Xyrin Empire
Chapter 488: Chance Encounter

Chapter 488: Chapter 488: Chance Encounter

"I feel Tohsaka, the Space Twins, and Silvia must have a lot in common when they’re together, no doubt about it," I thought.

A Miss from a renowned ancient family and sole heir, who spends her days calculating utility bills and touring Earth as an alien friend, one (Asida and Asidora really count as one) who as a high-level commander of the Empire runs a flower shop that loses money every month and relies on handouts from subordinate commanders and comrades to pay rent and get a full meal, and one who used to lead the Empire and now commands the Raven Corps, subsisting on welfare in Shadow City, happy as a mole as long as he gets a full meal every day—is there a sadder sight? These poor princesses certainly take the cake.

Ah, speaking of Silvia, rumor has it she has opened another small shop near the entrance to Avalon in Shadow City. Given her precedent of running an accessory shop in the administrative center of Academy City, everyone can easily guess just how unreliable her new venture is—yes, she opened a candy house in an SSS-tier military alert zone of the Imperial fortress and is now busy pushing peppermints to stationed Xyrin Soldiers and heroes from all realms.

What on earth is stuffed in that silly girl’s brain?

Whether Silvia will make any money is yet to be determined, but for now, due to her misplaced little shop, Shadow City has had to significantly increase its number of daily patrolling soldiers.

I digress, but what I meant to say is this: this morning, just before Tohsaka left for school, she shamelessly asked for three years’ rent in advance. Three years! Although that money came from Pandora hacking into the bank systems and is virtually unlimited, Tohsaka, have you gone completely mad? Three years is more than enough time for me to conquer the world several times over, you know? How can such a dutiful girl in front of others transform so much in our company, Lilina?

Facing my puzzlement, Sandora discreetly responded through a spiritual connection while having breakfast: "Ah Jun, I think this is also the effect of the Daddy Halo."

I was baffled and uncomprehending, and while Tohsaka was not paying attention, I desperately exchanged glances with Sandora.

"That human little girl has found fatherly love in you, so she has decided to start asking you for pocket money every month."

Sandora remained calm in front of my instantly pale face, munching away carelessly, while Tohsaka shivered across the table, finally realizing that her budget for the voracious girl’s meal the night before—for forty people—was far too optimistic.

Meanwhile, I considered whether I should lock Lilina in a cage for a few years upon returning home to prevent her terrible genes from further corrupting the masses. Look, my Sandora was originally such a pure Glutton, now tainted with a sly gene by Lilina.

"Hey, we’re off to school," said Tohsaka, who after all still has the status of a student, along with Emiya, and they must attend school daily. Before leaving the house, Tohsaka offered her last admonition, "Please, don’t mess with anything at home! Especially you, Sister Sandora, feel free to order takeout if you’re hungry—ah, but of course, the bill’s on you—and also, Uncle Alien, please don’t have any more colleagues from the photography industry over, European-style houses can’t withstand such damage..."

Hmph, as if we’re here just to cause trouble all day. Let me tell you, the ones at your doorstep are Saviors! Saviors!

But then Tohsaka’s next words shut down any objections before they could even emerge: "Just think about what Emiya has gone through, I really feel that whatever the house turns into upon our return, I should just gracefully accept."

I was wrong, Rin. We’ll definitely stay at home without damaging anything. The series of mishaps at Emiya Mansion were absolutely an accident—please believe that.

Having sent away the troublesome miss, us members of the Imperial soy scene immediately returned to our state of idleness. Well, despite having a lot to do in theory, for some reason, I always feel like I’m idly passing time even when I’m supposedly busy with important tasks.

"Director, this area has already been set up as a defense position," Tsuruya, in her garrison uniform, agilely jumped down from the rooftop, her commander’s sword still shimmering with undimmed blue light, "If attacked or spied upon with hostility, the space will immediately lock down, and the soldiers waiting in the basement can use the positioning matrix of the site to appear instantly beside the attackers."

"Ah, thank you for your hard work." I nodded. Although still quite youthful, Tsuruya now had at least some qualities of a commander. If the Heroic Spirit that spied on the Emiya Mansion that night were to appear again, the arrangement she had made in advance should work.

But the capabilities of the other party were indeed a bit troublesome, constantly disintegrating themselves into dispersed energy. Without setting a quick-reactive trap, even the Empire’s advanced technology would find it difficult to deal with such a specialist in escape, considering these are merely the split manifestations of the workers under the origin power of the world.

"Where are Pandora and Visca?"

I looked around but didn’t spot the two youngsters; only Little Baobao and Dingdang were whooping joyfully, hopping all over the living room, enacting their curious friendship between food and diner.

"They might be installing space dark mines," Tsuruya scratched her head, revealing her signature dry laugh, "They said in such unfamiliar places, sleeping without at least two thousand units of high-explosive ordnance nearby makes them uneasy."

Suddenly, I felt that Tohsaka’s worries before leaving home might indeed have been justified; Pandora might really demolish Tohsaka’s house anytime, and then Rin would have a reason to have us build her a new home spanning a hundred thousand kilometers, two hundred floors above and below ground—could that be what the young miss had originally planned?

Just then, a communication from Avalon suddenly connected to the information link. It was the intelligence group responsible for monitoring this world requesting communication. After the connection was established, the image of a subordinate commander, who I had once met at a fortune-telling stall under Erli Bridge, appeared in my mind: "All glory to you, my Leader, the Leaving World Garden’s scan of the Yododani Temple area has obtained the latest data. The target space underwent reverse displacement at 6:55 AM your local time; the normal Yododani Temple has returned to the real space, but we have not located where that false projection, which once occupied the reality, has gone."

I raised my head, just in time to see Sandora’s eyes also turning this way, clearly, she had received the same message.

Yododani Temple had returned, and the people inside were safe and unaware of what had happened at night. I didn’t know if the magician mingling among them understood all this, but compared to a couple of disruptive Heroic Spirits, the Yododani Temple experiencing some kind of anomaly mattered more. Avalon’s Leaving World Courtyard System represented the highest technology we currently possessed. As its main targeting device, the world scanning module was extremely advanced, able to scan every dimension of a distant world across the Void Sea if we were willing to pay enough energy. Yet, even such scanning had not found where Yododani Temple under the Red Moon had gone.

According to Baobao’s calculations, after correcting for the interference the plane barrier posed to the scans, the only source that could cause such strong disruption besides Xyrin Technology would be the origin power of the world.

Alaya, Gaia, of course, I’m not talking about the older sisters from the ’Three Sisters of All Things Illuminated’ at home, but the two great Suppression Forces of the world. If "they" had noticed and begun to counterattack the invaders, then things were about to get interesting.

Interesting my foot! We are here to save you two, you dense Suppression Forces!

However, until Avalon deciphers the laws of this world’s structure, we still can’t make direct contact with the two great Suppression Forces. Therefore, commanding the officer controlling Leaving World Courtyard to continue the current task became the only thing we could do right now.

It’s really boring staying inside; the young ones could still find fun things to do. Pandora and Visca could study space dark mines, Little Baobao and Dingdang were still playing food escape, even Tsuruya could cheerfully fight with Sandora over the TV; I, however, turned out to be the one left out. After several unsuccessful attempts to join their fun, I decided to head out for a walk.

Fuyuki City isn’t some bustling metropolis and because of the major fire ten years ago, the town hasn’t fully recovered after a period of downturn—there wasn’t much to see here. Wandering aimlessly, I unknowingly found myself far from the bustling city center.

Suddenly appeared before my eyes, the land full of withering and scents of death, surrounded by an ominous atmosphere.

A vibrant city green space and residential area was not far away, but the scorched land before me bore no grass, and even the remaining scorched tree trunks looked utterly lifeless. This was probably where the great fire had raged, as if the dead souls of the past were still entrenched here, stubbornly using their own deaths to prevent life from descending, turning this place into a barren wasteland. However, I knew that all talk of dead souls was nonsense. What lurked here was neither dead souls nor merely those despairing grudges. Through the perception of spiritual power, some kind of filthy substance stubbornly occupied the ground below. It was a blend of magic power and grudges, similar to the catastrophe contamination in the soil of the Western Plague Land, a "virus" straddling between life and energy, infecting the earth and strangling the seeds in their cradle.

At any rate, it wasn’t much trouble, I might as well help Dingdang accumulate some merit.

Thinking thus, I took out a large cup from my Personal Space. The cup was decorated with a silly smiley face and two crossed lollipops drawn in crooked lines by some "person." Knowing well whose handiwork it was, I filled the cup with water from a nearby pool. Watching the water instantly turn crystal clear and begin to slowly evaporate into a mist filled with energy, I knew this was effective.

With a "splash," I poured all the water from the cup onto the barren land. The seemingly unremarkable liter of clean water immediately soaked into the soft mud, but merely seconds later, an unprecedented energy storm swept across the land in a way invisible to ordinary people. The decade-long lingering filthy energy was utterly defeated in an overconfident clash and was dismantled into the world’s elemental components due to the sin of blasphemy. Perhaps in a few days, this would become a vibrant meadow.

After all, this cup was used for Dingdang’s baths... It’s funny how Little One didn’t mind that I used such an object to "bathe" her every now and then when her experiments failed and left her utterly filthy, even going so far as to doodle her own signature lollipop pirate flag on it in her boredom. Should I say that a God who could be appeased with just a sugar cube is really easy to placate?

Since the True God had once bathed in it, the water that touched this spring had become holy water, second only to the "First Light" in mysticism. Although applying this theory to a plastic cup bought for seven and a half seems absurd, one must acknowledge the irrational strength of the Star Domain Divine Race in some aspects. Lola, the Fox Woman, once had the fortune to get Dingdang’s leftover half-cup of water. After conducting a series of experiments, she arrived at an astonishing conclusion: replicating that bit of holy water would require the collective energy from all the Christians in Britain praying devoutly in churches for half a month. Learning that the eternally seventeen-year-old "girl" had mobilized the entire British Puritan power for such research also left me astounded—of course, that’s another story.

The ominous energy tainted by Dingdang’s divine holy water was swept away, and the air around seemed much cleaner. I took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, and at the same time, a cheerful voice unexpectedly rang out from behind.

"Ah! It’s that weird big brother!"

"Ilya?" Although I had already sensed the girl’s approach, I still made a surprised expression, "What are you doing here?"

"Because I felt something happened here. Or is it that Ilya suddenly appearing bothers the weird big brother?"

The silver-haired little girl slightly tilted her head, her face bearing genuine confusion and sadness.

"Of course not." I smiled faintly and walked up to Ilya’s side. Although we had been enemies when we first met, even having my servants gruesomely dismembered by two berserk Shorties, now she greeted me without any guard up, making her train of thought quite perplexing, "Also, can we drop the ’weird’?"

"Ah, Ilya really is annoying!"

Ugh, kids are really a hassle.

"Speaking of which, aren’t you afraid of me?" Curiously observing Ilya’s innocent smile, I playfully threatened her, "My two sisters can instantly defeat a Berserker, you know."

"No, I won’t," Ilya’s eyes reflected the clear sky as her voice rang crisp and cheerful, "Berserker has resurrected, and big brother protected me that night, you know? And you know Berserker can resurrect, right? So from the start, big brother never intended to harm Ilya. Plus, you aren’t participants in the Holy Grail War, so we aren’t enemies."

Such an innocent-looking girl, yet so sharp?

I stared in amazement at the little girl before me, finding myself somewhat unable to understand how she could maintain such innocence while also being so astute.

Standing next to the land recently purified by holy water felt very comforting, yet I noticed Ilya’s complexion gradually worsening. Her body had been transformed by the Einzbern family into a "special tool" from a young age, which, in some ways, was also seen as a betrayal of the Life Goddess’s will. Dingdang’s power had already unknowingly begun to reverse the modification of the magic circuits inside Ilya’s body, meaning her physical body was disintegrating under the residual life divine power in the air.

"Your complexion doesn’t look good, go sit over there."

I patted Ilya on the shoulder, almost pushing her towards a swing set across the street. She clung to my sleeve with considerable confusion in her tone, "It’s strange, I feel a comforting presence here, but why does it feel so uncomfortable?"

After resting on the swing for quite a while, Ilya’s pale complexion finally began to normalize. The girl swayed listlessly on the swing set, her legs gently swinging in the air. After a while, she slumped to the side, seemingly distressed, but I quickly caught her.

Uh, could it be she knew I would definitely come to rescue her and thus played a prank so boldly?

Seeing the small curve of Ilya’s mouth, I seriously doubted this, oh Dingdang, why are modern children so terrifying?

But the mischievous smile on Ilya’s lips was fleeting. The next second, she pursed her lips, showing an unhappy expression. Although I didn’t know what was going on, the little girl in front of me seemed a bit down from the start. Apart from the spirited greeting when we first met, she had been looking rather disheartened, and it certainly wasn’t due to physical discomfort now that the effects of divine power erosion had passed.

I casually pulled out a lollipop, which for various reasons had almost become my personal bonded item, and handed it to Ilya. "Here, I originally prepared this for my sisters, but it’s okay to give you one too."

"Being big brother’s sister must be really nice," Ilya’s eyes brightened as she took the candy and spoke with some envy.

But being their brother was indeed very exhausting.

Watching the happy smile gradually appearing on Ilya’s face, I felt moved by this simple sense of happiness. Having been raised as a "tool" by the Einzbern family since she was little, she had probably never experienced such pure, unadulterated care. This little girl with snow-like features involuntarily reminded me of Visca. Despite their vastly different appearances, the expression of joy they showed in front of this seemingly insignificant happiness was strikingly similar.

"Berserker was injured," Ilya suddenly spoke, interrupting my thoughts, candy in her mouth and her eyes staring blankly ahead, "to protect me..."

(To be continued. If you want to find out what happens next, please visit www.qidian.com. More Chapters are available there, support the author, support genuine reading!)