"Ding-dong~ Ding-dong~ Ding-dong~"
The next morning, Lumina got out of bed to the sound of a [Special Group] ringtone on her phone. First, she glanced at Herta, whose breathing was steady and whose sleeping face was peaceful and serene, then looked out the window at the still dim and crimson sky. Her hazy and drowsy eyes showed no emotion.
Withdrawing her gaze, she picked up the phone placed beside her and opened the chat interface.
Before viewing the messages from this [Special Group], Lumina rubbed the corners of her eyes to relieve the fatigue and drowsiness from just waking up.
Only after the world before her became clear and bright did Lumina slowly lower her gaze to the phone screen, into the chat with the beautiful girls.
For beautiful girls, Lumina would always put in 100% enthusiasm, even if it was just a message sent by a beautiful girl.
No matter what the matter was, Lumina would absolutely not be perfunctory with any message sent to her by the beautiful girls.
Unless... unless this beautiful girl was one Lumina was "deliberately targeting."
For example, Little Herta, who was sleeping very peacefully beside her.
She was not obedient, she dared to resist her, she dared to compete for a place among her subordinates, and she even dared to try and control her. In this situation, Lumina would naturally not give her any good face.
That being said, Lumina would never actually go too far.
If she did something truly terrible to Herta, causing her to become genuinely angry and resolve to distance herself and stay away, Lumina would be utterly flustered.
If such a thing were to happen, Lumina might be driven to do anything...
Of course, forced or illegal... all sorts of things, were definitely out of the question.
At least, she would never do such things to beautiful girls.
In that case, she would probably have to beg for Herta's forgiveness in a low and humble voice... Although Lumina disliked this kind of thing, if she truly angered Herta to the point of making her hate her, Lumina would actually do it.
After all, the same saying applied: in Lumina's heart, beautiful girls were always the bottom line.
And all behaviors above that bottom line could be reduced to tools within it.
As long as she could obtain Herta's forgiveness, anything would be possible!
That being said, this was only the worst-case scenario. Even if Lumina had to seek Herta's forgiveness, she would definitely take it one step at a time, slowly, just like making friends with a beautiful girl.
If the relationship was already broken and she still acted impulsively, it would be completely over.
Fortunately, these thoughts were all a bit far-fetched. They all relied on her doing something extremely terrible to Herta, which would then cause their relationship to break down. This had absolutely nothing to do with the present situation, so why was Lumina even thinking about it?
It would be better to carefully control the degree to which she "teased and played" with Herta, keeping it at a level that would make Herta willingly "submit" to her without ever developing any resentment.
As long as she did that, none of the subsequent scenarios would ever happen, and Lumina wouldn't have to think about what to do if they did occur.
Wouldn't it just be a matter of cutting the problem off at the root and preventing it from ever happening?
As clever as she was, Lumina didn't take this possibility seriously at all.
You could say Lumina's IQ wasn't great, but you absolutely couldn't deny her intuition for beautiful girls, and you definitely couldn't deny her observational skills when it came to them!
Lumina could sense whether a beautiful girl liked her or not, even with her eyes closed!
The moment she sensed Herta's emotions turning sour, Lumina would instantly take a half-step back and apologize, making sure such a thing would never happen right in front of her!
Yes, it definitely couldn't happen behind the scenes either. In any case, she would simply not let such a thing happen.
Lumina thought to herself, over and over again.
But in reality, Lumina was simply overthinking it. Such a thing could never happen, at least not with Herta.
As long as Lumina didn't do something truly terrible, Herta would never lower her fondness for Lumina, not even by a single point.
And exactly what kind of thing would constitute something "truly terrible," no one knew.
At the very least, in Herta's heart, the idea of disliking Lumina had never even been born.
Therefore, the scenario Lumina was considering was absolutely impossible from the very beginning.
"Hmm..."
Even Lumina, who excelled at observing the moods and emotions of beautiful girls, failed to notice this point.
At this moment, she had finished her train of thought. Her gaze fell upon the phone screen, and seeing the countless red notification dots within the [Special Group], Lumina tirelessly and carefully replied to each one.
At this moment, the troubles of having too many best friends became apparent.
Especially for someone like Lumina, who would never brush off any beautiful girl, any best friend, with a perfunctory reply.
Every single message had to be answered carefully, and this included the follow-up replies, which consumed a vast amount of time.
If the number of best friends and beautiful girls in the [Special Group] on her phone were to increase, she might eventually have to spend at least 20 hours a day just replying to messages.
Of course, this was the case for a normal person. For Lumina, it was a completely different story.
Lumina had once discussed this with the beautiful girls, explaining that she would reply to many, many messages every day, and if she couldn't respond in time, she would reply to them all one by one later.
And before replying later, Lumina would also send a soft voice message to apologize.
This move of Lumina's was extremely clever. Instead of asking the beautiful girls to send her fewer messages, she took all the responsibility upon herself and would later send an apology full of "sincerity."
Under these circumstances, the beautiful girls who cared for Lumina would naturally feel distressed and understanding about her situation. Therefore, if there was nothing important, they would only send a few messages each day, never too many.
Even so, the number of messages Lumina had to reply to every day remained large, but fortunately, it didn't take too much time.
Just like that, an hour later, Lumina put down her phone, took a deep breath, and finished replying to all the messages sent by the beautiful girls.
"Well, well, has our busy Miss Lumina finally completed her daily 'work'?"
During this time, even though Lumina's movements were extremely subtle, so slight that they made less noise than a needle gently falling to the ground, Herta still slowly opened her eyes, her thoughts returning as she woke from her sweet dream back to reality.
After waking up, seeing Lumina engaged in her "daily work," Herta didn't disturb her much. She silently got out of bed to wash up and tidy herself, then returned to the bed to quietly wait for Lumina to finish her tasks.
And after she finished, Herta naturally let out a burst of sarcastic mockery.
Herta was not someone who liked to be sarcastic or mock others.
But Lumina's behavior, this specific action, would make anyone who saw it lose their composure, wouldn't it?
The fact that Herta didn't slap Lumina across the face, and didn't give her a good lesson by properly chastising her, already showed that she was in a very good mood.
Well... fine, it's just that Herta simply wasn't Lumina's match.
If Herta's strength exceeded Lumina's, allowing her to make Lumina do whatever she wanted, her first task would be to formulate a plan to "reform" Lumina.
This kind of thing could only be thought of, but it could simply not be implemented in reality, which made Herta feel extremely sad.
For the first time, the great Madam Herta herself felt completely helpless about this kind of matter.
It was like being an impotent husband who clearly knew his wife's deeds, and even witnessed them with his own eyes, but because of the gap in their actual strength, he could only watch as everything happened, powerless to do anything.
Other than imagining himself as a world-saving hero with absolute strength in his mind, he couldn't do anything else.
This kind of feeling... perhaps only someone who had gone through what Herta had experienced could deeply sympathize with it.
And the final result derived was: "There's nothing I can do."
If there were any other choice, she wouldn't have waited until the "final" moment; she would have struck a heavy blow the moment she discovered all this. How else could the subsequent series of melodramatic, impotent husband events have even happened?
"Work? How could this be work?" Lumina had already noticed Herta was awake, and since Herta already knew about this, Lumina didn't show any sign of panic.
She calmly put her phone away and turned to Herta with a smile.
"This is a morning greeting with beautiful girls, a very important matter."
"Right, right, right." Herta glanced at her speechlessly, without offering any rebuttal.
If arguing were useful, why would Herta still be staying here?
A morning greeting, my foot. Aside from Castorice and the others, everyone else was in different worlds, with completely different weather and time in their respective locations.
It was morning here, but not elsewhere.
And...
Herta glanced at the crimson sky outside the window.
"An apocalyptic morning? Well, that certainly fits."
After silently complaining in her mind, Herta didn't linger in bed any longer. She got up and sat on the sofa, not letting her feet touch the floor, but instead gently lifting them to rest on the sofa cushions, striking the pose of a lazy young girl. This surprised Lumina a bit.
"Are you surprised?" Herta asked, half-lying on the sofa. Sensing Lumina's slightly surprised expression, she asked back in a somewhat lazy tone while scrolling through her phone.
"It's definitely quite surprising. You would never have made such a posture before," Lumina replied without hiding her thoughts. She tossed aside the blanket, got out of bed, and answered Herta's question while looking down to straighten her clothes and smooth her slightly messy hair.
"Staying with a certain person all the time, some habits and gestures naturally get contagious." Herta's voice was still as lazy as ever, but the meaning of who she was referring to was self-evident.
"Haha, then I'm truly honored." Knowing that the person Herta was referring to was herself, Lumina didn't feel the slightest bit of embarrassment. Instead, she felt honored by this and couldn't help but puff out her chest and hold her head high, wishing everyone could see her great achievement.
It was obvious that Herta had learned this posture from Lumina.
Ever since Herta discovered her true purpose, Lumina had stopped pretending in front of her.
She lived and acted before Herta exactly as she did when alone.
Her lazy, fallen angel-like posture was completely revealed to Herta, with nothing hidden.
Over the long run, Herta naturally became infected by Lumina's habits.
But most importantly, Lumina's habit of half-lying on the sofa with her small feet resting on the cushions was truly comfortable.
In such a state, scrolling through her phone with potato chips and soda placed on the sofa within arm's reach would make it even more comfortable.
Unfortunately, Herta had no interest in potato chips or soda, thus missing out on the combination that could take the comfort of this posture to the next level.
But it didn't matter, because it had nothing to do with Lumina.
What did Herta's comfort have to do with her?
As long as Lumina herself was comfortable...
[Aglaea]: Sister Lumina, we will not give up on Amphoreus's "Era Nova." Time cannot sustain us for much longer, and the Okhema masses will eventually collapse.
[Aglaea]: Besides... the Era Nova is the long-sought wish of the Flame-Chasing Journey for a thousand years. We cannot abandon our wish just because of a conjecture. Even if this Era Nova might lead to a bad outcome, we must still try.
[Aglaea]: If... if the Era Nova is truly false, a result sufficient to destroy Amphoreus...
Aglaea's messages ended here, without continuing, but Lumina knew what she wanted to express.
If the Era Nova was false, she hoped Lumina could lend a hand to Amphoreus.
Regarding this, Lumina didn't have much of an opinion.
She would definitely help, but the one helping wouldn't be herself, but the Flame Reaver.
At least on the topic of the Era Nova, the protagonist was that Flame Reaver.
After finishing her washing and getting ready, Lumina sat on the sofa, looked at the messages she had replied to a while ago on her phone, and sorted out all the matters concerning Amphoreus.
After reading the messages Aglaea had sent her, Lumina returned to the page and clicked on the messages Hyacine had sent her.
Lumina had gotten up. Although Hyacine was very tired, she hadn't slept for long and had also gotten up very early.
[Hyacine]: Lumie, the return time for [The Sky] Coreflame has been confirmed, it will be in seven days.
[Hyacine]: Seven days after the return of [The Sky] Coreflame will be the time for Miss Phainon to return the [World-Bearing] Coreflame.
[Hyacine]: The Era Nova... will soon arrive.
Although Hyacine's words did not say it directly, nor did they reveal any emotion, Lumina could still see the nervousness and worry about the future in her heart.
Regarding Hyacine's words, Lumina only responded simply a few times, without offering any comfort.
After all...
How could comfort over the internet be as effective as face-to-face comfort?