Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

"So, this is the key to that brother and sister's room, huh?"

"Seriously though, you're going way overboard. You just waltz in and start doing human modifications on them, not even a shred of consideration? Just straight to the experiments? If they turn into traitors later, don't expect me to bail you out."

Kiana felt like she couldn't control that many people with minds of their own, especially since more and more people were heading into the Kaslana family's Stigmata space. It seemed like they were all getting some weird power from there.

And that power seemed to be backwashing onto her through the Stigmata space too.

Kiana sensed she had some kind of Honkai-like power, though she couldn't quite put her finger on it. It was like, she could communicate with human concepts and then make them real.

If Otto were here, he'd just tell Kiana that it was the power of the Imaginary Tree, converting Imaginary energy into reality. It could be a Stigmata, or it could be Honkai energy.

While she didn't know what this power was for, Kiana just felt that it was ridiculously strong.

The most insane part was how her body could just handle this power out of nowhere.

She had this impulse, this weird urge that she could just create Honkai beasts.

'What the heck? I feel like I'm sprinting down the path to becoming non-human.'

Kiana looked up at the guy next to her. She saw the same white hair and blue eyes on Noldrei.

Seeing that, she really did look like a...

'Wait, I'm just experiencing my childhood, not actually trying to go back to it.'

Kiana almost got used to having a new dad. She suddenly realized she'd kind of been slacking off lately, letting herself get taken care of and just enjoying the carefree life.

She thought she was looking after a future person who was clueless about the modern world, but it turned out the future person was taking care of her instead.

"Um, there's something I don't get. Why are you so nice to me?"

She even looked a bit touched.

"......"

Noldrei was deep in thought. He wracked his brain, trying to think about how exactly he'd been nice to her? By current living standards and what she had in terms of happiness, Noldrei felt like none of it would be considered acceptable in the future.

In other words, it's like giving a high schooler a candy.

No high schooler would think that a candy was something great, or that it'd be good enough to make them cry.

But Kiana's current mental state made Noldrei think that maybe he was abusing her.

"Well, I did turn you into one of us, can't just leave you hanging, right?"

'Actually, if I left you alone, there's a good chance you'd be used as a tool by some enemy group.'

"Oh, is that it? I thought you just thought this girl was pretty cool. I mean, I did just overreact and attack you first. Even if I got killed in the counter-attack, it would just be 'excessive self-defense' at best."

Kiana quickly realized something wasn't quite right.

If she followed the original plan and went to Chiba Academy, she would very likely meet Raiden Mei.

That meant that the two of them, being Herrscher core holders, wouldn't become friends. It was much more likely that they'd end up fighting each other due to their Herrscher powers.

Kiana wasn't even sure if she'd be able to maintain her consciousness if she became a Herrscher back then. But two Herrschers didn't seem like they'd get along well.

'Thinking about it, if I hadn't met Noldrei, I might've become enemies with Mei. I guess I'm pretty lucky after all, huh?'

Kiana even thought that the world was being pretty nice to her.

After meeting Noldrei, she met a bunch of other kids her age who were all pretty nice.

Not only did she find her dad in a short amount of time, she also got "paternity tested" and learned her real origins.

'Looks like my luck's finally turning around!'

This girl's got a pretty strong case of the "A-Q mentality" [A-Q mentality is a term used in Chinese to describe a person who always tries to find a way to rationalize and feel good about a bad situation].

Noldrei didn't have the heart to tell her that, in the future, weapons of that level couldn't even do damage, and were classified as low-quality toys.

There was actually no legal responsibility for attacks of that kind.

"I'm not too worried, but what are you planning to do with this whole thing? You're not actually going to just raise a bunch of new humans and then leave them to their own devices, are you?"

Kiana's way of thinking had already shifted.

This shift had been building up since she first changed her body shape.

The world wasn't perfect, and it wasn't getting any better even after they beat the Honkai.

It wasn't enough, not even close. It was nothing like the wonderful world she had been hoping for.

Even though Noldrei often said that future people didn't have parents or things like single-parent families or orphans, Kiana was still pissed off.

Why her? Why did all this stuff have to happen to her?

Most people in this situation would have already started thinking about buying dangerous weapons and getting ready to take revenge on society, but she was still strangely holding onto the idea that she was an "ordinary girl."

This was a girl who knew gun-fu and carried around hot weapons on her person. It was lucky that she hadn't gotten corrupted by the freedom-loving ideals of America, otherwise the first things to suffer would have been daycares.

"Leave them to their own devices? Where have I been neglecting things?"

Noldrei had actually prepared a lot of stuff that they would need in the future.

"I haven't seen you manage anyone here. Isn't it all Cocolia and Raiden Ryoma who find people to manage things? If you keep going like this, your people will just start doing their own thing and then no one will listen to you."

Noldrei looked at her in surprise. "You know how to manage people?" he asked.

Eight-year-old Kiana puffed out her chest. "Of course! I'm not a complete idiot. I've seen you do so much, even I can see some of the problems."

Noldrei pondered for a moment and explained, "I don't really want to manage things. I just release the things they need at certain times. When people use tools, they naturally think about how to use them. They'll start making choices on their own at that point. All I have to do is slightly change the order in which the tools appear in history."

"To me, ruling humanity isn't important. What's important is that people take the things they need from me, but also don't think that I'm the one who gifted them to them. I need to shorten the research time, while also making sure that the locals put in enough effort."

"Humans in this era are very fragile lifeforms. Most of them have strong dependency issues. A new world that hasn't been brewed through enough conflict and struggle won't be able to allow humans to grow to match their new powers."

Kiana was silent for a long time. She didn't know if she could match her own new powers.

Today, she would make a decision that would influence her entire life.

She decided that she was going to buckle down and study hard!