Having pinpointed the exact location of the Authority, the rest of the training became significantly easier.
Bianka closed her eyes again. Her entire body tensed as she mobilized her Honkai Energy to drive the Authority, rapidly churning through the dormant [Wishes] stored within her, one after another.
Shu stood nearby as her spotter. Occasionally, he stepped in to help her fulfill a [Wish], smoothed out the lingering side effects, and, most importantly—
Interrupted the [Wishes] that would have instantly sucked Bianka dry.
Some people's prayers were completely unhinged. Time travel, causality reversal, altering fundamental universal constants... people really just asked for anything.
And Bianka's training method was equally reckless. She was treating it like a roulette wheel—whatever [Wish] she rolled, she attempted to manifest without so much as glancing at the contents. She was blindly delegating full operational control to the Authority itself.
The Authority looked at the submitted request: Oh, reverse time and spin the Earth backward?
Master, are we really doing this?
No response from Bianka.
The Authority, eager to please and terrified of being fired, gritted its teeth and decided to wing it.
Let's just withdraw 2,000% of the user's total Honkai Energy to test the waters!
THWACK!
Shu raised his hand and flicked Bianka hard on the forehead, forcefully interrupting the Authority right as it prepared to drain Bianka into a husk in a matter of frames.
"Ouch—!" Bianka clutched her forehead, staring at Shu in bewilderment. When she finally processed what had almost happened, that bewilderment rapidly morphed into sheer terror.
"You actually have to read the contents of the [Wish] before you accept it." Feeling that physical violence wasn't the best teaching method, Shu manifested a small toy hammer in his hand, tapping it rhythmically against his palm.
"You aren't like me. I have multiple Herrscher Cores providing a continuous, infinite output of Honkai Energy. A MANTIS's physiology, at the end of the day, is just a massive battery. If you drain it, your Honkai Energy will run out."
Shu patiently counseled her.
A Herrscher Core and MANTIS genes were fundamentally different.
A Core was like a permanently open valve. Outside a Herrscher's body, it might fall silent, but inside, barring special circumstances, it remained constantly open. The other end of that valve was connected to the Imaginary Tree—or some other sub-dimension—supplying a fixed, continuous flow of Honkai Energy to the vessel.
It worked like a communicating vessel. Once the Herrscher's maximum physical capacity was filled, the output paused. The moment it detected a dip in reserves, the valve opened, pumping energy until the tank was full again.
For someone like Shu, who possessed more than one Core, that regeneration rate was multiplied. For him, running out of Honkai Energy was a physical impossibility.
Because of this, Shu's only real bottleneck was his maximum capacity, which occasionally prevented him from instantly fulfilling truly absurd [Wishes].
However, unlike Bianka, attempting a god-tier [Wish] wouldn't turn him into a mummified corpse. Instead, he would simply enter a "buffering" state, waiting until his Cores pumped out enough total energy to meet the required threshold.
Essentially, a self-inflicted stun caused by a slow processing speed.
Which brought up the obvious question: Was there a way to solve this bottleneck?
"How did you solve that problem, Senior Shu?" Bianka asked, her lingering fear giving way to burning curiosity.
Theoretically speaking, Bianka's maximum Honkai Energy capacity was actually higher than Shu's base capacity. Yet, Shu routinely pulled off miracles she couldn't even fathom.
"..." Shu stared blankly at Bianka for a moment before waving his hand with a helpless sigh. "You won't be able to replicate this... but I can explain the theory behind it."
In terms of raw base stats, Shu was genuinely falling behind the current meta. In a world experiencing rapid power creep, Bianka was undoubtedly the new meta-defining stat monster.
Logically, the shiny new unit should have power-crept the old veteran right onto the bench. Hell, if this were a game, that's exactly what would have happened.
But unfortunately for the meta, Shu had an exclusive, signature PRI-ARM.
The Scepter.
The buff provided by that artifact was far more profound than just adding another Core's output.
Before acquiring the Scepter, Shu's total Honkai Energy capacity was split between his physical body and his energy constructs—which eventually included the Scepter itself.
Because constructs were extensions of the Herrscher, maintaining them permanently reserved a chunk of his maximum capacity.
It was exactly why the Herrscher of the Void, when cosplaying a certain golden-armored King of Heroes, hand-crafted every single Void Lance right before firing them, rather than maintaining a permanent armory of pre-made lances.
Shu's Scepter operated on the same principle. Maintaining it carved out a massive chunk of his maximum capacity, which was exactly why his base stats had taken a hit, rendering him temporarily "weaker" than Bianka.
Even holding the Scepter only restored his original power level, making him slightly superior to Bianka, but not by a world-shattering margin.
However.
The moment Shu embodied the Herrscher of Dreams and expanded his Dreamscape, everything changed.
The Dreamscape wasn't a construct.
It was a literal, physical chunk of Imaginary Space that he tore out and slammed into reality. Why else did Welt Joyce manage to walk out of that Dreamscape holding a genuine fragment of Imaginary Space?
At that point, the "vessel" storing the Honkai Energy was no longer just Shu's body. It was Shu plus an entire dimension of Imaginary Space.
The mathematical difference wasn't just multiplication anymore. It was adding an exponent.
That was how a Shu who nearly suffocated to death from Apsu's breath could, upon expanding his Dreamscape, suddenly treat Apsu like a punching bag.
Of course, the Dreamscape wasn't an invincible win button. It still possessed a fatal cast animation—a wind-up time slightly longer than the few frames it took to cast [Wish]. Against an opponent with a massive stat advantage, getting caught during that wind-up meant being instantly diced to ribbons.
If Arc City's White Blood Cell array hadn't bought the Mirror Shu enough time to finish casting his Dreamscape, Apsu would have turned him into minced meat. But he did manage to cast it.
Dreams. Truly miraculous, aren't they?
"So that's how you bypassed the limit..." Bianka murmured in awe, though a hint of frustration quickly followed.
Shu was right; she couldn't learn this method. There was only one Scepter, and it only recognized Shu and Sirin.
Even if Shu wanted to transfer admin privileges to her, it wouldn't work. The Scepter could grant access, but Bianka lacked the fundamental compatibility to operate it. Even as a MANTIS, she couldn't wield an entirely foreign Authority.
For a Herrscher, using their own Authority was as natural as a heartbeat. It required zero conscious effort; the body just did it.
But trying to make a biological heart beat inside a fully mechanical chassis? The technical barrier to entry was simply too absurd. It was impossible for Bianka to ever learn.