Subject to the dual nature of Honkai—a force as devastatingly efficient as it is ruinous to civilization—the progression of the world, both in the Previous Era and the present, has remained stubbornly tethered to the mast of technology.
Matters of the soul, those elusive mysteries of the occult, remained a wall that Otto had spent over five hundred years hammering against, yet he had scarcely moved an inch.
“As long as you transfer your soul into a Herrscher Core and use our unique Threads of Domination to pilot the body, you can sever the link between the core and the physical form the moment you take a fatal blow.”
After detailing the grueling conditions required to resurrect a person, Sienna took the opportunity to explain the current survival tactics employed by the Herrschers of Dominance.
“Can it work even on a body that’s already stopped breathing?”
“I haven’t tested that yet,” Sienna admitted.
“But it would likely drain significantly more Honkai Energy just to keep the husk moving.”
“If your regenerative abilities are up to par, you’re better off just mending the body directly. If the damage is too far gone, you can just hop into a fresh shell from the Theater of Domination.”
“Of course, the Theater is empty right now. If we want spare parts, we’ll have to wait until our influence expands.”
Responding to Cocolia’s inquiry, Sienna recalled her only experiments: placing a Core into mannequin bodies.
At the time, she hadn’t bothered to measure how a Herrscher Core performed across different materials.
For now, it was all educated guesswork.
“So, in other words, our current power is… negligible?”
“Not negligible. Non-existent.”
Aside from Cheng Lixue, who was still slumbering within the Core, and Vanilla, who was out ‘farming’ in the wilds, the entire Herrscher of Dominance faction consisted of the few people sitting in this room.
“What’s the game plan, then?”
Cocolia didn’t look particularly discouraged by Sienna’s bluntness.
To her, the growth of an organization wasn’t about its current footprint, but its latent potential.
Since becoming a Herrscher, she possessed enough raw power to wipe out an entire army single-handedly.
Imagine that power multiplied by a thousand versions of herself.
“I have over nine hundred Herrscher Cores, but they aren’t exactly plug-and-play,” Sienna explained.
“If we just start tossing Cores around, Schicksal and Anti-Entropy will sniff us out in a heartbeat.”
She remembered how, while the Herrscher of Dominance was busy plotting against Kiana’s crew, they hadn’t even noticed Otto slipping into their backyard.
After the Herrscher of Flamescion turned them to ash, the entire Theater of Domination became Otto’s personal property.
After watching Vanilla evolve from a low-level Zombie into a sentient one, Sienna realized her recruitment pool shouldn’t be limited to just humans.
“Leave the scouting for potential comrades to me,” Cocolia said.
“For now, you focus on building up a conventional power base here.”
“The previous Eruption swept through Siberia like a localized apocalypse, thinning out the local players. This is the perfect window to swallow up those battered warlord factions and turn them into our own.”
On the global chessboard, Schicksal held sway over Eurasia, Africa, and Australia, while Anti-Entropy maintained its grip on the Americas and the Far East.
Siberia sat right in the crosshairs, a no-man’s-land between the two giants.
Right now, both Schicksal and Anti-Entropy needed time to lick their wounds and recover from the war’s attrition.
Until Schicksal could use the Fourth Divine Key to restore the environment, they wouldn’t be looking too closely at this frozen wasteland.
Anti-Entropy, wanting to avoid Schicksal’s gaze, would be looking for local proxies to do their dirty work.
They had no idea that Cocolia—the woman they sponsored to run a small orphanage—would one day become the most powerful figure in Anti-Entropy whenever Welt wasn’t around to call the shots.
“Integrating them isn’t an issue,” Cocolia noted, “but what use are these people? They can barely hold their own against a Honkai Beast.”
From her days in the military, Cocolia knew exactly what those so-called warlords were made of.
If you cut off the head of the snake, the rest only cared about who was signing their paychecks.
Such a force was fine for minor skirmishes, but in the face of the Honkai, they were nothing more than cannon fodder.
“The ‘warlord’ title is just a coat to wear while we stake out territory,” Sienna replied.
“Once the land is yours, you can do whatever you want behind closed doors.”
When Anti-Entropy had plucked Cocolia out of a sea of warlords, it wasn’t just because of her efficiency.
It was because while everyone else was busy press-ganging children into becoming child soldiers, she was the only one building an orphanage to protect them.
“I understand.”
If she could consolidate the power of this region in her own hands, she could continue chasing her ideals.
“Just remember,” Sienna warned, “unless your back is against the wall, don’t use your Herrscher powers. And if you do, make sure there are no witnesses.”
“Schicksal and Anti-Entropy are like hounds when it comes to anything Honkai-related.”
But this was still Schicksal territory.
Being caught meant either a swift execution by a Valkyrie or becoming a permanent resident of a laboratory petri dish.
“You said civilization and the Honkai evolve in tandem,” Cocolia asked, “so why is Schicksal so much stronger than the Honkai right now?”
“Because the ‘now’ we live in isn’t the first time humanity has walked this path.”
Seeing that Cocolia—having just glimpsed the dark side of the world—still lacked a concrete grasp of Schicksal’s true depth, Sienna decided to use the afternoon to give her a proper education on the history of the Honkai and civilization.
“Even the wildest sci-fi movies I’ve seen can’t hold a candle to how surreal reality actually is,” Cocolia remarked afterward.
She was reeling, first from the revelation of a lost prehistoric civilization, and then from the looming dread of the various Herrscher-led disasters to come.
“Sienna, how do you know all this?”
It wasn’t just Cocolia and Alexandra who were stunned.
Even Cecilia, an S-Rank Valkyrie, hadn’t seen documents in Schicksal’s archives that went into this much detail about the Previous Era.
Sienna was supposed to be a mere B-Rank.
Usually, one only learned scraps about the past through the history of Divine Keys or scavenging ruins.
“That’s my secret,” Sienna said with a small smile.
“I can’t tell you just yet.”
“Then… do you actually have a way to defeat the Honkai?”
Hearing how a single Herrscher could wipe out a continent during the late stages of the Previous Era, and how the Final Herrscher had crushed humanity despite them throwing everything they had at it, Cecilia felt a pang of doubt.
Even if she were fully resurrected, she wasn’t sure she could win against such overwhelming odds.
“They just used the wrong method to fight it,” Sienna said confidently.
“I won’t be making the same mistakes they did.”
Exhausting every resource just to push technology forward would only ever result in a stalemate with the Honkai.
Every battle fought that way only eroded the soil in which civilization grew, until eventually, there was nothing left for the Honkai to consume but ashes.