Himeko Murata knocked gently on the door before entering the Principal's office, signaling to Theresa that someone was visiting.
Given Himeko and Theresa's relationship, this level of etiquette wasn't strictly necessary; she did it for other reasons.
Theresa liked to read manga. There was nothing wrong with this hobby itself, but unfortunately, Theresa, wanting to maintain the dignity of a Principal, had always intentionally hidden it. If Himeko were to enter the office while Theresa happened to be reading manga, the Principal, unable to hide the book in time, would instantly tear it to shreds, destroying the evidence.
To protect the poor manga, and to maintain Theresa's dignity as Principal—which, due to her overly cute appearance, had never really existed anyway—Himeko had developed the good habit of knocking before entering.
Unexpectedly, this time, Himeko didn't hear the frantic sounds of things being put away from inside the office.
Could it be that the Principal isn't reading manga, but is actually working seriously?
With some curiosity, Himeko pushed the door open and saw Theresa sleeping on the wide, magnificent desk.
Woken by the knocking and footsteps, Theresa rubbed her eyes. Seeing who it was, she asked in a voice that was still a bit drowsy and overwhelmingly cute.
"What is it, Himeko?"
"..."
Seeing the girl in this state, Himeko would normally make a small joke and tease Theresa, but her mood was somewhat heavy at the moment, and she couldn't casually make jokes. She immediately put on a serious face.
"I want to borrow your account to log into the Schicksal database and search for some information."
"Oh."
Because she had gone to Nagazora City with Evan late at night to deal with the newborn Pseudo-Herrscher, Theresa's mind was sluggish from lack of rest. Coupled with her trust in Himeko Murata, she didn't ask too many questions. She directly opened her personal terminal, scanned her fingerprint and iris to successfully log in, and then pushed the terminal towards Himeko.
"Remember to shut it down when you're done. I'm going back to sleep, so sleepy."
Things went smoother than she could have imagined. Himeko had even prepared a half-true, half-false excuse to deal with Theresa's inquiries, but the other party had just fallen asleep without any intention of prying.
My luck is quite good.
Himeko's mood relaxed a little. She began to operate Theresa's terminal device as lightly and quietly as possible.
As the world's largest organization fighting the Honkai, Schicksal's database contained an unimaginable amount of information. From trivial life common sense or academic knowledge to cutting-edge technology for fighting the Honkai, it had almost everything. It was practically a universal search engine; as long as you wanted to know something, you could mostly get an answer.
But Himeko didn't recklessly type something like "What price must be paid to artificially solve the drawbacks of artificial Stigmata?" into the search bar, which would expose too much information. Theresa's account had extremely high privileges, yes, but that didn't mean no one's privileges were higher than hers. At the very least, Schicksal Overseer Otto's privileges were definitely higher than Theresa's.
If she searched for too many thought-provoking phrases, it would be terrible if it attracted Otto's attention.
Strangely, compared to the Overseer who had lived for ages and had almost become synonymous with Schicksal, Himeko was more willing to trust Evan.
This was also natural. If she blindly worshiped the Schicksal Overseer, Himeko wouldn't have followed Theresa to break away from Schicksal and establish St. Freya Academy.
The Overseer didn't seem like a truly good person. It wasn't just Schicksal's somewhat iron-fisted methods in fighting the Honkai; a part of it was Himeko's intuition. She maintained basic vigilance.
Himeko searched with rough keywords like "artificial Stigmata" and "zombification." This information wasn't particularly special; almost every Valkyrie would come into contact with it, so it wouldn't attract special attention. And as long as there was enough data, Himeko could see information that others might not care about, but was extremely important to her.
Himeko wanted to confirm whether Evan was putting himself in danger to save her. If he was, Himeko would refuse his help later. And if he wasn't...
Just imagining a future free from the painful torment of the artificial Stigmata, a hopeful light appeared in Himeko's eyes. She wasn't considering the issue of lifespan at all, nor did she think that the lifespan taken from her by the artificial Stigmata would be restored. Himeko was simply happy that she might be able to spend the remaining few years of her life in the best possible state.
Taking a silent deep breath to calm herself, Himeko quickly browsed the information.
"The zombification process is extremely difficult to alter through external force; specialized equipment must be used to delay or stop it. The requirements for facility conditions and timing are extremely high. Considering the suddenness of Honkai outbreaks and the rapid evolution of the zombification process, it is actually extremely difficult to achieve."
This was information Himeko already knew. Next.
"The essence of zombification is the manifestation of Honkai energy eroding the human body. People with sufficient Honkai adaptability can avoid zombification even in a high-concentration Honkai energy environment. And theoretically, by increasing a person's Honkai adaptability, or by re-extracting the Honkai energy that has invaded the human body, the zombification process can be reversed. But it cannot restore a zombie to a human, because at the moment a human becomes a zombie, they are already dead. What remains is just a walking corpse."
That was all there was about zombification. Himeko was a little disappointed and could only turn her attention to the information related to artificial Stigmata.
Then, she found a paper where the author's name had strangely been erased.
"Artificial Stigmata have allowed a portion of people lacking aptitude to become powerful Valkyries, but they have brought great drawbacks. Through my extensive research, I have found that these drawbacks are根本难以彻底消除(extremely difficult to completely eliminate). At the current level of technology, it cannot be done even with several decades of development. Therefore, I propose to stop the research on artificial Stigmata and find other solutions. Perhaps we can replace Valkyries with robots to reduce casualties."
Himeko was a little helpless to find that even with the privileges of Theresa's account, the available information still couldn't determine the consequences of Evan's actions. But this last paper caught her attention.
Replacing Valkyries with robots to reduce casualties—
Anti-Entropy's Titans are purely robots, aren't they?
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