42. Sirin: Do you think I'm doing a good job pretending?

"Don't worry, Miss Mulsus, if we can't succeed this time, then once the Thousand-Man Herrscher obtain the power of the Herrscher of the Void, it will be impossible to succeed... So, this is the only chance."

Meanwhile, on the other side...

"Hey, are you deaf? Why aren't you responding?"

The dolls huddled around Kiana, trying to see despair and sorrow on her face.

However, they were disappointed; in Kiana's suddenly opened eyes, they saw only unwavering determination.

"How should I react? Should I kneel down and cry, shouting that it's not true? Or should I fall into self-blame and desperately hurt myself?"

Kiana said coldly.

"This... this shouldn't be happening. I know, you don't believe this is the real Plague Gem? Then, let you experience its power for yourself!"

The doll held the gem aloft, and several Honkai Beasts were immediately summoned, their flame patterns imbued with the gem's power.

While urging the Honkai Beast to charge towards Kiana, the puppet continued to taunt her with a grin.

"You know what? When we found it in the Imaginary Space, it was drifting all alone. Where did its original owner go?"

"Who knows, hahaha..."

Kiana didn't take the words of the Thousand-Man Herrscher to heart, or rather, the Thousand-Man Herrscher overestimated her.

She didn't firmly believe that Himeko was not dead, as the Thousand-Man Herrscher claimed. In fact, as early as when Xia Ling appeared in Changkong City, she had imagined Himeko's possible fate more than once.

After all, even Xia Ling admitted that she was not alive, but "resurrected," Himeko, whose condition was even worse than Xia Ling's, was probably already in grave danger.

She had asked herself the same questions and self-blame countless times in the dead of night.

She had already shed all the tears she needed to shed, but the things she needed to do were not yet finished.

At the very least, we must not allow Himeko's belongings to remain in this puppet's hands.

Seizing the moment the doll used its power, Kiana suddenly appeared in front of it and, after a merciless knee strike, sent the doll flying.

"I don't know what kind of reaction you'd like to see..."

Kiana crouched down and picked up the fiery red gem from the ground.

"But I know... what Teacher Himeko wants me to do."

Chapter 42 Sirin: Do you think I'm good at pretending?

As Kiana picked up the gem, the surrounding dolls began to stir.

"It's been stolen! It's been stolen!"

"They claim to be righteous, yet they take things from others!"

"Thief, robber, death penalty!"

"However..." The puppets suddenly stopped their agitation and, with malicious expressions, uttered the exact same words.

"Stealing the jewels will come at a price..."

"After all, you've already declined to be one of us... In that case, we'll have to invite another guest."

"Let me think, didn't that Bishop of Schicksal do the same thing to you back then? Awaken her consciousness and then insert a core into you?"

"So, what will be the result of doing this? You... should know better than anyone else, right?"

"What, this is...?"

Kiana suddenly covered her eyes, and through her fingers, golden light, symbolizing Sirin, continuously overflowed.

"The Herrscher of the Void..."

Finally, the once azure eyes turned completely gold.

Amidst the dolls' undisguised laughter and malice, the consciousness representing Sirin is gradually awakened from its core.

"You got it right!"

Accompanied by Sirin's teasing voice, Kiana suddenly lost consciousness and fell heavily to the ground.

"This is..."

When Kiana opened her eyes again, she found herself in front of a familiar ceiling.

"Wait, is this my house?"

Kiana suddenly realized why she was so familiar with this place.

This is the house where Sirin and she lived together in her dream.

"You got it right!"

A voice, exactly the same malicious one it had just heard in the theater, rang in Kiana's ears, startling her.

Kiana turned around abruptly, and sure enough, Sirin, the culprit, was lying by her bedside, smiling at her with a smug look on her face, still looking smug after her successful prank.

"How was it? Did I do a good job of pretending?"

"Sirin ..."

Seeing Kiana staring blankly at her, Sirin suddenly felt awkward that the other person hadn't caught on to her joke, and for a moment, the atmosphere on the field made her a little uneasy.

"You, you can't just stay silent... How am I supposed to continue the conversation like this...?"

"Sorry, I just suddenly realized how much you've changed."

Kiana looked around and found that her room was still arranged exactly as in her dream, with almost no changes. From the details of the decorations, it was even clear that, although it wasn't reality, Sirin seemed to still be cleaning the house every day.

"Almost everyone I've met says that... though I haven't met many people."

"Hmm... It seems you still have many questions. That's alright. The flow of time inside and outside the core is different, so we have plenty of time."

Sirin simply moved a chair over and sat down next to Kiana.

"Does the core... have such a function?"

"Originally, it didn't exist, but since this is my own consciousness space, it's still possible to slow down the perception of time through the senses."

"Moreover, based on my previous performance, the Thousand-Man Herrscher probably still thinks I'm the same as before... It might even protect our bodies before we decide the winner."

"So... what you were doing just now, you were really acting?"

"Of course! What's wrong? Doesn't it look like me?" Sirin blinked. "It took me a lot of effort to even slightly recapture that feeling from before."

"Then your efforts weren't in vain." Kiana breathed a sigh of relief, "To be honest, it didn't seem like acting; I was genuinely startled just now."

Having shared a considerable amount of time in their dreams, Kiana and Sirin quickly got back into character even after a long gap between their reunion.

"Although I had been thinking about seeing you again, now that we've actually met... I don't know where to begin."

"Then let me answer your questions about the Thousand-Man Herrscher first."

Sirin thought for a moment and decided to start with the most recent thing, "You dream every night, you remember that, right?"

"Of course, every time I push open the door to my room, I just faint." Kiana's tone was tinged with resentment. "Because of this, Sister Xia Ling even teased me, saying that it's good to be young, you can fall asleep as soon as you lie down."

"Hahaha..." Sirin looked away shyly. "It was definitely my fault at first... When I was recalling my memories of reality just now, I really didn't know how to face you..."

"But every time you dream, you get drawn into my dream world, so I can only let you sleep one more time in your dream..."

"At the beginning?" Kiana noticed the key phrase. "So, what about later?"

"That's right, later on, your dreams became less innocent."

Sirin said earnestly, "I don't know if you still remember the order of each dream, but... if you do, you'll find that the proportion of your dreams follows a pattern."

"From a certain point in time, the proportion of pleasant memories in your dreams began to gradually decrease, and in their place came the nightmare of me in the Tower of Babylon Tower, which you should still remember."

"Hmm, but it seems like they haven't appeared much lately?"

"That's because I interfered with your dream." Sirin's tone was somewhat serious.

"At first, I didn't really have any opinion about your dreaming. I brought you into the house simply because this is the core and deepest part, where you can have a better experience of your dream."

"But just recently, I discovered that your dreams seem to have been interfered with by someone."

"You mean... the Thousand-Man Herrscher?"

"That's right. Didn't the Thousand-Man Herrscher tell you that they can connect with people who have the potential to become puppets to some extent?"

"Clearly, they probably interfered with your dreams to some extent, mainly by increasing the proportion of your nightmares... which is a way of disturbing your state of mind."

"To prevent you from being disturbed, I separated those dreams, keeping only the relatively pleasant ones for you."

"However, since their interference has become increasingly rampant lately, I simply dispelled those dreams... That's why you haven't dreamed for the past two days."

Chapter 43 We—are all extensions of Sirin

"I see... Thank you, Sirin."

Kiana expressed her sincere gratitude.

"No, don't say that... Compared to what I did before, this is nothing..."

Sirin turned her face away in embarrassment. Compared to gratitude, she might have felt better if Kiana had treated her the same way she treated the Thousand-Man Herrscher.

Silence fell over the room for a moment.

"Sirin," Kiana suddenly said, "Do you know? Just recently, Sister Xia Ling said something to me."

"She told me that instead of worrying about it myself, I should just go and ask the person involved."

"You can't move forward if you dwell on the past. No matter what the outcome, I think... you should at least give it a try."

"So that's what you're worried about... Don't worry, I have no intention of standing still. After being so withdrawn for so long, it's time to face reality."

Sirin smiled and stood up.

"Moreover, it's time to face it."

"Have to?"

"Well, after all, you've gradually come to realize that fact..."

This time, Kiana was the one who remained silent.

"It's impossible that you didn't notice anything after having such a long dream, right?"

"Besides, even if you didn't notice Bella's attitude towards you, and the extent to which I interfered with you beyond normal limits, you should have realized something by now."

"That's right... I've realized it." Kiana sighed. "This is something I have to face... Only by facing this can I truly master the Herrscher Core and accomplish what Sister Xia Ling said... Ascension."

"You and I... are two selves born from this body, two beings born from Sirin's desire."

"We are all extensions of Sirin —aren't we?"

"You guessed it after all... As expected of you. Reimu, the first one," Sirin said with a satisfied smile.

"It's a pity that all my efforts to guide you to understand this matter have been wasted. You may seem silly at times, but you're not stupid at all when it comes to these crucial issues."

"So... when did you find out?"

"I should say I've had some doubts for a long time... until Sister Xia Ling created the dream, my doubts turned into speculations, and these speculations were only recently confirmed."

Kiana explained, "At first, my understanding of you was very simple: you were the soul of the Second Herrscher residing in the core."

"However, when I saw Anti-Entropy's records about the Second Honkai Outbreak, I had a question."

"If the consciousness within the core can truly have such an effect on the original owner of the body, then wasn't your act of absorbing the Herrscher of Reason Core during the Second Honkai Outbreak just asking for trouble?"

"Hey, didn't you consider that Sirin was just a little girl back then? Didn't she know any of this?"

Sirin was somewhat speechless. Although she could recognize her own identity, she still identified herself as the Sirin from the Second Honkai Outbreak in her mind. Every time the Second Honkai Outbreak was mentioned, she always felt strange.

It's roughly equivalent to the feeling of "How could I have been so bad back then?" and "I'm already so bad, and you still insist on making me review why I was so bad."

"Well, just because you don't know doesn't mean Mr. Welt doesn't know. In fact, when he was inside you, he didn't have nearly the same level of freedom as you..."

"So, I've been wondering why you have such a high degree of interference with my body and consciousness, even though you clearly don't have any mental abilities, you can still repeatedly manipulate my dreams."