Prometheus was sent flying nearly a hundred meters by the blast of the explosion. She rolled along the ground to a stop, the deep red pupils of her aiming system narrowing as she scanned the activity of the Hephaestus in the distance.
"Energy fluctuations decreasing. Hephaestus Type-X3 has ceased activity."
She punched the head of a nearby zombie, exploding it, then lifted a collapsed wall to clear a path. She stood still and began to contact Lin and Vil-V.
I wonder if Dr. Vil-V has arrived at Lin sid—
Suddenly, all of Prometheus's activity stopped. She lifted her head expressionlessly.
Her monitors, capable of capturing atmospheric movements, saw the "person" floating above her.
The silvery-white long dress wrapped around her without any sense of discord.
But in a world covered in blood and death, that silvery-white dress reflected the grimness of white bones.
She was like an inorganic object, quietly watching Prometheus on the ground with suffocating brown eyes, then slowly reaching out her arm draped in white gauze.
Danger.
Prometheus sensed no accumulation of energy, and the other's movements were ordinary, yet at this moment, something appeared that should not exist in an AI—a sense of crisis.
And precisely because she had never experienced such a feeling before, it caused her to be...
One step too slow.
Boom!
The Ninth Herrscher looked down at the massive crater with a radius of over a hundred meters beneath her feet. No one knew how she had managed to "hollow out" the entire area simply by raising her hand.
And Prometheus, who had been standing in the center, was nowhere to be seen...
Delta staggered toward an open area, clutching her twin swords. Not a single part of her was intact; she felt as if all the blood in her body was flowing backward. She felt the searing heat of being rolled in boiling oil, mixed with the biting cold of a dropping body temperature.
"Cough... cough..."
She pulled a syringe from her inner lining and stabbed it into her neck, the liquid flowing into her body accompanied by pain.
Every Fire Moth soldier carried emergency medicine, such as analgesics. They were not used under normal circumstances because the side effects of certain drugs were far too great—even the constitution of a MANTIS might not be able to handle the agony once the effects wore off.
But the situation hadn't stabilized yet. She might have to fight again in a moment, so she had to adjust her stat—
Bang!
A deafening shock caused the syringe to drop from her hand. She grabbed a nearby piece of rubble and instantly ducked behind it.
The tremors in the ground had not stopped; the source was very close. The loud noise she heard came from nearby. She cautiously peeked out to look in that direction, only to see a bizarre spectacle.
Debris and collapsed buildings were floating in mid-air, defying the laws of physics. They weren't falling; they were rising.
Delta gaze slowly moved upward, and her pupils shrank.
That "person."
With her hands held out, the ruins began to rotate around her, wrapping her inside. Next, materials of even greater hardness were kneaded by a pair of invisible hands to become an outer shell. Finally, the hardest metals completely covered the structure, forming a final line of defense.
Delta hands clenched, her heart racing. The pain that had just lessened returned to her body as her blood flow accelerated.
That was a Herrscher.
The first lesson for every Fire Moth soldier was learning the concept of the Honkai.
The second lesson was learning what a Herrscher was.
One could say a soldier might not recognize every type of Honkai Beast or zombie, but they could absolutely recognize that god-like "person" as a Herrscher.
So that was it—the one who attacked her before was the Ninth Herrscher.
Having gone through eight large-scale Honkai eruptions, Fire Moth had already determined the patterns of a Herrscher's birth and their post-birth logic.
The host of a Herrscher Core is a "female human" with "high Honkai adaptability."The core appears within the human body first, then transforms the human into a Herrscher.Some Herrscher can possess higher intelligence and richer human-like emotions, but those without these traits are superior in destructive power.After birth, a Herrscher goes through a "window period" where they cannot fully utilize their authority. Their control over Honkai energy has not reached its peak, so they seek "Emergence" during this time.
Not all Herrschers follow the fourth rule. For example, the Seventh Herrscher possessed destructive power and complete authority far exceeding all others from the moment of birth, which was one reason Fire Moth was caught off guard.
During the critical time other Herrschers spend seeking Emergence to fully master their authority, some hide themselves, some use subordinates to protect them, and some do both.
Is the Ninth Herrscher currently in her window period?
Delta stared fixedly at the giant sphere the Ninth Herrscher had become. She was currently the only one with a chance to slay the Ninth Herrscher at her weakest; she had to seize this opportunity.
She raised her sword to charge, but then stopped, looking forward in disbelief.
The body of her sister, which had been completely dead—that massive Honkai Beast corpse—now slowly floated into the sky. Under her trembling gaze, it flew in front of the sphere.
Then, another colossus took to the sky.
It was the mechanical body of the Hephaestus, which had been disabled after losing its arms.
The two were manipulated by an invisible force, converging before the sphere, and emitting a bone-chilling, skin-crawling sound of "fusion."
Under Delta stunned gaze, "that thing" slammed heavily onto the ground. The body that had lost its vitality "came back to life" amidst the pulsing of thick, twisted, hideous blood vessels.
It had an alien head and a mechanical head, arms of flesh and a body of Soulium. Its original flesh had turned into a sharp, rugged tailbone, and four distinct legs slammed heavily against the ground.
"Huff... Roar... HOWL——————"
That was a true alien creation.
A true Frankenstein.
Letting out a distorted roar of rebirth, its arm slammed into the ground. An invisible pressure traveled from its fist to Delta in an instant.
In her slowed vision, wherever that invisible pressure went, all matter was crushed into a thin sheet of paper.
Boom!
Delta twisted her body with all her might to dodge, but she was still one step too slow. Her right foot was crushed by the invisible "energy" from above, turning instantly into a pool of blood.
"Cough—"
She collapsed to the ground. Blood, warmth, and life were fading from her body drop by drop.
Weakly, she watched the "Mountains" walking toward her amidst the apocalypse.