One percent of Kevin's original strength. What did that actually mean?
Simple.
Autumn, 2015 of the current era.
That was the period when Durandal, the resident Two-Diode Personality who had recklessly spent over thirty days straight sweeping Honkai disasters across the globe without sleep, was supposed to be on vacation. Instead, she got dragged into Schicksal's operation to recover the Second Divine Key and ended up having to face off directly against World Serpent.
And the one guarding the Second Divine Key at the time was none other than the Armed Puppet Kevin, which carried one percent of the real Kevin's power.
On that day, wielding a miniaturized replica of the Sixth Serenade, the puppet had fought Durandal, already an S-rank Valkyrie and clad in the Bright Knight: Excelsis battlesuit, to a dead even fifty-fifty standoff.
Their fight leveled several blocks of London. To cover the damages, Schicksal bled so much money that Otto, gritting his teeth, had slashed the development budget of Kallen Fantasy.
And in the end, if the Armed Puppet Kevin hadn't run out of power, Durandal couldn't have forced a decision out of it even after transforming into Palatinus Equinox, her so-called Golden Goose form.
That was what one percent of Kevin himself looked like.
So the number might seem small, but it wasn't something to take lightly.
Granted, roughly two years had passed since then. With 99% effort and that 1% bloodline edge that was nothing on its own, Durandal had gotten even stronger.
But what she was facing now was tens of thousands of '1% Kevins.'
And on top of that…
"Hehehe."
The countless 'Kevins' in her field of vision suddenly started cackling.
The voices that came out of them were all deliberately sharp, pitched like mocking women.
As that bizarre atmosphere closed in, Durandal felt her vision blur for a single instant.
Then the scene around her began to turn misty and unreal.
One 'Kevin' after another faded out of view.
They hadn't actually vanished, of course.
Their movements had just been concealed.
Their figures flickered in and out of sight.
And what she was standing on wasn't yellow sand anymore.
It was more like the middle of a major city, surrounded on all sides by the noise and neon of nightlife.
Amid the flickering neon…
"Everyone, be careful."
The voice sounded like Fu Hua's.
A peculiar pulse of energy radiated from her.
Red Crow feathers drifted down a moment later.
The ten of them who had come together to World Serpent HQ each received a hint delivered straight through 'consciousness.'
It was like a beacon, pulling them rapidly back together.
"Hmph. Trying to use illusions on me?"
"This really proves the old saying. Showing off your axe at Lu Ban's gate."
Behind Fu Hua, a translucent figure seemed to hover.
From the look on her face, she was clearly not in a good mood.
She hadn't… been scammed over the phone… right?
In any case, she was this era's Herrscher of Sentience.
A rebellious baby whose brain had been fried by a flood of enormous memories.
For whatever reason, at this critical moment, she'd ended her brief little 'running away from home.'
She'd decided to stand with her old antique on the same side.
At the very least, pummel the annoying crowd around them first, secure a 'tomorrow' worth looking forward to, and worry about the rest later.
But just then…
"The Little Red Flower Classroom is now in session. Today's guest lecturer is… the ever-so-beloved Professor Sparkle."
In the illusion, a girl in a fox mask with her hair tied into twin tails skipped past the ten of them in a flash.
Every time Durandal and the others turned warily toward the source of the voice, the sound of wooden clogs on the ground and the clear ring of a bell would come from another direction.
And then, that eerie cackle again.
"Pop quiz."
A figure flickered into view ahead of them.
The moment they saw her, Theresa, Bronya, Kiana, and Raiden Mei all went wide-eyed.
Because she was…
"Wendy."
The poor girl who had died long ago, her legs wrapped in bandages.
Right now, her head was tilted at an angle, and the smile on her face was terribly, terribly… *healthy*.
"Valkyrie, oh Valkyrie. In this world, are there more good people? Or more evil ones?"
The moment 'Wendy' finished speaking…
"Naturally, there are more good people."
Beside her, another 'Theresa' appeared.
This was the woman who had pushed her most promising student, with her own hands, into the 'hell' of the Oceania Branch.
All for the sake of one line. This is a necessary sacrifice. 'Wendy' had screamed. Wailed.
She'd had a real chance of becoming the fourth S-rank Valkyrie. And she'd lost both of her legs.
Looking at herself as a broken thing.
Later, she'd met Bronya, met Kiana, met Raiden Mei.
The three of them had all cared for her.
But the good times hadn't lasted. Cocolia had intervened, and that warm stretch of days had ended up being the last keepsake of her life.
In the final moment before death, on the dissection table, 'Wendy' suddenly moved like a marionette on strings. Her head slid and rotated in a way no living person's should, angling toward them. "If there are more good people, then why has this world never known peace?"
"Why do the wicked always get to run wild?"
The scene shifted without warning.
A white-haired, golden-eyed girl, knocked unconscious by a single punch from her former class president, was carried off to Schicksal HQ.
A short-haired maid casually defeated the allies and the mentor who had come to rescue her.
Then…
The same white-haired girl again, falling from the heavens, only to be forcibly carried away by a blonde girl. A purple-haired girl chased her through the night streets, weeping, berating her own powerlessness.
"I can't do anything!"
In this moment, Domination Puppet Sparkle was truly embodying what it meant to 'cast a thousand roles.'
She performed every character to the life, reconstructed every scene at one hundred percent fidelity.
And finally…
She played 'Ling Ke.'
The black-haired young man who had now sunk fully into the 'deepest evil.'
They heard him begin to speak, slowly.
"Because indiscriminate kindness isn't kindness at all."
Like an announcer introducing an act, he swept his finger across the ten of them. Raiden Mei, Rita, Fu Hua, Durandal, Theresa, Bronya, and the rest. "It's evil's accomplice."
Right now, among the ten, only Seele, the Aryn twins, and Kiana weren't being called out by implication.
But Kiana's mood was no better.
Because in the 'classroom' performance being staged by Domination Puppet Sparkle, a figure in crimson red had just appeared.
Yeah.
Even now, Professor Himeko was still missing.
And this world hadn't become what she'd promised it would that day in Nagazora. It hadn't turned into what they'd hoped for.
"Someone once said, a schemer who had near-perfectly disguised his true self, that yearning admiration is the farthest distance from understanding."
Suddenly, 'Ling Ke's' voice came in through their ears.
All ten of them startled.
None of them had noticed another black-haired young man appearing beside them, at some point they couldn't place.
They watched him with intense wariness.
He went on talking. "I used to be that stupid. I couldn't even see what you people really were on the inside."
"Not until I'd lost everything, lost my dignity, lost any vision for a future, until all that was left of me was obsession and a shell. Only then did I finally understand this absurdly obvious truth."
He tilted his head toward them. His gaze swept across the six of them, skipping Kiana, Seele, and the Aryn twins. "All these years, forget Cocolia for a second. Did you genuinely not know what kind of man Otto was? Not know how Schicksal operated?"
"Or was it that you *did* know, you just… didn't want to admit it? It was more convenient that way. You didn't want the headache of those impossible moral calls, so subconsciously you treated the man like a pair of useful black gloves. Pretended not to know while you watched him take on the dirty work. That way your so-called purity and nobility stayed clean. Self-deception, time after time."
He had no intention of attacking them. He just kept pacing, slowly.
Of course, his words were more efficient and more cutting than any physical attack could be.
"Yeah. Maybe in your eyes, every evil act can be brushed off with that universal excuse. 'It's all to fight the Honkai.'"
"The righteous cause that serves the majority. It's just so convenient, isn't it?"
"Convenient to the point that you can throw away your own brain and not feel the loss."
The black-haired young man's eyes narrowed slightly. "So have you ever stopped to think? The people who were 'forced to pay the price' in the name of that righteous cause. Their suffering, the futures they lost. How does that get accounted for?"
"Did they have the right to choose?"
"By what right do you throw a 'for all of humanity' crown on their heads, use that weight of responsibility they can't possibly bear, and turn their futures, our futures as the weak, into disposable material and stepping stones that you self-proclaimed champions of justice get to rearrange as you please?"
His unfocused gaze fixed on them. "The people who were forced to disappear. The ones who didn't have my kind of luck. The ones who never lived to see the beautiful future arrive. What they lost, can any of you self-proclaimed champions of justice actually make that up to them?"
"Weren't you going to fight for all that is beautiful in this world?"
"Then why is everything you've done the kind of thing that. I, the villain, would do? Using the hypocrite's logic that even I, this evil man, wouldn't stoop to?"
As he spoke, the black-haired young man's eyes finally came to rest on Durandal. "The one who lost her name, whose whole life was manipulated. The strongest S-rank Valkyrie of any generation."
"When you were once confronted by the girl who'd ended up with your name, when she asked you why you were helping Otto, you answered her with such perfect righteous conviction…"
"'If not Schicksal, then who will protect the billions of people on this planet from the Honkai?'"
"You said there was no absolute good and evil in this world, no absolute right and wrong. There was only duty."
"And you were only fighting for the sake of your own duty."
He paused for a beat.
And then…
"What a disgusting little speech. Dressing up your collaboration with a tyrant in the language of righteous duty."
He laughed coldly. "By your logic, I've now slaughtered hundreds of millions of people on this planet, and the number is still climbing."
"So am I allowed to justify it by saying: with this many people dead, the resources they would've consumed can go to more survivors, who can now enjoy more? Greater quality of life for everyone who's left?"
Durandal and the others couldn't have known it, but in a place called Marvel Cinematic Universe, there actually was a purple-faced eggplant who thought exactly that.
Though, that one was also… a villain.
A super villain, at that.
So…
"Or even more extreme. Shouldn't all the people I haven't killed yet be offering me thanks, since I'm not killing them right now?"
"Shouldn't every minute, every second they're still alive be spent in devout prayer to me?"
He stopped walking. "That's not how any of this works. You've understood this simple truth from the beginning, haven't you?"
"Good is good. Evil is evil."
He stared straight at them. "To the vast majority of humanity on this planet, the me of now is, without question, the greatest evil."
"But at least I won't twist myself into disgusting contortions of logic to justify what I'm doing."
"Right. Compared to me, in the middle of fulfilling a 'Honkai's mission,' taking a clear stance on where I stand… all of you…"
He raised his hand and pointed at them. "All of you are nothing more than a crowd of self-gilded counterfeits."
"Without the countless inheritances left behind by the Previous Civilization, without one 'lucky coincidence' of fate after another, your era would have gone the way of every era before it. Judged by 'Finality' as defective, a failed product, and wiped clean to start over."
"Since that's the case…"
He smiled.
Right now, countless 'Sparkles' had gathered around him, and his whole body seemed to waver with illusion. He spread his hands wide. "If an era has to rely on self-satisfied counterfeits and fakes to save it, then it might as well be destroyed."
"Because you don't deserve it."
"Which naturally means…"
As he spoke, a strange pulse of energy began spreading outward. "…this precious opportunity should go to the era that actually deserves it."
As that speech landed in the ears of Raiden Mei and the rest…
"Jabbering on and on about a pile of nonsense. Annoying."
Another figure almost identical to Fu Hua's materialized beside her. "You said a whole lot, but all I heard was four words. 'Deceiving the masses with wicked words.'"
The Herrscher of Sentience. She was about to say something more. "Old antique, let's first… wait."
The Herrscher, who hadn't been born all that long ago herself, went through a flicker of genuine shock.
Then a look of real alarm.
"My Authority. It's disappearing."
And it wasn't just her.
"!!!"
Raiden Mei had also sensed the same anomaly.
Having long since completed her ascension to full-form Herrscher, she was now slowly reverting to the kind of 'power-saving mode' she used day to day.
The Authority inside her, derived from the Herrscher of Thunder, was being steadily weakened.
Piece by piece, it stopped feeling like her own.
"What is this…"
Raiden Mei's expression turned grim. "According to Jackal's estimations, and Dr. Einstein's analysis, when the Herrscher of Dominance plunders another Herrscher's Authority, it's supposed to be a struggle. Like a tug-of-war."
"So why is it even working on me…?"
That was it.
Ling Ke wasn't a normal Herrscher of Dominance at all.
The name Herrscher of Legion alone was enough for him to casually handle Kiana and Bronya.
So what about 'Ten Thousand Multitudes'?
That wasn't just ten times more. Because in Chinese, one hundred thousand is still 'ten thousand.' One million, ten million, one hundred million, all of them are still 'ten thousand.'
At this moment, Ling Ke, who had deliberately held off on plundering Raiden Mei's Authority until now, finally bared the fangs he'd had ready from the start.
Right now, he, or rather, the Ling Ke still safely nested inside the Theater of Domination…
Was preparing to 'reclaim Authorities.'
The black-haired young man from a moment ago, yet another Domination Puppet Ling Ke who had been monologuing in the desert for that long, was undoubtedly another means of buying time.
His rhetoric, combined with Domination Puppet Sparkle's illusions, had disoriented everyone present.
Especially their perception of time.
Ling Ke, clearly, wasn't the kind of villain who would 'talk himself to death.'
He'd turned that trope on its head and used it.
And right now, the situation had matured.
Ling Ke's main body, without wasting a beat, began executing the final step.
"According to the plan the Fire Thief laid out, the more unstable the current world's foundational structure becomes, the easier my Branch-Breaking Plan is to execute."
"So…"
So the Gilgamesh Game Character Template really had come at just the right moment.
Without it, Ling Ke would have had to burn significantly more effort, and significantly more time, on this part. That was what the 'thirteen hours' of preparation had been for.
The scrapped Plan A would probably have worked too, but executing it would have been a lot more troublesome.
And the longer things dragged out, the more variables piled up.
Ling Ke knew the bizarre temperament of so-called 'protagonist crews' all too well.
The moment he slowed down, got sloppy, got cocky, or indulged in some stupid, strategically pointless chatter, the opposing side was liable to start yelling about friendship, bonds, hope, marching into tomorrow, and power up out of sheer plot momentum.
But right now…
"Using the Herrscher of Dominance's 'plundering' ability as the ignition…"
"The 'Authorities' are already flowing back into me."
"Thanks to those reverse fireworks up above, the Gilgamesh template has already maxed out its level."
"Its 'background talents' will also be firing at a full 100%."
Ling Ke gathered himself, calm and focused, and spoke softly. "With this, every piece needed to destroy the world, to create the world, is in place."
"This… is the hour of apotheosis."