"As for your third question—what does 'renormalization' have to do with black holes? According to Dr. Schrödinger's description in the original storyline, for the universe, planets are like thumbtacks pinned into a mural called the galaxy, nailing the so-called 'terminal branches of the Imaginary' onto its canvas."
"And a pseudo black hole—or rather, a planet's gravitational singularity—is the entrance from this galaxy to the 'terminal branch of the Imaginary.'"
Id raised an objection. "I remember that the 'gravitational singularity' was just a metaphor Dr. Schrödinger used for an 'Imaginary singularity,' right? And how could a pseudo black hole be a planet's gravitational singularity?"
"You actually remember that... then again, so do I. All right, let's expand on it." Conductor sounded a little helpless. Teaching really ought to be Lecturer's job. She just wanted to get through this quickly.
"A planet can govern space. That means any 'black hole' formed upon a planet can become a gravitational singularity. No matter where on the planet the collapse occurs, the result is the same."
"Imaginary Space is still space. As long as it is space, it cannot escape the dominion of planetary gravity. That is why the Imaginary Space where the Cocoon of Finality resides appears on the moon."
Id tapped her small hand against her palm in sudden realization. "Ah! No wonder we never saw the Cocoon of Finality."
"In truth, it isn't quite that simple..." Conductor muttered softly. But in the interest of ending class early, she did not continue.
"In fact, we located the Imaginary singularity long ago—through the Herrscher Core. But to contain the entire Cosmic Juggernaut within it, we had to borrow the planet's gravitational singularity as a passage. After all, the Cosmic Juggernaut is not the Herrscher of the Void."
"As for the failure... I did not anticipate that communicating with the 'terminal branch of the Imaginary' would cause our consciousness to stagnate. It does not kill us. According to renormalization and the conservation of information, we would neither die nor vanish. But we could very well remain eternally fixed at some node within the world's origin."
"And the facts proved exactly that."
Id's face filled with astonishment. So the Imaginary Tree could be interpreted this way as well. Eternally remaining at the world's origin... If she guessed correctly, wasn't that the original fate of Elysia in the established storyline?
At that moment, Pure Evil cut in. "Ha! That's exactly what pisses me off the most. We failed and didn't even die—what kind of nonsense is that? If we'd used my plan... we could've just stepped on the Herrscher of Reason's head and come back up. There wouldn't have been any of this risk. Conductor just had to stubbornly protect the Herrscher of Reason. Totally unnecessary!"
Conductor instead laughed proudly. "But look, Pure Evil—I won the bet, didn't I?"
The 'terminal branch of the Imaginary' was full of unknowns. Failure was normal. But that did not mean Conductor lacked a backup plan.
Even in failure, she had prepared a plan for failure.
"Oh, stop laughing. That was just dumb luck," Pure Evil retorted in a tsundere tone. "My plan could've achieved it too!"
"But your plan would have made us permanently lose the Herrscher Core of Reason..."
Id continued pressing Conductor. "So how exactly did we break free from that state? If we were trapped in eternal stagnation, then no matter how many methods we had, they'd be useless, right?"
"We relied on the Fourth Herrscher's feather. She restored the flow of your consciousness." Turning away from her bickering with Pure Evil, Conductor explained calmly.
If it was a matter of restoring motion to something stagnant, Wendy's authority could indeed accomplish that. As for how she managed to exert her power in that place, it was unclear. Perhaps it had been an instinctive reaction. After all, if she had done nothing, she too would have been trapped there forever.
Id did not question at all why the feather would help her, even though it was the relic of a Herrscher.
"So it was Wendy!"
Her eyes shimmered. She raised her right hand, and Wendy's fallen feather emitted a faint, gentle glow. "Thank you, Wendy!"
"Tch." Pure Evil could not help clicking her tongue at Id's innocence. If it were her, she would never rely on something as uncertain as 'waiting for a Herrscher to show mercy and help on her own.' That was practically handing over all initiative to someone else.
A relic should behave like a relic—something to be ruthlessly squeezed for every ounce of value.
Pure Evil had plenty of methods to force Wendy's feather into submission beneath her authority. They were simply rather dangerous, that was all.
Conductor naturally understood what Pure Evil was thinking and continued, "Even without Wendy's feather, we had a backup. It just would have required the price of one Vill-V... or waiting for Elysia to return to Origin and pull us back out."
Conductor spoke of sacrificing one Vill-V as if it were nothing, yet the words moved Id. She had not even been consulted.
But very quickly, Id realized which Vill-V Conductor had intended to sacrifice.
It was herself.
So when she said she would load her life into the chamber, she had not meant Vill-V's life.
She had loaded her own life—
To save all the Vill-Vs.
"Conductor... I understand why you kept it from me, but... but something like that... I know I'm an idiot, so I wouldn't have stopped you from acting cool... but at least let me say goodbye, okay?"
Id fidgeted with her fingers. She knew she did not really have the right to say such things. The one who made the choices and decisions was never her—it was always Conductor.
But she still gathered her courage and spoke, because this was what she truly felt. Whether Conductor agreed or refused, she had to tell her.
Even if it made Conductor think she was nothing more than a burden who interfered with decisive judgment.
Conductor fell silent for a long time before finally speaking. "All right. I promise. After all, you are me. Though... there probably won't be a next time. This experiment was very successful." Which meant she'd probably dare to try again.
"This was also a test regarding Wendy. Now it seems this feather truly will not harm us."
Id had never imagined that to test Wendy's fallen feather, Conductor would go this far. "Saving Wendy as much as possible was my idea... but there was no need to go so far as sacrificing yourself, was there?"
"You don't need to blame yourself. It wasn't entirely for you," Conductor replied. "If we want to fight Honkai, we must seize every possible trump card. We must exhaust everything we have—even gamble it all, placing our entire existence upon the scales."
"Otherwise, in the face of Honkai, in the face of this cruel world, there would be no possibility of victory.
"Without that resolve, mortals cannot defeat gods. Nothing is inevitable. Everything is the result of giving it our all."