Chapter 485 Marry Acheron - 485

The strange sword technique had come out of nowhere, throwing Polka's calculations into disarray. Despite her surprise, she forced her body to change direction through sheer physical strength, narrowly avoiding Sylvia's Tsubame Gaeshi.

A faint smile appeared on her blurred face, and Sylvia could feel her studying her.

"Who are you?"

Polka Kakamond had suddenly spoken, asking a question she shouldn't have needed to ask.

"You're not that artificially created accident."

Sylvia blinked, seeming to realize something. Her tone changed at once.

"Oh, so the real one's here? And here I was wondering what it'd take to find you."

Polka Kakamond lowered her head, seeming to think for a moment. Then her gaze shifted to the figure behind Sylvia.

"Herta, Sylvia. I didn't expect you two to be so eager to challenge me."

Herta merely glanced back before ignoring Polka again. Sylvia moved to block the scalpel Polka had raised.

"What's so surprising about that? You didn't think you were the only one in the universe with a temper, did you?"

Polka gave a soft laugh. Her scalpel sliced through space, sending an unavoidable ripple around Sylvia and straight toward Herta. The attack was both graceful and deadly.

"Not a chance!"

Sylvia swung her sword again. The crude staff shone with light, blocking the attack aimed at Herta.

But in that instant, the deadly ripple turned into a harmless breeze. Polka Kakamond appeared right in front of Sylvia, her cold scalpel pressed against Sylvia's chest. A smile spread across her indistinct face.

Such pure killing intent made Sylvia's hair stand on end.

Polka wanted to kill her, and not just inside the Simulated Universe. She was trying to find some way to reach through the simulation and kill Sylvia in reality.

Sylvia might survive through sheer luck, but Herta couldn't withstand such an attack. Sensing the threat, Sylvia stopped limiting herself to the Simulated Universe's rules.

The power of Permanence flooded her body, and the smiling mask of Elation covered her face.

The sharp scalpel tore through Sylvia's clothes, but its blade couldn't pierce her chest. Her firm muscles clamped down on the steel, holding it in place.

Then her blade flashed!

No longer limited in how much power she could use, Sylvia's strikes grew faster and more vicious. At such close range, Polka barely blocked the first strike with her scalpel and slipped past the second with nimble footwork.

But she couldn't dodge the third.

BOOM!

A dull crash rang out as the blade struck home. Polka Kakamond went flying, slamming into a metal wall some distance away. The sheer force of the blow shook the entire spacecraft behind her.

Just then, Herta pulled the cables from the scepter and stood up. Sylvia's actions had disrupted everything in the Simulated Universe. From that moment on, there'd been no point in observing the scepter.

"You were trying to seize control of the Simulated Universe, weren't you? Too bad for you, Screwllum and Stephen have been waiting for exactly that."

Herta hid behind Sylvia, peeking out with only half her head. Yet her tone was as arrogant as ever.

The Simulated Universe was under attack, and Herta had to admit that Polka's methods were impressive, especially when she started interfering with causality itself. Without advance preparation, even Herta and Screwllum might've struggled to stop her.

But a genius who'd had time to prepare was the most terrifying enemy in the universe.

This time, Polka Kakamond was the one who'd acted without enough preparation.

Polka rose from the ground in silence. Her right arm was gone, and her chest had been crushed inward. Blood stained her candy-colored dress, and though her face was still impossible to make out, her dark expression was clear enough.

Genius #4 ignored Herta's words. Instead, she fixed Sylvia with a piercing stare, making no effort to hide her murderous intent.

Sylvia raised an eyebrow.

Why was Polka glaring at her?

Shouldn't Herta be her target?

Herta had noticed the same thing.

"#4, you seem awfully interested in Sylvia. Even that last attack was meant to kill her. What, you think Sylvia's a bigger threat than me?!"

Herta stamped her foot in anger, but she was also baffled.

Despite her injuries, Polka calmly adjusted what remained of her collar with her only hand. She seemed to care little about her disadvantage as she looked at the frustrated Herta.

"I received an invitation from several geniuses and a Hand of Variables."

"Your preparations were as thorough as I'd expected, but this is only the beginning. I'll kill you and erase the chaotic possibilities you bring, just as I've done to everyone else who's died by my hand."

Polka turned her attention back to Sylvia.

It seemed she'd stopped trying to hide her goal. After all, with several geniuses watching, she didn't think she could conceal it any longer.

"...Erasing the possibility of chaos? Breaking through the circle of knowledge? You think she's better at that than ME?!"

Herta was close to losing it.

Polka Kakamond had been hunting geniuses across the universe. They'd come up with a thousand possible motives: jealousy, power, stealing knowledge, and more.

But they'd never imagined she was trying to remove the possibility of chaos from the universe itself.

Of course, that odd motive wasn't the point.

The point was that she, the great Herta, was the genius who'd reached the brink of the knowledge singularity several times. She'd nearly expanded the circle of knowledge itself!

So why the hell was she being outdone by some brute who only knew how to fight?

Could that musclehead increase the total knowledge in the universe?

Had #4 completely lost her mind?!

To Herta, Polka Kakamond's words were the ultimate humiliation.

She must've been blind to think Polka was someone like her, someone she could actually hold a decent conversation with.

Like hell!

That woman didn't even deserve a seat at the same dinner table!

Just then, Polka looked up. She swung the scalpel in her left hand through empty space, and the entire world began to shatter.

Herta's expression changed.

"Damn it! She's trying to escape!"

Sylvia lunged forward at once, trying to hold Polka back and stop her from carrying out the rest of her plan. Herta also accessed her administrative privileges, hoping to use the Simulated Universe to trace Polka's location.

Unfortunately, with Polka Kakamond's abilities, stopping her when she was focused solely on escaping was next to impossible.

Polka's figure soon broke apart, forcing the simulation to end.

--+--

Sylvia and Herta woke up in the office.

"Welcome back, Miss Sylvia, Madam Herta."

Screwllum was as elegant as ever, despite everything that'd just happened.

"Did you catch her signal?"

No matter how powerful Polka Kakamond was, she'd still needed an ID to access the Simulated Universe. If they could trace that connection backward, they might find a clue to her whereabouts.

"Conclusion: We were unable to pinpoint her exact location."

Screwllum couldn't give them a definite answer. They'd had too little time, and Polka had kept attacking the Simulated Universe throughout the encounter.

The obstacles and traps Screwllum and Herta had set together had managed to hinder Polka Kakamond at first, but they'd all failed soon afterward.

That outcome wasn't entirely unexpected. Even so, watching Polka break through their carefully laid traps by forcing unlikely events to happen had made Screwllum reassess her abilities.

"We underestimated Polka Kakamond. She's far more formidable than we'd imagined."

What made her so frightening wasn't her technical skill or brute strength. It was her near-limitless ability to manipulate causality at will.

The problems Screwllum and Herta had spent so long devising hadn't even lasted two rounds against Polka Kakamond.

For some reason, however, Polka had stopped using her targeted causal attacks after she began fighting Sylvia. Otherwise, the Simulated Universe would've crashed again today, and it might've taken the entire space station down with it.

"Question: Polka Kakamond abandoned her probability-based attacks on the Simulated Universe after engaging Miss Sylvia. That doesn't make logical sense."

"Arrogance? Maybe she thought we weren't worth the effort?"

Herta clicked her tongue in annoyance. In all her life, she'd never been looked down on like this.

Screwllum didn't answer.

Sylvia turned to Herta instead.

"Herta, how much of the scepter's structure did you manage to see?"

"Hmph. About half, give or take. There wasn't enough time. Still, I've got some ideas for improving the Simulated Universe's underlying framework."

Herta gave another huff.

At least they'd gained something from the encounter. They couldn't load a complete scepter system into the Simulated Universe, but they could improve its algorithms and architecture.

Sylvia let out a sigh of relief.

"Well, that's good. At least we got something out of it. So, are we going again?"

"No. I'm upgrading the Simulated Universe first."

It wasn't just the system that needed an upgrade. The firewall needed work too.

Sylvia pursed her lips. She'd wanted to jump straight into another run and try to find the Lord of Silence today. She'd thought Herta would want to start another simulation right away and keep exploring that stretch of history.

She hadn't expected Herta to announce a sudden overhaul of the entire system.

"Screwllum, could you send me Polka Kakamond's location?"

"Of course, Miss Sylvia."

Screwllum nodded and sent the information he'd intercepted to Sylvia's phone.

It pointed to a star system Sylvia had never heard of.

A quick search showed that it was another remote region. In fact, calling it remote was being generous.

A terrible battle had once taken place there, leaving the corpses of the Swarm scattered among the stars. Its once-thriving inhabited planets had long since gone dark, and the entire system had become a deserted battlefield.

Most people had even forgotten its name.

Sylvia reached into her pocket and gripped the bullet.

She wasn't sure whether such vague information would be enough for it to lock onto Polka's location. Perhaps she'd need something more precise.

"I'm heading out for a bit."

After letting the two geniuses know, Sylvia teleported to the station's platform.

Her Subspace Lance changed shape, taking the form of a handgun. Sylvia loaded the bullet into its chamber.

The Countertemporal Shot hadn't come with an instruction manual. Yet when Sylvia held the bullet and thought about firing it at a specific target, she found that she knew how to use it.

The power of The Hunt gathered within the weapon, waiting to be released.

Sylvia closed her eyes and focused on Polka Kakamond, making the image of her clearer and clearer in her mind.

She kept this up for around ten minutes.

Then, at a certain moment, a faint message reached her from the power inside the bullet.

The Hunt had marked Polka Kakamond's presence.

Now, the chase across the stars could begin.

Sylvia's eyes snapped open!

She raised the gun high, aiming into the depths of space toward the nameless star system.

And pulled the trigger!

The power of Destruction erupted inside the chamber, turning into an unmatched force that drove the bullet forward. At the same time, the power of Permanence wrapped around the projectile, soaking into it and granting it even greater, longer-lasting destructive force.

A low hum rang out.

There was no deafening gunshot.

The gun, forged from the Subspace Lance and made nearly indestructible by Sylvia's power, began to crack under the terrible recoil. The moment the bullet left the barrel, the weapon shattered piece by piece until nothing remained but dust scattered across the floor.

Sylvia had to summon her draconic form and put on her mask just to keep her footing.

Only then did she manage to stop the recoil from being unleashed upon the space station.

Even so, the tiny fraction of power that escaped was enough to leave the entire platform in ruins.

And in exchange for all that, the bullet imbued with The Hunt had been fully unleashed.

At that very instant, somewhere in the distant stars, a towering centaur holding a great bow cast THEIR gaze upon her.

For a brief moment, Sylvia thought she saw the Reignbow Arbiter draw back THEIR bowstring, an arrow nocked and ready, though THEY didn't release it.

The dazzling arrow of light seemed to shine in answer to the bullet's own radiance. The thunder of The Hunt's iron hooves echoed in Sylvia's ears, each step carrying an immense weight.

Sylvia snapped back to her senses.

The Reignbow Arbiter's figure vanished, as though everything she'd just seen had been an illusion.

But The Hunt's glance had caught everyone's attention.

Nobody knew why The Hunt had turned THEIR gaze toward The Blue.

Yet the brilliant streak of light had already been fired.

The slender bullet blazed with dazzling radiance as it left Herta Space Station, crossed vast stretches of space in an instant, and raced toward the unknown depths of the cosmos.

The glorious trail of light looked like a wonder of the universe itself, visible from The Blue.

Even people standing on the planet's surface could see it with their naked eyes.

Many assumed it was another of Madam Herta's experiments. But only Herta, Screwllum, and Mei knew that Sylvia was almost certainly behind it.

The question was, how had Sylvia managed to attract The Hunt's attention?

Everyone fell deep into thought.

Meanwhile, Sylvia stood gazing at the fading trail of light.

She wondered just how much trouble that bullet would cause Polka Kakamond.

Could it kill her in a single shot?

Probably not.

Sure, The Hunt had glanced this way just now, but that was most likely because Sylvia had suddenly pulled out such an unusual weapon.

The Hunt hadn't actually done anything to the bullet itself.

Maybe THEY'D just helped fine-tune its trajectory?

--+--