Fuli was in deep shit. He was terrified that the moment he left the virtual space, he'd find the Hyperion surrounded by Schicksal's grand army. Hundreds, even thousands of warships with their main cannons glowing, elite Valkyrie squads armed to the teeth, ready at a moment's notice to annihilate their fledgling crew and take his head.
What was this? Had his words to Durandal earlier jinxed them? Since when did he have the potential to be a great prophet?
"Calm down, brother! No one's found out yet, have they?" Seeing Fuli lose his cool, Otto quickly tried to placate him.
"There are only three of us here. What's said between us stays between us. As long as you sneak Kallen out and the database resets to wipe my memory, only heaven, earth, you, and she will know. With Kallen's personality, do you really think she'd go blabbing about it?"
Fuli listened, then sized up the Saintess, who was stretching her body now that the bloodboil curse was gone. After a long moment, he slowly uttered two words: "Hard to say."
"Alright, how about this?" The man materialized a mimicked Fenghuang Down, a mischievous glint in his eye. "If you're really that scared, I can use this to wipe both of your memories of this matter. Guaranteed to be foolproof!"
And I'll just implant a little suggestion, like 'protect Kallen no matter what,' to make sure she won't be bullied when she gets out...
"Stop! Don't even think about it!" Fuli, sensing his ill intentions, quickly stopped him. "If I die now, at least I'll die knowing why. If I get taken out after leaving without a clue, it would be the worst way to go!"
Besides, were brains and memories things you just let people mess with?
"Fine," Otto said, dissipating the feather with great regret. His expression then turned serious. "As much as I hate to say it, now that the curse is lifted, your journey in the virtual world, brother, has come to an end."
He looked at Kallen. "Along the way, I'm sure you've gotten to know my brother's character and personality. Unlike Nicholas, he would never force you to do anything you don't want to."
"Indeed, indeed." Fuli crossed his arms and nodded sagely. "A bright and cheerful boy like me is a rare find in this whole Honkai world. Quick, sign the contract and become the Hyperion's magical girl, uh, AI!"
Time had unknowingly passed into evening. The sun was setting, its light growing soft and warm. The clouds on the horizon were dyed a brilliant orange-red, as magnificent as a fiery sunset.
Facing their expectant gazes, Kallen sighed.
"For some reason, I feel like I can see a weird-looking rabbit behind you wagging its tail, little bro. It's like a whole crowd of self-proclaimed magical girls are holding me back, telling me not to sign this soul-selling contract under any circumstances."
She took a step, instantly appearing before the great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns.
"So, I've decided!"
BOOM!!!
The S-Rank Valkyrie, now restored to her full power, clenched her fist and, with a single blow, shattered the sleeping red dragon's massive skull.
Splattering blood dyed her silver hair the color of fire. Kallen turned around and said seriously, "I'm giving this chance to leave the virtual world... to Otto!"
In the boundless dark space, Ella's eyes snapped open.
Her pale white hand clenched unconsciously as she whispered, "Kallen Kaslana, you have betrayed our agreement."
Fortunately, the AI girl hadn't planned on betting everything on her alone.
If possible, Ella didn't want to use violence to achieve her goals. It would have been best to do it quietly through Kallen, before the real-world Otto noticed anything.
She didn't want to turn against the Overseer just yet.
A pity.
But no matter.
It was only a matter of time.
An invisible ripple swept across the bubble universe where Fuli and the others were. It was the super AI's control authority over the network world.
In that instant, in a ten-thousandth of a second, Ella issued a command, severing all connections between the virtual world and the outside.
The first to notice the problem was Fuli, whose brow furrowed in an instant.
For him, leaving the virtual world had been a simple matter of lifting a hand.
But now, he had become a Sword Art Online player trapped in Aincrad on the first day, discovering the log-out button had been removed by that bastard Kayaba Akihiko.
He couldn't get out. Haha!
"We can't get out, can we?" a familiar voice echoed in his ear. It was Kallen.
Her earlier blow had awakened the sleeping red dragon. The dragon, known by the alias of Satan, threw its head back and roared, its fury erupting.
"ROOOOAR!!!"
At its roar, the entire legion of sleeping dragons awoke.
Countless pairs of eyes locked onto the three figures, their cavernous mouths opening to brew draconic fire, ready to execute these little pests on the spot.
Kallen smiled.
"Be silent."
A golden gear soared into the sky, and the Elysion Pedion, with a radius of 100 kilometers, deployed from Judah.
The dragons, who had been so arrogant just a moment ago, were now prostrated under the shadow of the cross. Even Fuli and Otto, who were her allies, were not exempt.
Kallen's form gradually took on a ferocious tint. It was the chimera factor hidden within the Kaslana genes.
Heaven knows how she did it, but her bizarre yet aesthetically pleasing form looked as if every alien fantasy had been kneaded together, yet each part was harmoniously compatible.
Then, she opened her mouth and began to devour the legion of dragons that filled the sixth layer.
The savage sounds of tearing and swallowing echoed throughout the Heaven of Jupiter. The gazes of Fuli and Otto were as if nailed in place, mesmerized by this absurd yet bewitching scene, unwilling to look away for even a second.
A minute later, the barrier dissipated.
The "Kallen" who had finished her meal licked her fingers, her sidelong glance captivatingly beautiful.
Occasional flashes of purple and white lightning illuminated her purple and white scales. The wings on her back slowly fanned a gale, and her legs were replaced by a long, serpentine tail. The long, powerful tail swayed languidly, exuding a seductive and coquettish aura, reminiscent of a dancer's hips.
Her form was so twisted yet so beautiful, a mixture of holy and evil elements. Even the devil himself would have had trouble imagining such a creature.
"You're not Kallen!" Otto roared, realizing what had happened.
"Hand over the Equation of Life, Otto Apocalypse of the virtual world," Ella, who had possessed Kallen's body, said indifferently. "And I will return her to you, unharmed."
"Not happening."
Kallen's voice echoed faintly from the depths of her heart.
A strange power erupted from within Ella's body without warning.
Fuli and Otto, unable to react in time, were sent flying by the force, dragging a third of the stars in the sky down with them toward the mortal realm.
Ella, realizing the problem, her eyes turned ice-cold. "You devoured the dragons here just for this one strike?"
"In that dark space, to make me betray little bro and Otto, you deliberately let me experience modern life to instill in me a desire to go to the real world."
Kallen, within her, smiled sweetly. "And so I learned: the virtual world is made of information. The more information, the greater the weight of the file."
Ella gritted her teeth. "So you delayed the time it would take for me to completely control your body by devouring high-quality 'dragon-type' files, all to buy a chance to send those two safely back to the real world!"
"The authority to control the world is in your hands, after all," Kallen laughed. "I have no confidence in completely wresting my body back from you, Ms. Ella. But I do have the ability to forcibly open a crack and send those two back to reality while you're still finding your footing right after you've descended."
"And since we've made such a huge commotion, the real-world Otto must have noticed something is wrong." She said quite casually, "That guy's character isn't much to speak of, but when it comes to ability, I've never had any doubts."
"Your end has come, Ms. Ella. Let's go to hell together, with a fake doll like me!"
The resolute voice of a woman determined to die echoed through the Heaven of Jupiter, leaving only Ella standing alone, her expression shifting uncertainly.
The next moment, however, her face twisted in ecstasy.
...
Beneath the city walls on the outskirts of Vienna, two heads were planted firmly in the ground like upside-down scallions.
One of them pushed off the ground with his hands, straining to pull his head out of the dirt.
"Man, that was rough..." Fuli shook his head with a "whirring" sound, shaking off the dirt from his hair and shoulders.
He then ran over, grabbed Otto's legs, and pulled the unlucky, noble-born companion out of his predicament.
Otto looked at him dazedly, as if he hadn't yet recovered from the emergency landing.
Without a shred of hesitation, Fuli acted on pure instinct!
"Oh no!" Otto, coming to his senses, immediately realized his intention!
He opened his mouth to speak. "Wai—mph!"
SPLAT!
Without a second word, the boy shoved a handful of mud into his mouth.
"Brother! Don't blame me!"
He then proceeded to kick him while he was down.
"I'm doing this for your own good, to bring you back to your senses!"
Foshan Shadowless Kick! Star Platinum Pummel!
After a thorough beating, Otto finally couldn't take it anymore. "I surrender! I surrender! I'll tell you the truth! Just stop hitting me, brother!"
He didn't listen. He didn't stop.
Of course, the current Otto had no idea just how much pain Fuli was in.
[Name: Belobog Traffic Light]
[Rank: A]
[Category: Consumable]
[Effect: A one-time-use item that provides an invincible barrier for the user. The barrier can resist all damage except for damage-over-time effects. It is dispelled after being attacked.]
[Note 1: I am here to ram, to tank, and to win! As long as there are no debuffs, let the blades rain down, let the multiverses be scoured, what can you do to me? For I am—the Amber Lord!]
[Note 2: I hear your name is Nanook?]
This item was arguably the most valuable thing Fuli had gotten from his last ten-pull, aside from the Water of the Eternal Well.
And just to counteract that sudden attack from "Kallen" earlier, this thing was... it was...!
Fuli's heart was truly weary, like an eighty-year-old farmer who had carried sixty buckets of water under the blazing sun to water the vegetable seedlings at the edge of the village, only to realize he had watered someone else's plot.
And Otto, who was being pinned down and pummeled, had a fire of his own brewing in his heart.
"You! Bastard!"
Seeing that begging was futile, he threw caution to the wind and began to fight back fiercely.
They wrestled until both brothers were exhausted, finally lying side by side on the ground, gazing up at the gray, starry sky.
Fuli sighed faintly. "The true anomaly born from countless cycles, the AI who truly awakened their own consciousness... it wasn't Kallen. It was you, wasn't it."
"Yes," Otto said softly. "It was me."
How many cycles ago had it been? The man no longer remembered.
Perhaps it was a small coincidence, or a bug in the program's operation.
The data named "Otto Apocalypse" had broken free from the mainframe's calculations and control, gaining a unique self.
"At first, I was excited. But soon, I became anxious."
There is no pure water in nature. If a fish finds itself living in pure water, the answer is obvious.
Realizing this, the virtual Otto fell into despair, like sinking deeper and deeper into the sea, reaching out but unable to grasp the last ray of light, annihilated in darkness. When the whale song sounded, it was as if the gears of fate were turning, telling you that destiny cannot be changed, that your efforts are in vain.
He could only watch as he faded into the ink-black depths, his consciousness eternally awake, his pain eternal.
"I was afraid. Afraid that the real Otto would discover the truth. Afraid that the program running the virtual world would realize the problem and erase me, a variable born of an accident."
Compared to other databases that simply recorded history, where one couldn't even interact with the NPCs, Kolosten was, in essence, a man-made bubble universe presented in a digital form.
No one knew why the Otto outside had created it. Was it to remember the ugly things he had done in the past? Or was it simply out of interest?
But regardless, its importance far surpassed the others.
"At that time, I was frantically searching for a way to leave. I absolutely could not tolerate my hard-won self being easily erased, becoming a puppet whose every action was decided by a computer once more."
The man gave a bitter smile. "Like Kallen."
When building this special virtual world, the real Otto had, almost uncontrollably, made the NPC "Kallen Kaslana" more perfect than anyone else.
She was the "Saintess" in his heart, the beacon he had always pursued.
Under the filter of his white moonlight, no amount of enhancement was too much.
However, the moment he saw this Saintess born from his own fingertips, a great agitation suddenly disturbed the real Otto's mind.
He realized that his embellishments were a desecration!
He was using this seemingly perfect falsehood to defile the one, true Kallen!
When it comes to faith, no one is calm.
This was even more true for the Overseer who had lived for five hundred years.
"And so, that guy set a trap."
"He programmed Kallen as a special NPC who would [gradually realize she was false data as the plot progressed]. Then, with a twisted sense of humor, he sat back and watched, waiting for the day she would completely fall."
That way, the real Otto could rest easy.
—See! This person is not the Saintess I believe in at all!
—She is nothing but a fake, a forgery who cannot even overcome this level of hardship!
"In every cycle, Kallen would gradually realize the falsity of the world. And with every reset, she would completely forget everything, only to experience it all over again."
Over and over, without end.
"That's horrible," Fuli said.
"Yes, it's horrible, that Otto Apocalypse," the virtual Otto said.
"But unfortunately for him, his plan went wrong!" He broke into a smile filled with immense pride. "No matter what torture she endured, no matter how many times her hopes were shattered, even if her life was reset again and again, the girl named Kallen Kaslana never fell, not even once!"
Time and time again, she gritted her teeth and stood up. Time and time again, she tried to seize fate by the throat!
"Not only that, in the countless cycles, even I, the awakened one, wanted to die many times from the pressure."
"But miraculously, every time I was about to act on it, Kallen would pop out from some corner, always with that same bright smile."
"It was her encouragement, again and again, that allowed me to persevere until now, to remain myself, instead of turning into some indescribable monster."
The man gazed at the churning dark clouds. "You know I have the potential."
Fuli nodded silently.
"But that also made me curious. No matter how sensitive Kallen's intuition was, it couldn't possibly break the rules and appear before me at the perfect moment every single time to stop me, especially when she was imprisoned in the underground dungeon."
"So, in one cycle, I investigated and found the answer."
Otto said, "The Oath of Judah. On Judah's cross, I saw densely packed messages."
"And they were all from the Kallens before the reset."
He clenched his fist. "Heaven knows if it was a special function of Judah itself, or if the Elysion Pedion was so powerful it could even resist a world reset. But in one cycle, a Kallen noticed this and left the first message."
"She said... they said... they left countless messages, begging the next version of themselves to see it, begging her to save that blockheaded, hopeless great inventor!!!"
"What an idiot."
Lifting the back of his hand to his forehead, the blond man seemed to shed tears, as if stung by the sun. "She was about to die herself. Every cycle, she would be reset. A mere idiotic woman without even a self, a background NPC that Void Archives could replicate a hundred times over with a snap of its fingers. And her dying thought was still to save me!"
"Yeah," Fuli said, looking at the gray sky. "What an idiot."
"So I decided," Otto said, lowering his hand. "I will save her."
"Not based on the memories inputted into my brain, not based on the false life of the fake 'Otto Apocalypse,' but out of my own will!"
"But miracles don't happen twice," Fuli said. "Kallen isn't you. She's just data simulated to be that way."
"Yes, no matter how much of a coincidence it seems," Otto lamented. "The probability of two miracles happening at once, of two people gaining a self at the same time, is far too low."
"But who am I? I'm the great inventor she designated to save the world with her!"
He slammed his fist on the ground and shouted at the sky, "If I can't even do that, then what kind of great inventor am I!"
"And so, I began to deconstruct myself."
"And this... is the result."
He raised his hand. Pale green runic equations flowed across it.
...