"!!!"
Herta suddenly opened her eyes wide and sat up from the bed, stunned.
She raised her hand to her cheek; it was wet.
She was crying.
It felt like she had a dream—a dream of her childhood, and of things her mother had said to her.
But why couldn't she remember the details now?
"Covered in cold sweat, did you have a nightmare?"
A familiar voice came through.
Herta turned her head and saw Qi Zhimu sitting on the armchair nearby.
"...I don't know if it was a nightmare."
Herta answered subconsciously, her thoughts drifting back to last night.
Not long after talking with Qi Zhimu, she had fallen asleep. Would the dream she had in her deep sleep be related to that conversation...?
No one could answer.
Never mind.
She checked the time; it was past nine in the morning.
Herta wiped the moisture from her cheeks, pulled back the covers, and quickly took off her nightgown to change into casual clothes right in front of Qi Zhimu.
Qi Zhimu took a couple of blatant glances before curling his lip and looking away.
This brat really didn't guard against him at all...
After Herta finished washing up and stepped out of the room, she smelled a familiar fragrance coming from the kitchen.
Walking in, she found breakfast already set on the dining table.
Fried eggs, grilled steak, tomato salad, milk, and a fruit platter.
"You made this?" Herta blurted out.
"Huh?"
Qi Zhimu shot her an extremely familiar look; Herta knew exactly what she was about to hear.
"You mean a grand mage like me made breakfast for you? You wish. I just went out for a few minutes and 'zero-yuan purchased' it. Eat it or don't!"
"Oh."
Herta thought to herself that it was just as expected. She nodded obediently, her gaze inadvertently sweeping over certain parts of the kitchen.
The cutting board was wet.
There were still water droplets on the knife.
The apron was placed incorrectly, and... well, never mind.
It was better to see through it without saying it.
She really couldn't tell that Qi Zhimu could actually cook, and it was even the taste she had been used to since childhood.
She was becoming more and more curious about who his creator was.
Unless it was a work related to culinary arts, a Virtual Substance Lifeform was unlikely to come with cooking skills; it wouldn't even be mentioned in the setting.
High-intelligence species could learn it later, but the problem was... Qi Zhimu didn't seem like the type of person who would bother learning such things.
She couldn't figure it out, and she didn't expect him to explain, so she simply stopped thinking about it.
After finishing breakfast, she waited for the time to reach 12:00 PM.
With ten minutes left, Herta received more detailed rules and supplements.
"Mr. Creditor, in a moment, I will be teleported away."
"What's going on?!"
Qi Zhimu's lazy eyes instantly sharpened.
"Don't worry, I'm just going to the common starting point of the mission. The supplementary content mentioned that as long as the people on the list aren't all dead, Death won't come for us."
Herta tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, where the black hair tie Qi Zhimu had given her was simply tied.
"Through this, you'll be able to find me, right?"
"Right."
Qi Zhimu's expression softened slightly.
He had forgotten about that. Seeing the hair tie he had used, he subconsciously touched the key pendant hanging around his neck.
Herta had given this to him a while ago.
"Just remember what I said. Once we disappear from each other's field of vision and perception, the key you gave me can act as a tracker."
"Hmm... I'll add an instant communication spell as well."
Before Herta could speak, Qi Zhimu pressed two fingers together and brushed them over the key and the hair tie respectively.
"You should be familiar with this, right? We used it in the Life-taking Mirror Shadow. It's commonly known as team voice chat."
"I'm familiar."
"That's good then. Anything else to say? Hurry up."
"There's no need to say anything..."
"???"
Qi Zhimu was just about to glare when he heard the next sentence, and he couldn't suppress the corners of his mouth.
"I believe you won't let me die prematurely."
"One thing's one thing. At least give me the information on those eight people on the list, right?"
"I don't know who they are yet. It should be announced when the mission starts," Herta replied.
"Tch..." Qi Zhimu crossed his arms.
The implication of not being able to know in advance was self-evident.
It was nothing more than preventing the mission executors from taking self-protection measures for the people on the death list in advance.
"By the way, what lock is this key you gave me used for?" Qi Zhimu asked.
"...It was a birthday gift from my mother when I was seven."
"A Longevity Lock key?"
"...People from Fog City don't have the custom of wearing Longevity Locks. My mother gave me this as a blessing that I could open the door to the world of knowledge and become a respected scholar."
"A blessing... interesting," Qi Zhimu suddenly smiled.
"What's interesting about it?"
"A blessing gives the power of choice to you, rather than choosing for you. The word that strips you of your right to choose is 'hope'."
Qi Zhimu stared at the key hanging from his finger, as if he could see the scene of a gentle mother giving a gift to her child.
"Perhaps your mother had high hopes for you and thought about having you inherit her mission and embark on the path of saving the Azure Star."
"But in the end, she chose to respect her child's choice and left you some room."
"You have a very good mother."
Herta was stunned.
To be honest, she had never thought her mother's gift had such deep meaning, although she couldn't rule out that it was just Qi Zhimu's speculation.
But thinking back on her childhood experiences, this speculation held weight.
From the age of four, she had been required by her father to learn all sorts of obscure knowledge that even adults would find headache-inducing.
She had almost no free time of her own every day.
She had to learn at school and at home.
While her peers could play carefree as children, she could only hold thick books.
Every month, she only had 12 hours of free time.
Her mother would often look at her with an extremely gentle gaze, filled with a faint sense of pity.
Love was normal, but pity...
"Yeah, my mother was very good, but she and my father both died in the Labyrinth Zone of the Azure Star."
Herta suddenly looked directly into Qi Zhimu's eyes.
Qi Zhimu felt a bit uncomfortable under her gaze. His eyes twitched, and he became annoyed.
"What are you looking at? You want to see me as your father? Ha, keep dreaming!"
"Even a tiger doesn't eat its cubs, so you can only be my Reserve Food, forever!"
"...Mr. Creditor, I just wanted to tell you that time is almost up. Once I get the information on the deceased, I will contact you immediately."
"..." Qi Zhimu's expression froze.
Before he could speak, Herta suddenly disappeared from in front of him.
"Hmph."
Letting out a cold snort, Qi Zhimu focused his mind to sense her current location.
Just as he was about to rush over as fast as possible, he heard a familiar voice in his head.
"Xi Manning, Room 02, 14th Floor, No. 35 Kewen Street, Fielding Road; full-time writer; the time of death is between 13:25 and 13:35 today."
"Information on the first person. The distance is 79 kilometers from our current location."
"Got it. I'll come find you in a bit. Contact me immediately if anything urgent happens, got it?" Qi Zhimu instructed.
Herta: "Got it."