Starting with the Herrschers, I Cut Down All

[Unfortunately, out of respect for human rights and freedom, they lost a scientist whose theoretical potential was incredibly high.]

[If one could directly observe humanity's tech tree, they would find that a vast section of its branches concerning imaginary mathematics had suddenly gone dark. To light them back up, the required skill points—in other words, manpower and resources—would be far greater.]

[Please select an upgrade path.] ×7

[The ding-ding-ding of upgrades wasn't noisy at all.]

[The first fifteen levels only required a few million experience points, but level sixteen needed nearly thirty million, followed by nearly ninety million.]

[Based on what An Yu had discovered while mowing down enemies in the previous stage, the maximum level really was twenty. Though there were still a few stragglers, they definitely wouldn't be enough to fill the gap needed to reach level twenty-one.]

[Thunder Control 1 → Lord of Myriad Phenomena]

[Elemental Overflow 0 → 3]

[Lord of Myriad Phenomena]: Connects all things and controls magnetic fields. It wasn't hard to understand. The Thunder Herrscher's setting was control over electromagnetic fields. Electromagnetic fields were one of the fundamental forces determining the structure of all things in the world. On a macroscopic level, they manifested as light and electricity, which was why games often used lightning to represent damage output. Electromagnetic force, along with the strong force, weak force, and gravity, was known as one of the foundations of the universe. Unfortunately, although An Yu's real-world job was worldbuilding design, his university professor had been Einstein, one of the foremost authorities in theoretical physics.

"So, heroes, you'd better pick up the pace."

Volume One: Chapter 56: Let's Hope Mei Doesn't Care About Beauty

"Um, Student An?"

The noise by his ear made An Yu frown slightly. Come to think of it, did this damn designer not give the main story characters any voice lines?

Or had he found the wrong person?

"Forget it. I won't follow the main story."

Mei couldn't understand what that meant, but her biological instincts made her quickly bow. Her calves beneath her pleated skirt trembled nonstop.

I'm so sorry, Student An. Please be magnanimous and calm down.

The next moment, the books in her arms were snatched away. An Yu casually flipped through them.

Griffiths' Introduction to Quantum Mechanics.

"Griffiths' Introduction to Quantum Mechanics?"

An Yu froze for a moment. He really did recognize this book. The current third edition of Introduction to Quantum Mechanics was widely used by universities. Back then, driven by a little utilitarian ambition, he had read it too.

Mei nodded vigorously and hurriedly began rattling off everything she knew.

"Shut up!"

An Yu had a headache. It wasn't that he couldn't understand the book—the electronic voice was simply too noisy.

He flipped through it casually and eventually confirmed that this was the second edition. Compared to the third edition, it was missing quite a lot of content.

He switched out of the game, opened his computer, and continuously compared the game with calculations of the chain reactions caused by eliminating intermolecular electromagnetic forces.

It was too troublesome. An Yu directly tossed the problem to his AI assistant before switching back into the game.

He looked at the girl beside him again. Come to think of it, only games had schoolgirl uniforms like these.

"If you've been marked as a boss, you must have something exceptional about you. Let's assume you're a genius."

An Yu briefly explained his ability and had Mei calculate the relevant data for him.

He still felt he had found the wrong person. If the girl's answer turned out to be wrong, then unlike with I, he would choose to obtain two Attribute Cards.

[Kevin's grades weren't ideal.]

[His mood wasn't very good either.]

[Elysia's mood wasn't good either, because without An Yu, the time and place where the Thunder Herrscher appeared would never have been this accurate.]

[Mobius wasn't in a good mood either. Mei was a junior she valued immensely.]

[Getting back on topic, they had plenty of time to deal with the disaster. With so many cheats activated, if they still couldn't easily survive the first two disasters, then this civilization was already beyond saving.]

[The Herrscher Core of Reason became the fastest artificial intelligence, helping advance human technology.]

[And because of the despair brought by the Herrscher of the Void in the previous dream, at Elysia's request, the Herrscher Core of the Void became a weapon this time.]

[But humans were not Herrschers, after all. Their use of Imaginary Space could never be that simple.]

[To unleash the Herrscher of the Void's true power, the Second Divine Key was made into two longswords. One of them was mainly used for positioning, though Elysia always felt the two swords looked more like a pair of scissors when combined.]

"The dream has changed again."

Elysia lowered her bow.

Kevin pressed one knee into the Honkai Beast's back. The Key of the Void in his hand easily sliced open the beast's corpse. Then a Void Realm passage appeared beneath him, and when he emerged again, he was already on the street.

"As expected."

Kevin gritted his teeth. From today onward, he would never part with the Second Divine Key. He would even sleep with it in his arms!

He had trusted the previous dream too much. That really was his mistake.

And thinking about it carefully, Sirin's skill gap with An Yu was just as vast as heaven and earth. He shouldn't have let his guard down.

[The Herrscher doesn't seem to have started causing destruction immediately. What is he waiting for?]

[Elysia didn't know. This dream had already become a complete mess. She had found the professor in advance and contacted Vill-V. Kevin had even solved the mystery of his birth. At the point where only she and Kalpas should have been holding the line, there was now an additional Kevin.]

[But science had lost Mei.]

[Even Kevin, who was wholeheartedly devoted to Mei, didn't dare hope that she could survive in the Herrscher's hands.]

[But where could the Herrscher hide?]

[Honkai energy detection, satellites deployed outside the atmosphere, and surveillance cameras almost everywhere.]

[Found you, Thunder Herrscher.]

An Yu leisurely flipped through the books. Though most of them were decades old, they weren't bad for passing the time.

Meanwhile, Mei lay sprawled across a nearby desk, writing furiously.

"It says I control electromagnetic force, but that doesn't mean I can manipulate it freely."

Thinking about it, that made sense. An Yu ran some figures through his mind. If he canceled the intermolecular electromagnetic force in one kilogram of water and turned it back into dihydrogen monoxide, the chain reaction produced in an instant would probably be equivalent to 5.1 × 10? W.

And if it involved intramolecular chemical bonds, the energy would rise to somewhere between ten to the tenth and eleventh powers. If it delved into electromagnetic force itself, it would soar to the twentieth power of ten.

"The final conclusion is that if one could truly overcome the electromagnetic force between atomic nuclei and electrons, the energy released in an instant could rival the conditions of the early universe after the Big Bang."

Mei's throat bobbed. The sight of Student An sitting by the window with a book in hand instinctively reminded her of her rigid electromagnetic physicist father.

It wasn't praise. Her father's rigidity and lack of human warmth had left her with terrible memories. He was just as awful as Student An, who killed people as casually as breathing.

An Yu looked at the paper and its conclusion, then sighed.

"Ha, I knew it. This game couldn't make—or achieve—that kind of thing. It talks a big game about controlling electromagnetic force."

In reality, it had merely given An Yu a switch that let him briefly turn off the electromagnetic force within his attack range, completely disintegrating that area without causing a chain reaction. In other words, it was a small-scale Big Bang.

An Yu could understand the ability having limitations. After all, electromagnetic force was one of the universe's fundamental forces. Even a simple adjustment of its parameters could reshuffle the universe.

Forget a small studio game like this. Even Anti-Entropy couldn't currently construct a simulated universe of that level.

As for the real universe... anyone who could control electromagnetic force in the real universe would already be an omnipotent god.

Yes, omnipotent.

As long as its macroscopic performance in the game wasn't weakened too much, that was enough. Players wouldn't examine the internal values anyway...

"Can I leave now?"

Mei cautiously pushed over a small note. An Yu glanced at it, then tossed her a new set of problems.

Mei sniffled. The scent of blood in the air left her with no desire to resist.

[She still didn't know what her calculations meant at this moment.]

[An Yu wasn't in a hurry. Rather, forcing a well-built high school girl to do exercises here put him in an inexplicably good mood.]

[It would be nice if his older sister were this smart. Then she wouldn't have ended up hanging around that group of useless friends.]

[Time passed bit by bit. The moment Mei finished calculating the result, a silent passage appeared beneath her chair.]

[A sturdy arm grabbed Mei's calf, and she vanished with the chair in an instant. Only a faint cry of pain could be heard.]

"Imaginary Space?"

An Yu froze for a moment. He didn't stop it. He even chuckled softly.

This stupidity born of being bad at school made it impossible for him to get angry.

Fun fact: Imaginary Space dissolved all non-superhumans like concentrated sulfuric acid. In the game, it could even dissolve the fourth-generation Valkyrie armor, Crimson, along with everything belonging to an A-rank Valkyrie, leaving behind only a Plague Gem.

"Let's hope that delicate girl's underlying code contains the trait of not caring about beauty."

He leisurely walked over to the desk and picked up the manuscript.

"If I divide my current Honkai energy equally into 2,800 portions, then apply each hw to the speed and strength of Lord of Myriad Phenomena, these are roughly the changes?"

Volume One: Chapter 57: This Is a Judgment I'm Betting My Career On!

[Elysia's scalp began to tingle.]

[Kevin, who had seemed omnipotent and always regarded dreams as his own salvation game—improving whenever he wanted and easily reaching the top of humanity—felt his heart pound wildly.]

[Yeah, it was only a dream, but... would Mei really let him off after waking up?]

[Mobius found it difficult to describe her feelings. As a woman, it was hard for her not to empathize with the situation.]

[As for Vill-V, she had already been rendered speechless by this bunch of illiterates.]

[Mei survived, but the price was steep.]

[But the world would never stop turning for one person, even though personal power truly existed in this world.]

In the vast city, purple-and-white Honkai Beasts appeared once more. An Yu planned to gather some startup capital first.

A Void Realm passage appeared behind him. A cold flash streaked past, but for An Yu, who constantly maintained 10 hw to detect the surrounding magnetic field, it was far too obvious.

Fun fact: in the Honkai IP, because the microscopic effects of electromagnetic force had been weakened, the Thunder Herrscher had been granted many extraordinary traits—for example, severing the connection between a Herrscher Core and Imaginary Space...

Actually, it was because Mei was the protagonist! That's why she had extra traits.

Ahem. Imaginary numbers were an abstract concept and weren't normally affected by force, but within the Honkai IP, electromagnetic force really could affect imaginary numbers.

"Looks like this really is a regional boss. The defenses I saw in the previous stage probably won't appear until the middle or later stages."

An Yu stood atop a streetlamp, continuously considering the boss's skills.

He rarely offered praise. "You really do have a superhuman constitution, brave hero."

Kevin's expression darkened further. He understood that the Herrscher was mocking him, but his anger wouldn't cloud his mind.

A cold flash appeared. The Key of the Void, which should have whispered like the Reaper's scythe, was always one step too slow. Just a little short—always just a little short!

An Yu kept retreating. In his perception, the surrounding magnetic fields continually shifted from white to red, indicating the increasing solidity of spatial fluctuations.

"Sure enough, unless this is the JoJo world, muscle size and intelligence are usually inversely proportional, huh?" he muttered.

Lightning flashed continuously around him. The missed attacks sank dozens of meters into the ground. Another boss with astonishing reaction speed.

[Elemental Overflow 3]

Active: Efficiency in using residual energy increased by 60%.

Passive: Initial magnitude increased by 500 × 3 hw.

"You aren't the Herrscher of the Void, are you?"

An Yu suddenly spoke, though he wasn't expecting a response. After all... if the other party answered, it would only be noisier.

"Though I don't understand why the Divine Key became like this, you need positioning, don't you?"

After all, a Divine Key was ultimately inferior to an actual Herrscher. And An Yu had already had plenty of fun with the Herrscher of the Void in the previous stage.

"What do you mean?"