"Sometimes... I really want to know where these options even come from..."
Staring at the final choice at the bottom of the screen, Jiang Ling could not help twitching at the corner of his mouth, utterly at a loss for words.
What kind of normal person spends every day thinking about how to steal one of Herta's puppets?!
No matter how you looked at it, those things were creations of a Genius. The strange part would be if one could actually steal them easily.
And stealing the puppet alone would have been bad enough, but the option specifically wanted him to drag it back to his room. What kind of abuse of public property was that supposed to be???
And Herta was still watching from outside. If he really went through with something like this...
Wait a second?
As if struck by a suddenly interesting possibility, Jiang Ling blinked rapidly, and his expression turned distinctly suggestive.
If Herta could see everything he did during Persona Extraction, then that meant she could also watch him steal one of her puppets and carry it back to his room, didn't it?
And throughout that entire process, all Herta could do would be stare through a screen and a stream of generated data as he made off with her puppet—completely unable to stop him.
Wasn't that, in its own way, another form of public humiliation?
At that thought, the corners of Jiang Ling's lips lifted slightly. His mind was made up.
Without the slightest hesitation, he turned and headed straight for the conference room where he and Herta had met earlier.
An offline Herta puppet...
Did he really need to search for one?
There was a perfectly good one sitting in the conference room already. It would be wasteful not to make use of it.
And judging from the salary and accommodations Asta had arranged for him, his assigned quarters were not far from the conference room anyway. It would not interfere with his actual work.
After all, only by remaining on the space station could Persona Extraction continue. So the research he was supposed to do still had to be done, and the corporate spy role he was supposed to play still had to be played.
...
Just as Jiang Ling had expected, when he followed his memory back from the Master Control Zone to the conference room, the Herta puppet that had negotiated with him earlier was still sitting there.
"Looks like she's offline..."
Jiang Ling bent slightly at the waist, muttering under his breath as he stared at the puppet's dim crimson-violet eyes, which held not a trace of light.
Then he reached out, gently taking hold of the perfectly lifelike arm, intending to haul the adorable girl-shaped puppet back to his quarters.
However...
The instant his hand touched the puppet, those dull crimson-violet eyes lit up without warning.
The Herta puppet, which had shown no reaction at all to the outside world a moment ago, abruptly straightened—and seized Jiang Ling's wrist in return!
"?!"
The sudden turn of events startled Jiang Ling badly. Instinctively, he tried to yank his hand back—
with predictable results.
He was just an ordinary person who had not even stepped onto a Path. How could he possibly overpower a creation of a Genius?
But just as Jiang Ling was trying to figure out whether Herta had noticed what he was doing or whether he had triggered some kind of automatic defense protocol, an emotionless voice rang in his ears.
"Unauthorized lifeform other than Lady Herta detected attempting physical contact with Puppet #114514. Self-defense mode activated. Verifying identity of contacting individual..."
Hearing this, Jiang Ling looked up at the Herta puppet holding him firmly in place with some surprise, only to find that she still wore the same lifeless expression as before.
In the next moment, a soft blue glow burst from the puppet's eyes and swept across Jiang Ling's face like a scanner.
After that, the strength in the puppet's grip gradually lessened, until at last she released his hand of her own accord.
"Biometric identification successful. Contacting individual confirmed as: Lady Herta's prospective assistant, duplicitous and silver-tongued special company envoy—Jiang Ling."
"Individual detected on trust list. Self-defense mode disengaged."
"...?"
Hearing that, Jiang Ling raised a brow, his gaze toward the puppet filling with confusion.
But what confused him was not the fact that he had been placed on the trust list.
It was...
What the hell were those nicknames in front supposed to mean?!
"Prospective assistant" was one thing. Fine. That was, after all, the official position he would hold after transferring to the station.
But duplicitous and silver-tongued? What exactly was that supposed to mean?
Could it be...
because of that line about her being an old woman obsessed with pretending to be young, Herta had formed that sort of impression of him?
She claimed not to care about how others evaluated her, but in reality she had gone and written it all down somewhere like a little black notebook, just waiting for the day of reckoning.
Well now... who would've thought a tsundere genius would have a gap moe side like this?
Jiang Ling chuckled softly, then lifted his eyes to scan the surroundings.
The conference room was still empty. There was no sign of the woman in the oversized witch's hat, nor did he get the ominous sensation that some wand was about to rap him on the head.
"Herta actually isn't reacting at all to the puppet going into automatic defense mode? Is that because I'm on the trust list? If that's the case, then..."
Looking at the exquisite girl-shaped puppet sitting upright in her chair, some rather... bold ideas began to take shape in Jiang Ling's mind.
Then doesn't that mean no matter what I do to her, she won't resist?
Almost the instant that thought crossed his mind, an unexpected light screen appeared before his eyes.
[Faced with an offline Herta puppet, how will you abuse public property?]
[1. "I want to become one with this machine!"]
[2. Maintaining a rigorous scientific attitude, bring her back to your room and properly study this ultra-realistic beautiful girl puppet.]
[3. Since she's just sitting here anyway, you might as well take her back and use her as a body pillow.]
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