Chapter 60: Controlling Kafka (Patreon)

At this moment, Polka Kakamond was beginning to regret coming after Gusttave.

Sure, he could shatter the Circle of Knowledge, but this power was far too immense.

Right now, Gusttave gave Polka Kakamond the feeling of standing above the Aeons.

It wasn't an illusion. It was fact.

As the origin of time and the embodiment of Honkai, Gusttave was the two most fundamental and indispensable cornerstones of this world.

With the two Great Truths bound to his body, he could shake the Imaginary Tree itself.

The Aeons were merely a vertex on a single branch of the Imaginary Tree.

True, that branch was a multiverse with countless possibilities, and the Aeons were multiversal in scale.

But next to the two Great Truths, that still wasn't nearly enough.

And the gap between an Aeon and those beneath an Aeon was immeasurable in turn.

So Polka Kakamond had no way of shaking Gusttave, not even by a hair.

After putting on his show, Gusttave shut off the livestream.

After all, what he was about to do would surely hurt his image.

Gusttave chose not to kill Polka Kakamond. Instead, he invoked his Authority and invaded her mind, intending to bend her to his service.

Of course, she would also handle certain needs of his.

[March 7th: Wait, what?! He shut off the stream?! Right at the crucial moment?!]

[Silver Wolf: Reasonable inference: what comes next belongs in a paid channel.]

[Kiana Kaslana: I'm dying here, I'm dying here, I'm dying here! What is he going to do to that candy-colored sister?!]

[Honkai 3rd · Bronya: Silly Kiana Kaslana, some things are better left unknown to you.]

[Lumine: Any mature adult knows what happens next.]

[Herta: One of those defeat CGs, is it? If that gets out, ninety-nine percent of the universe will end up wiped out.]

In the Land of Finality, the purple-gold tide of Honkai energy still churned slowly. The pulse of the Cocoon of Finality had fallen completely into step with Gusttave's breathing, and with every rise and fall, countless parallel worlds were born and died within it.

The Finality patterns across Gusttave's body slowly faded. His purple-gold pupils turned back to ink black, and the pressure that had been enough to crush an Aeon drew in without a sound. He was once more a young man in a plain Daoist robe, looking utterly carefree.

He glanced at Polka Kakamond beside him.

The scalpel in her hand had long since vanished. Her candy-colored evening gown was in tatters, and the corner of her mouth was still stained with some unidentified white liquid.

Right now she was gazing at Gusttave with a tender expression, her eyes full of adoration.

"If you'd been this well-behaved from the start, you wouldn't have had to chase me around screaming for my blood," Gusttave said. He reached out and tidied her disheveled gown, his tone teasing and offhand.

Polka Kakamond leaned in half a step and tugged lightly at his sleeve. Her voice was so soft it was hard to believe it belonged to the same woman who had spoken so coldly before. "Master is right. I was foolish before."

The corner of Gusttave's mouth twitched, and he silently rolled his eyes.

He had only meant to use the Authority of Finality to invade her mind, erase her killing intent toward him, and plant a basic obedience command. He never expected the intrusion to take a detour and twist "obedience" into "besotted, wholehearted devotion."

"You go ahead. I need to lie low for a while," Gusttave said. He raised a hand and sliced open a rift in space. Beyond it, a snowbound wasteland reflected a familiar sight: Jarilo-VI, Belobog.

Borrowing the power of Finality didn't come without a price.

If he didn't leave now, he wouldn't be able to leave at all.

The Cocoon of Finality had already set its sights on Gusttave. It wanted to give him an "embrace" and turn him into its vessel.

The Cocoon of Finality was strong, but that wasn't what Gusttave wanted.

So Gusttave planned to run.

Because of the Cocoon of Finality's nature, he'd be found even if he fled to the Honkai universe. So he decided to hide out in another world.

After sending Polka Kakamond off, Gusttave left the place and opened a spatial passage to Teyvat.

On the bridge at Mondstadt, Gusttave's figure suddenly appeared, giving Lumine, Paimon and Amber, who had just arrived, a terrible fright.

Once Paimon saw who it was, she blurted out on instinct: "It's the Big Scumbag! What are you doing here?!"

But the moment the words left her mouth, Paimon regretted them.

"Big Scumbag?!"

Gusttave looked at Paimon, who was floating in midair and clamping both tiny hands over her own mouth, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Say, Paimon," he said, patting dust off his robe that wasn't there, all innocence, "this is our first time meeting, right? Isn't that a pretty rude way to greet someone?"

"Mmph... I didn't mean to!" Paimon let go and stamped her feet in midair, her little face flushed bright red. "It's just, I'm so used to watching the stream that my mouth just slipped..."

[Author's Note: Please send flowers...]

"You're so used to watching the stream that you call me Big Scumbag?" Gusttave raised an eyebrow. "So that's the image of me in your heads?"

"What else?" Lumine said, arms crossed. Her golden eyes swept over him from head to toe, and a meaningful smile played at her lips. "A man who's married seven wives. If that's not a scumbag, what is?"

Gusttave opened his mouth and found, to his surprise, that he had no rebuttal.

Amber asked curiously, "So how did you get here?"

"That's a long story. I'll explain in the group chat in a bit," Gusttave replied offhandedly.

---

[Gusttave: @All Members, the matter's been settled perfectly. The Lord of Silence is now my subordinate!]

[March 7th: Seriously?]

[Herta: For the Lord of Silence to become your subordinate, I suspect you did something to her?]

[Gusttave: True. But who told her to provoke me first? Consider it her punishment.]

[Herta: Tell me what you two did back then.]

[Gusttave: No comment. And don't use that commanding tone with me.]

[Herta: Tch.]

[Gusttave: Others may indulge you geniuses, but I won't.]

[Gusttave: In my eyes, whether you even qualify as geniuses is still up for debate.]

[Gusttave: After all, you've researched for this long and still haven't figured out the essence of this world. Honestly, it's a bit of an insult to the title of genius.]

[Gusttave: Only Zandar ever researched it thoroughly. Too bad that at the end of his life he destroyed all of his research.]

[Gusttave: Compared to Zandar, you're nothing but toddlers learning to walk.]

[Herta: You really are infuriating!]

Herta was furious at Gusttave's belittling, but she couldn't refute it.

After all, her research into the Imaginary Tree was shallower than that of a civilization that wasn't even spacefaring. It was truly humiliating.

But anger aside, Herta had also caught what Gusttave said: that Zandar had destroyed his research before he died.

[Herta: What do you mean, Zandar destroyed his research before he died?]