The Elysian Realm's Signets. To any Captain who had battled through that sacred, sorrow-laden ground, these symbols were etched into their soul deeper than any memory.
Kevin's Deliverance. Elysia's EGO. Aponia's Discipline... Each was not merely a power-up, but a elegy carved from the fate of the thirteen Flame-Chasers, a final torch passed from the grave of the Previous Era. They were hymns of desperate permanence, the fingerprints of a "god" who loved humanity too much, signifying an "I shall never change" addressed to all of salvation.
However—
Bai Ming stared, her mind a vortex of cognitive dissonance, at the three luminous orbs pulsating before her.
This was Herta's Simulated Universe, a project dedicated to simulating the Paths of the Aeons. So why was it offering her the legacy of the Flame-Chasers?
"Why have you ceased movement?" Herta's crisp, slightly synthetic voice chimed in from the void. A deliberate pause, then a dry, needle-sharp remark. "What's wrong? Not interested if the blessing doesn't come in the shape of a girl? How disappointingly shallow."
"Hertie! I must protest your slanderous characterization!" Bai Ming planted her hands on her hips, thrusting out her decidedly unremarkable chest, and declared with theatrical righteousness into the ether. "What do you mean, 'not interested if it's not a girl'? Clothes are a transient concept! They can be removed!"
"…"
Herta was filled with a profound, cosmic regret. How had she allowed this... this chaos variable... into her pristine, mathematically perfect simulation? She should have subjected her to a full battery of psychometric evaluations, then another three rounds for good measure.
But then, Bai Ming's tone shifted. The performative indignation melted away, replaced by a note of genuine, unforced discovery.
"Hey... so you're actually this cute, Herta?"
A sharp, violent "ZZZT—KKKCHHHH!" erupted from the communicator—the exact sound of a high-fidelity audio channel overloading. The digital distortion crackled for a full three seconds before Herta's voice returned, stripped of its usual condescension and laced with a strange, sharp intensity.
"Brat. Say that again."
"S-say what again?"
"That!" Herta snapped, the word cracking through the simulation like a whip. "Repeat your previous statement verbatim!"
"So... you're actually this cute, Herta?"
The moment the words left her mouth, a translucent screen materialized before Bai Ming's eyes.
[Heartfelt Moment Completed]
[Evaluation Score: 8/100]
[Reward Obtained: Crystals*80]
[First Impression Bonus: Additional Crystals*100]
Bai Ming blinked. What event was this? [Anyway, It's Just Very Cute] An 8/100? It felt like reading a profound truth written in a language she only vaguely understood.
"Brat, do you comprehend the implications of your utterance?" Herta's voice echoed, straining for its usual scientific gravitas but betraying a faint, flustered resonance. "Concepts such as 'cuteness' are subjective qualia. To apply them so frivolously violates every principle of rigorous, empirical analysis."
"I-It's that serious?" Bai Ming was momentarily taken in by the academic facade. "Then... I retract my statement. Consider it unsaid."
"Unacceptable!" Herta's retort was instantaneous, ringing with the finality of a collapsing star. "Verbal output is immutable data. To retract it is to attempt temporal manipulation on a localized scale—a corruption of the event log. Such an action necessitates a punitive correction."
"Why does that sound so much like a scam..." Bai Ming muttered, rubbing her cheek. "So what's the penalty?"
"Elaborate!" Herta's voice boomed, and for a moment, she truly seemed the Aeon of this domain. "Articulate! Provide a detailed breakdown! I demand a full-spectrum analysis: what, in your deficient perception, qualifies as 'cute'? Omit no variable. Spare no detail."
"Ah↗↘?" Bai Ming was floored. This was a trajectory she had not calculated.
"Expedite your report. The Simulated Universe's computational resources are finite. Do not squander them."
Cornered, Bai Ming marshaled her thoughts. "Well, first... your size. Petite. Compact. Logistically efficient. That's... a foundational form of cute."
"Mhm, mhm. A rudimentary but logically sound observation. Your aesthetic sense is passable, brat." A note of approval seeped into Herta's tone.
"Next... your aesthetic design. The doll-like proportions and features are... highly optimized for visual appeal."
"Correct. It seems your optical processing units are not entirely defective."
"And finally... the color palette! The pristine white and calming blue, accented by that singular, perfect purple flower... it's a masterstroke! Maximum moe output achieved!"
"Color palette? The purple flower...?" The satisfaction in Herta's voice hit a firewall. A dreadful, dawning realization froze her processes. "Brat. When you refer to 'me'... are you, by some catastrophic failure of logic, referring to the stationary administrative avatar in the my office? The one that is primarily white, holds a stylus, features a digital display for optical sensors, and has a purple floral accessory on its head?"
"Bingo!" Bai Ming clasped her cheeks, wriggling with uncontainable delight. "I can't help it! The design is too potent! It triggers a system-wide overheating alert!"
"…"
The silence that followed was colder than the void between galaxies.
"Get. Back. To. Work." Herta's voice was now the absolute zero of sound.
"Huh?"
"Brat, I ordered you to resume the simulation protocol. Are your auditory inputs corrupted? Do you, or do you not, require the designated Credits?"
"Fifty Credits deducted for the first second of delay. One hundred and fifty for two."
"Hey!" Bai Ming protested, hopping on one foot in frustration. "You're a tyrant! A digital-age robber baron!"
"Do you observe any gallows on this station? Continue this insubordination, and I will deduct for three."
"Hertie, you're changing the rules!"
As she cried out, Bai Ming's focus finally snapped back, her hand darting out to touch one of the three orbs. What she didn't see was Herta, outside the simulation, biting her lip, a storm of conflicting code warring within her.
So it was the avatar! In all her cycles, no one had ever dared to label her with such a frivolous term. And the first one to do so was praising a mere UI element! This brat... she was clearly employing a advanced psychological tactic to disrupt her emotional equilibrium!
Meanwhile, within the simulation, Bai Ming's fingers made contact with the light. A wave of warm, familiar energy flowed into her, and a mark materialized on the back of her hand: an eye of wisdom, serene upon a Bodhi leaf, set against a void-black background.
[Erudition - Bodhi]
It was Su's Signet, but it had been... taxonomized. Assimilated by the Simulated Universe's logic and supercharged by the gaze of the Erudition Aeon, Nous. The effect was a sublime, recognizable echo—a combo-based empowerment that no longer reset, its potential now infinite.
The confusion in Bai Ming's eyes evaporated, replaced by the fierce, veteran joy of a Captain who had just found the cheat codes. If this was the Simulated Universe wearing the skin of the Elysian Realm... then she knew this game inside and out.
Herta had promised no physical harm. It was time to break the game.
"Alright, you glorified error codes," she grinned, hefting her bat with renewed purpose. "Let me demonstrate the concept of 'crowd control'."
And so, the symphony of destruction began anew.
Herta, observing from her throne of data, found her scholarly fascination once again overwhelming her pique. Bai Ming moved with an instinctual, preternatural grace that mocked the crude statistics of her loadout. She was a phantom between attacks, her bat an extension of her will, each strike a punctuation mark in a sentence of pure force. Every motion was optimized, every evasion calculated at the very event horizon of possibility.
Fascinating, Herta mused, her mind a whirlwind of new hypotheses. The Stellaron's energy signature remains stable, yet her combat efficacy is an outlier. It's as if she's interfacing with a different set of physical constants. The desire to understand, to deconstruct this beautiful anomaly, burned brighter than a thousand stars.
I really should have her on an examination table, the thought emerged, clinical and darkly playful. Full-spectrum bodily scans. Stress tests pushed to the theoretical limits of material physics. I'd continue the analysis until she was fully depleted, the Stellaron within her pacified. Until she was reduced to tears, begging, "Hertie, please, no more..."
The entire procedure would be... far from boring. This subject was an order of magnitude more engaging than anticipated. Her lack of conventional intellect wasn't a bug; it was a feature. An intelligent subject was predictable. A fool... a fool could generate novel data. And a genius, on occasion, requires a fool to shatter her paradigms...
Just as Herta was descending this rabbit hole of thought, Bai Ming's voice chirped through the comms again, syncopated with the sound of a Voidranger being converted into base code.
"Hey, Hertie, you still watching?"
"I am perpetually monitoring," Herta replied, her voice a masterclass in feigned detachment. "Ensuring the operational integrity of each Simulated Universe run is a core function of my responsibilities."
"Then—" Bai Ming arched her back, a Voidranger's scythe whistling past her nose. In a single, fluid motion, she pivoted, her bat connecting with the creature's core in a cathartic explosion of pixels. "Hertie, there's something else I need to tell you."
"State your business." Herta felt that now-familiar cocktail of anticipation and dread. "Let me preemptively clarify: if you are about to request the integration of R-18 character model data for March 7th and Himeko again, I will personally forward the audio log of this request to their personal terminals."
"Hertie, have mercy! It's not that!" Bai Ming hopped in a panic, her flailing foot accidentally sending another Voidranger cratering into a wall.
"Then what is this critical communication?" Herta asked, genuine curiosity piercing her irritation.
"It's about earlier... the 'cute' analysis..." Bai Ming's voice softened, losing its performative edge and gaining a surprising, gentle seriousness. "I hadn't finished my report."
"The 'cute' analysis?" Herta's digital presence in the control room flickered, a skipped processing cycle.
"Mhm, mhm!" Bai Ming nodded vigorously, a warm, genuine smile blooming on her face as she effortlessly parried an attack behind her back. "That administrative avatar is objectively cute, yes... but you yourself..."
She took a deliberate, dramatic breath.
"Or rather, the 'you' I'm talking to right now... the consciousness piloting this puppet... the way you speak, the specific cadence of your tsundere operational parameters... that is the highest-order cute I've ever encountered!"
"Eh—?!"
The sound that escaped Herta wasn't static, but a short, sharp, utterly undignified gasp—a system interrupt. A wave of thermal energy rushed to her cheeks—a sensation so alien, so archaic, that her consciousness blue-screened for a full nanosecond. She, Herta of the Genius Society, was blushing!
Her first blush in centuries... stolen by a fool praising her conversational algorithms!
No! This was an uncontrolled variable! A critical exception! This was not the protocol! She was the researcher, the master of this reality! She was supposed to be the one in control, the one reducing the test subject to a quivering, over-stimulated data point!
As Herta clutched the sides of her head, her logical processes spiraling into a recursive loop of chaos, a new phenomenon bloomed within the Simulated Universe. The space before Bai Ming shimmered, reality itself crystallizing into a radiant figure of pure, geometric intellect, its form casting a brilliant, all-comprehending light.
Another Aeon had manifested. And it had fixed its gaze upon her.
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A/n: Hey over on my patreon there are currently two for the time being exclusive books which are
Life Simulator: Starting in Genshin Impact!
Zenless Zone Zero: Loving Daily Life Starting in New Eridu
patreon.com/deadlygoober