Chapter 26: Please, Let Me Test It
Leon stood entirely motionless, his expression flattening into a deadpan, lifeless stare. Right in front of him, the Aeon of Elation was sprinting away into the digital horizon, waving their arms wildly and chanting, "Aha! Aha! Aha!"
It wasn't just a laugh. It was a literal, physical manifestation of those ridiculous meme emojis he had shared not too long ago.
'No, seriously, bro?'Leon thought, his eye twitching slightly.'Is Herta's Simulated Universe really this impressive?'
It hadn't been that long since he gave Aha that meme. Had the simulated version of Aha already synchronized with the real one?
Once you eliminate all impossibilities, whatever remains, no matter how incredible, must be the truth. And the truth was glaringly obvious: the real Aha had absolutely hacked into Herta's servers!
He could already picture the cosmic exchange happening somewhere out in the stars.
The real Aha: 'Eh? This digital version of me is actually quite fun.'The real Aha:'Want me to give you an Emanator status to play with?'The simulated Aha:'Aha is an Aeon, I don't want to be an Emanator. How about Aha gives you an Emanator to play with instead?'The real Aha:'Now this is truly elating!'
Meanwhile, outside the digital confines of the Simulated Universe, Herta's biological and mechanical processors were simultaneously frying.
"How on earth did you do it?" The puppet's voice crackled over the intercom, pitching up an octave. "The moment you appeared, you attracted Nous... Then you drew in Fuli, and Fuli actually shattered! And finally, you even dragged Aha into the mix? And you clearly didn't do a single thing!"
Through the monitor, Herta's synthetic eyes bore into Leon's virtual avatar. A ravenous, insatiable thirst for knowledge burned within her gaze. She completely ignored the fact that the simulated Aha had just openly declared himself an equation in a computer. After all, she already knew the virtual Aeon of Elation was self-aware.
This was far from Herta's first time booting up the Simulated Universe. She had thrown countless space station researchers into the immersion pods for testing. She had disguised them, tweaked their parameters, even masked them as Aeons themselves. Nothing worked. The virtual gods never spared those normal staff members a single glance.
That was precisely why she needed Stelle and Caelus. Their bodies housed Stellarons, making them unique anomalies capable of drawing the gaze of the divine.
Even with the Trailblazers, Aha's appearances were exceedingly rare and usually resulted in a catastrophic system error report. Herta had long suspected that the other simulated Aeons knew they were just strings of code, but they maintained their divine dignity. They didn't break the fourth wall as overtly as Aha did.
But someone like Leon? A guy who just stood there, doing absolutely nothing, and chained the attention of four different Aeons in succession? It was unmatched. It defied all logic.
Inside the simulation, Leon shrugged lazily. "How should I know?" he drawled, holding up his hand and pinching his thumb and index finger together, leaving a microscopic gap. "Maybe I'm just a tiny bit special."
That's right. Just a tiny bit special.
A smug grin tugged at his lips. He knew exactly what was going on, but there was no way he was going to explain it to her. Let the curiosity eat away at her. Let it drive the great genius of the cosmos absolutely crazy.
Even without seeing her physical body, he could perfectly envision Herta aggressively scratching her head, her eyes wide and glowing with manic scientific fervor.
"You really don't know?" Herta's voice trembled with barely suppressed excitement. "How about this? Let me give you a complete, full-body examination."
Outside in the laboratory, mechanical arms were already whirring to life. Trays of sterile instruments slid into place—needles for blood draws, vials for urine tests, containers for waste collection, clippers for hair sampling... there was even a highly specialized extraction device for reproductive fluids.
Before Leon could even formulate a witty rejection, the digital environment around him violently warped. Herta's curiosity instantly skyrocketed to astronomical new heights.
The sky tore open. Nanook had arrived.
Unlike the previous three Aeons who simply manifested in the space, the Aeon of Destruction didn't bother with pleasantries. A terrifying gravitational force seized Leon, violently dragging him straight into the Abyss of the Path.
Back in the lab, Herta slammed her hands against the console. "No way! Even Nanook is here?!"
She pressed her face close to the monitor, her words blurring into an incoherent, manic mutter. "How exactly did he do it? How did he do it? How?!"
Were all her previous hypotheses actually correct?
Within the oppressive, suffocating darkness of the Abyss of the Path, Leon dusted off his clothes. He looked up at the towering, scarred figure of the simulated Nanook. He didn't bother repeating his dramatic catchphrase, 'Nanook, I've come to bring you destruction.' The virtual version of the Destruction Aeon simply wasn't interesting enough to warrant the effort.
He braced himself for a generic combat sequence. But what happened next caught everyone completely off guard.
"Nanook, I've come to bring you destruction!"
A familiar, obnoxious voice echoed through the void. Out of absolutely nowhere, the simulated Aha materialized in mid-air, wound up a comically exaggerated fist, and clocked Nanook squarely in the jaw.
The impact shattered the digital space. Before Leon could even process the absurdity of an Aeon getting sucker-punched, the system forcefully ejected him from the Abyss of the Path.
Leon blinked, staring at the loading screen. '...Holy crap. Remember to pay the copyright fee for that line, you masked freak!'
In the lab, Herta blinked her synthetic eyes, a sudden spark of realization flashing across her neural network. "So... is that how it is?" she whispered.
Inside the pod, Leon tapped the glass. "There shouldn't be any more Aeons lining up to crash the server, right? Can I come out now?"
"Of course! Come right out!" Herta agreed with suspicious eagerness.
The immersion pod hissed open, releasing a cloud of cold vapor. Leon stepped out, stretching his limbs—only to freeze in his tracks.
A dazzling, horrifying array of medical testing equipment was lined up right in front of him.
"What exactly are you trying to do?" Leon asked, his voice entirely flat. "I'm just a child. I'm scared."
His gaze slowly drifted up, locking onto a massive, terrifyingly thick syringe that was literally taller than the Herta Puppet standing next to it. He instinctively took a half-step back, his survival instincts screaming. "You're trying to drain me dry!"
"Let me test you, okay?"
The Herta Puppet stared up at him, her artificial eyes sparkling with intense, unblinking anticipation. She looked at him the way a starving predator looked at a particularly juicy steak. This was the exact, terrifying demeanor the genius displayed whenever she found a research subject she was utterly obsessed with.
"Are you begging me?" Leon asked, a smirk breaking through his apprehension as he recalled a classic dialogue choice from the game. He couldn't resist teasing her.
"I'm begging you. Let me test you, okay?" The Herta Puppet fired back instantly, completely abandoning all pride in the name of science.
Leon sighed, crossing his arms. "Fine. But you have to guarantee that these samples will never be leaked to anyone else."
"No problem at all!" Herta chirped, her joints clicking as she gestured enthusiastically to the horrific torture devices. "Come, these are all prepared specifically for you—"
She pointed to the containers one by one. "This is for blood. This is for urine. This is for solid waste. This is for hair follicles. And this one..." She patted a very peculiar, cylindrical device. "...is for collecting your seed."
Leon choked on his own spit. "Wait. What the hell? Collecting my what?!"
A muscle in his cheek twitched violently. Seriously? She needed to test that too?!
"Of course. For the sake of absolute experimental rigor, this is strictly necessary," the Herta Puppet explained, her porcelain face entirely devoid of shame or embarrassment.
"After all, you attracted the attention of multiple Aeons without any external disguise," she continued, slipping effortlessly into a clinical lecture. "And as everyone knows, reproductive fluid is composed of haploid cells produced through the process of meiosis. This biological process reduces the number of chromosomes in the seed to exactly half that of standard somatic cells..."
She stood there, delivering a deadpan biology lesson on his reproductive organs with a perfectly straight face.
"Stop. Stop, stop, stop." Leon held up both hands, his eye twitching so hard it was starting to ache. "Are you telling me you want to determine whether all the cells in my body have a cosmic anomaly, or if only the cells from a certain... specific part of my anatomy are particularly attractive to Aeons?!"
He stared at the puppet in sheer disbelief. "Herta, you are way too abstract!"
This was beyond ridiculous. If it turned out that the haploid cells in his body were the actual catalyst attracting the cosmic gods, what did that make him? A walking, talking cosmic aphrodisiac?
The sheer absurdity of the thought made his brain hurt. Leon suddenly realized that Herta wasn't just qualified to walk the Path of Erudition. If she really applied herself, she could easily pivot to the Path of Elation. She was just that damn unhinged.
He let out a long, defeated sigh, rubbing his temples. "Fine. I'll let you test me."
"If you find the manual extraction process embarrassing, I have specialized equipment here that can assist you," Herta offered helpfully.
The puppet paused, tilting her head as if processing a major, new decision. "Hmm... I can even provide you with a specially modified Herta Puppet. If you have any... needs, you can resolve them with her."
She looked up at him, her tone completely businesslike. "As long as you remember to return the puppet to the lab every time you're finished."
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