Arknights, but the sickly pretty girl starts

"You don't want to say it, or you don't know?" Mace smiled, "Noah, you can clearly see it."

"I only know what I want to know, Mace," Noah responded. "Besides, if this really comes down to a winner, there's only one person here who can talk to me. I don't want that kind of ending at all."

"...So, we all stopped." Mace said softly. She closed her eyes, feeling the rare pain of the wound. "No matter what, I don't want you to be sad... Noah."

For a moment, none of the three spoke, as night was gradually falling. The darkness was not a problem for the three of them, but it was obvious that it was time to go home.

Kjerag is much colder at night than during the day.

-

"New intelligence has arrived from Kjerag. It says... Noa Kyrielight appears to be in close contact with Enthiotis... We can't rule out the possibility that Enthiotis intends to use Noa Kyrielight's connections to free us from our constraints. However, he also emphasized that this situation is different from the past. The current situation in Kjerag is too complex, and extreme measures are not recommended."

The guard, who was also a member of MI6, lowered her head and read the message that had just been transmitted from Kjerag's intelligence network. She raised her head with some uneasiness and looked at the figure with his back to her. It was the figure of Duke Caister. Among the current Grand Dukes, apart from the God of War, Duke Caister's methods were perhaps the most sophisticated. The God of War seemed to have turned to the Kingdom of Tara, and Duke Caister... She had always been loyal to Victoria.

But... maybe she is loyal to her Victoria.

Naturally, no one dared to say such words out loud, but such thoughts were common throughout Victoria, and it was no exaggeration to say that everyone knew about it.

Although the title of Grand Duke is still retained, the parliamentary system has limited the power of the Grand Dukes. The new Speaker, against all odds, plans to open the meeting early tomorrow to discuss foreign policy, and this matter... is somewhat directed against the Duke of Caster.

At first, Victoria thought that a new king would be crowned and nothing would change. Victoria would still be Victoria and would slowly walk out of the shadow of the Sarkaz.

But the young crown prince refused the crown and embarked on a new path.

But this road… has never been traveled by any Victorian monarch.

The Grand Dukes, who are the relics of the old era, have obviously become stumbling blocks to the new era.

Now we have to see how much courage the Speaker has and how he will deal with the Duke of Caster.

"Let's leave Kjerag's matter alone for now. What I need to consider now is what that little lion is planning to do to me. Humph, Victoria is still Victoria. Traditions are not easily broken."

Chapter 34: Betrayal

Honestly, when Noah presented the so-called "Truth" to Gray Hat, he thought she must be a lunatic. Did she think a false projection could convince a well-trained elite Victorian agent to obey her orders? Someone like him would never be swayed by a false performance.

He had long known that Noya's nickname was "Witch." She seemed to possess a rare telepathic Originium technique that could easily incite others, causing the determined to lose their composure and even become their captor. This was an extremely dangerous Originium technique, and Victorian agents like Gray Hat were subjected to rigorous testing before leaving the training facility... one of which was to ensure they wouldn't betray Victoria.

At the time, Gray Hat had passed the test with perfect scores, including anti-brainwashing and drug resistance. To prevent the Victoria's Secret from being exposed, he even hid poison in his second left tooth. If he poked the foil with his tongue, the poison would instantly kill him. In fact, many of his colleagues had committed suicide by taking poison because they had to keep the secret.

In fact... he almost did that.

However, that glimpse of the starry sky made him forget everything for a moment...

And when Noah told him that she planned to let all the Terrans witness it, he just thought Noah was crazy.

He even instinctively calculated the success rate. Victoria has 3862 active agents. Based on an average of 12 targets monitored per day, blocking this type of information would require—he suddenly paused, not because he felt he couldn't do it, but because he found that he had instinctively believed, without knowing when, that the scene before him was real, even though he had never seen it before... had never seen the so-called universe before.

All he saw was the barren sky...

Why would he believe... believe that Noah Kyrielight had not deceived him, and believe that behind that sky, there were these vast stars?

No…it wasn't that he believed in Noah.

He just hoped so, that behind the boring sky, there would be a sky full of stars and endless beauty. He hoped this was true, so he wanted to believe that everything Noah revealed was the truth.

People always believe what they want to believe... His professional ethics as an agent told him that letting the Terrans know the truth behind the veil was extremely dangerous. People instinctively fear what they don't know. Even if someone stood before everyone and shouted the truth, the fearful people would not listen...

Trance... A sudden trance brought him back to his senses. He didn't know when, but he had returned to his safe house. He subconsciously looked out the window. It was a sunny day today. The Kjerag region was located on a plateau, so the air was clear and it was a great place for stargazing. The stars that dotted the sky seemed to fall into his eyes.

Speaking of which…how long has it been since he became the so-called Victorian agent?

Two prisoners looked out of their prison window. One saw mud, the other saw stars.

At this moment, the gray hat seemed to have taken its eyes off the mud and looked up at the sky for the first time.

This kind of thinking is very dangerous. His education warns him that this is an act of treason!

The man in the gray hat unconsciously rubbed the second tooth on his left side, and the tin foil seal of the poison capsule gave off a metallic taste on the tip of his tongue.

That was the final shackle Victorian MI6 had forged for him—a shackle that, if he bit through, would obliterate all shock, uncertainty, and dangerous thoughts along with the neurotoxin. But at this moment, his teeth were chattering with another kind of vibration, as if something inside his skull was gnawing at the iron wall of reason.

The starlight outside the window shone on the codebook on the oak tabletop. The codes he had personally compiled twisted into unfamiliar symbols in the starlight. He had used this codebook to transmit seventeen execution orders to the Duke of Caister, nine coup warnings, and even cold-bloodedly encrypted the death report of his own mentor. But at this moment, the logic of the codes he had been so proud of was collapsing—he actually felt so unfamiliar with them. These codes were his masterpieces, the things he was so proud of.

But at this moment, he felt that these codes... were so annoying, like the most smelly garbage in the room.

"Ridiculous!" He laughed twistedly, grabbed the code book and smashed it against the wall. Pages flew everywhere, and several of them flew into the fireplace and burned to ashes.

He paced back and forth in the room, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, sometimes writing furiously on the table, and then tearing up everything he had written and throwing it into the fireplace to destroy it.

He was writing poetry... The scary thing was, he hadn't written a single line of poetry since he left school.

Those poems and distant places are not suitable for an agent - maybe he can speak eloquently, but that is just to cover up his identity as an agent.

I can disguise myself as a poet, a singer, or even a college student obsessed with poetry and songs...

But he couldn't deceive himself.

We are all light trapped in amber

[But mistakenly took the cage as the frontier of the universe]

Yes, the universe… the universe… As he wrote this line, his mind was filled with the magnificent sight of the cosmos. It was as if tiny stars pierced through the manuscript, and the black spots stained during printing now seemed to transform into stars in the universe. The stains began to move as if alive, the bloodstains fading into the crimson of nebulae, the coffee stains smudged into the pale gold of star clusters. He pulled his hand back as if shocked—reason seemed to take over instantly.

"...No, it needs to be verified, these are just conjectures..." He staggered to the filing cabinet and pulled out a book labeled "History of Astronomical Observation on Terra". To be honest, these books were all published publicly on Terra, and he never thought that he could find the so-called truth from such things. These were not even top-secret documents, but he searched word by word... looking for the content between the lines.

Stargazing was actually quite popular in Victoria, with Victoria even establishing a dedicated observatory. Historical records show Victorian aristocrats obsessed with observing the starry sky, imbuing it with poetic meaning and even claiming that its alignment foretells destiny. However, as an agent, he clearly remembered... Victoria burning down an observatory and even secretly executing a group of astrologers accused of spreading heresy.

Even though that happened a long time ago, but considering the images Noah showed me...

At this moment, the descriptions of the "abnormal celestial phenomena" crossed out in red ink seeped out in the starlight, overlapping with the illusion of Noah's starry sky that remained on his retina.

He raised his head, compared it with the star map, and confirmed it with his own eyes. He compared them one by one, staring at the sky with a frenzy that almost consumed him.

His fingertips were twitching, and he saw why these astrologers were executed. When everyone was expecting the stars to tell them their future destiny, these astrologers stood up.

[The stars do not predict any destiny, because they are just stars. They just exist there, just like the two moons.]

【The sky is false, we cannot see the truth. 】

He even followed the description in the book, as if he saw the scene where the astrologer was pinned in the snow, roaring what he believed to be the truth.

A hundred years later, people agreed with what these people said and called them pioneers, but their once passionate lives were gone. If these astrologers were still alive, would it be possible... would it be possible that they did not need Noah's revelations to know the truth? Would the people of Victoria look at the starry sky with an exploratory eye?

At some point, he began to hallucinate, as if he was the one being pinned down in the snow. He struggled and raised his head, but did not look at those foolish people.

He was looking at the starry sky, the clean, sparkling starry sky.

The moment his tears hit the page, he tasted something bitterer than poison. It wasn't emotion, but the dust of the crumbling empire of rationality. As someone who had passed the MI6 anti-brainwashing test with a perfect score, he had long since learned to face torture with a sneer, to dilute pain with indifference. But now, the tears felt like an uncontrolled physiological collapse—as if a rusted valve in his soul had been cracked by the starlight, unleashing all the "things that shouldn't be there" that had accumulated over the past twenty years.

He wasn't some astrologer, he was a Victorian agent, he wasn't supposed to shed tears for the stars.

He is a sophisticated egoist who will sell out anything except his country.

But now, he couldn't help crying and shedding tears. All his emotions were like an avalanche, and emotion took over.

He knew what the truth was.

He raised his head tremblingly, his vision blurred by tears, but for the first time, he truly gazed upon the vastness of the universe. The sky could no longer prevent him from gazing deeper into his eyes. The starlight, once declared "false" by the Victorian Astronomical Society, now pierced the snowy mist of the Kjerag Mountains and reflected into his eyes.

It turns out that the truth is so close to them that they can catch a glimpse of it just by raising their heads.

He clenched his fist and smashed it hard on his face. The severe pain twisted his face, but his punch accurately broke the tooth containing the poison, and the tooth was spat out on the ground along with blood foam.

This poison was Agent Victoria's bottom line, and now, he gave it up.

Give up the poison that harms yourself and choose to embrace the truth.

The tears continued to flow, but they no longer held warmth. He knew he could no longer numb his perception with telepathy or hallucinations—just as a prisoner with limbs amputated could not deny the excruciating pain of their amputations. When he finally raised his head, letting the starlight pierce his pupils, the teardrop dangling from his jaw reflected the stars, like a fallen miniature universe.

He turned his head and began to draw up a plan -

His mind was very clear, not at all blurred by staying up late. The various skills he had acquired as an agent over the years allowed him to remain calm anytime and anywhere. His pen moved across the paper, leaving behind one symbol after another.

——Kjerag is the place closest to the sky on Terra, and also the place closest to the universe.

This place has unique advantages. Kjerag is the only pure land on Terra that is not obscured by the Originium dust. It is the most suitable place to establish a research institution. Whether it is astronomical research or planning to break through this sky and enter the universe, this must be the starting point.

Therefore, Kjerag must not be controlled by Victoria... No, he must not be controlled by those conservative fools.

Duke Caister wasn't a fool, but all she cared about was her old-fashioned Victoria and her own interests. Such a person would only be a parasite in Terra's future, hindering Terra's future development... However, Victoria wasn't just full of fools and parasites. Victoria had begun to change, and those conservatives were beginning to worry about their own power...

Using the terms parasites and termites is not an insult, but a rational judgment.

He wanted to use his identity to maneuver between Victoria and Kjerag... or in other words, he wanted to use his own methods to conceal the eyes and ears of Duke Caister. Besides himself, there were other spies here. He did not know the identities of these colleagues, but he could completely get rid of them one by one by passing messages.

His eyes were almost cold, but if you looked closely, you could see that beneath that coldness was a fire that had never burned so hot before.

Forged reports, forged documents, one person worked on behalf of the entire Kjerag intelligence agency, deceiving the eyes and ears of Duke Kaster.

Work with the new Speaker to urge Victoria to carry out reforms and let all the dukes be consigned to the dustbin of history.

He was Victoria's shadow, and he knew too well how Victoria's shadow worked. Although on the surface, he was considered a traitor... but in reality, his loyalty was never supposed to be given to the Duke of Caster.

Victoria no longer has a king...

Then, he already had no one to be loyal to.

Ah... Gray Hat had never felt so passionate about work. It was obviously the overtime and staying up late that he hated, but at this moment, he became more and more excited as he wrote.

It’s true... I suddenly feel that the world is so vast.

The ink in his pen had run out, and the manuscript papers were scattered all over the floor. He greeted the rising sun with exhaustion. Under the sun, the twinkling figures in the starry sky gradually disappeared. He stood up from his seat and stretched. Everything started from this night. His body was already quite tired, but his spirit was excited as if he had taken stimulants.

Just when he was about to take a short rest, there was a knock on his door. The man in the gray hat's expression froze, and his sleepiness was wiped away by vigilance. He put away all the documents on the desk. Although he used a password, he was not sure who was knocking on the door. He put away all the documents and put them in the sun. This special ink will become transparent and colorless after being exposed to the sun for a while. After making sure that the ink became transparent, he walked to the door vigilantly.

"Who?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Gray Hat." The man in the gray hat turned around suddenly. The voice didn't come from behind the door, but from behind him. However, when he turned around, Noah was already sitting in the seat he had been sitting before. "I've been waiting for too long, so I came in first. Do you mind?"

"...Does my mind help?" Gray Hat breathed a sigh of relief. "What's the matter with you coming to see me?"

"I'm just checking—it looks like you didn't sleep well last night?"

"Yeah, after all, seeing that kind of scene, I was a little excited. I felt like an elementary school student on the eve of a picnic..."

Gray Hat said self-deprecatingly.

"As for what you want to confirm..."

Noah looked into the eyes of the man in the gray hat and spoke.

"I have confirmed it. Now, we are comrades."

Chapter 35: I Try My Best

Victoria, Londinium, Downing.

In 1072, Victoria's last monarch, Alistair II, was executed, and the throne remained vacant for twenty years.

In 1094, Tracy led the Kazdale Military Council and entered Londinium at the invitation of Grand Duke Victoria Cavendish. Later, the Duke of Stafford launched a rebellion in Londinium, and the Duke of Cavendish came to quell the rebellion, and both sides eventually died in battle.

In 1098, the conflict between the Grand Duke and the Military Council culminated in a full-scale war. This conflict involved the Victorian military, Rhodes Island, Deep Pool, and the newly formed Londinium Citizens' Self-Defense Army. During the war, the Tara region declared independence, and Victoria suffered heavy losses in this internal conflict. Today, Victoria can no longer even be called "intact."

After the Londinium War, all parties in Victoria reached an agreement. The remaining Sarkaz forces withdrew from Londinium and returned to Kazdel. The Military Council reestablished its partnership with Babel. The King of Impulse refused to be crowned King of Victoria, choosing instead to serve as Speaker of Londinium.

From then on, Victoria's political center shifted from the royal palace where the throne was vacant to a conference room in Downing Street.

Today is the day when the Londinium Parliament meets. All the dukes have already taken their seats. Among the current dukes, only one seat is vacant - that seat belongs to the Duke of Wellington, who has actually betrayed Victoria. However, on the surface, everyone still regards the Duke of Wellington as one of the eight dukes. After all... Victoria does not recognize Tara's independence.

Before the meeting begins, the ceremonial officers have a special set of procedures... This procedure is what Vina dislikes the most, but it is one of the countless traditions that have not yet been broken.

Open the door——

Honor guard, present the Holy Orb of Order—

Earth and sun bear witness, the order of the council is in place—

May wisdom and justice bless you all and add new glory to the glory of the parliament.

Today, the birth of the new parliament is witnessed by all of you. Now, please welcome Alexandrina Vina Victoria, the inheritor of the golden bloodline - the destroyer of demons, the destroyer of natural disasters, the restorer of glory, the guardian of order, the heroic leader of the Exemplar Army, and the Speaker of the Londinium Parliament.

With every word that came out of the ceremonial officer's mouth, Vina's brows furrowed even more. Which former king came up with these ceremonies that were so embarrassing that one could dig out a three-bedroom apartment with one's toes?

Seriously... could it be simpler?

You can just call me Vina...

When Vina did not plan to become king but chose to become the Speaker of Londinium, she did not consider this. After all, she was not familiar with this process... and even if she was familiar with it, it probably would not make her much used to it.

She missed her boxing gym and her good sisters even more. She was thinking of taking a leave and going back after the meeting.

Speaking of which, when I passed by there, I went to help in a fight, but I forgot to change into casual clothes, causing the other party to think I was some big shot, so my fists became limp... Ah, no, I can't be distracted at this time.