In fact, the moment Evan paid, took the hairband, and used it to tie his own waist-length hair into a neat ponytail, Mei had already figured it out. He had likely said that just to prevent her from refusing. He was so cunning.
Evan admired Mei's single ponytail look for a while, then continued to stroll with her a bit longer before ending their "date" as it was getting late. There was no doubt; it was a date now.
Days passed, and Mei grew accustomed to spending her evenings with Evan, chatting, practicing swordsmanship, and going on strolls (dates). On Evan's side, after realizing that continuing to play the role of an intern at the ME Corp branch would yield no further gains, he had resigned. This naturally caused a small stir at Tachikawa Academy, but since ME Corp's reputation had been damaged and its status lowered, the others didn't find it too unbelievable.
Besides that, there was training, and—pulling from the Friendship Supply.
He was now able to get ninety friendship points from Mei every day, allowing him to pull almost once a day. Although this number had been fixed for a while now and hadn't increased, possibly indicating that his relationship with Mei had reached a limit, Evan didn't dwell on it. He continued to live his life methodically according to his plan.
As his swordsmanship improved, it was no longer necessary to continue sparring with Mei; he had no problem practicing on his own. This meant that his daily interactions with Mei became a form of relaxation, or even entertainment. After that first strawberry daifuku, Mei would almost always make some small snacks for him. Coupled with their occasional strolls through the nighttime streets of Nagazora and the extra time he had after quitting his job at ME Corp, he was much more relaxed than before.
Evan had performed dozens of Friendship Supply pulls, probably over fifty. He had already collected a full set of Shigure Kira Stigmata and upgraded them to two-star max level. In addition, he had a full set of Charlotte Stigmata that were not yet fully upgraded. Like Shigure Kira, these were also base one-star Stigmata that could be upgraded to two stars. He considered himself quite lucky. This also confirmed his earlier theory: he was not limited by the number of Stigmata he could equip and could absorb them indefinitely, making their power his own.
Collecting a full set of Stigmata didn't unlock any set skills like in the game; instead, it further enhanced their effect of strengthening his physical abilities, making each of the top, middle, and bottom pieces about twenty percent more effective.
Evan was a little surprised, but then he thought this was actually better. After all, some of the set skills from the game required specific Valkyries or equipment to be effective, and some even had attribute requirements. Some Stigma skills even did strange things like creating exploding water balloons; if that happened in the real world, the scene would be quite bizarre.
Besides gaining far more power than before, Evan also discovered that the Friendship Supply did not give duplicate Stigmata. After completing the Shigure Kira and Charlotte sets, he began to frequently receive two-star Holo Treasures, which probably replaced the slots for those one-star Stigmata. This was why he had enough gold to max out the Shigure Kira set and still have some left over to partially upgrade the Charlotte set. Originally, Evan thought he wouldn't be able to obtain any new Stigmata before the advanced supply opened, and would just have to keep accumulating gold, since as far as he knew, Shigure Kira and Charlotte were the only two one-star sets.
But today, Evan discovered he was wrong.
As usual, he immediately did a pull after reaching one hundred friendship points. When he first saw the blue glow on the virtual interface, he thought it was another Holo Treasure worth two thousand gold, but it was a Stigma.
"Hannah (M)? So my Friendship Supply can even pull base two-star Stigmata... No, even with my bad luck, it's unlikely it would take until now to get one. It's more likely that pulling all the one-star Stigmata changed the contents of the supply pool, just like how the two-star Holo Treasures started appearing frequently after I got the one-star Stigmata."
Would it be possible to pull a four-star Stigma from the Friendship Supply in the future? Evan thought the probability was low. However, just the fact that a base two-star blue Stigma had appeared in the Friendship Supply was the best news he'd had in a long time.
Evan didn't have much gold left, not even enough to enhance it. After all, the Hannah Stigma started at two stars and required a full ten thousand gold to enhance. He hadn't even been able to max out the recently acquired Charlotte set; he was always short on gold.
Feeling his body grow stronger once again as Hannah (M) transformed into energy and infused into him, Evan smiled.
"In nearly two months, I've obtained a total of seven Stigmata and have enhanced them to varying degrees. At this rate, by the time the Third Honkai Eruption truly arrives, I might actually be able to take down a Honkai Beast with one punch."
Evan didn't know how strong he was now. He had no zombies or Honkai Beasts to test his strength against. His swordsmanship practice with Mei had long since become more of a form of companionship, as his power continued to grow with each new Stigma, while Mei, not yet awakened as a Herrscher, remained at the level of an ordinary person [t4]. In their spars, Evan had to increasingly suppress his strength, which in a way was also a form of training his control over his power, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.
Mei couldn't see the explosive growth in Evan's strength over the past month, but she could see that he had become much more relaxed, no longer full of pressure. For this, she was genuinely happy.
And on the other side of the world, a white-haired girl, having searched for her long-lost father for years in Europe to no avail and having made no progress in her investigation into the Honkai that plagued the world, embarked on a journey to Asia.