The sunset's afterglow quietly slipped away amidst the bus's bumps.
As night descended, the neon-lit city was reflected in the water outside the car window, like scattered stars—everything felt like a dream or an illusion.
[Host.]
The cybernetic, milky voice by his ear made Fuli, who was pretending to sleep at the back of the bus, open his eyes.
"What is it, Curious Baby? Want to ask where I'm going again, like before?"
[No.]
The little AI shook her head. Her light gray braids, tied into twin-turbos, bounced up and down, looking extremely cute.
[I was thinking, since you clearly know the Third Honkai Eruption is about to happen in Nagazora City, why does the Host insist on staying here?]
Question: You just transmigrated, asked around, and found out you are in Hiroshima or Nagasaki in 1945.
What would a normal person do in this situation?
Run! If you don't run, are you staying to become well-done meat?
"I saw you struggling with this the whole way. I thought you could hold back from asking." After teasing Prometheus, Fuli quickly answered before the little girl started grinding her teeth, "You remember, right? Before leaving, I said there was one more thing I had to do. Only after finishing that will I leave this city destined for destruction."
The girl, having just been teased, didn't say a word, silently staring at the big bad guy who was keeping her in suspense with her beautiful eyes.
The big bad guy smiled. "Do you know about the Divine Keys?"
[Divine Keys: Anti-Honkai God-killing armaments driven by Herrscher Cores. They were created by the greatest scientists of the Previous Era using the cores of Serial Herrschers as the hub, supplemented by numerous top-tier materials including Soulium.]
Prometheus puffed out her chest proudly after reciting this in one breath. [I understand my own kind very well.]
"That's right," Fuli said. "These super weapons from the Previous Era each possess earth-shattering power. And since they are made from the cores of Serial Herrschers, they contain the ultimate Authorities that could originally only be wielded by Herrschers."
He glanced at the little AI. "Oh, except you."
Prometheus wanted to bite him in anger.
Including the legendary Herrscher of Finality who completely destroyed the Previous Era civilization, the Previous Era faced a total of fourteen Serial Herrschers.
They were born in one Great Honkai after another. For the convenience of written records, people used the combination of "the order of the Herrscher's birth + the name of their Authority" as a code to refer to them.
Among them, the Tenth Herrscher, the Herrscher of Domination, was a special case.
Unlike the other thirteen siblings whose power was concentrated in a single body, the Herrscher of Domination of the Previous Era was a massive group totaling a thousand individuals.
Although this significantly diluted their individual combat power, the coordination of a thousand Pseudo-Herrschers with different abilities still caused considerable turmoil for civilized society at the time.
Most crucially, after subjugating all these Pseudo-Herrschers, the scientists of the Previous Era were surprised to find that each of these dominated individuals possessed a one-thousandth portion of a Herrscher Core in their bodies.
So they extracted the micro-Herrscher Cores from the remains and used these thousand portions of material to forge a total of one thousand Keys of Domination.
The designation "Finality Coordinator System 0017" that Prometheus initially used for herself referred to her serial number, 0017, among these one thousand Keys of Domination.
However, there were pros and cons. Since the Herrscher of Domination's core was split into a thousand pieces, the power of the Keys of Domination was naturally much lower compared to other Divine Keys with complete Authorities.
Unfortunately, Fuli before his regression had no idea about any of this.
He had simply heard from a familiar intelligence broker that an ownerless Divine Key had appeared. After confirming the authenticity of the news, he howled and joined the scramble for it.
Only after realizing the power was underwhelming did he buy follow-up information on the Key of Domination, finally understanding why the strongest participant in a battle for a Divine Key was only Critical-class.
It turned out, just like the Future Foundation's loan business, the real experts didn't even care about it.
"However, the Divine Key still slumbering in Nagazora City is different."
Speaking of this, Fuli straightened his back. His usually relaxed tone rarely carried a hint of solemnity.
"Although for some reason it hasn't been completely finished, it is undeniably a Divine Key created from a complete Herrscher Core."
"And that is the reason I insist on staying in Nagazora City now."
Thump!
The bus bumped over a speed bump and entered a tunnel. For a moment, only the fluorescent safety signs and Fuli's eyes were glowing inside the carriage.
The former flickered dimly, while the latter shone like stars.
Facing her rarely serious Host, Prometheus thought for a moment before speaking, [I have no intention of questioning the rationality of the Host's trip. I just want to know, where did the Host learn such important intelligence? Is it really reliable enough for the Host to bet his life on it?]
The two "swords," Mikazuki and Shiranui, were fine. Although rare, they were only C-rank, so getting intelligence related to them wasn't too difficult.
A Divine Key was different. This was an ultimate existence from another dimension, an irregular God-killing armament that a civilization exhausted everything to create only a dozen or so of.
Sensing the worry in the girl's tone, Fuli curved his brows imperceptibly. "The intelligence about the Divine Key was told to me by Kiana in the previous timeline. As for credibility, it is absolutely one hundred percent."
When Kiana told Fuli this with a hint of bragging, that Divine Key, codenamed "Jizo Mitama," had already been contained by the Schicksal Far East Branch she belonged to at the time, and she was one of the personnel who participated in the containment.
The specific containment time was a few days after the Third Honkai Eruption occurred; otherwise, Fuli wouldn't be rushing to squeeze into the gap.
This was the only chance to seize Jizo Mitama in advance.
[Kiana Kaslana?] The little AI was stunned. [Isn't she the Host's...]
Inexplicably, Prometheus regretted bringing this up in front of Fuli.
It wasn't that she harbored any weird romantic feelings for him, but rather, chatting about someone's heartbreaking past in front of them felt like sprinkling chili powder and dipping sauce with a bit of cumin on a wound.
"Yes, that white-haired girl living next door in Room 201."
Fuli was quite calm about this. "I said before, after the Great Honkai happened in Nagazora City, I got lucky and survived on the sparsely populated highway until the rescue team arrived. Not just me, the few survivors of Nagazora basically survived through similar methods."
"Kiana was the only exception." He let out a sigh belonging to a mortal. "She, along with two other little girls, fought her way out of the most densely populated city center purely on her own strength!"
...