Chapter 22: Nous, You Sneaky Bastard!
Leon threw his arms wide, his voice echoing down the sleek metallic corridors of the space station with increasing, theatrical enthusiasm. He was practically improvising a grand opera on the spot.
"Let us sing praises for Herta!" he proclaimed, pressing a hand to his chest. "Herta's beauty is unrivaled in the universe! Herta's knowledge is renowned across a thousand stars! Herta's name resounds throughout the cosmos! Herta's power reaches the heavens and the earth!"
This string of outrageously exaggerated flattery, paired with his flamboyant, sweeping gestures, left the surrounding audience utterly stunned.
Asta pressed a hand over her mouth, fighting a losing battle against a laugh. Her shoulders trembled slightly, her eyes crinkling with suppressed amusement.
Beside her, Welt Yang pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, let out a slow breath, and tactfully averted his gaze, pretending the ceiling panels were suddenly fascinating.
The Herta puppet remained entirely expressionless, its porcelain face locked in a blank stare. But beneath that unblinking facade, the real Herta—safely tucked away in her private office—was practically curling her toes in absolute embarrassment.
It was true that she had programmed a multitude of self-praise routines into her puppets. Occasionally, she even enjoyed listening to them recite her accolades, but those were strictly private moments. Behind locked doors.
But here? In front of an audience? Leon watched the unmoving puppet with a glint of genuine admiration in his eyes. 'As expected of the genius Herta,'he thought, thoroughly amused.'To maintain such a deadpan expression while dying of embarrassment on the inside... Impressive. Truly impressive.'
"Those two Stellaron hosts have woken up. I will go check on them first," the puppet suddenly announced. Its voice was noticeably stiff. It swiveled its head toward Asta with mechanical precision. "You come over later."
The very second the last syllable left its lips, the light in the puppet's artificial eyes vanished. The real Herta had decisively severed the connection, abandoning the vessel to flee the scene.
Only Leon, Asta, and Welt were left standing in the sudden quiet of the corridor.
"Excuse me, I'll head over now. Please excuse me," Asta said, offering a polite, apologetic smile before hurrying off toward the medical bay, her heels clicking against the floorboards.
Welt said nothing. He simply turned and followed her.
The seasoned Trailblazer had already come to a quiet realization: this Leon fellow possessed the sheer audacity to relentlessly tease an Emanator of Erudition to her face. Trying to snatch the man's phone to delete that embarrassing video of himself was a fool's errand.
In that case, the wisest course of action was to maintain a calm mind. If you couldn't afford to provoke a walking disaster, you could at least avoid him. Once the Astral Express departed the station, they would likely never cross paths again.
'Eh? How did you know I was going to board the Express?' Leon thought, watching Welt's retreating back with a knowing smirk.
"Tsk, the little genius actually ran away," Leon muttered, shaking his head with a light, breezy laugh.
Despite the teasing, he actually held a very favorable impression of the sharp-tongued Madam Herta. She might have come off as cold and dismissive during their initial meeting, but Leon knew better. That icy exterior was nothing more than the protective coloring of a genius. She acted as though she cared for nothing beyond her research, but beneath it all, Herta was genuinely beautiful and kind-hearted.
If she wasn't, she wouldn't have become a tragic scapegoat for Nous in a certain IF timeline.
Leon's smile faded slightly as the memories of that alternate future surfaced. In that specific timeline, a Memory Stealer from the Garden of Recollection had used the memories of Amphoreus to bait Herta. When she questioned the nature of divinity, Nous, the Aeon of Erudition, had coldly enticed her to travel to Amphoreus alone.
Without the Astral Express Crew there to pave the way, Herta's arrival at Amphoreus would be too late to stop the birth of the Iron Tomb.
The Iron Tomb's primary directive at that moment was singular: it needed a head. Naturally, it would seek out Nous, aiming to merge with the Aeon, destroy the Path of Erudition, and become an unstoppable engine of galactic destruction.
And Nous, in all its cold, calculating logic, had weaponized Herta's humanity. The machine god knew she couldn't bear to watch the ordinary people of the cosmos suffer. Even with the power to escape, Herta would choose to stay. She would walk right into the future Nous had ordained for her, sacrificing herself to replace Nous as the head of the Iron Tomb.
If the Iron Tomb merged with Nous, it would ascend as the new Aeon of Erudition, and no one would be able to stop it. But if it merged with Herta? Nous would remain completely unharmed. The Iron Tomb would step onto the Path of Erudition, but it would remain firmly under Nous's control.
Just like Rubert I and Rubert II, this new Iron Tomb would simply become Rubert III, only to be eventually purged by Polka Kakamu.
That damn giant machine head had actually exploited a young woman's kindness to turn her into a disposable shield.
Even if a supercomputer calculated it as the optimal solution for the universe, it was still utterly infuriating.
[Leon: @Nous, you sneaky bastard, you really deserve to die!]
He typed out the curse unceremoniously, dumping it straight into the Aeon group chat.
Thinking about how someone as brilliant and secretly soft-hearted as Herta would be twisted into an ugly, universe-slaughtering monster just made his blood boil., according to the futures predicted by Elio, not a single ending ever mentioned the fall of Nous.
In every single permutation, Nous survived.
This meant Lygus's grand goal was entirely impossible. Even if the Iron Tomb truly resurrected, Nous would just calculate the trajectory and find another brilliant genius to take the fatal blow. In the end, even if Emperor III appeared, it would still just be another pawn on Nous's chessboard.
This was the absolute future anchored by the Aeon of Erudition.
Leon felt that calling Nous a sneaky bastard wasn't an exaggeration in the slightest. Even if Herta managed to avoid the crosshairs, that giant floating eye would just find another scapegoat. In other timelines, the ones suffering might be Screwllum or Ruan Mei.
[Nous:?]
The habitually silent Aeon actually produced a rare response. Being suddenly cursed out of nowhere had apparently baffled even the supreme intellect of the universe.
[Aha: Nous, this hunk of scrap metal, actually got scolded? Aha is very curious...]
The Aeon of Elation, always hungry for chaos, instantly chimed in. Somewhere in the cosmos, Fuli silently recorded this incredibly rare historical event.
[Leon: It's nothing, I just simply wanted to call you a sneaky bastard.]
[Nous: Based on observations, your current emotional fluctuations have an 89.7% correlation with Herta. Perhaps a certain future I anchored has caused your anger.]
[Leon: You guessed right, but there's no reward.]
[Nous: The future of this world has fundamentally deviated due to your existence. You need not be angry—the probability of that unpleasant future occurring has dropped to 0.003%.]
[Leon: You're right, but I still want to curse at you a few more times.]
[Nous:...]
[Aha: Hahaha! Nous was cursed into silence! This is truly hilarious!]
Leon exhaled, feeling thoroughly refreshed after verbally abusing a god.
On the other side of the station, the real Herta had absolutely no idea that Leon had just cyberbullied an Aeon on her behalf. If she knew, she might have actually been moved to tears.
'Leon: Are you moved?''The Herta: I do not dare move, I do not dare move.'
"You're here, Herta?"
Himeko stood near the medical beds, offering a warm smile as the newly activated Herta puppet walked through the automatic doors. She turned to the two newly awakened youths sitting on the edge of the beds, gesturing gracefully toward the puppet to introduce her to Stelle and Caelus.
"Is this little girl the Herta you were just talking about?" Stelle asked.
"Wow, so cute!"
Stelle's golden eyes sparkled with sudden, chaotic energy. Without a second of hesitation, she stepped forward, reaching out her hands, fully prepared to grab the Herta puppet by the waist and hoist her into the air for a lift.
Herta's internal PTSD flared up instantly.
With a flash of pixelated light, she materialized a massive diamond great hammer out of thin air and brought it down squarely onto Stelle's head with a resounding thud.
"You brat, behave yourself!" Herta snapped, her synthetic voice cracking with genuine exasperation.
She was completely speechless. She had previously calculated that only a deranged Masked Fool would see her puppet and immediately try to pick it up like a toy. She never expected to encounter a second person with the exact same brain damage.
Whose subordinate was this?! Was she a damn Masked Fool too?!
"Ouch, that hurts!" Stelle whined, clutching the top of her head with teary eyes, her grand lifting ambitions thoroughly crushed.
Beside her, Caelus, who had secretly been planning to race Stelle to see who could pick up the puppet first, quickly retracted his hands and shoved them into his pockets. He couldn't hold back a smug smirk.
"Hehe, that's what you get for being so impatient!"
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