The initial requirements didn't need to be too high. Even armor powered entirely by bioenergy would do. If he sold out Sato Yuno, it would definitely be enough.
Don't misunderstand. Fang Jie meant introducing her to someone who could make use of her talents. A Stigmata Awakened capable of becoming a vessel for a Herrscher's descent would be a prized commodity before she turned into a Pseudo-Herrscher.
"So the question is, how do I sell her?"
Schicksal was the first to be ruled out. That bastard Otto was currently letting the situation in Chang Kong City run its course while pretending not to care enough. Besides, if he sold Sato Yuno to him, she would most likely still become a Pseudo-Herrscher.
The same went for Anti-Entropy. They were the easiest to contact, but only the radicals were available. Clearly, those people were the type to say, "I want the goods, but I don't want to pay."
St. Freya Academy was the best choice. It was close by, and it had principles. Fang Jie wasn't some demon, after all. He still wanted to board the Astral Express someday.
How could he contact St. Freya Academy?
Blood Flowed Like Rivers
Although he had never experienced Li Mei Barbecue, Chang Kong City's cherry blossoms were quite common.
No longer so starving that he would eat anything, Fang Jie cleaned himself up properly. He changed into a Brother A-style hoodie and jeans, then wandered through the city on this day of drifting cherry blossoms, exploring the city before its collapse and searching for a viable way to make contact.
But he hadn't expected this city to give him so little time.
"This feeling..."
He stared blankly in the direction of Chiyu Academy, sensing an immense, oceanic burst of energy that engulfed the entire city in an instant.
Energy perception—this was a new sense Fang Jie had acquired after surviving the snowfield. It was difficult to call it a sense at all; it was closer to an instinctive feeling.
Chang Kong City had already been filled with constantly gathering, continuously rising Honkai energy. At that instant, it crossed some threshold and erupted with explosive growth.
Like a landslide, like a tsunami—an incomparably terrifying electromagnetic shock erupted alongside the Honkai energy.
Yet in the images the eye could capture, it was as though the world had suddenly dropped frames, freezing for a moment.
A bolt of lightning that seemed to pierce heaven and earth was born.
Then, the storm surged!
The sky was shaking. It was not the wind. The once-clear sky was abruptly torn open by a hole carved through the atmosphere by lightning. Within it, seas of clouds churned and ripped apart. Countless clouds, mist, water vapor, dust, and Honkai matter collapsed, then surged back into the gap the next moment, piling over one another and staining it from deep violet to black. Countless peals of thunder erupted as they gathered in one corner of the sky. The sunlight that had just shone blindingly through the gap turned heaven and earth white, only for darkness to swallow the land...
It clearly divided the ordinary sunny sky beyond from the canopy that covered one corner of Chang Kong City.
Under that canopy, Chang Kong City welcomed an extraordinary day.
And the entire world welcomed a day worth remembering.
Humans were creatures with souls, while corpses were merely remains left behind after life had ceased. At the instant of death, a body stripped of its soul became no different from grass or trees.
And at that moment, a great terror that left not even grass or trees standing descended.
The surroundings instantly fell silent, so quiet that even a needle hitting the ground would have been heard.
But that deathly silence lasted only an instant before erupting violently!
Driverless vehicles collided with one another. Aircraft that required human operation plunged from the sky. Electric currents ruined every precision industrial product powered by electricity. Alarms droned. There were also the sounds of objects falling and shattering—things that normally only happened when someone "lost their grip" or "slipped." Thousands upon thousands of such sounds gathered in a single instant—clattering, cracking, popping... Every sound of accident caused by the sudden absence of humanity came together at once, deafeningly loud!
For the survivors in Chang Kong City, this was the first wail after the world's destruction!
"...Aaaaaaaaaah..."
They could not understand, could not imagine, could not... accept it.
Screams mixed into that wail, along with footsteps.
Chaotic footsteps reached the ears of every survivor. It was a sound people often knew well—hurried, impatient, like starving students rushing to the cafeteria after class ended at noon.
But, but, those things were absolutely not that harmless.
Gray eyes devoid of much emotion. Bodies covered in blood. Strange crystalline patterns. Limping figures that nonetheless moved faster than any beast. Like zombies in a gore film, they pounced on panicked survivors at once, triggering waves of horrifying screams as scarlet fluid splattered everywhere...
Compared to being reduced to ash, this scene flowed with thick layers of blood. Whole chunks of muscle, like ripe fruit, were violently stripped from bodies, then crushed underfoot. Warm, slick organs—livers, spleens, kidneys, intestines—along with fist-sized hearts, splashed in every direction with steaming heat. Crimson liquid rained down, drenching the sky and earth.
Though they resembled zombies, they did not eat people. Many weren't even bitten to death; they were violently dismantled, crushed, and ravaged alive by Death Troopers!
Yes, Death Troopers.
Humans with resistance to Honkai energy would not be eroded into ash in an instant. Instead, they would be continuously corrupted until they became monsters without consciousness, relying solely on instinct to slaughter everything.
They felt no pain, feared neither life nor death, and possessed vastly enhanced physical abilities.
After remaining in close contact with normal organisms for too long, those originally normal organisms would become infected as well.
They even possessed intelligence.
—The intelligence to kill!
Once every normal living thing in sight had been slaughtered, they would wander and search until they found something new to kill!
"...Hahaha... There's no way something like this could happen... I'm dreaming... I'm having a nightmare!"
A hysterical roar came from one corner of the city. A crazed woman laughed as crystalline patterns spread across her skin.
Will was not some intangible thing. When it was needed, it was incomparably precious. At a life-or-death moment like this, if one lacked even the strength of will, it meant death.
And it left behind a ruined body, in the form of a Death Trooper.
Covered in blood, reeking of rot, with grayish-white skin and vacant eyes, hunting the living...
The next moment, she became a new Death Trooper. She chased survivors with higher resistance, crushing and tearing them apart. Honkai granted her strength, allowing fragile human bodies to be ripped open as easily as cardboard boxes. Their remains scattered everywhere, mixed with bright red fluid, painting flowers of hell upon the pale concrete streets of the city.
Living, dying, orderly chaos. Compared to the highly urbanized world from before, the few people left were like ants trapped in a flood, blindly crashing about and screaming until they died at the hands of Death Troopers, or became one of them, or—
Died to Honkai Beasts.
Boom—
Honkai energy had the trait of mutual attraction. It drew together and gathered, giving birth to powerful individuals. These monsters, which had suddenly appeared throughout the city and wreaked destruction like Death Troopers, possessed even greater violence and the same goal.
They searched for the living, flattened high-rises, and crushed every survivor hiding within.
No one knew where the disaster had begun to spread, nor did anyone care.
By the time everyone who had retained their sanity came to their senses, there was only one thing left for them to consider—survival!
A piercing alarm shrieked. The souls of the well-trained Valkyries seemed to tremble in an instant, but that did not stop one of them from lunging toward the console and pressing the red button that could only be used in the gravest emergencies.
She practically used all her strength to smash it in. Afterward, cold sweat covered her body. Seeing that she had actually left a handprint in the reinforced special console, she trembled without caring in the slightest.
"A... a Great Eruption..."
And so, after a series of swift and decisive meetings, the Hyperion set sail!
It was not some national authority deploying its military. The first to respond was the Hyperion, the aerial battleship belonging to Schicksal's Far East Branch.
With an overall length of 278.5 meters, a deck length of 182 meters, a combat personnel capacity of fifty to two hundred, six nuclear reactors for power, and flight enabled by the Leonov Anti-Gravity Engine, it was a masterpiece forged by humanity's most advanced Honkai science. It was also the personal aerial battleship of Murata Himeko, an A-Rank Valkyrie of St. Freya Academy under the Far East Branch.
Setting off from the artificial island at full speed, the pale vessel, brimming with violent aesthetics, soon hung high above Chang Kong City. It witnessed the horrific sight of the city, which had completely lost contact with the outside world at ten that morning.
There was no need for further explanation. A Great Eruption itself was synonymous with the end of the world.
In the battleship's command center, a fully armed Valkyrie stood behind a console almost as tall as she was. Only a little white-haired head could be seen above it. With her arms crossed and her face full of anxiety, she angrily kicked the console hard enough to make its reinforced steel groan, then cried out in disbelief:
"What the hell are those Anti-Entropy bastards doing?"
The Valkyrie had white hair and blue eyes from the same source as Kiana. Her medium-length hair reached her back and was tied into a ponytail over her left shoulder. Her Schicksal Valkyrie uniform, which had originally resembled a nun's habit, had been switched to luxurious Valkyrie armor. A massive cross was strapped to her back. Yet her insufficient height made what should have been a dignified appearance look like a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl pretending to be an adult.
—Theresa Apocalypse, head of Schicksal's Far East Branch and principal of St. Freya Academy.
At the same time, she was Schicksal's former S-Rank Valkyrie, a powerhouse who had nearly slain the Second Herrscher single-handedly during the Second Great Eruption.
But that did nothing to improve her mood as she faced another Great Eruption.
"Grandpa, what exactly are you planning this time?!"
Theresa's grandfather was Otto Apocalypse, the Overseer who had ruled Schicksal for five hundred years.
The outbreak of the Third Great Eruption had not come without warning. Chang Kong City's Honkai energy readings had been there all along. Honkai energy had continued rising until it now exceeded 1000.
That was the threshold. Once the concentration of erupting Honkai energy reached that line, the environment would be sufficient to give birth to a Herrscher. What had been small-scale everyday Honkai incidents would turn into a Great Eruption capable of destroying civilization itself.
For the former, Schicksal only needed to deploy Valkyries. B-Rank or A-Rank Valkyries could handle it with complete confidence. Similar branches were stationed near the high-energy Honkai reactors Schicksal had constructed across the world, ensuring they could quell Honkai disasters.
For the latter, even S-Rank Valkyries could not guarantee victory. It was a disaster severe enough that Schicksal's major branches had immediately agreed to deploy Honkai fission bombs against Chang Kong City.
However, Overseer Otto rejected the proposal and ordered Theresa to lead the Hyperion into action.
Upon receiving the order, Theresa had already formed a suspicion. The disaster in Chang Kong City was definitely not as simple as the Third Herrscher being born "by accident."
But Theresa had no choice but to come. Even as a former Schicksal S-Rank Valkyrie, when faced with a disaster like a Great Eruption, she could only accept it and head to the battlefield, both emotionally and logically.
She also brought her capable subordinate, Murata Himeko, one of the only two A-Rank Valkyries in Schicksal's Far East Branch who hoped to find a partner before turning thirty, aboard the aerial battleship Hyperion to Chang Kong City.
"So this is the Third Eruption."
Murata Himeko, a tall woman as fierce as Houkai itself—at least compared to Theresa—also stared at the city's horrific scene. It was ruins, wreckage, and one of the foundations of human civilization entering its apocalypse.
Resolve flashed through her sharp, phoenix-like eyes. Her golden irises shone brilliantly, awe-inspiring and entirely devoid of their usual laziness and charm. What stood here now was the Valkyrie Murata Himeko.
As the true captain of the Hyperion, she was the one responsible for coordinating resources from every side and consolidating the battlefield reports.
Watching the information gathering on the console, Murata Himeko spoke steadily. "Principal, we can now confirm that a Herrscher capable of manipulating electromagnetic force exists in Chang Kong City. Based on records from the ancient civilization, we have provisionally designated the Third Herrscher as the Herrscher of Thunder."
"As expected. After Berlin sixty-two years ago and Siberia fourteen years ago, another Herrscher has finally been born?"
Even though Theresa had prepared herself mentally, she still felt a wave of suffocating pressure. Remembering how she had faced the Herrscher of the Void alone fourteen years ago and been beaten black and blue, she turned toward the tall crimson-haired figure beside her without the slightest hesitation. "Himeko, I'm handing on-site command over to you."
With that, she shouldered Judah and prepared to land in Chang Kong City.
"Hey, Theresa, stop right there!"
Himeko had never expected her best friend to be so reckless.
No matter how anxious she was, she should not lose her composure. The only effective method for scouting Chang Kong City at present was "visual observation." That terrifying electromagnetic shock had destroyed every human technological product. It was an expression of the Herrscher of Thunder's authority as the Third Herrscher, empowered by Honkai to break molecular chemical bonds.
Even the Hyperion could not withstand it. It could only cruise outside the electromagnetic field, serving merely as "transportation."
It looked incredibly impressive, but in reality, it could only watch helplessly.
This was a Great Eruption. They had not even seen the Herrscher yet, and it was already this troublesome. But this was a Great Eruption.
As for rescuing survivors—
Although Schicksal's Valkyries had always regarded rescuing surviving civilians as their foremost duty, and it was a tremendous achievement, when facing a Great Eruption with Honkai energy readings above 1000, survival was Schicksal's only requirement for its Valkyries.
At the same time, it was also the shared requirement Theresa and Himeko had for their subordinates.
Yet Theresa intended to land just like that. She clearly did not plan to bring anyone, intending to go alone!
Even if that was how she had charged in during the Second Great Eruption, this was far too reckless!
And what did she mean by handing command over to me? I can go with you too!
"You're the branch head!" Himeko shouted.
"Forget it. You know what my command skills are like. I'm better at doing things my way. It's an emergency—I'll handle the Herrscher."
Without stopping at all, she left Himeko and the Valkyries here with only the sound of the cabin door closing.
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Dead and Alive Again
Jarilo, the name of the God of Spring—the frozen planet Jarilo-VI was named after it as well.
It had once possessed a glorious past. Even interstellar travel had been nothing remarkable. But good times did not last.
Nearly a thousand years ago, resource depletion, the fall of the Stellaron, the Anti-Matter Legion that followed, and finally the arrival of The Eternal Freeze, which erased the earth in pure white... Countless disasters completely buried Jarilo-VI's glorious yet brief history of civilization. The world entered an eternal winter.
Now, even this name had been forgotten. Refugees who survived the Eternal Freeze were confined to a small corner, where they built Belobog, a city sheltering from the Eternal Freeze. Relying on the protection of Preservation, humanity had survived here despite the assault of wind and snow, struggling to keep the flame of civilization alive.
As long as one crossed the snowfield, one could see Belobog in its entirety—the final fortress of humanity against The Eternal Freeze, the land protected by Qlipoth...
Even if Belobog would never see spring again.
"Cough, cough, cough, cough..."
Before you continue