That was why Flame Willow could ask Little Kong to help conceal some of her "little secrets."
"Sister Reed, when are you leaving?"
"Hmm... counting the days, probably another three or four days."
As she spoke, Flame Willow pinched Little Kong's cheek and said softly,
"If there's anything you want to eat these next few days, feel free to ask me. Consider it... a bribe for you all?"
Little Kong shook her head and said quietly, "I was just... worried about Teacher after hearing what Sister Reed said."
"It's fine. My destination this time happens to be the same as Raven's, so I'll keep an eye on her for you."
"Huh? Is that so?" Little Kong raised her head and asked in surprise, "Is Sister Reed going to come clean with Teacher?"
"Of course not. If I came clean, I might not be able to stay with you anymore."
"But secretly looking after Raven is still no problem."
"Then Sister Reed, you have to keep a close eye on Teacher."
"Don't worry. As long as I'm there, nothing will happen."
After nightfall, several people sat around a bonfire in the system's snowy Research Team Camp.
"Flame Willow, you really can't kick that habit of setting flags." Xia Ling looked deeply moved. "The main thing is that reality beats you up every time, and then you keep doing it next time."
"It's fine. I recover quickly and can take a fall." Flame Willow did not care in the slightest.
"I've got a bit of a problem on my end." Highmore frowned. "Ever since we successfully hollowed out Oceania's Valkyries during the Manila Honkai eruption, I've clearly felt that Branch Leader getting a little too bold lately."
"It's only been two months, right? He's already getting restless?"
"I'm afraid it's precisely because he transferred away all the veteran Valkyries that he's in such a hurry now."
A distinctly childish voice spoke from the fourth seat.
"Recently, I've had nothing to do in the system every day, so I've been empathizing with Highmore. I can clearly see that the Branch Leader's high-end combat force is somewhat lacking."
"That's why he wants to push the experiment through as quickly as possible and cultivate a batch of high-end combatants of his own."
"But he really went too far. Today, he directly took a small sample from my arm." Highmore complained. "I can block out the pain, but Wendy was heartbroken just watching."
"Isn't that perfect? It lets you farm more favorability. Unlike me, who stays in the system space doing nothing every day, empathizing with you all like some old man making hospital rounds."
That was right. The voice sitting in the fourth seat belonged to the fourth character card Xia Ling had exchanged for.
As for her identity...
"Dusk, you could totally practice your painting skills more." Flame Willow said with a grin. "Otherwise, having all that ability but being unable to paint even a landscape would feel pretty miserable."
Dusk rolled her eyes. "Give it a rest. According to the plan, I'm supposed to infiltrate the inside of Schicksal. There'll be plenty of teachers to teach me how to paint then. Why would I need to slowly figure it out myself?"
"Besides, such awful painting skills fit the persona we painstakingly prepared even better."
Dusk, one of the twelve fragments of the Beast, was also one of the few pitiable characters whose presence grew less impressive the further the story went.
Even so, her potential was extremely strong. Although the character card exchanged by the system retained only her Ink-Summoning Soldiers and World within Paintings abilities, Dusk still had exceptionally good "mechanics" among Xia Ling's current characters.
The only problem was that Xia Ling could not paint, and the character card apparently had not included Dusk's painting skills either.
So... after Xia Ling had seen the abstract painted world Dusk created with her abilities, something like the Witch's Barrier from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, they no longer dared let Dusk improvise freely.
In Xia Ling's words, it was an affront to the heavens. Looking at it made people lose SAN.
It was worth mentioning that, in order to accommodate Xia Ling's upcoming plan, she had specifically asked the system to make a small modification when generating the body.
As for what the modification was...
Looking at Dusk, who appeared to be around twelve years old, Xia Ling smiled. "Whether you can paint or not doesn't really matter. Even if Otto doesn't help you, you can still ask Rita."
"Trust me. When Rita sees what you look like, she'll definitely do everything possible to keep you."
"And Durandal has just adopted Stan, so she'll definitely speak up for Rita too."
"Then you'll be the beloved mascot of the Blade of Annihilation."
An Unexpected Encounter
"Being everyone's favorite isn't all that important."
"Compared to that, whichever one of us it is, we're usually the ones taking care of others. Someone like me, being taken care of instead, is actually in the minority. Now that I think about it, I'm rather looking forward to it."
"Look forward to it all you want. It won't help." Flame Willow played with a flame in her hand and said absentmindedly, "I still have three or four days before departure, and you have to stay at St. Freya during that time as a teleportation anchor."
"Your part won't come until we finish all the preparations."
"Sigh, when will the system change that ability requiring the host's individual body to serve as an anchor? Switching back and forth like this is really troublesome..."
Ahem, that ability is being updated. It will most likely be optimized so that teleportation can target marked objects belonging to the host's individual body.
"But there's still some time before the optimization is complete. It's estimated to launch alongside the Elysian Realm teleportation module after the security system upgrade, right?" Xia Ling rolled her eyes. "I could recite that line by now."
Hehe, there's nothing I can do about it.
"Ah, right. Speaking of the Elysian Realm, Xia Ling, when are we summoning Elysia?" Flame Willow suddenly asked.
"I'm not sure yet... According to the system, the conversion for the summoning time of the Angry Accord means one node is equivalent to three days."
Xia Ling shook her head. "I'll have to wait until you arrive before teleporting over to take a look. We need to find the location of the Second Divine Key first before we can summon Elysia."
"Although the original story said its approximate location was above the River Thames, searching that area will still take time."
"In the original story, Otto mobilized Schicksal's mech forces to conduct a comprehensive scan of the entire region before finding the exact location. It might be more convenient if I go looking for it."
"Because your ability is related to space too, right?" Flame Willow picked up where she left off. "Fine, then I'll leave in three days. Have you handled things at St. Freya?"
"Yeah. I told both Theresa and Welt that I sensed something in the Sea of Quantum that concerned me."
"After I return this time, I'll use the opportunity to reveal some information about Kevin to Anti-Entropy."
"Poor Kevin is going to catch a stray bullet."
Three days later, under Little Kong's reluctant gaze, Flame Willow boarded a plane bound for London.
Of course, the identity she used this time was not the one Raven had arranged for her, but the fake identity Xia Ling had obtained through her deal with Anti-Entropy.
Speaking of which, although Xia Ling had never expected Anti-Entropy not to keep some level of surveillance on that identity, what surprised her was that Anti-Entropy had truly left it completely unguarded.
While Xia Ling tried using the identity herself several times, she also had Duck Duck secretly record who was collecting information generated by it.
After several attempts, Duck Duck's conclusion was that no one had accessed any information related to the identity. Not even Anti-Entropy's other Executors had shown any interest in it.
Perplexed, Xia Ling continued investigating Anti-Entropy's internal situation. Combined with some indirect probing of Welt, she finally understood the reason.
Although it had always been openly and secretly opposing Schicksal, Anti-Entropy was fundamentally a loose alliance organization. Quite a few nations secretly funded it from behind the scenes. The conservatives were relatively better, but some radicals did things behind the scenes that were no better than the Babylon Laboratory.
Identities that suddenly appeared like this seemed quite common within Anti-Entropy. Since it was difficult to trace which Executor they belonged to, Anti-Entropy's internal policy was not to investigate further as long as the identity verification was valid.
Otherwise, what if they really uncovered something?
Once again sighing over what a good person Welt truly was, Xia Ling began using the identity for all sorts of activities without a shred of guilt.
Naturally, lending the identity to Flame Willow this time was simply mixed in among that string of activities and seemed nothing special.
Flame Willow had originally planned to put on makeup and change her appearance, but later discovered that she and makeup simply did not get along. She could only change her single side ponytail hanging on the left into an energetic high ponytail before hurriedly setting foot in London.
"So next... I should find a hotel first."
Half an hour later, beneath an eave, Flame Willow looked speechlessly at the rain on the street.
"London's weather really is unpredictable." Flame Willow sighed. "What a miscalculation. I was so busy familiarizing myself with all the identification documents before leaving that I actually forgot something as important as an umbrella."
"And just my luck, there isn't a single convenience store nearby that sells umbrellas."
Xia Ling's gleeful voice sounded through the communication channel.
"It's not convenient for me to leave right now. It'll take at least half an hour before I can bring you an umbrella. Until then, you can enjoy London's rainy scenery."
"Of course, if you really don't want to wait, we have a backup plan here."
There was never such a thing as too many people watching a joke. Highmore, still lying bored on the experiment table, immediately rushed in to mock her as well.
"Look at that collectible we got after finishing the roguelike last week, the Scale Cloak." Highmore made no attempt to hide the malice in her voice. "We can have the system disable the equipment effect and temporarily restore its original function as a rain cape."
"Forget it. With that shape, I'd turn directly into a street performance artist, wouldn't I?"
Flame Willow curled her lip and decided to temporarily mute these people who had nothing better to do every day. However, just then, someone suddenly patted her shoulder from behind.
"Hello, did you not bring an umbrella? If you don't mind... is that you?"
The instant Flame Willow turned around, both she and the person behind her jumped in shock.
"Reed?"
"Anna?"
The sudden reunion left both of them utterly stunned. At the very least, Flame Willow was.
By then, she was frantically calling for help through the channel.
"Help, help! What's going on? An acquaintance I never expected to see just appeared here!"
"Why is Anna here?" Xia Ling was equally shocked.
"Hypothesis: This place is very close to Schicksal Headquarters, and the cleanup after the Manila Honkai eruption has only recently ended." Dusk's calm voice spoke. "Therefore, she is here on vacation."
Although the discussion in her mind was intense, Flame Willow kept a straight face in reality.
"Ahem. If I say you have the wrong person, can you pretend you didn't see me?"
"How could I possibly do that?!"
"Sigh, what a hassle."
"You think it's a hassle just because I said hello?" Anna's eyes widened. "Am I some kind of terrible person?"
"So, what are you doing in London?" Flame Willow looked away.
"Don't answer a question with a question!"
Although Anna said that, she still obediently answered Flame Willow's question.
"After the Manila Honkai eruption ended, I returned to Schicksal Headquarters for treatment. At the same time, I received commendations and a promotion, and the Snow Lotus Squad's designation was retained."
"Bishop Otto said the promotion would still need to go through a long process, and rebuilding the squad would take time. So with a wave of his hand, he directly approved three months of leave for me and told me to come out and relax."
"I asked Rita for advice, and she recommended London, so here I am."
You Seem a Little Kaslana
"That... sounds pretty reasonable."
Flame Willow muttered to herself and nodded slightly.
"What kind of impression do you even have of me?! Do I need to lie to you?"
Anna felt exhausted. It seemed like she had used up an entire year's worth of snark today.
"To be honest, I have a pretty good impression of Schicksal's Valkyries, especially the Kaslana and Saniyat families."
"Really? Why?"
The sudden compliment made Anna blush slightly as she asked embarrassedly.
"They're stupid, rich, easy to fool, and most importantly, they're basically all good people."
Flame Willow gave her a thumbs-up.
"You... forget it. I really shouldn't have had any expectations for someone like you." Anna was so angered by her that she could not speak for a moment.
"Wait, no." Suddenly, Anna remembered the speculation about Flame Willow made by the commander named Xia Ling.
"You, why exactly are you here? This is very close to Schicksal Headquarters. What are you trying to do?"
Seeing Anna suddenly become wary, Flame Willow smiled helplessly. "You really are just like before. You have absolutely no vigilance. I've been fishing for information from you for ages, and only now did you realize my identity is suspicious."
"You really do have another purpose?" Anna sucked in a breath. "You... what are you trying to do?"
"Hehe, I'm going to punch Schicksal and Otto, and experience the feeling of his Soulium face creaking beneath my fist."
Before you continue