Id, who was tightly hugging little Pardo, looked utterly confused and bewildered.
"What's going on? Little Pardo went tumble-tumble... Haven't we seen this scene before?"
Conductor remained calm. She gestured for Id to stay composed, then consulted Expert and Scholar for their opinions.
Expert and Scholar muttered a huge pile of terms that Id could not understand but that sounded incredibly impressive.
Things like Made in Heaven's acceleration ability, DIO's stair-controlling ability, President Valentine's D4C Love Train and its parallel dimensions, and so on.
Are you really discussing Vill-V's current situation and not debating the JoJo manga?
After an intense argument over which Stand was stronger, Conductor finally told Id their conclusion. "Mm. Naturally, we wouldn't ignore the anomaly in that little display Seele gave us earlier—after all, it may have been a hint from Seele. Expert immediately analyzed and researched her ability afterward and came up with more than a hundred hypotheses."
"Judging from the sense of incongruity we're experiencing, our current situation falls into three broad possibilities."
"First, we're trapped in the boundary between life and death. Second, our memories were tampered with by the authority of life. Third, we've crossed into another worldline."
"Huh? Isn't it a time loop?"
Id became even more confused when she heard this. According to the conventions of web novels, time loops were hardly anything unusual.
"Reality is complicated. How could time loops possibly be so common? Time itself would start crying, okay? Under conventional scientific definitions, there's no such thing as time actually flowing backward. Even in the original Honkai story, there has never been a phenomenon where time itself was reversible."
As Conductor spoke, she opened the PowerPoint presentation Expert had thrown together on the spot.
"Lecturer, you're up."
"Very well." Dressed in a teacher's outfit, Lecturer held an infrared pointer and indicated the images representing the three major possibilities while explaining with complete seriousness.
"First is the boundary between life and death. People experience their life flashing before their eyes right before death. You know that much already. After all, you've had several experiences with dying yourself."
Her inexplicable transmigration two lives ago did not count, but Vill-V still vividly remembered being flattened by a dual-vector foil in her previous life.
Still, that was hardly the kind of life experience worth having. Vill-V would rather have gone without it.
"And the Honkai world possesses possibilities that surpass common sense, so something like one's life flashing before their eyes can naturally become even stranger."
"The most classic example would be Siegfried's personality fragments, which directly created an entire life-flashback world inside Imaginary Space."
On the PowerPoint slide was a chibi Siegfried transforming into three Homus.
One Siegfried became three Homus.
"The meaning of time within Imaginary Space cannot be understood according to ordinary logic, so being unable to properly perceive your own death is perfectly normal."
"Ah."
Inside the mindscape, Id subconsciously felt around her body and even pinched her own cheek hard.
"Mmgh—this is bad! I really can't feel any pain!"
Id's voice trembled slightly. "Doesn't that mean we're really on the verge of death?!"
Conductor did not know whether to laugh or cry. "Id, this is your mindscape to begin with. Pinching yourself doesn't seem particularly meaningful, does it?"
"Oh, right. Ah! It hurts! It hurts so much—"
Id was rammed by Magician wielding a crying-cat head and immediately let out an agonized howl.
"Well? Lecturer designed it. It lets you vividly relive painful memories from the past~ Take this! Dead memories suddenly attack!"
"Ow~" "Ow~"
"All right, stop ramming me, Magician! I already have a very visceral sense that I'm alive! Being alive hurts so much! Waaaaah—"
"Lecturer, keep going."
Id wiped away her tears and motioned for Lecturer to explain the second possibility.
Lecturer continued thoughtfully, "The second possibility is that the Herrscher of Death's authority of creation manipulated our brains. Since the authority of life can repair DNA, reviving some dead memory cells wouldn't necessarily be impossible."
Id touched a fingertip to her lips. "But even if the memories were restored, those memories would still have needed to exist in the first place, right?"
"That's where Occultist comes in." Lecturer spread her hands. "You know how it is. Whenever she takes control of our body, we usually lose a chunk of memory afterward."
"Maybe she acquired those memories from somewhere and tossed them into some corner of our memory, only for the authority of life to happen to reactivate them this time. That would also explain why only we possess those memories while no one else does. Of course, that point still needs to be confirmed."
On the PowerPoint slide, a chibi Occultist was praying toward an unknown sparkling existence. Looking closely, one could even make out the shape of a crystal.
"Holy crap, Occultist! The eternal GOAT!"
Expert shook her head. "Statistically speaking, that possibility has by far the lowest probability. As for the third possibility... although we really don't want to admit it, it's the most likely one."
Lecturer also said, "Unfortunately, some of Expert's earlier deductions regarding the authority of the Herrscher of Death were correct."
The PowerPoint was torn apart by a scythe as an evil chibi Dark Seele, wearing a perfectly wholesome smile, completely shredded the previous two possibilities.
Uh... and she was literally shredding them. Chibi Dark Seele was not an animated image in the PowerPoint. She was an actual ELF existing within Vill-V's mindscape.
Id pointed at the ELF and complained, "Uh, why Dark Seele? Isn't Dark Seele also a good Seele who's just sharp-tongued but softhearted?"
"Don't worry about it. This chibi Dark Seele is a new ELF designed by Lecturer. She simply wanted to use this opportunity to show it off." Conductor explained, "Lecturer likes displaying and promoting the works she's proud of. It's not like this is your first day knowing her."
In fact, much of the design inspiration behind Expert's successful creations came from Lecturer. The one most sensitive to user needs was not Expert, but Lecturer.
Just from the name Lecturer, it was obvious that rather than being a teacher, she was more like a product salesperson who loved displaying and promoting the creations she was proud of.
Of course, there were still some differences in practice. At the very least, Lecturer cared greatly about the emotional needs of her "customers."
Conductor: So aggressively pushing Anti-Kevin Weapon Model 68 (Armed Card) on Mei counted as taking care of Mei's trial needs?
Lecturer: Alleviating performance anxiety is an emotional need too. Besides, that card-playing robot in the Elysian Realm wasn't me. It was created from your memories. You complain about that card-playing robot's aggressive sales tactics, so what does that have to do with me, Lecturer?