Saliva Collection

There were no crystalline traces on her body surface.

Silence did not know how to evaluate this. She could only frown slightly.

It defied common sense.

Silence merely found it unreasonable, but not surprising. Everything had a rational explanation; people were surprised only because they lacked sufficient information.

"Do you need to draw blood?"

Hoshino asked timidly, carrying herself with the bearing of a queen.

"Yes."

Silence answered as the blood-drawing needle gradually approached. Yet it stopped firmly against the surface of Hoshino's body, unable to penetrate even half an inch further.

Was her skin extremely hard?

Silence thought, adding a little more force. In the end, she still could not breach the barrier. Instinctively sensing something was wrong, she withdrew the needle.

She lightly touched the tip.

With a crackle.

A bright electric spark flashed and vanished. Silence shuddered as needle-like agony raced from her fingertip through her entire body.

It hurt.

Her right hand spasmed. Worse still, the electricity had burned away one of her feathers.

"The needle was magnetized and charged?"

Silence found the root of the problem.

Anything even slightly related to metal could not pierce her skin. This was Lightning Empress's self-protection mechanism, and Silence had no solution for it at the moment.

Hoshino raised her head.

The magnetization was naturally her doing.

Of course, she would not let Silence take her blood. The power source of the Lightning Empress armor might be the core within her body. The people of this world certainly would not recognize Honkai Energy. If they discovered the secret inside her body, what consequences would that bring?

Next came the MRI.

There was only darkness. It could not even produce a proper image, and it nearly damaged the machine.

Silence shook her head.

Even the most preliminary research could not proceed, much less any in-depth study. Silence's path had been blocked, and the experiment came to a complete standstill for the time being.

"Are you really an Infected?"

Even Silence found the question somewhat laughable after asking it. Lightning Empress was unquestionably a genuine Infected.

Since blood could not be collected, she naturally had to find another method.

Silence took out a sampling tube and carefully handed it to Hoshino, saying something that left the latter dumbfounded.

"Give me some saliva."

"?"

"I need a saliva sample from you. Understand?"

Hoshino stuck out her tongue and carefully let saliva drip into the sample tube. She frowned, wanting to ask what the point of this was.

With that adorably queenly face, she spoke directly.

"Excuse me, are you a pervert?"

Silence frowned. A patient's emotions were extremely important to a doctor, and she read many things from those words.

Could this person have unpleasant memories related to sampling?

Was she a test subject?

Scenes Silence had witnessed in a Rhine Lab laboratory abruptly surfaced in her mind. Beneath snowy-white lights stood reinforced glass. Transparent barriers separated the breeders from those being bred. They were two sharply distinct sides of a line, only a few centimeters apart, yet as distant as opposite shores.

Silence was not normally so sentimental.

But the reality was...

She shook the sample tube. Even the transparent saliva gleamed with lightning.

In a tone she was especially bad at using, Silence comforted her. "This is merely research without any personal feelings involved. I personally mean you no harm."

"Th⚡ank⚡ you~"

It was such a clumsy expression of gratitude. Though it burst beside her ears like thunder, it unexpectedly touched her heart.

Silence wanted to stroke her face, but the electricity frightened her into pulling back.

Hoshino lowered her head at the right moment, displaying the shame of someone who had done something wrong. It formed an indescribable contrast with the queenly aura surrounding her. Her gaze was cold and aloof, yet her words were unimaginably soft. She truly was impossible to refuse.

At least, Silence could not refuse her.

"I hope... I can meet your guardian."

"Her."

Hoshino assumed a thoughtful expression, her brows and eyes filled with an indescribable pride.

"You cannot find Miss Yae Sakura on your own. But if Miss Yae Sakura knows you are looking for her, she will descend outside your window in the dead of night."

Those words were rather mysterious.

Perhaps she needed to light a "bat signal" atop the Lungmen Guard Department building before she could find the shrine maiden.

"I can't find her?"

Having collected a strand of hair and a tube of saliva, the experiments at this stage were more or less finished.

Silence truly did not wish to remain in this oppressive atmosphere any longer. After receiving Her Majesty's approval, she slowly left the scene.

Hoshino opened her eyes.

She truly was not very good at this sort of acting cute, and at one point she had even wanted to give up.

Fortunately, she had managed to persevere.

"Silence can't conduct an independent assessment. Another group of researchers will probably arrive next, so my task hasn't become any easier. On the contrary, it has become even heavier," she muttered to herself. "She took my bodily fluids. Will Warfarin be the one coming?"

Blood and bodily fluids felt like they should be the same thing.

She would not drink the saliva in one gulp, would she?

Hoshino thought of something terrifying, and her expression darkened. The weather around the shrine changed with it as deep violet lightning crashed down upon the earth.

"henshin!"

She transformed back into Yae Sakura's form, intending to find Silence under cover of night.

Considering that Silence was an owl and liked to sleep during the day, she would choose the morning for their meeting.

When Silence left, Hoshiguma saw the troubled look on her face and roughly guessed that something had gone wrong during the examination. She immediately arranged accommodations for Silence in Lungmen. Since this could not have an official background, Miss Swire covered all the expenses.

Silence stared at the rising sun and sighed at how quickly time had passed.

After settling in, she first called Doctor Kal'tsit, the head of the medical department.

Doctor Kal'tsit always wore that stern, unsmiling expression.

"I have completed the handover with the subject."

"Tell me about the situation."

"She is very powerful. If she unleashes her full strength, her destructive power would be no less than that of a natural disaster. Due to her lightning affinity, I cannot examine the severity of her infection, but it is highly unusual that there are no crystals on her body surface."

"..."

"There are two possibilities. She may be an undiscovered new species on Terra, born with the authority to control lightning."

"The second possibility is that she is an uninfected person we have been seeking. That is, she herself lacks Originium infectivity, and all Originium within her exists in the form of a core. She may be a laboratory product, or she may have arisen naturally."

"Your conjecture is bold."

"Biology advances through constant change. As a researcher, daring to make hypotheses is a basic ability."

"Then what evidence do you have?"

Kal'tsit asked.

Silence answered calmly and without arrogance. "I collected a tube of saliva. Quickly send that vampire over to taste it. Also, I have arranged to meet the guardian of that Lightning Empress. She should come to my lodging to meet me."

"Good luck."

"Doctor Kal'tsit, don't tell her she'll be tasting saliva this time."

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