This was also why... Su had arranged for her to go and meet up with Vill-V and Hua.
If it had been any other cadre from the Mad Hatter organization, there would likely have been trouble. They might have even started a full-scale war with the entire city of Barcelona before ever meeting Vill-V.
There was no helping it—the corporate culture of the Mad Hatter organization was exactly that. It emphasized one thing: madness.
One reason was that the Mad Hatter organization allowed individuals to pursue their own dreams. As a result, a group of people treated their desires as dreams and did many things that weren't exactly outrageous, but still felt like the kind of things only lunatics would do.
On the other hand, the Magician Vill-V had stuffed far too many strange and bizarre elements into the organization in order to give it theatrical flair and vitality. This led to the emergence of all sorts of odd individuals. Liora was already among the more normal ones.
Although it was "mad," that madness had indeed pushed the internal cohesion of the Mad Hatter to the level of a military organization. Protecting the Mad Hatter was equivalent to protecting their dreams.
In this regard, Vill-V was truly worthy of admiration. She had never bound them with chains, yet they were willing to give their lives for her.
However, when he saw Vill-V spinning around in an office chair, all of Su's reverence vanished.
He kindly reminded her, "By the way, Vill-V, won't you get dizzy spinning like that?"
Vill-V waved her hand, completely unconcerned. "Oh, come on, I'm a Herrscher now. Spin all I want—spin all I want, woohoo~"
If the members of the Mad Hatter Party knew that their boss behind the scenes was such a childish girl who loved spinning in chairs, their jaws would probably drop.
Fortunately, the public-facing boss, Mr. Mad Hatter—Su—had never given the members any reason to be shocked.
But right now, Su himself was the one whose jaw nearly dropped.
"A Herrscher?!"
Even Su, who had studied under Occultist for two and a half years and cultivated a calm temperament, felt his heart jolt when he heard those two words so close to him.
The Third Honkai Eruption—the hellscape of corpses he had witnessed—still lingered vividly in his mind.
Even after the Honkai Eruption had ended, that dreadful nightmare had followed him for a long, long time.
Before that, he had merely been a man who believed in science—a normal person who would skip classes with his best friend to eat ice cream and attend Eden's concerts.
When the apocalypse suddenly descended upon his daily life, shattering his materialistic worldview and taking away his best friend, Su's psyche had naturally suffered a devastating blow.
It was only after undergoing psychological treatment from Occultist that he managed to escape those nightmares.
Moreover, every Herrscher Su had encountered so far had been anything but kind. Every single one of them regarded humans as insignificant, like weeds to be cut down.
Their very existence was meant to bring about humanity's destruction.
Yet as he gazed into Vill-V's eyes—cleaner and more innocent than ever—Su simply couldn't associate her with those world-destroying agents of the Honkai.
Su's perception was exceptionally sharp, yet even so, he could not detect any obvious abnormality in Vill-V's eyes compared to before.
Then again, Vill-V's personalities were always changing. Trying to define her based on personality alone was clearly impossible.
Perhaps one day, even if a Herrscher personality appeared, Su would simply assume it was a newcomer from the future.
Glancing at the Honkai energy indicator in his hand, which showed no abnormalities, Su suppressed his emotions and asked, "Then... what kind of Herrscher are you?"
Vill-V rocked back and forth in the chair as if it were a rocking horse. "The First Herrscher—the Herrscher of Reason."
So you're the Herrscher of Reason, not the Herrscher of Chairs.
Watching how enthusiastically you're playing with that chair, I almost thought your authority was controlling chairs.
"I understand. So you're currently unable to use your Herrscher powers?"
Su's ability to accept things had grown significantly—something Vill-V had personally trained into him.
Those with poor adaptability had long since been broken by Magician.
"As expected of you, Su. You saw right through it." Vill-V slumped her baby-faced cheeks against the back of the chair, muttering, "It's to maintain another world. I'll send the information about the Time Fragment world to your terminal later. It's too much to explain all at once."
"Damn it, why can't I just smack people with bubble worlds like that goose girl? Aaaahhh—I refuse to accept this!"
Vill-V angrily jumped off the chair and flung herself backward onto the soft, springy sofa, sending Hua—who had been reading beside her—bouncing up into the air.
"With how carelessly you're sitting, aren't you afraid of exposing yourself?"
Su pointed at Vill-V's knees, which were spread wide open on the sofa.
Since it was midsummer, Vill-V naturally wasn't wearing any safety shorts underneath. Those stifling, hot things would definitely cause heat rash, so she had stopped wearing them.
A short skirt was breezy and comfortable.
It was a privilege for girls—boys couldn't just walk around in loose shorts like that.
Because of her exaggerated movements, her skirt swayed up and down dramatically.
Su rarely saw girls in skirts behave this boldly.
Even the Valkyries of the Mad Hatter organization were comparatively reserved.
"Hehe... what, Su? Are you interested in what's under my skirt?"
"Considering how hard Su-gege works, I should reward you a little~"
Vill-V revealed her small fangs, gripping the hem of her skirt. Starting from her plump, fair thighs, she slowly lifted it upward—then suddenly flipped it open, making Su's eyelid twitch.
However, what was revealed was not Vill-V's underwear.
Instead, hidden beneath her skirt was something hard and thick... a metal rod.
More precisely, it was the hilt of Hua's Taixuan Divine Sword.
"Oh my, Su, were you expecting something?" Vill-V crossed her legs, using her full thighs to clamp the sword hilt as she teased Su's line of sight.
"Relax. In this world, under a cute girl's skirt is always either a black hole or divine light. Totally safe, totally safe!"
As long as she could see reactions from the Flame-Chasers that never appeared in games, Vill-V had no problem acting like a mischievous little brat.
Unfortunately, Vill-V was no longer a man. Otherwise, she could have said something like, "Actually, I'm a man," to scare Su—it would definitely have had an even better effect, maybe even making him widen his eyes.
As Elysia once said, "The wisdom of the awakened always strikes straight to the point. Among the Flame-Chasers, we usually divide situations into four levels of severity: when Su has no reaction, when Su reacts but doesn't open his eyes, when Su reacts and his eyelids tremble, and when something makes even Su widen his eyes."
Making Su's eyelids tremble was one of the items Vill-V had listed in her "One Hundred Things We Most Want to Do to Su."
And ranked first, of course, was turning Su into a girl—transforming him into Vita.
That would surely be even more interesting.
At this moment, Su still had no idea that his most vital asset had already been targeted by Vill-V.