The Use of Complete Surveying / Highmore Research Log (1)

"Theresa." Xia Ling hurried onto the bridge. "What's the situation now?"

"A massive Great Honkai, though small in scale, has occurred within the Oceania Branch." Theresa frowned. "Based on current observations, the peak energy level of this Honkai is close to 4000 HW, which basically means that Herrscher has definitely been born in the Oceania Branch."

"Four thousand?" Xia Ling's eyes narrowed. This number far exceeded Wendy's energy level when Herrscher transformation in the original work.

"That's right, almost a thousand more than Mei did back then." Theresa nodded. "Xia Ling, I remember you've been keeping in touch with Wendy, haven't you? Has she been acting strangely lately?"

"A Herrscher has appeared in Oceania. If nothing unexpected happens, it's most likely Wendy who has the Desire Gem implanted. But how could she suddenly lose control?"

Xia Ling thought for a moment and replied, "Judging from the last few communications, she is in very good spirits, as is her companion named Highmore."

"Highmore, is that the Pseudo-Herrscher specifically invited you to conduct research there?"

"Yes, those two are so lovey-dovey, probably... like Mei and Kiana."

"Hmm..." Theresa's expression turned sour as she clearly realized something.

"I hope it won't be like the Second Honkai Outbreak..."

"You mean... because of Highmore?" Xia Ling pondered for a moment, "I think it's very likely."

"Wendy's emotions have always been very stable. I can't think of any other situation that would cause her to have such a strong reaction."

Just then, Theresa's terminal rang again.

Theresa picked up the terminal and examined it carefully. After a moment, her expression became somewhat... puzzled.

"What's wrong?"

"I suspect..." Theresa said with a strange expression, "We were right."

"We just received a report from headquarters that although the level of this Honkai is very high, the affected area is extremely small. The location of the Honkai, namely the Oceania Branch, has been basically wiped out."

"The Herrscher of Wind... no, let's just call her Wendy."

"She's now stirring up a small whirlwind, searching for something in Oceania."

"To be precise, she is seeking revenge. Once she encounters a target, she will use her power to instantly cut the opponent into small pieces and throw them into her blood-stained whirlwind."

"So far, probably dozens of people have died in this revenge, and according to statistics, almost all of them are from the Oceania Branch."

Upon hearing this, Xia Ling fell silent for a moment.

"So... what's headquarters' attitude?"

"Although Wendy didn't harm any innocent people, the social impact she caused is really terrifying." Theresa shrugged. "Grandfather's idea is to try to communicate and appease her as much as possible, but it's still unclear whether her revenge is only aimed at these people or at the entire Schicksal."

"If it's the latter..." Xia Ling's voice revealed a hint of worry.

"If it's the latter, we'll prioritize protecting ourselves. Durandal and Rita will arrive shortly."

Theresa looked somewhat helpless.

"I don't believe Wendy has completely lost her mind either. Anyway, as I said before, we will try to find Wendy while stabilizing the public. Xia Ling, you are the person here who has the best relationship with Wendy, and you are much faster than us."

"So, you're free to act as you see fit. We'll keep you updated on our findings in real time and try to find a breakthrough before Durandal arrives."

"Otherwise... once the people from headquarters and Anti-Entropy arrive, it will most likely end up in complete chaos."

"Understood." Xia Ling nodded emphatically. "I'll go to the site of the Oceania Branch first to see if there are any clues."

"I will let you know if you need help."

Thanks to Himeko's incredibly fast travel, which seemed to consume almost no energy, the Hyperion quickly reached its destination.

After placing Xia Ling near the Oceania Branch, Himeko turned the ship around and began to handle the aftermath along Wendy's route.

After confirming that Hyperion had left, Xia Ling also released Highmore from the system space.

"Time is of the essence, lead the way quickly."

"Okay, I'll just give you the coordinates."

Xia Ling grabbed Highmore's arm, and her figure vanished instantly, reappearing hundreds of meters away. Then, without stopping, she moved on to the next target.

Although Xia Ling could also reach the destination in one step, the concentration of Honkai Energy remaining in the Oceania Branch is ridiculously high, which would likely interfere with the teleportation. Therefore, Xia Ling opted for a safer method of traveling.

Before long, the two arrived at the former Oceania Branch, which was now in ruins.

"Tsk tsk, it's been so long, I never imagined it would be here already..."

Highmore shook her head, feeling a pang of emotion.

Then, she led Xia Ling to the ruins of the original experimental building.

This seems to be the place where Wendy Herrscher transformation. As you can see, this building is the most severely damaged, because the two of them can't find it at all.

It appears that the disintegration of this building is far more severe than that of Highmore.

"Sure enough, although I didn't have high expectations before, I can only confirm it after conducting an on-site investigation. It is indeed impossible to find clues by manpower alone."

Xia Ling stood on the ruins of the experimental building, trying to sense downwards.

"There's nothing we can do. It's obvious that Wendy intentionally destroyed the data."

"The good news is that she definitely still has self-awareness. She probably got the list of Oceania Branch members from here and then began her revenge."

"Then let's not waste time, let's just use the Cipher Plate."

Highmore took out a Cipher Plate with blue patterns.

Xia Ling also took out a Cipher Plate with green patterns and combined it with the Cipher Plate in Highmore's hand.

[Beginning the announcement]

[What is seen, known, and sought is all in darkness and gloom. By day, one climbs a tree to keep watch at dusk; by night, one holds a torch to guard the clan.]

Indeed, this time, Xia Ling unusually did not use the Cipher Plate to form a coherent phrase, but instead chose to combine two separate pieces.

[Eyes] and [Inspection].

As you can tell from their names, this duo is designed to maximize their intelligence-gathering capabilities.

In the game, the role of "Patrol" is to fully survey node intelligence, while in reality, when combined with "Eyes", this pair of Cipher Plate can directly extract intelligence from a certain area.

The blue light emanating from the Cipher Plate rapidly expanded, then enveloped the entire Oceania branch area.

Countless data points and points of light converged into the Cipher Plate. Finally, the light transformed into a logbook and two USB drives, which fell into Xia Ling's hands.

"A diary? I don't recall Ryan having that kind of hobby."

Highmore pinched a stray strand of hair, looking somewhat puzzled.

"No normal person keeps a diary, especially someone in his position. This thing is probably the survey result of the Cipher Plate, but it's just put together in this way to make it easier for us to see."

Xia Ling opened the diary.

"Come on, let's see what really caused Highmore's death?"

Bounty 2.0

Ahem, I was originally planning to post a bounty announcement at the end of the chapter, but considering that many people submitted their bounties too early last time, I only posted a brief notification and set a timer for 12 o'clock.

As the title suggests, I've recently accumulated some drafts, not many, but my group members insisted that I open a bounty, so here I am, hehe.

The following is the bounty details:

One extra chapter for every 1,000 recommendation votes.

One extra chapter for every 100 monthly votes.

An extra chapter will be added for every 50 blades or 5000 reward; these two can be combined.

The bounty will continue for another week, with a maximum of ten chapters.

As for the box...

The gold chest will receive an extra 16 chapters, and the silver chest will receive an extra 5 chapters. These will not be included in the bounty cap and will be calculated separately.

However, since I don't have that many chapters saved up, I'll have to repay the extra chapters from the boxes slowly. Please be lenient, everyone.

I will post the picture later, but due to the delay, you may have to refresh the page tomorrow to see it.

Oh, and by the way, regarding the plot, there's actually a reason for Wendy's sudden surge in power, which I'll explain later. Also, I've also covered up why Wendy was so weak in the original work, though there might be some personal interpretation involved.

Okay, that's it.

The following is a screenshot of the data at 0:00 on July 4th.

Chapter 42 Highmore Research Log (1)

Flipping to the first page of the log, the date is... no date?

"Uh... it's normal that there's no date, after all, this isn't a real diary."

Skipping the blank date field, the two continued reading.

[Highmore Research Log 1]

[My research has not yielded any breakthroughs to date, which is abnormal, or rather, this result is abnormal.]

[There are so many suspicious points about Highmore that I can't even count them all. It's really outrageous. How could such Pseudo-Herrscher be born in the world? She has no powers, no strength, and the only difference between her and Honkai zombie is that she is alive and has human consciousness, and can think like a human.]

If it weren't for the fact that her physical abilities and recovery capabilities genuinely reached the level of Herrscher, I would have suspected that someone was impersonating Herrscher to fool me.

In conclusion, further observation is needed.

[Highmore Research Log 2]

After careful consideration, I've ruled out the possibility that she was someone deliberately impersonating Herrscher.

The reason is simple: I honestly can't think of anything here that someone could possibly want, something that would make someone infiltrate as a test subject and remain undetected for months.

The only thing that fits this value is the Desire Gem, but neither Schicksal nor Anti-Entropy really have a way to deal with it. Otherwise, Headquarters wouldn't have used Wendy as a humanoid container to house this Herrscher Core.

[And this Highmore... excuse my bluntness, but it seems her interest in the container of the Desire Gem far outweighs her Desire Gem itself. She couldn't possibly have come all this way just to woo Wendy, haha.]

However, this did give me some inspiration. I initially assumed that Highmore would cooperate with my experiment, and it seems that that's indeed the case. She's extremely indifferent to her own feelings, to the point that it's hard to believe that it's really her body.

[It was precisely this attitude that made me subconsciously avoid considering one possibility: Highmore... really cooperating with me?]

"Although I don't know the date of this blog post, it turns out you'd already given yourself away." Xia Ling looked at Highmore speechlessly. "I thought you were doing a pretty good job of pretending."

"Uh..." Highmore looked innocent. "If I cooperate with his suspicions, won't he be even more suspicious if I don't cooperate? This seems like a dead end."

"Never mind, let's keep reading." Xia Ling turned to the next page. "Let me see which way he's guessing."

[Highmore Research Log 3]

Today's experiment achieved a breakthrough.

Oh, to be precise, this progress isn't related to the experiment itself, but rather comes from summarizing the experimental results.

The conclusion is that this Highmore's drug resistance is highly abnormal.

Her drug resistance appears to be selectively developed.

It's as if someone is weighing the pros and cons; anything that would cause significant harm to her body will cause her to immediately develop resistance upon contact, while she will ignore anything that is harmless or beneficial.

This means that most medications only have an initial killing effect on her.

[Because no Herrscher sample had ever undergone such detailed drug testing before, I always assumed this was one of the Herrscher's inherent characteristics. But today, an assistant reminded me, what if this isn't Herrscher's inherent characteristic?]

[I immediately tested it in an environment without Honkai Energy, and found that even when her Honkai Energy almost completely depleted, this evolution still occurred. This evolution may not originate from Honkai Energy or authority, but rather from her body itself.]

However... she doesn't seem to want me to obtain something that could bring about her evolution. I've tried to extract this... let's call it evolutionary factor, but I've never succeeded.

[Highmore Research Log 4]

[Interesting, this is really interesting.]

I think I've found a bug.

[In previous experiments, because Highmore claimed she could block out pain on her own, and this was indeed the case, I never anesthetized her.]

However, during today's anesthesia experiment, I discovered that she doesn't seem to have evolved any resistance to anesthetics; she immediately passed out.

So I immediately conducted an experiment, taking a blood sample from her in an attempt to identify that evolutionary factor.