Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Alice let out a soft breath and silently detached herself from the spatial bubble. She landed as lightly as a falling leaf on a vast, dusty plain. With a flick of her finger, a blank expanse of land was cleared away.

Now start counting.

One, two, three, four, five—BOOM!

A distant explosion echoed, causing the ground beneath their feet to tremble slightly. But that was irrelevant; it had nothing to do with the well-behaved, adorable, intelligent, and sensible Miss Alice. Any consequences arising from it were entirely irrelevant to a certain magician who enjoyed playing with dolls. While it might slightly uplift someone's mood, it didn't serve as proof that anyone needed to take responsibility for anything.

"Yes, absolutely not." Alice nodded, then started counting backwards from the number five she had memorized.

Five, four, three, two, one—click!

The space beside her silently crumbled, and spatial teleportation, triggered by the principle of the space bridge, unfolded around Alice. As the door disappeared and the entity that had crossed the boundary fully materialized, a 'predictive interference barrier against spirits' that Alice had concocted immediately activated. This completely prevented any information leakage that might have occurred during the spatial jump.

A familiar figure appeared beside Alice, someone she knew well, yet always overlooked. Because in a sense, she wasn't really human, not even a complete living being.

Because she is the little devil, the master AI of the Great Library, an information complex formed by the convergence of messages.

"It is an honor to serve you, Master Alice." The little devil, dressed as always in a coffee-colored and white maid outfit, bowed deeply to Alice. A torrent of data flowed in her eyes like a waterfall. Her inner structure was a thought core created from copies of information from all the books in the Great Library. However, unlike before, she was no longer merely an information aggregator capable of interfering with network systems, but a computational structure supported by a swarm of nanites and possessing a powerful external terminal.

An encrypted message was secretly transmitted into Alice's senses through a special channel within her body. Chu Xuan and Patchouli provided corresponding solutions and summarized them in response to the information Alice provided. Their work was so excellent that Alice felt she didn't need to make any modifications. At most, only a few data adjustments would be required to put it into operation.

The solution is simple: since Zheng Zha is unwilling to dirty his hands and mind for no reason, let him go and fight the demons to his heart's content. As long as he takes action, he will have created 'momentum,' and since it is 'momentum,' then we can simply follow suit.

This is a war of gods. To participate in a war of gods, one must first become a member of the gods. Mortals are indeed an easily manipulated race with a large base of believers. But mortals are not the only race without gods—vampires do not have gods either. Moreover, although Zheng Zha is focused on fighting in the wild, his enhancements and the strength he possesses have already become one of the 'advantages' of the vampire race.

Moreover, his concerns were not unfounded; the Supreme God had indeed not set any penalty for mission failure—and the rewards were vaguely stated. The only certainty was that the Star Grail possessed extremely powerful energy and would most likely become the spoils of war for the Reincarnators once successfully obtained. But this alone was not enough to make the entire Reincarnation Team risk their lives for it.

Zheng Zha's initial agreement to draw fire likely stemmed from this reason. He knew he was a soft-hearted person; if he truly witnessed the plight of mortals in this world, even though he had abandoned the path of the Human Emperor and bore the responsibility of leading the entire Reincarnation Squad safely back to the Main God Space, he probably wouldn't be able to resist empathizing with these bipedal, upright creatures who at most resembled his own race. He would see them as his fellow beings from another world and drag the entire Reincarnation Squad into the quagmire of war—he realized this, so he chose to turn a blind eye. While this might sound like self-deception, this method was indeed effective.

[This is really nothing like the Zheng Zha I know... No, the current Zheng Zha is more like the person in the prediction records... Companions are the most important thing; everything else takes a backseat. When Chu Xuan in the records blasted America and Japan to smithereens with his magic cannon, he didn't show up and complain afterwards.]

[If it involves the lives of his companions, he can watch foreigners from parallel worlds die with a straight face. Let alone otherworldly beings from another world? Perhaps I'm mistaken… or rather, my past self and Patchouli's decision to push him onto the path of the Human Emperor was actually a terrible move.]

The root cause has been identified, and the doubts have naturally dissipated. Although the external factors that caused this change have not been confirmed, that matter is not particularly important at present.

She breathed a sigh of relief and took a scarlet ring from the little devil's finger—a ring given to Patchouli by Remilia Scarlet when she left Gensokyo. It contained the full force of a blow forged from a fragment of the crimson crescent moon's soul—though this treasure had gradually become obsolete, or perhaps never been used at all. But now, it could serve a completely new purpose.

The colonization plan in the underground cavern will continue, but that's just a safety net. The real strategic force lies with the vampires who gained some 'momentum' due to Zheng Zha's shift in allegiance. Since Zheng Zha is unwilling to be a god among mortals, let him go and hunt his fill in the wilderness. As long as a god who aligns with the Reincarnators and inherits the vampires' destiny is born, all his killings of demons will become an asset to this side.

So, let the divine war begin. The main body of the Central Continent Team, along with the absorbed mortals, will hide underground. Even if the world is in chaos outside, they won't need to get involved. Instead, proxy gods will fight a proxy war on the surface using proxy races. Even if they can't win, it will be the vampires that perish in the end. The fourth-tier reincarnators who participate in the battle can simply run away, while the mortals hidden underground can use the technology left behind by the reincarnators to create a new life after they leave.

Everything is ready, and the plan is complete. Now, there's only one thing left to do.

Alice turned her head and glanced at the little devil who had buried the main engine of the Great Library within his body and was loaded with all the stored knowledge. Her gaze then shifted, lingering for a moment on the remnants of the Skywing race and the Scales of the Final Dragon in her hands.

The materials and rituals are all ready. Now, the only thing needed is to construct the corresponding concept so that the necessary birth process for a deity can be completed in this world—the activation of the divine essence. So…

Alice wiggled her fingers. Her height and figure began to adjust slightly…

“In short,” her voice thinned, becoming shrill. She stretched out her hand, and the scepter she controlled transformed into a crimson spear. The imp's form also shifted, materializing into a pair of narrow, dark wings behind her. “Before I can conjure her spirit, I must first create her concept and enhance its quality. The most suitable way is…”

"No matter what, let's beat up all the vampires except Zheng Zha first!"—She puffed out her now completely flat chest, and so came the freshly baked, quotation-enclosed "Remilia Scarlet."

Section Twelve: Majesty and Courage

What are the elements that make up Remilia Scarlet?

There are many answers, many directions for answering them, and different answers are not necessarily wrong.

But according to Alice Margot Lloyd, there are three elements that constitute Remilia Scarlet: fate, tea, and her doting on her sisters.

She doesn't possess any semblance of authority, not even in past generations when she single-handedly resolved the vampire mutations and slaughtered all the other vampires except herself and Fran. It has nothing to do with breast size; she simply can't be serious. While she often seems a bit mystical due to her supposed understanding of fate,... she's really just like that.

If we go back another hundred or two centuries, perhaps she once possessed something called 'majesty'. But Alice never witnessed it; she only knew that before the Church reached its full power, vampires had once displayed a glimmer of strength.

But that was a long, long time ago.

Over a century of complacent, carefree living in Gensokyo was enough to turn one once-powerful figure after another into a useless nobody, and Remilia, frankly speaking, was no different—just one of those useless individuals. Her once infallible Spear of Destiny, capable of annihilating armies with a single blow, had become a doomed weapon before the rules of spell cards were even established. And the reason she missed wasn't because she was truly inaccurate, but because she never even intended to try.

Gensokyo is only so big; you see each other all the time. Who would you be showing off your power to?

That's why someone like Fran, a vampire descendant whose soul was damaged in a distant war, even her wings crystallized, retains both a childlike heart and a pure killing intent stemming from her bloodline. That's why she's confined to the lower levels of the Great Library most of the time, only occasionally allowed out for some fresh air on holidays.

—Although two-thirds of the year in Gensokyo is spent celebrating holidays, the remaining third is also the holiday of these unemployed people.

Alice tapped her head, banishing these random thoughts from her mind. She quickly began constructing the character based on her understanding of Remilia, using the resources at her disposal to fill in any missing elements.

The elements of destiny are simple: the dragon spirits of this world are essentially fragments of spacetime. And the evolution of spacetime can also be considered a form of destiny—the Dragon Scale was originally intended as an enhancement item for Zheng Zha. But since he, Zheng, planned to hunt wild monsters, it was only natural that Alice should make the most of the resources.

—The Dragon's Scales activated, resonating with the 'Red Dragon' element within the Staff of Control, releasing a fraction of its power. As one informational rune structure after another was constructed, fragmented pieces concerning the past and future appeared in Alice's eyes. While she couldn't directly isolate time rifts like the Winged Trisolarans, dragging her past self out of the timeline to fight, brief precognition of the future was within her capabilities.

The perspectives within her eyes suddenly split into dozens, each directed towards entirely different places according to Alice's thoughts. She devised dozens of motivations for outward exploration, and in each of these projected futures, different versions of herself sped towards those different regions.

From one perspective, you walk eastward, bump into a migrating tribe of orcs, pass them without leaving a trace, and then reach the predicted time limit more than two thousand kilometers to the east.

One version of myself walks westward, encountering nothing, traversing three thousand kilometers of mountains and plains, and then reaches the predicted time limit.

From one perspective, I took a few random steps, and then another prediction unfolded within the prediction, thus directly reaching the prediction time limit.

From one perspective, while exploring eastward, the player encounters the same orc tribe, slaughters them, and then follows the messages found on the corpses towards a nearby orc city. Upon reaching the city's outskirts, the player hits the predicted time limit.

From one perspective, the self walks north and sees Zheng Zha, with a chimney-shaped head, beating up a demon, and then reaches the predicted time limit just as he is about to speak.

One's perspective is that of oneself flying into the sky, reaching the predicted time limit as one leaves the atmosphere.

One version of myself, upon encountering the orcish migrating tribe, directly wrote an apocalypse, but the project reached its predicted time limit before it was even halfway through.

In one perspective, when encountering an orc tribe, I threw a ball of deuterium that had reached a critical state. The ball reached the predicted time limit a few seconds after the mushroom cloud rose.

A perspective on myself...

………………

Alice closed her eyes, summarizing and analyzing this newly acquired power. Her conclusion was that she could activate the Dragon's Scale by paying energy, thus gaining prediction time ranging from one second to a thousand seconds. However, this method of prediction had many limitations—it couldn't be used within the prediction itself unless energy for the future was paid in the past; complex information magic couldn't be used within the prediction; and even using simple information spells would result in a significant reduction in prediction time.

The total intensity of life observed in the predicted future will also reduce the prediction duration. Lower-level life forms will experience only minor losses, but for a transcendent life form—anyone other than oneself, whether familiar or unfamiliar—the very act of making a prediction will result in a significant loss of energy and a rapid reduction in time.

And finally, the energy expenditure required to predict the prediction time will increase exponentially as the prediction time lengthens. Around one thousand seconds is a fairly economical prediction time, excluding those involving supernatural beings.

The witch pressed her forehead.

The gains were decent, but unfortunately, they weren't yet hers to claim. After all, the Dragon Scale was an item closely related to the Dragon Spirit and had been handled by the Lord of War. Alice absolutely refused to believe there weren't hidden mechanisms or backup plans within it. Therefore, she only used it as a slightly useful tool; at least until her initial plans were complete, she wouldn't rely on it as her core strength.

[However, it's quite strange that information magic can't be widely used in prediction... Is it because information magic possesses some kind of special characteristic, or is my previous guess correct, that the divine and fantastical species of this world actually share some kind of concept with information magic?]

[Alright, let's not think about that too much for now. This development, while somewhat strange, isn't necessarily a bad thing. At least it proves that the Dragon Spirits' space-time interference methods are unlikely to find Patches, hidden deep underground and surrounded by information magic. Those of us outside don't need to worry about being suddenly and miserably surrounded by other forces.]

However, Patchi seems to have planned a separate operation... Will Chu Xuan respond to this? Right, he's not unaware of the Dragon Spirit race's intelligence. Making baseless accusations isn't his style.

The thought process is complete, and a conclusion has been reached. Now, let's move on to the next step.

Remilia's other element—her love for her sisters—is actually quite easy to resolve. Because Alice's complex feelings for Patchouli may well contain elements of sisterly affection (accepting the anti-yuri self-regulation of the vulgarist QAQ), although the specific components are quite complex... but it's not that difficult to apply them to the past.

After adjusting one's mindset and transforming one's emotions, one moves on to the final step.

Alice stretched out her hand, her five fingers spread, and a dark red liquid sphere appeared out of thin air at her fingertips. The dark red instantly turned crimson, and the smell of blood gradually emanated from it.

Remilia likes black tea because it's the only drinkable beverage in Gensokyo. For her vampire clan, blood is blood; human blood is sustenance. Other forms of blood, like that of youkai or other high-energy sources, hold little interest for her. In Gensokyo, the mortals of the Human Village are far more important as ritual elements than as food sources. Even without harming the body, absorbing blood is not something that can be done year after year.

Therefore, Remilia substituted pure blood for black tea laced with a small amount of blood, using Victorian court etiquette to satisfy the bloodlust churning within her veins.

And now...

Dozens of different perspectives reappeared in Alice's eyes, and in an instant, she gleaned clues about the vampire from dozens of prediction records—the girl spread her small wings and, like Zheng Zha, transformed into a distant streak of light.

"...All we need to do is replace the black tea with blood."

....................................

There was a smell of blood in the air... but it wasn't human blood.

It wasn't human, but a monster. Not a rare anomaly, but a demonic species common among monsters.

It was several meters tall and several meters thick. Several heads, and one scar.

A mirror-like wound cleaved the demon in two, and crimson blood cascaded outwards like a waterfall. The viscous demon blood transformed into more than a dozen tributaries of varying sizes, cutting the desolate, black-and-grey-stained land into a grid-like network of broken fragments.

In the distance lay a wrecked, crashed airship, its technical features suggesting it was a goblin warship. The wear and tear around it indicated it had been lying in the ground for several weeks. Amidst the wreckage of the demon race, in the center of the ground cleaved by a purplish-red mesh, a black-haired, black-eyed girl looked up at the sky.

Zhao Yingkong arrived here five seconds ago.

Four seconds ago, he killed the exceptionally perceptive demon at his feet.

Three seconds ago, her gaze swept across the surroundings, her senses swept across the earth, swept over the wreckage of the destroyed airship, and she vaguely detected a few faint signs of life.

—Those must be the native humans of this world, three men. This is one of the reasons why Zhao Yingkong still had time to investigate the surrounding area after the teleportation ended and she found no human settlements nearby. Anyway, there are people here now, although they are not quite the same as described in the intelligence, and no orc army has come to attack this place... But since Chu Xuan has arranged it this way, then let's just do it this way for now.

Two seconds earlier, she looked up at the sky and, from the lingering traces of the air, reconstructed in her mind the events that had occurred weeks earlier that had led to the crash of the goblin airship.

Birds leave traces, geese leave calls. Before her death in battle, Zhao Yingkong, who had suppressed the darkness within her heart through earth rituals, also gained some information interference capabilities. By simply investing her mind and consuming energy, the sound patterns, radiation, fluctuations, and heat in the air would aggregate in a complex and incomprehensible way, piecing together bit by bit the complete picture of a specific event that occurred at a certain point in the past.

The witches were adept at using this method, but Zhao Yingkong never found it easy. In her view, the spells of the Primordial Flame system were more than ten times simpler than information magic. Her proof was that since her resurrection, she had mastered all the offensive and defensive support techniques of the Primordial Flame system. Yet, a simple information rewind was giving her a real headache.

—How did those witches manage to do such a thing? It seemed as easy for them as eating and drinking! And the theory wasn't even that complicated, so why was it so difficult to control them in practice?

Zhao Yingkong's inner turmoil lingered as she worked on the project. In those brief seconds of contemplation, the battle from weeks prior flashed before her eyes—she saw a humanoid object, no larger than a normal person and without wings, clashing with several airships high in the sky. The high-energy rays and shockwaves emanating from the object sculpted the previously slightly undulating terrain into a rough, flat expanse. Although small in size, the humanoid object possessed astonishing combat power, easily destroying one of the three goblin airships attacking it. The other two only inflicted minor damage before hastily retreating, without even recovering their own crashed warships.

Zhao Yingkong blinked. She sifted through the recently shared data and found data that matched the backtracking description.

"A goblin warship and a lone mech?" The girl raised an eyebrow, and after comparing the data, she roughly figured out the cause and effect, and then more questions arose.

If her guess was correct, the goblin fleet must have discovered the lone mech in this area and launched an attack—the reason was simple: while mechs were a neutral yet powerful species, almost like an uncontrollable natural disaster, they wouldn't retaliate unless attacked. Furthermore, they typically operated in groups and shared data connections; attacking one was tantamount to attacking the entire group and inviting a swift and decisive retaliation.

For this reason, few races would attempt to be enemies with the Machine Race, especially after the successful defeat of the Machine Race by the Yama Dragon, one of the kings of the Dragon Race, before the Dragon Break. The Machine Race's reputation had grown to its greatest extent.

No species would provoke a Mech-type without a reason. Unless that Mech-type is a solitary individual that doesn't maintain a connection with the overall species. And once such an individual appears, the species that discovers it will inevitably try every means to obtain it in order to acquire information about the Mech-type, and even attempt to bring this runaway natural disaster power under its control.

There is only one chance, and failure will inevitably erase all traces. That's why the goblin airships fled immediately after realizing the situation was hopeless. They ignored even the valuable wreckage of the airships and the abundant information inside, leaving such a large piece of metallic polymer to decay and erode on the surface.

The young assassin exhaled a breath that melted the surrounding gray snow, confirming that her guess was correct.

So, there are three questions that need to be addressed and can be addressed immediately.

First, why do lone machine armored creatures appear, and what is their purpose?

Secondly, why didn't the goblins launch a follow-up attack, at least to raze this battlefield to the ground?

Thirdly… Zhao Yingkong tilted her head slightly, looking over the clouds that had quietly dispersed two seconds earlier. She silently gazed at the cyborg female humanoid creature in the sky, which had just emerged from its stealth state, its body still bearing some wounds and undergoing self-repair, and was aiming a strange, energy-accumulating weapon at her. An invisible shockwave immediately spread from Zhao Yingkong, disrupting communication channels within a ten-kilometer radius.

Thirdly, what exactly gave her, or rather, what gave her the courage? It allowed her to act without even considering the relative strengths and weaknesses, daring to express hostility towards a transcendent being with her mortal form!

Section Thirteen: Position, Cause and Effect, Reward

If the weak want to challenge the strong, the most basic requirement is that they must do their best from the very beginning.

Whether it's wisdom, strength, connections, terrain, celestial phenomena... whatever it may be, all factors that are beneficial to victory must be taken into account before taking action, because if not, the so-called victory of the weak over the strong will never come, and what will ultimately happen is nothing more than foolish moths flying into a flame.

However, this statement is actually incorrect, because the probability of the weak defeating the strong is extremely low. After all, this world has always been one where the strong prey on the weak. Victory is only achieved when the weak create local advantages, thereby altering the balance of power in a small area. Given that the weak are inferior to their opponents in all areas, the victory of the weak is more like a beautiful fairy tale.