Horde Slayer Starting from Herrschers

"I want to go traveling."

An Yu:...

Travel to clear her mind?

"How about after a while? The new project was just approved, so traveling isn't a very good reason to request leave."

"Or you can go out on your own first, sis. I'll go with you after a while."

If she'd been bullied or wronged, An Yu figured he could grit his teeth and still get some time off.

But if his sister had gotten tired of dreaming and wanted to travel to clear her mind, even he didn't have much confidence asking for leave.

"Then we'll wait a while."

Elysia didn't insist. Although she loved acting spoiled and being willful, An Yu had his own job now.

After dinner, An Yu didn't continue gaming. He went over Honkai's general plot again, focusing on the background details that had only been briefly mentioned.

"The new project is related to Honkai?"

Elysia leaned against the doorway and quietly watched An Yu work. Recently, she'd become a little sensitive to Honkai, to the point where she couldn't stay as calm as usual.

"Yeah, the new project should be about the Previous Era before Honkai."

An Yu replied casually. In a sense, none of this was supposed to be discussed, but there was no need to draw such clear boundaries between family.

"Still, Boss Bronya's past ideas seem to have a lot of inconsistencies... Mm, players have criticized them quite a bit over the years, so I'm gathering them up to see if we can smooth things over in the prequel."

"After all, that's what we worldbuilding planners do."

He smiled helplessly. Come to think of it, his sister used to really like the IP Bronya had created, especially the girls flirting and cuddling scenes in it.

"Will the new story still have girls flirting and cuddling?"

Elysia moved closer, repeatedly scanning the sections An Yu had specifically marked. But this kid still liked grand spectacles and bloody destruction so much.

"...Not really."

"We're planning to focus on the Herrschers' destructive power, completely removing all their tender scenes and making them humanity's absolute enemies."

"And the Previous Era's purpose is to turn the girls flirting and cuddling in the Honkai IP into the efforts of those who came before, with later generations living in the world they dreamed of."

An Yu continued explaining. Since they were going for an anti-contrast, the Previous Era couldn't have any warm-hearted Herrschers unless that warmth was an act.

Elysia's head began to spin. It sounded so familiar, almost like the theme of her dream.

"Do we have to do this?" She held her forehead.

"We need to make some breakthroughs, after all. And aren't tragic heroes the easiest characters for players to empathize with?"

An Yu smiled. He could understand his sister's occasional melancholy.

That was just how Elysia was.

"If, and I mean if..." Her voice inexplicably carried a faint sob. "What if the numbers in the game were also real human lives?"

She truly couldn't forget everything in the dream. Those monsters seemed to regard destroying the world as an entertaining game.

An Yu hesitated for a moment. "Uh, it's just a game. If the contents of a game could become real, then blue pills definitely exist too."

"Then I'll take a blue pill, go in there, and punch the boss away for you, sis."

He swore it solemnly.

Elysia covered her forehead as her vision gradually blurred.

"You really are looking down on everyone, darling."

An Yu suddenly sensed something was wrong. Why had it gotten so chilly around him?

Boss Battle!

Night fell.

Still shaken, An Yu slowly poked his head out from the kitchen. He really had to request leave tomorrow. His sister seemed to be having mental issues, and he needed to take her to the hospital.

After confirming that his sister was asleep, An Yu thoughtfully locked his door before putting his helmet back on.

"Horde Slayer, activate!"

Since he was taking leave tomorrow anyway, he definitely wouldn't be able to earn that performance score for information gathering. He might as well slaughter another round before bed!

"It's this strange dream again."

Elysia walked through the ruined streets with vacant eyes and unsteady steps. The smell of gunpowder mingled with blood, and scattered limbs could vaguely be seen beneath the shattered high-rises.

Her steps gradually grew heavier. Her superhuman physical condition seemed unable to stop the mental strain.

"Survivor! There's a survivor here!"

A faint glimmer of light appeared on the horizon. Elysia stood stiffly in the middle of the street like a soulless doll until hurried shouts from soldiers came from afar.

"Be careful! What if it's a Honkai Zombie?"

Elysia slowly turned her head, her gaze vacant as several guns warily pointed at her.

"Squad leader, she seems to be alive... but her clothes are too clean. She doesn't look like someone who just escaped that kind of disaster."

"Miss! Can you hear us?"

A soldier pressed himself against the edge of the ruins and shouted at her from roughly ten meters away.

Elysia nodded. These should be Fire Moth soldiers. Their uniforms seemed vaguely familiar from remnants of her previous dreams.

She tried to put on a smile. "My name is..."

Bang!

Before everyone's eyes, the girl who had just been standing there was suddenly sent flying backward like a kite with its strings cut, smashing heavily into the broken ruins beside her!

"Enemy attack!"

An Yu loaded his bullets. The action was entirely unnecessary, but according to past experience, a boss standing still usually meant it was opening its second phase, and the process couldn't be interrupted.

"What the hell are they babbling about? If this crappy studio can't afford voice actors, can't they use AI? What's the difference between saying a bunch of incomprehensible nonsense and deceiving themselves..."

Artillery fire poured forth as An Yu skillfully cleared out the boss's guards.

The experience points remaining in the city filled his exponentially growing experience bar again. Unfortunately, his automatic pickup range at level 3 was still a bit too small.

[Please select your upgrade path]

Artillery Support 3→4

Attack Speed 3→4

Collective Will 0→1

"What the hell is Collective Will?"

An Yu chose it instinctively, and a new affiliation module instantly appeared on the clean interface.

"Oh, this is kind of interesting."

"It summons minions to fight for me, right?"

At level 11, he had a full 1100 Hw of energy, enough range to cover the entire city.

With a snap of his fingers, the empty city instantly became lively. Honkai Beasts and Honkai Zombies moved through the ruined city, picking up experience and hunting lesser monsters for him.

What pleasantly surprised An Yu was that the lesser monsters could absorb experience points for him, and he could completely leave them unattended.

"That's more like it. I was wondering why there wasn't an experience pickup perk."

Survivor: An Yu
Level: 11
Skills: Replica Reconstruction, Artillery Support 3, Collective Will
Attributes: Attack Speed 3, Skill Frequency 2

All the gun barrels converged, and the moment Artillery Support's cooldown ended, black radiance briefly deprived the surroundings of all light.

No attribute card dropped. It looked like the boss really was invincible during its transformation, or perhaps the game had simply given the boss an absurdly long health bar.

"Let's see what this boss's transformation animation is like." sn＼∥)＞∶

The ground covered in rubble and craters rapidly reshaped itself. An Yu glided over on his skates and arrived at the crater filled with smoke and dust.

The boss that had previously killed him with a single arrow was now sitting in the crater, covered in grime, with little will to resist.

"...Was its armor broken? Is it stunned?"

An Yu raised his gun, barely locating the mouth on the blurred face before aiming directly at it with a teasing tone.

"You're already dead!"

He raised his chin. The boss that should have been stunned also lifted its head. Its face couldn't be seen clearly, but those flawless pink eyes made An Yu lose focus for a moment.

Those eyes were interesting. He remembered them.

He pulled the trigger.

However, the expected gunshot never came. The bullet exploded inside the chamber, and a hand stained with dust yet still fair tightly gripped the muzzle!

The strongest Desert Eagle, reconstructed and upgraded countless times, was crushed like a sheet of paper.

An Yu:...

He could understand not being able to beat the boss with only one advanced skill, but how could his ultimate advanced skill be reduced to tickling it?

"You deserve to die!"

The miserable voice was mixed with an electronic distortion. An Yu had no time to criticize the shabby designer's cost-cutting, because the boss with maxed-out stats punched his already meager health bar all the way to zero.

If Mimicry hadn't upgraded to level 8 and produced the highest-toughness artificial spider silk currently available, An Yu figured he'd have been instantly turned into a bloody mess.

"Moronic designer. The stat inflation is completely out of control."

Fortunately, An Yu had long turned pain sharing down to the lowest setting for the sake of enjoyment. He rubbed one hand against the ground, his silk gloves reducing the damage to his arm.

Once he sensed that the force had weakened enough, a backward leap followed by levitation successfully avoided the boss's follow-up attack.

"I may not be eighteen anymore, but my reflexes haven't fallen that far behind."

He extended a hand, and countless pieces of steel formed from nanobots rapidly assembled into a fortress. Though the boss could blow apart nearly half of it with one punch, the nanobots continuously reformed to fill the gaps.

An Yu used his ability to repair his wounds and easily replaced the ruined flesh from earlier with machinery.

"No wonder the lesser monsters don't drop health packs. Why make a roguelike game this complicated?"

Facing the shell in front of her, Elysia let out a long breath. Her flawless eyes gradually lit up as the Honkai energy created by the Herrscher of Reason gathered around her into points.

"Even though I know it's a dream, I still can't just stand by and watch."

"Sunrise and Dawn Glow, Stars Descending Across the Sky!"

If he loved hiding in his shell so much, then she would send him and his shell straight to hell to atone for these souls!

"Enuma Elish—Star of Creation!"

While the pink-haired boss was still charging up, the highest physics manifested. The strongest spinning spear instantly burst from its shell, and the spiraling lance tore through the torrent of energy with unstoppable force, piercing the girl's body in an instant!

Her flesh was ruthlessly twisted, her organs violently torn apart—despite the blur effect, An Yu could still see the horrifying destruction.

The spear's momentum didn't diminish, hurling the boss into a distant, precarious high-rise. The building collapsed in an instant, sending dust everywhere.

An Yu snorted. Although the game's database was terrible, it had at least incorporated basic laws of physics. There was nothing a rapidly spinning, continuously regenerating spear couldn't pierce.

"Now it should enter the second phase, right?"

Listening to the boss's wails in the distance, An Yu didn't remain idle either.

Countless machines formed from thin air, gradually even condensing flesh and blood. A chaotic, bloody aura spread outward, yet the wings growing from his back remained as holy as ever, scattering feathers of light in every direction.

"Ultimate Skill: Spear of Longinus!"

But!

Space froze. Energy of a higher dimension and greater density squeezed against reality itself, while thick, viscous Imaginary energy burst through the barrier. Nearly ten thousand Hw of Honkai energy gathered around it.

An Yu looked at the girl staggering to her feet amid the distant dust and could only curse inwardly: Trash designer!

"Is this really a boss that should appear in the first phase?"