"Operation Clean Up Mobius's Mess—a perfect ending!"
After shouting this, Fuli placed his hands on his hips and laughed heartily.
But as he laughed, he suddenly felt something was wrong. He looked around, rubbed his eyes, and was surprised to find that everything in front of him seemed to have gotten bigger?
No!
It wasn't that things had gotten bigger!
Examining his own tender, soft, and chubby little white hands, the boy exclaimed in surprise, "Why has my body shrunk? I didn't take any APTX4869!"
He didn't recall having any debuff like [Transforms into child form upon overexertion]. The only time he had turned into a shota in the previous loop was due to an enemy's magic trap.
Prometheus answered her little host's question: [Congratulations, Host. Just now, with the help of the inferior Hogyoku fragment and a massive amount of Honkai energy, the first turn of the Peerless Nine Turns has finally been constructed.]
Before coming to England, Fuli had predicted that, barring any accidents, the construction of the Shesha organs would be completed during the trip to the City of Fog.
The "Princess Carry" buff allowed his stats to equal Rita's at her peak. Although the boost would vanish once physical contact was broken, the critical-grade Honkai energy surging through the boy's body during the battle had solidly accelerated the organ construction.
Little Fuli blinked his big eyes and said impatiently, [So, babe, do I have an immortal body now?]
His lovely cheeks were flushed with a cherry blossom pink, the natural upward curve of his mouth outshone the signboards of every dessert shop, and his eyelashes cast shadows like fluttering butterflies on his porcelain-white face. One could almost smell a scent mixing milky sweetness with fresh grass.
Suppressing the urge to rush over and hug her little host, Prometheus reminded him: [However, you cannot resurrect from every type of death. for example, being decomposed into elementary particles will definitely kill you. Also, you cannot defy the natural decline of lifespan caused by non-external interference. Furthermore, the prerequisite for reincarnation is having enough Honkai energy in your body to support it.]
Even the Tenth Flame-Chaser of the Previous Era, who fused with Shesha, couldn't achieve true immortality, let alone the Peerless Nine Turns, which only constructed a portion of the Honkai Beast's organs.
However, there was no need to worry about lifespan. The current Fuli could already be considered an alternative kind of Fusion Soldier. A lifespan of tens of thousands of years was guaranteed, and he didn't have to worry about falling into Mara-Struck madness.
[Neoteny—returning to a child state—is a necessary step for the first completion of the construction. The Host can understand it as shutting down and restarting after a system update.]
Prometheus comforted him: [Don't worry, you will return to normal in a dozen hours at most.]
[But before that.]
Dr. MEI, who had popped up from who knows where, curled her lips. Her amused gaze passed through Fuli and focused on the graceful figure standing behind him at some unknown point. [Little Host should be more worried about his own... chastity!]
[Chastity? Why?]
The boy turned his head, following her line of sight.
"Buh... Gwah!!!"
The terror in his heart was no less than when he first met the Herrscher of Dominance.
"Haa... Lord... Fuli..."
Broken honorifics mixed with terrifying panting. Ash-gold hair stuck to cheeks flushed a coral hue.
The maid's thin lips, usually curved in a perfect arc, opened uncontrollably. Her wine-red eyes, twisted into a frightening shape, looked down from above at the cute little shota sitting on the ground.
Gulp!
He swallowed hard.
"Ri-Ri-Ri-Rita! Calm down! You need to calm down! There are so many people here! You must maintain the positive image of a Schicksal Valkyrie in front of the general public!"
Little Fuli scrambled backward on the ground, eagerly pointing toward the distant, panicked innocent passersb— people...?
Where the hell are the people?!
Where did all my lightbulbs go?!
"The moment Soulium Animara was deactivated, the citizens were all sent back to their original locations by Rita!"
"And where we are now... is inside the Travel Mansion Rita just created~"
The [Clara and Mr. Svarog's Travel Mansion] that Boothill had rested in earlier was Rita's handiwork. With her abilities, creating another one was effortless.
City of Fog, London. Inside a treehouse that no detector could find. This was where Fuli and Rita were.
"Lord Fuli~"
Pearl-like drops of sweat rolled down the girl's luscious lips, dragging ambiguous silver threads across the rose-colored boundaries smudged by her lip gloss.
"Now, you can't escape!"
The crystal chandelier swayed in the warm golden light. The Love Elixir, which had been suppressed during the previous battle, finally spread throughout her body. Rita's gaze was as scorching as twisted, molten rubies.
"Who—who says!"
The Lord of the Hyperion, usually fearless, now looked like a little white rabbit about to be stripped of its fur.
He tightly gripped the fragment of the Lance of Finality, baring his fangs and brandishing his claws, bluffing at the hungry big bad wolf.
Come closer! Come any closer and I'll bite you!
"It's useless."
His vision blurred, and the lance fragment, governing the authority of Time immutability, was easily snatched away by a jade-like hand covered in grey silk.
"Aschour could be invincible among his peers because to defeat him while he held the Lance fragment, one needed to neutralize it with Honkai energy a level higher than his."
"But right now, you are only A-rank. As a Critical-Grade Valkyrie, I can suppress you in exactly the same way~"
"Nani?!"
Little Fuli's pupils quaked as he lost his last means of resistance, accidentally slipping into Eastern slang.
Half-kneeling on the ground, Rita used a gentle yet undeniable force to pull the struggling boy into her arms. Her exquisite, dainty nose sniffed at his small, round ear.
Ah! It's the scent from seven years ago!
Quick! Let me take another huff of this sweet, bright milky scent!
She looked intoxicated, breathing out warm, misty air laced with a sickly sweetness from her usually enchantingly seductive lips.
Frankincense (Ru Xiang). The name of a spice. It smells like citrus. It absolutely does not have any double meaning regarding "milk scent" (Convinced).
"Pervert! You're not allowed to smell!"
The physical regression to childhood did indeed affect his mindset. Held in the clutches of a pervert with no escape, Little Fuli's first reaction was to smack Rita's fragrant back with all his might, rather than search his skill library for an escape ability.
Though even if he searched, given the massive gap between an A-rank and a top-tier Critical Grade, it probably wouldn't do much good anyway (LOL).
In his grievance, the little guy could only let out another shout, so powerless it was adorable: "You perverted shotacon!"
"Eh! I learned this from you, Lord Fuli!"
Rita had once heard Ragna describe a vivid little anecdote about Fuli and Kiana's first meeting. Back then, Ragna was taking 7-year-old Fuli to the Schicksal affiliated kindergarten prep class. As they walked, she suddenly noticed he was staring intently at a little girl with white hair and blue eyes eating a tanghulu, drooling with envy.
Ragna had asked tenderly, "Does Little Fuli want one? If you like it, Mama Ragna will buy you one."
7-year-old Fuli hesitated for a while, opened his small mouth, and said something that took her a long time to process: "I do like it super much. But the criminal law says trafficking children is wrong."
Of course, based on age, Fuli and Kiana, born on the same year, month, and day, couldn't be considered pedophilia.
But that didn't stop Rita from filling in the blanks with her own imagination to justify her behavior.
After playing with Little Fuli for a while, the maid finally made her next move.
The boy, who thought it would end there, finally realized what the Love Elixir's description meant by "The emotions hidden in the heart will turn into an uncontrollable, ferocious love, burning you and your beloved to ashes."
Rita was serious. She really intended to eat him right then and there.
In despair, he squeezed his big, watery eyes shut and screamed for help with the last of his strength:
"Gwah! Bianka, save me!"
BOOM—!
Like a knight in a fairy tale responding to the princess's cry, a lance forged of Soulium pierced through the treehouse, descending from the sky.
"Rita! Are you okay?!"
A soft hand encased in a silver-white gauntlet swept away the dust from left to right. Schicksal's strongest Valkyrie made her dazzling entrance bathed in moonlight!
Durandal, who had rushed over, was extremely anxious.
By convention, this mission to wipe out the Nazi remnants should have been executed by both her and Rita.
That's right. Aschour and the others should have faced the perfect combination of Durandal + Rita, the Bright Knight and the Fallen Rosemary (or Argent Knight).
In other words, in the previous loop, they did face this combination.
That was why Fuli had never heard rumors of Aschour, the "strongest Critical Grade," because in the previous loop, he was instantly killed by Durandal upon her arrival.
So why did Rita come to the City of Fog alone this time?
As mentioned before, in order to make time to go to the Hyperion for a secret tryst—to practice martial arts with Fuli—Bianka had completed a large number of missions in advance while offloading some "less important" ones to her adjutant, Rita.
These "less important" missions just happened to include wiping out the Nazi remnants.
That was why Bianka had rushed over in such a hurry. Because of her own selfish desires, she had pushed the mission onto her childhood friend, putting her in unnecessary danger. If anything happened to Rita, the upright Knight-Princess would never forgive herself!
Regrettably, because she was previously in an undeveloped bubble world, Bianka couldn't receive any communications from Schicksal.
By the time she got the news from Ai and rushed over, the crisis in the City of Fog was pretty much over. Her entire journey had amounted to "all support except help."
But the good news was—
"What... are you two doing?"
Her coral-colored hair tips bobbed in the invisible force field, and her golden bangs shadowed the Knight-Princess's eyes.
She unconsciously twisted the sturdy Soulium lance shaft until it cracked. The cold light reflected off the blade seemed ready to cut through the solidified air at any moment.
The good news was... she caught the adulterers in the act?
"Oh my, it's Lady Durandal."
Rita smiled slightly, not minding at all, and extended an invitation from the bottom of her heart: "Do you want to join us? The current Lord Fuli doesn't have even a tiny bit of ability to resist~"
"Join your sister!" (Join you, my ass!)
As expected of a childhood friend. At these words, Bianka, who looked ready to commit violence a second ago, immediately roared back in embarrassment and anger.
However, only the girl herself knew that the main reason her anger dissipated was that the moment Rita issued the invitation... she had felt a shameful flutter in her heart.
Then, um... action speaks louder than heartbeats?
In a world filled with mist, the crisp sound of Mei's footsteps echoed.
This was an artificial interdimensional space opened above the River Thames, and also the destination of the girl's journey.
During the Operation White Moon in the City of Fog earlier, Argenti had merely shown the Pardo-cat yawning on top of Fuli's head, and the old lords of the House of Lords were terrified into unanimously passing the vote to share the Cauldron's authority with him.
Was it really because they were afraid of the legendary King Arthur returning and starting a thousand-year blood war for Celtic revenge?
No.
King Arthur was, in the end, just a deceased natural Stigma Awakener. Even if she could truly come back to life, she would only meet a bitter end against the rapidly developing, powerful Honkai technology of today.
What the councilors truly feared were the existences that facilitated the awakening of her natural Stigma—the two Pioneers who assisted her in ascending to the throne and uniting England, only to retreat behind the scenes at her peak.
The first was the wizard Merlin.
The second was the Lady of the Lake.
The former vanished without a trace 1,500 years ago and could be ignored for now. But the latter... had been hiding somewhere in this land all along.
The evidence was the existence of the cat demon Cath Palug—Pardofelis.
As the pet of the aforementioned two, it had been wandering near the Thames for 1,500 years.
Aside from guarding the Lady of the Lake who still existed in the world, no one could think of a reason why the cat wouldn't leave.
While Fuli and the others were fighting the Immortal Trio, Mei, who was interested in the Pardo-cat, used her father's Executor status to access the Royal Library of England and learned of this little anecdote.
Since Pardofelis had been lingering near the Thames, presumably, the Lady of the Lake herself was mostly likely living anonymously right there.
Since she had nothing to do anyway, the girl called upon Little Kallen, who was equally idle, and embarked on a journey to the Thames.
Kallen didn't have high hopes for this. The conclusion that the Lady of the Lake was near the Thames wasn't hard to deduce, yet to this day, no one had been able to find her (?) true body.
You, Raiden Mei, are smart, but can you be smarter than all the talented elites of the British Isles over the last 1,500 years?
To this, the girl expressed: I can't say if I can surpass everyone, but I did indeed discover an abnormal spatial fluctuation.
It was precisely that artificial interdimensional space located above the Thames.
The reason Mei could detect the anomaly, aside from her own intelligence, was mainly because the creator of the space used some special concealment techniques.
And these techniques were all recorded in the Previous Era's Archive of Knowledge within the Thunder Stigma. Simply put, she was standing on the shoulders of giants.
At the same time, realizing his setup had been cracked, the Lady of the Lake also issued an invitation to Mei and Kallen.
The girls looked at each other, and adopting the principle of "since we're already here," they stepped onto the staircase in the void.
Before long, entering the alternate space, they passed through the dense fog and arrived at a small island in the center of a lake.
A 'beauty' with waist-length grey hair sat cross-legged under the Bodhi tree in the center of the island, returning a small fish that had flopped into his palm back into the shimmering lake.
Then, he stood up and bowed. "Welcome to the Seed of Sumeru, Miss Kallen of the virtual world, and—"
Su opened his magnificent eyes, carefully observing Mei's beautiful face, which was so familiar to his old friend yet much more youthful.
I wish to buy osmanthus flowers to carry with wine, but it is not like the time of youth.
Pulling himself out of past memories, the man sighed softly.
"And, Raiden Mei."
...