[That woman who just slipped away was Cocolia, right? To actually take the initiative to create a Herrscher artificially.]
This really was like sticking a straw into a cesspit—risking one's life to suck up sh*t (court death).
At this moment, even with Dr. MEI's vast knowledge, she couldn't help but marvel at the "charm" of civilization.
Even in the Fire Moth of the Previous Era—that mental hospital composed of murderers, crazy scholars, schizophrenics, charlatans, aliens, and petty thieves—the people there would at most research the corpses of dead Herrschers to create early versions of Stigmata and whatnot. None dared to directly create a Herrscher.
This was a perfect embodiment of biodiversity: when the forest is big, all kinds of birds exist.
Recalling those Flame-Chasers who had caused 'herself' a lot of trouble, and whom 'she' had also troubled greatly, Dr. MEI's gaze couldn't help but turn to Theresa, who was wrestling with Shesha.
'With this child's ability, she could probably rank around the middle among those thirteen.'
She thought.
They were currently in the suburbs, and Nagazora City in the distance was in chaos.
This was the fear and panic modern people felt when power and water supplies stopped, the internet cut off, and signals were lost.
Taking advantage of this chaotic time, many lawless individuals turned into criminals, running through the streets and alleys to start a carnival for outlaws.
Notice the problem?
Even though the born Herrscher of Thunder was so close, Nagazora City could still be called "intact."
Why?
Because while Theresa was wrestling with Shesha, diverting attention to control chains to restrain the Honkai beast tide and block heavenly strikes, she also raised a birdcage-like barrier reaching the sky, completely enveloping the land within a radius of dozens of miles!
However, this birdcage wasn't made of threads, but chains of Judah.
Utilizing the Oath of Judah's Honkai energy nullification ability, Theresa was currently desperately suppressing the Great Eruption, which should have engulfed at least half of the Far East, inside the birdcage, preventing it from spreading!
[Truly impressive.]
Dr. MEI was somewhat dazed.
Memories inherited from Dr. MEI of the Previous Era constantly impacted her mind—anger, hatred, and longing as a survivor of the Third Eruption of the Previous Era facing everything before her.
Anger and hatred directed at the Herrscher of Thunder and the Honkai itself;
Longing meant that even today, Dr. MEI still hoped a hero would appear back then, arriving in time to turn the tide like Theresa.
Ultimately, they were just inherited memories, and Dr. MEI quickly regained her composure.
She said with great regret: [Unfortunately, that child won't last long.]
This was a fact.
The liquid energy torrent gathered from twelve nodes constantly bombarded the outside of the birdcage, while the Great Eruption triggered by the Herrscher's birth constantly washed against the inside.
Theresa herself still needed to restrain Shesha, an S-rank entity, and all this was while the Herrscher of Thunder hadn't formally made a move yet.
[Speaking of which, Host, I suddenly realized a problem.]
Tapping the corner of her mouth with slender fingers, Dr. MEI's eyes curved into beautiful crescents: [The reason things have developed into such a mess is all because that little girl named Raiden Mei left alone last night after coaxing you to sleep, right?]
Before Fuli could answer, she teased in a mischievous tone: [Tell me, last night when you two were alone on the second floor, the atmosphere was great. If you had really done something to her, pressed her onto the floor and banged her all night, Cocolia wouldn't have found a chance to communicate with her alone, and none of these subsequent events would have happened, right? My chaste little Host~]
Gave you a chance and you didn't take it!
Despite having the exact same face as Mei, this person suddenly became shameless again.
Dr. MEI was trying very hard to adjust the atmosphere. Floating in the air, she wrapped her arms around her chest, which was at least a D-cup, squeezing out cleavage. Her long, snow-white legs also dangled in front of Fuli from time to time, trying to distract the adolescent boy with sex appeal.
However, Fuli remained stunned.
For a long time, he thought the birth of the Herrscher of Thunder in Nagazora City was destiny.
In this moment, he finally understood: what humans generally call fate is mostly just stupid things done by themselves or others.
Why were Raiden Mei and Bronya so good to him for no reason in the previous timeline? Despite meeting for the first time, they were eager to confide in him and teach him life-saving skills like hacking and the Hokushin-Ittō-Ryū style.
Just because they were fellow survivors of the Third Eruption?
The torrential rain brewing in the thunderclouds poured down on the boy, instantly soaking his already thin clothes. The spiritual energy of the Demon Sword Shiranui flickered dimly, like the lifeless, turbid eyes of a person about to die.
"Hehe, so that's how it is."
It turned out he was the only one kept in the dark.
"So that's it..."
He laughed uncontrollably, shaking his head.
Laughed again, then shook his head again.
A Herrscher.
An... accomplice.
...
Seeing the chaos exceeding her comprehension, Kiana anxiously circled around Fuli, swinging her bat time and again to repel attacks aimed at them.
"Ah-Li, don't just stand there! Is there a way to make Mei return to normal?!"
She believed in him as always, just like those times when hope appeared at the end of the road.
However, this time, the moment she met Fuli's crimson eyes, the girl's movement to pull the trigger suddenly froze.
Kiana had noticed long ago the difference in Fuli's attitude towards her compared to Mei and Bronya.
It was also this attentiveness, honed from four years of wandering, that allowed her to notice something after leaving Raiden Tower. Although the boy (who had vaguely sensed the Third Eruption had an inside story related to Mei and others through conversation with Yuya) appeared normal on the surface, he seemed to be carrying something incredibly heavy on his shoulders.
Yet he was still like a firefly flitting through the woods alone in the depths of late autumn, flickering on the verge of extinguishing, holding onto his last breath just hoping to find one last companion before death.
And now, the light was gone.
What remained was only the deepest night.
Dr. MEI, who had watched this whole scene, sighed faintly: [This time I advise you to leave them behind and make a strategic retreat. Host, you shouldn't think I'm trying to manipulate you with words, right?]
S-rank, Natural Disaster.
This level benchmarks against the total combat power of a single medium-sized faction.
The medium-sized combatant faction [Eight Faces of Unjust Death] that hired Fuli in the previous timeline—eight people, eight faces, every one of them Critical-level.
Single S-rank = Eight Critical-levels. Even if the formula isn't perfectly accurate, it's basically close enough.
Compared to the steady improvement before, this was a cliff-like gap.
Asking Fuli to fight against a Super S-rank monster holding Authority like the Herrscher of Thunder—it was like an amateur boxing enthusiast stepping into the ring without knowing who his opponent was.
Then the lights went out, came back on, and Bruce Lee in his prime rushed out screaming.
He thought he was definitely done for. Prime Bruce Lee—wouldn't that be a dimensionality reduction strike against him?
Unfortunately, no. This was at best an unfair match.
He soon discovered that Bruce Lee didn't warm up after entering the ring but put on a referee's uniform. His real opponent was Optimus Prime, who had just finished transforming and was assuming a cosmic martial arts stance.
Heaven have mercy!
Fuli's meticulously maintained Mikazuki Munechika was a "lifetime" away from breaking through the Herrscher of Thunder's electromagnetic defense!
Zzzzt!
A tangible, majestic electromagnetic field suddenly expanded in all directions with the Herrscher of Thunder as the center.
Kiana, who had been fighting constantly, had quick eyes and hands, swinging her Galactic Bat at the small portion about to hit her.
Even though she was knocked back dozens of meters in one breath, and blood faintly seeped from the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, relying on the Kaslana family's ancestral absolute Honkai resistance and monstrous strength, she still managed to barely stand firm.
"Ah-Li!"
She turned her head, anxiously wanting to say something.
But she found that the figure who had merely reacted defensively by instinct, the handsome boy she had relied on all along this journey, had been knocked high into the air by that strike, becoming smaller and smaller.
The girl gritted her teeth, about to turn and chase after him.
"Don't make it hard for that child."
A crimson figure burning with sword intent cut through the atmosphere. Surrounded by high heat, Murata Himeko arrived.
She wore the Scarlet Knight armor forged from fire, with a long cable trailing from her back like an Evangelion charging plug, connecting to the sky.
The Nexus System. Designed personally by Schicksal Overseer Otto Apocalypse, it was a pinnacle achievement that loaded weapons, energy, and equipment originally intended for an aerial battleship-class unit onto a connected suit of armor.
The combat power amplification was determined by the grade of the connected battleship. Mounted on the Hyperion, the ace battleship of the Far East Branch, its user gained a powerful boost far exceeding Emperor-class Honkai beasts.
The only small drawback was that it significantly consumed the user's lifespan.
What? You call that a small drawback?
To be fair, compared to the critical moments that would require the Nexus System, consuming lifespan could really only be considered a bonus throw-in.
Besides that, commanding the Hyperion to unleash firepower, arranging Valkyrie troops to form a defensive net on the perimeter to block Honkai beasts, ordering subordinates to transmit the situation of Nagazora City through various means...
Himeko didn't waste a single bit of the tiny amount of time Theresa desperately bought.
"You—"
The beautiful crimson figure entering her view left Kiana stunned on the spot.
Himeko patted this stranger girl's shoulder: "Fuli isn't in the right state of mind. Don't force him."
Multi-function scanning module, one of the features equipped on the Nexus System, collected and scanned surrounding material information through optical, sonic, energy, and other detection means, analyzing it against a database.
But even without this, the expressions revealed by a person when their heart was extremely shaken could absolutely not be hidden from Murata Himeko, who had rich life experience.
Current Fuli, with his terrible mental state—let alone being a B-rank Breaker, even if he possessed combat capabilities above Critical-level, forcing him into this battle would absolutely result in death.
And Murata Himeko, as long as she lived, would never let the people she protected be sacrificed.
Because the word sacrifice must be voluntary, not forced.
This is a warrior's dignity.
Sacrificing oneself versus sacrificing others—a single thought's difference, yet worlds apart.
The former is a hero's pride; the latter is merely the act of a despicable person.
Otto Apocalypse was different.
The center of the struggle between the S-rank Valkyrie and the Judgement-class Honkai Beast had turned into a huge, viscous quagmire. The energy tide, dense enough to be almost tangible, twisted and stretched space itself, rendering conventional communication means completely ineffective here.
[Leave, Theresa.]
A clear voice, completely dissociable from a five-hundred-year-old monster, echoed in the girl's ear.
The person speaking was none other than the Overseer who had ruled Schicksal for five centuries.
[Grandpa knows that little girl named Raiden Mei's stubborn resistance inside the Herrscher gave you a sliver of possibility that you might win. However, the fact is, the entire four islands of the Far East cannot be saved.]
Even Otto, wielding the Void Archives (Key of Revelation), couldn't glimpse the full picture of the battlefield from Schicksal HQ—the floating island above the Mediterranean—due to interference from wildly growing electromagnetic fields, frantically distorted dense Honkai energy, Judah's rated power, and many other factors.
But based on conjecture alone, he almost touched the truth.
The Herrscher of Thunder hadn't moved yet.
Raiden Mei inside her was still resisting.
But she couldn't resist for long.
Unnoticed, a geometric, unbridled halo of light had already appeared to the side of the Herrscher of Thunder's head.
Six blazing wings of light constructed from Authority slowly formed behind her. The wings themselves were composed of countless energy crystals of varying sizes, covered with magnificent purple patterns like artistic decorations.
The moment they fully formed, it would represent the Herrscher of Thunder's complete control over the body.
That would also be Theresa's time of death.
Having held back the spread of the Great Eruption and Shesha in one breath, she had no spare capacity to block an attack from a Herrscher in peak condition.
Rather, she was currently forced to recall the obsidian chains dealing with the Honkai beast tide, handing that task to the distantly engaged Valkyrie troops, to focus on Shesha's increasingly angry offensive.
She couldn't win.
Just like Dr. MEI, who inherited the memories of the Previous Era's Fire Moth leader, the Schicksal Overseer of the Current Era reached the same conclusion.
For both public and private reasons, Otto didn't want Theresa, whom he treated as a granddaughter and a precious combat asset, to die here.
However, he also knew his advice would hardly be effective.
The reason he gave the immensely important name [Theresa] to this Experimental Subject A-310, created by combining genes of Kallen and Vishnu, was precisely because she showed brilliance similar to Kallen's in that slaughter against fellow clones.
And Kallen, if it were her.
Facing the current situation, she would definitely—
"Grand... pa!"
"I... won't leave!"
Her clenched silver teeth faintly sank into her gums, the metallic taste of blood spreading in her mouth.
Every bone in her body creaked, muscles taut as if they would snap the next second.
The girl once heard a joke from a dear friend who hadn't passed away yet: Regret isn't shameful, because people move forward constantly through regret.
At the time, Theresa giggled and dismissed it. They were S-rank Valkyries standing at the peak of the world; what existence could make them regret?
Until the Second Eruption occurred. Until that blood-stained white iris was scattered across the cold sky of Siberia.
...