The rocking carriage emitted a negligible creaking sound.
The pink-haired woman's face was placid, devoid of any discernible emotion, and the helmeted man, whose posture was as rigid as a statue, remained silent. This intensely oppressive atmosphere caused immense stress for both Eden and her manager.
What they had encountered was no longer merely an "emergency."
Amidst the rocking of the carriage, Eden's turbulent emotions gradually calmed down.
Conversely, her mind became active.
"Um…" She cautiously opened her mouth, wanting to ask where these two were planning to take them.
"Eden has announced that the location of her next concert tour is in Central Australia. Every year in mid-July, she chooses to hold a concert in Australia to console the Australian people who suffered massive losses due to the bushfires."
The muffled, low voice of the helmeted man suddenly reached Eden's ears from inside the helmet. He remained completely motionless, without even moving a finger, yet he was reciting information about Eden.
"You… know me?"
"No one doesn't know you."
Lin looked coldly at Eden and her manager. The massive blunder in this mission was not within his expectations.
When Himeko notified them, the mutated Honkai Beast had already been born. It was a speed-specialized Honkai Beast that used extreme speed to break through the encirclement of nearby soldiers and entered the populated city.
Before Lin and the others could return to base, they had to change their destination. At the critical moment, Lin, who was in the transport plane, noticed the Honkai Beast was causing massive destruction and was about to crush a car, so he piloted the transport plane to ram the Honkai Beast head-on.
What followed was the scene Eden witnessed.
"I will now give you two options. Beyond that, there will be no advice." Lin spoke with a chilling tone.
"Does that mean… all the choices are ours to make?"
"Witness in the same situation would have the same options, but your influence is too great, so I have been tasked with executing this personally."
"…I see."
Eden easily understood. As a world-famous singer, any disappearance or public statement from her would cause a huge uproar globally. These two were clearly from some organization, and that monster was something they were trying to conceal, necessitating special handling.
"Say whatever you want, then." By now, she was somewhat curious about who these two were, and what the monster was. Would his options be related to them?
"You can choose to return to your lives. We will not interfere with you, but for prudence, a psychological expert will administer a certain amount of hypnosis."
"Altering our memory?"
"No."
In reality, short of brain surgery, it was virtually impossible to modify specific memories. Moreover, given Eden's age, her brain development was fully complete, making memory surgery highly ineffective even if performed.
Perhaps it could be done later if consciousness-related research advanced, but for now, they could only use hypnosis to give them simple suggestions, trying to prevent them from casually talking about the Honkai Beast.
"…That's the first choice, right? What's the second?"
"…"
"Why have you stopped?"
Lin azure visual display remained fixed on Eden's face: "Join us."
Eden was silent for a long while, then a subtle smile curled her lips: "Heh heh… Excuse me, is there any wine in the car?"
…
"We've arrived."
Kevin kept staring at the empty seat in front of him. In fact, it was not empty; there was a Starlight.
This species claimed to have abandoned their physical form when they modified their entire species' existence, adopting a movable body made of a special class of metal with high Honkai energy resistance. This material was nearly transparent, so they could be said to have no external appearance. When motionless, it was impossible to discern their existence with the naked eye.
This physical form affected them in many ways. For instance, emotions were lost during the body replacement process. Aside from differences in logic resulting from distinct memories, they were essentially highly consistent, rational thinking machines.
According to them… non-quantifiable existence like emotion was the fundamental reason they failed to defeat the Honkai and perished on their planet. Therefore, rational thought from the root cause was the correct approach.
After obtaining partial information about the Honkai on other planets, this Starlight would come to the Shenzhou Branch as an inspector, according to the terms of the agreement.
For prudence, the Fire Moth only allowed one Starlight to come and only to the Shenzhou Branch. They had not relaxed their vigilance regarding this mysterious species.
The Starlight had not revealed its knowledge of combating the Honkai to humanity, nor had humanity directly displayed the Herrscher Cores to the Starlight. Both sides had yet to reveal everything to each other.
"Very well. Please lead me on a tour of the human base for combating the Honkai." The Starlight emitted a strange sound, like multiple voices synthesized together, but Kevin and Elysia could understand what it was saying clearly.
Kevin and Elysia leading the tour for the Starlight was a pre-arranged term. They couldn't allow the Starlight to wander freely through the Fire Moth base, not even a branch.
However, the Starlight was surprisingly easy to deal with. Perhaps due to their different way of thinking compared to humans, a matter that might take humans a certain amount of time to decide upon was answered by them in less than a minute.
"Come with me."
Kevin said nothing. He was the first to step off the transport plane. Elysia waited for the pulsating transparent object to follow Kevin down before walking closely behind, forming a front-and-back pincer formation.
At this moment, Elysia felt a strange sense of déjà vu. She seemed to have seen something like this before.
As they entered the Shenzhou Branch, a pair of eyes quietly watched them from a distant corner.
The girl silently watched Elysia and Kevin entering the Branch, but her gaze seemed to be focused on the invisible Starlight.
When Kevin subconsciously looked in her direction, she had already vanished without a trace.
Elysia finally recalled why this scene felt familiar now.
Back then, Lin introducing the base while wandering around the headquarters with the girl seemed very similar to this scene.
…
Meanwhile, at the Fire Moth Headquarters.
"Why are we performing a consciousness probe experiment on this Herrscher Core? Didn't we confirm the existence of a Herrscher consciousness inside it when it was first discovered?"
Vil-V, who had been roped into this two-person experiment, had no complaints, but she was curious why Mei would suddenly conduct what she saw as a pointless experiment.
One of the reasons for the God Key plan was to completely transform the potentially dangerous Herrscher Cores into human weapons. Whatever the Herrscher consciousness inside might be, it would be irrelevant later.
"…Ten seconds left." Mei didn't answer, focusing only on the content displayed on the detector.
This experiment could be seen as impulsive or premeditated. She was the only person capable of technically probing a Herrscher's consciousness, and the only one who knew this secret was Vil-V, who was assisting her.
Regardless of the purpose, this technology could not be made public.
Ten seconds passed in a flash.
"Let me see… Wait a minute! What is this! What is going on!" Vil-V, who had initially thought this was just another boring experiment, widened her eyes in astonishment.
And the eyes behind Mei's glasses were completely obscured by the reflection.