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On a desolate, dead planet that drifted like a cold corpse in the dark, the air was heavy with the weight of an impending end.
Herta stood firm, gripping her witch's staff so tightly her knuckles were white. Her eyes were locked onto the figure before her—the Lord of Silence, the Genius Society's #4 member, Polka Kakamond. Polka had lived for over a hundred thousand years, and her presence was as suffocating as a collapsing star. She stood with her arms crossed, her face obscured by mist, looking languid and utterly bored. It was the look of an adult humoring a child's tantrum.
Polka's terrifying confidence was rooted in her "Omniscience and Omnipotence Domain," a power homologous to Nous, the Aeon of Intellect. Within her range, she predicted every movement, blocked every unfavorable possibility, and controlled the butterfly effects of destiny itself. She was the executioner of geniuses; those who dared to break the boundaries of Nous's sanctioned knowledge usually met their end at the tip of her scalpel.
"You know that The End is the ultimate conclusion of the universe," Polka's voice resonated, a mix of regret and curiosity. "Everything Nous does is to delay its arrival. Why do you want to break this boundary and sentence yourself to death?"
Herta's purple eyes narrowed, her voice dripping with the characteristic arrogance of the 83rd seat. "Nous's circle of intellect is nothing but a self-righteous cage. Since the universe is destined to reach The End, why shouldn't we try to change that outcome?"
Herta had done the impossible. With Hiroshi's help, she had used her research to craft a Curio—the sphere she had given him—that could break the "cage" of pre-determined logic. She knew that the moment she broke that boundary, she would be marked for death. By driving Hiroshi away and erasing the memories of the Space Station staff, she was buying him time. She was the decoy; he was the bearer of the key to a new future.
"Heh... what a fanciful little girl," Polka sighed, losing interest. "But the fact that you accomplished this under Nous's nose is indeed unexpected. This conversation is over."
In a blur of motion faster than Herta's eyes could track, Polka flashed forward. A gleaming, sharp scalpel slashed toward Herta's neck, moving with the casual grace of a predator playing with its food.
Just as Herta prepared to meet her end, a dark purple flash cut through the air. The Demon Blade Thousand Blades—its body separated into a dozens-of-meters-long chain of lethal fragments—stabbed straight toward Polka's back.
Polka tilted her head, easily dodging the sneak attack. "A helper? What good would it do?" She turned back, only to see a handsome, determined young man gasping for breath, his eyes burning with a desperate fury.
Herta froze. Even though her memories of him had been erased by her own hand, her heart began to pound wildly against her ribs, a phantom recognition screaming in her soul.
Only hours before, inside the spaceship, Hiroshi had sat in his seat, staring at the sphere Herta had given him. Why would she kick him out? If he were just a tool, why go through the trouble of giving him a ship and a treasure? He absentmindedly fiddled with the sphere and noticed its true nature: it was a Sealing Device.
"Wuwuwu... Madam Herta... why did you... sigh..."
A voice drifted from the back of the ship. Hiroshi became instantly alert, summoning his blade. He walked through a narrow corridor and found a mirror with a red vortex swirling on its surface.
"Fourth Mirror? Why are you here?"
The mirror flustered, its voice hesitant. Herta had ordered it to stay silent for a day. Hiroshi's brows furrowed into a 'river' shape. If the Fourth Mirror—Herta's most trusted assistant—was here, something was terribly wrong.
I must get the truth out of it. But how?
He recalled the Universal Key. If a mouth that kept secrets counted as a "lock," then he could open it. He summoned the quantum-form key and mercilessly inserted it into the mirror's surface.
Click.
The lock on the Fourth Mirror's silence shattered. Its surface began to shimmer, displaying the scene Hiroshi had missed: Herta preparing the memory-erasing device, her hands trembling as she looked at his photograph, and finally, her teleporting to a dead planet to face a legendary executioner alone.
"She... she did all of this to protect me?" Hiroshi's voice broke.
Without a second of hesitation, he had used the spaceship's maximum warp, then used his own teleportation skill to breach the planet's atmosphere, arriving just in time to stop Polka's blade.
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