A Narrow Escape

"Meow~"

The soft cry rang out clearly in the quiet room.

The Herta Puppet looked down at the Cat Cake in her arms. Her vacant eyes shifted, but she said nothing immediately.

Lin Feng's heart was in his throat.

He could clearly sense that Herta was looking at him differently than before.

Before, it had been curiosity, the way someone might play with an interesting living specimen. Now there was something more—

Scrutiny.

Could she still be concerned about the "interstellar researcher" from before?

Lin Feng didn't dare think any further, because right now he was just a Cat Cake at Herta's mercy.

"March 7th."

Herta spoke, but didn't look at March 7th. Her gaze remained fixed on the Cat Cake.

"Before you entered the Simulated Universe, did this creature go in with you?"

March 7th shook her head. "No. There were only three of us when we went in: me, Stelle, and that researcher from before."

"Three people."

Herta repeated the number.

The puppet's finger brushed lightly over the Cat Cake's back. The touch was gentle, yet it sent a chill down Lin Feng's spine.

"Now that's interesting."

Herta raised her other hand and pointed. A screen of light unfolded out of thin air.

It showed surveillance footage from the entrance to the Simulated Universe, with a clearly visible timestamp.

In the footage, a little blue-and-white creature came charging around a corner in the space station corridor, riding on the back of a scrawny Peppy in an utterly ridiculous pose, and plunged straight through the entrance's gate of light.

Peppy's hooves skidded on the metal floor, and the Cat Cake's body pitched forward with the momentum. He almost flew over Peppy's head, but managed to cling tightly to Peppy's horn with his short front limbs.

The image was clear, the angle perfect. Nothing blocked the view.

March 7th's mouth fell open.

"W-wait!" She pointed at the screen, her voice rising. "This little guy... he rode Peppy in there himself?!"

March 7th lightly covered her mouth, then whipped around to look at the harmless-looking Cat Cake on the table.

"And! Why would Peppy let him ride? When I played fetch with Peppy before, Asta said Peppy was going easy on me—"

Stelle leaned over and stared at the footage for two seconds. She pointed at the Cat Cake's riding posture and gave an answer that shocked the world.

"Nice riding skills."

"That's not the point!" March 7th slapped Stelle's hand away.

Herta ignored their reactions and swiped her finger, freezing the screen on the last frame of the Cat Cake charging into the gate.

"The entrance closed at 14:37:22. This creature entered at 14:37:19."

Herta raised the Cat Cake to eye level, bringing the puppet's face less than three centimeters from his.

If the puppet had been capable of breathing, her breath would have reached his face.

"Three seconds early. Neither too soon nor too late, just within the closing window."

Under Herta's gaze, Lin Feng kept his beady eyes wide open, trying to look blank and innocent, as though his brain couldn't hold more than three peanuts.

"Tell me... how did a creature precisely calculate the time window before the entrance closed?"

Herta hadn't directed the question at anyone in particular. More precisely, she had directed it at the fluffy little thing in her arms.

Lin Feng's heart skipped a beat.

I'm done for. I can't act cute to get past this question.

A three-second window really wasn't something an ordinary creature could manage.

A normal Cat Cake couldn't even tell a wall from a door, let alone calculate a time window.

He could already foresee what would happen next—

Herta would send him into a lab chamber, take him apart, scan him, analyze the data, write a paper, and publish it in the Genius Society's internal journal. It would most likely be titled "A Study of Intelligent Emergence in Aberrant Creatures and Its Reversibility."

And yet.

Herta put him down.

Not gently. She casually set him on the console beside her, like a tool she was finished using.

Just like the Curios she collected in her storeroom: she would take one look, decide they were useless, and toss them back where they had been to gather dust.

Lin Feng froze, hardly able to believe it. Was that it?

"Forget it. We'll talk about that later."

The puppet turned to face March 7th and Stelle, her tone noticeably different from before.

"Now tell me what you saw in there."

March 7th clearly hadn't expected the subject to change so quickly either. "Huh? You're not going to look into the Cat Cake anymore?"

"A creature that may possess extraordinary intelligence, or a Simulated Universe that may have drawn an Aeon's gaze—"

Herta tilted her head.

"Which do you think is more worth my time?"

March 7th fell silent.

What she said made so much sense that there was no arguing with it.

Lin Feng lay on the console, his short front limbs resting on its edge and his round head tilted slightly.

His heart finally dropped from his throat back into his chest.

Herta's attention had been diverted—

Not because she didn't care about the Cat Cake's abnormalities, but because she had bigger fish to catch.

Nous!

To Herta, a creature with a high IQ was, at most, research material for her spare time.

But Nous's gaze was major news, enough to rewrite the entire direction of her research.

What was the Simulated Universe, fundamentally?

It used virtual means to explore the relationship between real Aeons and the laws of the universe.

An unfinished system had actually attracted the attention of the Aeon of Erudition.

That meant either the Simulated Universe's calculations had touched upon some kind of true "knowledge," or the Simulated Universe, this scepter, had taken an unknown direction.

Either way, for Herta, member #83 of the Genius Society, it was well worth her time.

Of course, the first thing to rule out was a Cat Cake creature.

Herta wouldn't believe that a creature that had suddenly barged in could have caused such a major upheaval.

She had an inherent confidence in her Simulated Universe.

"All right, start from the beginning." Herta folded her arms across her chest. "What abnormalities did you encounter after entering the Simulated Universe?"

March 7th gathered her thoughts and began to recount what had happened.

The time loop, the tearing images, the Voidrangers that appeared, the chaotic data streams...

She picked out the important parts and left out most of the details.

Stelle occasionally added a few words, brief and precise.

Herta listened intently, the puppet's fingers tapping at her side from time to time, seemingly organizing the data as she listened.

"What else?"

March 7th pressed her lips together and hesitated.

"When we went in... I think I saw someone from behind."

Herta's fingers stopped.

"Red and blurry. It only lasted a moment." March 7th gestured as she spoke. "I thought it was a data afterimage at the time, so I didn't pay much attention.

"But thinking back, that outline... didn't look much like a model generated by the Simulated Universe.

"At the very least, I'm sure that thing wasn't from the Antimatter Legion, which you often see in there."

The room fell silent for three seconds.

The Herta Puppet slowly raised her head. Streams of data flashed rapidly several times through her vacant eyes.

"Red, blurry, a humanoid outline."

She repeated the keywords under her breath, her fingers quickly tracing a string of commands through the air.

A name came out of her mouth, with a hint of disdain.

"Masked Fool, Sparkle."

March 7th froze. "Are you sure?"

"Who else but the authority of Elation would appear somewhere it shouldn't, in that manner?"

Herta scoffed. It was the disdain of someone with an overwhelmingly superior intellect, but underneath was a trace of interest that even she couldn't suppress.

"A Fool infiltrated the Simulated Universe... Elation has reached its hand in here."

She spoke as if to herself, slowly pacing two circles around the room.

"But that does make sense. Nous wouldn't gaze upon a half-finished system for no reason—

"Unless a variable appeared inside the system that was enough to pique their curiosity."

"A Masked Fool of Elation, stirring up trouble on Erudition's turf."

Herta stopped pacing.

"That really is interesting enough."

Lin Feng lay on the console, his cake ears perked up, catching every word.

Herta's reasoning was perfectly logical—

Sparkle's appearance explained Nous's gaze, completing the chain of cause and effect.

But Herta had guessed the real reason wrong.

Nous hadn't been looking at Sparkle!

They had been looking at him!

Sparkle had said it herself—

"They have good taste."

"An existence that even the big mechanical head noticed."

That difference in knowledge was his only safeguard for now.

Herta spent more than ten minutes running a system check, then announced that the Simulated Universe would be shut down pending a thorough investigation.

"The data layer has been contaminated. It can't be restarted anytime soon. I'll devote my efforts to analyzing Nous's intentions in the meantime."

Her tone was calm as she said it, but the light in the puppet's eyes flickered unusually.

It was the first time Lin Feng had seen anything resembling "excitement" from Herta.

After all, for a genius like Herta, ordinary things were no longer enough to satisfy her research.

Only subjects like Aeons and Paths could draw her near-fanatical pursuit.

That was also why many people preferred to call the members of the Genius Society madmen!

P.S.:

I used the Qingming holiday to sort out how things have developed and where they're going. The update frequency will gradually pick up, so don't worry about the story being dropped!