Soft. Warm.
Opening his eyes, a familiar face filled his vision.
The face was exquisite, adorable, and currently rippling with a gentle, brilliant smile. Yet the moment Aizen saw this face, a nameless fire surged in his chest.
"Oh, Aizen-bao, you're awake?"
A sweet, mellow voice rang out, laced with careful concern.
"How many times have I told you? Stop making that pathetic doormat face."
Aizen pushed himself up, glancing around. No surprises here,he was back in this place.
The Great Tomb of the Nameless Titan.
Demiurge's slumbering ground.
And the wimpy girl who had just offered him a lap pillow was none other than the landlord of this place,or perhaps, the most stubborn squatter within this Universal Matrix system.
"Failed again, huh?"
Returning here meant one thing: he had once again washed out of Amphoreus' Prologue, First Stop. Still stuck on the initial 1-1 Map.
The clear condition for 1-1 was simple: Help Tribios obtain Janus's Coreflame.
Motherfucker...
What kind of bullshit difficulty curve was this? If 1-1 was this hard, Aizen didn't dare imagine how to push the later maps.
Whose "Tutorial Chapter" involves waiting around to throw hands with the Lord of Extinction for Erudition, along with a whole pack of veteran Lords of Extinction coming to deliver the baby?
Granted, the Honkai Star Rail universe wasn't exactly a safe neighborhood to begin with. But places like Belobog or the Xianzhou Luofu at least offered some wiggle room to struggle.
What the hell was Amphoreus? The "Final Battle" map where the universe gets destroyed instantly, followed by a galaxy-wide reformatting?
The most critical issue was the scaling.
Facing the threat of multiple Lords of Extinction, the majority of the Chrysos Heirs simply couldn't keep up with the numerical intensity. Some Heirs existed purely for functional utility or key support buffs. The demigods whose job was actual combat? They were almost unqualified to even participate.
Take characters like "Myriad Enemies",sure, they had their highlight moments during the early plot performance. But by the endgame, most were reduced to cheerleaders shouting slogans or acting as stand-up comedians reciting rapid-fire lines.
In the end, the only true key players left were the duo stuck in samsara.
One was Phainon, enduring thirty million loops, desperately stalling for time.
The other was Cyrene, also enduring thirty million loops, desperately feeding the initial Seed of Erudition while waiting for her "guaranteed pity."
But here lay the problem.
The thirty million loops weren't finished yet. Cyrene's ideal "guaranteed pity",the Astral Express Crew,hadn't arrived. Even Demiurge seemed indefinitely delayed. And he, a transmigrator, had crashed here ahead of schedule.
A cruel reality sat before Aizen.
He faced a choice. Either hide in this Demiurge Tomb like a wrapped dumpling, waiting for the future Gray-Haired Trailblazer to visit, eventually getting wiped by the Iron Tomb's ultimate move, turned into slag, and then resurrected by "Baby Memory Aeon" / "Messenger of Eros" Big Sister Cyrene.
Or, be a bit more proactive. Like Old Phainon, go out there and explode alongside Rogo and that pack of Lords of Extinction!
And obviously, Mr. Aizen chose the latter.
Just changed classes, landed with cheats enabled,and you want me to avoid their edge?
Can I swallow that kind of humiliation?
Then, he proceeded to wipe on the 1-1 Map four consecutive times.
"Still haven't seen Big Tribbie, huh?"
"According to history, before Lady Tribios accepted Janus's Coreflame, she was kept under house arrest by the priests of the Janus Temple. They restricted her contact with outsiders. At that time, Lady Tribios was effectively no different from a prisoner."
"Aizen-bao, you wanting to contact Lady Tribios directly is basically equivalent to a prison break, you know."
The soft, fluffy little pink-haired girl gently explained to the companion who had finally spawned in this Tomb of Demiurge.
"Aizen-bao, you're an outsider yourself. Even the guards will guard against you strictly, let alone... there should also be some Chrysos Heirs under orders to watch over Lady Tribios stationed there."
"Besides, even if you did contact Lady Tribios, what could you do?"
"Turn on my hacks, what else? It's a pity I don't know how to activate the Codex yet, otherwise, unlocking your entry would be fine too."
Dusting off his butt as he stood up, Aizen sighed helplessly. Without a "Newbie Gift Pack," even with cheats, it was hard to take off immediately.
After transmigrating, Aizen suspected he had been converted into a native of Amphoreus. His entire being had been digitized, his body regressed to that of a thirteen or fourteen-year-old. Then, for some unknown reason, several games that existed on his phone at the time fused together to synthesize his current cheat system.
Yes.
Children.
There is a piece of despairing news.
The phone contained miHoYo games! Plus Teamfight Tactics (Golden Spatula) and Princess Connect! Re: Dive. If Fate/Grand Order and Arknights had been there too, it would have been a confirmed kill.
After that, he crossed over. The system automatically set the Great Tomb of the Nameless Titan as his Spawn Point/Recall Point, and locked the Temple of Janus as the "Flame-Chase Journey" Chapter 1, Map 1-1. aside from a visible interface resembling an Auto-Chess team builder and a personal stat panel, almost everything else was pitch black.
When he saw that Auto-Chess interface, Mr. Aizen felt it was barely good news.
Because maybe there was a chance to assemble a 1-cost War God, 2000-Speed Rageblade Aglaea.
But the bad news: Aglaea, you aren't even in the gacha pool right now!
If I don't clear 1-1, even Teacher Tribbie won't join our pool!
"As expected, I still need to find a helper."
However, who to ask for help was the problem.
The Cyrenes inside the Demiurge Tomb were souls bound to this place,memetic sacrifices melting into the Demiurge.
Although there was currently one he could see and touch, before long, this one would likely dissolve into a part of "Big Cyrene" just like the tens of millions before her.
Forget using this current Cyrene as a teammate; she probably wouldn't even survive a few rounds as a fleshlight.
In his digitized vision, he could clearly see the frame floating above the little thing's head...
HP bar less than 1%. No different from Otto before he charged the tree. If this little Pink Hair's obsession could compare to Otto's, maybe she'd grab her little staff and fight her way out too.
But unfortunately...
The most violent and savage version of this Pink Hair would only be the future M意味mi who throws punches like "Ora Ora."
Truly a waste of this "Baby Aeon" stat panel.
"But, speaking of which, who can I find as a helper in this 1-1 era?"
Aizen fell into deep thought. Most other Demigods hadn't been born in this period. If he had to name someone from the same era, there was only the Empress of Order (Anaxa). But the Empress herself was currently god-knows-where, preparing to be a Shrine Maiden, waiting to be picked up.
Besides, the Empress's own strength was just average. If he really met the loli-version of the Empress, who knows who would be helping whom.
"Then that only leaves the one in the sky."
Amphoreus had plenty of named characters, but they were mostly concentrated in the era when the Empress ruled Okhema,Castorice, Aglaea, Hyperion, Mydei, and The Herta all popped up around that timeline.
But, aside from these predestined Demigods...
In Big Tribbie's era, there should actually be one thigh,not yet fully grown, but definitely thick enough,that he could try to hug.
"Seliose, the Daythunder Knight"