Dania's Gone!

In Dania's room, Lu Guan was helping a certain lazybones pack for her trip to Jinzhou.

"A change of clothes..."

"Toiletries..."

"Spare terminal batteries..."

"Oh... and this..." Lu Guan picked up the doll Dania often carried with her. "Should I put this in the suitcase?"

"No... I'll carry it with me."

"All right... see if there's anything else you need?"

"Nope..." Dania shook her head and smiled as she pushed Lu Guan toward the door. "Hurry back. I'm tired today and want to go to bed early."

"All right..." Lu Guan nodded. "Then I'll come get you tomorrow morning? Don't oversleep!"

"I won't oversleep! Good night, dummy!"

With a little huff, Dania pulled the door shut.

Late that night.

Lu Guan sat on his dorm bed, clutching two boat tickets to Huanglong, but he felt uneasy.

What Dania had said today was clearly an attempt to cover something up. It was very likely that, because she was no longer devoting herself to "nihility," her connection to Aleph-1 was gradually weakening.

She had not truly become a Threnodian Resonator, and her resonance was more akin to Cartethyia's. In theory, her Resonance Ability should not be affected by the state of the Sentinel, as Jinhsi's and Jué's were.

And that was indeed the case. Lu Guan could tell that Dania's Resonance Ability showed no sign of weakening, but Hydra's notes in that experiment log greatly concerned him.

Could Dania still control Void Matter without the Threnodian's gaze? If the Void Matter in her body went out of control, would it erode her body as it had those test subjects, eventually causing her to become nihility?

Lu Guan didn't dare gamble, and he wouldn't.

He opened the system again and looked at the unclaimed rewards from his vow with Dania, considering possible solutions.

"Fragment of the World's Origin": From a world destined for destruction. Those who seek to glimpse its power will ultimately meet their own destruction.

"Gaze of the Nihility Threnodian": Aleph-1 is watching you.

"Dania's Resonance Ability": Obtain a Resonance Ability from the same source as that of your vow partner, Dania.

"Perfect ending..." Lu Guan murmured to himself. "If it really is a perfect ending, Dania can't possibly be left unsaved..."

"What... is the key to breaking out of this situation?"

As things stood, if he allowed Dania's connection to Aleph-1 to deepen, it would most likely end the same way it had in the game's original story: to avoid affecting Solaris, Dania would take the last Threnodian fragment and head into the Void Matter space.

That was an ending Lu Guan absolutely could not accept.

Lu Guan had originally planned to take Dania, who never left home, to Jinzhou to enrich her inner world, let her experience more of the world's beauty, and enrich her existence as well.

But as things stood, if Dania's state of mind changed and severed her connection to Aleph-1, the result might well be even harder to accept than "heading toward nihility."

"...Something's wrong!" Lu Guan suddenly noticed something amiss.

If Dania was no longer in a state of nihility because of him, would she accept an ending where she disappeared because she "no longer had nothing"?

From what Lu Guan knew of Dania, she was usually lazy and seemed uninterested in everything.

But in reality, if something like that happened, she would surely take action. At the very least, she wouldn't be willing to simply disappear...

It was very likely happening right now!

As for why it would be tonight, Lu Guan naturally had his own way of judging.

Dania had been distracted earlier, clearly planning something she couldn't let him know about.

Given how the two of them usually got along, how could she not have packed a few boxes of "0.01-caliber" armor-piercing rounds for the trip to Jinzhou?

Clearly, it was very likely she had never intended to go to Jinzhou with him!

Dania hadn't gone to bed early as she had said she would.

After making sure Lu Guan had left, she took the opportunity to slip out of the dorm, leave the academy, and head for the underground facility in Darkhollow.

This time, her destination was the experiment sample room.

There were a few remaining unused doses there, made by the Fractsidus from fragments shed by the Threnodian.

She found them exactly where she remembered, pulled out the corks, and drank every last one in one go.

"Ugh... ah..."

As she drank the doses, large amounts of Void Matter multiplied inside her. She could feel her body gradually being replaced by it, but the sensation wasn't all that bad, because something worse had already happened.

Although the doses could strengthen her resonance with the Tacet Discord of Nihility for a short time, she no longer felt the emptiness she once had. As time passed, she could feel the power from the Threnodian being stripped from her body.

Void Matter particles were running rampant inside her, and it felt terrible. Dania could only use her Resonance Ability to forcibly suppress them.

"There's not much time left..."

"In the end... is this really the only way?"

Her face contorted with pain, Dania held her shoulder as she walked slowly through the passages of the Fractsidus underground laboratory. Her little leather shoes struck the metal floor, producing an ethereal echo in the corridor.

"Rather than suddenly disappearing for no reason... I really do want to do something more worthwhile..." Dania said with a bitter smile. "Perhaps after I leave, Aleph-1's influence on Lahai-Roi will weaken considerably too..."

"This is the only thing I can do for you before I leave..."

By now, she had reached the Void Matter chamber.

Dania bent down, picked up the piece of "gift cake" she had left on the floor earlier, and took the little fork. Sitting in front of the Void Matter chamber, she began eating it in small bites.

As she ate, tears fell onto the little plate holding the cake.

"Dummy... how would I ever make a Void Matter bomb...?"

"Before I go, it really is better to have a piece of cake..."

"If I can remember this sweet taste... that wouldn't be bad..."

As she spoke, Dania suddenly clapped a hand over her mouth and coughed several times. Fresh blood mixed with Void Matter seeped between her fingers...

"Cough, cough... I don't even have time to finish the cake...? That's fine... I have to leave sooner or later anyway..."

With that, she casually dropped the half-eaten, bloodstained cake in her hand, shed her earlier disguise, and assumed the Form of Disillusionment. Humming an unfamiliar tune, she lay down in the Void Matter chamber.

As the chamber door closed, the girl's eyes gradually fell shut...

"Don't do anything stupid, Dania!"

Lu Guan's voice rang out from outside the door, but it was already too late. Dania had opened the passage to the Void Matter space, and nothing could be undone.

The last thing Dania saw before closing her eyes was Lu Guan running toward the Void Matter chamber, gasping for breath.

A smile curved her lips.

"Dummy... don't miss me too much..."

"Dasvidanyia (Until We Meet Again)."

When Lu Guan opened the Void Matter chamber, all that remained inside was the doll Dania always carried with her.

Unlike the pristine appearance it usually had, its worn body was covered in traces of hand stitching, and the Void Matter that had filled it was long gone.

There was a note on it, which read:

"A broken and stubborn vessel was once perceived and shaped by the world-and now it is no longer lonely: thank you for giving me the heart I wanted, at the very, very end."