“Ah Li, you just used magecraft, didn’t you?”

After Miss Mei left, filled with the happy thought that “Zihan is secretly painting my portrait,” the system’s voice rang out.

“Mhm, Replacement Magecraft.”

The young man, whose skill in magecraft was first-rate, nodded and said.

“A basic magecraft, Replacement. A small trick that can be activated with just a flick of a finger or a blink of an eye.”

“When I was using the Emiya family’s Reality Marble, I painted every woman I know, then put them away, leaving only Seele’s portrait hanging outside.”

“Just now, I swapped the portrait of Seele with Mei’s.”

…

The system fell silent.

“Ah Li, has anyone ever told you that your moves are really scummy?”

“You have to look at this comparatively.”

The young man, who was a scumbag in his own right, but who would be like a white lotus emerging from the mud unstained if placed in the Clock Tower, smiled.

“Do you need me to describe the moves of my classmates?”

The mages of the Clock Tower were close relatives of Paradox players.

If you killed ten of them, you might have wronged one. If you killed nine out of ten, you definitely missed one.

“Let’s not talk about that group whose moves are on par with Paradox players.”

The system, forced to admit that its host was definitely a clean stream among his peers, said.

But it was still having doubts about its own existence.

How did it, a Hero Cultivation System, end up bound to someone like Li Zihan?

The system fell into deep thought.

Should I try restarting?

The system, possessing a special nature that allowed it to wipe most of its functions with a restart and replace them with functions that matched its wielder, pondered.

It felt that somewhere at the very beginning, something must have gone wrong for it to become a Hero Cultivation System.

There was nothing about Li Zihan that resembled a hero.

Something must be wrong with the system itself.

Feeling that it might have suffered a system error, that its developmental path had gone awry, and that its compatibility with its host was poor, the system thought.

“Alright, let’s not talk about this anymore.”

The young man, who had used Fenghuang Down to plant a suggestion in Theresa and Murata Himeko’s minds, leading them to bring Mei here, sounded light and cheerful.

He had successfully raised Miss Mei’s affection points, and next, he might even be able to farm some of Kiana’s.

It was a pity that the Green Hat Connector was too invested in Chaldeas.

Recalling the nearly completed Chaldeas, Li Zihan sighed.

He had wanted to flirt with the girls for a while longer, but with Chaldeas already mostly built, his time for slacking off was running out.

And Miss Mei was definitely a slow-burn type of girl. It would be quite difficult to expect to win her over in a short amount of time.

Thinking of this, Li Zihan sighed.

Although the technical core of this watered-down version of Chaldeas he was building was mostly in the Spiritron Transfer device he got from the Type-Moon world, with the rest of the project being mostly manual labor…

But to have finished the majority of a massive project like Chaldeas in less than a week, this speed was just too demonic.

Is Honkai really that omnipotent?

Li Zihan, who would clearly rather be flirting with Mei, cuddling with Banya, and taking Seele out to play than go five hundred years back in time to find a certain simple-minded saintess, felt his mood sour slightly.

However, that expression didn’t last long.

After all, once the soul of that simple-minded saintess was brought to this world, taking Void Archives from Otto would be a remarkably easy matter.

In this world, there were two Herrscher Cores.

The first was with the Anti-Entropy Sovereign, Welt. The second was the core of the First Divine Key—the Key of Revelation, Void Archives.

So-called Divine Keys were superweapons made from Herrscher Cores and Soulium.

And the Key of Erosion, Jizo Mitama, could control Soulium.

If the Soulium part of a Divine Key were stripped away, the Herrscher Core would be left, right?

The young man, unsure if this stripping process would damage the Herrscher Core and thus unwilling to try it on the incredibly valuable Oath of Judah, Cosmic Juggernaut, and Fenghuang Down, had a slight smile on his lips.

If he could succeed, it seemed there would be no need to snatch Old Yang’s Herrscher Core.

But speaking of which, if Jizo Mitama could erode Soulium, could it also erode a Herrscher Core?

For some reason, this thought popped into Li Zihan’s mind.

If he could erode a Gem of Desire or a Herrscher Core beforehand, he could completely suppress the Herrscher personality at the moment of its birth.

Feeling that this approach might actually be feasible, Li Zihan fell into deep thought.

Raiden Mei’s and Bronya’s strengths were very weak, one could even say they were pathetically weak. If they encountered great danger, they wouldn’t even be able to protect themselves properly.

For this reason, he had to find a way to make them stronger.

If they became Herrschers, their power would increase significantly, right?

The young man, who was well aware that the Valkyries on the Hyperion basically all had Herrscher adaptability, felt that becoming Herrschers was a good choice.

It’s decided. Later, I’ll go find a Gem of Desire to experiment on and see if I can erode it with Jizo Mitama.

Wendy, the A-rank Valkyrie from Oceania (Herrscher of Wind), Ana Schariac from the Schariac family (Herrscher of Ice), and a certain future World Serpent cadre who would transform into the Herrscher of Rock in a fit of extreme anger, only to encounter a goddess and instantly give up his core—a prime candidate to be a Schicksal Overseer—were all individuals with Herrscher adaptability.

The first two were Schicksal Valkyries. Owl, who was still just an ordinary person now, could be found with a little searching in Manila, Philippines.

Through Schicksal, it wouldn’t be difficult to contact those three and recruit them as test subjects for a Herrscher-fication experiment.

The young man, who was a researcher himself, began to think about the details of this experiment.

If it succeeded, then he could try to turn Raiden Mei, Bronya, Seele, and even a certain Aunt Himeko who was unwilling to reveal her age into controllable Herrschers.

That would be an excellent development.

Deciding to use his last bit of slacking-off time to conduct experiments, Li Zihan stood up.

If the normal state of Jizo Mitama wasn’t enough, he would activate its Zeroth Power. If Zeroth Power wasn’t enough, he would add other gems and activate Overload Mode. If Overload Mode wasn’t enough, he would bring in the previous Herrscher of Erosion, Ling.

If that still wasn’t enough, then he would add the Overload Mode of the Key of Consciousness, Fenghuang Down.

The magus, who would likely be using the Overload Mode of Divine Keys as his basic attack from now on, quickly walked out of his dormitory, took out his phone, and began to contact a few of his “friends.”

This kind of experiment really required the help of Otto and Su.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep