Nightmare / Revenge

There was no kindling there at all; it burned spontaneously without wind, hovering right in the palm of her hand, burning slowly yet steadily.

That was a heat Yelena could feel even from afar.

"From a general standpoint, we are not the same kind of people, but to some extent, we sort of are...

----We are both outcasts."

"I have to go to work in a new place in a few days, so I'll be taking you with me. It's not that far away, right in Chernobog in the central region."

That was a Mobile City-State.

"But... I am an Infected."

After a long while, the girl whispered softly, seemingly enduring the bitterness brought on by sobs.

"I have a way. I'm a doctor, after all."

Even if it was just psychiatry.

With that, the young lady casually tossed her silver locks, turning what had originally been smooth hair into a bird's nest.

Paying no mind to the girl's low spirits, Chlorine Sodium just kept talking to herself.

Or rather, things that weren't really issues in the young lady's eyes were no problem at all, but in Yelena's eyes, they were towering mountains.

Suddenly, a small hand tightly grasped the hem of Chlorine Sodium's clothes.

"Don't... leave me, okay."

Without looking at the girl in her arms, Chlorine Sodium only gave a cold response.

"Okay."

Chapter 10: Nightmare

Yet another brand-new morning, and the silver-haired young lady appeared on the city streets, holding breakfast bought from the roadside.

This place was called Terra.

What an inauspicious name indeed; the last world called Terra was being invaded by the Chaos Gods, and the Emperor could only sit on the Golden Throne glowing and heating up.

"A demi-human worldview, huh."

The silver-haired young lady stood on the street corner, holding a soda bought from a shop, looking at scenery different from anything she had seen before.

This was a city with a fair bit of vitality, and also the city Yelena had mentioned that was closest to that village.

Even as the closest, it was still separated by a straight-line distance of 913 kilometers.

After all, she flew straight over, so Chlorine Sodium only calculated the straight-line distance.

Right now, Chlorine Sodium, disguised slightly, looked just like a trendy student. A baseball cap and a hoodie just happened to obscure the top of her head, making it hard for people to tell whether she was an Ursus, allowing her to fish in troubled waters without being noticed.

Her long silver hair and blue-black pupils, along with an orange and white hoodie, concealed most of her appearance, keeping her as inconspicuous as possible.

However... it was still far too dazzling to a certain extent.

At least as a female protagonist existing in game settings, she was simply too fantastical. Even though her current body was later remodeled, it still copied her previous look precisely.

Exquisite blue-black pupils like gemstones watched the newspaper in her other hand without a single ripple.

Her long silver hair cascaded like a waterfall; even though a hood covered the vast majority of it, this charm and the figure that clothing couldn't hide were truly impressive.

She had to admit, high looks made anything look good.

Although she, Chlorine Sodium, hated superficial appearances and preferred purity within, people were all superficial anyway, and even she was no exception. Looking good was indeed a plus.

She could only say.

I am so cute.

The turnaround rate of passing males was over ninety percent, while the remaining ten percent could only sneak a glance under the pressure of their female companions.

Chlorine Sodium didn't care about that, though; her purpose in coming out was to gather information on this plane.

And newspapers were one of the best ways to obtain information.

So, Infected... are truly such beings, huh. Compared to the information automatically given during a time-travel, what she saw with her own eyes had much more tangible reality, and her subsequent actions would have a more practical reference.

Very well, no matter what, she was a villain after all. How could a villain not commit evil deeds?

And this was yet a world filled with tragedy.

It complemented each other quite nicely.

As for the situation in Ursus, everywhere she looked now were Ursus people.

Just like brown bears, really, with those round brown ears that made one yearn to pinch them.

If that was the case, was the white rabbit actually a rabbit and not a donkey?

No, that kind of thinking was too hasty. A donkey was an animal too; there was no way a demi-human worldview wouldn't have donkey-people.

Cold and shaking with anger, when would donkey-people ever stand up?

No, what on earth was she even rambling about.

Driving these comedic thoughts out of her mind, who was Chlorine Sodium? She was a super arch-villain, a senior villain who had traveled through countless worlds, become countless villains, maxed out aggro, and still survived the protagonists.

Therefore, as a qualified veteran villain, she ought to be a despicable and cunning, cunning and despicable person.

The righteous were completely without ideals, slow to realize, overflowing with sympathy, and relied entirely on luck and protagonist halo to overcome hardships.

While the noble higher-up villains were full of ideals, possessed foresight and mighty agency, overcoming hardships through their own talent and effort.

So if not for the protagonist halo, how could a villain in the face lose~

Yet after banishing these thoughts, she did come up with plenty of ideas for future planning.

Right now, Yelena couldn't be definitively confirmed as the protagonist.

If she was the protagonist, great; what if she wasn't?

Although Chlorine Sodium was well-versed in utilizing characters—treating Yelena as the protagonist would yield massive profits, and if not the protagonist, she'd just treat her as raising a tool-character. After all, how could she, the mastermind boss, not have lackies around her, right?

Still, the work of searching for the true protagonist could not be put down. Fortunately, she was a villain, and protagonists and villains were always mutually attracted; as long as she went out to stir up trouble, she would bound to run into the protagonist.

This was just like a jujube tree: whether there are jujubes or not, strike a branch; collateral damage would always flush the protagonist out.

Either an impassioned youth bursting with a sense of justice, or a miserable protagonist whose family was ruined by collateral damage, anyway, as long as she stirred up trouble, she could fish the protagonist out. She had used this method in several worlds, and it worked every single time.

The question then arose: how to stir up trouble.

Ursus was a military-supremacist empire, and its military power was relatively independent. After all, if the High Lords played along, it was the feudal enfeoffment of the Zhou dynasty; if they didn't, it was holding the emperor to command the lords.

Yet nothing remained unchanged forever. A generation or two was fine, but once all those old folks enfeoffed passed away, the newly arrived second and third-generation fief-holders might not play along.

Yellow Robe Usurpation warning.

Therefore, the commanders of the Ursus Army Groups, those nobles, seemed unsatisfied with just being High Lords; human desires were truly endless.

And Ursus's current state was one of high-pressure policies, suppressing all dissenting voices, making reform next to impossible. It was simply the portrait of a senile, decaying empire.

Generally, at the end of an era and the intersection of the next, countless stories would emerge, and protagonists and heroes would be birthed in such times.

In that case, she would just accelerate this process.

Since the guarantee of the high-pressure policy was Ursus's formidable military might, what if one day, a mysterious entity severely battered the empire's army?

It didn't need to be completely destroyed—she didn't have the luxury of time and effort for that. As long as it was severely battered, creating the impression that the decaying empire's army was utterly unable to fight, that would be enough.

When the world fell into chaos by then, surely a protagonist could be fished out by her. After all, she was the spark that ignited the powder keg.

Of course, this matter could not be done covertly. Not only did she have to openly beat up the Ursus army, but she also had to reveal her own existence, telling witnesses that a mysterious entity did such a thing. That way, even if she needed a target for hostility, it would be easy to establish, right?

Ha, as expected of me.

Although she liked a peaceful life, spending the rest of her days like a plant—she was just that easily contented.

If she had to take action, however, she would never lose to anyone!

Hmm?

Just as Chlorine Sodium was indulging in fantasies about the life she pursued, the arrival of a message brought the young lady back to her senses.

It was the signal of a trigger device.

That was a technological creation from the Honkai world, extremely inconspicuous and not using this world's communication methods. Instead, it used Honkai Energy to contact her, lacking any alarm mechanism and merely notifying her of activation.

Before leaving, she had placed numerous trigger devices around the surroundings of the village. After all, Yelena might or might not be the protagonist, but she was Chlorine Sodium's investment! Was it easy for Chlorine Sodium to meticulously deceive her target using all her methodological knowledge? This was her investment, after all; as an evil-doer she never acted without a target. Any gift had already been marked with its price in the dark, and she never did losing business.

Could it be wild beasts invading the village?

Impossible, because these devices plus the traces she left behind radiated trace amounts of Honkai Energy. Although machines couldn't detect it, it had a repellent effect on animals, since animals possessed far more acute perception than humans.

Since it wasn't wild beasts, it had to be some death-seeking fellows.

Running wild in a deity's domain? Who gave them the courage, Fish Leong?!

And now, this thing had been triggered, and an entire patch of them at that, indicating the village had been surrounded.

She was quite curious and wanted to see just who was so blindly courting death.

Unawares, her originally blue pupils burst forth with an ominous golden hue!

That was flowing energy, and her rounded pupils suddenly expanded into the Cross Star Pupils representing a Herrscher.

The young lady who activated her Authority vanished from the streets of Ursus in a mere instant, unnoticed by anyone, as if this girl had never existed there at all.

Big sister... did she go out to get food?

"Muw~"

Because suppressing her abilities required concentrating all her attention, consuming too much energy, and Yelena was only a child after all.

So recently, apart from self-control training, all she did was sleep; after all, the only way to replenish energy was rest.

Sleeping in the other's arms, the barrier between the two had invisibly vanished.

Yelena rubbed her eyes and climbed out from the broken sofa. Glancing at the sky outside, for some reason, today's weather had suddenly turned overcast. The past few days had been quite nice, and even the snow had stopped, but today heavy snow was falling once more.

Although Chlorine Sodium wasn't around, training couldn't be stopped; after all, she didn't want to, and couldn't, cause trouble for her.

Children were like that: a tiny bit of sweetness could make them happy for a long time.

Pushing the door open, although the wind and snow were heavy, Yelena could no longer sense any cold; she was fast becoming synonymous with winter.

However, today was destined to be unlike any other day.

Because within the village, the sounds of kicking doors and heavy boots crushing snow echoed one after another!

"There's actually still an Infected here? Ha, what lowly trash."

Several heavily equipped Infected Enforcement Squad members wearing filters spotted Yelena not far away.

The contempt and malice in their eyes practically overflowed!

Infected, in Ursus, was a vocabulary synonymous with garbage. If the definition of garbage was unrecyclable and reusable, then Infected were unrecyclable human resources. Instead of offering everything to the empire with gratitude, they actually dared to hide.

Infected scum.

"You guys keep searching! Take this Infected away too!"

The nightmare that had lingered in the young lady's mind all this time had finally arrived.

Why were these Black Bugs appearing here!!

Nightmares always caught up to those tragic, wretched souls.

Whether they wished it or not.

The cozy past made the present warmth feel as fragile as a dream. She didn't want to return to that dark past, and would even wake up in the middle of the night fearing all of this was just a fake dream.

Yet, the dark past ultimately caught up to her.

Chapter 11: Revenge

Infected?

Ha, Infected?

That came with a contemptuous sneer and an arrogant gaze.