Reverse-Engineering Herrschers

"This seat... damn..." Himeko watched as Xina accurately picked out the seat that Kiana, the Absentee King, had once occupied from among so many others, and her heart sank.

She had wanted to try and save the situation, but it was the new student's first day. She couldn't exactly manually rearrange someone's seat, so... she could only take things one step at a time.

I hope this kid doesn't turn out like Kiana...

At that moment, Himeko prayed silently.

"Alright, even though we have a new student in class today, our usual lesson plan can't be disrupted. Everyone, open your textbooks. This period, we'll be covering the history of the Second Honkai Eruption."

Himeko opened her book and was about to begin when she noticed the completely bare desktop in front of Xina. She explained, "Xina, your textbooks will be delivered this afternoon. For the morning classes, make do with Fu Hua's book."

Xina: "?"

"That's right, the desk next to yours is Fu Hua's!"

"..."

Xina hesitated for a moment. Seeing Himeko keep looking at her, apparently urging her to go get it, she felt reluctant—but... sigh, she could only steel herself, walk to the neighboring desk, and bring the textbook Fu Hua had always kept at the corner of her desk back to her own seat.

The moment she opened it, Xina was stunned by the neat handwriting.

Propping her head up with one hand, she gently turned the pages with the other and browsed through the notes in the book.

She had to admit, Fu Hua truly deserved to be class monitor. Her notes were exceptionally thorough, and her handwriting was beautiful too.

Following the table of contents to the chapter on the Second Honkai Eruption, Xina began reading at a rapid pace.

According to S-Rank Valkyrie Theresa Apocalypse, a firsthand witness to the Second Honkai Eruption, the Second Honkai Eruption's true outbreak time was midnight on February 1, 2000. It erupted within the Babylon Laboratory in Siberia, accompanied by the birth of the Second Herrscher, the Herrscher of the Void. All 322 researchers inside the laboratory vanished overnight.

After reading the first paragraph, Xina's pupils visibly contracted.

Damn, Principal Theresa has really been hiding her depths! She looks about the age of an elementary school student, yet she actually took part in the Second Honkai Eruption. But that time... February 1st? Midnight!

Wasn't that around when I was born?

If my birth happened around the same time as the Second Herrscher's birth, and I just happened to become a Herrscher too, then was that really a coincidence—or something else?

Her interest piqued, Xina continued turning the pages.

On February 2, 2000, Destiny and Anti-Entropy detected the outbreak of the Second Honkai Eruption at roughly the same time. S-Rank Valkyrie Theresa arrived at Babylon Tower and joined up with Snow Wolf Squad member Patrick．Heismith (confirmed deceased). At midnight, the two entered the Honkai energy reactor within Babylon Tower to investigate. During this time, the Second Herrscher appeared and defeated Patrick.

"I'd bet that A-Rank Valkyrie acted on her own and got picked off by the Herrscher. Principal Theresa's cross is way too effective against Herrschers. If Theresa and her cross had been there, the Herrscher wouldn't have been dumb enough to fight two against one!"

"Anyway, I definitely wouldn't..."

Out of a rigorous sense of caution, Xina very solemnly added that last sentence before continuing to read.

On February 3, 2000, Destiny reinforcements Siegfried and the First Herrscher, Walter, arrived beneath the Tower of Babel. In order to uphold the important mission of protecting humanity, the two sides formed a temporary alliance with the approval of Destiny's Bishop, Otto Apocalypse.

Following technical sharing through their cooperation, they ultimately discovered traces of the Second Herrscher and her servant, the Judgment-Class Honkai Beast Benares, approximately seventeen kilometers from Babylon Tower.

The First and Second Herrschers fought for the first time on the snowfield. After the Second Herrscher narrowly won, Anti-Entropy scientist Einstein used the Silver Bullet (Atomic Bomb) to strike the Second Herrscher. The Second Herrscher evaded it with her spatial teleportation ability and seized the chance to escape.

At 9:10 on February 14, 2000, the Herrscher of Wind appeared in Oulu, Finland. At 12:10, the Herrscher of Death appeared in Novosibirsk, Russia. At 16:30, the Herrscher of Flame appeared in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Upon seeing this, Xina spotted several extremely strange loopholes.

That Impostor had once told her that the Serenity Gem, along with the three gems of Desire, Conquest, and Pestilence, were all authorities of the Second Herrscher. That meant that, including space, the Second Herrscher possessed five authorities in total.

How could a Herrscher with five authorities possibly be beaten into fleeing by a Herrscher with only one authority? Even if that Einstein had been providing support with some huge bomb from the side, that should have been absolutely impossible.

That also meant... the Second Herrscher hadn't possessed five authorities from the start. Like Xina, she acquired her power later on!

The single-authority Second Herrscher had been no match for the First Herrscher and fled to the moon, where she obtained the other four powers! She then used those powers to catalyze Pseudo-Herrschers to destroy cities.

Yes, that was right. Although the textbook hadn't written it and God hadn't told her, the truth had to be like this...

If so, then everything lined up!

But as Xina continued reading, her expression grew increasingly grim.

The contents of this book seemed to have been deliberately edited down. Most of the valuable information was either glossed over in a single sentence or made deliberately vague at crucial points.

Just like the reports she had seen on television about the Fourth Honkai Eruption in Singapore, it was as though an invisible hand had erased these traces.

If the television reports had concealed things to keep ordinary people from panicking, then why was this textbook, meant for internal personnel like herself, also so deliberately embellished?

Was someone trying to conceal some truth?

Xina flipped the book back to the title page and looked at its publisher—Destiny Technology, a special unit directly under Destiny Headquarters.

At that moment, Xina had an answer. Her intuition told her that Otto Apocalypse, Destiny's Bishop, was hiding many enormous secrets.

Those secrets included, but were far from limited to, the Second Honkai Eruption. Even whether the Second Herrscher had truly died completely remained an unknown.

If the Second Herrscher had truly been dead, then five gems would inevitably have separated from her after death—not four, as that Impostor had claimed!

If the Second Herrscher had died but her power had been inherited by someone else, then where would that new Herrscher of the Void be?

As a Herrscher herself, Xina understood that unscrupulous God's temperament all too well. As long as she wasn't diligently trying to destroy humanity, Its voice would nag in her ear practically twenty-four hours a day.

After being nagged at for so many years, even the kindest successor should have suffered a mental breakdown, right?

Unless... unless the Second Herrscher was in a state similar to Mei's. Their Herrscher consciousnesses weren't awake, so they couldn't receive that endless nagging and had therefore remained well hidden.

That meant that, aside from Mei, the dormant Third Herrscher, the Second Herrscher was likely hiding somewhere as well, merely waiting for the day her Herrscher consciousness awakened so she could finish the work she had failed to complete back then!

Thinking of that, Xina couldn't help feeling a little excited. With an "old employee" like the Second Herrscher taking the lead, she only needed to lend her a hand, right?