Imaginary Space / Arrival ...

Three dull thuds rang out in succession. Miraculously, all three arrows struck the same spot. After another shot, Chris's leg joint finally shattered completely.

The severed thigh swiftly dissolved into particles and vanished without a trace. This was Su Jue's contingency plan; he had no intention of letting these people trace the puppet back to unbox him. The real puppet was already in hand. The current Chris was merely a monster formed from concentrated Honkai Energy.

Working together, the two of them eventually overwhelmed Chris. Mercilessly kited by two ranged fighters, he finally lost all ability to resist after all four of his limbs were severed.

Only after the dust settled did Chen Tianwu, who had been hiding nearby and launching sneak attacks, reveal himself. His left hand had completely disappeared, and his empty sleeve fluttered in the wind.

Yet what flowed from the sleeve was not blood, but a small amount of black lubricant. Occasionally, faint sparks caused by short-circuited electronic components flickered within, making for a rather bizarre sight.

His thigh had also been severely damaged. However, it too had undergone mechanical modification. Perhaps that was precisely why he had survived Chris's attack.

"Who are you? Do you know what that monster was?" Raven did not lower her guard just because of Chen Tianwu's miserable state. She kept her bow drawn, ready to put an arrow into him if he made even the slightest unnecessary movement.

Unfortunately, this man was different from the others. After separating from Anna, Chen Tianwu had essentially entered a state of complete resignation. He did not even look at Raven's arrow, merely using his sniper rifle as a crutch as he supported himself and limped away step by step.

Thud.

The arrow embedded itself beside Chen Tianwu's foot, its fletching trembling and swaying.

"Chen Tianwu. Don't know." Those two terse phrases answered Raven's question. After a pause, he added, "Almost everyone in the town is dead. If you don't want trouble, you'd better leave quickly."

She found it hard to believe. It was only a frontier town, but it had numerous gangs and endless weapons smuggling. With that kind of firepower, how could this be...

Before she could ask anything further, the roar of a helicopter approached from afar. The helicopter assigned to transport her directly lowered a rope ladder, and someone waved at her.

"Raven, retreat! Schicksal forces are approaching!"

Raven put away her bow and chose to trust the transport officer. She was on a mission, after all. Getting dragged into Schicksal because of a commission would be troublesome.

She looked at the approaching helicopter, then at Chen Tianwu, who was still slowly walking away.

"Come with me!" With that, she rushed over, grabbed Chen Tianwu, and ignored his objections. Using the surroundings for leverage, she leaped up and caught the rope ladder.

As the helicopter rose higher and higher, Raven, hanging outside, finally saw the town's full extent.

Pools of red covered the ground everywhere, as though the entire town had been smeared with paint. Not even the most brutal Honkai Beast attack would be this horrifying. It was as though the killer had deliberately chosen the bloodiest possible methods of slaughter just to proclaim its own terror.

After climbing into the helicopter via the rope ladder, her communicator began to ring. Schicksal had indeed assembled an A-rank unit to investigate. She had nearly become the scapegoat.

After Raven left, Chris's puppet, already incapable of moving, continued to wriggle. Space suddenly tore open, and countless transparent threads surged out, ripping the puppet's remaining parts into pieces before they dissolved into particles and disappeared.

More than ten minutes later, Schicksal's Valkyrie unit finally arrived in town, only to be greeted by a bloody slaughterhouse.

The perspective returned to the Theater of Domination. Once Chris's consciousness dissipated, time here finally began to flow again.

The curtain fell, and the actor onstage willingly made his way to the audience seats, becoming the sixth puppet under Su Jue's control. Unlike the previous puppets, which had formed after the lamb spirit absorbed their resentment, this puppet had been completely devoured by the black wolf. Everything that made Chris who he was—his soul, personality, and emotions—had been absorbed by the power of the Herrscher of Domination, creating this new puppet.

The mark on his body was not the usual black-and-white pattern, but a dense blot of ink-black. Intense resentment wrapped around his entire body, and even his wooden form faintly gleamed with the luster of rosewood, setting him apart. More importantly, he brought Su Jue an entirely different kind of enhancement.

"My strength has increased by nearly tenfold..."

It was an utterly outrageous figure. Before this, even after gaining three puppets, Su Jue had only barely risen above being useless and reached the level of an ordinary person. But this time, Chris alone had directly raised his strength to the level of a combat-type B-rank Valkyrie.

Though B-rank might seem weak in the game, in the world of Honkai, B-rank meant being capable of fighting massive Honkai Beasts. They were the backbone of the fight against Honkai, and their physical capabilities far surpassed those of ordinary people. If Honkai Energy did not corrode their bodies and cause Valkyries to deteriorate like consumable goods, gathering a B-rank force could even be enough to start a war.

Judging by the timeline, those girls at St. Freya had probably only just reached B-rank. After the Herrscher of Void awakened, Kiana had barely obtained A-rank combat power. In all of Schicksal, there were currently only two publicly known S-Ranks—Bianca and Rosweisse—with perhaps Li Sushang still asleep somewhere.

Should I just make a move and kill the possible Herrscher of Reason, Herrscher of Thunder, and Herrscher of Binding? The thought suddenly surfaced in his mind, but he quickly abandoned it. The protagonists were not that simple. If they all said, "I can't do anything," while he was making his move, wouldn't Su Jue die a horribly unjust death?

Just as Su Jue was delighted by the increase in power, a powerful stabbing pain began to surge through him. He knew the sensation well: it was the power of his curse. He went through this pain every time he obtained a puppet.

The agony grew stronger and stronger. Su Jue felt as though something were biting into his soul, chewing it up, grinding it apart, and swallowing it.

When the pain finally ended, Su Jue was drenched in cold sweat. His throat itched, and he suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.

Not only had his lifespan failed to increase, it had instead been reduced by two months...

Was this the price of choosing the black wolf? That sensation of being bitten apart just now was likely what Chris had felt when his soul was torn to shreds after making a deal with the wolf spirit.

Only after more than ten minutes did Su Jue barely recover. No matter what, obtaining puppets this way had been his own choice. All he could do was tally up his gains and hope that the next puppet would choose the lamb spirit.

Young puppet +1. Combat power increased to B-rank. Lifespan reduced by two months.

The effects of the dual-soul mark were obvious now. Choosing the white lamb's redemption granted only a small increase in combat power, but could extend his lifespan. Choosing the black wolf's fall granted an enormous boost in combat power, deepened the curse, and reduced his lifespan.

Sitting alone on the stage of the Theater of Domination, Su Jue took a star-shaped hair ornament from his pocket.

"No matter what, the conditions are all in place. I have the power to break through Imaginary Space, and an item to locate Murata Himeko. It's time to bring back the Plague Gem."

Imaginary Space

Long before Su Jue first came into contact with Kiana and decided to abduct her, he had already set his sights on one of the most important characters in all of Honkai Impact 3rd—Murata Himeko. Looking over the entire story, every change began with Teacher Himeko's death. Only afterward did Kiana grow and awaken.

As the Herrscher of Domination, Su Jue personally believed that the most foolish decision those rabble in the original story made was pulling out the Plague Gem in front of Kiana. Not only did they help her undergo a complete transformation, they also handed her the Flamescion gift package. Now that time had given Su Jue another chance, he had to consider whether he would repeat the same mistake.

So the first thing to do was naturally obtain the Plague Gem. Then, whether he used it himself or gave it to someone else, the initiative would remain in his hands. But Imaginary Space was far more dangerous than he had imagined. When he obtained the Theater of Domination, he had already tried to search for the Plague Gem directly, only to feel intense Imaginary attrition the moment he left the theater's range.

It was a region even Otto himself would find dangerous, one where even someone as powerful as Durandal would continually lose her way. If Su Jue had forced himself to search for the gem back then, it would have been no different from looking for a needle in the ocean.

That was why he later devised the plan to abduct Kiana. As the Herrscher of Void, she possessed an innate mastery over Imaginary Space. More importantly, she had personally sent Himeko into Imaginary Space. Only by obtaining a locating beacon from her could he find the gem faster.

And the hair ornament in Su Jue's hand was the reward from this endeavor. Imbued with the Herrscher of Void's power and carrying the girl's precious memories, it was undoubtedly an excellent locating beacon.

The gears around the Theater of Domination began to turn rapidly. This time, no play was being staged. Instead, Su Jue was controlling it with all his might to move. When he had initially decided to "carry the Theater of Domination home overnight," it had not been empty talk. Given enough time, he truly could do it.

At that moment, Jian Yun, who was walking alongside Su Jue in the outside world, merely felt her vision blur before he vanished. Yet her memories were quickly altered, and she simply assumed that her eyes had deceived her.

Fine threads of domination continued to coil and climb. Every puppet fell into stillness, and within the grand Theater of Domination, Su Jue's true body finally appeared.

His eyes seemed to reflect the lingering glow of a sunset over a lake. Rich gold nearly overflowed from his eyelids, yet crimson corrosion patterns spread continuously at the same time, creeping closer and closer to his brain and heart. Coiling threads connected to his back and formed a lifeline with the Theater of Domination. If Su Jue accidentally lost his way, the constantly operating theater could pull him back. It was insurance he had prepared for himself.

Once everything was ready, Su Jue poured an immense amount of Honkai Energy into the star-shaped hair ornament and activated it. Faintly, the boundless Imaginary Space began to produce a weak resonance. Had Su Jue not activated it personally, he might not have sensed the beacon at all.

He clipped the girl's hairpin into his short gray hair, then leaped down from the theater toward the direction of the resonance.

Darkness and silence were the main themes of Imaginary Space. In this empty void, the only thing one could see was one's own hands, and the only thing one could hear was the blood gurgling through one's veins.

In such a claustrophobic environment, even the strongest-willed person would have their faith stolen by time and their mind erased by loneliness. Nearly three months had passed since the battle in which the Herrscher of Void awakened. Murata Himeko was likely long gone, not even ashes remaining. And within this perilous Imaginary Space, terrifying monsters lay hidden as well.

Su Jue, floating through the void, slowly stopped moving. From the Imaginary Space not far away came an aura that made him uncomfortable.

According to physics, even if an Imaginary Space corresponding to real space existed, it could only contain pure energy. It might be antimatter or dark matter, but life absolutely could not exist there. Yet in the world of Honkai Impact 3rd, Imaginary Space truly did give birth to a unique kind of monster. They were beings born from the Imaginary Tree—apostles of gods.

And the Theater of Domination was currently the known structure closest to the Imaginary Tree. That made their identities obvious.

"Imaginary Skeleton—Unknowable."

"Imaginary Skeleton—Self-Reference."

"Imaginary Skeleton—Tautology."

It was as though golden flames had ignited within the utterly dark Imaginary Space, or as though holes had appeared in paper scorched by intense heat. The strange, piercing hum grew more and more intense, and the burned holes widened. Finally, a massive eyeball opened from within.

An intense sense of filth washed over him. Even before contact, the Imaginary corruption from the world's dark side had already begun eroding him.

Once those voids fully opened, rough golden eyeballs emerged from them. Energy then gathered around them, forming bizarre, connected limbs. They had no heads, only those eyeballs as their absolute cores. Their projected limbs tightly wrapped around them, just like—puppets.

"Did miHoYo's designers get lazy and plagiarize the Herrscher of Domination's abilities?!"

Whether it was the eyeballs or the detached outer limbs, they looked remarkably like the operating model of the Herrscher of a Thousand, which used Herrscher Cores to drive puppets. The only difference was that they did not need domination threads for control, instead using filthy cores directly as their central processors.

Seeing such blatant plagiarism, Su Jue felt his hands and feet turn cold in the middle of summer, his entire body trembling. What was wrong with this world? Why did the Herrscher of a Thousand deserve this treatment? Not only was it targeted by human civilization, it was also having its rights infringed upon by the Imaginary Tree.

Unfortunately, the Imaginary Skeletons had no interest in Su Jue's elaborate inner monologue. To them, anything with physical form was prey. The instant they took shape, sharp claws swept out in an arc and viciously clawed toward him.

"Good thing I got Chris's puppet. Otherwise, this would have been genuinely troublesome." Pulling his scattered thoughts back, Su Jue focused. This was his true body now. If anything went wrong, he would really be dead.

Surging Honkai Energy accumulated within him. Su Jue knew no combat techniques; he only knew how to fight with raw power. All he needed was for the enemy to enter his attack range.

"Like right now..."

The Imaginary Skeleton's attack grew larger and larger in his vision. Its sharp claws seemed to have already sunk into his flesh, yet all he could do was strike back with his fist.

"Calculated Bombardment Fist!"

Arrival

The moment his unadorned fist connected with the Imaginary Skeleton, it was as if a wolf's howl rose up. The force he had built up for so long poured directly into the Imaginary Skeleton's joint, blasting it into a sky full of severed limbs.

The Imaginary shell encasing the golden eyeball collapsed and vanished beneath that punch. Su Jue raised his hand, changed his fist into a claw, and seized the eyeball directly.

Crack.

A fissure appeared in the Imaginary Core, then swiftly spread like bloodshot veins across an eyeball, looking savage and terrifying.

Just as Su Jue prepared to finish this Imaginary Skeleton in one go, an intense sense of danger struck him. He immediately released it and pulled away.

The next second, the Imaginary Core he had just gripped was pierced through by a blade. The Imaginary Seed exploded into true nothingness.

A Tautology hovered where Su Jue had been standing moments earlier, slowly withdrawing its twin blades.

Did they even backstab their own teammates?

Only then did he realize that, within the few seconds he had spent fighting Self-Reference, so many Imaginary Monsters had appeared without his noticing.

"How could so many Imaginary Seeds be born in a void of pure nothingness?" Though Su Jue still knew little about Imaginary Space, he was, after all, the master of the Theater of Domination. He had some understanding of the spawning patterns here.

Imaginary Monsters were creatures that fed on matter. They often gathered around structures swallowed by Imaginary Space, gaining sustenance by attacking and eliminating living beings. Pure nothingness could not satisfy their hunger, so they normally appeared in very small numbers. It was precisely because he had taken that into consideration that Su Jue had planned to resolve them through brute force.

But the situation was clearly wrong. There were simply too many Imaginary Seeds. They could not have appeared out of thin air. The only possibility was that something nearby had been attracting them all along—Su Jue touched the hair ornament on his head. The faint resonance coming from it had become much clearer, confirming his suspicion.

This area was probably the battlefield from that final lesson.

After drifting for so long, he had finally found hope. As he let out a breath of relief, a smile curled across Su Jue's lips, and he immediately abandoned the idea of fighting the Imaginary Skeletons.

As a Herrscher of Domination, only someone with a hole in their head would want to fight with brute force. Although the new puppet granted him power no weaker than that of a B-rank Valkyrie, wasting his precious strength here would be far too unwise.

He rapidly retreated to widen the distance, then suddenly raised and opened his right hand. The countless puppet threads wrapped around him burst outward in an instant, weaving a horrifying web through Imaginary Space.

As Su Jue's palm turned slightly, the dense net of puppet threads swept toward the Imaginary Skeletons. The instant it touched them, the Herrscher of Domination's Authority of Domination began to gnaw away at the control privileges of their Imaginary Cores like maggots feeding on bone.

Though the Authority of Domination could not allow Su Jue to control these Imaginary creatures directly, their similar operating systems, born from the same source, were more than enough to assist him in exerting a degree of control. Gradually, some of the Imaginary Monsters ensnared by domination threads began to change. The puppet threads around them grew solid, while the cores of their Imaginary Seeds became secondary.

"Fight for me."

His voice was not loud, and due to the nature of Imaginary Space, it did not travel far. Yet the instant the order was given, the controlled Imaginary Skeletons turned against their allies and attacked the monsters around them. A chaotic melee was inevitable. More importantly, whenever one of Su Jue's controlled monsters approached death, it would directly detonate its Imaginary Seed and self-destruct.

Tsk tsk, what terrible manners.

After judging himself thus, Su Jue stopped paying attention to the situation behind him. He continuously activated the fluctuations in the hair ornament, searching for the site of the final battle.

At last, a stretch of collapsed ruins entered his field of vision.

Stone steps stretching for thousands of miles, ruins like broken walls, ground casually sliced apart and discarded by terrifying force, and boundless silence as far as the eye could see—all of it proclaimed that this had once been a battlefield.

He was somewhat shocked. Only upon seeing it firsthand could one understand how terrifying the destruction caused by battles between Herrschers truly was.

He landed softly on a patch of relatively intact ground. To his left, blue stone steps still extended along stone pillars into the sky thousands of meters above, while to his right lay a bottomless abyss.

It was an incomparably smooth cross-section. Merely a casual snap of the Herrscher of Void's fingers had created such an impassable chasm. Was this what it meant to wield the power of space?

By comparison, someone like him, who could only barely survive through deception and trickery, was hardly fit for the grand stage. Su Jue had an accurate understanding of his place. What he needed had never been world-destroying combat power, but plans capable of overturning civilization. So although he was somewhat envious, that was all.

Screech, screech, screech.

The strange sound rang out again. Within seconds of Su Jue landing, a large number of Imaginary Monsters began to emerge. Having reached this place, Su Jue put away his puppet threads. Unlike the empty Imaginary Space, this area was filled with all kinds of stone pillars. And because of the Herrscher of Void's battle, the remaining structures had become dangerously unstable. If he carelessly caused explosions and triggered a collapse, finding the Plague Gem would become difficult.

From here on, he had to fight personally. That was also why he had needed to raise his combat power in advance. If he could not even break through the encirclement of Imaginary Monsters, how could he hope to obtain the Plague Gem?

Boom—

A thunderous impact came from the stone wall as it was smashed into a deep crater. The Imaginary Monster, which had lost all signs of movement, was embedded within it before gradually dissolving into nothingness.

Su Jue had been fighting for who knew how long. He had no capacity to think about such things anymore. He could only feel that the energy accumulated in his body was nearly depleted. If he still could not find the Plague Gem, he would have to return to the Theater of Domination and wait for another opportunity.

That was difficult for him to accept. He had planned for so long, all for this day. If he failed to obtain the gem, all his plans would be thrown into disarray. Deceiving Kiana could temporarily ease the crisis, but sooner or later it would be exposed for one reason or another. When that happened, it would be Su Jue's death sentence.

He took a deep breath, calming himself slightly, then stepped toward the next location.

At that moment, a splash of vivid red suddenly entered his vision without warning.

Murata Himeko

As he drew closer, that fiery red hair, like a stove in winter, truly came into view.

She lay there quietly. The ruins stretching for thousands of miles seemed to mourn her. Collapsed stone pillars willingly became a peaceful coffin. Her flame-like hair no longer burned; instead, it resembled a maple tree in late autumn, shedding its most moving leaves in its most beautiful season.