After sending the two of them out, Liu Bai patted Herta, who was hanging off him.
"Mm... don't, don't say something so embarrassing..."
Herta seemed to have gone completely soft from having no strength left.
"Get me something to drink, or this body won't hold up."
"Oh—mmph! Why are you pinching me!"
"I should be asking why you're unfastening your belt!"
Herta looked up at Liu Bai with a flushed face. "I want something to drink! Something hydrating! Not that thing! Aren't you usually full of common sense?"
"I only pretend to have it... Fine, I'll go get you a bag of milk..."
"...Forget it. Desperate times call for desperate measures!"
"Hey, hey!"
--
"Do you know anything about Cyrene?"
"Mm... slurp... I feel like I've heard of her somewhere... Let me think... Liu Bai, do you know about the Imperial Scepter?"
"The interstellar intelligent-machine crisis?"
"...That was an awfully simple way to put it, but yes... slurp... I feel that she may be connected to the Imperial Scepter. After Rupert II's empire vanished, far too many Imperial Scepters—supercomputers created by it—were left scattered throughout the galaxy."
Herta seemed to choke a little.
"Burp~ From a certain perspective, these things are even more troublesome than Stellaron, but then again... There are quite a few Imperial Scepters, yet normally no one can use them. After all, although the Second Empire did not collapse as swiftly as the First, machines are machines... Without orders, they can hardly operate. And the people who come into contact with these things most often are those of us from the Erudition faction."
"Are scientists the ones who usually cause great disasters...?"
Liu Bai leaned back against his chair and looked down at Herta.
"So Cyrene's origins may be connected to your Erudition faction—or rather, she might