"Feeling better now?" Lumina asked with a gentle smile, releasing her embrace of Robin after a moment and gazing at her slightly flushed cheeks.
"Mhm... mhm, I'm fine now," Robin replied, obediently shaking her head to reassure Lumina.
"You really don't need to feel so down about this," Lumina said, taking out her phone and waving it at Robin. "After all, I could easily send a message to Sunday to let him know you're safe, couldn't I?"
Though Lumina didn't actually have Sunday's contact information, she used this pretense to comfort Robin.
"You're right," Robin said, her expression brightening as she watched Lumina's phone sway in her hand. "Just a quick message to let him know I'm safe would do."
"Wait a minute..."
But Robin quickly realized something was off. "Miss Lumina, how is your phone getting a signal in Dreamscape Reef?"
Robin always carried her phone with her. After being brought to Dreamscape Reef by Death, her first instinct had been to contact her brother, telling him about the Dreamscape Reef and assuring him she was unharmed.
But it was immediately clear that within Penacony's most primal and chaotic Dream, no messages could be sent out.
Nor could Robin receive any communications from the outside world.
Yet Lumina's phone could connect to the outside world and receive messages, leaving Robin utterly astonished.
Aren't we both using flagship phones manufactured by the Interastral Peace Corporation? Why is your phone slightly different from mine?
"Hmm... Now that you mention it, I'm puzzled too," Lumina replied, realizing the anomaly. She hadn't modified her phone in any way; under normal circumstances, messages should neither be able to be sent nor received in this place.
"Perhaps it's because this phone was custom-made for me by the Interastral Peace Corporation?"
After fiddling with her phone and pondering for a moment, Lumina couldn't find anything particularly unusual about it. She could only attribute the phenomenon to the manufacturer.
"The phone's components and technology must have been meticulously selected by the Interastral Peace Corporation."
"So the signal strength and connectivity should be somewhat better than standard phones."
Lumina opened her phone's settings and checked the model number.
Hmm... instead of the usual phone model format, there were just a "Lumina".
"As expected of the Sai-... Ah, no, I mean, as expected of Miss Lumina!" Upon hearing this, Robin's beautiful eyes instantly lit up with the starry-eyed admiration of a fan. She nearly blurted out some of the crazed phrases she often used in the group chat, but thankfully stopped herself in time.
Lumina: ...
Though Robin had cut herself off, Lumina wasn't stupid. Based on those first words, she knew exactly what Robin had been about to say.
You were about to say "Saintess," weren't you? You were definitely going to say "Saintess," right?!
Speaking of which, could Robin be a member of that inexplicably popular Saintess Support Club?
Lumina muttered inwardly, taking in Robin's timeless beauty and celebrity-like aura.
It was clear that Lumina herself knew absolutely nothing about this so-called "Saintess Support Club."
When she first heard about this "organization," Lumina had even gone to the trouble of registering a completely flawless "fan account" through high-ranking officials at the Interastral Peace Corporation, hoping to infiltrate it.
Yet this single, flawless "fan account"—jointly registered by Lumina herself and top executives of the Interastral Peace Corporation—was immediately detected and kicked out by the President on its very first day.
Lumina still vividly remembers the President's parting words before kicking her out:
"This is the Saintess's Support Club. Saintess, please don't overstep your bounds, ha (Lumina so cute.jpg)"
But even more than being kicked out of her own Support Club, Lumina was deeply troubled by how the so-called President had detected her account as suspicious.
She had registered it with the assistance of top executives from the Interastral Peace Corporation! The Interastral Peace Corporation! The Interastral Peace Corporation!
They controlled the entire network! With their cover, even if she were eventually discovered, how could she possibly be exposed on her very first day?!
Lumina refused to believe it. The bewildered executive shared her disbelief, personally overseeing the account creation process and even having the staff sign exorbitant confidentiality agreements.
The outcome? This time, the moment the accounts surfaced, the President obliterated them instantly.
Realizing this, Lumina had no choice but to abandon that approach and explore another avenue: borrowing accounts that were already members of the Support Club.
But the President seemed to possess clairvoyance. The moment Lumina logged in, before she could even open the Support Club group chat, she was kicked out.
Lumina and the IPC executives made countless attempts, but the President single-handedly thwarted every effort.
Finally, they had no choice but to give up on trying to infiltrate the Saintess Support Club.
Though she lost interest in the Saintess Support Club itself, Lumina became intensely curious about the President.
Someone with such extraordinary capabilities must be a renowned figure in the Cosmos—a true cosmic titan!
Lumina entertained two hypotheses about the President's identity. First, she suspected he was a high-ranking executive at the Interastral Peace Coexistence Corporation (P47+). After all, only a member of the P47+ Board of Directors could neutralize the combined assault of Lumina and a P47-level executive.
As for her second theory... well, it was a bit far-fetched, but she couldn't rule it out:
The President's true identity was an Aeon.
As for which Aeon they might be... that's truly impossible to guess.