'Diplomacy, huh...'
'Now that the Mikage Furnace Core has been repaired, it's just waiting for a restart to resume work, so it certainly isn't irreparable damage.'
'Then the last point is related to diplomacy. Diplomacy, diplomacy, it must be a product of another country, which means you want to convey the meaning of a foreign product?'
"The only foreign products currently on Inazuma's soil… besides you, a Fontaine engineer, are the Fatui from Snezhnaya."
"Coincidentally, the character for 'person' in 'Fatui' can also correspond to the 'person' in the manual, so this string of numbers means 'save me, and the one who acted is the Fatui.'"
This was the answer Shiki could deduce. For now, this answer perfectly matched the clues given by the numbers, and the Fatui had indeed tried to get their hands on the Mikage Furnace Core before.
However, if the result was truly like this, then what exactly did they do to Xavier? And why did they target Xavier?
Shiki gazed at the emergency manual in her hand, as if trying to discern something from it.
Speaking of which, if anything happened to Xavier, it would be her responsibility, because she was the one who had slaughtered the Fatui squad that came to cause trouble, and the innocent Xavier was the one who suffered the retaliation.
"Oh, right, what about that Fatui disk-shaped device I asked you to research earlier?" Shiki asked.
"Huh? What disk device?"
Shiki's body stiffened at the reply. This answer caught her off guard. She had personally handed that disk to him. There was no reason for Xavier not to know.
So the question arose: Was this Xavier in front of her still Xavier? Or had his memory been tampered with?
Truth be told, Shiki leaned more towards the latter. Memories, as long as the person was still alive, could be dealt with, and it could also explain why he didn't know the meaning of the string of numbers that appeared in her dream.
But if it was the former...
Shiki didn't want to think about it, nor did she want to go down that path. She decided to find the Fatui first and see if she could follow the clues to their main base.
"Ugh!"
Xavier, who was standing beside her, suddenly clutched his head and screamed. Shiki immediately pressed him down onto a chair, and the Traveler, hearing the scream from outside, also rushed into the room.
"What happened?"
"I don't know." Shiki shook her head, a hint of worry in her eyes.
"Xavier, look at me. Can you clearly see the number I'm making with my hand?"
"Wait a minute, my head hurts so much!"
At this moment, Xavier was clutching his head with both hands, veins bulging on his arms. Shiki, seeing this, directly grabbed his wrist and forcibly pulled his hands away from his head.
He couldn't press his head down so hard. Even if the pain was unbearable, he couldn't keep pressing like that.
Xavier was in so much pain that tears and snot streamed out. Of course, he knew it was embarrassing to be snotty and teary in front of two girls, but when the pain reached a certain level, it was beyond his control.
"Tsk, Lumine! Help me hold him down!"
Shiki released her hands after speaking. At the same time, the Traveler darted forward and restrained Xavier. Then, Shiki's eyes turned into a swirling mix of rainbow and blue, and she drew the dagger hidden in the obi behind her back.
That's right, she was going to kill Xavier's "pain."
The dagger plunged into Xavier's glabella under the shocked gazes of the Traveler and Paimon. However, what shocked them even more was his perfectly intact forehead and the dagger without a single drop of blood.
The pain suddenly disappeared, and Xavier finally couldn't hold on anymore, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto the ground.
"Eh!? What, what did you do?" Paimon said, utterly shocked.
"I just killed his pain. If I didn't, he would have literally died from the pain. This isn't a figure of speech; he would have truly died from the pain." Shiki said, putting away her dagger.
"The human brain has a protective mechanism. When the pain is too intense, this protective mechanism activates, forcing the person into a coma."
"But the pain Xavier was enduring just now clearly exceeded his tolerance, yet he didn't fall into a coma. The reason is still unknown, so this was the only way for now."
Paimon listened, utterly bewildered, while the Traveler found it somewhat unbelievable. Could pain actually be killed?
"Don't look at me like that. Let's first figure out what's wrong with Xavier. His headache suddenly started. What caused it?"
Shiki frowned. The timing of this headache was too coincidental, wasn't it? She had just figured out the meaning of that string of numbers, and then this happened.
Or was it because of that disk device?
If it really was because of the disk device, then the meaning of the numbers she deciphered was correct. This matter was related to the Fatui.
Therefore, as soon as the disk device was mentioned, the person behind it couldn't sit still and caused Xavier excruciating headaches through some unknown means.
However, looking at it this way, they were currently under the other party's surveillance...
Otherwise, how could the headache appear at such a convenient time?
As soon as she thought of this, Shiki's mood sank. If it was the Fatui, who planned this incident? Balladeer?
After all, there were only two Harbingers who came to Inazuma: one was the girl, who was already three and a half catties, person and box included, and the other was Balladeer, who was currently hiding somewhere unknown.
At the same time, somewhere on Yashiori Island...
"I say, Balladeer, Tsaritsa sent you here to collect the Gnosis, not to be a peeping tom."
In the laboratory, where usually only Balladeer was present, a brown-haired man with a mask on the side of his face appeared. And judging by his tone, he didn't seem to have a superior-subordinate relationship with Balladeer.
And among the Fatui, the only ones who could be on the same level as Balladeer were the Harbingers.
"This is part of the plan. Do you think Beelzebul's Gnosis is as easy to get as Morax's?" Balladeer retorted indifferently, then stopped what he was doing.
The culture dish containing Xavier's head returned to its normal state.
Balladeer hadn't expected Shiki to know about the device he had previously created to detonate the Mikage Furnace Core, and that she had even given it to Xavier for research.
This directly conflicted with the memories he had implanted earlier. He had intended to overwrite the memories, but he hadn't expected Shiki to directly interrupt the overwrite.
No, it should be said that she interrupted his control. Now, no matter what he did to Xavier's brain, it wouldn't affect that puppet anymore.
Of course, in a few days, that puppet would also collapse due to the interruption of consciousness transmission.
Neither Balladeer nor Shiki had anticipated what was happening now. Originally, she only wanted to kill the pain, but unexpectedly, by a fluke, while severing the pain, she also severed the link between the two.
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