Why hasn't anything interesting happened yet!
I was lying out spread eagle on the bed in my hotel room.
It had been 6 days. The first day was somewhat interesting, I browsed the internet for a while, made up some excuses to avoid meeting Kiana, who had wanted to meet up with me after school. Instead I said that I was available to talk via text.
Kiana remarked on her failures to court Mei during the day, how sad it was that all her former friends abandoned her as soon as her dad was arrested. I said that was pretty normal for that kind of situation, especially since Mei was (formerly) extremely wealthy.
Now that Raiden Ryoma was in jail, and had to pay back the 3.4 billion that he had managed to divert towards weapons projects specifically designed to murder his own daughter. He had to pay it all back to ME corp, now owned by Cocolia, effectively shoveling money towards his enemies. Being completely unable to raise 3.4 billion in funding, and with even Anti Entropy's conservative faction unwilling to foot the bill, all of Raiden Ryoma's former assets were being auctioned off.
Mei had gone from a life of extreme wealth as the heir to one of the largest business empires in the far east to being basically broke. It was a good thing she was a minor, and that the burden of Ryoma's debts did not fall to her, otherwise her situation would somehow be even worse than it already was.
By the next day, I was already completely bored. Kiana was complaining about Mei again, and I encouraged her to repeatedly try to prove her love with Mei. This would end in either Mei becoming a Herrscher on the spot just to try and get Kiana to go away, or maybe somehow Kiana might actually manage to get through to Mei ahead of schedule. Looking at Mei's romance score towards Kiana, I somehow highly doubted that would happen.
Having nothing to do, I bought a gaming laptop, and bought and downloaded some of the top games on Sbeam. I had started to play through Kallen Fantasy VI, which despite its name shared very little with Final Fantasy VI in story, only gameplay. While its story was almost a comically laughable self insert wish fulfillment story by Otto, with a notably blonde haired green eyed protagonist trying to prove themselves to a notably blue eyed white haired non dragon. The final boss of the game was even Ye Sakura. It looks like Otto wasn't completely over the events that happened in Shenzhou 500 years ago. Otto even had a cameo, in which he explained some of the deeper lore about the story.
The story, while basic, was fully fleshed out, with a rather complete and cohesive universe with deep lore and references to Schicksal's past. However the visuals were certainly quite impressive, leagues ahead of other games on Sbeam, better than even video games from her original Earth. Given the almost limitless funding the game apparently had, noted as the most expensive video game of all time by several major gaming publications, it would have been strange to expect anything else. While I had bought a very nice and expensive laptop, It still cooked the room and itself when playing on even medium settings. Making me wonder what Schicksal black technology had gone into creating the game.
Not that I minded Otto's rather odd use of Schicksal's funding to create a video game company, Schicksal entertainment. It was good for me, I got to play some top tier video games.
I played for around 12 hours a day for 3 days. Occasionally Homudashing some food and texting with Kiana and encouraging her into increasingly insane and elaborate bids for Mei's attention. Unfortunately for her, Mei still believed that this was all an elaborate way of making fun of her, and to be honest, some of the things Kiana had tried were rather absurd.
The system rather approved of Kiana's actions, even if they were having the complete opposite effect then was intended.
The system was rather grouchy that I had turned into a shut-in, and was constantly complaining about how I should be out and about trying to romance as many people as possible. When I asked the system if it had a plan to combat Siegfried, the system tactfully stopped bugging me about Kiana, however it still relentlessly and overwhelmingly praised Kiana for her actions whenever we texted.
However one can only play so many video games before one gets completely sick of it. I know, sounds ridiculous, being sick of video games? Couldn't be me. However it was true.
I spent almost all of yesterday attempting to find a new game to play, however I just wasn't feeling any of the many games I had bought, downloaded, played for a few minutes, and refunded.
Mostly I was just feeling rather helpless, and while avoidance was definitely in full effect for the first few days. I realised that I had no idea what was going on with the situation in Nagazora, the eruption could happen tomorrow or 5 months from now. I really needed to get out and investigate.
That was the mindset I woke up with today, full of energy and ready to start the day. However by around 10am I realised that I still had no idea what to do. It's not like I could just walk up to ME corp HQ and ask Cocolia about it, and I wasn't a professional or even amateur detective. While I was somewhat skilled with computers, I wasn't exactly skilled enough to do some digging into the inner workings at ME corp. Mostly my experience with computers consisted of telling people not to do stupid things, and then helping them fix their computers when they inevitably did stupid things.
However around 10:20 I received a rather interesting notification from the system.
[System: Alert! Kiana's feelings toward you increased by 29 points! Current score: 86. ❤︎]
Wha…
At first I was extremely confused, my romance score with Kiana, which had been steadily decreasing over the past few days as Kiana realised I was intentionally avoiding meeting with her, had suddenly shot up almost 30 points!
Then I realised what must have happened. Kiana must have encountered Siegfried, Siegfried had obviously said something that tipped Kiana to the fact that Siegfried had warned me to stay away from her, and thought that was the reason why I had been avoiding her.
A few minutes later I received a text from Kiana.
Kiana: Did my stinky dad threaten you to stay away from me?
Kiana: He looks like me
Kiana: White hair
Kiana: Blue eyes
Kiana: Was wearing a weird looking coat that probably went out of fashion 30 years before he was born?
There was no point in saying outright refusing. Even if I did, Kiana would still interpret it as me being threatened by Siegfried. She had already reached a conclusion, so it was better to play along for now, and give additional reasons for my avoidance of her that are still valid.
Lee: Yes
Lee: However that's not the only reason I have been avoiding you
Lee: Me staying with you is extremely risky. [For me]
Kiana: Don't worry about danger!
Kiana: I am super strong!
Kiana: My dad won't harm you!
Kiana: If he does I will beat him up!
Unlikely Kiana could even catch up with Siegfried, he must have intentionally shown himself to her in order to warn her that I was dangerous. If Siegfried wanted to be hidden from Kiana, he had been doing it successfully for years. He had a SS rank deadbeat dad skill.
Lee: My line of work can place you in danger, I won't allow someone so young to be in danger because of me.
Kiana: Aren't you the same age as me?
Lee: Mentally I am much older.
Kiana: What is that supposed to mean?
Kiana: We are the same age, we should have the same mental age!
Lee: Well, no matter what I have made up my mind about this.
Kiana: You don't have to be concerned about me! I can handle myself just fine!
Actually I really just want to be left alone, I intend to work with Otto by tempting him with future knowledge as soon as possible, and Otto is destined to be your greatest adversary. Well that isn't the Honkai. Or Kevin.
Kiana: If I see you again, I will drag you off back to my apartment and sit your butt down on the couch and make you see things my way.
That comment is surprisingly suggestive, however that's just Kiana for you.
I responded that not responding to that text was better than responding to that text. I had just lost my only person that I had to talk to.
Well besides my online friends that is!
Switching tabs back to Sbeam, I received a notification that one of my steam friends, Silverwolf, was online.
This was obviously Bronya. Just another example of fate existing in this universe. I was shocked upon seeing that username, before realizing it couldn't possibly be the real Silverwolf. However, this world's Broyna also had the nickname of Silver Wolf of the Urals, which, although she had abandoned her former mercenary title, she had apparently reused as her online username.
I reckoned that it was probably a good thing that Bronya hadn't made her way over to the Honkai: Star rail universe. With 3 Bronya's it might as well be called Bronya: Star Rail.
Pinging Bronya inviting her to play in the competitive multiplayer mode of Kallen Fantasy VI, (On the same team, she cheated in an undetectable way by using project bunny), I was informed that Bronya was unavailable to play today, and that she had work.
This could be a sign that the 3rd eruption was approaching, or it could just mean that Cocolia had some other routine task for Bronya. No way to tell for sure. Anyway, the main point was that I had nobody to play video games with, and I had completely 100%'d the main story of Kallen Fantasy, and I still hadn't found any games as good as it.
It seemed like this was one of those fantasy universes where games were extremely underdeveloped where the MC makes exceptionally average games that somehow manage to shoot to the top of the most popular video game list and end up making the MC extremely wealthy.
Unfortunately for me while I apparently did have the time, sitting around doing nothing all day, I did not have the skill. While I have some knowledge of programming, creating some dinky programs to solve basic math problems was not the same as creating a fully fledged video game. Turns out making a video game is an extremely hard thing that takes a considerable amount of both effort and skill.
Another thing I had found out, the system apparently had an internet connection that it refused to share with me or use in any useful way. This connection was apparently what it had used to create and distribute all those forged identity documents it had created, and now it was using it to play video games.
The system refused to play video games with me though, when I suggested the idea it stated that it would play video games with me the moment I started taking romance as a career seriously.
I definitely did not plan on romancing anyone until I managed to get to Honkai: Star Rail. I wasn't about to get into a romantic relationship and become tied down and stuck on this shitty ass planet.
So there I was, laying spread eagle on the bed, staring at the ceiling, when a knock came from the door of my hotel room.
I knew it wasn't room service, I had put the little paper do not disturb sign at the door, they had tried to clean the room while I was inside of it several times. Reaching for the baseball bat sitting in my half open backpack, I got up to check the door.
I didn't just open it of course, I am not that stupid. I looked through the peephole to see who was on the other side.
It was Siegfried, looking slightly the worse for wear.