Liu Bai's goal was to get his fill from both sides.
World Serpent's greatest technology was its ability to control Honkai Beasts. With Mobius in charge, it might also involve Fusion Soldiers. There was also an Easter egg blueprint called the Honkai Ball; once made, it could turn Honkai monsters into Pokémon.
Schicksal had even more things, from Valkyrie Armor usable only by female characters, to universal mech warriors, to precious potions. Whatever you wanted, they had it.
Well, all right, for players who started with male characters, Schicksal's most appealing feature was still the Valkyries...
With high enough favorability in Schicksal, you could spend money to hire Valkyries—but raising Schicksal's favorability was especially difficult.
Like World Serpent, Schicksal's faction favorability depended entirely on its leader.
The standard approach was to secretly take Otto out.
That would trigger a special storyline. If the player had high reputation with Schicksal—that was, if they were a high-favorability character—then the protagonist would succeed him after completing the storyline.
If the protagonist was not affiliated with Schicksal, or was not a high-favorability character in Schicksal, then Theresa would take over after the storyline.
Once Theresa took over, Schicksal's faction favorability would become normal. In other words, you could raise it by diligently running errands and doing work.
Of course, if he was discovered during the assassination of Otto, they would become permanent enemies—but if everyone who saw him was taken out, then no one had discovered him.
The assassination itself was troublesome as well. He first had to shut down Schicksal's servers to prevent Otto from transferring his consciousness, then end the fight quickly before Schicksal's guards realized something was wrong.
But Schicksal's servers were not easy to shut down at all...
The hard requirement was max level—Computer Skill level ten.
Here was a joke: even Ada, Anti-Entropy's quantum computer, only had Computer Skill level nine in the datamined results...
Prometheus should have been added in this version, right?
He could look forward to Prometheus's Computer Skill level.
If Prometheus used a boss template, she might even have a skill that broke the limit.
Normally, player skills capped at level ten, but some individual skills of boss units were not subject to that restriction.
For example, higher-tier Honkai Beasts generally had Physical Fitness levels from eleven to thirteen. Their health bars were simply ridiculously long.
Or Durandal. Although her initial Strength, Vitality, and Agility were all level nine, the actual cap for those three skills was fifteen, and calculations showed that her experience bars were half as long as everyone else's...
On top of that, her favorability was relatively easy to raise, so players following the sugar-baby cultivation route generally tried to pursue Durandal from the start...
But then again, Liu Bai was not exactly a normal player either. Later on, he could use alchemy to make breakthrough potions...
Mods were all about being able to do anything.
If he remembered correctly, Rita's three base stats should have been 6, 6, and 7.
Liu Bai had played the sugar-baby route before. Though he later gave it up after realizing it took too long to come online in a modded environment, he still had a rough impression of the stats.
As long as Liu Bai could obtain and finish reading intermediate training manuals for the three base stats during this period, he would not need to fear Rita.
"I really can't say whether that confidence is a good thing or a bad thing." Yelan sighed.
"Don't worry. I'm very cautious."
Liu Bai was only evaluating this world through the lens of a game. It was not as if he did not know the two could not be treated as the same.
If he truly could not distinguish reality from a game, he would have thrown Elixir of Love at Mobius long ago...
Playing Brother and Sister
"See you next time."
Liu Bai watched Yelan drive away, then returned to the apartment, went upstairs, and opened the door.
"Welcome back."
The moment Liu Bai entered, he saw Raven, her hat removed, lying sprawled across the sofa and watching TV.
Several empty beer cans sat on the coffee table.
Black skintight bodysuits really were sexy...
"Should I say, 'I'm home'—like that?"
Then again, it really was startling to see her here.
"Whatever." Raven lazily changed channels. "Nothing happened today, right? I was already prepared for that maid to steal your soul away."
Liu Bai hung the black coat Raven had bought for him on the rack. "I haven't reached the point where my little head controls my big head."
"Oh? So your little head did move after all?" Raven wore a rare teasing expression.
"My dear sister, do you have to make jokes like that with your little brother?"
"...That title is really disgusting. Fine, I surrender." Raven curled her lip. "I bought food. I was originally planning to eat with Guinaifen first, but only you can use that pot—oh, right. Call me Natasha from now on, at least while we're playing house."
"Got it, Sister Natasha."
"Ugh... Why does that somehow sound even more disgusting..." Natasha sat up, the corner of her mouth twitching despite herself.
Maybe, in a certain sense, she really had made a bad decision.
"Then work hard to get used to it, Sister Natasha~"
"...I'm starting to regret this."
"So that means I'm moving next door, right?"
At the dining table, Liu Bai, Natasha, and Guinaifen chatted about the current situation while eating boxed meals. They also discussed arrangements for Guinaifen.
"After all, Guinaifen, your current persona isn't suitable," Natasha replied as though it were only natural.
Casually living together would arouse suspicion.
"Oh, and that pot. Rita might discover it, but when you go out, keep it in your bag and put some other things on top to hide it."
Natasha had tested it. That pot was far tougher than it looked.
She had not dared test it too forcefully, but a warrior's instincts told her it was not something that could be easily damaged.
So to Liu Bai, that thing was basically a safe house—and, strangely enough, it could even receive signals. At the very least, she could call Guinaifen inside the pot.
At certain times, it could even be used as a prison. Without Liu Bai's permission, no one could get out. It was rather overpowered.
Bringing it along clearly had more benefits than drawbacks.
"Come to think of it, Liu Bai, did you get another wristband?"
"Rita gave it to me. It's something internal to Schicksal." Liu Bai raised his hand to show the black and white wristbands on his wrist.
"Huh? You've already infiltrated Schicksal?"
"I'm just an unaffiliated agent planted at your side."
"Planted at my side..." Natasha seemed to have heard something amusing and revealed a wicked smile.
"Whoa, what a villain."
"What a villain."
"You two, shut up!"
The next day
Mobius: Little white mouse, come to my lab this morning Liu Bai: Understood Mobius: Good boy~
Was she really treating him like a pet?
Liu Bai grumbled inwardly while brushing his teeth.
"Morning, Liu Bai. Looks like you don't have a habit of sleeping in. I'm heading downstairs to buy breakfast."
"Sis, why not try making breakfast yourself?"
"No time for that—honestly, you can call me that without the slightest psychological burden."
Without the intent of making him uncomfortable, Natasha actually felt a little embarrassed about taking advantage of Liu Bai.
(...Wait a second, is this guy calling me that so smoothly because he wants to disgust me?)
Natasha paused slightly as she put on her shoes, but still opened the door and left.
"She's gone..." Liu Bai glanced at the closed door. "So, seriously, why was there something like that in the gacha pool?"
Before going to sleep last night, Liu Bai had returned to the pot and done a ten-pull.
But there had been no characters.
Well, that was understandable. After all, the pool only had soft and hard pity. Without a constellation system, the Astral Express characters would not be enough to fill a four-star pity.
After all, five-stars appeared much faster than four-stars.
So what appeared instead was...
Sweet Dew Celestial Summoning Ticket (single-use item): Upon use, summons a Sweet Dew Celestial to fight for you (Strength 4, Vitality 8, Agility 4, special skill: **Abundance 4**). Duration: 30 minutes. Upon use, gain a small amount of Abundance experience.
A summoning ticket for an elite Sweet Dew Celestial.
Judging from the stats alone, it was merely a weakened mage with a lot of health, but the "Abundance 4" in its special skills, along with the small amount of Abundance experience gained after using it, was far too noteworthy.
Was this a Path?
Unfortunately, it was a Sweet Dew Celestial summoning ticket, and its Path was Abundance.
Otherwise, Liu Bai really would have wanted to try seeing whether he could learn it.
At the end of the day, something like "walking alongside an Aeon" was far too subjective.
Liu Bai had asked Firefly and Guinaifen about it, but neither of their answers was particularly helpful.
Their answers could be summed up simply: The Aeon never blessed me, so how would I know how I got onto this Path?
They were called Pathwalkers, but they did not feel anything at all.
They had set foot on the Path because of their actions, not acted because of the Path—well, that was not entirely true either. Abundance, for example.
—Mortals may, intentionally or unintentionally, step onto the Paths governed by "Aeons," and from then on become "Pathwalkers" who practice their ideals.
Guinaifen was a classic case of stumbling onto one by accident...
He was not sure about Firefly, but judging from her attitude, she probably did not care either.
Walk your Path without believing in it. That was all.
It made Liu Bai want to get himself a Path to play with, but he simply could not.
Come to think of it, although the Abundance Path had massive drawbacks... wasn't it the easiest Path to join?
After all, it had a certain ability to "infect" people.
But he only had one life. Liu Bai was not about to court death. Sweet Dew Celestials and the like were better saved as bodyguards for critical moments.
Having a blindfolded blonde big sister as a bodyguard actually did not sound bad.
And following that logic, the gacha pool might contain summoning tickets for other elite monsters as filler for the ten-pull pity.
Speaking of which, aside from the single-use Sweet Dew Celestial summoning ticket, the other notable item from yesterday's ten-pull was the "Disposable Hypnosis Pocket Watch."
Disposable Hypnosis Pocket Watch (single-use item): Swing the pocket watch to hypnotize any character who stares at it for more than five seconds. Hypnosis lasts for ten minutes. Any action against the character's wishes, loud noises, and so on may cause the hypnosis to end early. (Hypnosis ending may lower favorability.) The pocket watch is destroyed after swinging for five seconds.
The rest were all vaguely useful yet incomprehensible items, like "Extremely Sturdy Binding Rope" and "High-Frequency Holy Sword."
...Had he installed too many weird mods?
They had seriously diluted the drop rate of useful items in the Gacha Machine.
Mobius's Assignment
After a simple classic breakfast of fried dough sticks and soy milk, Liu Bai rode to Shencheng Pharmaceuticals in Natasha's car, then headed to the laboratory under Gray Serpent's guidance.
Throughout the entire process, Gray Serpent seemed completely uninterested in what had happened to him—despite having access to intelligence, he was far too calm.
"Highlord, I've brought him."
Before you continue