First of all, she hadn't blurted out that answer on a whim.
After all, everyone knew that Furina was a beloved superstar in Fontaine. With this appearance, claiming she wasn't Furina would practically be a joke.
And looking at the people before her—barely clinging to life… If she denied it, could they really hold on any longer…?
Secondly, she truly hadn't said it on impulse. With the identity of a god, whatever she did would naturally become easier. At worst, if she were exposed, she'd just be thrown into the Fortress of Meropide. It wasn't exactly some hellish concentration camp anyway.
So admitting that she was Furina had been carefully considered. It was premeditated. It was—
…Alright, fine.
She'd admitted it on impulse.
What could she do? Just look at the girl in front of her—the hope shining in her eyes, her frail body, her gaunt cheeks. If she saw hope only to be plunged into despair a second later, collapsing unconscious would be the least of it.
And not just her.
Those hopeful faces in every surrounding prison cell…
How could she bear to disappoint them? Right now, she had already become their last lifeline.
Besides, the culprit behind the serial disappearance of girls was just a group of ordinary people. Not a single Vision holder among them.
So it shouldn't be that dangerous.
…Probably.
"It's me," Xia Yu said stiffly to the weak girl in front of her, forcing her expression to stay tense. "I'm here. I'm sorry you had to suffer like this."
Expecting her to perfectly act like a lively, convincing Furina was impossible.
For a grown man to suddenly portray a vivid young girl? That was asking too much. To put it bluntly, she'd only interacted with Furina through a game. She had never even met the real person—how could she possibly act like her convincingly?
Perhaps such a genius existed somewhere in the world.
But that person definitely wasn't Xia Yu.
But did it matter?
Not really. It wasn't something that couldn't be explained away.
For example—seeing her innocent citizens dying unjustly, the Hydro Archon Furina abandoning her previously flamboyant demeanor and becoming serious instead.
That sounded perfectly reasonable, right?
"Lady Furina…" Aurelie struggled to sit up. For days now, she had longed for this very moment.
She was a cheerful person. She had taken in several homeless outcasts—misfits among the crowd—and together they had formed a small troupe, living happily side by side.
Ever since she was young, Aurelie had carried a dream: to one day perform in the opera house just like Lady Furina.
She was optimistic. She was kind.
To the others, she was their salvation—their pillar of support.
But now, that same girl lay dying in a dark, damp prison cell.
Even in this state, she had given her blanket to a companion burning with a high fever. Every day, she took the pitiful portion of food she received and patiently fed most of it to the unconscious Kleish.
Even though she knew the girl locked up with her had little time left.
Before illness could take her life, she would become another sacrifice for those people's vile experiments.
Perhaps today.
At the latest, by tonight.
And yet Aurelie still insisted on doing this.
By any measure, Aurelie was a good person.
Anyone would be proud to have a friend like her.
But now—
This good person was about to die.
Those people wouldn't care about the health of their test subjects. The moment someone looked close to death, they would simply drag them away for experimentation.
"Shh."
Seeing Aurelie struggling to get up, Xia Yu raised a finger to her lips and gently shushed her.
Then she moved the rapidly spinning water sphere in her hand behind her back and raised her now-free right hand.
A blue flower—formed entirely from flowing water—slowly sprouted from the ground.
It bloomed.
Ripples of azure water spread outward from the flower like waves.
"This is…?"
As the blue ripples touched her, Aurelie felt the pain throughout her body suddenly lessen. Beside her, Kleish's occasional pained groans gradually faded, replaced by relaxed, gentle snores.
From the surrounding prison cells, cries of surprise soon followed.
At this moment, Xia Yu stood in the center of the many cells like the moon surrounded by stars.
The reverent gazes of the girls around her filled her with no small amount of satisfaction.
However…
She looked down at the unfamiliar flower before her.
Furina's in-game healing ability didn't look like this.
The healing side of Salon Solitaire involved summoning the Singer of Many Waters. It certainly wasn't a flower.
Thinking of this, she quietly sensed the power within her Vision.
Then her expression turned strange.
How should she put it…?
The template was there, but the inside was completely blank.
Furina's three Salon members weren't present in her ability at all.
It was an empty space.
Yet she had a vague feeling that she could create three Salon members herself.
Just… not yet.
She would need to experience certain things first. To understand certain things. And even if they were eventually created, they wouldn't resemble Furina's Salon members.
They would instead be shaped by her own experiences.
In short, this wasn't the time to think about such things.
The most important issue was how to get these girls out of danger.
This problem could be difficult—or surprisingly simple.
Either way…
It would depend entirely on her improvisation.
Xia Yu had already roughly figured out the situation.
The case of the missing girls.
In Fontaine's early main storyline, nearly everything revolved around this case. A man from Snezhnaya named Vacher and his lover from Fontaine had discovered the Primordial Seawater during an archaeological expedition. When his lover touched it, she dissolved instantly.
Yet Vacher himself, being from Snezhnaya, remained unharmed.
Afterward, no one believed his story. How could a human possibly dissolve in water?
After a series of blows, Vacher completely descended into darkness. Under the alias Marcel, he began doing business in Fontaine. By diluting the Primordial Seawater, he developed the illegal substance Les.
Using the enormous profits from selling the drug, he conducted experiments with the Primordial Seawater.
He kidnapped young Fontaine girls roughly the same age as his lover, dissolving them one by one to observe patterns and search for a way to bring her back.
At the beginning, he was a pitiful man.
Later…
He was nothing short of a complete bastard.
And this place was probably the secret headquarters that the protagonist would later raid for evidence before his trial in the story.
Seeing that so many people were still alive meant the story probably hadn't reached that stage yet.
The good news was that these criminals were ordinary people. None of them possessed Visions.
The bad news was that the enormous profits from selling Les had allowed them to secretly acquire a batch of clockwork meka guards.
As their most important base, there was no way this place lacked such machines.
Even with a Vision in hand, Xia Yu had barely used such power before. Whether she could defeat those clockwork meka remained an open question.
But there was no more time to think.
When the cart reaches the mountain, there will always be a road.
Hearing the rough voice of a man coming from the entrance of the corridor, Xia Yu took a deep breath.
Now it all depended on whether she could control the situation.
Fufu, please don't fail me here.
Even if you've been putting on exaggerated performances for years, surely the people of Fontaine still see some authority in you, right?
Everything from here on out depends on just how much authority you hold in their eyes.
The best outcome would be subduing the enemy without fighting.
After all, escorting so many girls to escape wasn't something Xia Yu felt confident about.
Taking another deep breath, she turned toward Aurelie's cell, ignoring the approaching footsteps.
"What's all this noise?! What's all this noise?!"
A burly man and a skinny one walked in one after the other. When Xia Yu had appeared earlier, the prison had briefly fallen into commotion.
Those sounds had likely drawn them here.
"Are you trying to die right now—"
The skinny man's impatient voice abruptly stopped the moment he stepped into the prison.
He froze in place.
"Ethan, what's wrong with you?" an annoyed voice came from behind him.
"Fu—Fu—Fu—"
The skinny man, Ethan, couldn't even speak properly.
"Fu what?!"
The burly man shoved him aside impatiently.
"Someone causing trou—"
Then he saw her.
The supreme Hydro Archon of Fontaine—Lady Furina—standing quietly beside a prison cell.
Beside her, a flower formed from condensed water emitted a faint glow, its ripples filling the corridor layer by layer.
"Fu—Fu—Fu—"
The burly man started stammering too.
"Silence."
Xia Yu cast them a sideways glance before turning her gaze back to the prison cell.
The two grown men instantly shut their mouths.
Their eyes filled with terror.
Their legs trembled uncontrollably.
They didn't dare move an inch.
Damn it—how could Lady Furina appear here?!
The two men could only shrink in place, trembling.
To be honest, in a world where gods truly existed—within a nation ruled by one—the words of a god carried immense weight.
Even ruthless criminals who killed without blinking would go weak in the knees when facing a god in person.
Run?
A water sphere silently descended behind them from the ceiling. Its mere presence crushed any thought of resistance.
If it had been the Maison Gardiennage or other law enforcers, they might have dared to flee.
But a god appearing personally?
No one believed they could escape.
This was underwater.
The Hydro Archon stood before them.
And they—mere thugs without Visions.
Run?
Were they insane?
Seeing this, Xia Yu felt a wave of relief.
Now all she had to do was act.
Her terrible acting skills were hopeless, so she could only rely on the inertia of Furina's five hundred years of rule in the hearts of Fontaine's people.
"Are these two men guilty of grave sins?" Xia Yu asked Aurelie seriously. "The kind whose deaths would not be regrettable?"
At those words, the two men at the entrance collapsed to their knees, their legs giving out beneath them.
Their faces were filled with terror.
"P–Please spare us, Lady Furina!"
But no one paid them any attention.
"Th–This… I'm not Lord Neuvillette," Aurelie hesitated for two seconds. Though hatred flickered in her eyes, she still said, "Matters like this should be decided by Lord Neuvillette and the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale."
"And what do you think?" Xia Yu continued. "I'm asking what your heart says."
"Of course I want them dead right now," Aurelie replied with a miserable smile. "Katara… she had just become an adult. Yesterday they dragged her out. She's probably already been killed."
"And Evelyn, Airi… they've harmed so many people. Of course I want them to die!"
"But Fontaine is ultimately a nation of justice," she added helplessly. "Lady Furina… you wouldn't kill them here, would you?"
"They will still have to walk onto the opera stage."
Hearing this, the girls in the surrounding cells lowered their eyes.
They truly wanted these men dead…
"My lady! Lady Furina, I confess! I confess!"
At that moment, Ethan the skinny man screamed hoarsely.
"They forced me into it, my lady! I didn't want to do it either… but I had no choice!"
Resist?
The one standing before him was a god.
Resistance was impossible.
He might as well start thinking about how to survive in the Fortress of Meropide.
The burly man stared at him in shock, opening his mouth to beg for mercy as well—
But he was cut off by the cold snort of the god before him.
"Hmph. Spare me that ridiculous face," Xia Yu said coldly. "Every criminal says the same thing."
"To be honest, I've long been dissatisfied with Fontaine's laws."
"Nominally, the death penalty exists—but the last person actually executed was nearly a hundred years ago."
"It's precisely because the death penalty lacks real deterrence that criminals have grown so brazen, leading to vile cases like this."
"Neuvillette is still too soft."
"If they are not sentenced to death this time, then what meaning does the death penalty even have?"
Of course, she knew the lack of executions wasn't Neuvillette's fault—the Oratrice handled sentencing.
But that didn't stop her from using the death penalty to scare these people.