It has been a week since Aleph settled the affairs on the parallel Earth. Mobius came to his house yesterday. So many things happened during this span of time that he couldn't immediately accomplish the three things he planned.
As of now, only the meeting with Akivili was completed. It brought him Terminus' intentions behind the 'test' it gave to him. Akivili was screwed over and was sent to the gulag equivalent, with all of her previous Trailblazers disappearing.
It is estimated that all of them met their ends. The next-generation Trailblazers started from Himeko, after all.
As for the second thing, it was the meeting with the Stellaron Hunters. Not only was Akivili's supposed 'vessel/reincarnation' appears with them, just their leader who was Finality's pathstrider is worth his visit.
It is important to note that during the game's twenty-something patches in his previous life, there are a total of five characters revealed to have connection with Finality. It was something that lasted nearly two decades.
'Twenty versions… and it was SilverWolf who survived all the power creep.' He mused. 'Acheron was powercrept to oblivion. Only SilverWolf and Ruan Mei were the viable version 1.x characters back then…'
Looking at the girl with flat-face (and chest), he sighed.
"How will we talk if nobody speaks first?"
The words that came out of his mouth did not correspond to the languages Silverwolf knew. Strangely, she could understand everything he had said.
She fell silent for a while.
From the beginning, she knew she was caught in a cross-fire. The other party knew her identity as a Stellaron Hunter very well. His words in the chat suggested he was also aware of Elio, even though the said cat did not make any prior public appearance.
Solverwolf lightly sighed before starting the conversation:
"What do you want? Don't think you can have a handle on me with those game accounts."
"It was me."
What came was a bizarre reply.
"The trash sidelaners you got three days before we played together? I queued them with you."
"..!"
"Those stupid midlaners? I also queued them with you. I gave you the shittiest teammates you could ask for."
"...!"
"Yes. It's unnecessary, but it is fun." Aleph reiterated. "It's fun to see you attempting to carry four black-hole level teammates."
"!!!"
Bam-!
The entire table shook. The glass cups atop the saucers nearly fell off with Silverwolf's table slam. Pure anger could be seen in her eyes. Her small stature did not mean much even when she stood up.
If Nanook was here, he could have instantly accepted her as the Emanator of Destruction.
The frustrations after experiencing ten lose-streaks in a single day, trashy sidelaners who do nothing but gather a standing of 0-7-8, and all those moments where her teammates did not recall and got split-pushed…
"...Do you dare? Fight me fairly."
Underneath her calm tone was an unspeakable rage. Three days before she played with Aleph, she kept on getting shitty teammates. This frustration was what led her to play for four consecutive days.
She did not even question Aleph's words. There was something convincing in them that made her believe it was truly him.
Even if it was not him, Silverwolf wanted to find a 'punching bag' to release her pent-up rage. Aleph who was sitting smugly across her was a good target.
"You asked for it. There won't be any reasons left if you lose miserably."
Hearing that, she sat down in her chair again.
"What are your demands?"
Her flat voice sounded flatter this time. The round of provocation Aleph did was not easily worn off.
"I want to take a look at your script."
"..!"
Surprise could be seen in her eyes no matter how hard she tried to hide it.
"Finality resides in the future. They walk towards the present. It means that the future is predetermined in their eyes. You are moving towards the future they see."
There was a big reason why the Stellaron Hunters fell silent during the middle patches. Most of these stories involved Aeons. Only in the later patches did their actions begin to make sense.
At first, there was their interference on Xianzhou, then on Penacony. They were meaningless if looked at individually. If the Trailblazer's growth and acquisition of several Paths were considered as a whole, it becomes a whole different thing.
If it weren't for that, the story won't reach the one Aleph knows.
Sometimes, dozens of small arrangements lead to a grand finale.
"What if I don't want to hand it over?"
"I can find other ways. But of course, it is not without any rewards." He paused before continuing, "For example, this thing."
Aleph waved the Decade Driver Belt in his hand.
"Just so you know, I am rich. Maybe you'll find some interesting things in my treasury."
SilverWolf fell silent. She did not care about the 'riches' Aleph painted in front of her. She was more concerned about their leader's decision.
An invisible pink string connected Silverwolf to another person. She heard a mature and elegant voice on the other side.
"Give it to him."
Although startled, she did not dilly-dally. Graphic cubes of different colors appeared on his right palm. They soon converged into a hardcover notebook with considerable thickness.
She placed it atop the coffee table and looked at his reaction.
Unfortunately, she was destined to gain nothing.
"Hm."
Aleph took the notebook and started reading it at the beginning.
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
It was filled with dozens of blank pages. He could not make out anything on it. It was always like that since the beginning.
"You won't come out? Then…"
A layer of indescribable light coated the notebook. It appeared as a hazy white glow in Silverwolf's eyes.
To Aleph, it was countless colors merged into a singular entity.
The moment his light came in contact with the book, lines of texts revealed themselves. Future itself was rewound. The contents from the back page was revealed first before it carried on to the present.
All the events recorded won't fit in a small notebook, yet it did. Its pages seemed endless. With one turn of a page, there was a new page that appeared next. Its thickness was fixed when Aleph reached the middle section.
'Hm. So things are supposed to happen like this?'
The first few sections mainly told things related to the Trailblazer. From her initial awakening up to her first few adventures, it was stated in the book.
Only in the middle sections did things become more complicated. The Stellaron Hunters are supposed to do a lot more work compared to before. There are even annotations which stated that death is possible given other Aeons' unpredictability.
For a while, Aleph kept reading up to the notebook's end. He looked at the girl in front of him before turning his attention to a bookstore opposite him.
A familiar girl with the Entropy Loss Syndrome could be seen working as the bookstore's staff.
A few dozen meters away, in another coffee shop, there was a purple-haired woman whose fingers were tied with a bunch of strings. Standing at her back was a reticent man who stood as straight as a blade.
Seeing the people he only saw on the screen before, he felt a complicated feeling. Aleph closed the book in his hand.
Before long, the answer itself was presented in front of him.
'Was this how Finality saw things..?'
*****
A/N: I saw some people asking me about the new PV.
I can say one thing: I called for it.
Kidding aside, I have a feeling it will happen one way or another. HSR's pattern is to move from small things (Belobog) before gradually expanding to the bigger world (Penacony, and the Amphoreus now). If it started with Aeon Wars, the Trailblazers will be relegated to the sidelines; it's not how Mihoyo writes things. Even now, it all depends on Trailblazer whether or not the PV occurs since it is based on the premise whether the Black Tides escape Amphoreus (based from what I've seen). They either need to play a crucial role, be it trigerring a set of events or ultimately stopping them. Then again, even without this event, I have a feeling it will happen at some point. That's where I got the idea for the upcoming small subplot in this fic (i.e., Aeons causing trouble).
Anyways, I have a feeling we will be playing guess with Mihoyo for the long years to come.