Compared to Anti-Entropy, which issued US dollars to harvest resources from the Normal Side, Schicksal's reputation in this regard was significantly better.
At least compared to those green scraps of waste paper that were too rough even for wiping one's backside, the [Crystals] issued by Schicksal were primarily made from genuine, excavated rare minerals—Divine Amber—mixed with other materials in specific proportions.
As the mainstream currency of the Honkai Side, Crystals naturally required financial institutions like banks for management. After all, no one could just toss a sack of Crystals around during a transaction. Given how hard these things were, smashing someone to death with them would be getting off easy.
Thus, with Otto's support, the Interastral Peace Corporation—cough, the World Peace Corporation (IPC)—was born in the early 20th century, responsible for mining raw materials, processing and forging Crystals, and financial regulation.
In its early days, the Corporation wasn't large. On just one Earth, with only so many people on the Honkai Side, there was no need to make the enterprise overly complex.
It wasn't until the First and Second Eruptions occurred, where the spatial barriers shaken by the massive Honkai energy caused many Bubble Worlds to surface and connect with the Proper World—coupled with the rapid development of cross-world teleportation technologies like the Genius—that the Corporation's business began to boom. Under their guidance, Crystals became an indispensable part of the multi-world trade system.
Through the pioneering efforts of several generations of ambitious leaders like Louis Fleming and Dongfang Qiming, the IPC had now risen to become a major power second only to the Three Giants. It also firmly held the fourth seat in the Schicksal Council of Elders, boasting monstrous influence.
However, beneath the glory, there are always shadows. following the passing of the previous board chairman, the ascension of the new leader left many dissatisfied. Some were even sharpening their knives, planning to take their place.
Aside from the usual ambition of those in high places, there was also the fact that the previous chairman and the new chairman were father and daughter, and the new chairman had bestowed the title of the Council's Fourth Councillor upon her daughter, Asta.
Succession struggles were ever thus.
Some organization members worried that if this continued, the Corporation would become someone's private property. Leaving aside whether such complex maneuvering was nonsensical, it certainly gave people an excuse to "march on the capital."
Take this cargo transport, for example.
Before departure, the new chairman had already realized something was wrong.
However, because this batch of cargo was simply too important, she had to play a game of "repairing the plank road openly while crossing the warehouse in secret."
Publicly, she had her loyal subordinates pose as if they were transporting the goods, boarding an aerospace battleship to the delivery point. Secretly, she asked her daughter to disguise her identity and board a large luxury cruise ship—which wasn't a direct route—carrying the spatial device containing the real cargo, intending to reach the destination through multiple transfers.
Regrettably, the opposition still found out about this news from somewhere.
And thus, Asta's nightmare began.
Gluttony's Blood Feast—a continuously active B-Rank spell.
The caster first creates an environment with blood, then targets those who see, smell, or taste the blood, unleashing their killing instinct to seek fresh blood without restraint. simultaneously, their bodies are strengthened, granting them demonic combat abilities, turning them into slaughtering ghouls that attack surrounding living creatures based solely on instinct.
This cruel ritual, which requires only the sacrifice of a single cow to make an army of tens of thousands slaughter each other to the last man, was grandly unfolded within the closed environment of the cruise ship, an isolated island in the sea.
The scene was so wretched, so world-view shattering, that just recalling it made Asta want to vomit.
If that were all, it might have been manageable. Since the girl was transporting the real cargo, appropriate security measures had certainly been taken. Even though she couldn't arrange for powerhouse guards above the "Critical" level due to the need for secrecy, the chairman had still assigned her a full four A-Rank guards.
The result?
Petrifying Elixir—a potent poison specifically targeting energy circulation. Usually a powder, it can also be mixed into liquids.
No matter how it enters the body, once inside, it renders the victim's energy circulation inoperable, leaving them at the mercy of others for a short time.
All the A-Rank guards fell for it.
Turned into ordinary humans, their screams upon encountering the ghouls with demonic combat power still echoed in Asta's ears.
Ideally, this could have been avoided.
For such an important escort mission, consuming only food and water prepared before boarding and avoiding contact with the unfamiliar environment as much as possible was basic among basics.
However, Asta's age of 17 failed to command respect. Despite the girl emphasizing it multiple times beforehand, faced with the dazzling array of entertainment facilities on the luxury cruise and the delicacies prepared by Michelin chefs, the powerful guards, confident in their strength, couldn't help but indulge themselves.
There was only one exception: Arlan, a peer and servant whom Asta had picked up from an Arabian slum when she was a child. The honest and loyal boy remembered the young miss's instructions, consuming only the food and water from the spatial equipment from start to finish.
Therefore, Arlan was the only one who managed to fight back when surrounded, and it was he who escorted Asta all the way to the warehouse where she was currently hiding.
But that was the limit.
Arlan wasn't a genius. Even with the expensive equipment purchased for him, his strength barely touched the lower limit of B-Rank.
Meanwhile, seeing the situation develop sufficiently, the mastermind behind all this dispatched their elite troops.
The Kheshig—originating from the Mongol Empire, the imperial guard personally established by the incarnation of the Eternal Heaven, Genghis Khan.
Appearing here were certainly not the invincible cavalry that swept across Eurasia centuries ago, but "Blood Servants" converted by pure descendants of the Golden Family through the "Covenant of the Eternal Heaven."
When she learned the mastermind was the Kheshig, Asta fell into despair.
Covenant of the Eternal Heaven: developed by the Genghis Khan, it involves turning the blood of a Golden Family king into a small sword-like shape and inserting it into the heart of a target creature. The Golden Blood spreads throughout the body, transforming the target into a Blood Servant telepathically linked to the master—historically known as the Kheshig.
Transformed creatures not only gradually awaken their own abilities and gain significantly enhanced physical fitness, but their cognition also becomes twisted. While their memories remain unchanged, they become completely loyal to the Golden Family king. Depending on their original personality, this loyalty might manifest as love, respect, or worship.
This nature meant they could not be persuaded by anything other than physical force. Asta's final plan of bribery was dead on arrival.
Seeing that the Kheshig vanguard was about to find the hidden shipping container, Arlan had no choice but to step forward again, risking his life to lure the enemy away.
Leaving Asta alone in place, her soft, graceful body trembling uncontrollably.
"Daddy... Mommy... I'm scared..."
"Who can come? Who can come save me?"
Forget being the Fourth Councillor or the daughter of the IPC Chairman; right now, she was just a little girl realizing her death was imminent, having lost contact with her playmate, and unable to do anything herself.
Every sharp shout from outside increased the frequency of her trembling. Curled up in the corner of the shipping container with her eyes squeezed shut, she looked exactly like a little pink rabbit waiting to be slaughtered.
BOOM!!!
The noise of a heavy object smashing through the ceiling rang out. Asta's delicate feet in black high heels flinched inevitably.
Immediately, approaching footsteps made the girl realize something was standing right in front of her.
Clinging to the last shred of hope, she squeezed her eyes shut and shouted blindly, "I-I-I! I am Asta, daughter of the IPC Chairman! As long as you let me go this time, I can give you one hundred million Crystals as a reward afterward!"
As soon as the words left her mouth, Asta realized she had messed up. In her panic, her rich young miss mindset had taken over. If the person opposite had even a shred of class, they wouldn't care about mere money at a time like this.
Unexpectedly, the white-haired girl who had descended from the sky heard this, and her eyes instantly lit up. "One hundred million Crystals? Really? Bronya, did you hear that?"
"I heard it, Idiot Kiana."
A light snort carrying a hint of milkiness came from the earpiece Kiana was wearing. "Tsk, your luck is as good as always."
The Hyperion was short on money; wasn't this just getting a pillow when you wanted to snooze?
"Hehe, let's see what excuse Fuli and Mei use to lecture this young lady when we get back now!"
An image immediately floated into the white-haired Tuna's mind: herself lying on Mei's lap enjoying a fragrant knee pillow, while Fuli approached with a fawning face holding essential oil, loudly asking, 'Oh smart and capable Lady Kiana, may this lowly one offer a humble contribution?'
"W-Well, I suppose it's okay. What? You finished the back and want to do the front? Even that place? F-Fine, I'll give you this chance to curry favor with me, hehehe, Hiahiahia!"
Truly a turtle going to school—she couldn't hold back the laughter.
"!!!"
Seeing the wretched, lecherous expression—reminiscent of a dirty old man—appear on Kiana's beautiful, otherworldly face that resembled the Goddess of Moonlight, the slight flutter in Asta's heart caused by the suspension bridge effect vanished instantly.
Holy crap! A pervert!
...
After responding to Bronya, who had landed on the other side of the cruise ship, Kiana woke up from her monogamous harem fantasy and looked at the pretty girl with short pink hair in front of her.
Cheeks fair, neck slender as a swan, delicate collarbones hidden behind a black bow tie. Her upper body wore a sleeveless white shirt; her full, rounded chest pushed the exquisite lace top into a tempting curve, and below her snowy, smooth shoulders was a captivating side profile.
Pink borders on white sleeves were clamped onto the girl's lotus-root-like white arms. Her lower body was clad in a high-waisted, purple-black pleated skirt, and a pair of slender, fair legs stood straight, with a black and gold leg ring encircling the right thigh.
A beautiful girl! And with the rare "Rich Woman" attribute!
The white-haired Tuna's eyes lit up. She rubbed her small hands together, her "pervert genes" stirring restlessly.
But soon, as if remembering something, she wilted, even the ahoge on top of her head drooping listlessly. Clearly, she realized she was already taken.
On the other side, Asta was secretly observing the color refracted by her necklace. This necklace, a gift from her mother on her 10th birthday, could detect the strength of life forms within a ten-meter radius and inform the owner of the target's power attribute and level via the glowing light on its surface.
Dim light meant C-Rank, soft light meant B-Rank, and the dazzling light blooming now meant Kiana's combat ability was top-tier even within the A-Rank classification.
"Great!"
The girl couldn't suppress her joy. When fleeing, she had probed the strength of the Kheshig troops; out of a hundred people, eighty percent were C-Rank, and the remaining were mostly B-Rank. As for A-Rank, there were only three...
Okay, maybe not THAT great.
Asta's shoulders slumped in disappointment.
Low-strength soldiers in a unit and isolated low-strength individuals couldn't be roughly equated. Western phalanxes, Eastern formations—history was full of stories where well-trained troops defeated stronger individuals.
"Hey you, why are you happy one second and sad the next?"
Kiana scratched her head in confusion, then backhandedly hoisted Asta onto her shoulder.
"Eh?"
"Don't 'eh' me, big sponsors get priority evac to the safe zone! Our ship is right in the sky; this young lady will take you up first!"
Kiana winked at the girl on her shoulder and prepared to soar back up through the spot she had landed.
However, looking up, she discovered the hole she had smashed open had completely healed in mere tens of seconds. The metallic sheen on it declared a hardness far surpassing before.
"If we could run, Arlan and I would have run long ago."
Asta, still being carried, sighed faintly. "This ship has been activated by the wielder of the Hong Jun Sword. Essentially, it's no different from a controlled metallic lifeform."
"Considering activating a ship requires massive Honkai energy and time, the process likely isn't fully complete yet. That's why we haven't been attacked immediately."
She spoke quickly: "Once completed—"
"It's like making an enemy of the whole world, right?"
Kiana put her down and asked into her headset, "Hear that, Bronya? We gotta hurry up!"
A calm voice came from the other side: "Bronya has already eliminated 23 Kheshig skirmishers and two Kheshig guards. Meanwhile, Idiot Kiana is still standing in the same spot."
Kiana muttered, "That's just 'cause the environment favors that new skill you got."
The Matrix of Prescience.
A new technique Bronya learned via the Illusionary Martial Arts Catalog, which is also the signature technique of General Fu Xuan from the Taixu Front.
It drastically enhances the brain's computational capacity, constructing a massive model within the mind to process tens or hundreds of millions of numbers or other data points at high speed.
The cruise ship environment was closed to begin with. As long as a large model was established, combined with Bronya's exquisite positioning and super-heavy firepower, dividing and annihilating the weaker members of the Kheshig was simply too easy.
"Um! Miss Bronya on the other end!"
Realizing something, Asta hurriedly added, "If you see a dark-skinned boy with white hair anywhere, please, you must save his life!"
"Benefits?"
The response was mixed with the sound of violent explosions; one could practically visualize the sky-high flames just by listening.
"Another one hundred million Crystals!"
Asta said decisively. What was money anyway?
"Deal."
Bronya cut the comms. Her inorganic gray eyes reflected the structural map of the entire cruise ship.
Likely realizing her map-hack perspective, the Kheshig wielding the Hong Jun Sword had begun controlling the ship to change its internal structure, attempting to create blind spots for an ambush.
"However, too naive."
The girl raised her small hand.
"Project Bunny, fire the Particle Dispersal EMP rounds. Release Mihoyo Particles into the air."