Chapter 142: Raven.exe Has Stopped Responding
Pop!
It was a sound like a cork being pulled from a wine bottle.
With a long, drawn-out sigh of relief, Caelus felt like a pastry chef who, after working tirelessly for hours in a cake shop kitchen, had finally crafted a masterpiece of edible art.
His body felt a little weary, but looking ahead, he could admire the exquisite creation he had painstakingly sculpted for hours, filling him with an immense sense of honor and satisfaction.
This was, after all, a work that had cost him 19 crystals.
As his narcissistic sense of accomplishment faded, the beautiful cream puffs on the 'cake' made Caelus suddenly realize a problem.
"Oh no."
"Did I just hit the bullseye?"
As everyone knows, in a shooting game, the closer the shooter is to the target, the easier it is to hit the center ten ring. And...
Under the power of the Rubber-Rubber Fruit, Caelus had practically pressed the muzzle of the gun against the bullseye. Firing in such a situation...
His heart hammered a few frantic beats in his chest. Caelus's expression shifted rapidly, but soon, remembering something, he let out a sigh of profound relief.
Thank goodness, Raven was just a trial character; she'd disappear after a month.
Even Caelus, self-proclaimed as the preeminent experimenter of his era, had no desire to experience pregnancy.
"Phew, that kind of play was a bit too thrilling. I should probably be a bit more reserved in the future."
Stelle could feel Caelus's empathy, and Caelus, naturally, could also feel Stelle's sensations.
The feelings Stelle and Raven had in that situation, combined with his own, made Caelus's neural pathways practically short-circuit, his consciousness almost crashing.
If the Honkai: Star Rail world had a Path of Lust, Caelus would definitely be a Lust Emanator.
Next time, he should try Candyman. Would they taste sweet?
Would he eat them himself?
Or give them to Bronya?
Or to Raven?
As for Seele, it wouldn't be impossible to use the Tiger Talisman to separate White Seele from Black Seele when the latter wasn't around.
As her red lips softly parted and closed, Raven began to clean up the lingering traces on Caelus's body, while Caelus picked up the Tara Mask from the nightstand and placed it over his face.
In an instant, the shadows within the room seemed to come alive and stir.
He dispatched two Shadowkhan Ninja soldiers to guard the door, just in case the Stellaron Devil came charging in with her Flame Lance, wanting Caelus to 'taste her spear.' But Stelle probably didn't have the energy for that right now.
Hundreds of Shadowkhan Ninja, meanwhile, continued their search for the Clow Cards and the Wind Card. The ninja soldiers were shadows; they feared neither chilling winds nor freezing snow, and could move freely even in the icy wastes outside of Belobog.
Shuttling through shadows, their search efficiency far surpassed human capabilities.
The Shadowkhan Ninja were simply perfect tools!
As his palm caressed the soft jade, Caelus, filled with emotion, gave the Tara Mask a high appraisal.
Suddenly, Caelus's brow twitched. He sensed that one of the Shadowkhan Ninja had lost contact. His orders to the ninja were only to search for the Clow Cards and the Wind Card.
The ninja would never reveal themselves to the Silvermane Guards, nor would the monsters in the Fragmentum actively attack inanimate shadows. For one to lose contact under these circumstances...
Caelus's thoughts stirred, and the shadows in the room writhed once more, generating several bat-winged, specialized Flying Shadowkhan. They swiftly flew towards the last known location of the disconnected Shadowkhan.
The Tara Mask could summon all ten types of Ninja soldiers. Summoning specialized types consumed slightly more energy than normal ones, so there was a difference in cost-effectiveness, but not a significant one.
Furthermore, Caelus couldn't use the Shadowkhan Legion indefinitely or recklessly. Creating a false personality to resist the Tara consciousness's corruption required a consumption of power.
Overuse carried the risk of corruption. However, at the current usage intensity, summoning a hundred ninja soldiers, Caelus could wear the mask for a full month without issue.
The limit of Shadowkhan usage would increase as Caelus grew stronger.
Before long, Caelus sensed two more Flying Shadowkhan lose contact. Instead of worrying, his heart surged with delight. Excluding the Fragmentum monsters, only that could destroy Flying Shadowkhan.
Amidst a touch as smooth as solidified cream, Caelus's lips curled into a slight smile.
He'd searched for three days, and finally, he'd caught it!
The Wind Card!
Raven propped herself up with slender, pale arms, her lithe and graceful body rising. Stopping her sensual, massage-like ministrations, she was about to move away from Caelus and get dressed to capture the Wind Card.
But in that very second Raven began to rise.
"Holy sh*t! No way! Again!?"
The sudden, unexpected turn of events made Caelus's Tara Mask fall off. His eye twitched uncontrollably, and he immediately channeled more power into the mask to regain control of his expression.
The system's bug of automatically activating 'auto-battle mode' actually had a rather high trigger frequency. When stable, it might only trigger once every two or three days, but sometimes, it could trigger twice within a single day.
Twice within a single day was the current record.
However, under normal circumstances, a trigger was just a trigger.
Sushang and B-Raven both knew that their 'other selves' couldn't fully control this peculiar ability.
They only needed to wait quietly for a few minutes to return to their own bodies.
If an important activity was underway in the Honkai world—such as racing or combat—the moment consciousness switched over, a violent mental reaction would occur.
Upon detecting a strong mental reaction, the system would immediately notify Silver Wing and Midnight Absinthe, and simultaneously activate reverse mapping, ensuring that no accidents would befall either of their bodies.
Thus, even if the bug struck unexpectedly, there would be no safety issues.
That was true for Sushang and B-Raven, but for Caelus, it wasn't quite as friendly.
B-Raven was currently in 'plagiarism mode,' using Caelus's alt account to discuss with a famous European singer how many dollars parallel-world songs were worth. The next second, as if the world had a bug, she was screen-swapped to another world in one Planck time unit.
Raven had experienced this several times before; she knew it was due to the 'parallel world self's' unstable ability.
After a very brief moment of astonishment, Raven recovered and was about to open her mouth to complain.
But then...
What was this situation!?
The gray-haired beauty's once subtly seductive expression suddenly turned blank.
She could clearly feel the sensation between her legs, the lingering marks on her soft breasts caught her eye, and her cherry-red pupils widened as if struck by an eighteen-magnitude earthquake.
Raven.exe has stopped responding.
She sat there stiffly, like a delicate doll.
At this moment, a fierce storm of thoughts raged in Caelus's mind, with various scenarios and developments flashing through it in an instant.
But no matter how Raven might explain this, there was clearly only one role he could play.
Cradling the gray-haired beauty's slightly stiff shoulders in his hands, Caelus gently pressed the bewildered Raven onto the bed, kissing her lightly on the corner of her lips, and spoke with an excited tone: "Natasha, I've found it. I'm going to go catch it first."
Having said that, Caelus gave Raven almost no time to react. He put on the Tara Mask and snapped his fingers.
The shadows beneath him rippled like a lake's surface, and Caelus's body slowly sank into the darkness as if sitting in a boat.
Several Shadowkhan soldiers' hands reached out from the shadows of the bathroom and the floor, picked up Caelus's clothes, and retreated into the shadows with him, serving Caelus, who was within the Shadowkhan Kingdom, as he quickly got dressed.
At this point, Raven remained in a 'stopped responding' state.
[Uh, sorry about that.]
Midnight Absinthe mentally 'nudged' the 'crashed' Raven.
...
Raven's body retained a sensation she had never experienced before, a kind of warm afterglow. She instinctively moved her body, and then...
Gazing at the overflowing afterglow, Raven sank into an even deeper silence.
In truth, she didn't need 'herself' to explain. Raven, trained by Gray Serpent since the Second Honkai War and having forged a formidable reputation in the mercenary world, faced such an obvious situation; how could she not have realized what had happened?
"Who... was that?"
[My lover, Caelus.]
Midnight Absinthe replied with a gentle, elegant tone, yet it contained an incredibly complex emotion.
It was like a husband had been intimate with another woman, but the culprit who caused the incident was herself—a thick wave of self-pity and regret washed over her.
Hearing this, Raven took a sharp, deep breath, then exhaled.
Her parallel self finding happiness and a partner—by all accounts, this should have been something worth congratulating. Yet, Raven put on a mask of conflicted agony.
Her first kiss!
As a mercenary, Raven didn't typically care about such things, but as a woman, she couldn't be entirely unperturbed.
Wait, no, the body belonged to her other self.
So, it didn't count as her first kiss.
"You, take your body back, quickly!" Miss Raven's composure was starting to crack.
[Oh, alright.] Midnight Absinthe ended auto-battle mode.
Switched to the 'body's backend,' Raven's composure was still shattered.
Even though control wasn't in her hands, her body's sensations were still transmitted to her without a single inaccuracy. Raven could still feel the stickiness on her body and... a slight pain in her lower abdomen.
It wasn't a sharp pain; it was a strange, yet very comfortable, ache.
[Wait, what are you doing?]
Midnight Absinthe stood up, and Raven could feel something trickling down her thighs. Though she couldn't see it, she knew what it was.
"I'm just going to clean myself up. I can't put clothes on like this."
The matter-of-fact words made Raven's heart clench. She had countless things she wanted to say, countless curses she wanted to unleash, but she choked on them, unable to speak.
It was perfectly normal for couples to do such things, undeniably.
And she knew Absinthe hadn't meant for this to happen.
This happening probably bothered Absinthe even more than it bothered her. Raven could discern the complex emotions in Absinthe's previous words; to accommodate Raven's feelings, Absinthe was still doing her best to suppress the bitterness in her heart.
Through their mental link, Raven could feel Absinthe's emotions.
If the other person was being so considerate of her feelings, what else could she say?
After all, it was Absinthe's body.
But what exactly was this strange sensation in her abdomen?
Raven silently focused on her abdomen and on Midnight Absinthe's hand resting on her lower belly.
Once in the bathroom, Raven's heart sank even further.
She thought putting a full-length mirror in the bathroom was a truly bad idea. Seeing the state of the body from Midnight Absinthe's first-person perspective, combined with the reflection in the mirror, severely agitated Raven's nerves.
That amount...
'Her' body wasn't going to get pregnant, right?
Pregnant... a child...
A child?
Raven's thoughts suddenly became extremely chaotic.
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