“Hope I’m not too late.”
After a hurried drive, Sienna climbed out of a borrowed compact off-roader.
Taking in the sight of the ruined Babylon Labs, she glanced around but didn’t spot her target.
She stretched out her hand, releasing more threads to search for the person who’d used her life to buy time against the Second Herrscher, all to protect her teacher.
Beneath this rubble, the faint ripples of Honkai Energy from Cheng Lixue’s remains and the Divine Key: Water’s Edge drew Sienna’s threads like sharks scenting blood, extending rapidly toward them.
Shoving aside the debris piled on top, Sienna came face-to-face with the first broken body she’d encountered since arriving in this world.
“Hang in there.”
The sight before her made her freeze for a second, then she blurted out those words—both to Cheng Lixue’s fading soul and to herself.
Against Sirin going all out, even Fu Hua, temporarily at her peak, had been defeated.
So Cheng Lixue, just an A-Rank, facing her alone?
Her fate was bound to be far grimmer.
Staring at the body before her, riddled with wounds, clothes soaked in blood, bones and organs shattered beyond recognition, Sienna’s first instinct was to look away, to never see this state again.
“I’m not the type to say one thing and do another.”
She was supposed to be someone who’d protect everything beautiful in this world—how could she let a sight like this scare her off?
Sienna reached out, and a dozen threads shot from her hands, winding around Cheng Lixue.
Unlike Cecilia, whose soul was shielded by the creation powers of Abyss Flower and had died more recently, Sienna had to carefully feel out Cheng Lixue and the Divine Key in her hand for a long while before she could pinpoint and start absorbing that fragile soul.
In her Domain of Dominance now, her own core hadn’t fused with her, kept separate to hide her Herrscher identity.
Usually, a single Dominance Thread linked them, and when needed, she drew power through it.
Two cores storing souls were surrounded by the other unused ones.
“Sorry, someone else will have to take your body.”
Having finished her emergency rescue, Sienna thought about loading Cheng Lixue’s remains and the Divine Key into the car.
But her earlier speed—digging straight to where Abyss Flower was buried like she knew it’d be there—could still be passed off as pure luck.
If she showed up with a corpse and a Divine Key, there’d be no explaining that away.
“Can’t take the whole body back? Then this’ll have to do.”
She pulled a small vial from her backpack and collected some of Cheng Lixue’s blood into it.
Now that she’d saved Cecilia’s and Cheng Lixue’s souls, she’d need to prepare bodies for them later.
Cecilia’s body was gone, but Otto would secretly create her clone eventually.
If she didn’t leave something for Cheng Lixue’s full revival now, and her remains ended up cremated after recovery, that’d be a real headache.
“The rest doesn’t really involve me anymore.”
Back at the original site, watching the area turn into what looked like an archaeological dig from both sides’ efforts, Sienna blended in and started slacking off.
Hours later, both sides, having practically flipped every inch of ground, paused their work.
Sirin’s body and the five cores had been unearthed; now they just waited for the higher-ups to negotiate.
As for Sirin’s Void Herrscher core, after confirming neither side had hidden it and searching the area again, they gave up looking.
“If Fu Hua hadn’t sliced through the link between the Herrscher and the Honkai will, and ‘God’ suddenly ordered me to step in now, my slacking wouldn’t even be slacking anymore.”
Watching the on-site arrival of Einstein and Tesla from Anti-Entropy’s high command, facing Otto, who hadn’t bothered to show up and communicated via video instead, Sienna—posing as security personnel among the large number of Valkyries guarding against Anti-Entropy—eyed the five Herrscher cores in their boxes and Sirin’s broken body nearby.
Knowing how this negotiation would end, her mind started wandering.
Her Herrscher of Dominance instincts made her unconsciously glance at those cores.
But one look at that nearby pufferfish-like figure [Sirin’s body] was enough to kill any funny ideas—ten times over she wouldn’t dare pull anything now.
“Abyss Flower and the Core of Reason are each side’s property, so naturally they go back to their owners. But the remaining four cores—Wind, Fire, Death, and Thunder—and the Second Herrscher’s body: how much do you want?”
Right off the bat, Otto threw the tough question to the other side.
“We can give up the Second Herrscher’s body, but we can’t settle for just one Herrscher core.”
The Anti-Entropy higher-ups, who knew both Otto and Schicksal inside out, realized this negotiation wouldn’t net them more than Schicksal.
Among the treasures up for grabs, the Herrscher’s body wasn’t much use to their tech-focused development path.
So they’d hand it over to Schicksal—the four remaining cores were the real prize.
In the fight against the Second Herrscher, Anti-Entropy’s Titans could hold their own against mid-to-low-tier Honkai Beasts and Zombies.
But against Judgment-class threats and Herrschers, they had to rely entirely on Schicksal’s Valkyries.
With those four cores, Anti-Entropy’s Selene could finally activate.
Then, facing Herrscher-level enemies later, they wouldn’t be stuck with only Welt to deploy.
But this idea?
Forget the other side—even Schicksal wouldn’t demand all the spoils outright.
“Then let’s split them evenly. We’ll take the Wind and Fire Herrscher cores; the Thunder and Death cores go to you. Deal?”
Going by the Previous Era’s Herrscher order, after the Herrscher of the Void came Thunder, Wind, Death, and Fire.
Having seen that the Herrscher of Death’s power couldn’t revive the dead, Otto had little interest in that core.
Following the principle that later Herrschers are stronger, Schicksal would take the most powerful one on-site, Fire, and Wind, which outranked Thunder.
“No problem.”
Anti-Entropy, prepared for a back-and-forth, was determined to secure two cores no matter what.
Since Otto offered an even split, they agreed.
“Then we’ll discuss the rest elsewhere.”
With Herrscher matters settled, what remained were routine issues between the two organizations.
“Time to head back.”
Watching the negotiation wrap up, Sienna knew this crisis was finally over.
The fiercest battles were done; now came the period for both organizations to recover and resume their smaller-scale clashes.