Who Isn't a Herrscher?

Then the light shone on a spot on the stage.

Six figures stood there.

"!"

Everyone in front of the screen stared at the six figures in shock.

Stella clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. "It's those bastards!"

Ikki looked at the face on the screen that was nearly identical to his own.

"Big Brother..."

That was right. The six figures on the screen were Amamiya Shion, Kurogane Ouma, and their group, who had attacked Luo Mio and the others a day ago.

As Luo Mio watched the screen, a ringing sound that only he could hear suddenly rang out.

Then Luo Mio opened the system interface.

A newly appeared mission beneath the character status panel flashed before his eyes.

"The path called choice has been opened for you. Make your decision between choices; your answer awaits at the end of the road."

"Mission Reward: New World! Unlocked!"

Confession

A new world...

After Luo Mio received the new mission.

"System, are you malfunctioning? Why does this mission sound so literary?"

System: "..."

"The path of choice..." Luo Mio looked at the mission in confusion.

Fu Hua, who was also observing the mission within Luo Mio's consciousness, saw it as well.

Looking at that riddle-like mission and the changes taking place within Luo Mio.

Is that so...

Is he being made to choose between humans and "humans"...?

Fu Hua then fell silent once more.

"Excuse us."

The door to the infirmary opened for the umpteenth time.

Shizuku and Arisugawa entered carrying fruit baskets.

Ikki, Stella, and Touka, whose attention had still been on the screen, turned toward them as Shizuku and Arisugawa came in.

After Luo Mio noticed the complicated look in Arisugawa's eyes when she entered.

"Naru, visiting hours are over," Luo Mio said, stroking Shinguji Naru's long hair.

"Eh, then I'll come see you tomorrow, Brother Miohua," Shinguji Naru said obediently despite her obvious reluctance.

Luo Mio smiled. "Tomorrow, have Mom bring you to Brother Miohua's dorm to find me."

At the door, Shinguji Naru reluctantly said goodbye to Luo Mio. "Then I'll come play with you tomorrow, Brother Miohua!"

"Mm." Luo Mio waved.

After Shinguji Naru left, Luo Mio turned his gaze toward Arisugawa.

"If you have something to say, say it, Alice."

"You noticed..."

"Well, everyone here probably noticed."

Arisugawa then sat down on a stool and slowly began to speak.

"To explain everything, I'll probably have to start with the meteor shower sixteen years ago. I'm sure everyone has heard of it."

Ikki and Stella nodded. "We heard that it was the largest meteor shower in both scale and number in recorded history."

Touka's eyes flickered as she looked at Luo Mio.

It was because of that meteor shower that she had met Luo Mio and become his older sister.

"That's right. People also called that meteor shower 'the most dazzling meteor shower in history.'"

It streaked across the sky as brilliantly as raindrops. Watching it at night was like seeing trails of radiance left beyond the Milky Way.

"But that was only what people in the ordinary world believed."

"The ordinary world?"

"That's right. But among the Three Great Powers, including my former teacher, the One-armed Swordsman Wallenstein, that meteor shower was called the Golden Meteor Incident." At the mention of Wallenstein, Arisugawa's hand involuntarily clenched.

"Golden Meteor..."

"Because according to the situation at the time, the vast majority of those meteors would have fallen onto Earth!"

"?!"

Arisugawa's words startled everyone.

The meteor shower sixteen years ago had been recognized as the most numerous in history. If most of it had fallen onto Earth, it would have caused an unprecedented, catastrophic disaster.

Countless meteorites would have torn through the atmosphere, dyeing the blue sky red like the dusk of the apocalypse, crashing into fertile land and azure seas, and bringing about endless natural disasters!

"But..."

"But that meteor shower seemed to merely pass by our planet, right?"

"But that was only the information released to the public. In truth, the Three Great Powers had jointly gathered every top Blazer in the world and sent them across the globe to stop the meteor shower."

"And among those who distinguished themselves was Teacher Saikyo Neine, the Yashahime."

Upon hearing that, Touka said, "Indeed. Faced with an event like that, Senior Sister's ability would have performed exceptionally well."

"After that, the world's top Blazers destroyed every meteorite that could have fallen to Earth."

"Although they did everything they could to prevent the meteorites from falling, one still slipped through the net."

"One meteorite evaded their detection and entered the atmosphere."

"At the critical moment, Samurai Ryoma, who had come as reinforcements, split that meteorite in half."

"One half fell into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, while the other vanished somewhere on land without a trace."

"Without a trace..."

Everyone silently listened to Arisugawa's account.

"What happened afterward?" Stella asked.

Arisugawa shook her head. "I don't know what happened after that."

"Then what did you mean when you spoke to Wallenstein about those children and the modifications?" Remembering Arisugawa's hateful, furious expression and her conversation with Wallenstein, Luo Mio asked her.

At Luo Mio's question, Arisugawa seemed to recall something. Her expression twisted in pain as she closed her eyes.

"Alice..." Shizuku looked at Arisugawa worriedly from the side.

Arisugawa opened her eyes, let out a breath, and spoke painfully.

It turned out that Arisugawa had grown up as a Blazer abandoned by others. During that time, she met a child who had also been abandoned like her. The two often fought over the little food and cotton padding available, but eventually grew tired of that life. As fellow Blazers, they became friends, took in most of the orphans abandoned by their parents, and met a kind-hearted nun.

But then, one day, disaster struck. Her closest friend was killed, her younger brothers and sisters were terrified, and her hands were stained with human blood!

"Later, Wallenstein adopted me, and I became an assassin in the Rebel Army."

"I gave all the money I earned to the nun who had taken in my younger brothers and sisters, hoping their lives would improve."

"But one day, after finishing a mission near where they lived, I thought I would go see them for the first time in a long while."

"When I got there, I learned that the nun and my younger brothers and sisters had long since disappeared. On the surface, it was a church that took in homeless children, but underground, there was inhuman Human Experimentation!" Arisugawa said through gritted teeth, her voice full of pain.

"Human Experimentation..."

Everyone listened to Arisugawa with shocked, furious expressions.

"That's right, Human Experimentation. I used my ability to infiltrate the underground facility and found the corpses of the nun and my younger brothers and sisters! They were stored in containment tanks like specimens."

"Bang!"

Unable to restrain herself, Stella furiously smashed her fist into the wall. The red phosphorescence emerging around her revealed her emotions.

"Later, I saw the researchers' experiments."

"Young children were strapped to experiment tables. Those so-called researchers coldly injected the liquid in their hands into their bodies. After watching the children lose consciousness, they fed golden shards of stone into their mouths."

"!"

Luo Mio looked at Arisugawa in shock.

Golden shards of stone...

Could those be...

He recalled the golden shard in Wallenstein's hand a day ago.

"Then those children began struggling. Their bodies gradually turned white, and they slowly lost their sanity, becoming like beasts."

"The experiment must have failed. After disposing of those children, they extracted the golden shards from their bodies and repeated the experiment."

"Later, I killed them! Because of that, I was exposed and defected from the Rebel Army."

Stella could no longer hold herself back and wanted to rush out the door.

"Stella!"

Ikki grabbed Stella's hand.

Stella snapped furiously, "Why are you stopping me?"

Her rage caused the temperature around Stella to gradually rise.

"It's useless even if you go now."

"What do you mean?"

"After Alice defected, the Rebel Army probably destroyed all the evidence left at that experimental base. And Alice's testimony alone could never expose them, especially since she used to be an assassin for the Rebel Army."

"Then what are we supposed to do?"

"Unless they expose themselves."

Luo Mio looked at Arisugawa and asked his final question.

"Alice, did those children share any common traits after the experiment?"

"White! And their skin was extremely stiff, while their eyes had lost all human reason."

"Is that so..."

Luo Mio gritted his teeth.

Those traits reminded him of something incredibly vile.

Shiit!

Rules and New Missions

Shiit were humans mutated after being infected by Honkai Energy.

Those who became Shiit lost their minds and reason. The low-level ones bit humans like zombies, while the higher-level ones developed some unbelievable abilities.

Luo Mio's expression darkened slightly, then he thought of something.

"Alice, they weren't experimenting on animals too, were they?"

"No." Arisugawa shook her head.

Luo Mio slowly breathed a sigh of relief inside.