"Actually, as the center of pleasure, the Golden Hour's food is one of Penacony's finest points too."
Black Swan gently cut a small piece from the stargazy cake in her hand. "If you can't get used to Oak Cake Rolls, why don't you try mine?"
"Uh…" Lynelle looked at the fork Black Swan held out, and at the very lively fish-head cake on it. The corner of her mouth twitched. "Does Penacony… not have any normal food?"
"Don't worry. It looks strange, but the cake tastes pretty good." Black Swan smiled as she explained, "Most of the time, food that looks normal has a more unique taste. Food with a strange shape, the kind that looks almost like a wonder, usually doesn't taste bad."
"That's not really advice from experience. It's just simple psychology. The Golden Hour exists so people can enjoy themselves, so if a dish frustrates tourists with both its looks and its taste, how's that supposed to help them have fun?"
"That sounds like it makes sense…" Lynelle nodded like she half understood, then bit into the cake Black Swan fed her. "Mm, yeah, it tastes good!"
"Then, little one, in return for feeding you just now…"
"Then try mine?" Lynelle copied her and scooped up a big spoonful of her Thousand-Layer Sundae (Zero Calories).
"Little Lynelle really has no sense of caution…" Black Swan looked at Lynelle, who'd eaten food from a stranger without pause and didn't mind the so-called indirect kiss as she offered her ice cream back.
A troubled look crossed her face. "So, what are we now?"
"Don't talk. Keep eating," Lynelle answered by reflex.
"Ah, wait, no. Ahem… I fell right into the bit. As for Miss Black Swan and me, we're friends, of course."
"Friends…" Black Swan's lips curved. "Then, as your friend… can you answer one question for me, little Lynelle?"
"What question?"
"The question is…"
"I want to know what kind of mystery you're hiding, to make that colleague of mine pay so much… attention to you."
Black Swan's purple-and-gold eyes slowly met Lynelle's pink ones. In that instant, a faint wave of dizziness passed through Lynelle's mind.
There was no doubt about it. That was the feedback from Lynelle's own mental defenses being touched.
In truth, to let Black Swan invade smoothly this time, Lynelle had pulled back every defense she could.
Otherwise, with the level of protection around Lynelle's mental world, poor Swan breaking in once would've been no easier than making a DoT team 0-cycle every Abyss in a whole version back to back.
Still, this had one downside. Until Black Swan finished, Lynelle had to act like she'd been hypnotized.
If she didn't, and Black Swan sensed that something was wrong, then the fun would be over before Lynelle could watch it.
--+--
So, what was happening on Black Swan's side right now?
The answer was… she'd gotten a little lost.
"Strange… Can a human really hold memories on this scale?"
Looking at Lynelle's vast, boundless mental space, Black Swan felt a headache coming on.
As a Memokeeper, and one who'd clearly sensed that Lynelle had related mental defenses, the longer Black Swan stayed inside Lynelle's mind, the more Lynelle's subconscious would reject her. She had to end this fast.
But… what the hell was this in front of her? Black Swan had picked a random place to slip into, only to find herself watching a group of dinosaurs chase one another around.
Was this really the kind of memory a person could have?
What Black Swan didn't know was that, because Lynelle's system was linked to the world on the Honkai Impact 3rd side, and because the core anchor for the second run was still with Lynelle, anyone invading Lynelle's mental world could easily slip along the system's pull and fall into Honkai Impact 3rd's planet catalog by mistake.
Clearly, that was exactly what'd happened to our Miss Black Swan.
"No, at this rate I won't find anything… But at least that colleague didn't lie to me. If I'm seeing this right, this child's head contains the equivalent of an entire civilization… I've got to find where she stores her own memories, fast."
As an excellent Memokeeper, Black Swan had the composure to stay calm in a crisis.
Once she realized something was wrong, she chose to return along the path she'd taken in, then walked down another fork.
How should this be put… Black Swan's choice was right, but the problem was that she hadn't gone back far enough.
She'd only left the range where the system was linked to the planet catalog. She hadn't left the system itself, and the other path she walked down led straight to…
--+--
"Huh? Wait, I haven't even gotten ready to make a move, so why did this Memokeeper barge in on her own?"
Kiana stared at Black Swan, who'd appeared in the system buffer zone out of nowhere, and her eyes went blank with confusion.
She'd originally planned to take advantage of the other woman getting lost and whip up some giant spectacle to scare Black Swan.
Then she looked away for one second, and the woman was already right at her front door…
There was no helping it. Usually, Kiana really didn't want to step in, but this seemed to have flown far past what counted as usual.
Kiana dug through Lynelle's memories and found plenty of "spellcasting materials."
Just as Lynelle had said before, this strange-looking Memokeeper seemed to have a curious talent. She could always pinpoint the exact beings she absolutely couldn't afford to provoke.
So… it really was time to teach her a small lesson.
--+--
"This time, I seem to have found the right place… This should be Lynelle's memory space. This scene also fits the memory-palace layout of someone with mental abilities. I just don't know why her memory palace looks a bit like a large theater…"
"Ah, there's a door!"
The endless corridor before her suddenly produced three chocolate-like doors, and Black Swan's eyes lit up.
Everyone knew this kind of imagery was likely to represent something very important in Lynelle's heart. In other words, the big surprise her Memokeeper colleague mentioned was probably here…
"Whew… I still need to be careful." Black Swan walked up to the door on the left, gently gripped the handle, and pushed it inward just a little.
"Tap… tap…"
A sound like objects knocking together rang out as the door opened.
"?" Black Swan opened the door a bit wider and carefully poked her head in. "What's that sound…"
But the moment she looked inside, Black Swan noticed something familiar swaying in front of her.
It was a pair of feet, swinging in the air.
Black Swan snapped her head up. The figure hanging in the air like a little fair-weather charm came fully into view, and from her outfit, there was no doubt that she was a Memokeeper.
Black Swan's skin crawled. What that dense, endless tapping meant was now obvious. Without the slightest hesitation, she slammed the door shut.
"?!"
"Why are there so many Memokeeper corpses? And their outfits looked like… the Cremators?!"
"What is this girl?"
Black Swan quietly swallowed. Only now did she realize she seemed to have run into someone terrifying.
"Then, the remaining two doors…"
Reason told Black Swan she should run right now. But as everyone knew, Memokeepers were creatures with powerful curiosity and an even stronger talent for getting themselves killed.
Even though reason screamed at her to flee, Black Swan's body was more honest than her mouth. She walked to the door on the far right and opened a crack the same way.
"May I ask…"
Through the crack, a face Black Swan would likely never forget in this lifetime looked back at her in confusion.
In the memory, the girl named Mei tilted her head. "Do you… need something?"
--+--
T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL