By the artificial lake, in front of the two armies, a fierce chase unfolded slowly—
"Stinky Ah-Li, stop! Don't run!"
"Bullsh*t, Jie-men (Gentlemen?), you're disgusted by your own stinky feet?"
"Why wouldn't I be? Who uses the same towel for their face and feet!"
"Hiss—! You have a point."
While Fuli paused to think, Kiana swooshed up and tackled him to the ground.
Even though Fuli was always in a state of combat readiness with the Demon Blade Shiranui active, the girl's monstrous strength made it hard for him to struggle free.
"Hehe, caught you now~ I tickle!"
The white-haired dumpling wickedly reached out and tickled his vulnerable armpits.
"Mei! Friend in danger! Return quickly!"
Fuli, attacked on his ticklish spots, burst into deafening laughter on the spot. Tears overflowing, he hurriedly waved to Mei, begging her to come help quickly.
Normally, seeing Fuli and Kiana playing and making noise, Mama Mei would stand aside, chin in hand, with that characteristic lewd auntie smile of a CP fan seeing her ship sail.
But this time, watching the two rolling around, laughing and cursing (and Bronya, who was tormented to the point of rolling her eyes back and almost expelling her soul), a faint discomfort she had never felt before suddenly surfaced in the girl's heart for some reason.
Considering the crisis wasn't over yet, and Fuli's cries for help were getting weaker, Mei had to put aside this subtle emotion for now and ran over quickly to separate the two.
"Shut up! You two stinky brats over there!"
Already frustrated from being thwarted by Theresa at every turn, Cocolia was now agitated by the 360-degree surround sound noise.
Extremely angry, she roared a massive sound wave comparable to the Landlady's Lion's Roar in Kung Fu Hustle. Her narrow, sharp phoenix eyes were like two sharp knives whistling through the Valkyrie squad, viciously slashing at those two little bastards who ruined her plans!
—Wait! Through the Valkyrie squad?!
"Yuya!"
The adjutant, who was watching the drama while eating melon, quickly responded: "Here! Lady Cocolia!"
"Didn't I tell you to keep an eye on those people? When did they run behind Schicksal!"
"Huh?"
Yuya recalled for a moment and realized it was exactly when she was happily watching the two argue.
Kitty Kiana, held high by the back of her collar by Mei, hung her head and made a cute 'Yeah!' sign to the adjutant in mid-air.
Yuya was furious: "Despicable! Using such a method to divert my attention! Just playing petty tricks!"
"What despicable! You just weren't paying attention!"
Cocolia was done. She thought to herself, I'm really stupid, really. Even if I'm short on staff, I shouldn't have temporarily promoted this girl with a missing screw to adjutant.
If it were Bronya, who previously held the adjutant position, how could she be fooled by such childish tricks?
So the question is, where is the conscientious former little adjutant right now?
Exchanging a glance with Bronya, who was lying on Fuli's back, Cocolia slapped herself on the face.
On someone else's back.
Sadness flowed backward like a river.
"Executor!"
Yuya panicked: "Even, even if this subordinate made a mistake, you don't need to punish yourself like this!"
Facing her teary-eyed subordinate, Cocolia obviously couldn't hold it together: "Ah yes yes yes, I'm punishing myself because of you."
Hearing this, the adjutant was moved almost to tears. She sniffled hard and whispered a reminder: "Um, My Lady, I remember you asked the Doctor to send two things yesterday, right? Can't you use those to turn the tide?"
Yesterday evening, realizing the situation was gradually slipping out of control, Cocolia asked Yuya to contact the Anti-Entropy Executor candidate codenamed [Infinity] and have her send two magic weapons for victory.
One was the mental platform generator used to communicate with Mei earlier.
And the second was a Pseudo-Herrscher core.
The function of this thing was similar to the previously mentioned Divine Key. Its effect was to absorb a large amount of Honkai energy to prevent Raiden Mei from awakening when she shouldn't.
At that time, Cocolia had already prepared two plans:
If she could catch Raiden Mei quickly, she would follow the pre-set plan. Using twelve ancient Honkai phenomena around Nagazora City, such as the Thousand Shadow Tale, Tachibana Garden, and Mirror Language Hymn, as nodes, she would mobilize a massive amount of Honkai energy exceeding 2000 HW, pour it into Mei to forcibly activate the Gem of Conquest, and artificially create the Third Eruption.
Of course, the explanation given to unknowing people like Yuya was that they were injecting a harmless amount of Honkai energy into the populace using regulation technology developed by the Technical Department referencing Shenzhou cultivation methods, artificially increasing ordinary people's Honkai adaptability, and thereby inducing potential stigmata awakeners to recruit them.
And if she couldn't trigger the Third Eruption, she would take Mei, the carrier, back to North America to plan for the long term.
The Pseudo-Herrscher core was the safety catch for the latter.
Even if the probability was less than one in ten thousand, assuming Mei really got stimulated by something external or forcibly awakened through her own conviction, this thing could absorb a large amount of Honkai energy before the Great Eruption occurred, thereby interrupting Raiden Mei's Herrscher transformation and preventing her from escaping Cocolia's control at an inopportune time.
To be able to start it means also being able to stop it. The power to pull the trigger must always remain in her hands from beginning to end.
But the result?
Theresa descended from the sky on the Hyperion, waved her small hand, and declared, I'm taking them today, and I'd like to see who dares to stop me!
I've been tossing and turning in Nagazora City for three or four months and you ignored it, but now that it's about to succeed, you run over to steal the peach, is that it?
Her full chest heaving violently, Cocolia, consumed by rage, couldn't help but roar again: "Theresa Apocalypse!!!"
"Hehe~"
A green-haired woman observing this battlefield from the other side of the Earth through some means let out a low chuckle.
Seemingly sensing Cocolia's monstrous rage, the platform generator tucked in her coat pocket suddenly activated, connecting to the only girl present with Raiden blood, Mei. A sparkling crystal core flew up the high-dimensional channel and merged with her like a swallow returning to its nest.
"Hmm?"
As the only person on the scene to see this, Cocolia froze on the spot.
She absolutely didn't see it wrong. The crystal core just now was the Pseudo-Herrscher core she asked that green-haired snake for to suppress the Great Eruption.
Before she could think further.
The wind picked up.
The wind rose and clouds surged.
An indescribable great terror breathed above the dome of the sky. Clouds, mist, and water vapor gathered in the hole piercing the atmosphere, accumulating continuously.
Their color gradually deepened until the sun high above was obscured. Dark clouds covered the sky and earth, turning day into night at this moment, descending heavily like a curtain. The fierce wind howled and raged, lightning suddenly appeared, and silvery-white snakes wound and exploded in the sky, becoming the only light illuminating this world!
"Not good! Judah!"
The unlocking of the "S-rank Restriction Treaty" in her body made Theresa's hair stand on end!
The petite and lovely white-haired girl, with ruthlessness completely contrary to her cute appearance, immediately deployed the Godsbane weapon named Judah. The chains bearing the name of the betrayer rolled out, pitch-black and ferocious, shuttling through heaven and earth, whistling toward Raiden Mei to pierce all her vital points and nail her to the spot like the Saint form two thousand years ago!
But long before this, as if anticipating Theresa's overreaction, the mech unit behind Cocolia moved.
They stepped forward with sonorous strides, passing the blonde beauty who was unaware of this, and deployed into formation. Using spears, swords, knives, guns, and their own bodies, they blocked the chains that should have nailed Mei in the void, dying on the path like loyal dead soldiers!
The time these Titans bought was short, perhaps just an instant slower than a blink.
But in that instant, the twelve ancient Honkai phenomena existing around Nagazora City turned into beams of light shooting into the sky.
They roared, entangled, advanced, and rotated, converging into a torrent of Honkai energy deep as an abyss, like a prison, like a dragon, diving toward the bearer of the Gem of Conquest!
"Damn it! Himeko!"
Seeing that interception was too late, Theresa couldn't help but shout.
"Already on it!"
Holding the Surtr Greatsword horizontally behind her in the Lion Breaker stance most suitable for wide, sweeping strikes, Murata Himeko erupted with a spiral sea of flames beneath her feet as propulsion for a rising dragon!
"FALL—DOWN!!!"
The incarnation of Vermilion Knight, wrapped in six crescent-shaped blade beams like blazing wings, rose from the ground and slashed howling at the diving torrent of Honkai energy carrying a storm of blood!
BOOM!!!
Purple, white, red, and gold—mottled lights of four colors collided, bit, and tore at each other hundreds of meters in the air. In an instant, the surrounding air was heated to over ten thousand degrees, as if hundreds of suns hung high in the sky releasing light and heat simultaneously!
Unfortunately, this slash was still too hasty. The flames of Vermilion Knight, dyeing a third of the sky red, expanded and collapsed, finally turning into a crimson meteor smashing fiercely into the earth!
"ROAR—!!!"
The spiritual dragon-snake formed of liquid energy let out an extremely domineering hiss of triumph, wrapping the remaining massive amount of Honkai energy and pouring it into Raiden Mei's body, condensing into a cocoon that enveloped her!
"Tsk!"
Seeing that the situation was irreversible, Himeko, sensing something, jumped out of the crater that was still dozens of meters deep after instinctively dissipating the force.
She grabbed Kiana, who was waving a baseball bat to resist the shockwave nearby, under her arm. While swinging her sword to cut through dozens of lightning strikes, she shouted: "Combatants below A-rank, and those with abilities related to lightning, evacuate immediately!!!"
"Using a Godhead to feed a Herrscher, Cocolia, you woman, are you crazy?!!"
Theresa, who also realized some truth, revealed killing intent. She glanced at Cocolia's location but found nothing.
"Fuck! Ran pretty fast!!!"
She cursed loudly. After destroying the fearless Anti-Entropy troops in a few moves, she immediately controlled the Oath of Judah to prepare to do something else.
Isn't this how it always unfolds in Homu's Adventure? The incubation of the final BOSS always takes time.
As long as she broke the cocoon wrapping Raiden Mei during this period, she could interrupt her Herrscher transformation process.
Only regrettably, since the mastermind dared to cause trouble right in front of Theresa, speed was naturally taken into consideration.
A deep purple pillar of light suddenly unfolded, penetrating heaven and earth, suppressing the rolling lightning and thunder in the dark clouds to become the light of truth illuminating the boundless darkness.
After nine hundred cycles of birth and destruction, this ray of sacred yet evil light contracted back into that small cocoon along with the sky full of thunder.
Thump-thump!
That was a heartbeat.
A strong and powerful heartbeat.
A vigorous heartbeat announcing the imminent descent of the supreme, grandest, strongest, and most honorable magnificent existence!
Generous King, Grand Marshal, Moluo, Compassionate, Soma Drinker, King with Golden Hands, Wielder of the Vajra, Slayer of Vritra, Destroyer of Fortresses, God of Strength, King of Protection, Protector of the Universe, Grand Marshal, Friend, Sakya, Giver, Ruler, Conqueror, Friend, City Taker, Fortress in Water, Heaven-Given, Deva, Indra, Lord of Devas, Lord Indra, Victor, Supreme Victor, Ruler of the Gods of Heaven, Thousand-Eyed Sakra, Indra!
Disordered proverbs resounded for a thousand miles, finally extracted and summarized by the brain in a form understandable to humans, turning into a magnificent poem chanting the tip of the iceberg of this King's past miracles.
Rip—
A pair of hands tore apart the tiny world nurturing them from the inside.
'She' opened her sorrowful divine eyes enshrouded in heavenly punishment, slowly rising amidst the cluster of billions of starlights.
Her magnificent long dress floated dreamily, her bare feet, white as ivory, bound with golden ornaments, and her long beautiful hair seemed to drag the starry sky behind it.
Herrscher of Thunder, Godhead Manifested.
The sky of Honshu Island was dyed in the color of death, and the boundary between imaginary and reality receded like a tide.
The swarming tide of Honkai beasts roared to the sky, offering a gun salute for the birth of the King!
...
Let's rewind time a bit—
Watching helplessly as the 'Pseudo-Herrscher core' entered Mei's body along the mental channel opened by the platform, Cocolia, no matter how idiotic, could realize that something was definitely wrong with this thing.
She pressed one hand on the quantum communication device unaffected by electromagnetic interference, and without dialing a number, shouted the other person's name into it: "I know you're watching! What the hell did you do to those two things! Answer me! Green Snake! Green Snake! —Mobius!!!"
"Oh my, why so angry, my dear friend~"
A very leisurely and cheerful female voice came from the receiver of the communication device.
She indeed wasn't in a hurry. A C-rank Valkyrie's reflexes allow her to dodge bullets in milliseconds, which means there are plenty of tricks in the Honkai world to compress communication time.
Just like the three zero-frame dialogues between Theresa and Himeko earlier, in layman's terms, it's like in JOJO, commentary and dialogue time don't occupy plot progression.
"I'm angry?"
Cocolia pointed at Raiden Mei in the distance, who had suddenly erupted with a huge electromagnetic field, repelling everything around including Fuli and Kiana, and said hatefully to the communication device: "You tell me what that is about!"
Obviously, regarding the changes happening to Mei right now, Cocolia was basically completely clueless.
"Didn't you ask me to send the mental platform and the Godhead over?"
The beauty addressed as Mobius chuckled: "Look, haven't they achieved the purpose for which they were sent?"
"I asked you to send two things, and you tampered with both of them, didn't you!"
Cocolia laughed in extreme anger: "Wait? Godhead? You sent a f*cking Godhead?!!"
"It's the Godhead of the Thunder God Indra, the Lord of the Thirty-Three Heavens in mythology, or was it Thirty-Six Heavens? Whatever, it doesn't matter."
Mobius took a sip of coffee, revealing a bitter expression while pleading innocence: "I gave you such a good thing and you don't even know how to cherish it. Truly like a dog biting Lu Dongbin, not recognizing a good heart."
"So you sold me out just like that? Creating a Herrscher right in front of the Schicksal group to ruin my reputation? Is this how you treat the collaborator who was the first to lend a hand when the Life School was ostracized back then?!!"
With her only companion Yuya blasted away by the lightning earlier, Cocolia, now alone, didn't need to keep silent about the details of the Third Eruption like before.
"Ruined reputation?"
Mobius on the other end asked back strangely: "Who? You?"
"If not me, could it be you?"
Cocolia cursed: "This isn't some private matter where anything goes! Theresa and her gang are watching with their own eyes! If they spread the news that I triggered the Third Eruption, forget others, just the fury of the Taixu Front would be enough to swallow me, the leader of the Reformist Faction!"
The Taixu Front, an anti-Honkai faction established in recent years centered on Shenzhou, had explicit strength slightly inferior to Schicksal and Anti-Entropy, but had also stepped into the threshold of super-large organizations.
"Indeed, once the news of you triggering the Third Eruption is exposed, let alone other Anti-Entropy Executors, even I, your dearest friend and sister, would have to cut ties with you at light speed to save myself."
After all, this sh*t pot stinks too much; getting even a little bit on you would cause a huge stink.
Mobius smiled narrowly: "But the premise is, someone has to know!"
"Do you think they are blind!"
Pointing in the direction of the Valkyrie squad, Cocolia roared into the walkie-talkie.
"They aren't blind, the world is blind."
In an underground laboratory somewhere in Florida, North America, the bewitching beauty with green hair draped over her shoulders played with her fingers slowly: "I know you're anxious, but don't be anxious yet. Let's settle the accounts, my old friend—First, Nagazora City is our Anti-Entropy territory, right?"
"Nonsense!"
Cocolia said grumpily, calculating in her heart what means she should use to drag this green snake watching from the sidelines into the water.
"Second, we've been tossing around in Nagazora City for several months, and this land has remained calm... right?"
"Of course!"
Grumpy +1.
"Then, as soon as Theresa and her Valkyrie squad arrived in Nagazora City, the Third Eruption went BOOM! and exploded!"
"Hiss—!"
Cocolia, figuring it out, sucked in a breath of cold air: "You mean?"
"Oh heavens, old partner! We worked conscientiously in Nagazora City for several months and nothing happened, but as soon as the Schicksal people came, the Great Eruption happened and the Herrscher of Thunder was born! What does this show?"
Mobius hugged herself, her pupils trembling, seeming terrified of Schicksal's inhumanity: "This shows that the real culprit who triggered the Third Eruption and caused the annihilation of millions in Nagazora City is her, Theresa Apocalypse!"
"[Slavic Profanity!!!]"
Such sinister intentions made Cocolia, who always considered herself inhuman, unable to resist cursing Suka Blyat.
Of course, she understood that this alone wasn't enough to confirm that [The Great Eruption of Nagazora was triggered by Theresa's arrival], but all they needed was to drag Schicksal into the arena through these points and muddy the waters.
As soon as Schicksal arrives, the Herrscher descends. Look, what a beautiful coincidence!
Who asked you, Schicksal, to have a criminal record! The tens of millions of people who died directly or indirectly during the Second Eruption are watching you from hell!
With such a large population base, and fourteen years having passed for a generation to grow up, want to guess if there are any relatives or friends of the victims among the middle and high levels of various countries/factions in the world today? And among these people, are there any who are dissatisfied with Schicksal or simply want to use this topic to make a fuss?
When the water is muddy, it's naturally easier to fish.
'Of course, even if a problem really arises, it's Cocolia who did the bad things anyway!'
As everyone knows, dearest friends and sisters are always meant to be sold out.
Mobius thought with wicked amusement.
Seeing the bad woman come up with a feasible plan, Cocolia was very unhappy, but she lost her previous hysteria: "Don't change the subject! I haven't settled the score with you for tampering with the things I asked for! Also, if that little radish Theresa hadn't come, were you planning to find another chance to screw me over again!"
Her use of "again" was very subtle.
"It's not good to act innocent after getting a bargain, you know?"
Sitting back in her chair, Mobius crossed her slender, white-snake-like legs: "Getting hung up on trivial matters is thinking like a pawn. As a leader, you shouldn't care about these details. I called a car for you, take it and leave."
As soon as she finished speaking, something flashed across the cloud-covered horizon.
It was an aerial carrier battle group surpassing the Hyperion in both scale and number. The Belobog, having ended its exercise in the Sea of Japan early under the Executor's order, cruised over, remaining steadfast under the bombardment of lightning and thunder.
"Just spouting bullshit that sounds reasonable."
Cocolia narrowed her eyes, suddenly realizing a problem: "Hey, it won't work if only I leave. You have to help pull out the neutral research team I brought in earlier too."
She wasn't worried about the observational data. Since Mobius dared to do this, she definitely could observe it from her side.
Tsk, this bitch, the more I think about it, the angrier I get!
"Those disobedient research fanatics? If they die, they die!"
Mobius switched her crossed legs and said indifferently: "People you begged grandpa and grandma to get over here, haven't you been annoyed with them for a long time too?"
Cocolia wanted to refute a bit, but the surging emotions in her heart told her: Damn it, this green snake is extremely right! Extremely right!
Regrettably, she couldn't do that. She wasn't Mobius who held her position through technical skills; this matter concerned her reputation in Anti-Entropy.
Calling people over to help and then leaving them in a war zone while running away with her tail between her legs... Cocolia couldn't afford to lose face like that.
Regarding this, Mobius's attitude was: "Fine, fine, I will try my best to assist you, Lord Leader. Hey, tell me, is a caring sister like me hard to find even with a lantern these days?"
"You guy! Do you think I don't know that 'try my best' = 'no effort at all'?!! Hello? Hello? Fuuckkk!!!"
Cocolia crushed the useless communicator, and said to Yuya, who had barely walked back against the strong wind:
"Go!"
...