch, Kallen became the very first Fusion Warrior of this era.
The factor she fused with was naturally the Super Mutation Factor of Vishnu — an Emperor-class Honkai Beast. Since Vishnu had not yet appeared in this era, Lucius had gritted his teeth and spent 2,000 crystals ordering it from the system shop.
Though Vishnu was only an Emperor-class Honkai Beast, it possessed one extraordinarily terrifying trait: the ability to devour other Honkai Beasts to strengthen itself.
In theory, given enough powerful prey to consume, it even had the potential to evolve to the Judgment-class, or perhaps even to the Apocalypse-class.
For Kallen, however, the greatest benefit of becoming a Fusion Warrior wasn't the Fusion Warrior abilities themselves — what she had her eye on was simply the vastly enhanced physical body that came with it.
Using the Binding Authority through an ordinary human body was essentially treating her as a disposable Divine Key. But with the Fusion Warrior's physique supporting her, she could maintain the Binding Authority for far longer, and could even draw on the powers of a pseudo-deity to a meaningful degree.
Shortly after, Lucius watched as a faint glow emanated from Kallen's body and her size began rapidly shrinking — in no time at all, the large white dumpling had reverted back to a small white dumpling.
Once her size had returned to normal, Kallen held up the mirror for another look and couldn't help remarking: "The duration of the artificial descent is still too short. But with the Vishnu Super Mutation Factor stably integrated, I should be able to sustain the Binding Domain for much longer now."
She then looked over at Lucius — and found him pulling out a notebook and a pen, which he slid across the table toward her.
"???" Kallen tilted her head to one side. "Lucius, what's this for?"
"A calculus problem. Try it and see — has your problem-solving speed improved at all?"
Kallen had no idea what Lucius was up to this time, but she took the notebook and pen he offered and grumbled: "I've never had any particular talent for mathematics."
"Just give it a try!"
"You're impossible." Though a little exasperated, Kallen still applied herself seriously to the problem Lucius had given her.
And the moment her pen touched paper, she realized something was different. Her mind felt extraordinarily clear — if her brain before had been like a carriage stuck trudging through mud, right now it was a train blazing down iron rails.
Kallen's pen-holding hand moved across the paper so rapidly it almost left afterimages. In mere tens of seconds, she had written out a long, meticulous verification process across the notebook page and arrived at her answer.
"This… what is going on?" Kallen stared at the neat rows of numbers on the page, thoroughly bewildered.
"How could an Archbishop handle her duties properly with insufficient intelligence?"
Seeing Kallen's intellect make such a dramatic leap forward, Lucius knew his earlier preparations had been exactly right.
In synthesizing Theresa, he needed to equip Kallen with the Stigmata that belonged to Theresa.
Theresa's powers were also quite formidable — many of her variants came with S-rank ratings right from the start.
Fortunately, within the broad category, there were still some Theresa variants whose ratings fell below A-rank.
"I arranged a 'Big Brain Theresa' Stigmata for you. It should give your intelligence a massive boost."
Yes — what Lucius had actually loaded onto Kallen was the Stigmata of Theresa: Stargazer. After all, a smarter Archbishop would be far better equipped to serve as a… workhorse. A partner in saving the world, that is!
Upon hearing this, Kallen froze for a moment.
And then — this Archbishop who had steered Schicksal for five hundred years, who had never once shed tears even in the face of death after death — felt tears welling up in her eyes right now.
"Does this mean… I can finally break free from the Kaslana family's cursed tradition of questionable intelligence?"
"Lucius… sob… thank you. I've decided to hold off on punching you. For now." (sniffling)
But watching Kallen suddenly burst into tears like this, Lucius felt a flicker of suspicion. For some reason he couldn't quite pin down, he had the distinct feeling that Kallen's intelligence had somehow just taken a step backward...
He quickly tossed that thought aside.
Impossible. With the Stargazer Stigmata backing her up, Kallen's intellect would be skyrocketing by any reasonable measure, right?
"Archbishop — once Schicksal takes over the world, all the Archbishop's duties will be in your hands."
The canonical Archbishop was Otto — but his current mental development was still too immature to handle the responsibilities of that office.
So after much deliberation, it still had to be Kallen — the woman who had occupied the Archbishop's seat for five hundred years. The plan was for Otto to serve as a figurehead, while Kallen — or rather, Theresa — would act as Schicksal's shadow ruler, handling all actual affairs from behind the scenes.
Hearing Lucius's words, Kallen stopped sniffling. She replied in a relaxed, breezy tone: "Archbishop's duties? Easy! Back when I was Archbishop, I had the Void Archives and my teacher to help — there wasn't actually that much to deal with."
Looking at her confident expression, Lucius — for the sake of preventing her from fleeing the moment she found out the truth — decided not to tell her that here, there was no Void Archives and no teacher. Meaning every single task would fall entirely on her own shoulders.
At the thought of this, Lucius felt an uncommon wave of sympathy for her. Kallen, lost in her current joy, didn't notice it at all.
"Archbishop — now is not the time to rest. The moment to save the world has arrived."
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