Soon, a girl with silvery-grey twin drill tails opened her eyes before him. Her appearance was exactly that of Bronya from his memories.
After opening her eyes, she spoke in a slightly milky tone: "Bronya, awaiting orders."
Li Mu looked at the secondary personality in front of him while closely watching the System interface. But unfortunately, the System interface remained unresponsive.
Li Mu sighed, waved his hand, and the Bronya before him dissipated, leaving only the Herrscher Core floating in the air.
"As expected, it won't work."
Although this System was a bit slow, it indeed had a strict set of criteria for judging characters.
Kevin and MEI were essentially counterparts of Kiana and Mei, similar flowers blooming in two different cycles. He couldn't just find a random person, change their appearance and name, and expect the System to judge them as counterparts.
Otherwise, possessing the ability to transform, he wouldn't mind guest-starring as Bronya himself. But alas, the System didn't recognize it.
This might involve some ethereal but truly existent destiny in this world, just like a certain leader from the Land of Light once said: Bronya must be Bronya!
However, despite the failed attempt, Li Mu didn't feel disappointed. Or rather, he had long anticipated this outcome.
Before this, Li Mu had brainstormed many ideas to assemble the character of Bronya, but found many of them unfeasible.
For example, using the remains of the First Herrscher to create a clone.
But a clone was merely another person with the same appearance and genetics; it couldn't be counted as a counterpart.
Or figuring out a way to explore the Sea of Quanta to see if he could fish a Bronya out of a bubble universe.
But traveling to the Sea of Quanta was a difficult problem in itself, let alone encountering another Bronya like finding a needle in a haystack.
Where was he supposed to find another Bronya who met the requirements?
"Heh~ I actually do have an idea."
As everyone knew, according to the rules of the Honkai universe: Person = Consciousness + Vessel.
The First Herrscher of this era was Bronya's counterpart. Although her consciousness dissipated the moment she died, the body acting as the vessel was still there!
So, as long as he found a Bronya consciousness and stuffed it in, wouldn't he get a complete Bronya?
And conveniently, while he indeed couldn't get his hands on a complete Bronya, if it was just Bronya's consciousness, he actually had a way.
Thinking of this, he looked into his System inventory, found the A-Rank Stigmata Selector Box, and chose Bronya's Stigmata.
Stigmata were a sequence of genetic information, but to some extent, they could also be considered true lifeforms—another self existing within the Stigmata space.
Li Mu's inspiration actually came from Seele fifty thousand years later. Since the Stigmata Seele, "Veliona," was counted as part of the character Seele, then according to the judgment of this broken System that heavily plagiarized game mechanics, why wouldn't Stigmata Bronya count as Bronya?
Now, he already had Bronya's consciousness. All he lacked was a matching vessel.
And this was the reason he came to Mobius to get the location of the First Herrscher's remains.
Thoughts flashed through his mind, but Li Mu's hands didn't stop. In front of him, a spatial rift was torn open out of thin air.
Holding the Herrscher Core in one hand, Li Mu stepped into the spatial rift without hesitation.
Reproducing the authority of the Herrscher of the Void, he didn't even need to tear through the defense lines set up by Fire-MOTH. He quickly arrived at the place where the First Herrscher's remains were sealed.
In Li Mu's vision, a petite girl with silvery-grey hair was suspended quietly in a stasis field, completely devoid of life.
Her body was already heavily mutilated, looking as if it had been bombarded by weapons of mass destruction. At least a third of her total body mass was likely missing.
It was just a broken corpse.
Li Mu's gaze swept over the remains, revealing a look of disappointment.
"As expected, the Herrscher Core isn't here."
Although he had guessed this outcome from Mobius's resentment, not being able to get the Core of Reason still left him feeling somewhat lost.
With the authority of the Herrscher of Reason he currently possessed, he could hand-rub a core himself. But once the trial card's duration ended, his power and authority would be taken back by the System. The Herrscher Core he rubbed out would lose its authority and become nothing more than a crystal containing a large amount of Honkai energy.
The core left behind after a Herrscher's death was different; it retained the corresponding Herrscher's authority. If he could get it, he could ask Vill-V to make it into a Divine Key.
"What a pity..."
Li Mu sighed and casually tossed out the Core of Reason in his hand.
This core, flashing with a faint blue light, circled in front of him a few times before passing through the stasis field and sinking into the broken remains of the First Herrscher.
The next moment, the Herrscher of Reason's power to construct all things activated.
The First Herrscher's broken corpse began to be repaired out of thin air. In the blink of an eye, the missing body parts were restored to their original state.
Then, accompanied by the faint rise and fall of her chest, her long-stopped heart burst into life again. Blood began to flow through her entire body with each heartbeat.
Swish!
The First Herrscher's body inside the stasis field suddenly opened its eyes, a faint blue light bursting from them.
And in Li Mu's mind, he simultaneously saw himself standing outside the stasis field and the First Herrscher's body inside the stasis field.
Li Mu looked at the System and found it still unresponsive.
"Tch... as expected, it won't work."
So, using his secondary personality to occupy the First Herrscher's body, he loaded Bronya's Stigmata into it.
And next was the most crucial step.
Li Mu deployed the authority of the Herrscher of Reason. Through this power to analyze all things, his gaze pierced through the strings of genetic information making up the Stigmata, and saw a phantom projected into the Stigmata space by this genetic information.
It was a girl with Bronya's appearance, but she looked extremely ethereal. She was Bronya's Stigmata persona.
Except for certain mutated Stigmata, ordinary Stigmata consciousnesses couldn't exist independently. At the very least, the consciousness within an A-rank Bronya Stigmata couldn't.
If he just stuffed it directly into this body, it would probably dissipate the next moment. For it to exist, he needed to complete a reversal similar to Project Stigma.
So, borrowing the reproduced power of the Herrscher of the Void, Li Mu reached out, crossed an unknown distance, grasped the Bronya residing in the Stigmata space, and yanked her out.
At the same time, he stuffed his secondary personality into the original Stigmata space, causing a reversal between the Stigmata space and the real world.
"Letting the Stigmata consciousness replace the person in reality to exist... rounding up, I guess this counts as completing a version of Project Stigma, right?"
Feeling his secondary personality fall silent, Li Mu looked at the First Herrscher's body in the stasis field, which had already opened its eyes.
Bronya counterpart's body + Bronya's Stigmata persona = The bootleg version of Bronya. Li Mu was willing to call her—Temu Bronya.
And at the same time, the long-silent System panel finally reacted.
...
"This time we've offended Mobius to the death. That crazy bitch probably won't let us off."
In a closed room, several officials were holding a secret meeting.
Although it felt great when taking the money, once they actually got it, they realized they had to face Mobius's wrath.
This scientist held a pivotal position in both the United Government and Fire-MOTH, and was also a notoriously mad scientist.
If she really fought them to the bitter end over this...
The group exchanged glances, thought of those terrifying rumors about Mobius, and shivered.
At this time, someone suggested.
"How about we each pitch in some money and give her a share?"
But as soon as he spoke, he was met with the cold glares of the others.
"I took this money with my own skills, why should I share it with her?!"
Although Mobius was scary, the thought of parting with the money in their hands made them feel she wasn't that scary after all.
"We didn't push the blame onto her anyway, just made one of her subordinates take the fall."
"No matter how crazy she is, she wouldn't fight us to the death over a mere assistant, would she?"
The group thought about it and realized it seemed to make sense.
"Regardless, let's finalize the charges against her assistant first, lest there be a long delay resulting in complications..."
Knock, knock, knock!
Before he could finish, a knocking sound came from the door.
The group frowned, looking displeased.
One of them stood up, yanked the door open, and scolded the outside, "I ordered that during the meeting, no one should..."
As he spoke, his words trailed off.
Because he found that standing outside wasn't his subordinate, but a little girl with silvery-grey twin drill tails.
She was wearing punk-style clothes, goggles on her forehead, and seemed to be chewing bubblegum.
"Misters, take two steps back. I'll give you something good, guaranteed to make you f~ly!"
"Oh, okay... wait, whose kid are you?!"
The man subconsciously took two steps back before realizing that under his strict orders, how could a little girl have snuck up to their conference room?
But as soon as the words left his mouth, he saw two spheres with weird yellow rabbits printed on them appear out of nowhere in the girl's hands, which she then tossed towards him.
"Catch, Mister."
The man subconsciously caught them. Just as he was about to yell, he immediately noticed something was wrong with the spheres in his hands.
Because no matter how he looked at them, the things in his hands looked like... grenades?
Then he saw two ring-like objects looped around the girl's fingers as she looked at him with a grin.
The man's face instantly turned ashen. He let out a weird shriek and was about to throw them out.
However, the girl outside had already grabbed the door handle in advance.
Bang! The door was shut.
"Ah! Ahhh!!! BOOM!!!"
Screams accompanied by explosions blasted within the conference room.
Outside the conference room, the silver-haired girl watched the blown-off roof and the unrecognizable biological tissues flying into the sky.
She popped her bubblegum.
"Bros, you guys really took off~"