Gifting that cup to Eden... if it were her, she would have made the same decision. After all, Eden loved wine, jewelry, and all sorts of art.
But... even if that was the case...!
He didn't get me, Elysia, a gift, but he's thinking about another woman... even if it's Eden, a different kind of woman, it's obvious Miss Elysia is still jealous. After all, even if it's something I would have done, he could have just waited for me to do it! If you do everything, wouldn't that make me, Elysia, feel awkward and insignificant?!
Miss Pink Elf puffed out her cheeks, fuming and grinding her teeth.
"Alright, alright, I know you want a gift... but I don't really have anything else to give you right now, so... let's use this butterfly instead." The silver-haired girl smiled and shrugged.
A butterfly radiating magical energy landed on her. It was a product woven from Angel's Poem, but different from what [Illya] and Irisviel used. Like the previous Holy Grail, it was a product of the Third Magic.
A gift for herself... there really wasn't anything.
As "Elysia," she would want to give someone crystal flowers... when using other bodies, she was mostly influenced by their inclinations. But something that truly belonged to her, to Jiang Qiao... it might sound strange, but besides a vague sentiment, it was hard to find a vessel to entrust this gift to.
"That's more like it."
Elysia stroked the butterfly in her hand with satisfaction.
She wasn't really interested in gifts... well, of course, she wasn't completely uninterested. After all, receiving gifts really did make her happy.
The value was secondary; the sentiment within was the most important thing... well, of course, she really did like the gems Eden gave her. They were sparkly and so beautiful.
As for naughty Jiang Qiao... because he found it difficult to choose gifts, he often offered no gift at all, only heartfelt sentiments. While it didn't really matter and even made her a little happy, you giving gifts to cute girls made Elysia happy, but not having me among the recipients made Elysia very unhappy.
The Black Grail had vanished.
The seaside city in the Far East returned to its tranquility. And because the Greater Grail had been dismantled, there probably wouldn't be any more mysterious pipe explosions. From the perspective of both citizen safety and the pipe company's profit reports, this was a joyous occasion.
However... considering the human-like bureaucracy of the Far East, it seemed that even without the Holy Grail War, the physical and mental safety of Fuyuki's citizens was still quite precarious.
Her mission completed, Caster Illya also disappeared. When she opened her eyes again, she was in a familiar room.
Everything felt like a dream, as if nothing had happened. She was a little dazed until she saw the ruby wand on the table and... the cards scattered next to it.
A Firefly card imprinted with the Glamoth logo, a Fairy card with a mural-like pink-haired woman, and... a new, unfamiliar card with a very ordinary silver-haired girl as its face.
"Consider this card my gift to you. If you encounter a problem you absolutely can't solve, you can try it. It should come in handy, but don't rely on it too much. There's no need to be sad, because even if I'm far away, I'll always be by your side."
Out of various necessities, Miss [Illya] had joined the chat group along with her other self, Morgan le Fay, and Manaka Sajyou.
This was somewhat surprising for the members of the usually quiet chat group.
God of Justice: Wow, why did so many people suddenly join?
Elysia: Isn't it obvious? They're the cute girls naughty Jiang Qiao picked up from the newcomer's world...
Although it was just text, paired with a resentful chibi Elysia sticker, you could feel the strong resentment between the lines.
Empress of Glamoth: ...All of them?
Elysia: What do you think~
Empress of Glamoth: You seem to have a lot of free time... If you have that much energy, Jiang Qiao, you should come help me with my political affairs.
Empress of Glamoth: Jiang Qiao, Jiang Qiao, Jiang Qiao, Jiang Qiao, Jiang Qiao!
God of Justice: My sympathies.JPG
God of Justice: I can feel Her Majesty's resentment even through the screen.
TileGamer4ever: I feel the same way!
TileGamer4ever: Jiang Qiao, if you're so idle, get your ass back to the Xianzhou, ahhhhhh!
Kyoko: I'm just saying... this chat group is basically your harem group, right?
Crimson Demon Chief: Re-read?! So this is that kind of place?
Kyoko: Don't you think there are too many women connected to him?
Crimson Demon Chief: I didn't notice at all!
Hu Tao: Yunyun, you need to be more vigilant! Of course, it's probably not that exaggerated... Uh-huh!
Undoubtedly, apart from the red trio, almost everyone in the chat group had been "Jiang Qiao'd."
Prince's Princess: It's so lively... But, are all the women here connected to His Highness?
Manaka Sajyou looked at the long list of names in the group. Although the initial members were few, many had been added later. At least, many from the Honkai group were active in the group.
However, they seemed to prefer using another channel. Well, that was inevitable.
Although everyone got along well, if a career-oriented person like Theresa were in the same channel as a slacker like Kiana, it would probably easily evoke the Bishop's deep resentment, to the point where the former would start nitpicking out of thin air.
From that perspective, although it was just one group, the girls in it had what could be called eight hundred small channels.
For example, Firefly, Theresa, and Qingque's hard-working group.
The Dendro Archon, Mobius, Vill-V, and MEI's group of intellectuals.
Kiana, Furina, and Hu Tao's slacker group...
And so on, it could be further subdivided, and there were even specialized faction groups like the "Teyvat Group," "Cosmic Group," and "Honkai Group."
The subdivisions in the chat group fully demonstrated the social network diagram of a modern-day female college student's QQ (China social media) list.
To be honest, Mr. Jiang Qiao himself, the core target, didn't know much about this. He had only occasionally heard Elysia mention other channels.
This was inevitable. After all, he rarely even got involved in the initial chat group... Well, it wasn't that he was rarely involved, but most of the time he was just quietly lurking, watching the group members interact. As for joining in himself...
How should I put it, it would easily lead to very bad outcomes. Miss Qingque, having found her debtor, would directly activate the "every injustice has its perpetrator" mode and turn into a cyber ghost, and the others... needless to say. The time when a certain Mr. Jiang was present could almost be described as the eight major sects besieging the Bright Summit.
This was probably the charm of an all-female chat group. Even if the women "Jiang Qiao'd" weren't that extreme, their innate skills, as if born with them, were readily available.
For example, right now, after noticing the large number of competitors in the group, Miss Manaka Sajyou, who was initially quite annoyed with her thieving cat sister Ayaka and her treacherous concubine Morgan le Fay, had established the Type-Moon channel in a very short time.
At the same time, she fully utilized the "ally with the distant and attack the near" strategy she learned from Shenzhou, joining the channel against Elysia's group to try to gather intelligence.
The initiator of this channel was Miss Mobius, but the main forces were Furina and Firefly, who were on very good terms with Elysia.
And another channel, the "Protect Elysia" channel, was initiated by Eden. The members of this channel were suspected of having impure attitudes toward a certain Mr. Jiang.
The clueless Mr. Jiang watched as the chat group exploded with his news and then frantically messaged him, feeling a little helpless.
I really, really am just making friends with those cute girls with the purest of friendships!
Although a bit ruthless, he did one last thing before leaving, sending a message to Morgan le Fay.
—A farewell gift for you. I guess you'll like it~
Morgan le Fay, who thought she would return to the Star(Planet)'s Inner Sea that had imprisoned her for countless years to continue her bitter wait, gazed at the familiar yet strange country before her.
At this moment, the incredibly cold Morgan le Fay looked at this message from Jiang Qiao, and a corner of her mouth curved into a slight arc.
"Giving such a precious gift to a woman like me will bring retribution."
She had indeed received it.
—A world.
However, it was different from the Britain of her dreams. Although it was the British Isles, everything was like a blank sheet, as if it had returned to a blank page.
This couldn't be helped.
After all...
"I really don't know what the Britain of her dreams is like, so I can only give her a blank page that she can be willful with and paint into the image she likes."
Dreams were things you had to make a reality yourself.
A coin, a wine glass, a butterfly, a card... a world.
Such vastly different gifts.
If compared, it would undoubtedly be seen as favoritism, and it was only natural to anger the girls.
However, for him, whether it was as small as a speck of dust or as large as a world, their weight was the same.
From that perspective, he could only give such suitable gifts, not precious ones.
As Morgan le Fay said, this gift would probably become troublesome.
After all, the famous enchantress Morgan le Fay was not the grateful type, but a super-villain who would shamelessly repay kindness with enmity for her own purposes.
If her appetite was satisfied, then after becoming the king of Britain she had always longed for, Morgan le Fay's next target would become even clearer, and her obsession that had returned from the brink several times would also change direction.
"Hmm... seems like I've done something a little bad... Oh well, I'm used to it anyway."
Faced with the situation where "I'm close to the girls, but the girls want to ride me," the experienced Mr. Jiang Qiao chose to silently ignore it.
After settling things here, he still had to go check on Qingque.
After all, the postponed Luminary Wardance Ceremony was about to be held again.
Glancing at the 99+ messages from a certain TileGamer4ever Miss in the group, Mr. Jiang Qiao felt that if he was absent, he would probably be conscripted as a personal mount by the angry Miss Gambling with Cards afterwards.
Returning the body to its original owner, and after arranging the necessary matters, Mr. Jiang Qiao returned to the world of the Star Rail.
Undoubtedly, he was met with the Empress's icy glare in the Hall of Progeny.
You still know to come back?
Dumping such a huge task on her and then running off to experience the feeling of playing a JS (TL: now you know this mean right)... the gentle Miss Firefly now couldn't help but feel the urge to go berserk on the spot and demonstrate the destructive power of the Firefly mecha.
It should be known that the Alliance's Luminary Wardance was not just the Alliance's business.
Essentially, it was the clean-up of the Alliance's internal conflicts, as determined by the Xianzhou Alliance's Cloud Knight Marshal, and at the same time, the handover of the Xianzhou Marshal's position.
And more importantly, the Xianzhou Alliance would join Glamoth afterwards and become a member of Glamoth.
And to handle the handover of such an interstellar alliance into the Glamoth Empire, even though Hua had prepared in advance and there was the experience of the Company as a reference, Miss Firefly's workload had skyrocketed to thousands of times what it used to be... and this didn't even take into account the increased workload after the Alliance joined.
Just thinking about the astronomical number of documents, Miss Firefly stopped the data pen she was using to quickly input data and review documents, and looked at a certain someone present with a slightly hostile expression.
At the entrance of the Hall of Progeny, the words "Her Majesty the Empress is temporarily not seeing visitors" silently appeared.