Three days had passed in the blink of an eye, with Sienna spending most of it digging through all sorts of information.
With her authority, and a little help from both Schicksal and the Kaslana family, her plans to head to Siberia for a Honkai Beast suppression mission and to pull up information on Cocolia were already set.
But before she could go, Sienna had a funeral to attend.
After the post-war chaos had settled, the funeral for the Valkyries who’d fallen on the Siberian battlefield began.
At the Schicksal Valkyrie Cemetery, everyone who’d fought in the Second Honkai war had gathered, except for those who had to stay behind at their respective branches to man essential posts.
Standing at the back of the procession, Sienna looked at the rows of white tombstones, some dating back centuries, right up to the present day.
These were the people who never even got a background mention in the main story, the ones who’d protected this world.
And now, another batch would be laid to rest here.
“Otto…”
Watching the Schicksal Overseer at the very front, Sienna spoke his name in her heart.
Unlike the other Valkyries who only knew that this major crisis was the work of the second Herrscher, Sienna knew Otto was at least seventy percent responsible for all these deaths.
Even without the dark experiments in the Babylon Labs, the world still would have birthed a second Herrscher.
But with the power of the Previous Era’s technology, how could Schicksal, which Otto had developed for over five hundred years, possibly be afraid of some ordinary Herrscher?
The team sent to investigate Babylon Labs consisted of two S-Rank Valkyries armed with Divine Keys, and one Herrscher who wasn’t even at full power.
A Herrscher who’d just been born and didn’t even understand her own abilities?
Before them, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“Tch.”
But what did it matter even if Otto had intentionally let Sirin slip away, causing even more tragedies?
As the most powerful person in the world, he’d earned the right to do that now.
“You’ve got your obsession, and I’ve got my dream.”
Regarding Otto’s management of Schicksal and his obsession with Kallen, Sienna felt both disgust at how he used people like chess pieces, and admiration for his centuries of struggle that had actually borne fruit.
“Mom!”
A child’s cry suddenly rang out from the side, making Sienna turn to look.
She watched the child, now two years old, being held in Siegfried’s arms.
The kid hadn’t seen her mom in days, and her dad had come back with nothing but sorrow on his face.
After arriving here and seeing the coffin bearing her mother’s name, Kiana—knowing full well what it meant—burst into tears.
“Kiana.”
Seeing her, Sienna instinctively reached into her pocket and touched the core inside.
“Someday, I’ll let you see your mother again. And I’ll change your fate.”
For this real Kiana here, ever since losing her mother…
Her life, just as she was starting to understand things, was no longer a happy one.
Otto’s Sirin Project, Siegfried’s defection, Theresa’s departure…
The little princess of Schicksal’s two great families had become a prisoner, vanished from everyone’s sight.
She didn’t know yet that inside that coffin were only some of Cecilia’s belongings and clothes.
Most of the other coffins for the Valkyries who’d died on that battlefield were cenotaphs too, because the bodies were too badly mangled to be brought back.
With Kiana’s cries, the atmosphere grew even heavier.
A few Valkyries started to weep softly.
“Fu Hua?”
After glancing around the procession, Sienna spotted Fu Hua, whose uniform was a little different from everyone else’s.
“Right now, she’s probably forgotten that one of these people here was her student, huh.”
Having lost her memories again, Fu Hua only knew these women as her comrades now.
She’d forgotten she wasn’t always alone.
“Siberia, here I come.”
The day after the funeral, Sienna boarded a plane with the unit sent to deal with the residual Honkai problems on the battlefield.
“Captain, do you really have to go?”
When Sienna told her teammates she was planning to head to Siberia to clean up the remaining Honkai, the ones who’d been resting all barged into her room.
“You all saw what happened in this war. Our strength is still way too weak.”
“Then we’ll go with you!”
“You’ve got your own missions. If everyone goes, who’s going to protect headquarters?”
–+–
After a bit of back and forth, Sienna finally managed to get them to calm down.
“Now that it’s just us, anything you want to say?”
After her teammates left the room, Sienna closed the door and lay back on her bed, looking at the core in her hand.
“Thank you.”
A gentle voice drifted softly from the core.
“How are you feeling now, Cecilia?”
Watching Cecilia, who had woken from her slumber inside the core, Sienna hadn’t expected her to revive this quickly.
“For someone like me, who was supposed to be dead, just having a situation like this is more than good enough.”
She’d been fully prepared to die when she unleashed the Zeroth Rated Power of Abyss Flower.
But after who knows how long, she, who should have been dead, somehow regained consciousness.
“Was it because of Kiana?”
At the funeral yesterday, Sienna could feel the core on her body react for a split second when she heard Kiana’s cries.
But given the circumstances, Sienna quickly suppressed the core, not letting it make a move.
Only after the ceremony was over and she’d returned to her room did she take it out.
Slowly, she poured the Honkai Energy she’d accumulated over the past few days into it.
“How could I not hear Kiana crying that loud?”
Thinking back to yesterday, when she’d heard Kiana’s voice and looked towards where it came from, but couldn’t see anything…
She could sense the Honkai Energy around her, but couldn’t manipulate it like she used to.
Just lifting her hand a few times in that one spot left her exhausted.
“Do you know what your situation is now?”
With Sienna’s Honkai Energy replenishing her, Cecilia could finally see the outside world now.
She knew her body was gone, and her consciousness was stored in a crystal.
“Miss Sienna… are you a Herrscher?”
Someone who could bring the dead back to life, wearing a Schicksal uniform, but manipulating Honkai Energy even more flexibly than herself…
Having just fought Sirin, Cecilia could only conclude that this woman she’d seen at headquarters before, a member of the Kaslana family like Siegfried, was also a Herrscher.
“No, it’s more like we’re both Herrschers.”
“Congratulations, Miss Cecilia. You’re no longer a Schicksal S-Rank Valkyrie. You’re now a Herrscher of Dominance, on the Honkai’s side.”
Seeing her second ‘fellow’ appear, Sienna smiled as she explained the situation.
“But aren’t Herrschers of Dominance, like, super weak?”
Upon hearing her predicament, Cecilia didn’t seem too bothered by it.
Instead, she casually dropped her assessment of Sienna.
“Em…”