Herta: Heroes Are as Numerous as Carp Crossing a River

This is the Herta space, inside the Herta's private lounge.

Herta sat up from the soft bed, her long, loose, purplish-black hair falling over her shoulders, her eyes still showing a hint of drowsiness.

Upon seeing Herta awaken, several Herta Puppet that had been in standby mode in the corner of the room simultaneously snapped out of their standby state and gathered around Herta with the props they had prepared beforehand.

The dolls moved quietly: one handed over warm water, and another brought over neatly folded clothes.

Another figure stood behind the Herta, picked up a comb, and began to comb her long hair.

Throughout the entire process, Herta herself didn't move a finger, only occasionally raising her arm or turning her body slightly at the doll's prompting. They cooperated perfectly, completing the entire process from washing up to dressing up, and finally presented her with several carefully matched outfits to choose from.

Herta casually selected a set of everyday clothes that looked most pleasing to the eye.

After washing up, Herta sat down on a soft chair in the rest area, where another doll handed her her personal terminal.

She had intended to check today's tasks first, but as her fingertip swiped across the screen, she paused for a moment, then clicked on the monitoring program she had installed on Bai Luoming's terminal.

The monitoring system interface popped up, showing that since Bai Luoming left the space station, the number of his friend requests and external communication requests had increased significantly.

However, the vast majority of friend requests were blocked in the background. These requests came from all over the galaxy, with the most coming from the Xianzhou.

Herta's gaze swept quickly across the long list, his eyebrows slightly raised.

"Going out on a trip was quite popular."

Herta paid no attention to those who were intercepted; after all, they couldn't even take the first step, so there was no need for her to notice them.

Besides those who were intercepted, Herta discovered that one lucky individual had actually broken through the code's blockade and successfully added Bai Luoming as a friend.

Herta checked the account's information and found that this was just a lucky person who added a friend during a tiny gap in the system's self-check update. There was no need to worry about it too much, since adding a friend was only the first step, and there were all sorts of other challenges waiting for them.

Among the intercepted records, the most conspicuous were the hacking records belonging to Silver Wolf.

The number of logs had increased to the point that they needed to be folded into a separate folder, starting with the initial disguised additions and later forced breaches.

The methods are endless and varied, but each time they are precisely blocked at the last layer of permission verification, resulting in failure at the last hurdle.

Herta recounted Silver Wolf's latest defeat with great interest.

She saw that after being forcibly kicked out, the other person angrily left a simple note on the blocking page. "You wait."

Herta finally couldn't help but chuckle softly.

She moved her fingers and modified the firewall's auto-reply settings. The next time Silver Wolf came, she would be greeted with a system message: "If you're bad, practice more."

After doing all this, she casually increased the strength of the entire defensive strategy by one level before leaning back in her chair, satisfied.

"Hmph, there are really a lot of people." She picked up the black tea offered by the doll, took a small sip, and said, "What a pity, I was still one step ahead."

As soon as he finished speaking, a small notification popped up in the corner of the terminal.

[A new photo has been added to the private album of your monitored individual "Bai Luoming".]

Herta's upturned lips didn't immediately fall; instead, a hint of curiosity arose within them.

Based on her understanding of Bai Luoming, he was the type who rarely took photos voluntarily. The photos that he willingly kept in his album usually had some special meaning.

Before opening the album, she zoomed in on the file details to confirm when the photos were created—just last night.

With a light tap of her fingertip, the photo instantly filled the entire screen.

The image shows Bai Luoming fast asleep, his cheeks still flushed from drinking.

Beside him was "March 7th". The girl was facing the camera, making a "V" sign with one hand, and had a victorious smile on her face.

The closeness between the two could not be explained by a normal friendship.

The Herta remained seated, motionless.

The face that was just smiling vanished completely, as if all expression had been instantly stripped away.

The atmosphere in the lounge seemed to freeze at that moment.

Several small Herta Puppet keenly detected the abnormal changes in the environmental data, and all their movements stopped simultaneously, entering a silent observation mode.

Then she retrieved all the relevant information about the photo, including the shooting time, device permissions, raw data stream, and save history, and checked each item one by one.

Data shows that this photo was not photoshopped or faked.

What's more troublesome is that her security module left no record of any external intrusion. This means that the other party didn't use any sophisticated hacking techniques to remotely hack into her, but rather directly obtained her terminal and successfully passed the authentication.

As the information was gradually confirmed, her gaze turned completely somber.

"Interesting."

Herta spoke softly, his voice calm.

"How interesting. There are so many heroes in the world, I've underestimated them."

She kept applying pressure to the terminal in her hand, until a tiny crack appeared on the smooth casing.

The standby doll silently took a half step back, while another doll took out a brand-new spare terminal from the storage cabinet, clearly having a contingency plan for this situation.

Herta ignored them.

She logged out of the monitoring system and instead called Bai Luoming.

Meanwhile, in Belobog, the Administrative District.

Bronya is showing Bai Luoming a historic building that has just been unsealed.

"During the time of the Architects, this was a temporary command post to defend against wind and snow," she said softly, pointing to the mottled scratches on the wall. "Each mark records a difficult decision."

Bai Luoming listened attentively, occasionally asking about Belobog's next restoration plan.

His attitude calmed Bronya's mind, which had been wavering due to the disappointment of the previous night. Just as she was about to express her gratitude for his sincere concern, Bai Luoming's terminal rang at an inopportune moment.

The sound had extremely strong penetrating power, completely ignoring the surrounding noise.

Hearing the ringtone that ignored Bai Luoming's silent mode settings, Bai Luoming knew who the sender of the communication was.

He made an apologetic gesture to Bronya, quickly walked to the other side of the street, and connected the communication.

"Hello? Ms. Herta?"

There were no pleasantries on the other end of the phone, only an unusually calm voice.

"Where are you now."

"I'm in Belobog," Bai Luoming answered truthfully, then tentatively asked, "Is there something you need from me?"

Herta was silent for a moment, then continued.

"Get to the space station now. Immediately."

Although Herta's tone was calm, Bai Luoming sensed something unusual in Herta.

He pressed, "What happened? I'm here..."

"You can choose to do it yourself," Herta interrupted him directly, "Or wait for me to come find you. Choose one."

Hearing the multiple-choice question from Herta, he decisively replied, "I'll set off immediately."

"Okay, I'll have the doll wait for you at the anchor point."

After saying this, Herta decisively hung up the communication.

After the call was disconnected, Bai Luoming stood there and sighed softly.

He quickly returned to Bronya's side, his face apologetic, and said, "I'm sorry, Bronya, I have some things to attend to right now, so I might not be able to continue shopping with you."

Bronya looked at his unusually serious expression, her gaze turning to worry. "Is it serious?"

Bai Luoming looked at her and sighed softly.

"The problem shouldn't be too serious," he said sincerely. "When I get back, I'll definitely take you around Belobog some more."

After saying that, Bai Luoming put away his terminal, waved to Bronya, and turned to walk towards the nearest Realm Anchor.

A flash of silver-blue light engulfed his figure.

After the light faded, only Bronya remained on the long street.