Kiana was not happy.
She was very, very unhappy.
Just this afternoon, she had reluctantly accepted that bastard's ideas and had officially entered into a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with him.
And since they were boyfriend and girlfriend, going on a date next was a perfectly reasonable development, right?
Halfway back to the dorms, this thought occurred to her, and she started to get excited. So, she gave Li Zihan a call.
And then—no one answered.
Unable to find him, she rushed back to Chaldeas to look for him.
And then—still couldn't find him.
Asking the staff at Chaldeas yielded no results. It was as if he had completely vanished.
After waiting for a long time with no sign of him, she had no choice but to return to St. Freya Academy. It wasn't until it was nearly dark that she finally received a reply.
"So, why didn't you answer my calls?"
In the commercial district, the girl with the beautiful white hair stared at the boy who had seemingly rushed over in a great hurry, her voice laced with obvious displeasure.
It was perfectly understandable. To be stood up on the very first date after becoming official... that was something that would send most girls into a rage.
"I'm sorry, Kiana."
The boy, who seemed to have used magecraft to rush all the way here, was panting heavily, a rare look of fatigue on his face.
His mana consumption today had been enormous. Despite having the Mystic Code of the Second Magic to theoretically provide an infinite supply and shoulder the burden, maintaining a Reality Marble for several hours had still placed an immense strain on his body. And since magical energy was a power directly linked to life force, excessive consumption easily led to mental and physical exhaustion.
Furthermore... there had been that additional output.
I should have drunk some blood, the boy, who could have recovered his strength by ingesting Honkai-infused blood thanks to his Dracula Stigmata, thought with an internal sigh, feeling the deep deficit in his body.
I don't even know if I have enough mana left to activate Innate Time Control: Bites the Dust and rewind time.
Although he felt that Kiana probably didn't know about what had happened between him and Rita, the boy still prepared himself for the worst-case scenario.
With that thought, Li Zihan used a body flicker, instantly appearing beside the girl who had been waiting for so long.
"Sorry, I went to my private experimental site to conduct a part of the Artificial Herrscher experiment." The magus, who rarely told lies, panted for breath and then spoke to the girl, who didn't seem to be aware of the true situation.
"Ehh?!"
K423, who had not expected this development at all, was stunned.
"Human experimentation again?"
"Mhm. It's based on the Artificial Herrscher experiment I established." The boy, who had already dismantled the Void Archives and would most likely dismantle Fenghuang Down and Jizo Mitama next, deftly shifted the topic from his tardiness to human experimentation.
"I'm going to disassemble the First, Eighth, and Twelfth Divine Keys, extract their cores, and implant them into my own body."
Human experimentation again? And this time he was using himself as the test subject?! And implanting three Herrscher Cores at once?!
"Hey, hey, hey, Ah Li, have you gone insane?!"
The white-haired dango, clearly shaken by the implications of Li Zihan's words, stared with her blue eyes wide open. Implanting a Herrscher Core would lead to erosion by Honkai energy!
Take Joachim, for example. For the first few years after implanting the Core of Reason, he barely had a single good night's sleep, and even later on, he always looked like a sickly weakling.
And Li Zihan, who wasn't even a natural Herrscher, wanted to implant three cores in one go... Something was bound to go horribly wrong!
"It's fine. I have Stigmata, so I can resist the Honkai energy erosion."
The boy, who possessed both the Dracula and Yae Sakura Stigmata, looked at the worried girl and breathed a sigh of relief internally. It was confirmed: Kiana didn't know about him and Rita.
With that certainty, Li Zihan continued, laying out his plan.
"Besides, I can control my own time with magecraft. If the erosion on my body gets too high, I'll just reverse time."
His answer was concise and fluid, and his meaning was perfectly clear.
The reason was simple: the plan was real. The truth is always more reliable than something fabricated on the spot. The only thing was, this plan hadn't been conceived this afternoon, but much earlier.
It was actually a pretty good plan, Kiana thought. Time reversal could completely negate the corrosive damage from Honkai energy. But even with that ability, implanting multiple Honkai cores was still an incredibly dangerous undertaking. The pain brought on by triple the erosion rate... a normal person would go mad.
Seeing the slight weariness on her lover's face, a sense of unease rose in Kiana's heart. He wasn't necessarily a natural Herrscher adaptor. The price he would have to pay to obtain a Herrscher's power would be far greater than that for a normal adaptor.
"...Ah Li, why do you have to do these things to yourself?" The girl, who really didn't want Li Zihan to experiment on himself, stood beside him and complained.
Because I don't want to face a Kitchen Knife Ending, thought the boy, who was already basically immune to kitchen knives but still felt that getting stronger was the more reliable option.
"Probably because... I don't want to just be shouting 'I can't do anything!' when danger strikes," Li Zihan shrugged, quoting a certain someone sarcastically.
"With me around, there won't be that many dangerous moments."
The white-haired dango, whose combat power was roughly equivalent to one of Li Zihan's hands, turned her head and looked at the boy with her azure eyes, speaking with great seriousness.
The boy, whose combat strength in the human faction of the Honkai world was second only to Ancestor Kevin and the Darkened High Immortal, looked at the girl who seemed to have been infected by her second personality's confidence, his expression becoming a little complex.
To suddenly have a girl tell him that she was going to protect him... to be honest, Li Zihan's feelings were a bit strange. Did he really look that weak?
Still, the feeling wasn't bad.
For some reason, Li Zihan thought that eating soft rice might actually be pretty nice.
Unfortunately... having already accumulated so many advantages, he was one of the top-tier characters in the Honkai world. There were basically no girls in this world who could offer him any soft rice to eat.
At this thought, Li Zihan felt a little wistful. He really wanted to know what it felt like to be a kept man. But alas, there was no opportunity.
"...Kiana, have you forgotten that you can't beat me at all?" the boy, who could pin most Herrschers to the ground and pummel them as long as he was fully equipped, said, his words a little hurtful.
"Ah Li is very strong," the girl said softly. Though she had never seen him truly unleash his power, she knew from the rumors that he was one of the top-tier combatants.
"But, as long as I can master the Herrscher's power, I'll become stronger than you, won't I?"
The girl who now knew her true name said, as one of her eyes turned a brilliant gold.