The Strange Adventures of Hearn the Believer

That faint sense of anxiety still lingered in the heart of the woman, and the closer she got to Aoko, the stronger the anxiety became. She needed some time to think about the origin of that anxiety.

The not-so-long descent finally came to an end. The believer and Pandora once again stood on the ground, facing eight tunnels leading in all directions. The inner walls of the tunnels were reinforced by roots spreading out. It must be said that these old inhabitants of the forest have indeed come up with some ingenious ways to play with plants.

If the believer were to do it herself, she could complete works of the same style, and the quality and appearance would naturally be better. However, due to her personal affinity, she has never really dabbled in plant-based magic in her life to this day.

The believer whistled softly, and a wisp of blue light flashed past his feet. Immediately afterward, eight raven-like bluebirds flew out and shot into the eight tunnels.

"Wait a moment," the believer reminded Pandora beside her.

Pandora nodded, observing the believer's actions and secretly adding another task to her own assignment.

The believer looked at the girl's seemingly calm expression and noticed the hidden envy in her eyes. She couldn't help but smile. "Don't learn this from me for now. What I use is not the same as what you have mastered. When you have time, try to condense the 300-meter spherical observation net into the size of a small bird, and then extend it as far as possible to see where your current limit is."

“I understand, Mr. Hern.” Pandora, whose thoughts had been exposed, did not feel embarrassed. She simply bowed slightly to express her gratitude.

Soon, the believer sensed something and looked towards the tunnel in the northwest. She then summoned back the remaining seven blue rays and signaled Pandora to follow her into the tunnel.

The mine tunnels were poorly lit late at night, but fortunately, both visitors had their own night vision.

Mr. Hearn was not in a hurry to achieve his goal, hence his leisurely pace.

Things that have been sitting there for hundreds of years, they are where they should be, and those that shouldn't be there are long gone.

The mine tunnels were deep and seemed to have no end. During a brief moment of walking in the dark, Pandora inexplicably asked a question that the believer had never expected.

"Mr. Hearn."

"Ok?"

"What is Mr. Hearn's opinion of Miss Aozaki?"

Pandora recalled the ambiguous answer she received from Aozaki Aoko when she first arrived at the Forest of Trees. A kind of confusion stemming from the depths of her own logic also surfaced. It was a spark of thought generated by the conflict between the two completely different wills of the former Hive Soldier Bee 1 and Pandora Reinhardt. This made her keen to find a ready-made model of relationships between carbon-based life forms in order to build a new balance called rationality from scratch.

"If you're trying to balance the contradictions between your thinking about the past and the present, then I regret to inform you that you've chosen a rather unsuitable pair of people as your reference points. Interviewing Eirin and Deedlit might have yielded results much faster."

The believer had witnessed the almost schizophrenic personality changes that had taken place in the little girl over the past few days, from a cold-blooded soldier bee to a girl full of curiosity about everything. Her contradictory behavior made it difficult for him to ignore her.

However, perhaps due to that faint sense of anxiety, even after making the "inappropriate" assertion, he was still prepared to give Pandora a serious reply.

It's not just Pandora who needs to be talked to, but the believer chooses to step back first.

"Tell me your thoughts, at the moment."

He is no longer the sentimental young man he once was; now, as a devout woman, she is better at listening than simply expressing herself.

“Miss Aozaki once mentioned that she didn’t know how to face Mr. Hearn now. I think Mr. Hearn probably has similar thoughts, just like how he insisted on sneaking out alone tonight no matter what.”

"Why can't we just say it like we hate each other?" The believer looked ahead and chatted casually with Pandora, her tone devoid of any seriousness.

“Simply feeling disgust, an emotion that even a silicon-based being like me understands, is clearly insufficient to describe the subtle relationship between you two.”

"Pandora, have you ever looked in a mirror?"

“Of course, Mr. Hearn.”

"So, what are your thoughts?"

“No, Mr. Hearn.”

"Ha, such stream-of-consciousness dialogue is still too early for you, Pandora." The believer sighed slightly, then chose to be more direct.

“In the past, I respected her very, very much.”

"So, you mean that after something happened, they became less respectful, is that right, Mr. Hearn?" Pandora cautiously deduced.

"Yes, when I realized that I could not ignite the first spark of revenge in the abyss if I did not betray her teachings, my respect for her eventually turned into guilt."

"Guilty?"

"Yes, for the year I was seven or eight, I was trapped in a rotten ditch and tortured in every way. Shamefully, during this time I held onto a glimmer of hope. A naive little devil lay bloodied like a piece of meat on a chopping board in a dark, sunless cell, still hoping that tomorrow or the day after, a familiar blue sun would burst open those damned isolation doors and free him from that nightmare in the Far East countryside. But in fact, until the very end, I lost the most important person in my life at that time, and I never saw that blue sun. From then on, I gave up and put on a mask to become a third-rate actor, to cry, to laugh, to perform to my heart's content. Even if it cost me my life, I would bury those who took everything from me with my own hands. It was from that time that I completely betrayed the teachings of my first teacher and jumped into the abyss, running with all my might towards the 'finish line' in the little time I had left. Looking back now, I realize that my current state was actually destined from that time on."

"Mr. Hearn, if that's the outcome, shouldn't that feeling, which has turned from respect into hatred, be more like guilt?"

"Hate? Well, although in my hometown, it's not uncommon for children trained by witches to turn against them due to differing ideologies, my pride forces me to restrain the feelings that originated from respect, stopping at guilt rather than hatred, something much stronger and incurable. Just as I still believe that my childhood helplessness led to that nightmare, rather than her not coming back to see her cheap student the following year, our meeting had nothing to do with fate. It was just a bad woman acting as a go-between. Ironically, twelve years after I was mentally prepared to be crushed to pieces and to live on the brink of death, just when I was about to succeed, that blue sun that had been sealed away in my memory for many years reappeared before me, and by then I had become the very thing she least wanted to see."

"So, you two had a fight?"

"No, because I restrained my feelings to the point of guilt, so we never fought. We were like two strangers, exchanging pleasantries, talking about our recent situations and what we had seen and heard over the years, and were surprised to find that twelve years had passed for me and only four years for her. In the end, neither of us could convince the other during that week of reunion. We just reached a temporary agreement with the help of the same bad woman. Later, I returned to the Far East countryside alone and successfully put an end to everything. She took a lock of my hair and said she was going to find a place to make a cenotaph for me."

"And how does this story end?"

"In the end, they all died, but by some twist of fate, she and I survived. We took on new identities and struggled in our new circumstances for almost a hundred years until we recently reunited by another twist of fate."

"A completely illogical ending," Pandora commented thoughtfully after hearing the story.

"Because life is inherently a third-rate script with a terrible ending," the believer shrugged dismissively, muttering a familiar phrase.

"From the perspective of a human life, Mr. Hearn and Ms. Aozaki's lives did indeed end in a murky way, but aren't you both still alive now? Why are you still so bothered by the regrets of the past? I have always thought that Mr. Hearn is a person who is good at looking forward optimistically."

“Pandora, you’ve misunderstood something. It’s not that we’re bothered by the past that makes us unsure how to get along now. It’s that we’ve known each other for so long and understand each other so well that we don’t know how to interact in the future.”

Having said all that, the believer understood the reason for the faint anxiety in her heart. This meant that the conversation was meaningful to her, and that she realized that this anxiety was not just her own.

"Sigh, I think you've noticed what's happened on the road these past two days. We've been constantly competing, trying to determine our own position by using each other as a frame of reference. But no matter what we tried, it ultimately failed. And the saddest thing is, as we get to know each other better, I've discovered that the radiant, warm blue sun that was once buried deep in my memory has been diluted by layers of new impressions, replaced by someone whose personality is highly similar to mine."

"So Mr. Hearn is also aware of this?" Pandora asked, surprisingly with a hint of surprise.

"Huh? What kind of self-awareness?" The believer was completely confused.

"Everyone in the group thinks so—Mr. Hearn and Ms. Aozaki are like two snow leopards who are always slapping each other and biting each other's tails. They are old friends, but they always want to be one step ahead of each other. Is it because of the pride of felines or because they have been lonely for too long and finally met their own kind who can communicate, so they chose the wrong way to communicate? Anyway, this is what Mr. Eirin said in the tree hole last night."

""

The believer remained silent for a moment, and during that time, the deep tunnel came to an end, where a man-made doorway stood silently. It seemed to be the entrance to the underground research institute's warehouse.

The two stood outside the doorway for a moment, Pandora waiting quietly for the believer to finish her thoughts.

After a moment, the believer ended her contemplation and came to an answer to this not-so-sharp debate.

"Correction: She is the only old friend of mine who is still alive today and on whom I am an absolute equal in spirit—that is the only thing I acknowledge regarding Eirin and the others."

Having said that, the believer, carrying her knife, stepped straight into the door leading to the Yale ruins without hesitation.

Pandora followed at a slightly slower pace.

Whether it was due to the previous conversation or not, at this moment, in Pandora's eyes, Mr. Hearn, who was walking in front, looked exactly like a proud big cat no matter how you looked at him.

Chapter 117 Personalized Education

When the man-made stone steps came to an end, the scene that came into view was exactly as expected.

The believer looked around at the empty, metallic space, so different from the Linjing Mine, and knew that this was one of the research institute's warehouses that had been emptied for over fifty years.

“Mr. Hearn, over there.” Pandora, maintaining the surveillance network and attempting to extend her perception to a single line as instructed by the nun, quickly located another underground cavity diagonally below the southwest corner of the warehouse after a random scan. “However…”

"It's about a thousand, or rather, a little over two thousand meters in a straight line?" The believer had naturally already noticed that underground space hidden deeper inside.

There wasn't a trace of ether to be felt; it was like a blank space in a colorful graffiti, utterly abrupt.

"Is it because of the artificial anti-magic field? Given Yale's technological level back then, which was only one step away from colonizing the astral plane, most of the native spellcasters of Thranheim really couldn't do anything about this ethereal forbidden zone, unless their level of technology in communicating with the ether was more advanced than Yale's. However, in the current Fourth Age, the remaining gods have been dormant for many years."

Pandora observed the space hole through the monitoring perspective of the Prometheus particles and made a preliminary deduction: "Mr. Hern, I think I understand why that princess from the Far East insisted on entrusting this job to you."

"Of course, because unlike other arcane or divine spellcasters who need to communicate with ether or believe in a god to open spatial corridors, my 'teleportation' spell is..."

After pinpointing the destination coordinates, the believer casually slashed open a rift, then kicked the inside of the rift hard. A sound like shattering glass reached Pandora's ears, something she was already used to.

"Yes, Mr. Hern simply used violence to create a hole in the space."

"This is not violence, but an instinct that you are born with, plus the result of persistent training."

The believer chuckled and corrected her, then stepped into the rift first, waving for Pandora to follow.

After passing through the subspace corridor and re-entering the mortal realm, what greets you is a metal dog's mouth that reeks of engine oil.

The believer, without changing her expression, rammed her head back. The result of this head-on confrontation was first a crisp sound of metal breaking, followed by a chaotic scene of dogs and horses falling over.

As the woman emerged from the rift, her gaze swept across the area. It was an underground space similar to the one she had just left, encased in silver metal, but much more spacious, resembling an experimental center in a research lab.

“Mr. Hearn, there’s a dog.” Pandora then stepped out of the rift and glanced around.

"understood."

More than a dozen mechanical constructs, each the size of a lion, surrounded the two with hunting-like strides. A sensor, seemingly infrared, scanned the intruders from all directions as they moved, while a pack of hounds pounced.

The canine tooth that the believer had broken by banging her forehead against the other turned into a pile of scrap metal, paralyzed ten meters away. It would occasionally twitch mechanically for a couple of brief moments, but remained silent for the rest of the time.

Perhaps this incident spurred the hounds' learning abilities, or perhaps they simply opted for RushB after failing in melee combat. The hounds behind them conjured two twelve-barreled firing mechanisms on their shoulders, their limbs slamming into the metal floor. The turrets were constructed in one swift motion, and in an instant, a storm of metallic roars and incessant gunfire shattered the darkness and silence. The long-abandoned testing ground once again became a testing ground for mechanical creations.

"Pandora, Lesson One".

Long before the metal storm opened fire, the believer quietly signaled Pandora to activate the wind element mimicry she had learned in her first lesson. The rain of bullets, powerful enough to tear apart reinforced concrete buildings, passed through her outline as if they were nothing, and bombarded the believer's body.

Soon, Mr. Hearn disappeared from the barrage of fire, leaving only an increasingly bloated and swollen metallic outline composed of bullets and gunpowder smoke.

The time between firing and ceasing fire was so long that Pandora once thought Mr. Hearn had gone somewhere else, until the barrel crossed the overheating dead zone and all the ammunition inside the machine was emptied.

After the last red-hot barrel stopped spinning, a belated sound finally emerged from the pile of bullets.

"Thank you for the hospitality. My stiff neck from the first half of the night has finally subsided."

Then, with a soft snap of the fingers, all the mechanical creations surrounding Pandora rose into the sky and were welded to the same metal ceiling. The next moment, the color of the metal dome gradually changed from silver to a bright crimson, while the electronic hounds clinging to it melted as they struggled, eventually turning into pools of bright red molten iron.

The bloated outline formed by the bullets simultaneously melted into molten iron, converging towards the ceiling. After the two merged, they descended from the dome, enveloping the first and luckiest broken-toothed hound, finally solidifying completely and transforming into a brand new hound.

Aside from the color changing from the previous iron gray to an ambiguous dark blue,

The woman who had been standing still whistled, and the hound, now much larger and with a new paint job, trotted over and sat down in front of her. At the same time, it stretched out its right paw, which had been retracted, in a fawning manner. It was much more intelligent than before, behaving like a large dog of flesh and blood.

If it had a tongue, it would probably be sticking it out right now, trying to please its new owner.

"Good dog, take us to the treasure vault quickly." The believer laughed and kicked the dog's butt. The dog then ran happily towards the other side of the passage like a dog that had seen a flying saucer, looking back from time to time, waiting for its master to catch up.

“Mr. Hern?” Pandora looked at the believer, seemingly waiting for his decision.

"Just follow along." The believer waved her hand casually, indicating that she shouldn't be suspicious. "By the way, let's review what I just did on the way. That's part of today's lesson."

"Anti-gravity and gravity enhancement in a limited area or target, short-term high temperature suspected to be applied to the elemental realm, hacking methods that rewrite the AI ​​logic of mechanical bodies, and protection of an unknown entity."

Pandora followed along, briefly submitting her post-mortem report.

“These explanations are truly in line with your knowledge, Pandora,” the believer said, cheerfully walking her dog.

"But you have to understand, this is Yale's anti-magic facility, which means that traditional spells that rely on communication with the ether are ineffective. You know I'm an outsider, and my spellcasting system is different from the locals. For example, anti-gravity, gravity enhancement, and high temperature can all be achieved as long as I can understand them. As for hacking and programming, that's impossible. I just used your so-called Prometheus particles to recreate an obedient dog. As for the last one, body protection, that's something I don't even have."

"Something that doesn't exist?" Pandora tilted her head, seemingly not understanding the meaning of the sentence.

“It’s something that doesn’t exist.” The believer straightened her collar and said seriously, “Do you remember the division of labor we arranged before?”

“I remember, Miss Deedlit was the perfect spellcaster, Mr. Eirin was the quack doctor, I was the inexplicable radar, Miss Aozaki was a magic-releasing idiot, and Mr. Hearn, you were the punching bag.”

“Yes, sandbags.” The believer smiled and pointed to herself. “Although both she and I can do this job, she has to use some other methods to avoid injuries. In the end, it’s a losing business that consumes energy.”

"So Mr. Hearn is without cost?"

"Pandora, don't let my seemingly frail appearance fool you, I'm actually the type who looks slim in clothes."

“Pandora is skeptical of this, after all, Mr. Hearn, don’t forget that I witnessed you putting on your clothes before.”

"tsk"

"However, I have fully realized that Mr. Hearn is incredibly resilient just by standing there, even if he does nothing."

"Good that you understand." Seeing that the message had been conveyed, the believer smiled and nodded. "Pandora, in the future, if you encounter any uncertain situations, just transform into your elemental form. We each have our own ways of handling things."

“I understand, Mr. Hearn.” Pandora nodded in agreement, then asked with a puzzled look, “But if that’s the case, then why does Mr. Hearn go to Miss Aozaki’s place to provoke a beating all the time?”

""

In the pitch-black corridor of the underground research institute, Xin Nu silently pulled out a pair of her usual sunglasses from the subspace, put them on, and hid her blue eyes behind the lenses. She thought to herself, "This girl really knows how to bring up the most awkward things."

Chapter 118 Miracles and Magic

"Mr. Hearn, is this it?"

"Yes, if you compare it with the sketches Salome prepared beforehand, they are indeed quite similar."

In a corner of the core area of ​​the underground research institute, Xin Nu and Pandora sat around a desk, deep in thought.

With energy supplies cut off for many years, subsequent explorations yielded little. The believer led Pandora, who had been reincarnated as a dog, straight to the area resembling the director's office of a research institute. Aside from the completely sealed-off isolation doors, they caused almost no further trouble along the way.

At most, he only went in for a quick look around the research institute's equipment warehouse when he passed by, and after seeing that there were no large robots like Gundams left, he simply lost interest.

Of course, there were some gains as well. Just as the believer was about to leave the armory in disappointment, Pandora called him back. Following Pandora's directions, the believer found a vehicle covered tightly with a dust cloth near the corner. He had been so excited about finding the potential large robot that he hadn't even noticed this thing.

In addition, for some reason, he just doesn't have a good relationship with vehicles.

No matter how enthusiastic the initial encounter, the final farewell will always be in a regrettable way.