Chapter 193: Will You Blame Me?
Nuwa and Fuxi had been lurking by the doorway, peeking into the room. Nuwa scratched her head and whispered to Fuxi, "Ugh, why is it so quiet in there?"
"Hold on, something feels off." Fuxi had picked up on it too — the atmosphere was subtly, inexplicably wrong. Everything looked perfectly calm on the surface, but…
There was a strange, uncomfortable tension hanging in the air.
"Oh~"
Mobius had finished pulling up the data on her tablet and was now staring at the readouts in silence. Klein stood to her side, as always, ready to assist at a moment's notice.
The Puppet Klein beside her, however, looked decidedly more out of sorts. She hovered awkwardly, fidgeting, looking for all the world like someone who had no idea what to do with herself.
The Puppet Klein kept glancing at Mobius, clearly wanting to say something — but unable to find the words. Her gaze kept drifting toward her counterpart, the original Klein, as if searching for some kind of cue.
Klein had, of course, noticed the Puppet Klein's expression. She simply shook her head — she didn't intend to interrupt Mobius's train of thought.
Seeing her original self respond that way only made the Puppet Klein more flustered. It had been days since she'd been assigned any work. Ever since Dr. Mobius had met with the original Klein that time, her assignments had steadily dwindled.
And then, a few days ago, when the living Klein had walked back in — Dr. Mobius had stopped giving her tasks entirely. For the Puppet Klein, this was simply incomprehensible.
She didn't understand why. She had tried asking Mobius, but Dr. Mobius had said nothing — only that she didn't need her help.
This had never happened in fifty thousand years. The sudden change left the Puppet Klein utterly adrift. She couldn't even bring herself to attend to her usual routine maintenance of the Realm — she just didn't have the heart for it.
Yes, for a puppet, such duties were supposed to be mandatory. But the Puppet Klein simply couldn't find it in herself to go. All she wanted was to stay close to Mobius.
To wait for Dr. Mobius to give her an assignment. Until now, she had been left hanging — waiting and waiting, going nowhere.
She could see Dr. Mobius glancing at her unconsciously, only to hesitate each time before looking away and handling things herself.
She didn't know what Mobius was doing. It made the Puppet Klein feel lost. And as she stood there, glancing around, trying to find some task she could complete before Mobius even thought to ask —
She spotted the two sisters peeking around the doorframe.
The Puppet Klein's eyes lit up. She trotted over to them at a quick pace.
"You're back too." A look close to pleading flickered in the Puppet Klein's eyes. "Is there anything I can help with? Anything at all."
Dr. Mobius had left quite a few review tasks for the two sisters — but had specifically excluded the Puppet Klein from handling them. Still, if the sisters made the request themselves, surely that would be fine?
She couldn't stand having nothing to do. From the very moment of her design, Dr. Mobius had hardwired a love of work — a love of overtime — deep into her core. Fifty thousand years had only carved that drive into every fiber of her being.
Especially now, with the sudden and utterly unprepared way all work had been stripped from her, and not a single task delegated her way — the Puppet Klein had felt physically wrong for days.
"Well…" Nuwa and Fuxi exchanged a look. Something had clearly been off with Dr. Mobius these past few days. But what exactly had happened?
"Take her outside." Just as the two were at a loss, Mobius suddenly spoke. They looked up to find her turned toward them.
A flicker of embarrassment crossed their faces. Obviously Mobius had known they were eavesdropping — she'd just chosen not to call them out on it until now.
"As for those tasks."
"That's up to you." Mobius replied offhandedly, then turned back to the intelligence Klein had brought in and resumed her work.
Nuwa and Fuxi traded one last glance, then took the Puppet Klein by the arm and headed outside.
After they left, a silence settled over the laboratory. Then Mobius spoke again: "You can go help them out there as well."
"But I think Dr. Mobius needs help." Klein looked at her steadily. "It's all right, Dr. Mobius. You can treat it just like before."
"I don't need to." Mobius rose in her hovering chair and met Klein's gaze. "I'm not the same as before. I don't need your help every waking moment."
"Fifty thousand years have passed. I… no longer need you to help me."
Mobius said this while looking directly at Klein. After their last meeting, she had spent a long time in silence — not knowing how to face her.
She had asked Klein so many questions. She had said things she'd been holding back. And yet there was still a thorn lodged in her chest that refused to come loose.
A question she had been turning over for fifty thousand years. A question that surfaced in her mind again and again. Mobius had once told herself it was nothing more than a passing impulse — after all, the question no longer mattered.
Because the one person who could have answered it — the only one who knew — was already dead. She had never known exactly how Klein had died. The records showed that Su claimed to have killed the puppetized Klein.
Su had said so himself. He admitted it was he who had killed Klein. And yet — just as Sakura could sense that something was off about her sister's death —
Mobius was far too clever not to have worked it out as well. Su had been lying to her.
Mobius had died more than once. She had long ago noticed a pattern: her resurrections were not without cost. She had never become the ouroboros of infinite immortality she had once dreamed of.
The shrinking of her body with each resurrection was, in fact, the result of enormous energy expenditure. But if there was a sufficiently rich energy source nearby at the moment of her revival — that shrinkage could be avoided.
And it so happened that she had the habit of measuring her body after every death. After being killed by Klein that time, her height had barely changed at all — if anything, there was even a slight upward trend.
That could only mean one thing: at the moment of her death, she had absorbed — devoured — an extraordinarily abundant energy source. And what, exactly, might that energy source have been?
She had known for a long time. She simply hadn't been willing to say it. Because saying it aloud would be the same as admitting she had killed, with her own hands, the only person who had ever truly understood her.
Originally, the answer only needed to stay buried. Just keep it hidden — the way she had through countless days and months before. The way she had through all those endless ages in the Realm.
As long as it stayed hidden, no one would ever know. As long as it stayed hidden, she wouldn't have to face her own guilt. She wouldn't have to… wouldn't have to…
But the world seemed to have played a colossal joke on her. Because there, with Irene, had appeared a Klein who had never been killed. In the course of their conversation, what Mobius had lamented wasn't only that she'd needed mere seconds — a fraction of a moment's awareness — to have stopped a tragedy.
It was the realization, afterward, that Klein could have survived. That if she hadn't consumed her — perhaps it had always been a question of probability. Perhaps it was just some peculiarity of another world.
But Mobius could not ignore that possibility. Because that possibility was now standing right in front of her.
As Fu Hua had once said — life's failures are nothing but the stepping stones to eventual success. To grow in a way that transforms you from the inside out, you must first pass through regret that cuts to the bone.
But if there were any other way — who would ever choose to carry that kind of regret?
After leaving Irene's mind and returning to the Realm, Mobius had spent a very long time thinking. She had even, for the first time in ages, used her privileges to conjure up a sheet of bubble wrap to pop, just to take the edge off her emotions.
What was she supposed to do? Should she do what she had done through countless ages before — seal the regret away inside herself? Wait for Irene's Klein to eventually come to her?
She didn't know. Or perhaps she was simply running away.
She wanted to put distance between herself and Klein. Keeping things exactly as they were now — perhaps that was the best option. That way she would never have to hear an answer she wasn't ready for.
She was afraid. She was afraid that in her interactions with Klein, she would one day fail to hold back her curiosity — and ask the question she had been pressing down for so long, the one she had never dared to voice.
All she had to do was never ask. So why was she afraid? Maybe it was guilt. Maybe she wanted to know the answer. Or maybe she was simply, plainly afraid.
That fear had reached its peak when Klein came back — because she knew that if Klein was here, Irene would likely follow. And if Irene came, Klein would be right there with her.
So she had decided to make a change: refuse any help Klein might offer, stop using her as an assistant. As long as Klein wasn't her assistant, if she kept her at a distance, she wouldn't have to worry about learning the truth — right?
Honestly. Since when had she become such a coward?
"Are you afraid, Dr. Mobius?" Klein looked at her and asked, quietly.
Mobius heard the words and immediately denied it: "Afraid? Me? I'm Mobius — how could I possibly be afraid?"
"Miss Irene told me that there's something Dr. Mobius has been wanting to ask me." Klein's voice was gentle. "What is it that you want to ask, Dr. Mobius?"
"That's none of your business." Mobius met her gaze. "Just go help those two idiots outside and get their work sorted."
Klein nodded obediently. "Understood, Dr. Mobius."
Klein turned and walked toward the door. Just before she left the laboratory, she stopped. She looked back — and found Mobius watching her, eyes fixed on her retreating figure.
"Doctor — it wasn't your fault. And I never once blamed you."
With that, Klein walked out of the laboratory and went to help Nuwa and Fuxi with the review work — leaving Mobius behind in the silence, staring at the empty doorway.
"…Heh." A quiet laugh escaped Mobius. Something in her seemed to ease — to loosen. She turned back to the data on the screen in front of her and began reading through it. After a moment, she frowned.
The situation outside was getting hard to make sense of.
The order of the Herrschers had been thrown into almost complete disarray. This didn't match their plan at all — the original design called for the Herrschers' abilities and their emergence order both to be fixed.
Well — at least the abilities themselves didn't seem to have changed. As for the order, as long as they stayed vigilant, it shouldn't be too great a problem. After all, as long as a Herrscher's ability could be correctly identified, there was always a countermeasure.
But the biggest problem posed by the disrupted order wasn't actually about when each Herrscher emerged — it was about which Herrscher had already emerged. Specifically: the Herrscher of the Legion.
That thing — if it wasn't following the sequence and had instead been born at random, there could be serious trouble. If the people of the Current Era failed to notice it in time and allowed it to begin proliferating…
The same tragedy as the Previous Era could very well repeat itself. She could only hope the people of the Current Era had their guard up.
But as she continued reading through the structure of the Current Era's anti-Honkai organizations — and came to that Grand Overseer of Schicksal —
Mobius pulled that thought back in.
Looking at the track record of that Grand Overseer named Otto, Mobius's eyes twitched. How to put this — in wartime, it might have been understandable. But this person had clearly ruled from the Middle Ages all the way to the present day.
In times of war, a single iron will might prevail. But to maintain absolute dominance during peacetime — and to sustain it for five hundred years? In terms of political acumen, this man could probably run circles around every single one of them.
This had nothing to do with raw power. Someone powerful didn't automatically know how to govern. Pure combat strength, taken alone, made a person a god of war at best — and it was very clear that this man hadn't reached that Overseer's seat on strength alone.
Even though, in the Current Era, most Herrschers had emerged from among humanity, the civilization had still surely endured countless Honkai outbreaks of varying scale by this point. And yet in the awareness of the general population, the Honkai was apparently nothing more than an urban legend.
That was not something just anyone could pull off. In their Previous Era, after the Third Eruption, the people had been thrown into widespread panic. Every major Eruption had caused severe social upheaval.
And then there was the Herrscher of Flame — the sheer horror of erasing an entire continental shelf was something else entirely.
"I never imagined anyone could keep a lid on things to this degree." Mobius let out a low whistle. "If the Previous Era had even one person like this — how could things ever have gotten so bad?"
Though in the end it was Dr. MEI who had taken charge — by that point it was already far too late. And the upper echelons of the Fire Moth before her? Well, to their credit, they had moved quickly, establishing the anti-Honkai organization.
But their bloated structure had never been able to produce a single unifying will. Everyone was jostling for their own interests. Even Mobius herself had been persecuted back then.
She had nearly been done away with.
It wasn't until the era of the Herrscher of Flame — and beyond — that the enormous, unwieldy Fire Moth had finally, barely, begun to function as it was meant to. But by then it was far too late.
As for Dr. MEI — well. She was an outstanding scientist. But as a politician? That wasn't where her mind had grown. She had only barely managed to hold that seat.
And even in that position, it was hard to say how much of it had depended on Kevin's combat power.
After finishing her broad review, Mobius gave a nod. All things considered — having gone through all of this, she felt the Current Era perhaps hadn't reached a point where Project Stigma was truly necessary.
They were genuinely doing well. Even by her standards, it could be called impeccable.
Mobius swiped the documents aside. The screen in front of her immediately filled with a complex chemical formula.
Looking at it, Mobius turned toward the doorway and called out — the words she hadn't truly spoken aloud in a very long time: "Klein, come in and help."
A reply came from outside almost immediately.
"Of course, Dr. Mobius."
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