Walking down the road, Lucius was extremely happy.
Although he had almost been hugged to death by Eden just now, he had already gotten the money he should get, and his funding problem was completely solved.
Next, he could set up MEI Corp and complete the check-in.
He quickly returned to Mei's home and excitedly elbowed the door open.
"Mei, our family has money now!"
However, unlike the usual greeting from Mei when he returned, this time he actually saw an unexpected yet reasonable person in the house.
A white-haired, blue-eyed girl sitting quietly on the sofa.
—It was none other than his good brother Kiana.
At this moment, she looked at Lucius, disguised as Ryoma, returning from outside, somewhat at a loss.
At this time, Mei, who was preparing food in the kitchen, came out. She wore an apron and held an empty plate in her hands.
Seeing Lucius return, she explained to him:
"Father, this is Kiana, a classmate who helps me a lot, so I thought to invite her home for dinner."
After speaking, she said to Kiana: "Kiana, this is..."
Before Mei could finish, Lucius stepped forward to answer.
"Oh my, this young lady looks familiar to me?"
Meeting the strange expressions of Mei and Kiana, Lucius walked to Kiana's side with a smile on his face, looking her over.
Kiana immediately stood up, looking extremely restrained at the man before her.
Although this father of Mei's had a smile on his face that felt like a spring breeze, whether it was an illusion or not, she always felt the other's smile carried some mischief.
"You... Hello...?" Kiana replied awkwardly.
Lucius pretended to look her up and down, then asked: "What's your relationship with Siegfried?"
Kiana subconsciously replied: "That's my father..."
As soon as she answered, she realized something was wrong.
If this father of Mei's knew her old man, then he would definitely know that her family's dad only had one son.
Sure enough, after her words came out, she saw Mei's father's face turn cold.
"My dear niece, your father Siegfried and I have been old friends for many years. I never thought he would do such a thing!"
"Ah?"
"Don't worry, I know the one at fault isn't you, but that bastard Siegfried!" Lucius pretended to be angry. "Next time I see him, I'll definitely beat him up!"
"To dare have an affair behind Cecilia's back! This is a betrayal of pure love!"
"Ah?"
Watching Lucius suddenly become angry, Kiana hurriedly explained: "You've got it wrong, I'm not my dad's illegitimate daughter!"
Finally, after Kiana pulled out some explanation full of holes about family darkness and such, Lucius 'believed' that she was actually Siegfried and Cecilia's daughter, just hidden due to family struggles.
The two sat on the sofa facing each other chatting, waiting for Mei to cook.
Looking at the man before her whom she was clearly meeting for the first time, Kiana had a strange feeling, or rather a familiar feeling, as if she had seen him somewhere before.
"Good girl, niece, call me uncle."
The tuft of hair on top of Kiana's head suddenly stood up. She stared blankly at Lucius, her face showing suspicion.
Although according to his seniority, calling him uncle would be normal, somehow, she felt that once she agreed, she would inexplicably be one level below the other person, an extremely unpleasant feeling.
Just as she was thinking about how to respond, Mei's timely appearance rescued her. She brought the food to the table.
Kiana secretly breathed a sigh of relief, then looked at the food Mei had prepared.
Today at Eden's concert venue, she had run into Mei, and then an incident occurred at the concert venue—Eden was kidnapped by a group of bandits.
After they, the audience, were checked and confirmed to have no problems, they were released.
After returning from the concert, she had originally planned to go home, but after chatting more and more enthusiastically with Mei, she somehow ended up agreeing to the other's request to come home for dinner.
Seeing Mei's confident appearance, her cooking skills must be quite good, right?
To this, Lucius's answer was: One meal could earn 10 crystals—this was too delicious!
This month, just by eating Mei's cooking three meals a day, he had earned nearly 1,000 crystals. Without exaggeration, although he was nominally Mei's father now, in reality, Mei was his father!
Crystals were very important, related to the outcome of the entire Previous Era.
Lucius had never forgotten the impending Third Eruption. The Third Eruption of the Previous Era would cause far greater damage than the Current Era, with the disaster area covering all of East Asia, causing hundreds of millions of casualties.
To stop this disaster, he either had to kill the Herrscher of Thunder the moment it was born.
But Lucius had another more feasible method—to replace it with a controllable Herrscher with humanity.
And coincidentally, Lucius knew how to obtain a Herrscher not controlled by the Cocoon of Finality.
He looked at the system panel.
[Moon's Origin and Finality - Prologue: Escape from Nagazora]
[Stage Reward: Herrscher of Thunder Character Card]
[Status: Not Completed]
In the stage rewards of the main quest, completing all check-in tasks in one chapter would allow him to claim the stage reward—character cards for thirteen Herrschers including the Herrscher of Finality.
But the downside of exploiting the bug to open the system 50,000 years early showed here.
If the system had opened 50,000 years later, he could directly follow the main storyline, and after Raiden Mei awakened and sent the entire Nagazora City to the sky, he could directly check in and obtain the Herrscher of Thunder character card.
But now this was the Previous Era. Mei didn't have a Herrscher core in her body, and the Cocoon of Finality's selection of Herrscher candidates was uncertain. To complete the task, he had to make Mei obtain the power of the Herrscher of Thunder and inherit Raiden Mei's destiny.
Lucius's idea was to directly load the Herrscher of Thunder character card onto Mei, bypassing this era's Cocoon of Finality's mechanism while replacing this era's Herrscher of Thunder.
But the problem was, to obtain the Herrscher of Thunder character card, he had to first complete the task to get the stage reward.
And to complete the stage task to get the reward, he had to load the Herrscher of Thunder character card onto Mei.
It was a deadlock.
However, there was a saying that heaven never seals off all exits. As long as he wanted to walk, the road was under his feet!
He really did find a solution in the system's shop.
[Herrscher Trial Card (Thunder)]
[Price: 3000 Crystals/30 minutes]
The shop sold trial cards for all Herrschers except Finality and Origin, but complete character cards could only be unlocked after completing stage tasks.
When he saw this item, Lucius knew he had it in the bag.
Time limit? Was the time limit important? Not important at all!
Never mind thirty minutes—even if it was only thirty seconds, when active, it would be a real Herrscher with the qualification to directly connect to the Cocoon of Finality.
Suppose, just suppose.
At the moment the Cocoon of Finality selected a Herrscher, he directly activated the Herrscher trial card and had Mei snatch that position and take the authority.
After the trial card expired, the position and authority granted by the system would disappear, but the position and authority snatched from the Cocoon would still exist, and Mei would still be a Herrscher.
At that point, would the Cocoon just swallow this insult, or would it get angry and take back the position and authority?
The answer was obvious—the Cocoon of Finality, like this broken system, was a rigid idiot!
"In that case, I can only trouble the Cocoon of Finality a bit."
However, becoming a Herrscher was just the beginning. There was another more important problem to solve—how to give the Herrscher humanity.
You had to know that Herrschers of this era didn't have the Flame of Humanity. They were truly emotionless vanguards of the Honkai. If this problem wasn't solved, humanity would be elbowed by Mei after becoming the Herrscher of Thunder.
That scene, tsk.
So how to solve it? The answer, of course, was to boil Elysia into soup (laugh).
Of course, that was just a joke. As the director of this drama, Lucius didn't like grimdark plots.
If possible, he would try his best to weave a healthy, sunny, positive, and joyful happy ending.
But back to the topic—how to give the Herrscher humanity?
The answer was to time it well and arrange the moment of usurping the Herrscher's authority at the very end of the [Prologue: Escape from Nagazora] check-in task.
Within the thirty minutes the trial card was valid, quickly go through the plots of [Kiana and Mei: First Rooftop Battle], [Encounter with Bronya], [Hyperion Descends from the Sky], directly completing the [Prologue: Escape from Nagazora] check-in and successfully obtaining the [Stage Reward: Herrscher of Thunder Character Card].
After getting the Herrscher of Thunder character card, while the thirty-minute trial card hadn't ended, equip Mei with the Herrscher of Thunder character card.
Thus, a Herrscher of Thunder with humanity would be born.
It was nothing more than exploiting the Cocoon of Finality and then the system. Perfect closed loop.
Now that he had the funds to build MEI Corp, next he would build it and complete the check-in.
And the construction of St. Freya also needed to be put on the agenda...
Soon, Mei served all the dishes, and the three sat down.
Looking at the food on the table that wasn't lavish but certainly not shabby, and had excellent color and aroma, Kiana secretly nodded.
The appearance was good, it looked very appetizing, so the taste probably wouldn't be bad.
But Lucius knew that the more colorful the mushroom, the more poisonous it was.
His heart trembled. He silently sighed but still forced his fingers to pick up the chopsticks.
Whether hundreds of millions of people in East Asia could survive this Eruption depended on whether he could save enough crystals in the allotted time. And currently, the biggest source of crystals was Mei's cooking.
So having Mei was equivalent to having the power of a hundred people!
Using chopsticks to pick up a piece of tofu, the moment it went down, Lucius felt his stomach begin to spasm, as if being pounded hard.
But his expression didn't change as he stuffed food into his mouth.
Having eaten Mei's cooking for so many days, he hadn't made no progress—at least his resistance had increased a lot.
But perhaps his encouragement had worked, as Mei had become increasingly interested in studying culinary arts during this time.
Good news: Her cooking skills had improved.
Bad news: They improved in the opposite direction.
Eating and eating, Lucius shed tears.
"Father, why are you crying?"
"It's too... too delicious."
Kiana looked at Lucius showing a blissful smile like a background character in a food anime.
Was it really that delicious? Anticipation arose in her heart.
Kiana used a spoon to scoop up a piece of white, jade-like tofu and put it in her mouth.
Chew chew chew.
Kiana's body stiffened, and her hand holding the spoon trembled uncontrollably.
"Clatter!"
The spoon in her hand fell to the ground.
Then she fell straight backward.
"Splat!"
Kiana collapsed on the ground, unconscious.
Spiral eyes spun in her eyes, and a mochi-like soul seemed to fly out of her mouth.
"Kiana!!!"
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