***
— To obtain the power of Finality, one must face The Cocoon directly and pass The Cocoon’s trial.
And to achieve this, one must gather the 13 projections descended by Finality — the 13 Herrschers — in order to calculate and reach The Cocoon’s location.
“Can’t we use the cores from the Divine Keys as substitutes?”
Although she hadn’t revealed everything, Vill-V already knew the intelligence suitable for her to know. Jiang Qiao had no intention of hiding much from her, after all, such clever people could easily detect clues from the slightest traces.
The Miss Magician toyed with the high-tech lipstick in her hand, her fingertips gently rubbing the metallic shell of the lipstick, saying with a chuckle:
“Worthy of something made by my future self, it really has Vill-V’s style~”
The Divine Key – Seven Thunders of Retribution with its seven forms was just a design born from Vill-V’s personal interest, which caused this weapon’s seven forms to not all be weapons.
Jiang Qiao didn’t speak, and the glasses-wearing girl in a white coat, Dr. MEI, adjusted her glasses and said casually:
“Although I don’t yet know the full scope of the Divine Key project, the cores of the Divine Keys must have been processed already.”
Having already understood the details of Honkai and Herrschers, she could roughly make this judgment, after all, this plan originally came from her future self.
— This was the correct answer.
Indeed, Jiang Qiao had also considered the idea of directly collecting the Divine Keys from the future era. This way, by extracting the Herrscher cores within them, he could skip many steps and directly use the power of Origin to measure his distance from Finality.
But unfortunately, just as Dr. MEI said, the specially processed Herrscher cores had already lost this ability.
Unable to take shortcuts, the only way to complete the original intended goal was to — personally obtain the 13 Herrscher cores from the Previous Era!
The significance of this naturally went without saying, he had to personally fight through the Previous Era’s dungeon.
Even so, the Divine Keys hadn’t lost all meaning.
Originally designed as weapons to fight against Honkai, even if they couldn’t serve as measuring rods for distance, the Divine Keys could still provide powerful assistance in this war against Honkai.
Moreover, even inactive Herrscher cores could play certain crucial roles in the hands of Jiang Qiao as the Herrscher of Origin.
For example—
As a medium to trigger Honkai eruptions.
Vill-V, who had shown certain talents, gained the attention of Fire Moth in an extremely short time.
In this workshop specially allocated to her, what appeared before the three people was a screen.
It showed images of Nagazora City, and even the entire Southeast Asian region.
The pink-haired girl sat on the workbench, crossing and swaying her legs with slight movements. Through the faint light, one could see that the single-sided leg ring characteristic of Flame-Chaser uniforms was 20 centimeters away from those legs wrapped in tight black stockings. According to 【Elysia】 habit — today was Tuesday.
“The impact range of the Third Eruption covers the entire Southeast Asian region and is expected to erupt within the next year, but if I move fast enough, I can reduce the scope of the Third Eruption to only within Nagazora City.”
The energetic, light, and sweet girl’s voice softly described what she intended to do.
The imaginary internal energy accumulated by The Cocoon in the dark side couldn’t be eliminated through normal means.
Like accumulated tidal force, the longer the delay, the more ferocious the subsequent tide would become.
The power of Origin wasn’t omnipotent, otherwise Elysia wouldn’t have reached that final outcome.
But although unable to directly eliminate this Honkai eruption, Jiang Qiao could use his authority and the inactive Herrscher core in the Seven Thunders of Retribution to pry open the hidden floodgate in the dark side early, letting the water accumulating within flow out in advance.
The result of doing this would be that the Third Eruption would erupt earlier, but its scale and intensity would be smaller than originally.
From a certain perspective, what he might be doing was the same as what Cocolia wanted to do.
It’s just that the fox was acting on her own wishful thinking, while Jiang Qiao was trying to save as many people as possible.
The girl sighed softly:
“To do this, we would inevitably need to evacuate Nagazora City’s residents in advance.”
“You need us to gain Fire Moth’s voice so you can give the Far East government an early warning, right?”
Dr. MEI raised an eyebrow, saying with some exasperation:
“But that’s not going to be easy.”
As a native resident of Nagazora City, Dr. MEI knew well what kind of city Nagazora was. Like in the future era, Nagazora City was also an economically developed major city in the Previous Era, very important to the Far East government.
Evacuation and relocation would mean bringing a major economic metropolis to a halt, politicians would never agree to such a thing.
Even with Fire Moth’s warning, the politicians in the Far East region… Dr. MEI really couldn’t speak favorably of them.
Although politicians worldwide were pretty bad, the Far East politicians were outstanding even among the bad ones, bad enough to be an eyesore.
Never mind warnings, even if Honkai really crashed down on their heads, those people could still turn a blind eye and then shift blame to each other.
“Fire Moth also doesn’t have the authority to interfere with local politics.”
Just as Dr. MEI said about warnings, the early Fire Moth, as a secret organization jointly established by multiple countries, had no authority to interfere locally and could only provide suggestions, recommendations, and post-incident cleanup work.
Regarding this, the rather unrestrained Vill-V showed a sinister smile:
“Hehe, need the great magician Vill-V to give them some shock?”
If something like a nuclear bomb exploded in the waters around Nagazora City, even those politicians would have to consider the impact and evacuate the citizens to some extent, right?
Being from a wild background, the Miss Magician’s ideas were quite wild indeed.
“Hooray~ Magic~ Use Vill-V’s great magic to scare away Nagazora City’s people?”
The pink-haired girl clapped her hands at the right moment, her rather full thighs swaying, still wearing that smiling expression on her face.
Dr. MEI said irritably:
“Great suggestion, but if you don’t want to be sent to Fire Moth’s disciplinary room afterward, don’t make such suggestions again next time.”
“And you, don’t join in the commotion, Elysia.”
Even though her current political intelligence was still immature, Dr. MEI knew just how absurd such an approach would be.
“Hmm~ You see, isn’t the atmosphere quite tense? Appropriately lightening the mood is also necessary~”
“And—”
The smiling 【Elysia】 jumped down from the table, patting her skirt,
“What Vill-V said might not be unfeasible~”
Jiang Qiao’s light laughter reached the ears of both Vill-V and Dr. MEI:
“Perhaps, we need a white glove.”