Another Visitor

"Yo? You're back?"

Hearing the main door open, Mobius took a light sip of her coffee. As she turned to greet them, she quickly stuffed the documents she was holding behind her back.

Michael wasn't surprised by her presence. The mansion was brightly lit from the outside, so who else could it be but Mobius?

But still, he had a strange feeling...

"Are we eating out for dinner, or..." Michael temporarily ignored Mobius and turned to ask Mei for her opinion.

"Hmm? How about, I'll cook!" Mei glanced at Mobius, who was constantly sipping her coffee, and then at the expressionless Michael. She couldn't help but smile, then put down her schoolbag and took the initiative to go to the kitchen.

"Remember to make an extra portion!" Michael gently laid the still-unconscious Seele on the sofa, then turned and shouted at Mei's retreating back.

"Got it!" Mei replied, then decisively closed the kitchen door.

"Hmph..." Michael let out a light sigh, casually set up a soundproof imaginary barrier, and then plopped down next to Mobius.

"You! Can't you be a little gentler?" The movement of the sofa almost made the coffee in Mobius's cup spill. She held the cup steady with both hands and grumbled, biting her teeth.

Michael sank his upper body into the back of the sofa, his right arm naturally extending along the backrest, as if to wrap around Mobius's shoulder. But with her interruption, Michael seemed to wake up, shook his head with a smile, and pulled his hand back.

He didn't, and didn't want to, follow Mobius's words. Instead, he directly asked, "So, why are you back again?"

"Hmm? What do you mean, 'why am I back again'? Is there a problem with me being here? Or are you just that eager to get rid of me?"

Michael frowned, snatched the coffee from her hand, and when he spoke again, his tone had softened considerably, "That's not what I mean. It's just... when you left this morning, I thought..."

"You thought what? That I wouldn't come back?" Mobius winked mischievously, but Michael had reverted to his deadpan expression and didn't answer.

Mobius looked at his side profile, then followed his gaze to Seele, who was lying on the opposite sofa.

"Michael, I don't quite understand... no, it's not that I don't understand, I'm just... no, no, maybe I've never been able to understand your heart." Such a simple and direct sentence, yet Mobius had spent a lot of effort, twisting and turning several times, only to give an answer that had no connection to what she had originally intended to say.

"What did I do now?" Michael replied faintly.

If this sentence were written on paper, it would give a sense of innocence, but coming from Michael's mouth, it was just plain and flat, with no discernible tone.

Mobius tilted her chin towards Seele, her expression turning a little wistful, "You planned this, didn't you?"

"Hmm?"

"Her being kidnapped, and then awakening the power of the Stigmata, this whole thing was your plan from the beginning, right?"

Michael blinked blankly, his face instinctively wanting to turn away, but he stiffened his neck and suppressed this tendency. "Think whatever you want."

His answer was still so plain, but the corners of Mobius's mouth curled up. However, the smile on her face was not one of victory. One glance at it, and you could feel the bitterness of coffee.

"Still being stubborn, Michael?"

"Hmph... I said, think whatever you want, but do you have any proof?"

"Hehe!" Mobius sneered, stood up from the sofa, crossed her arms, and began to pace around the sofa.

The sound of her high heels clicking on the floor made Michael a little annoyed. He suddenly remembered that there was a lot of wine hidden in Ryoma's study and was about to get up, but his butt had just left the sofa when he slumped back down.

Seeing this, Mobius stopped behind him and gently pressed his shoulders with her hands. "Michael, I'm not here to judge you. I have no right to judge you. Of course, since it's not a judgment, there's no need for evidence, just a reasonable deduction. You can't shut me up, can you?"

Without waiting for Michael's response, she continued, "The people who kidnapped Seele should be Raiden Ryoma's remnants, right? On the day it happened... oh, actually, it was yesterday afternoon, they came here and talked to you. And during this process, it would have been very simple for you to use the power of Sentience to make some imperceptible suggestions to their consciousness, right?"

"Your intelligence gathering ability... Gray Serpent's derivative models are truly, pervasive."

"Thanks for the compliment." Mobius seemed not to have heard the sarcasm in Michael's words, and even snapped her fingers provocatively next to his ear. "But, for you, who possess the power of Corruption, it would be even harder not to find traces of Gray Serpent, right? So, since you let Gray Serpent listen to the intelligence, can I assume that you approve of me knowing this information?"

"And then?" Feeling the muscles in Michael's shoulders tighten, Mobius smiled. The hands on Michael's shoulders gradually moved, actually starting to massage him. "Relax, Michael, I'm not your enemy, and I never will be. I'm just purely interested in your actions right now—just like when we first met fifty thousand years ago."

"Is that so..." Michael smiled, then quickly suppressed it, but in the end, he still laughed out loud. "Mobius, do you know? The first time I saw you, in just a few words, I had already planned more than ten ways to escape from Fire Moth."

"Pfft—was I that scary?"

"What do you think? Whenever and wherever Fire Moth existed, there would always be various legends about Dr. Mobius. In the months that followed, every time you called me to the laboratory, I felt like I was going to the execution ground."

"Ahahaha..." Mobius laughed heartily, leaning on Michael's back, then pressed her lips to his earlobe and asked softly, "And now? After fifty thousand years, so many things have happened. There must have been some changes, right?"

Seeing Michael's earlobe turn red and swollen, and a large area of small bumps on his neck, Mobius mischievously blew on his earlobe again.

"Ahem!" Michael awkwardly moved to the side, and Mobius stopped teasing him.

"Now... I'm still afraid."

"Hmph, I can see that. But this fear is not the same as that fear, right?"

"Mmm, back then, I was just afraid of danger. Afraid of my identity being known by more people, and also afraid of dying on your operating table. As for now, what I'm afraid of is..." He didn't finish his sentence, but it didn't matter. He believed Mobius would understand... no, not necessarily understand, but just know the unspoken meaning.

"I understand. But don't worry, I won't make any comments about it. I have no right to make any comments, do I?" Mobius seemed to have said all she wanted to say. She moved to the other side of the sofa and gently stroked the head of Seele, who was deep in her dreams. Then she picked up a small strand of hair from Seele's ear and gently tickled Seele's own cheek with it.

Michael, on the other hand, stared at the coffee cup in front of him, watching his swaying reflection in the cup, his gaze as cold as the coffee's temperature.

"The state of affairs seems to be getting more and more wrong." Michael touched his red and hot cheek, thinking about where the problem lay.

"Is it because I reshaped my heart?" Michael quickly shook his head, rejecting this possibility. "No. The presence or absence of a heart is just a self-serving proof, it has nothing to do with this. Besides, even before the heart was reshaped, this wrong situation was not completely absent."

What was the "wrong situation"?

Joy, sadness, anger, fear. These emotions should have all been discarded dregs, but... why couldn't he just get rid of them?

He had tried to do so as early as the end of the battle fifty thousand years ago, but he had always been worried about Hua, so he had procrastinated until five hundred years ago.

And after that last worry was eliminated, he had no reason to retain these emotions that would make people weak. For this reason, he had even used the power of Sentience on himself. And in the first few years after returning to Earth, he had clearly been able to do it... almost able to do it.

He silently looked down at his reflection in the coffee. The world around him was so quiet, but the coffee in the cup kept shaking, creating ripples and blurring his face.

And only the two specks of pink in his eyes remained motionless in the rippling light.

"And then, fly! You will fly high with my part! Use your eyes to witness and experience with my soul..."

That's what she said, right?

The Herrscher of Origin was originally a part of the Herrscher of Finality, so if one stubbornly believed in some romantic rhetoric, one could also think that the girl had never left.

She had become a part of Michael's body, forever accompanying him, from fifty thousand years ago to now, and to the near future.

"Is it because of you? Elysia." Michael covered his eyes with his palm, but he couldn't stop the pink figure from flashing in his mind.

But the sad thing was, even with the power of Sentience, her appearance was still blurred.

"No, now is not the time to think about these things." Michael put down his hand, suddenly picked up the cold coffee on the coffee table, and drank it all in one gulp.

"Eh..." Mobius raised her hand to stop him, but she was a step too late. But on second thought, given their relationship, it didn't seem to be a big deal for Michael to drink what she had drunk.

"What's wrong?" Hearing her soft exclamation, Michael looked up in confusion.

"...Nothing." Mobius forced a natural look and shook her head, continuing to play with the sleeping Seele.

She actually wanted to ask Michael "what's wrong," but then she thought, if she asked so abruptly, would it be a little too sudden? Would it make her seem like she cared a lot about him? Perhaps Michael's evaluation was right. The her of today was indeed a little too gentle... so gentle that she didn't seem like the Mobius whose name alone could make every warrior in Fire Moth afraid.

Michael didn't know what she was thinking. For him, who possessed the power of Sentience, it wouldn't be difficult to read Mobius's mind. At this point, he wouldn't be burdened by any unnecessary moral scruples. It was just that he felt it was unnecessary.

He lowered his head, holding the empty cup, quietly savoring the bitter taste of the coffee.

"I see." He understood.

If the divinity of the Herrscher of Finality was originally a cup of pure black coffee with nothing added, then the return of the Herrscher of Origin... the return of the humanity she had refined from her time walking among mortals, was no less than adding milk to that cup of black coffee.

The coffee was no longer bitter, at least not as bitter as it originally was, but that was not important to Michael. What was important was that coffee mixed with milk could never go back to being pure.

He wanted to personally kill all his humanity, to walk the path of the current civilization with an absolutely rational divinity, to shape the ending he wanted, to fulfill the promise made between the two of them before the last Finality... but this was fundamentally impossible.

As early as fifty thousand years ago, that girl might have already anticipated it, or perhaps it was just an unintentional result. She had made herself a permanent part of Michael, and had also made Michael completely lose the possibility of mentally becoming a "god" again.

If it weren't for her, even if Michael hadn't deliberately tried to erase all his human emotions, fifty thousand years would have been enough to smooth everything out. He might have become as silent as Kevin, or as calm as Hua. At the very least, he would have been like Mobius, who, if you ignored her appearance and occasional stubbornness, was almost impossible to connect with the original Mobius...

"Elysia..." This indelible "humanity," was it a precious gift from the girl before she parted, or... was it a shackle placed on Michael by fate?

"It doesn't really matter." Michael murmured to himself. Although his lips were moving, even Mobius, who was only a step or two away, couldn't hear what he was saying.

It really didn't matter.

Joy, sadness, anger, fear... with these emotions, could he not shape the ending he wanted? Could he not fulfill the promise made fifty thousand years ago?

No. Take this incident for example. Did these emotions affect his suggestion to Gregory and Komatsu to kidnap Seele in order to trigger her Stigmata awakening?

Or did it affect him knowing that Bronya had targeted Kiana for kidnapping, and knowing that Kiana no longer had a reason to go back to the rental to pack her things, but still using the power of Sentience to guide her to do so, just because he needed a suitable opportunity to talk to Cocolia?

No, after experiencing so much, he had grown a little, although this growth might not even be something Mobius would be happy to see.

He would no longer be swayed by unnecessary emotions in his choices, because he had a goal that could not be negotiated, questioned, or blocked, a goal that had to be completed.

And the reason he wanted to erase these emotions was actually just... just to make himself feel better.

Without these emotions, he wouldn't have hesitated before seeing Seele, nor would he have been unable to stop worrying on the drive home—what if Seele hadn't been able to awaken her Stigmata?

He knew that to reach the end he wanted, he had to walk through many thorns. What he wanted to do was just to turn off his "pain sensation." But the pain itself wouldn't affect his determination to move forward, and it wouldn't even make his steps pause for a moment. It was as simple as that.

So, even if this pain sensation couldn't be turned off, it didn't really matter. It could even bring a long-lost pleasure to Michael's increasingly boring life.

Thinking of this, he stood up with a smile, even stretching his body and letting out a big yawn.

Mobius glanced at him and finally let go of Seele's hair, but then switched to poking Seele's cheek with her finger. For some reason, Michael felt that since she had appeared this time, she had an inexplicable interest in these little kids.

In the past, to arouse Mobius's interest was a truly terrifying thing, but as for the current Mobius... Michael really couldn't say.

But, watching her seriously absorbed in playing with the sleeping Seele, Michael seemed to remember something...

"By the way, Mobius. You seemed to have asked me last night... if I remembered your former dream, right?"

"Mmm? Ah, I did. What's wrong?" Mobius looked up for a moment, then quickly became engrossed in Seele's sleeping face again.

"I thought about it, you seemed to have something to say then, but in the end, you didn't say it, right?" Mobius squinted her eyes, looked up nonchalantly, tilted her head, and then shook her head.

But soon, probably thinking that her disguise was meaningless, as Michael could still directly read her thoughts with the power of Sentience, she sighed, opened her mouth again, and was about to explain something...

Ding-dong—

Just then, the doorbell rang.

"Eh?" Michael and Mobius exchanged a look. Although neither of them had been paying attention to their surroundings, to easily bypass Michael's unconscious perception, which was a mixture of several powers, in this world today, who could do this...

"Eh? Someone's here? Is it Kiana?" Mei also heard the doorbell and poked her head out of the bustling kitchen. Seeing Michael and Mobius standing there blankly, with no intention of opening the door, she was a little at a loss.

"I'll get it." Michael took a step forward.

But the mansion's main door opened on its own.

The night wind howled in, blowing the chandelier in the living room back and forth.

The lights in the house illuminated the blurry figure outside, outlining her dress and long hair, which danced with the night wind.

Damn it! Anai, how could you be so degenerate! How could you write this chapter so watery? The plot will speed up from today! Go, go, go!