When you start preparing, the whole world is not ready to welcome her.
Her name is Cantrela. You know that she does not belong to any reality. She is an illusion you accidentally see during an indulgent journey. Her eyes always seem to look somewhere underwater, and no one knows what it is. You can’t read her background. You only know that she is coming, and version 2.2 is the time when she is written into the system.
Her name always reminds people of opera. More precisely, it is an aria without an ending. There is no climax, no tail, only continuous extension and rupture.
You are not sure why you are preparing for her. Just like you are not sure why you put so much energy into a character you have never met. But you still start. With a strange calmness, a kind of cooperation that is almost inertia of life.
Her cultivation is a test of order and a thorough experiment of loneliness.
From level 0 to level 90, she needs a lot of materials. You look through the data, and you use your mechanical eyes to confirm each item:
Polymerization sound core.
29 low frequencies, 40 mid frequencies, 52 high frequencies, and 61 full frequencies.
You start to brush those sound variants by yourself. Every attack, every dodge, and every cooldown countdown are like the self-deletion you habitually do in life. You don’t say you are tired. You just repeat mechanically. You start to become like her – calm, alienated, and restrained.
You start to look for sea floating thorns.
It is a plant that only appears in the new version. You find them in the corners of the map, like things that only you can see. It is an extension of a part of her. It is a task mark that you must confirm again and again to complete the collection. 60 copies. Like the letters you wrote in adolescence, those that you never sent.
And those purgatory conches, from a leader named Lorelei.
You start to fight her. Once, twice, ten times.
You never win easily. You always leave with a little injury. But you still need 46 conches. You know, she won’t say thank you for your efforts. She just stands there, silently waiting for you to complete the shackles you voluntarily accepted.
You start to hoard materials called the Day of Iris Blooming.
26 copies.
You don’t know if it can really make her bloom. You just think that the name is beautiful. It’s like some kind of illusion. You always think that when you collect them, she will talk to you. But she didn’t. She won’t. She is just set by the system to be a resonator. You are just a bystander who executes her destiny process.
Then there are skill materials.
25 slow spirals, 28 adagios, 55 andantes, 67 prestos.
These things sound like music. You hope they can really make her sing. But you know that it won’t be her who sings in the end. It’s you, the one behind the screen, who builds this melody for her.
You also need to prepare 122 special resonance promoters.
You think of the moments when you failed to synthesize in the early morning. You are not angry, you just come up empty again and again. The meaning of the accelerator to her may be equivalent to the sedative you take in real life. It allows both of you to “function normally”.
If you still want to equip her with her own weapons – you also need weapon breakthrough materials: simple, basic, modified, and special. And shells – about 3.05 million.
It is a symbol of metal, efficiency, and exchange relationship. It has nothing to do with love. It has nothing to do with a sense of accomplishment. It is just part of the game setting. And you – you still accumulate silently.
You may feel frustrated because you can’t get a certain material. You will be disappointed in front of the synthesis table. You will sit in a dead sleep all night because you don’t have enough shells. You may even feel that all this is meaningless.
This is normal.
You must allow yourself to feel meaningless.
You must also learn to continue in this meaninglessness.
The system also prompts you to eat “stuffed meat tofu”. It can give you a higher drop probability. This is a gentle function. Just like when you eat a real dinner when you are tired, those reminders about taking care of yourself that you often ignore in reality.
You will eventually collect everything.
She will stand in front of you.
But she will not thank you. She will not be different. All your efforts will not shorten the distance between you by even a millimeter.
But you will still feel it is worth it.
Because you understand that you are not actually doing this for her.
You are completing a training for yourself through her.
A slow, difficult, but inevitable self-organization.
You are not facing a role, but yourself.
All the needs, control, obsession, fatigue, and softness exposed in front of a virtual character.
She is a mirror.
You are the real script.