[Natsume Yuzuri: ......]
On the other side, Sevia sat on the bed, looking at the virtual chat box that had suddenly materialized before her, her eyes filled with a sense of novelty.
[Sevia: Why isn't Yuzu saying anything? Are you going to play riddles with me like before?]
Seeing this, many complex emotions appeared in Xu Xiaoyou's eyes.
How much did the other person still remember about the things concerning them?
The girl clearly didn't even have much of her own memory left.
Xu Xiaoyou was now certain.
The person she was currently chatting with was not an NPC, but the real Sevia; it seemed that for some reason, a connection had been established between them.
[Natsume Yuzuri: It's nothing. Are you doing alright now?]
[Sevia: I've felt much better since I saw Yuzu three days ago.]
After confirming the person chatting with her was indeed Xu Xiaoyou, Sevia felt a profound sense of peace.
The nights were long, but having someone to talk to at any time made the lonely journey feel not so lonely anymore.
The destination was still far away, but she had found her beacon; when she was tired, she finally had a place to stop and rest.
Sevia thought for a long time, but in the end, she couldn't suppress her desire to share.
[Sevia: I want to talk about some things from my journey. Would Yuzu like to hear them?]
[Natsume Yuzuri: Yes.]
[Sevia: I won't tell you everything, of course, because there are still many things I want to tell you in person when I finally get to embrace you.]
[Sevia: Before, I walked alone in the badlands like a lonely bird, like a stranded blue whale. Many memories that didn't belong to me would manifest in my mind. Sometimes, when I had leisure, I would become a little girl growing up in a wealthy family, cultivating flowers and plants, wearing beautiful dresses, reading operas, poetry, and philosophy books, with parents who loved me.]
[Sevia: Sometimes, while staring blankly into the fire at night, I would grow up in an era of war, living in ruins and rubble with no one around me. Everyone was dead, and only a little bear named Jenny stayed with me. Her eyes had fallen out and her belly was torn, needing to be sewn with thread. So I searched and searched with bare feet, finally finding a needle and thread and a single copper coin in an abandoned house.]
Xu Xiaoyou was infected by the girl's lighthearted tone through the screen, and the fatigue she had accumulated over these days lessened considerably.
[Natsume Yuzuri: And then?]
[Sevia: Then I put the copper coin into little bear Jenny's eyes and sewed up her belly with old cloth. She looked just like a pirate captain. I held her close; that was the night I slept most soundly.]
[: Because I never woke up.]
[: A shell hit that house, and a falling steel bar pierced through my body. I felt my own body slowly turning cold as I died.]
[: That wasn't me, but a girl forgotten by history. I don't even know what her name was. She died on a freezing night.]
Sevia sighed softly as the memories of the girl surfaced before her eyes, one by one, scene by scene.
The girl's parents had also died in the fires of war, and she had struggled to live on the scorched earth for half a month without seeing another living person.
[Sevia: Sometimes I cry bitterly while holding a guitar in the middle of the night, sometimes I run across a sun-drenched playground, sometimes I read in a classroom filled with the sound of students reciting, and sometimes I'm executing the cruelest and darkest commissions, killing innocent people day after day.]
[: Some memories feel very distant to me, and after I wake up, I just treat them like a fish's dream. But the protagonists of some memories are very similar to me, whether in personality or experience, and after waking up, I become unable to distinguish whether I am still in a dream or not.]
[: I'm afraid of dreaming about people similar to me, and I'm afraid of experiencing their memories. Whether they are beautiful or painful, I've already grown accustomed to them; I'm just afraid that after waking up, I'll never be able to find myself again.]
[: But these dreams happen every day.]
[: I have countless dreams like this every day. Fifty? A hundred? I can't remember clearly. Everything in the dreams is so profound and long, lasting as short as a few days or as long as several years, even a whole lifetime.]
[: Ordinary people, magnificent legends—with just an inadvertent closing of my eyes, the trajectories of their lives pass through my vision.]
[Natsume Yuzuri: While you are chatting with me now... :]
[Sevia: It's alright. I've already gotten used to it; I won't suddenly say strange things.]
Xu Xiaoyou fell silent.
[Sevia: Oh, was Yuzu actually worried about me?]
The blue-haired girl chuckled softly and blinked as the life of a woman named Giovansa passed through her eyes.
The woman was a lieutenant who had rebelled against the Fars Theocracy, leading her team to many victories before being unfortunately hit by a stray bullet during a battle to liberate her hometown.
The one who fired the shot was a soldier she had personally trained; that soldier had performed very cowardly during that batch's training, even wetting his pants from the shock of the shells, yet he eventually became the enemy she hated most.
[Sevia: There are two stories in my memory that are very deep, Yuzu. They might be of help to you.]
[: In my memories, there was a person named 'Opal.' Before the corporation intervened in the Church-Company War, she was a slave in a mine. Later, she also went through the Church-Company War and achieved great military merit, entering Universal Heavy Industries after that. Perhaps saying it like this doesn't give you a clear idea, Yuzu.]
[: But what if I told you she climbed up from Amber 9 and eventually became Emerald 1?]
Xu Xiaoyou's memory was instantly pulled back to a long time ago, to her experience as an S-rank employee under the corporation on the Star of Art.
When living under someone else's roof, one has to bow one's head; yet she was a person with particularly strong self-esteem, so her memories concerning Yorick, Emerald 1, and Diamond 9 remained fresh even now.
Sevia had experienced those days with her, and with the girl's delicate mind, she naturally knew about her entanglements with the corporation, though she had never spoken of them openly.
[Natsume Yuzuri: How did Emerald 1 die?]
[Sevia: When she was about to be promoted to diamond, she met with that Diamond 9.]
Sevia tried hard to recall the scene at that time.
Emerald 1's footsteps echoed in the darkness, her chest heaving with heavy breaths, and she could clearly feel the ambition core in her heart.
The woman sat on a piece of equipment made of countless life-support machines; from a distance, that equipment looked like a piled-up mountain, while the pipes on the ground resembled winding snakes. She looked very old, with sagging skin and hair that had already fallen out, leaving only a pair of eyes that shone brilliantly in the darkness, as if they could see through time.
With just one look, Emerald 1 deeply felt the chasm between her and this Diamond 9, never daring to entertain any thoughts of overstepping again.
This was a feeling Emerald 1 had never experienced before.
Not even Diamond 1 or even Elias had ever made her afraid to meet their gaze, or feel such reverence and an almost frenzied sense of adoration.
Ever since entering the corporation, her career had been smooth sailing; in her early sixties, she had climbed to the corporation's executive level, standing above billions of people, and even family members had to flatter her. This had once made her feel arrogant, believing she was enough to look down upon everything in the world.
But she was wrong.
She finally understood why, for hundreds of years, no one else in the corporation had been able to promote to the diamond sequence.
— Do you want to become Diamond 9, to possess me, and even everything that is mine?
— No, I want everything of mine to belong to you. I wish for the nectar to turn into wine, for the nectar to be filled with poison. Wherever the hilt points, I wish for every harvest in the rest of my life to never go against the direction of your scythe.
Emerald 1 knelt before Diamond 9, speaking words of loyalty unto death. From then on, her soul became a bargaining chip, belonging forever to Diamond 9.
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