In other words, although her appearance and hair color had changed, Bianca was undoubtedly Siegfried's biological daughter.
How could Rita, who cared so deeply for Bianca, possibly hope to see Bianca clash with her biological father?
However, the moment Siegfried saw that message, he simply grabbed Rita's phone and bolted.
Less than thirty seconds after Siegfried left with his hood pulled up, Bianca appeared near Rita and the others.
Seeing Rita, who was not lightly injured, Bianca, who had just arrived at the scene, instantly felt anger surge into her eyes.
"Lady Durandal..."
"Rita..."
Helping her deputy up from the ground, Bianca asked in an incomparably furious tone.
"Who on earth..."
"Who hurt you like this?"
Chapter 19: Otto, why are you just watching!
Looking at Durandal before her, Rita managed to force herself to stand up from the ground, then said helplessly to Durandal.
"Schicksal's traitor, Siegfried Kaslana."
"Though in a sense, we must thank him, because..."
"--If he hadn't intended to hold back, we should already be dead beneath his Judgment of Shamash."
"Huh? Holding back?"
Hearing the information Rita reported, Durandal, who had already been preparing her combat gear to give chase, asked with a hint of confusion.
"He really held back in the fight? Why?"
"Who knows."
Shrugging helplessly, Rita endured the pain while smiling at Durandal.
"I only know that he didn't want to kill us."
"Besides, I do not advise you, Lady Durandal, to go after him and come into conflict with him right now."
"Eh? Why?"
Hearing Rita's advice, Durandal became even more puzzled.
"Didn't the Overseer order you to stop him?"
"Indeed he did, but... this place is not suitable for a battle."
Stepping out of the alleyway, Rita swept her gaze over the surrounding environment and turned back to look at Durandal with utter helplessness.
* * *
"Although this alley is quiet nearby, just a short distance further is the bustling Commercial Street."
"Mr. Siegfried is strong, and he possesses the Key of Destruction with the highest destructive power, the Judgment of Shamash."
"If you were to use the Key of Creation, Abyss Flower, to fight him in a place like this, then no matter how much you both restrained your powers, you would undoubtedly destroy this street with ease."
"Right, oh right."
Realizing this only now, Durandal instantly understood why Rita had stopped her action.
Bianca Durandal Ataegina was indeed a Valkyrie under Otto's command, but before that, she was a Valkyrie who protected humanity.
To have her pursue an enemy for Otto's orders, and then accidentally start a fight that dragged other innocent, unlucky people into it...
At least the current Durandal could not bring herself to do that.
As for the other side, seeing that Durandal had abandoned the idea of pursuing the enemy, Rita maintained her outward expression while letting out a thoroughly relieved breath deep down inside.
Worrying that a battle between the two would catch innocent passersby in the crossfire was merely one of the reasons Rita used to persuade Durandal.
Like Durandal, she too wished to avoid involving those innocents under unnecessary circumstances.
However, she did not want Durandal and Siegfried to fight for an even deeper reason.
Knowing that the two were father and daughter, Rita naturally did not want Durandal—whom she regarded like a younger sister—and Siegfried to engage in patricide and filicide.
She had no idea what had happened between them, but the fact that after Durandal lost her memory, Otto had withheld her true identity from her was enough to say a lot.
Otto did not want Durandal to know her true identity, and under such circumstances, if Rita were to rashly inform Durandal of this deep secret, her own life would probably become quite unpleasant.
In this situation, Rita could only use other methods to "protect" Durandal, keeping her from doing anything she might regret in the future.
"Sigh, if I can't pursue the enemy, then what did I come here for?"
Scratching her head irritably, Durandal said with some displeasure.
"We can't do anything right now. Are we just supposed to stand here and watch like this?"
"Well, for now, that's all we can do."
After all, the order Lord Otto just transmitted is for us to stay away from Chiba Academy.
Actually, at a time like this, we should be taking control of that test subject who might be awakening as a Herrscher.
Yet Lord Otto...
His current orders feel as though he is having us stand by and watch idly until the Third Honkai Outbreak erupts completely.
I can't understand it; why on earth is he giving me the feeling that he's looking forward to the eruption of the Third Honkai Outbreak?
Anti-Entropy has been in constant motion, and while our electronic warfare can't match theirs, as long as we intercept Raiden Mei, we can at least seize the initiative.
But right now...
Does the Overseer really intend to let the Herrscher of Thunder awaken completely, paying no heed to the life or death of the millions of people in Changkong City?
On the other side, Siegfried, who had just taken Rita's phone, had already contacted Einstein and Tesla at the very first moment.
"Hey, Siegfried, spit it out if you've got something to say; we're busy over here."
Hearing the sound of Tesla hammering away frantically at her keyboard on the other end, Siegfried, knowing the other's irritable temper, naturally didn't mind Tesla's rough tone.
After all, he quite understood the predicament Tesla and Einstein were currently in.
Their old friend Welt was not in Anti-Entropy; he had gone out to idle and recuperate from his injuries.
As a result, trouble broke out in Anti-Entropy right after their old friend left.
Cocolia had framed Raiden Ryoma and was also preparing to trigger the Third Honkai Outbreak.
And as people with a conscience, Einstein and Tesla naturally could not allow Cocolia to act in such a manner.
The problem, however, was that Cocolia's actions had been far too fast. After failing to trip her up in the nick of time, the two had missed the prime opportunity to stop this madwoman.
Right now, the two could only exercise their own clearance privileges and figure out ways to hinder Cocolia's actions from other angles.
"I managed to get a communication device belonging to a Schicksal S-rank Valkyrie over here. See if you can—"
"Hmph, connect the memory chip to that device."
"You got it."
Connecting Rita's communication device using the memory chip the two doctors had already prepared, Siegfried suddenly heard Rita's communication device emit an ominous sound.
Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep!!!!!
"Throw it away, fast!"
Prompted by Tesla's warning, Siegfried had already hurled the thing away on the spot.
Right after that, Rita's communication device was blown to smithereens in mid-air by a built-in bomb.
"...No way, the security measures are that good?"
Looking at the fragments on the ground, Siegfried was somewhat dumbfounded.
He had been counting on this wave to glean a bit of intelligence and find out what kind of nonsense Otto was planning on his end.
As a result, not only did he fail to get any intelligence, but he almost got his face pasted with a bomb.
While it was true that with his constitution, getting his face pasted with a bomb of that magnitude would probably do nothing more than scratch his skin, the issue was that basic immunity to breaking defense did not mean it didn't hurt!
Siegfried was a warrior who did not fear pain, but he wasn't a masochist who enjoyed it either.
Under these circumstances, he naturally hoped to avoid getting his face plastered by explosives.
"Don't worry, the moment we connected to that terminal, we already hacked it and got the intelligence."
On the other end of the communicator, Siegfried heard Einstein's voice.
Only...
"However, our trouble is even bigger."
There was a trace of fatigue in his old friend's voice at that moment, making Siegfried feel deeply uneasy.
Chapter 20: Siegfried, I can't do anything
With Anti-Entropy's electronic warfare technology, hacking into a Schicksal data terminal was actually quite low in difficulty.
Even though the data terminal in Rita's hands had blown straight up, Einstein had managed to instantly secure the messages inside before they could be erased.
And then she was dumbfounded.
Otto was indeed making a move, and had even dispatched two S-rank personnel along with Blade of the Unbroken, Schicksal's strongest combat force at present.
At this very moment, Otto had even instructed his granddaughter, former S-rank Valkyrie Theresa Apocalypse, to stand by near Changkong City aboard the Hyperion flagship.
As soon as the timing was right, the three S-rank Valkyries would strike into Changkong City with lightning speed, wipe out all of Anti-Entropy's forces, and casually take the Herrscher of Thunder away.
Before that, however, Otto—had no intention of doing much of anything extra.
He had dispatched agents to Chiba Academy, but that was primarily for K423, the resurrected Herrscher of the Void.
As for other matters, Otto had taken action, but not very much of it.
Overall, Otto could be considered to be letting Cocolia have her way...
No, to put it more accurately, he was expecting Cocolia to successfully manufacture a massive Honkai Outbreak.
To Otto, the lives of millions of people in Far East meant nothing.
Once Cocolia succeeded, this large-scale Honkai Outbreak would be something Anti-Entropy had created.
When that time came, Anti-Entropy's already mediocre reputation would simply stink even more because of this wave.
Moreover, against Otto's move, Einstein couldn't pick out a single flaw.
He was merely sitting by and refusing to rescue them; the blame for creating a Honkai Outbreak was a dirty bowl Cocolia had placed on Anti-Entropy's head herself.
And as for a person like Otto...
Him just sitting by and not rescuing people really was a very courteous gesture on his part.
Normally, whenever Otto wasn't being courteous, he was kicking people while they were down.
As a veteran of Anti-Entropy, Einstein knew all too well how Otto typically acted when he wasn't being polite.
When faced with Welt Joyce, the first Herrscher of Reason whom he couldn't defeat, Otto had directly chosen to bombard the city with Honkai Energy Fission Bombs, forcing Joyce to burn his life to protect the civilians.
In the end, the civilians didn't die, and Joyce was forced to his death by this wave.
Decades later, during the Second Honkai Eruption, when the second Herrscher, Welt Yang, faced the Herrscher of the Void, Sirin, he had been right on the verge of finishing her off.
As a result, for the sake of his own plan, Otto chose to let the Herrscher of the Void live. For this very reason, he had jumped out directly and dealt a blow to Welt Yang, who was on the verge of winning, disrupting his Simulated Black Hole.
Later on, when Sirin went on to kill several tens of millions of people more, that was a story for another day.
Compared to what Otto had done in those two major events, him doing nothing at all right now was indeed extremely polite.
"Sigh, what a pain."
Although Siegfried at this moment had no idea what Einstein was worrying about, he knew very well that the core of this incident was, when all was said and done, Ryoma's daughter.
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