"Hmm... The Corruption is working faster than I expected..."
As their bodies made contact, faint streams of pink energy flowed from Lynelle into Kiana through their touching skin. As for why it wasn't the standard purple associated with Corruption...
Well, obviously because pink is cuter!
Still, Lynelle was surprised by how easily she'd "invaded" Kiana's body.
Such smooth infiltration only happened in those... peculiar fanfictions from her past life. This likely meant that due to Sirin's influence, Kiana's body offered no resistance to Lynelle's power at all.
In those... indescribable stories, the Corruption was usually just a risk-free prelude to... steamier scenarios.
What Lynelle planned—a "mental examination"—actually carried some danger. After all, she couldn't be sure if Otto had left any countermeasures behind.
'Let me guess, Kiana's surface consciousness should be fine. The memories inherited from Sirin herself are probably stored within the Herrscher core... But it seems the Corruption power needs more time to penetrate the Void Herrscher's core. Whatever, let's check Kiana's surface consciousness first.'
'Wait... Kiana's dreaming?'
Lynelle paused. Though she hadn't seen the dream's content yet, if she remembered correctly, Kiana's dreams started showing abnormalities right when the main story began. So then...
'This feels like a bad sign... Let's see what exactly Kiana is dreaming about...'
With a serious expression, Lynelle slipped into Kiana's dream.
Seconds later, she fled, her face completely flushed.
"Wh-what kind of dream is this?!"
Lynelle clutched her face tightly, as if actual steam were billowing from her cheeks.
Despite her usual flirtatious antics, Lynelle had zero "practical experience."
Her only overly intimate contact had been that forced kiss from Sirin. So for someone well-versed in theory but utterly lacking in practice, Kiana's dream content was simply too intense.
'So weird... Let me see it again...'
A moment later, Lynelle peeked into the dream once more, her face still bright red, before decisively escaping.
She was here on serious business today—she couldn't get distracted by these... strange things. Besides, the expression on her own face in that dream was just too... intriguing.
But how did Kiana dream up something like this? Shouldn't she also be in a state of 'insufficient material, unable to proceed,' just like me?!
Not suspecting for a second that a certain "experienced" and "well-supplied" customer service Kiana-chan might be playing tricks, Lynelle dove into Kiana's core, her mind full of questions.
Then, a biting cold abruptly jolted her from the previous pink-tinged atmosphere.
'I knew something felt off... The interior of a Herrscher core represents its owner's mental landscape. There's no way Sirin's final emotions before death were this despairing. If this isn't Otto's doing, I'll eat Elysia's big thunder.'
Seeing Babylon Labs standing in the snowy wasteland, Lynelle couldn't help but feel irritated.
She didn't even need to go inside and see that tower, which held so many painful memories for her, to guess Otto's methods.
It could be summed up in four words: malicious editing.
The reason was simple: with Lynelle's current Corruption abilities, the completely unprotected Babylon Labs from 2000 couldn't block her detection at all. With a quick scan inside, she immediately spotted the problem.
She wasn't in this tower!
Not to boast, but during those Babylon days, she had practically been Sirin's only emotional support. Yet in these memories Kiana inherited, every single recollection related to Lynelle had been hidden away.
This was also one of the key reasons why Kiana felt so "drawn" to Lynelle.
As an extension of Sirin, the core's memories made her subconsciously feel like she was missing something crucial. Without a doubt, what she lacked were the memories connected to Lynelle.
'Still, it's fortunate Otto didn't want a completely nihilistic Void Herrscher. These memories were merely sealed deep within the core, leaving the external Kiana still a "blank slate"...'
'That must be why there's no Queen personality, yet Kiana still experiences brief losses of control... If the sealed memories were unleashed, Kiana's consciousness would get "trapped" in the Babylon tower, while her body would fall into an unconscious, rampaging state.'
'If these rampages happened too often, for self-preservation—combined with Otto's timely manipulations—Kiana could very well split off a Herrscher personality to "bear the pain"... ultimately following the same path as the original story.'
'But... thankfully I found it early.'
A mischievous smile tugged at Lynelle's lips.
'A simulated Fenghuang Down can only deceive the core; it can't completely overwrite the memories Sirin left behind. Once the "real deal" returns to the core, this desolate snowfield will quickly be overwritten by Sirin's true memories.'
'Besides... unless someone delves as deep into the core as I have, they'd never notice the anomaly. In this world, the only ones capable of that, besides the Flame-Chasers from the Previous Era, the World Serpent's "Hare," and a fully-powered Fu Hua using the real Fenghuang Down, are few indeed.'
'So from Otto's perspective, he'd probably just see a "second personality" emerging within Kiana as he intended. In that case, heehee...'
Just imagining Otto going through all that trouble—kidnapping people, pumping Kiana full of Honkai energy, finally joyfully awakening the "Queen," only to find a certain purple little angel instead—made Lynelle unable to suppress her grin.
'Well then...'
Lynelle opened her system backpack without hesitation.
'Kiana-chan, help me get Sirin's soul... Huh? Where'd Kiana-chan go?'
After calling out, Lynelle realized Kiana-chan seemed to be... offline?
She checked the home screen and saw Cecilia peacefully sleeping while holding a white kitten.
'Oh, she's accompanying Cecilia...'
Lynelle sighed in relief, completely failing to notice that the "kitten" Cecilia held was actually a plush toy.
'Whatever, I'll do it myself...'
Saying this, Lynelle retrieved Sirin's soul from her system space and placed it into Kiana's Herrscher core.
'That should do it. It probably won't take long for the Herrscher core to reshape itself into Sirin's original memory environment. And within her own Void core, Sirin should recover faster too...'
Watching the Herrscher core begin to change, Lynelle wiped a bead of nonexistent sweat from her brow.
'Alright, mission accomplished!'
Satisfied, she withdrew all her power and pulled her consciousness out of Kiana's body, returning to her own.
But...
Why did her current position feel different from before?
--+--
T/N: While I am an inexperienced Translator, I have a Patreon! While it may seem empty as of now, webnovel will get 3 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.