“Overseer!
The lightning strike just now resulted in 151 Valkyrie casualties, 75 of whom are too severely injured to fight.
Jotunheim sustained the most damage and is completely non-operational, while Helheim is suffering from varying degrees of Honkai energy leaks…”
Amber urgently reported Schicksal HQ’s losses from the barrage of lightning to Otto.
Otto stood by the window with his hands behind his back, listening silently to Amber’s report.
After she finished speaking, silence hung over the room for a long time.
No one knew what Otto was thinking at this moment, not even Amber, his personal secretary.
After waiting for a while without getting a response, Amber spoke up anxiously.
“Overseer?”
Otto suddenly turned around and walked toward the throne of the Schicksal Overseer.
Just like he had done for the first time—and countless times—over the past five hundred years, he sat down upon his throne.
“Notify all Schicksal HQ defense forces to prepare for battle,” Otto ordered calmly.
“Yes, Overseer.”
“Hold on.”
Just as Amber turned to leave, Otto suddenly called her back.
“Take all the Core Gems later and head to St.
Freya Academy with Li Sushang.”
“Overseer?!” Amber gasped in disbelief.
“Go.
While there’s still time, head to St.
Freya Academy with her.”
An unexpected trace of gentleness crept into Otto’s tone.
“But Schicksal…”
“This is an order!
Take all the Gems and leave Schicksal HQ!”
Amber looked up at Otto’s calm face, then lowered her head.
“…Understood, Overseer.”
Sitting on the Overseer’s seat, Otto watched Amber’s receding back, suddenly realizing that her silhouette was gradually overlapping with another shadow in his memories.
In the empty hall, Otto let out an imperceptible sigh.
Then, he began recording his final words.
BOOM!!!
The outside was suddenly hit by heavy artillery, immediately followed by the deafening roar of incoming fighter jets.
All of Schicksal HQ was coming under a brutal, relentless bombardment.
“Time to go take a look.”
After finishing his final recording, Otto stepped down from the throne and pushed open the doors.
BOOM!
BOOM-BOOM!
Explosions resonated across Schicksal HQ, and flames blazed everywhere.
Countless fighter jets were engaged in dogfights inside and around the base.
Missiles and autocannons crisscrossed the skies, and every so often, a Schicksal jet was blown out of the air, plunging straight into the Mediterranean Sea.
Enemy jets attacking Schicksal HQ were also destroyed in the dogfights, crashing into the Mediterranean alongside them.
Accompanying the enemy fighters was a massive swarm of armed attack drones.
Like endless cannon fodder, these drones flooded in, attempting to overwhelm Schicksal HQ through sheer numbers.
However, the Valkyries still capable of fighting at Schicksal HQ manned anti-air weapons alongside other defense units, sweeping away the incoming drone swarms.
Otto closely observed the incoming attackers.
The fighter jets and drones all bore a strange and ominous symbol—a silver gear enclosing a human skull, with the right half of the skull composed of gears and mechanical components.
Try as he might, Otto couldn’t find any organization matching this emblem in his memory, so he asked.
“There is no record of this emblem in the database,” Void Archives replied.
Even as a database from the Previous Era, it had no idea what the symbol represented.
Still, whichever faction was attacking Schicksal HQ, it was most likely founded by humans.
After all, who else would adopt a skull encased in gears as their emblem?
Unless…
could it be created by the Honkai or a Herrscher?
That was completely impossible.
“The situation isn’t looking good.
Are you still not planning to make a move?”
Void Archives glanced at the battle nearby, feeling somewhat astonished.
The Previous Era had focused most of its energy on fighting the Honkai; although they had aerial warships and even space dreadnoughts, they never fielded fleet formations on this scale, let alone engaged in full-blown armada-vs-armada fleet battles.
“It’s meaningless.
I am merely an ordinary Overseer of Schicksal.
What power could I possibly have to stop a war like this?” Otto said nonchalantly.
In the airports of Schicksal HQ, dozens of floating warships scattered across various docks fired their defense orbital cannons alongside harbor artillery at the distant enemy, sending warships crashing down every now and then.
Outside Schicksal HQ, an armada of over one hundred aerial warships—split into four fleet formations—had half-encircled the entire base, locking into a fierce exchange of heavy cannon fire with Schicksal’s defense fleet.
BOOM!
BOOM!
Deafening artillery roars echoed from afar as countless shells slammed viciously into Schicksal’s harbor defense platforms.
ZAP!
In the blink of an eye, several massive high-intensity laser beams scorched across the sky, striking a Schicksal floating warship.
By a stroke of dark luck, the beams pierced right into the warship’s power core, igniting its onboard Honkai reactor.
The Schicksal warship couldn’t hold together for long.
With a deafening explosion, it snapped clean in two and plunged into the Mediterranean Sea.
The invading armada didn’t necessarily have the upper hand in raw firefights against Schicksal’s fleet and defense platforms.
However, massive repair ships stationed at the rear of the enemy armada were constantly fixing damaged vessels on the fly.
As a result, even though Schicksal damaged many ships, they managed to sink very few—unless they focused concentrated fire on a single target.
Otto’s gaze wasn’t on those standard warships, however.
His eyes were locked onto the largest vessel in the center of the fleet—the enemy flagship.
Schicksal’s defense fleet clearly recognized that ship as the flagship as well, repeatedly attempting to organize fighter squadrons and warship escorts to push through and destroy it.
Yet the armada’s point defense was impenetrable; any fighter squadron or warship that tried to breach the perimeter was obliterated in seconds.
Otto stood like a mere spectator, watching what was likely the largest fleet battle in human history—whether of the Previous Era or the Current Era—and every single warship in it was airborne.
Aboard the flagship Project Bunny No.
1, Bronya controlled her nanobot clone in the commander’s seat, crossing her shapely legs as she gazed coldly at Otto on the main screen.
“Time to end Otto.”
This was the moment Bronya had been waiting for—waiting for Otto to finally show his face.
She knew full well that the Otto standing out there wasn’t his main body, and she was certain he had backup plans up his sleeve.
But none of that mattered.
Bronya had prepared weapons designed specifically to erase Otto once and for all, and she had zero interest in trading villain speeches with him.
As the saying goes, villains die talking too much—and Bronya certainly wasn’t gonna play the villain!
The Soulium Otto relied on was ultimately nothing more than a massive construct of nanobots.
Coincidentally, Bronya had long since cracked the structure of Soulium.
The moment she pinned Otto down, she could trigger a self-destruct sequence across all of Otto’s Soulium bodies simultaneously.
“Goodbye forever, Otto,” Bronya said coldly.
Let’s bring an end to everything!”
“Understood!” Gray Wind replied instantly.
At Bronya’s command, colossal energy surged within the core of the Project Bunny No.
1.
The next second, total silence fell upon the world.
For at that moment—time stood still!
The Time-Stop System: pure, state-of-the-art sci-fi black technology!
It was one of Bronya’s most formidable creations, and the single object she had poured the most Honkai energy into constructing.
In a certain universe, a vampire who could pause time for just five seconds already thought he could rule the world—only to get beaten up by a guy who could stop time for three seconds.
And in another universe, if not for running low on energy, a Time-Stop System could have directly crushed a certain bald villain’s ambition of world domination.
In short, stopping time was…
No, she couldn’t let herself get carried away.
Bronya forcibly calmed her racing heart.
She couldn’t afford to drop her guard for even a second.
Who knew what hidden trump cards Otto might still have left?
“Execute the plan immediately!” Bronya ordered swiftly once her mind cleared.
Dozens of clone squads quickly boarded transport craft.
One specialized squad carrying specialized weapons teleported right beside Otto, who was frozen in time.
The squad injected an electronic virus specifically engineered to dissolve Soulium straight into Otto’s Soulium frame.
Other squads penetrated deep into Schicksal HQ to eliminate any biological organism that could serve as a potential vessel for Otto.
Another group copied and downloaded every bit of research data from Schicksal’s laboratories, while additional squads extracted select key individuals to serve as experimental test subjects.
Naturally, Bronya’s armada and ground forces didn’t slack off on the assault either, wiping out all hostile combatants across Schicksal HQ at maximum speed.
“Big Sister Bronya, everything went according to plan,” Gray Wind reported after a thorough check.
“We gotta keep searching!
We can’t let Otto stir up any more trouble.
The second we catch his trail, execute him on the spot!”
Bronya didn’t let her guard down, speaking with total gravity.
“Understood!”
When time resumed, to Otto, it felt like he had merely blinked.
And then—every single force across all of Schicksal Headquarters was instantly wiped out!
“What…?”
Otto eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
Right after that, he felt his current Soulium body rapidly disintegrating.
It wasn’t just this one either; every other Soulium avatar he possessed, even those on the opposite side of the globe, collapsed into dust within seconds.
By the time his consciousness snapped back to his real physical body, a searing, heart-wrenching pain tore through him.
Darkness swallowed his vision, and he drew his final breath inside a secret office hidden within Schicksal HQ, dying with unfulfilled lingering regrets.
Bound to Otto, Void Archives watched his death in absolute terror.
Its form collapsed back into a gleaming golden cube, clattering onto the floor right beside Otto’s corpse.
“Alright, Otto should be totally out of the picture now.”
Ren let out a long sigh of relief.
Finally took out Otto.
Even if the old fox had somehow survived, with nanobots monitoring every inch of the globe, he’d be sniffed out in no time anyway.
“Next up…
the main squad.”