“So these are the two organizations fighting the Honkai? Pretty funny, if you ask me.”
After getting off the plane, Sienna led her squad to the epicenter of the explosion.
The plain, once blanketed in snow, had been turned into a massive crater.
The thick layers of snow and the trees that had stood there were all vaporized.
The first to arrive were some people from Schicksal and Anti-Entropy, already using all sorts of excavation machinery and detectors to search for the treasures buried beneath the dirt.
And during their digging, the two groups kept glancing over at each other, afraid the other might snatch something away.
“Stop gawking. Let’s start digging too.”
Sienna stowed her weapon and pulled a portable entrenching tool from the pouch on her belt.
Since they weren’t trying to forcefully take over the area, the distribution issue could wait until they were at the negotiating table.
“You guys search here. I’m going to check over there.”
Leaving her subordinates behind, Sienna ran towards an empty spot.
Unlike the others, who carefully dug bit by bit, terrified of breaking something with a single wrong swing of their shovel, Sienna had her own special way of searching.
Once she reached a certain spot, she started digging downwards as fast as she could.
“Looks like this Herrscher’s power isn’t so bad after all.”
Wrapped around Sienna’s right wrist was a thin thread made of Honkai Energy.
Just as she’d arrived and was wondering how to find Sirin’s scattered remains, buried under the dirt, the Six Herrscher cores, and Cecilia’s Abyss Flower, this thread had suddenly extended from Sienna’s hand and probed towards a specific location.
Surprised she still had this ability, Sienna followed the thread’s direction to search for something.
Clang!
After a few shovelfuls, the sharp entrenching tool hit something hard.
“Abyss Flower?”
After digging a bit more, the tip of a lance appeared before Sienna’s eyes.
“Wait a minute!”
Just as Sienna was about to dig out the entire Abyss Flower, the thread wrapped around her hand began to coil around the lance’s tip.
Then, Sienna felt a faint connection form between herself and the core of the Previous Era’s Herrscher of Death within the Abyss Flower.
And if she wanted to, she could deepen that connection and eventually gain control over a part of the Herrscher of Death’s power.
But here, surrounded by Schicksal and Anti-Entropy troops, Sienna didn’t dare reveal her current identity.
The moment she used the Herrscher of Dominance’s plundering ability, the equipment nearby, loaded with Honkai Energy detectors, would surely pick it up.
She’d come looking for a Herrscher’s legacy, only to become a new Herrscher’s legacy herself.
Stopping her suicidal impulse, Sienna carefully unearthed the entire Divine Key, bit by bit.
“Too bad it’s not mine.”
Back before she’d crossed over, she’d pulled this weapon in the game too.
But in-game data and pictures could never compare to the real Abyss Flower.
“Even if I have to hand it over, let me get my fill of touching it first.”
Checking that no one nearby was paying attention to her, Sienna decided to indulge herself for a while.
“!?”
The moment she picked up the Abyss Flower, Sienna could sense a tiny, unfamiliar energy attached to it.
“Could it really be…”
Thinking of something, Sienna didn’t care about possibly being discovered anymore.
She quickly released her Dominance threads and carefully absorbed this energy, which seemed like it could vanish at any moment.
“Looks like I underestimated my own abilities.”
Normally, for a Herrscher of Dominance to gain someone else’s power, they’d at least have to defeat them first.
If the opponent was stronger, failure meant not only not gaining power, but also suffering severe damage.
The reason Sienna hadn’t gone after the Herrscher of Death’s core in the Abyss Flower just now was that she was afraid her action would provoke a counterattack from it, exposing herself.
But whether successful or not, what could be dominated were various Honkai energies and Herrscher Authorities.
There was no mention anywhere of being able to dominate souls.
When Sienna had been thinking about her abilities before, this hadn’t even crossed her mind.
After all, she was playing Honkai Impact 3rd, not some kind of card game with dark rules.
The Honkai world’s story had already reached chapter twenty-five, and there was still no mention of souls existing in this world.
But Sienna herself was a soul transmigrator, and then there was Welt’s whole deal of dying and coming back to life multiple times thanks to his Herrscher core.
That’s what made Sienna think, upon contacting this energy, that it might be Cecilia’s soul.
“This haul is huge.”
In less than a minute, Sienna finished absorbing it and injected the gained energy into one of the cores within her domain of Dominance.
The originally colorless core, upon receiving the new energy, began to emit a pure white light.
Then, the figure of Cecilia, the woman Sienna inwardly hailed as her mother-in-law, appeared within it.
“Calm down. Gotta stay calm.”
This feeling, like getting ten pulls with no off-rate items and all golds, nearly made Sienna jump for joy on the spot.
But this wasn’t the time for loud laughter, or for taking screenshots and spamming them in every game group.
After taking a few deep breaths, Sienna picked up the Abyss Flower and walked towards where the Schicksal contingent was gathered.
“It’s the Abyss Flower!”
When Sienna reached a more crowded area, some Valkyries who saw her immediately recognized the weapon in her hand.
“Where did you find it? Did you see Lady Cecilia?”
At this time, the Abyss Flower wasn’t just a Divine Key in Schicksal’s possession; it was also the weapon used by Cecilia, the idol of all Valkyries.
In this search mission, these Valkyries had been informed that besides the Second Herrscher’s remains and the six Herrscher cores, the Abyss Flower was also on the list.
Surrounded by a few Valkyries, Sienna didn’t answer, just shook her head to indicate she didn’t know.
Cecilia’s soul and her own secret weren’t something she could reveal now.
“I found the Abyss Flower over there.”
To avoid being held up by these Valkyries, Sienna could only point towards where she’d just been.
“Sigh.”
Watching the Valkyries rush off in that direction, Sienna knew they were just wasting their time.
As powerful as an S-rank Valkyrie was, they still had a human body.
If it had been Siegfried, whose bloodline had awakened, who’d been caught in that blast, there might have been a tiny chance he’d survived.
But Cecilia, having exhausted all her power and blood, her body had already dissipated into this land.
“Even without a body, so what? I’m not powerless like them now.”
Having obtained Cecilia’s soul, one day she would be able to bring her back into this world.
When she handed the Abyss Flower over to the person in charge of collecting items, they hadn’t expected Sienna to find one of the targets so quickly.
This was the epicenter of the explosion, after all.
The massive blast wave could have blown anything that was here anywhere.
“Not staying to guard it?”
More people were arriving now.
The excavation work wouldn’t suffer with one less person.
At this moment, when even S-rank Valkyries needed rest, and A-rank Valkyries had been wiped out in the operation against Benares,
Sienna, a B-rank Valkyrie, was temporarily Schicksal’s high-end combat power.
“No, I still need to help.”
Declining the request to stay and guard the Divine Key, Sienna had another place to go.