"A copy of Evernight's teru teru bozu sleep-aid white noise, plus one of my private Mei memory highlight reels… Mm, that should be enough to scare this Memokeeper off, right?"
Kiana rested her chin on one hand as she watched Black Swan struggle inside the Theater of Domination, and the corners of her mouth couldn't help but curl up.
As for where the Theater of Domination had come from?
First, this was inside Lynelle's memories.
Second, Lynelle had also fused with the Core of Domination, so wasn't it only normal for the Herrscher of Domination to have a Theater of Domination?
"Still, this Memokeeper's strength is decent, and she's got an adult body, no question there, but why do I keep feeling like she's kind of silly? She doesn't feel anywhere near as mature as she looks… At least, she's a step below that Memokeeper who came into the Solar System to negotiate with me before."
"But that makes sense too. What that Memokeeper discussed with me had to do with the Garden of Recollection's deepest secrets, so of course her rank couldn't be low. At Lynelle's current stage of growth, she's nowhere near ready to know about that yet… Eh, wait?"
Kiana's eyes flew wide open.
"No way. You're already scared that badly, and you're still opening the third door?!"
"When it's fine, you watch boldly, and when it's not, you watch while scared out of your mind, huh? Are all you Memokeepers like this?"
While Kiana had been talking to herself, Black Swan had already made her choice under Kiana's stunned gaze.
The first two doors had given her more than enough of a shock, but in the end, they'd only seemed like memories. They'd been frightening, yes, but at least they hadn't bitten her like Acheron had.
Among the memories Black Swan had once collected, someone rather overweight had once said that if you survived eating it, it counted as edible.
For Black Swan, since the memory in front of her hadn't hurt her at all, that meant there was no problem.
Besides, if the memories behind the first two doors were already that exciting, then getting to see what lay behind the third door would be worth the ticket price even if she got plucked bald again!
With that thought, Black Swan took a deep breath and pushed open the third door.
In an instant, Black Swan felt as if the place around her had changed.
She seemed to have arrived in a deep, ethereal space, so strange that even her long-memetic body gained a vague sense of substance.
And before her… a huge purple cocoon of light, almost alive, rose and fell like it was breathing.
Even though the cocoon made no move, Black Swan could feel a pressure from it that was hard to put into words.
Without a doubt, she'd only ever felt pressure like this from Emanators.
But even with Acheron, who'd left such a deep impression on her not long ago, Black Swan had been able to judge Acheron's true Path by her power.
With this giant cocoon before her, no matter how she searched her memories, she couldn't find any kind of power that matched Them.
"What in the world is this… Ngh!"
Before Black Swan could react, a force she had no way to resist took over her body and hung her straight up in the air. Her face turned pale with panic.
After all, a Memokeeper's greatest reliance was nothing more than their near-immortal memetic body, along with their Path abilities in the mind and in manipulating Memoria.
But now, her memetic body was useless before the other party, and her ability to manipulate Memoria couldn't sense a thing.
Most important of all, even the escape methods Black Swan often relied on, whether for attack or flight, seemed to sink into the giant cocoon like stones into the sea. None of them worked at all. Instead, they'd only gotten her strung up.
Now she was finished… That place full of Memokeeper teru teru bozu dolls from earlier might be gaining one more resident…
Black Swan swayed in despair in midair, and she couldn't help cursing herself from a few minutes ago.
Damn you, past me!
"So… what should I do with this Memokeeper?" While Black Swan was being hung by the cocoon's phantom and "swinging" in the air, Kiana sank into thought.
Because Black Swan had insisted on courting death, Kiana had no choice but to bring out something with a bit of deterrent force to fully restrain her.
The cocoon in front of her was a projection Kiana had made on the spot.
After all, if Black Swan kept probing deeper, she'd likely notice the memory power hidden within Lynelle, as well as the deal between Kiana and the Garden of Recollection.
But… now that she'd caught Black Swan, what was she supposed to do with her? Killing her was out of the question, since Black Swan's later role was almost impossible to replace.
But just letting her go… With a Memokeeper's curiosity, it'd be hard to guarantee she wouldn't stick to Lynelle's side and try to dig up memories from her every single day.
And if Kiana punished her a little before letting her go… Lynelle didn't really have any punitive memories strong enough to threaten her.
Black Swan wasn't like Sparkle, who'd already been punished every which way by Lynelle back in the Solar System for stirring up trouble.
Besides, with Black Swan's experience, her resistance to that sort of thing probably wouldn't be weak. As a Memokeeper, even if she'd never eaten pork, she'd surely seen plenty of pigs run.
"Ah, right. I'll just use that…"
At that moment, Kiana's eyes lit up. A special memory was pulled from Lynelle's memory archive.
On the other side, Black Swan's vision suddenly began to blur. In that daze, she seemed to see, at the far end of her sight, a beautiful silver-white planet. On that planet, someone was looking back at her too.
That person had long silver-white hair, a gorgeous white-and-purple dress, and… a beautiful pair of star-shaped eyes.
"What's happening…?"
Before Black Swan could finish wondering, she suddenly saw the blurry figure in the distance raise a hand toward her.
"Bang~"
Along with a cute little sound effect, the girl made a playful finger-gun gesture. But in Black Swan's eyes, that cute motion was terrifying.
The instant the girl raised her hand, a pressure that was without doubt Emanator-level—no, perhaps even at the top among Emanators—locked firmly onto her.
Black Swan, still hung in the air, couldn't help trembling.
Yet the earlier restraint left her unable to move at all, so she could only let the other party's attack lock onto her. And after that… Black Swan witnessed what it meant for a blow to destroy heaven and earth.
Under that strike, "she" didn't even get a single instant to struggle before being crushed into dust.
Only when Black Swan's eyes flew open did the trembling and spasms of surviving a disaster fully reach her senses.
"Uh… Miss Black Swan?"
Watching the other woman calmly stare at her and take a bite of ice cream, only to start shaking like Sparkle in Belobog after Lynelle had turned the vibration setting up to max, Lynelle tilted her head.
What kind of memory did Kiana feed her? Why was it that strong?
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T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL