The world of Honkai was cruel.
For the countless ordinary people swallowed up by disasters and man-made calamities born from Honkai, there was no resistance worth speaking of. No real way to fight back.
And yet, the world of Honkai could also look beautiful.
Because some people—no matter how much blood stained their hands, no matter how many sins, debts, and consequences they carried from the past—would still be handed a chance others could only envy.
A chance to start over.
Or else… a chance to fulfill the dream they had never let go of. To satisfy the obsession buried in their hearts.
Was that fair?
Of course not.
"No matter what world you're talking about, true fairness doesn't exist."
"The ones who get preferential treatment are almost always the strong."
Inside the Theater of Domination, Ling Ke gave that answer in a flat, emotionless voice.
A few days later—
"This is your reporter, coming to you live from Tokyo."
"As you can see, riots have already broken out in the streets—"
Boom!
"After the shocking revelations earlier today, enraged citizens have poured into the roads. Government buildings have already been set on fire as people vent their anger and disbelief."
Inside a lounge at Schicksal Headquarters, Kiana sat in front of a single-user terminal and stared at the live report on the screen, her expression complicated.
The image changed.
A huge procession flooded the avenue.
People held banners high over their heads and shouted in unison, their voices rising in wave after wave.
"Eliminate the Herrschers! Give us back our homes!"
"Eliminate the Herrschers! Give us back our homes!"
And if one looked closely, many of the banners and flags held by those ordinary civilians carried faces Kiana knew all too well.
Ling Ke.
Mei.
And herself.
Only those faces had either been crossed out with huge red X's, or covered in vicious curses and abuse. Some of the portraits were even being burned right there in the street.
And that was not all.
"Dissolve Schicksal!"
"Punish Anti-Entropy!"
"Put World Serpent on trial!"
"You butchers of human life!"
"Enemies of humanity!"
"The international community has no need for this kind of vermin!"
The emblems of the three anti-Honkai organizations were being dragged out and condemned alongside them.
In Europe, West Asia, and North America, most of the fury was aimed at Schicksal.
In the Far East, Singapore, and several other countries, Anti-Entropy was taking the brunt of it.
As for World Serpent—
once the truth behind Sky City had been exposed, once people learned that Shencheng Pharmaceuticals, one of its subordinate institutions, had tried to use an entire city's population as test material…
the Shenzhou government had openly lodged its protest.
Now the whole world knew.
Billions of people knew what had really happened behind the Berlin fire decades ago.
What the meteor disaster from more than ten years ago really was.
What the fall of Nagazora a few years back really was.
And what the so-called global hunt now sweeping across the world had really started from.
Were Herrschers the enemies of humanity?
Yes.
But how were Herrschers born?
Because certain scum, drunk on arrogance and malice, had done whatever they pleased.
People now knew about the experimental subject called Sirin.
They knew about the "piece on the board" named Raiden Mei.
And they knew about Ling Ke's past.
The video archives preserved at the West Asia Branch—the recordings of those experiments, raw and undeniable—had already been thrown out into the public eye.
Now everyone knew why Ling Ke hated all mankind so much.
Some people had started to understand him.
Of course, there were just as many who spat back one bright, cheerful sentence:
Serves him right.
Because for some of those people, someone close to them—a parent, a lover, a friend—had already died in the global hunt Ling Ke had unleashed over the past few days.
There was no question that Ling Ke himself did not care about those curses in the slightest.
After becoming a Herrscher, he had always placed himself very clearly.
There was no need to say more. Even putting aside the identity of the Herrscher of Domination, the five words "Doomsday Player" already explained everything.
But compared to him—
whether it was Kiana and Mei,
or Schicksal, Anti-Entropy, and World Serpent—
the pressure falling on their side was far greater.
Ling Ke was already humanity's enemy.
They, on the other hand, were being torn apart by the very people they had once wanted to protect.
"…Sigh."
Kiana rubbed her forehead and shut off the video.
She wanted to go outside and walk for a while.
Hopefully she would not run into Otto.
Yes.
Even though the three sides had formed a temporary alliance, she still did not want to see that face.
If not for him, Teacher Himeko never would have—
"Teacher Himeko…"
The instant that fiery red figure flashed across her mind, Kiana's mood dropped even lower.
There was still no news of her whereabouts.
And according to the Sovereign of World Serpent—Kevin Kaslana himself—the chance that Himeko was still alive was already infinitesimal. Close enough to zero that the difference hardly mattered.
"Teacher Himeko… please be okay."
"I…"
Kiana walked out of the room alone, her heart already in a mess.
Then all at once, she heard another broadcast playing from the room next door.
"Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all viewers and listeners."
"This is your most truthful host, Doni Vermillion."
"And next, I will once again reveal to the world some of the truths that have been hidden in the dark all these years…"
Kiana's footsteps stopped.
The room next to hers belonged to Mei.
Right now, Kiana did not dare go in and see her directly.
Because over the last few days, Raiden Mei's condition had very obviously been wrong.
Even though her father, Raiden Ryoma, had already been taken into protection by the three organizations, she still had not recovered.
It seemed what happened that day on the deck of the Hyperion, along with the crushing storm of public opinion afterward, had hit her hard.
As for the broadcast Mei was listening to—
Doni Vermillion.
A mysterious man whose past identity could not be traced at all, no matter how Schicksal, Anti-Entropy, and World Serpent dug into him.
No records.
No history.
Nothing.
Because of that, their side had already come to one conclusion.
This man was very likely one of Ling Ke's subordinates.
It was he who had suddenly become active in front of the whole world over the last few days, exposing one buried secret after another related to Honkai.
During that time, his personal account, his live channels, the news portal he had built, and the forum under his control—
none of them could be shut down.
None of them could be blocked.
No matter how the three organizations deployed their best active information warfare specialists, they still could not close any of it.
And it was precisely because of that nonstop stream of revelations that the public opinion storm now raging across the world had grown so terrifying.
By now, Doni Vermillion had already gathered an audience in the hundreds of millions.
Every live broadcast, every recorded upload, pulled in massive viewership.
It could be said that as long as that man sat down in his studio chair, attention itself would gather around him.
And today—
"Today, dear viewers, I will be bringing you a piece of hearsay whose authenticity has not been confirmed one hundred percent."
"Yes, you heard correctly. Let me stress it once more: this information has not been verified by every party involved. Whether it is true or false, I leave that judgment to all of you."
Outside the room, Kiana unconsciously pricked up her ears.
As far as she knew, if Doni Vermillion ever spoke about something that had not already been confirmed as fact, he always gave this kind of warning in advance.
Many people said that made him extremely rigorous.
And that, in turn, only pushed the credibility of everything else he said even higher.
Then his voice came through the door again—
"According to reports, during the Second Eruption in Siberia more than ten years ago, Anti-Entropy's leader, Welt Yang, fought the Second Herrscher head-on multiple times."
"There is no denying that, as the inheritor of the previous Herrscher of Reason's will and power, he paid an immense price and made many sacrifices in battle after battle."
"However, it is possible that, at that time, he made one judgment whose long-term impact on later generations was… extraordinarily wrong."
Doni Vermillion clearly knew how to seize an audience.
His tone rose and fell at just the right places. Every pause landed exactly where it should.
And then—
"As I revealed in an earlier program, Sirin—the girl who would later become the Herrscher of the Void—had long suffered horrific abuse inside Schicksal's privately established Babylon Lab."
"She herself lived in agony, while the friends around her were used up one after another as expendable material and died miserable deaths."
"And those inhuman researchers even told them this: that as orphans, the chance to sacrifice themselves for the Valkyries and for Schicksal should have been an honor."
"So after she became the Second Herrscher, the first thing she thought of was revenge."
"Revenge against Schicksal. Revenge against all Valkyries."
"At the time, she did not even know the name of the man standing at the very top of Schicksal—let alone that he was her greatest enemy."
"However, during one battle with the Second Herrscher, Mr. Welt said two lines to her in a voice burning with passion—"
"'I, Welt, challenge you in the name of humanity.'"
"'God—judge this. Judge whether humanity deserves to continue existing.'"
"And so, from that moment on, Sirin's target for revenge expanded. Before, it had only been Schicksal."
"After that, it became all of humanity."
When Kiana heard that much—
"…!"
She froze, then pressed herself against the door.
Because in her mind, almost at the same moment—
"Hmph. That really did happen, yes☆"
the person involved had already given her answer.