"Who has such weird hobbies!?"
"Well, it's Wendy after all."
"What do you mean, 'after all'? Do you take me for some strange creature? Besides, the weirdest one of all is you, you dead salted fish!"
"Sigh, little Wendy, don't mind, don't mind!"
Today's elderly-group sunrise-viewing event once again ended with Delta's "sizzle-sizzle" comfortable water-drinking sounds and Wendy's frantic shouting.
After returning, Wendy immediately went to the research institute's assistant to ask for an electric wheelchair.
And then, she was refused.
People even looked at her with strange gazes, as if questioning where she got such thick skin.
A furious Wendy shoved open the door to Delta's room.
"Delta, you scammed me again!"
"Pfft! You actually believed it?"
"Then why is it that only you get one?"
"I've got connections, Wendy!"
Someone puffed out her chest, unashamed and even proud of it.
Then, even more frantic, raging screams came from Wendy from inside the room.
What a wonderful time it was, so wonderful that the loneliness and sorrow of the recent past felt like an illusion, as if even the pain of the Gem of Desire surging within her body could be completely ignored.
When Wendy woke up on the experimental table, she couldn't help sighing with such emotion, immediately yearning for Delta's lazy, salted-fish-like expression.
And so, Wendy sat up from the experimental table, then felt a strange, numb, and itchy sensation in both of her legs.
"?"
This discomfort was very strange.
It wasn't that her legs had been in better condition before; on the contrary, previously their state was completely infiltrated by the power of the Gem of Desire, not only causing unbearable and intense pain, but also carrying a threat of death that felt like it could spread from her legs to her entire body at any moment.
But now, those feelings seemed to have completely vanished, leaving only a mild tingling and weakness, at least entirely tolerable for a Valkyrie.
"I am..."
Wendy reached out her hand, gently stroking her snow-white and tender thighs.
There was the sensation of being touched.
She couldn't sense anything no matter how much she touched or pinched them before!
Why?
Wendy instinctively felt a burst of ecstasy, but then, she realized a terrifying reality.
The Gem of Desire seemed to have been moved out of her body, but this experiment had only two qualified bearers so far—where would the gem be now? Whose body was it in?
"Where's Delta? Where is she? Where is Delta!?"
Wendy grabbed the collar of a nearby researcher and roared like crazy.
The other person looked as though they had expected this long ago; despite being somewhat startled, they still calmly replied:
"As for Delta, she woke up a bit earlier than you and has already gone back."
Having received her answer, Wendy didn't say another word as she hoisted herself onto the wheelchair with both hands, pushed the wheels with all her might, and quickly rushed out of the laboratory.
Only then was she somewhat glad she hadn't switched to an electric one, because motors could hardly compare to a Valkyrie's arm strength, and when needed, manual was far faster than electric.
"Delta!"
Wendy rushed into that long-familiar room, where a sweet, faint fragrance of the room's owner still lingered in the air, but Delta's figure was nowhere to be seen.
Wendy paused for a moment, then abruptly whipped the wheelchair around and bolted outside.
Today's sea breeze was somewhat biting, feeling icy-cold to Wendy who was only wearing a single lab coat; the gloomy sky and the harsh cries of the seagulls made her feel even more uncomfortable.
Finally, at the spot where the two of them often sat to watch the sunset and sunrise, Wendy saw the familiar silhouette in the wheelchair.
A hand extended from the wheelchair, slender and pale, making one instinctively want to cup it in their hands to warm it up. And above those delicate fingers, an unusual current of air was swirling.
Wendy felt her eye sockets sting and heat up; she knew without looking in a mirror that she was probably on the verge of crying.
Then that wheelchair turned around, revealing that familiar, delicate face, which was much paler than usual.
"Yo, how does it feel to have the Gem of Desire taken out, Wendy?"
You super big idiot!!!
"Hey, wait, what are you doing? Don't crash into me!"
Wendy's wheelchair came on with the unstoppable momentum of a dump truck, knocking an unprepared Delta tumbling to the ground.
"Bang!"
On this day, both wheelchairs were written off at the same time.
"Wendy, you're the idiot, it hurts so much!"
"Shut up! Jerk! You deserve to hurt to death!"
"I didn't offend you, did I? Is it wrong to just want to give you a surprise?"
"This isn't a surprise at all! Damn Delta, who told you to do this? Did you ask me first? Jerk, idiot, wuwuwu..."
The sound of the two of them talking was swallowed up by the sound of the waves and the wind, lingering for a long time before subsiding.
When the laboratory assistants received the distress signal and rushed over, they only saw two physically impaired young girls hugging each other and falling fast asleep on the ground.
Among them, Delta was wearing a smile, while Wendy's eyelids were damp, and even in her sleep, she tightly clutched Delta's body, refusing to let go.
Chapter 66: The Final Promise
Two weeks after the gem transfer, Wendy had basically recovered her walking ability and started rehabilitation exercises at the Valkyrie level.
In the brightly lit professional rehabilitation exercise room, Wendy kicked off the ground to run, leaped mid-air at the appropriate timing, grabbed the aerial rings, and flipped and danced. Her petite and soft body was like a butterfly fluttering in the wind, carrying an admirable and agile beauty.
For creatures like Valkyries, even mere rehabilitation displayed physical capabilities sufficient to make the most professional athletes drool with envy.
Yet only Delta appreciated this pleasing sight.
It wasn't that the two of them tyrannically occupied this activity room, but rather...
"Speaking of which, last mission was really dangerous; that Honkai Beast jumped out from the burial mound of corpses and almost smashed my head in... Sorry, to disturb!"
"Bang!"
After the hurried sound of a slamming door, one could completely imagine the flustered and wretched sight of those Valkyries fleeing in panic.
The original Wendy was already enough to make people keep their distance, and now with Delta sitting by the door sipping wolfberry tea, it was naturally even more intimidating.
Wendy flipped through the air a few times and landed lightly. Her raised hands were like wings that had just finished a flight, and her form-fitting gym suit perfectly revealed a striking, graceful curve.
Wendy smugly tilted the corner of her mouth.
"Am I awesome?"
"Ah, awesome, awesome, Wendy is the best~"
Delta read from a script, her face fixed with an unchanging dead fish eye.
Seeing this infuriating expression where a compliment was equivalent to no compliment at all, Wendy puffed out her cheeks in depression, walked up to Delta, and gently poked her forehead.
"You don't have an ounce of sincerity!"
"Then how about a cup of hot water?"
"Bring it! Watch me drink it all up, and die of thirst for all I care, bleh~~"
Wendy unscrewed the thermos and poured it straight into her mouth, spitting out her pink tongue dully a second time.
"Cough! Hot!"
"You really aren't too bright."
"Get lost! You only know how to tick me off!"
"No, oh, it's Wendy who has a bad temper. You should learn from me: keep calm and smiley smiley~~"
Delta said slowly, pulling up the corners of her mouth with both hands at the same time to show Wendy a physically forced smile.
Wendy rolled her eyes and squatted down, packed the thermos well, placed it properly on the wheelchair rack, and said:
"So this thing called keeping calm means going to the cafeteria again yesterday to use your sharp tongue on someone else?"
"As for that, just had some free time, went to warm up my vocal cords."
Delta said listlessly, waving her hand slowly.
Wendy was simply laughed to anger.
"Your kind of warming up your vocal cords really opens my eyes!"
"Don't mind it. Live long enough, and you'll see every kind of ghost."
"What are you acting mature for, a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old minor like you!"
Wendy delivered a knife-hand chop downward.
The force was very light, feeling no different from a gentle stroke to Delta.
Then Wendy stared straight into Delta's calm and unfocused eyes, sighed with complicated emotions, and said:
"Actually, they aren't that bad. It's just that they've faced the horror of Honkai head-on, and more or less lost something in the Honkai; acting like that is somewhat excusable."
"You mean PTSD?"
"Pretty much."
"Then what does that have to do with me?"
Delta said indifferently, her bland expression completely unchanged.
Wendy was somewhat startled.
Then she heard Delta continue to speak slowly:
"Aren't you a Valkyrie? Haven't you been on the battlefield? Don't you have that little bit of PTSD? Everyone has PTSD, why should we give way to them?"
"Though that's not quite how it goes, I unexpectedly have nothing to say in rebuttal. Your mouth is really something; I've never seen such an eloquent Valkyrie!"
Wendy was half emotional, half helpless.
To put it bluntly, Wendy didn't consider herself a saint either.
On that day when she silently endured verbal abuse, Delta had come behind her speaking eloquently, just like building a shield and sword for her—after that, the scale in Wendy's heart had long since tilted.
Yet just as Wendy intended to skip over this topic, Delta said again:
"But what you said is right, they aren't that bad. Only reasonable people will blush at my words, and for those who have rotted to the point of being shameless, I am entirely helpless. From this point of view, they really haven't rotted to the core."
"...Are you praising me or running me down here?"
"Actually, Valkyries are just soldiers, weapons that are managed and constrained. The root problem of military ethos is never the soldiers themselves, but—somewhere else."
Delta pointed her finger upward, revealing a meaningful smile.
Wendy blinked blankly, opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, and opened it once more. After repeating this several times, she finally said dully:
"You can say these things to me, but don't go talking nonsense outside, or you'll stir up trouble."
As a local Valkyrie, how could Wendy be completely unaware of the root cause of the chaotic and improper ethos?
Yet, being mere Valkyries, unless they promoted to the strategically important S-rank, what could they possibly do against the huge dark shroud hanging over their heads?
Perhaps this was also one of the reasons why she resolutely accepted the Gem of Desire experiment back then, hoping to soar to the skies in a single bound through the experiment, and perhaps then she would be able to do something.
It was just that the encounters that followed completely exposed the cruelty of reality.
Thinking up to this point, Wendy shook her head, deciding to terminate this dangerous topic.
"How have you been feeling lately? Can you really handle it? I've mostly recovered; if you can't bear it on your end, we can transfer it back to me. I heard this kind of recovery and re-transfer might improve our adaptability, maybe it'll be the way the experiment succeeds!"
"I'm fine, no need to live in a box for now. While your legs and feet are still good, run a few more errands for me; the efficiency with legs and without legs really is different."