Otto: If I don't go to hell, who will? No, I'm going to the hell of "never having existed"

"This is too ironic," Zhou Weiqing said quietly. "Otto deceived the Will of Honkai, and the Will of Honkai looked down on Otto. In the end, they were the same. Both apostles of the Tree, both borrowers of power from its projection. One played god, the other became a false god. Neither stood above the other. Otto simply had one thing it didn't—he dared to trade his life for a name. Honkai itself only destroys as the Tree wills. One acted for himself, the other for the greater whole. But in the Tree's eyes, both were merely borrowing light beneath its branches."

"Then why did this branch grant authority to both of them?" the Dragon Prince suddenly asked.

"Because the Tree needs hands," the Dragon God said slowly, his voice like thunder rolling up from deep within the earth. "The Tree is too vast. It cannot personally rewrite life and death on every leaf. It needs to lend out authority. Honkai is its permanent hand, used to sift through civilizations. Otto is a hand it extended unexpectedly, used to shift a particular world line. Both hands are merely tools. One believes itself irreplaceable, while the other would rather be reduced to ashes."

"So Otto's 'blessing' came not from Honkai, nor from a god, but from the Tree," Tang San said. "The Tree lent him a moment of power. Not because he deserved it, but because he had reached that position. It was like fire falling from the sky and happening to ignite a piece of wood dry enough, desperate enough to stake everything. Otto was that piece of wood. The Tree would not remember, but in that moment, the fire truly burned upon him."

In the scene, Otto's figure had faded until it was almost invisible. Yet the branch's light