All Kiana could do was sigh at her rotten luck on the moon.
She had tried to control the power of Finality to prevent it from leaking out, and her body had indeed understood how to meet her needs.
What was originally just a slime-like body instantly swelled to an enormous mass.
To avoid terrifying the people on Earth, Kiana had no choice but to hide on the far side of the moon.
Currently, the one building her Palace of Finality was none other than Sa, whom she had captured from Venus.
Sa was being ruthlessly exploited like a construction worker by Kiana. The fact that she had held back and not killed her outright was probably because she wanted Sa to build her a new house.
Durandal looked up at the gigantic Kiana, then down at the smaller Kiana that had been separated from the main body.
Both bodies were clearly Kiana, but the massive, writhing, transparent pink insectoid body gave Durandal a bad feeling.
"How did you end up like this?"
"I tried to use my body to swallow the power of Finality so I could use it better, but this is what happened. I had to split off a human body to control it. Right now, my head feels like it's been soaked in Honkai Energy. All sorts of Honkai factors are being generated and destroyed."
"I'm in control, but it's not the kind of control I had in mind," Kiana said with a long face. "I was thinking of something like a humanoid form, but the body's automatic adaptation turned me into this giant pink slime."
Durandal's mouth fell slightly open. She wanted to say something, but was at a loss for words.
She could only step forward and pat her sister's shoulder in comfort.
Kiana buried her face in her sister's shoulder and started nuzzling her, mumbling, "That guy Noldrei didn't say anything either. He just said it was my body's problem, and if I want to find a solution, I have to figure out how to adapt to my own body and get used to modifying it on the fly."
"But how am I supposed to know about this stuff? Even the gene tree hidden in the Stigma Space can't handle this new situation of having devoured Finality. I can only try to swallow this big body bit by bit myself."
"But who knows how long it'll take to actually get rid of it... I can't just have my body hide on the moon for hundreds of years, can I?"
Seeing her sister so anxious, Durandal offered a suggestion. "You could hide your body under the surface of the moon. That way, you wouldn't have to worry about scaring anyone."
Kiana looked up at her sister in shock.
So her new palace wasn't even built yet, but the location for her new mausoleum had already been chosen, huh?
But on second thought, what Durandal said made sense. After all, the construction of an emperor's tomb began on the very first day of their reign.
"Huh?! I..."
Kiana was at a loss for words, unsure how to explain to her sister whether she wanted to live underground on the moon or not.
"What? Is there a problem?"
Durandal was still a little confused. She thought that since Kiana wanted to hide her body, under the surface of the moon was the best place. It wouldn't interfere with construction on the surface, nor would she have to worry about Kiana's massive slime body being exposed.
That way, she could still maintain her beautiful girl appearance.
"No, there's no problem." Kiana couldn't bring herself to say that she actually wanted to ask Noldrei for help with her body's problem.
Durandal looked at her sister's cowardly demeanor and thought, 'This won't do. If something happens in the future, everyone will be counting on her to use her wisdom.'
"Are you just going to stay here?" Durandal asked. "Who handles your daily work?"
"Uh, work? That... well, not..." Kiana scratched her head awkwardly. "I've left it all to... um, I've left it all to Little Duckie. But it's fine, Vita is there to help her."
Durandal never expected to receive such a shocking answer. "You're a reincarnation of the Yongle Emperor?" she exclaimed. "How could you make such a young child do all that work?" [T/N: The Yongle Emperor (Zhu Di) usurped the throne from his young nephew.]
Little Duckie had only just gained sentience, and already Kiana was treating her as the next crown princess and sending her off for training.
Kiana's face flushed red with embarrassment as she stammered out an explanation, "What's wrong with that? Isn't that how I got here? Now that I've moved up a level, of course I have to hand this work over to the person on the level below me. Is there something wrong with that?"
Durandal was so shocked by her shameless words that for a moment, she couldn't think of how to refute this strange reasoning.
"That's... that's not good, is it? You hold the Stigma lifeline of all humanity in your hands now."
Durandal kindly tried to persuade Kiana, also feeling that her work attitude was inappropriate.
"Eh, I just need to maintain the balance between Stigmas and Herrschers. Other people have a lot more to consider. I can't just hog all the work for myself, can I? Wouldn't that make me a dictator? I'm an enlightened leader. Of course I have to work together with everyone. My main job is to serve everyone so they can work normally."
"Otherwise, wouldn't it be a case of the higher-ups seizing power from below? How would that show that others are also a part of the new civilization? It's precisely because others have the power to handle their work that they can become a part of the new civilization!"
Durandal went from questioning Kiana to understanding her.
'It seems like that actually makes sense. Without work, how can one exercise power? Without exercising power, how can one prove that this civilization is your civilization?'
Durandal thought about it carefully and soon came to agree with Kiana's theory.
Kiana's power was indeed meant to maintain the rules of this civilization, so it certainly couldn't be understood as work in the conventional sense.
Kiana breathed a sigh of relief. She had finally managed to fool her sister.
Power and rules were all secondary issues.
She hadn't learned much else from Noldrei, but she had learned how Proliferationism directed others to engage in productive activities.
Kiana had actually noticed the dislocation problem in the current civilization's system.
For example, the central conflict of Proliferationism was indeed centered on her, the Emperor of Finality. But the problem was that the cost of this Proliferationist conflict was not borne by her at all. The brilliance of this civilization's system lay in its success in making all of humanity a part of the cost of civilization.
Kiana realized in her heart that the most immoral part of herself had begun to emerge.
She still retained the simple moral sentiments of an industrial-era human, feeling that it was a bit too much for her to sit on top of so many people's heads doing no work at all.
She couldn't just eat, drink, and be merry all day, and then go gallivanting around looking at pretty girls whenever she felt like it, could she?
All Kiana could do was inform as many people as possible, letting them compete and produce what they needed for themselves.
'No, I still have to work hard.'
The thought of her foster father charging out of the solar system, trying every means possible to find a better solution for her body's problem, filled her heart with guilt and gave her even more motivation to work