Chapter 590: Luna’s Past and Wish

"Tch, I actually forgot to bring it."

Elias searched through his Imaginary Space for quite a while.

Snacks, gold coins, weapons, and gemstones were piled into one small mountain after another. With such abundant supplies, even if the world fell into an apocalypse, they would still last for centuries.

Yet even after searching through everything, Elias still couldn’t find the Fenghuang Down Divine Key that stored his memories. Fu Hua probably borrowed it and left it behind in the proper world.

After all, he wasn’t the only person in the world with hyperthymesia. Fu Hua was equally unwilling to erase the memories of her past.

And she was the nostalgic, old-fashioned type too.

Fu Hua was currently the only person in the Valkyrie dormitory who still used a flip phone and stubbornly refused to switch to a smartphone... No wonder the Herrscher of Transcendent Sentience called her an old fossil every day.

"Forget it. If I forgot it, I forgot it. It’s just a dungeon of this level. There’s no way it can stump me, right?"

Elias planted his hands on his hips and gave himself a pep talk.

Although it felt a little strange not being able to use memories from his previous life to spoil the plot and cheat his way through, he’d overcome so many difficult problems in the past that Elias refused to believe he’d screw up this time.

Then Elias opened another portal.

He traveled directly to the Elysian Realm, which had already become reality.

After looking around for a while, Elias soon discovered Luna inside the Realm’s amusement park. The vampire girl gazed at the many different attractions, her eyes shining brightly.

Yet she never took a step forward.

It was as though she couldn’t decide which one she wanted to try.

Elias: (Only children make choices. Adults take everything! Oh, right. Luna actually is still underage.)

Elias then hid behind a cloud in the sky. He was rather curious about which attraction the vampire girl would choose first. The Ferris wheel? Bumper cars? The carousel? Or perhaps the haunted house?

For some reason, he felt a strange sense of anticipation, like a parent watching a child choose an object during a first-birthday fortune-telling ceremony.

However...

Half an hour passed. Luna had wandered through more than half the amusement park, looking here and there. The light in her eyes grew brighter and brighter, yet she never boarded a single attraction.

(Does this girl have a terminal case of indecisiveness?)

Elias, still hidden above the clouds, was already starting to yawn.

In the end, he helplessly shook his head and descended back to the ground.

"This is the amusement park Ely and I are so proud of, you know. Luna, if none of it catches your eye, even I’m starting to feel a little hurt. Isn’t there anything you want to try?"

"H-Human! When did you get here?"

Like a kitten suddenly startled out of its wits, Luna’s shoulders jerked violently. She spun around and saw Elias standing right behind her.

"When I got here isn’t important. What’s important is why you haven’t picked an attraction to try. Don’t worry, admission to this amusement park is free, and it’s open twenty-four hours a day."

"N-No, that’s okay. Just looking at everything like this already makes me feel satisfied. This world is so big... and so beautiful."

"It’s not quite that impressive. This is only an amusement park. Calling it a whole world is a bit of an exaggeration. The real world is hundreds of millions of times bigger than an amusement park."

Elias spoke with a slightly embarrassed expression. In truth, the entire Elysian Realm was only about the size of a city.

"R-Really? That’s amazing. I really want to see a world that big... Ah... I’m so greedy."

Luna spoke with startled longing, but in the very next instant, she began rebuking herself for that tiny trace of greed.

"..."

Elias fell silent, his brows knitting slightly. Looking at the vampire girl before him, he suddenly felt a pang of heartache. Faced with countless amusement park attractions right within reach, Luna had said that merely looking at them was enough.

Even a wish as ordinary as wanting to see the world was something she considered excessively greedy.

In her own eyes, she seemed almost insignificant. She blamed herself as though wanting even the slightest bit more happiness meant committing some unforgivable sin.

"Human, can I ask you a few questions?"

"Sure, go ahead. Luna, do you want to know the truth of the world, or perhaps the mysteries of the universe?"

"Uh, n-no, nothing that dramatic. I want to know what that enormous wheel that keeps turning is."

Luna pointed toward the enormous Ferris wheel glittering with lights, her crimson eyes filled with curiosity and amazement.

"That’s a Ferris wheel. Legend says that every time a Ferris wheel completes one full revolution, another pair of lovers kisses somewhere in the world. And whenever a cabin reaches the very top, the people inside arrive at the place closest to heaven."

"I see. Th-Then what are those wooden horses that keep going around in circles too?"

"That’s a carousel. Actually, a lot of people think carousels are a very cruel game, because the people riding the horses keep chasing one another forever, yet they’re always separated by the same distance and can never get any closer."

"...Is that so? That really is a shame."

"Don’t make that face. As far as I’m concerned, whoever first said that must’ve been an idiot. If two people want to stay together, couldn’t they just ride the same horse?"

"Ah, you’re right. Then they wouldn’t have to be separated."

"Mhm~ Anything else you want to ask?"

Elias raised a hand and gently stroked Luna’s head.

The vampire girl dazedly froze for a moment, finding the sensation extremely pleasant. Then she continued pointing toward one attraction after another, asking questions nonstop like an endlessly curious child.

And Elias was unquestionably an excellent guide. He didn’t merely tell Luna the names of the attractions, but also explained all sorts of meanings and symbolism behind them.

For example, roller coasters symbolized all the highs and lows of life, along with plenty of thrills! Pirate ships symbolized the great spirit of freedom and adventure, while haunted houses symbolized the kindly malicious intentions of a bunch of fun-seeking troublemakers.

"So that’s... what they’re like. How interesting."

Luna felt as though the door to an entirely new world had opened before her.

Elias looked at the vampire girl’s innocent expression and felt as though he were watching a bird finally leave its cage and discover the beauty of the outside world for the first time.

His own mood improved along with hers.

Elias even felt that perhaps he had more potential as an amusement park guide than a certain self-proclaimed pink tour-guide elf.

But...

"All right. I’ve introduced every attraction in the amusement park to you. From here on, just follow your heart and play on whichever ones you like. But before that... Luna, shouldn’t you tell me about Theresa and that promise now?"

Elias decided to get to the main topic first.

Since he couldn’t search his memories through Fenghuang Down...

He would just have to learn about it directly from the girl herself.

That said, when he’d previously used the authority of the Herrscher of Rebirth to try treating Luna, he’d already gained a considerable understanding of her fundamental nature.

In terms of abilities alone, Luna seemed somewhat stronger than a certain Judah launcher, because she too was a MANTIS possessing Vishnu’s Meta-Morph factor. Except... in addition to that, she had also fused with part of the Herrscher of Corruption’s authority.

A Vipralopa-class Honkai Beast capable of devouring other Honkai Beasts.

And the Twelfth Herrscher, capable of corrupting all things!

Neither was anything short of terrifying.

One was the strongest Honkai Beast beneath the Planet class, while the other was the strongest Herrscher beneath Finality. On top of that, she even possessed the bloodline and genes of the Kaslana family.

Although she had only inherited part of each one’s power, and fusing all three together had caused a mutation, a strange twist of fate had ultimately given birth to an incredible vampire like Luna.

Her very existence could be described as an anomaly, a bug.

Both her upper limit and her lower limit were extraordinarily high.

(But it’s obvious that Luna, just like Theresa, was artificially created. As for who was responsible, I don’t even need to guess. It was definitely that blond, cuckolded, loser bastard.)

Strictly speaking, after analyzing this much, Elias could already be said to understand Luna rather well. But... he knew that he’d only learned about the girl’s origins. If he truly wanted to understand her, he still needed to know the vampire girl’s past.

"...Yes. It’s my turn to tell you."

The smile on Luna’s face gradually disappeared. She seemed to transform from an innocent young girl into an exquisite doll. Elias knew that the only thing he could do at that moment was listen.

"I was a doll created by Grandpa. From the moment I was born, my life had no value. I always lived in a cage-like room filled with books..."

Luna couldn’t help remembering the room she had never once left during the first twelve years of her life.

It was a room without even a single window. She wasn’t allowed to meet anyone, nor was she permitted to go outside. The only thing she could do each day was read those storybooks over and over again.

There was a coffin inside that dim room, lined with velvet bedding. That was Luna’s bed, but it wasn’t hers alone. It was also her older sister’s bed.

"Grandpa wouldn’t allow her to meet anyone, so the only person she could occasionally speak with was her older sister, who was always asleep."

"She was required to drink blood packs frequently, and once every half month, she had to drink her sister’s blood. All of it was Grandpa’s wish, and she continued living that way."

"She herself never felt dissatisfied with it, because that was what she’d been born for, because someone needed her, because every time she finished drinking her sister’s blood, her sister would wake up and smile at her so gently..."

"Only then could she feel that her existence had meaning. But even so, greedy as she was, there was still one wish in her heart that she wanted to fulfill."

In Luna’s crimson eyes was an innocent longing. She looked at the white-haired young man before her, then at this flawless and beautiful Realm, and finally spoke aloud the wish she had always carried.

"She wanted to go outside. She wanted to see what the world described in the books actually looked like, even if she could only see it once."

Luna wanted to see the world she lived in with her own eyes.

What color was the sky? What color was the sea? What did an amusement park look like? What was Yae Village, the place her sister so often mentioned and that always made Grandpa furious, really like?

That was Theresa’s wish. Luna’s wish.

Fortunately, with her sister’s help, Luna successfully reached the outside world. Yet there, her sister betrayed her. The very sister who had freed her from her cage pointed a gun at her.

And so Luna fled from her sister.

But...

The outside world was far too unfamiliar to her.

With only the tiny amount of knowledge she’d learned from storybooks, Luna had no way to function normally in human society.

A bird that had never left its cage since birth couldn’t fly even after being released into the outside world.

At that moment, Luna understood.

All alone, she couldn’t do anything.

So...

Luna said, "Human, can you take me to see the world? There are so many things outside that I don’t recognize. I want to know what they are. This is Theresa’s one and only wish... In exchange, I’ll agree to anything you ask of me."