In the underground cavern, Schrodinger, who had just fallen asleep cuddling Little Sora... Little Black... anyway, that fat cat, was jolted awake by the sound of a door being excitedly thrown open, not even a few minutes later.
"Erwin! I heard Little Sora's [Setting] is the same as the jam-buttered bread!" A little loli with long, golden twin-tails bounced into Schrodinger's room. "Is it true or not?!"
Schrodinger: "..."
With heavy dark circles under her eyes, she glared resentfully at the large group of people who had just barged into her room.
"Alfred... I must thank you for inventing something that can accurately describe your personality..." Schrodinger said faintly. She felt like she might become Future City's second person on the verge of death by overwork.
You ask who the first was?
The person right in front of her, who had nearly blown up herself and the entire experiment building...
"Hehe, I'll take that as a compliment then!" Nobel proudly put her hands on her hips, her gaze then falling upon Little Sora.
"Erwin" Another small figure peeked out from behind the haughty Nobel, its gaze also fixed intently on Little Sora. "Lend us Little Sora for a bit"
The intense "malice" startled Little Sora awake. It lifted its head to see several pairs of eyes staring at it.
Schrodinger silently hugged Little Sora tighter. "Pablo, if you wanted to paint a picture of Little Sora, I might have agreed to your request..."
Picasso shook his head, answering honestly, "Sorry, I want to see what happens with the cat and the jam-buttered bread."
"I want to see too." A third loli appeared, her thick brown hair cascading messily down her back, her facial expression a stark contrast to Nobel's.
Unlike Picasso's naturally stoic face beside her, Van Gogh's eyes seemed to hold an eternal sadness.
"I also want to see exactly how much better the combination of Little Sora and jam-buttered bread is than just two slices of bread!" The fourth loli... Watt, dressed in engineer's overalls and wielding a wrench, appeared.
At the doorway, Shu slanted a glance at Darwin and Joyce beside him, voicing a doubt he had harbored for a while, "Is the nutrition in Future City really that bad?"
Joyce and Darwin both coughed simultaneously, then averted their gazes. "Individual differences... individual differences..."
There were eight people in Joyce's group. One male, Darwin; one non-human, Joyce; and among the remaining six females, four were lolis.
And Schrodinger herself wasn't much better off.
The only one with a mature adult woman's aura was Cézanne...
Nobel and three painters ganging up to snatch Schrodinger's cat... Why am I having such a dream? Sirin, is this also your [Setting]?
I should be in Honkai, not Fuyuki City facing a gas explosion, right?
Shu no longer had the energy to complain about the utterly chaotic scene before him. He felt his mental state had undergone some kind of bizarre sublimation.
Facing the siege of four people, Schrodinger was outnumbered and quickly pinned to the bed by Nobel and Picasso. Van Gogh seized the opportunity to snatch Little Sora. The group then smoothly exited, closed the door, all in one go.
Leaving only Schrodinger on the bed, reaching out, trying to get her Little Sora back.
Forget it... As long as I don't open this door, Little Sora will forever exist in a superposition of being experimented on and not being experimented on...
"Meow!!" A mournful cat shriek came from outside the door, followed by the excited voices of Nobel and Watt. "It's spinning~! It's really spinning!!"
"Shh! Let Erwin rest properly!"
Schrodinger: "..."
At this point, might as well go back to sleep.
Sighing, Schrodinger pulled the thin blanket over herself. The underground cavern felt exceptionally cold today...
---||---
Outside the door, Shu once again intervened, rescuing the nearly-blended Little Sora from its dizzying spin. Little Sora buried its head in Shu's chest in terror.
These poop-scoopers are all bad poop-scoopers! Only this brand new poop-scooper will save it from the torment of these women!!
Shu awkwardly held the black gas canister, looked down at the circle of small figures before him, and his eye twitched.
"Let Erwin rest properly first. Let's discuss our next strategy," Joyce coughed, drawing everyone's attention to her.
"Firstly, we can confirm that this story is indeed Homu Brave Fights the Evil Dragon, which I created over a hundred years ago. However, the protagonist has changed from a Hero to a Knight."
"Since a [Knight] has appeared as a replacement, can the [Hero] setting still be used?" Nobel looked at Shu. Shu looked at the Homu beside him.
The Homu at Shu's feet was the very same one that had shattered Shu's heroic dreams with a single punch. And now, two gleaming golden characters floated above its head, creating a stark visual contrast with the two black characters above Shu's.
[Hero], that was this Homu's identity.
"Still in effect." Joyce also glanced at Shu, then confirmed, "The Homu's power will still change in response to Shu's display of power, and will always be superior."
As she spoke, Shu received a subtle glance from Joyce.
Silently rolling his eyes inwardly, Shu extended a hand. The Homu beside him leaped forward, facing the casual Shu with utmost seriousness.
"Rock, paper..." / "Homu! (Rock, paper—!!)"
"Scissors..." / "Mu! (Scissors!)"
Shu's fingers momentarily splayed open as if to throw "paper" when he made his move, but in the end, he formed a "scissors" gesture.
Thus, the Homu, having no fingers and defaulting to "rock," won!
Shu looked at his momentarily uncontrolled hand, "tsked" in annoyance, then quickly fell silent again.
He had already tried his luck against the Homu several times upon arriving, refusing to believe it. The results were invariably the same. The Homu, even though it was its first time playing rock-paper-scissors and could only throw "rock," had beaten Shu over a dozen times in a row.
This was a completely different concept from losing to Bronya in a game. Losing to Bronya was because he himself was bad. But losing to the Homu was purely because the opponent was cheating.
No matter what he threw, even using [Hope]/[Wish], his hand gesture would ultimately be forcibly changed to "scissors," ensuring he lost to the Homu's "rock."
The Hero will always defeat the Demon Lord. This was the most important [Setting] attached to the Hero. No matter how strong Shu was, the Hero would always perform above Shu.
Even a game of chance like rock-paper-scissors would be rigged.
Then... what about the [Knight]? Can Mei also benefit from this buff?