"Vill-V, which Vill-V are you?"
Hua looked at Vill-V suspiciously as she asked.
"Which one?" Vill-V planted her hands on her hips and boasted, "Of course I'm the wisest, strongest, most perfect, and most popular Magician~"
"All right, all right, Hua. I know you don't trust that suspicious ball of light, but the enemy is still secretly observing us, so there are some things I can't explain to you openly.
"If you really want to know, I can tell you..."
"No need." Hua waved her hand, indicating that she understood the situation.
Hua knew she wasn't particularly clever. Since Vill-V had already put it that way, she wasn't so tactless that she would keep pressing.
Hua turned around and stepped into the curtain of light with some unease.
Seeing that Hua had indeed entered the light, "Vill-V" left behind a meaningful smile before disappearing from where she stood.
...
"According to plan, we've been dragged into the enemy's consciousness space."
Vill-V had naturally encountered this kind of locked-room situation too, but her circumstances were much better, because five additional people were beside her—
Faced with the sudden situation, Conductor remained perfectly calm. After all, this had been her plan from the beginning.
Conductor kicked the floor. "We can feel pain. Strictly speaking, we're currently in the gap between consciousness and reality... Magician, wake Id up."
"Id, wake up!" Magician shouted directly into Id's ear through a megaphone.
Id covered the ear that had nearly gone deaf from the noise and said gloomily, "Conductor, aren't I already awake?"
"No, you're not." Conductor shook her head and pointed at herself. "If you were awake, would we be standing here chatting with you?"
A consciousness space was still only a consciousness space, after all. Vill-V's so-called consciousness space was an imaginary environment constructed through communication between her personalities. In reality, everything was still nothing more than images Vill-V imagined inside her mind.
It was like imagining a ship in one's head. A phantom image of a ship could appear in the mind, but visually speaking, there was still nothing actually in front of one's eyes.
Because information could be exchanged among multiple personalities, Vill-V could make the images inside her mind feel almost like reality, because she could not only perceive the scenes she imagined herself, but also the scenes imagined by the other personalities.
This was also the prototype of the Elysian Realm.
"Uh, I thought my delusion powers had gotten stronger." Id poked her fingertips together aggrievedly.
Conductor tapped Id's wooden little head. "Where did this chuuni nonsense come from? If you want to truly see us with your own eyes, you'd at least need assistance from some special device—like the Consciousness Collector Elysian Realm Vill-V gave Mei. You can't project personalities onto your retina through imagination alone."
"All right. Before we move on to the next step, I'll repeat our plan one more time. First, your highest priority is rescuing Seele, right? Even above your own life."
Id nodded. "Mm, that's right. We'll rescue Seele first, and then she'll definitely save me. With the True Herrscher of Death's abilities, there's no way I can really die, right?"
It wasn't that Id wasn't afraid of death, but the thought that Seele possessed the ability to revive her greatly reduced her worries.
As long as they could save Seele, then have her cast a mass resurrection afterward, wouldn't that be a wonderfully happy ending?
From then on, no matter what she did, she'd have a healer following behind her who could cast resurrection. She'd basically be invincible.
Conductor rejected that idea immediately. "I don't think the Herrscher of Death would do such a thing. Erasing us from the worldline would be more likely."
Id asked in confusion, "But Conductor, look. Seele was still pretty normal when she communicated with us before, wasn't she?"
Pure Evil laughed and cursed, "You call a Seele frozen in a quantum eigenstate normal? Don't be so naive, Id. Don't you understand Herrschers by now? Seele is already gone. Right now, she's nothing but the pure Herrscher of Death!"
The air fell silent, aside from the noisy Magician off to the side.
Although Id had long since prepared herself mentally and had already begun to realize the truth after seeing Seele again, she still couldn't accept this cruel fact.
Yes, Seele was already the Herrscher of Death. Even though she could still speak and communicate exactly as before, even calling her Teacher Vill-V, she had undeniably become a Herrscher controlled by Honkai, not a Herrscher of Humanity who had broken free of Honkai's control.
Herrschers of Humanity were special, but Seele wasn't special, just like Akane when she became the Third Herrscher.
She had no ability to escape Honkai's control.
Even if she fled into the Sea of Quanta, into Imaginary Space, or onto another worldline, Honkai could still manipulate her as easily as a puppet on strings.
This was Honkai. This was what Herrschers were. This was the bright, wholesome, positive foundational truth of the Honkai world.
Id asked seriously, "If that's the case, then helping Seele recover her clarity and reason and turn into a Herrscher of Humanity like us should still be much easier than with other Herrschers, right?"
After all, Seele had still been capable of communicating normally with Vill-V before.
"Hah? We're special! Where exactly are you planning to find another Herrscher of Humanity to help Seele exploit a bug? And your own situation wasn't just some bug exploit either..."
Pure Evil's words were cut off halfway when Conductor muted her.
Pure Evil genuinely had no ability whatsoever to read the atmosphere. Or rather, she simply didn't care about it. She was a destroyer of conversations.
She didn't even care if she exposed things Conductor hadn't yet told Id.
If the atmosphere became awkward, she would probably be even happier.
Even after being muted, Pure Evil could still type in the Vill-V Chat Channel!
"Stop being stupid. Human civilization is about to be destroyed, and you still want to save her? What about Pardo, Su, Hua, and the others? We're still sitting in the palm of the Herrscher of Death right now!"
"Imagine a protagonist with a save-file cheat, in a world where she can infinitely improve herself, turning into the villain who destroys the world."
"And you don't have any cheats at all. Human civilization keeps throwing new disasters at you, and aliens are watching you from overhead."
"We can't win. We seriously can't."
"Even Kars, the Ultimate Lifeform, would run into space overnight and stop thinking after hearing this."
"When people are killed, they die! We finally became Herrschers and obtained eternal life. Dying now would be way too much of a loss."
Pure Evil seemed extremely dissatisfied with Id's spirit of self-sacrifice.
But Pure Evil's chat box was quickly drowned beneath all kinds of reaction images from Occultist.
Occultist: Happy family.jpg
Occultist: Don't be afraid.jpg
The Vill-V Chat Channel was never short on Occultist's reaction images. Compared to expressing her thoughts through words, Occultist felt reaction images were much more concise and straightforward.
"Mm, of course we're going to save Seele," Conductor said.
Pure Evil: "Hey, Occultist, shut up already!"
Occultist: Covers mouth.jpg
Pure Evil: "****"
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