"...Invade St. Freya Academy?"
The silver-haired girl was slightly startled.
Her surprise came from two different directions.
On one hand, as Schicksal's Far East Branch headquarters, St. Freya Academy possessed quite a few defensive measures, not to mention a considerable number of Valkyries.
Under such circumstances, what kind of people would Mama Cocolia have to send in order to successfully invade this place?
Could she be planning to send a massive Titan Mecha force to attack...
On the other hand, it meant that her mother still had not given up on Mei and still wanted to capture her.
"Don't worry. My research has made some progress recently... This is the perfect opportunity to test just how powerful the product of my artificial Herrscher experiment is."
Cocolia spoke with some pride.
The artificial Herrscher experiment was one of her primary research projects, and by now, she had achieved some results.
And once there were results, they needed to be tested.
Memories: Tragedy of Binding
Unlike when he touched ordinary weapons, countless images appeared before Ming Yu's eyes the moment he touched the Oath of Judah.
He quickly realized that these were memories from its "life"—experiences from when it had still been active as the Herrscher of Binding.
The eleventh Herrscher of the Previous Era, the entity bestowed with the name "Binding," possessed an irrational power that was almost paradoxical.
—The previous ten Herrschers had all relied on Honkai energy. Their authority to destroy humanity and civilization was also exercised through Honkai energy in one form or another.
Likewise, to fight fire with fire, Fire Moth, through the efforts of Dr. Mei and Mobius, developed the MANTIS surgery to create fusion warriors who wielded the power of Honkai Beasts in order to counter the ever-growing destructive power of the Herrschers.
But the Herrscher of Binding was an "anti-Honkai energy" entity. She could deploy a barrier with a radius of one hundred kilometers, completely nullifying all Honkai energy within it except her own, while also suppressing other forms of Honkai energy to a certain extent.
Even fusion warriors with bodies far beyond those of ordinary humans could not survive for long after entering the barrier. And aside from soldiers, electronic devices likewise could not function properly within it.
This battle was also the most brutal war in the history of Fire Moth's—and even the Previous Era's—struggle against the Honkai. Although the Ninth Herrscher's final attack had caused the disappearance of Mu Continent, humanity's most important scientific research center, Fire Moth's main fighting force had at least remained intact.
But during the battle against the Herrscher of Binding, more than ninety-nine percent of the fusion warriors perished.
After that battle, only thirteen fusion warriors remained in all of Fire Moth. Humanity's fight against the Honkai began to decline from its peak, falling step by step into the abyss.
—That was roughly what Ming Yu had previously known about the Herrscher of Binding.
As for the exact details of that tragedy, he did not actually know much.
After all, back when he played the game, the details of this battle had mostly been scattered throughout various conversations in Elysium Everlasting. He knew the broad strokes of the plot, but he had never dug into every little detail like some Honkai lore expert.
At most, he knew that Kevin had ultimately defeated the Herrscher of Binding with his own hands and brought the tragedy to an end.
But now, he truly witnessed the details of that battle—and saw them with perfect clarity.
Well... though it was from the Herrscher's own perspective.
A white-haired girl walked through the city, advancing at an unhurried pace.
Around her, every living creature had already lost its breath. The occasional ones still clinging to life were rapidly withering away as well.
She had no emotions. She merely moved in a predetermined direction.
That direction was where Fire Moth's base was located.
Destroy it. Destroy this organization established by humanity to fight the Honkai. That was her mission.
Her operation progressed very smoothly. After all, a barrier spanning a hundred kilometers in radius was enough to envelop Fire Moth's base before they even noticed her arrival.
The girl did not need to act personally, nor did she need to see. Simply moving forward like this was enough to exterminate all life.
But that silence did not last long. For the first time, a human figure capable of moving normally appeared within her field of vision.
No, was that really a human...?
It was a man engulfed in blazing flames, wearing a mask over his face.
He was steadily approaching her, but unfortunately, the closer he came, the stronger the binding effect became.
The flames covering this unknown man's body were already going out. Clearly, he would not be able to reach her.
The Herrscher of Binding quietly watched as the infernal flame demon collapsed to his knees because he could no longer endure it. He looked like he was about to lose consciousness.
"...!"
However, in the next second, his body rose to its feet once more.
Thanks to her exceptional sensitivity to energy, the girl noticed that he had not stood up through his own will.
Someone else was forcibly driving his body to fight through mental control.
—The binding barrier she had created naturally possessed considerable resistance against psychic abilities, but that only applied to herself.
If someone used mental control to manipulate other organisms within the barrier, the barrier's suppressive effect was not nearly as strong. This made remote control possible.
Still, it did not matter. As long as she continued drawing closer, once he entered a sufficiently close range, he would still be completely bound by the power of Binding.
The girl continued forward at an unhurried pace, closing in on the flame demon whose face she could not make out.
But at the same time, more and more fusion warriors entered her field of vision.
They were slow, but they were indeed approaching her.
...Were they trying to defeat her through numbers?
Unfortunately, she was not an entity that could be defeated through sheer numbers alone.
No matter how many of them there were, they could not reduce the suppressive efficiency of the binding barrier.
The humans who came afterward did not wear masks, allowing the girl to clearly see the agonized expressions on their faces.
The sensation of slowly dying under the power of Binding was far more painful than being instantly killed by fire, frost, or raging winds.
Watching oneself gradually lose control of one's body while feeling one's life force slowly drain away was a helplessness capable of destroying both body and mind.
The flame demon burning from head to toe was already right before her. He swung a flaming fist, attempting to attack her.
But it was of little use against her.
Although her primary power was the deployment of that absurdly vast barrier, and she herself was not particularly formidable in direct combat, the barrier's suppression could drastically weaken every enemy.
Perhaps this flame demon was an elite Fire Moth warrior, but standing within the barrier now, he could probably only display the combat strength of an ordinary soldier.
The Herrscher of Binding engaged him in close combat and easily gained the upper hand, suppressing his movements.
During that time, several other humans also tried to attack her in various ways, but they achieved very little.
After knocking down the man before her with a punch, the Herrscher of Binding felt a faint tremor in her heart.
It was a sense of danger, as though a terrible attack was about to strike.
The girl had great confidence in the capabilities of her barrier, but to be cautious, she still looked around for suspicious enemies.
Soon, she spotted a gray-haired girl.
She wore a skintight combat suit like most of the fusion warriors from Fire Moth she had seen earlier. The difference was that a crimson feather floated in this girl's hand.
A feather... burning fiercely.
Yet unlike the flames on the flame demon who had already been knocked to the ground before her, the feather in that girl's hand had no temperature.
It was as though it was not burning material, but fuel from some spiritual realm.
Soon, a fiery bird like a red kite soared into the air, flying toward her from where the gray-haired girl stood.
The girl confidently raised her hand, intending to suppress the attack with the power of Binding.
This move had always been effective. Whether it was flame, frost, or electromagnetic attacks, attacks in every energy form found it difficult to reach her side. Even if they could touch her, the damage they dealt was extremely limited.
But this time, although the fiery bird was constrained by the barrier, it weakened far more slowly than the attacks of the others.
The girl quickly realized something.
—This was a mental attack!
By the time the Herrscher of Binding realized that, it was already too late to mount any other defense.
The fiery bird swallowed her figure. The attack from the spiritual plane did not burn her, but it did halt her steps.
Because of that strike, her mind briefly crashed.
And that was precisely the gray-haired girl's intention.
The opportunity to kill the Herrscher of Binding was fleeting. This was the best chance.
—Kalpas and the other fusion warriors would engage the enemy head-on, creating an opening for her to activate the first rated output of the Feather of the Wind.
Everything had gone smoothly up to this point.
The powerful mental attack had indeed brought the Herrscher of Binding to a standstill, but clearly, mental attacks alone were far from enough to kill her.
To destroy her completely, they still had to rely on Fire Moth's strongest warrior—
The gray-haired girl raised her head and looked into the sky.
The man named Kevin was preparing his strongest attack at a height beyond the reach of sight.
This was a hastily formulated plan in response to the Herrscher of Binding's attack. All the fusion warriors would enter the barrier together and draw the Herrscher of Binding's attention.
Whether they were the fusion warriors on the verge of death, Kalpas, or herself, none of them were the main attacker.
Their mission was merely to delay the Herrscher of Binding and fix her in place.
The true main attacker would descend from the sky and deliver a precise vertical strike.
Like a meteor falling to earth, the man descended with the Judgment of Shamash in hand. Heavenly Fire was drawn once again.
When the Herrscher of Binding regained consciousness, she could already feel a temperature hot enough to burn someone to ashes.
—This temperature was far more terrifying than that of the flame demon from before.
The girl did not doubt that an attack of this level could take her life. But at the same time, everyone present would likely die as well.
If an attack of such intensity fell, not a single nearby human would escape unscathed.
So in a sense, she would still be the victor.
A flaming slash carrying lethal heat cut into her body. Even the binding barrier could not completely suppress that searing temperature.
In almost an instant, her life was completely taken from her.
Before the girl's consciousness fully faded, she saw ice completely unlike the flames that had claimed her life spread outward, freezing everything around it.
All the blood that had once been spilled across this land was frozen in midair in the very posture in which it had just sprayed forth.
Ice should have been colorless and transparent, yet at this moment, the solid ice covering the land was bright red.
So this was the past of the Herrscher of Binding...
Would touching a God Key passively reveal its past because of Projection Magic?
A massive amount of information had flooded in at once, and Ming Yu had no choice but to take some time to process it.
"Ming Yu, what's wrong?"
Kiana, standing beside him, watched him space out for a moment after touching the Oath of Judah. Curious, she reached out with a slender finger and poked his head, bringing his consciousness back to reality.
"...It's nothing."
Ming Yu shook his head.
After all those memories had completely entered his mind, he vaguely sensed that he could now initially project some of the Oath of Judah's armaments.
In a sense, he had also come to understand the origin of the Herrscher of Binding and gained a deep understanding of it.
"Then let's go back together. We can have Mei make something delicious for a late-night snack!"
Kiana suggested.
"You really are never full... Fine. Let's go back together."
Before you continue