The lounge door was knocked twice, neither hard nor soft, and then pushed open.
"Pop."
A crisp bubble-bursting sound rang out in the eerily quiet room.
Bronie leaned against the doorframe, her tactical goggles pushed up onto her forehead.
Unhurriedly, she rolled the popped bubblegum back into her mouth, both hands stuffed into her jacket pockets.
"Yo, Theresa, so this is where you're hiding."
Ever since that last, practically flawless traffic-funneling campaign, Bronie—as the studio's head of network security—had firmly established her footing in the workshop.
Although most of the time she still preferred to hole up in the server room she'd turned into her own fortress, every now and then she'd come out for a breath of air.
Hearing that voice, Theresa, still stuck in a frozen, crashed state, jolted as if struck by high-voltage electricity.
"Bro—Bronie—!"
Theresa practically scrambled off the couch, launching herself forward and bolting straight to the door.
She clamped both hands onto Bronie's arm, hiding behind the girl who was barely taller than herself like a startled quail.
"Thank goodness! You're finally here!"
Theresa's voice trembled like a leaf in the wind. She pointed at Sirin on the couch, unable to string her words together properly.
"Kiana... the things she's been asking, I really don't know how to answer them! You're the only one who can save me!"
Theresa's frantic state amused Bronie.
She tilted her head, sizing up this white-haired shorty who normally strutted around so full of herself, always throwing her weight around as everyone's "Auntie," a playful curve tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"What kind of tough problem could possibly get the almighty Big Sister Theresa this worked up?"
"Kiana's been going on and on with all sorts of weird stuff this whole time!"
Theresa's grip on Bronie's jacket tightened a few more degrees, her entire face flushed red enough to drip water.
"She said things like telling me to go... procreate with Su Yu! And she wants to know my thoughts and feelings about it! She even showed me that... that memo!"
Bronie raised an eyebrow, her gaze traveling over the top of Theresa's head to land on Sirin sitting on the couch.
"So?" Bronie deliberately drew out her tone, her voice brimming with teasing. "You finally couldn't resist, and you've got a soft spot for the BOSS too?"
"Are—are you here to help me or here to make things worse?!" Theresa stamped her feet in exasperation.
"Easy, easy, I'm here to help you."
Bronie gently patted the back of Theresa's hand, the smile on her face relaxed and cheerful.
As the person in charge of the entire studio's network security, how could Bronie not know about the flow of network data on the top floor of Arc City Tower these past few days.
Exactly what websites this "white-haired dummy's" phone had been browsing all day long was crystal clear in her backend monitoring system.
She had no interest in other people's privacy, but that access frequency was absurdly high—so high that even the security firewall had nearly flagged it as a malicious attack.
She'd even taken that data report specifically to Su Yu, asking whether the girl at his place had been under too much stress lately and needed some psychological counseling.
Although at the time Su Yu had only propped up his forehead, looking like his head was splitting apart, and hadn't spilled the full story about Sirin.
But Bronie had more or less guessed it: this seemingly loud, blustery character had an utterly barren stockpile of knowledge in certain areas.
Bronie walked in from the door and stopped two steps short of the couch.
"So? Where exactly did your conversation get to just now?"
Sirin sat on the couch, chin slightly raised, those golden pupils sweeping across Bronie's face.
She recognized this gum-chewing character.
Back when she'd been playing Vigilante to save up money for a graphics card, it was this hacker calling herself Hack Bunny who'd provided intel support from behind the scenes.
On that face—eighty percent identical to Bronya's—Sirin saw none of the weakness she so despised.
She remembered that in that world, Bronya had dared to burn out her own brain chip to protect her comrades.
That kind of resolve overlapped somewhat with Bella, who'd once fought to the death standing before her, refusing to retreat.
For a worthy quarry, the Herrscher of the Void had never been stingy with a bit of leniency.
This human called Bronie understood forbearance, and understood how to exploit the rules—she'd make a decent candidate to be taken on as a number-three servant.
Sirin pressed the phone screen full of explicit descriptions dark.
"It didn't really get anywhere."
Sirin's tone was cold, carrying the air of a superior appraising a subordinate, and she pointed the spearhead directly at Theresa cowering by the door.
"I merely put forward a reasonable suggestion, telling her to go practice these domination techniques. But she seems extremely resistant."
Sirin stared into Bronie's eyes and threw out the core question that had been plaguing her for so long.
"So, does she really have no interest whatsoever in conquering that man? Or is it that she simply lacks that ability?"
The bubblegum in Bronie's mouth paused for a moment.
Looking at this dummy in front of her, so earnestly studying the interactions between the sexes as some kind of "art of domination," Bronie silently sighed inside.
It was like trying to explain the operating principles of a quantum computer to someone who'd only ever seen an abacus—correcting her from the angle of physiological knowledge was flat-out fantasy.
She'd have to save the nation by taking the winding road.
Bronie pulled both hands out of her pockets and sat down on the single-seat sofa beside her, her posture relaxed.
"Do you really want to know why that woman named Eden can so effortlessly engage in that... intimate behavior with the BOSS?" Bronie deliberately slowed her speech, looking Sirin straight in the eye. "While you rack your brains trying to imitate it, the BOSS refuses to cooperate with you?"
Sirin's spine instantly straightened.
That question pierced precisely into the greatest source of her frustration these past days.
"Why?"
Bronie leaned forward slightly and tossed out the word.
"Because between you and the BOSS, there is no love."
"Love?"
Sirin was stunned.
That syllable rolled across the tip of her tongue, bringing a friction that was both familiar and utterly foreign.
"What is love?"
Seeing that Bronie was about to veer off into such intangible, ethereal philosophical topics, Theresa, hiding in the distance, was so anxious she wanted to cut in. But Bronie merely waved a hand at her behind her back, signaling her to relax.
"I can't give you an exact set of data or code to explain what love is." Bronie leaned back against the chair. "But I can tell you how to obtain the BOSS's love."
Sirin's eyes slowly widened.
An extremely bright radiance burst forth from those golden pupils.
"As long as I make that guy Su Yu fall in love with me, then no matter what demand I make, he'll accept it?"
"Correct." Bronie nodded with great solemnity, not forgetting to add, "At the very least, he won't reject engaging in those intimate contacts you saw on your phone anymore. He might even actively cooperate with your domination."
That line was like a key, instantly unlocking the door to a whole new world of understanding for the Herrscher of the Void.
Sirin abruptly stood up from the couch and took a few steps to stand right in front of Bronie.
"Human—no—Bronie."
Her voice quivered slightly from excitement, the eagerness of someone who'd just found the most powerful weapon.
"Tell me quickly, how exactly do I make that detestable human fall in love with me!"
Bronie propped both feet up on the coffee table and sank her body back into the single-seat sofa.
She extended one finger, tapping rhythmically against her knee, as if retrieving from some vast database.
"First, you have to understand what kind of person your target is."
Bronie spoke quickly, with the certainty unique to a professional hacker.
"A guy like the BOSS—his emotional radar is basically half-paralyzed. And he's absolutely the type of man who could be easily lured back home in the dead of night by another girl with just a line like 'my cat can do a backflip.'"
Sirin's brow furrowed.
Her eyes were filled with enormous confusion.
"A cat that can do a backflip?" Sirin shifted her posture a bit irritably. "What does that mean? What does Chongchong doing a backflip have to do with Su Yu? Is this supposed to be some impressive domination technique?"
Off to the side, Theresa covered her face with both hands, watching the two of them through the gaps in her fingers, her brain in a state of intermittent short-circuiting.
This Bronie—clearly she spent all day every day in the server room banging on a keyboard. Since when did she turn into a smooth-talking love guru?
"There isn't actually a cat." Bronie rolled her eyes and held up her index finger, wagging it in midair.
"What it means is, the BOSS is a little virgin who's barely even held hands—his psychological defenses are actually very fragile."
"As long as his favorability toward you hasn't dropped into the negatives, as long as he shows no clear disgust or rejection, then winning him over and making him willingly cooperate with your... demands is basically a matter of mere minutes."
Sirin looked at Bronie half in doubt, half in belief.
What Bronie didn't say out loud was that the data anomalies at Arc City Tower these past few days were actually quite interesting.
The entry and exit times of Eden's custom supercar in the surveillance footage, along with the occasional evasiveness Su Yu displayed—she'd long since noted all of it.
Any fool could tell that the BOSS must have displayed some world-shocking ability in front of that top-tier wealthy woman Eden, directly triggering this megastar's hunting instinct.
Who was Eden? That woman—noble and elegant under the spotlight, yet secretly chasing life-and-death thrills on winding mountain roads.
With a status like hers, what sort of powerful, wealthy figures hadn't she seen? The fact that no scandal had ever leaked about her only proved her standards were frighteningly high.
But the moment she truly encountered a man who interested her, that slumbering beast within her would instantly awaken.
What's more, Su Yu was not only at a disadvantage in age—in status, position, and even financial power, he was crushed by Eden across the board.
Being forcibly kept as a boy-toy by such a wealthy older sister who held absolute dominance and even relished the process of conquest—in Bronie's calculation model, the probability was as high as ninety-nine percent.
"Your biggest problem right now is that you've picked the wrong benchmark to compare yourself against."
Bronie lowered her legs flat, reining in some of her teasing, and looked Sirin dead in the eye.
"How old is Eden this year? How old are you? There's a fundamental gap in your styles of doing things. To the BOSS, Eden is more like an intellectual, mature elder, even one bathed in a strong 'maternal' glow. And you?"
Bronie paused, her gaze sweeping mercilessly across Sirin's face.
"In the BOSS's eyes, at best you only count as a 'foster daughter' he's obligated to take care of."
That sentence was like a cold, sharp awl, stabbing accurately into Sirin's pitifully small reserve of pride.
"Human males are naturally defenseless against women who radiate maternal warmth." Bronie continued outputting her theory. "And on you, there's not even the tiniest trace of that glow to be found. Your only accomplishment each day is probably coming up with new ways to make trouble for the BOSS—do you think that with a method like that, you could possibly out-compete Eden?"
Sirin bit down on the soft flesh inside her lower lip.
She was furious.
This little bunny's words were awful to hear, yet she couldn't find any logic to refute them.
Piecing together all the signs from this period: Su Yu asking her every day what flavor of milk tea she wanted, always confirming again and again whether she was seated securely when riding, even secretly slipping a slice of cut cake into her hand when her mood was foul.
Sirin had originally assumed all this was the tribute a servant was rightfully due to offer.
But now, dissected this way by Bronie, the truth was cruel enough to be unacceptable.
That detestable man hadn't regarded her as some awe-inspiring Herrscher of the Void at all—he'd bound her together with a Paramecium, treating her completely as a... pet, something that needed to be fed and cared for!
"Then what exactly should I do?" Sirin's voice sank.
"Simple." Bronie blew a bubble till it burst, the gum sticking to her lips, and rolled it back in with the tip of her tongue. "The BOSS is the classic type who yields to softness but not to force. I'm sure you've figured out this point over this stretch of time."
Sirin thought back for a moment.
Indeed.
In that consciousness space, no matter how she tortured him or how much pressure she applied, he'd never uttered half a word begging for mercy.
Yet that one night, simply because she'd handed him that shabby little gift Kiana had prepared, he'd rarely said a word of "thanks."
"So, the conclusion is?" Sirin pressed.
"The conclusion is: change strategy, invade through daily life." Bronie held up two fingers. "Eden is a very busy woman. She has an endless string of concerts and never-ending business dealings. She can't cling to the BOSS's side twenty-four hours a day. But you're different. You eat and live together with the BOSS—this cohabitation status is the biggest trump card in your hand."
Sirin nodded, half-understanding.
"Then how exactly do I invade?"
"Treat him like a girl."
"Huh?!" Not just Sirin—even Theresa, who'd been playing dead beside them, couldn't help but let out a questioning sound.
Bronie ignored Theresa's reaction and looked at Sirin with blazing eyes: "Respect him, affirm him, even praise him. Secretly prepare little gifts and little surprises for him—nothing expensive needed."
Bronie gestured with her hands, as if sketching out a grand blueprint.
"It could be a dinner you clumsily cooked, or an ugly-as-sin scarf you knitted with your own hands."
"Or even, when he's working overtime and exhausted to the point of coughing up blood, you suddenly slap down a ticket to a mecha exhibition and declare grandly to him: 'Come on, this young lady's treating you to see a man's romance!'"
Sirin's eyes slowly lit up.
"In a word—"
Bronie delivered her summation, her tone carrying an authority that brooked no rebuttal.
"So-called love is about doing these inconspicuous little things to the utmost."
"And then, from these small things, accumulate enough of an emotional qualitative change. As long as you can execute according to this playbook, I believe there's no man in this world who could resist such a lethal charm."
Silence.
The lounge fell silent for a few seconds.
The next second, the tension in Sirin's shoulders completely melted away.
An unprecedented fervor blazed in those golden pupils; she even couldn't help but stand up from the couch, hands planted on her hips.
What a magnificent scheme to save the nation by the winding road! What a magnificent strategy to dismantle the enemy from within!
Who would've thought that this little bunny who cooped herself up in the server room all day was actually deeply versed in such advanced techniques for making people submit!
"It's decided!"
Sirin's chin lifted high, a spirited curve tugging at the corner of her mouth, her gaze landing appreciatively on Bronie.
"You shall serve as th—this young lady's chief strategist in this world! Assist me, and let me thoroughly... conquer that man!"
"Let me say this in advance," Bronie's eyes turned rarely serious, "it's only because you're my friend that I'm offering you this exceptionally precious tactical advice. Don't you go and disappoint me, Kiana."
Sirin gave a cold snort.
Her chin tilted up slightly, a certain fervor as if preparing to march into battle surfacing across her features.
"Hmph, who exactly do you think you're talking to? Since I'm going to do it, then I'll definitely do it to the best!" Sirin clasped her hands firmly together in front of her chest. "I'm going to make that guy Su Yu willingly, beggingly ask me to step on him!"
This bold, grand proclamation, riddled with severe cognitive bias, made Theresa on the other end of the couch reel back tactically once more, but Bronie applauded without so much as a change in expression.
"Very good, I approve of your resolve!"
Bronie pulled her legs back off the coffee table and leaned forward, like a commander setting up a battle sand table.
"Then there's no time to lose. Let's start from the most fundamental, and also the most lethal, domain. As the saying goes, if you want to conquer a man, you first have to conquer his stomach—"
"Stomach?" Sirin frowned.
"That's right." Bronie snapped her fingers. "I think we might as well start with the BOSS's favorite foods. Just think about it—if one day, the BOSS drags his exhausted body home from work..."
Bronie's voice took on a certain bewitching magic, guiding Sirin's simple neural circuitry to construct the scene.
"He pushes open the door, and he sees you. And you—you've made him a whole table of his favorite foods, still wearing an apron, and you say to him tenderly, 'Would you like to eat first, take a bath first, or... enjoy me first?'"
"In that instant, his pitiful little line of defense will utterly collapse! He'll absolutely be so grateful he'll weep, drop to his knees on the spot, wrap his arms around your legs, and wail his heart out!"
Sirin's eyes instantly lit up.
Weep? Drop to his knees? Wrap his arms around her legs?
This scene was just too perfect! Wasn't this precisely the vision of submission she'd dreamed of? No matter how tough that man normally was, a single meal could dismantle his will and leave him sprawled at her feet like a tail-wagging, groveling little puppy...
This was just too satisfying!
Off to the side, Theresa rolled her eyes hard—that line about eating first, bathing first, that was clearly your own private smuggled-in goods!
She'd nearly forgotten—this Bronie was, at her core, the type who never thought a spectacle was too big to make bigger!
"So what exactly should I do?!"
Sirin asked impatiently, her body nearly pressing right up to Bronie's face.
"Heh heh," Bronie leaned back, revealing a smug smile that belonged to a hacker. "Don't forget what I do for a living. What the BOSS likes to eat, what he likes to drink, which delivery place he orders from most, even what shady little sites he secretly visits in the middle of the night—it's all crystal clear in my database."
Bronie pulled a micro projector out of her pocket and projected a densely packed data chart onto the coffee table.
"Come, come, this strategist will now bring you up to speed..."
Theresa sat on the edge of the couch, her mouth gaping wide open, exactly like a stranded fish.
She looked at Sirin, fighting-spirit ablaze, as if she were about to grab a cleaver and go save the world the next second, then looked at Bronie beside her, holding forth eloquently, endlessly supplying all sorts of "underhanded tricks."
Although.
Although Bronie's appearance still hadn't resolved her dummy niece's despair-inducing misconceptions about the basic facts of the two sexes.
But from another extremely bizarre angle, this little bunny had, miraculously, forcibly dragged this lost girl back onto the right track!
She was teaching her how to display feminine charm, how to gradually capture Su Yu's heart through the little details of everyday life!
Theresa looked at Bronie's profile, and from the depths of her heart a wave of admiration involuntarily rose up.
She had to admit—this Bronie definitely had an IQ of a hundred and eighty.
At the same time, an inexplicable sense of comfort spread through Theresa's chest.
No matter how ridiculous the process, being able to see her dummy niece striving for the sake of love—as an elder, she was simply too happy!
"Hey, you, Auntie."
Bronie's voice suddenly interrupted Theresa's musings.
Theresa came back to her senses and found Bronie's and Sirin's gazes both fixed squarely on her.
"Don't just sit there spacing out, either." Bronie spread her hands, her tone utterly matter-of-fact. "Since you were the one who first sparked this white-haired dummy's curiosity, then you have to see it through to the end. Now, I officially declare: you've been conscripted."
Theresa pointed at her own nose: "Me? What do I do?"
"Join our [Su Yu Romance Strategy Team], of course!" Bronie's words landed with resounding force.
Sirin also nodded very forcefully beside her, those golden pupils full of an oppressive pressure that allowed no refusal.
"Didn't you just say you're my elder?" Sirin mimicked Theresa's earlier tone. "And that you'd help me with anything."
Theresa gritted her teeth.
She looked at her blazing-eyed "niece," then looked at the mischievously grinning Bronie.
Although when it came to romance she really was a theorist who couldn't even claim half a bucket's worth of knowledge, for the sake of her dear niece's lifelong happiness, even just being the cheerleading, atmosphere-building squad was better than doing nothing!
Theresa abruptly stood up, one foot planted on the edge of the couch, her little hand clenched into a fist and pumping forcefully once in front of her chest.
"Fine! Since it's come to this, then I absolutely can't let you all down either! I declare that from today on, we are a community of shared destiny!"
Sirin stood up.
Bronie stood up along with her.
Three women, completely out of sync in height and art style, completed a historic rendezvous in the lounge of the miHoYo workshop.
"Our goal is—" Theresa shouted loudly.
"Conquer Su Yu!" all three said in unison.
Outside the window, the sky had gone completely dark, and the city's neon lights painted the building's glass curtain wall in a dazzling array of colors.
And at the other end of the corridor, in that brightly lit office.
Su Yu sat at his computer, frazzled as he worked through the last few bug fixes before the first test of Honkai Impact 3rd, the keyboard clacking away under his fingers.
He picked up the coffee at his side, now gone completely cold, and took a gulp, when he suddenly felt a tickle at the tip of his nose and, for no apparent reason, let out a sneeze.
"Strange, why do I keep feeling like my stomach's a bit off?"
Su Yu rubbed his stomach. Could it be that he'd drunk too many cold beverages today?
This man, destined to be regarded by the world as a genius producer, had no idea at this moment that in a room less than fifty meters away from him, that number-one archenemy of humankind—the Herrscher of the Void—had quietly altered her plan to destroy the world.
Together with two human accomplices, she had leveled her gun barrel and kitchen cleaver, locking them firmly onto him, preparing to beat him to his knees with a feast of the utmost lavishness.
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