T/N: This was also done by PearlTL, though only 15 chapters before they deleted it.
–+–
As the blinding light from the Honkai Fission Bomb finally faded, the Second Eruption of this era was, for all intents and purposes, over.
With the Second Herrscher Sirin, the cause of all this, gone, cleaning up the remaining Honkai Beasts scattered across most of Siberia was just a matter of time.
As for the vast swathes of devastated environment, well, the Fourth Divine Key, parked up in space, would spend the next few years fixing that.
“Sirin… Sirin. It’s not that I didn’t want to save you, it’s just… this whole mess was way over my head. Even a six-core Herrscher like you bought it. What could a tiny little Herrscher of Dominance like me possibly do?”
Sienna Kaslana, a B-Rank Valkyrie who’d clearly gotten the wrong cheat code, admitted she was currently useless.
“Captain, time to move out.”
Having just finished a three-second silent tribute to the blowfish, Sienna grabbed her gear and joined the other Valkyries heading for the blast zone.
“Man, this sucks. Weren’t I supposed to be the Herrscher of Flames?”
Sitting in Schicksal’s small aircraft, Sienna, a recent transmigrator, felt a bit defeated.
She couldn’t quite remember why she’d transmigrated, but she distinctly recalled a voice hyping her up to enter this Honkai world.
It promised she’d become the game’s newest SSS-rank Herrscher of Flames, complete with Himeko’s stigmata set and her signature weapon.
But after arriving, yeah, she was now part of the Kaslana family—white hair, blue eyes—and she could feel a powerful force linked to her.
But a quick check of her new identity’s memories revealed she was smack-dab in the middle of the Siberian theater during the Second Eruption.
No Key of Radiance in her hand.
No Himeko stigmata on her back.
Delving deeper into the power inside her, Sienna found a subspace pocket dimension all her own.
Connecting her consciousness to it, she saw a thousand neatly arranged ‘gems’ floating in the empty void.
As someone who’d just finished the game’s main story, Sienna reluctantly accepted the truth: she’d become the Herrscher of Dominance, the very one she used to mow down like grass.
“Even if a lot of people have been transmigrating as the Herrscher of Flames lately, couldn’t I have at least gotten some other Herrscher from the game?”
The satisfaction of using HoF, HoT, HoS, and HoR to obliterate those puppets in-game was now directly proportional to her current headache.
Because whether it was the pathetic Herrschers of the current era or the more impressive ones from the previous one, the Herrscher of Dominance was basically cannon fodder.
Sure, they numbered a thousand, but their top fighters were barely pseudo-Herrscher level.
Basically, mooks and minor elites.
The kind that, once discovered, would be mowed down by any half-decent enemy combatant.
“Whatever. Playing it safe is better than being a pufferfish that keeps puffing up just to get smacked down again.”
Feeling the plane’s unusual speed and reading the mission brief they’d just received, Sienna, who knew the Honkai story inside out, realized they were heading to retrieve the Second Herrscher Sirin’s remains and her six cores.
“Are Herrscher bodies really that tough?”
The spot where Sienna had been was over a hundred klicks from Ground Zero, yet she could still see the sky lit up by the blast.
“Approaching target. All personnel, gear check. Prepare for immediate combat readiness upon landing.”
Having gotten a handle on her new situation, Sienna, now a squad leader, started issuing orders to her team.
The fight between humans and Herrscher was over.
But the fight between humans and humans?
That never ended.
Schicksal and Anti-Entropy, two organizations united against the Honkai, had allied for this Herrscher crisis.
But with the common enemy dead, they had no reason to keep playing nice.
Add in their historical baggage and mutual hatred, this meeting wasn’t going to be a friendly handshake.
“Yes, Ma’am!” xN
–+–
“Overseer, are you heading to the scene now?”
In Schicksal’s floating headquarters, Otto had just transferred his consciousness from his body in Siberia to a new one in the command center and walked in.
“No need. Anti-Entropy took a beating this time too. Even if I’m not there, they won’t dare take more than their share.”
Never really seeing Anti-Entropy as an enemy, Otto was confident Schicksal would come out ahead in divvying up the Second Herrscher’s remains.
“According to intel from the front, Anti-Entropy’s Sovereign, Welt, can’t currently use the Herrscher of Reason’s power. Their top administrators, Einstein and Tesla, will also be at the negotiations. Should we take this chance to wipe out Anti-Entropy’s leadership?”
Having witnessed a Herrscher’s power firsthand, Otto’s secretary, Amber, suggested this based on the latest reports.
“Schicksal’s losses in this fight far outweigh Anti-Entropy’s. We need time to recover. Not a good time to make a move.”
Otto had underestimated Sirin after her return from the moon.
Initially, with all of Schicksal’s advanced Previous Era tech, they should’ve been able to corner and kill the newly-ascended Sirin near Babylon Lab in a day.
But thanks to Otto’s deliberate maneuvering, a severely wounded Sirin escaped to the moon.
There, the Will of Honkai on the moon granted her four new Herrscher cores.
Feeling invincible again, the upgraded Sirin forced the Schicksal-Anti-Entropy alliance to pull out all the stops in their next engagement.
They cycled through the Zeroth Rated Power of Divine Keys like the Star of Eden, Judgment of Shamash, Abyss Flower, and Fenghuang Down, and still couldn’t beat her.
Good thing Sirin wasn’t a real soldier.
Her arrogance meant she kept getting outsmarted and smacked down every time.
“All three of Schicksal’s S-Rank Valkyries are gone now, huh.”
Witnessing the terrifying power of Siegfried’s awakened Kaslana bloodline at the end, Otto, seeing a potential threat, decided to deploy the Honkai Fission Bomb.
But to protect Siegfried and the others still on the field, Cecilia, who could have survived, chose to sacrifice herself to ensure their safety.
Now Cecilia was dead.
The surviving Siegfried would surely hold a grudge against Otto.
And Theresa, so close to Cecilia, would be alienated from him.
Sure, he could use the Fenghuang Down simulated by the Void Archives to tweak her memories a bit, but things would never be the same.
“Losing the S-Ranks isn’t a big deal. The main objective was achieved anyway.”
After mulling over the potential fallout, Otto, with over five centuries of Schicksal leadership under his belt, didn’t see it as a major crisis.
What mattered more to him now was deciphering the method he’d obtained from ‘God’ – the way to revive Kallen.