"Silver Wolf, her abilities are so similar to yours."
Amidst a series of clashing clangs of blades, Lynelle discarded the seventh shattered mimicry of the Xuanyuan Sword and conjured the another Xuanyuan Sword using Welt's power.
Though she had transformed into Welt, the cramped space—and the fact that the Stellaron was right in the middle of the room—meant both sides had silently agreed to avoid large-scale destructive attacks.
They stuck to simple melee combat instead.
While dealing with Kafka, Lynelle also had to constantly channel her Herrscher of Corruption powers to resist Silver Wolf's digital intrusions.
She had no idea what that knucklehead was thinking—if Silver Wolf had just joined the physical fray, Lynelle would've been overwhelmed long ago.
But instead, she chose to hang back and wage a data war using Ether Editing.
If it were just about offense, Lynelle might've been a bit anxious. But when it came to defense… she didn't even need to focus much.
Her corrosive power was enough to neutralize all of Silver Wolf's assaults.
To use a clumsy analogy, in the realm of data warfare, Lynelle's corruption was like a Scourge Army composed of the undead.
Unless Silver Wolf's attacks could instantly wipe her out, any data she sent would be devoured and turned into Lynelle's own troops.
The more she fought, the stronger Lynelle became.
"Dammit, it's not just similar! If I didn't know better, I'd think she was some secret human weapon Punklorde designed specifically to counter me!"
Silver Wolf wiped the sweat from her brow. Honestly, even when she'd tangled with Screwllum, the pressure hadn't been this intense.
But facing Lynelle's bizarre "your data is mine, my data is still mine" trait had her genuinely sweating buckets.
In just over ten minutes, Silver Wolf could clearly see the fruits of her labor—she'd successfully handed Lynelle a whole bunch of data samples, like those light blades she'd just projected.
"Seems we might've bitten off more than we can chew… Are you sure Elio's script didn't mention anything? This level of interference doesn't seem like 'no impact on the script' at all."
Kafka frowned slightly. It wasn't that she feared losing to Lynelle—even though both her and Silver Wolf's best abilities were hard-countered by the girl, she'd picked up on a few things over the past minutes.
The girl's physical constitution wasn't strong; before using that card, she'd been downright frail. Even after transforming, Kafka still had her completely outmatched in raw physicality.
It was clear the girl's abilities weren't suited for this environment either, somewhat similar to someone on the Astral Express, in fact. If that was the case… While Kafka was confident she could eventually subdue the girl, she couldn't guarantee it'd happen quickly.
"Nothing at all! I'm starting to wonder if Elio gave us the wrong script—"
Thud.
"—…He did?"
No sooner had the words left her mouth than the previously lively girl crumpled to the floor in a limp heap.
"What… what just happened?"
"Seems she fainted from exhaustion…"
"Huh?"
Kafka and Silver Wolf stared at each other, utterly bewildered, then checked the time. Exactly one minute remained until their scheduled awakening of the Stelleron. The fight had neatly burned through the time they'd "saved" from their speedrun through the station.
"...Holy crap. No wonder the script was blank. Elio's a god."
--+--
"Huh? What's going on?"
Meanwhile, Lynelle sat up in a snowfield, completely confused.
"Wasn't I just fighting on the space station? How did I black out and end up in… the Honkai world?"
[You dumb host…]
The customer service rep, Kiana-chan, let out a weary sigh.
[Take another careful look at the role card's description.]
"The description… seems fine to me?"
Lynelle scratched her head. "Doesn't it say 'upon transformation, gain a fixed additional energy bar, minimum duration one hour, maximum three hours'?"
[...]
Kiana-chan was speechless.
[Further down. In the user agreement.]
"'If the user depletes the fixed energy early, and the duration has reached one hour, the transformation ends immediately. If the duration has not reached one hour, the user's own energy will be consumed to sustain the role card until one full hour is reached'?"
Lynelle's cheek twitched. "Seriously?! Why is something this important buried in the user agreement!"
[Well… how to put it? Normally, this situation wouldn't occur.]
Kiana-chan's voice sounded strange.
[But since you were dual-tasking the whole time, and the Herrscher of Reason's abilities are already huge energy hogs, and you just had to go and project a bunch of Silver Wolf's weapons you're completely unfamiliar with… it's normal your energy ran out.]
[More importantly, why did you even use Welt's card? That's probably the hardest one for you to utilize, both in terms of the combat environment and your own proficiency…]
Ahem. "Mainly because I never thought I could win… I just wanted to unlock the gallery. Using Sirin or Cecilia's transformation cards would've been such a waste, so I just faked it with Welt's."
[That's… a very practical reason.]
"Whatever, let's not dwell on that."
Lynelle glanced at the newly added Silver Wolf and Kafka in her character pool. "The goal's achieved anyway. The Stellaron Hunters aren't going to kill me, and even if I passed out, I left a countermeasure for Silver Wolf. So things should be fine over there."
"Right now, I should figure out where I am…"
--+--
"What did Elio say?"
Kafka asked while slotting the Stellaron into the prepared vessel.
"Elio said we encountered an extremely low-probability event, but the final outcome hasn't changed, so it's fine."
"And what about this girl who collapsed from exhaustion… How do we handle her?"
"Can't move her. Elio says she'll be an important member of the Astral Express and a very close companion to Stelle…"
Silver Wolf's voice trailed off. "Most importantly, there's a powerful Emanator-level existence backing her."
"The Herta?"
"No, if it were Herta, Elio would've named her directly. He didn't."
Silver Wolf shrugged. "Whatever, it's fine. If she's joining the Express, even better. I can sneak in some games with her later."
"But for now… I'm still really curious, what are her abilities exactly?"
Silver Wolf crouched beside Lynelle, gently poking her cheek. "If this kind of ability showed up in a game, even if the devs were Val players, they wouldn't have enough family members left to curse."
"So, before we leave, I have to analyze what this girl's power is…"
"But Elio's script didn't say you could… Ah, forget it. Do what you want. Looks like Stelle's waking up; I'll go check."
Kafka naturally didn't understand the methods of hackers. But judging from Elio's script…
A somewhat "amused" smile played on Kafka's lips.
Sure enough, less than ten seconds later, a wail of despair came from behind her.
"W-wait, what is this? A counter-invasion? Since when?!"
"Gah! My game save! Stay away from it!"
--+--
T/N: While I am an inexperienced Translator, I have a Patreon! While it may seem empty as of now, webnovel will get 2 Chapters Every Day, and advanced chapters will be uploaded on Patreon.
It may not seem worth it now, but maybe in the future. Who knows!
[email protected]/AspenTL
If you guys wanna check it out.