Klein looked at Morien, wanting to speak but hesitating.
He was somewhat curious about Morien's situation, but it involved Morien's privacy, so Klein did not feel it was appropriate to ask.
Morien, who had been continuously examining the space, noticed Klein's hesitation and spread his hands.
"What are you hesitating over?" he said. "If there's something you want to ask, just ask."
"If I don't want to answer, I won't."
Klein blinked behind the Gray Fog.
Wait, what?
Why did that actually sound reasonable?
Since the other party had put it that way, Klein asked directly.
"Those butterflies at your home..." Klein carefully chose his words.
"They're my offspring," Morien said as if it were only natural.
"The one on my leg is my biological daughter. The rest are probably my grandchildren."
"Mm, they're biological too."
"I see..." Klein did not know what to say.
They were actually biological?
When Morien had previously said he was a giant bug, Klein had thought he was joking at his own expense.
Turns out he had been speaking literally.
Three generations of the family, and aside from Morien, the "Royal Insect," who maintained a human form, they were all bugs.
This really was something to blame on the family he had been born into.
Morien stopped looking around and smiled at Klein, making Klein suddenly feel a little awkward.
"The Fool, right?" Morien suddenly asked.
"Just how much did you learn from Mr. Hanged Man's mind..." Klein complained.
"Mm... probably..." Morien pinched his chin and thought for a moment. "Everything."
Every...
Klein pressed his lips together.
"Looks like I won't need to introduce everything again."
He manifested a deck of tarot cards before Morien.
"You know the rules. Pick one yourself."
He meant for Morien to choose his codename.
Morien picked up the tarot cards before him, casually flipped through them, and selected The Tower.
He held the tarot card upright in reverse, facing Klein.
"I'll choose this one." Morien smiled. "From today onward, I am Mr. Tower of the Tarot Club."
"Yes, yes, congratulations." Klein spoke in the perfunctory tone of casual small talk, without the slightest hint of dignity. "Every Monday at three in the afternoon. Remember to make sure no one is around."
"That was so perfunctory." Morien was dissatisfied. "I wanted to see that. That thing."
"Which thing?" Klein asked in confusion.
"That thing!" Morien sat up straight, leaned back against the chair, tapped the armrest with his fingers, and spoke in as deep a voice as he could manage.
"You may call me... the Fool."
After saying that, Morien's voice became lighthearted again.
"That one. I wanted to see that. Can you perform it again?"
Klein looked at him without saying a word.
"What's wrong?" Morien was about to urge him when he suddenly felt his body plummeting downward.
When he opened his eyes again, he had already returned home.
"Oh, you're embarrassed."
A few minutes later, inside the Synchronization Space.
There were only two people in the Synchronization Space today, one standing and one sitting: Lord of Mysteries Morien and Honkai: Star Rail Morien.
The other two had time flows that did not quite align with theirs. Jujutsu Morien in particular would probably not make it unless he entered the space immediately after leaving it.
"Oh? You got in touch with Klein." Honkai: Star Rail Morien sat on the ground with both hands braced behind him, in an exceptionally good mood. "The show I've been following finally got into the main plot."
He treated the experiences of his other selves entirely like weekly anime episodes.
"Mhm." Lord of Mysteries Morien snapped his fingers. "Now we just wait."
"Monday afternoon. It's Thursday for me right now, so there's still plenty of time."
"Yeah, plenty of time." Honkai: Star Rail Morien closed his eyes. "I haven't done much these past two days."
"But since you managed to obtain the Reverse Cursed Technique, I think I can start doing some experiments."
"Is that so?" Lord of Mysteries Morien neither agreed nor disagreed. "Then be careful."
"Mhm."
At that moment, ripples spread through the space again.
"Oh, someone else is here." The two Moriens turned around.
A new Morien appeared in the space. Just as Lord of Mysteries Morien raised his hand to greet him, the form of address that should have slipped from his mouth got stuck in his throat.
In this space, they could easily distinguish one another. Yet now, Lord of Mysteries Morien could not tell which version of himself stood before him.
That left only one possibility.
"Wow! A newcomer!" Honkai: Star Rail Morien happily raised both hands. "Great, there's another new show to watch!"
"What world did you transmigrate into?"
The newcomer Morien took less than ten seconds to accept his new circumstances. With a relieved sigh, his body went limp as he collapsed onto the ground in a duck-sitting position.
"Ah... my cheat finally arrived," he sighed weakly.
Lord of Mysteries Morien walked over and lightly tapped the newcomer's raised hand in a high-five, completing the synchronization.
"Which world is he from?" Honkai: Star Rail Morien, who had deliberately not gone over immediately to preserve the suspense, asked from behind them.
After completing the synchronization, Lord of Mysteries Morien frowned slightly.
He looked at his palm and shook his head.
"I don't know," he answered.
"Huh?" Honkai: Star Rail Morien asked in confusion. "You don't know?"
"Mm, I don't know." Lord of Mysteries Morien walked toward Honkai: Star Rail Morien and held out his hand. "I can't tell."
"You aren't setting me up with something like strawberry-flavored mapo tofu, are you?" Honkai: Star Rail Morien suspiciously took his hand.
At the same time, the newcomer's memories synchronized over.
It seemed to be a forest on a lake, with pale fog permeating the surroundings.
The fog was not particularly dense. He could barely make out things within a few dozen meters, but anything farther away was completely obscured.
This was where the newcomer Morien had spawned.
The water beneath his feet was not deep, reaching only his ankles.
The surrounding woods were somewhat withered. Beneath the pale mist, anything even slightly farther away became completely invisible.
Other than that, there were collapsed ruins, stone walls and arched bridges, as well as some nameless blue crystals.
There were no other living people.
Over the following days, the newcomer Morien lived in a constant state of oppression.
There was no food here, though there was water. He could drink it simply by lowering his head.
Things occasionally moved slowly through the hazy fog. They looked bloated and sluggish, sometimes making low, rumbling sounds. As an ordinary person at the time, the newcomer Morien had not dared approach them at all.
Not only that, the newcomer Morien discovered many corpses.
Those corpses were dried out and shriveled, nothing but skin stretched over bones.
If that were all, it would not have been a problem. They could have left each other alone and lived in peace.
But clearly, those corpses did not think so.
They were not completely dead.
Slow-moving, fragile, but unkillable corpses would occasionally crawl out of the mud beneath his feet, always trying to ambush Morien.
Even though Morien could easily kick them back into the water as an ordinary person, they could not be killed and loved sneaking up on him whenever he rested or slept.
Dark, oppressive, dangerous.
He endured that environment for three days.
In the end, he entered this space on the fourth day.
"So what world are you actually from?" Honkai: Star Rail Morien pondered in confusion.
His memory was extremely good now, good enough that he could easily recall any work he had ever encountered.
Yet he still could not identify which world the newcomer came from.
It was not because he had never seen similar settings.
On the contrary, it was because this setting was too common.
It felt like a scene that could appear in any fantasy story.
The newcomer Morien shook his head.
"I don't know either."
"But now that I have some means of protecting myself, maybe I can explore deeper."
"By the next time I come here, perhaps I'll have an answer."
"Mm... at least..."
Lord of Mysteries Morien spread his hands and made a joke.
"Now that you have the Lonely Monster ability, you probably won't be attacked anymore."