"Hahahaha—I like this girl!"
Laughter echoed through the tomb passage.
On the thirty-third underground level of Heliopolis Life Sciences, a man in black imperial robes and a golden mask stood at ease.
"Those not of our kind can never be trusted. Kill them! Eradicate them all. You ought to learn from her, Minister Vill-V..."
"That sort of thing means absolutely nothing to me. The only thing I want is revenge. We're only acting together because our goals happen to align. You're in no position to lecture me like some elder, Star Sovereign."
Beside Star Sovereign, a girl who looked almost indistinguishable from Vill-V gave an indifferent yawn.
"Those higher-ups staying inside Heliopolis have probably all been purged by now. Killing with a borrowed knife—not bad."
"Indeed. The rebellion against the Creator that I lead began a full five thousand years before you were born, 'Blank'! When it comes to dealing with that being, I have far more experience than you."
"Ahahahaha..."
The girl clasped both hands behind her head and flashed a healthy smile. "Yeah. Five thousand years of rebellion, five thousand years of failure. What laughable experience. Oh, right, you can't even remember any of those memories from the past and need me to remember them for you. Hahaha... Five thousand years, and all you learned was how to smoke!"
"If you didn't possess MOTH's highest level of authority, letting you mobilize resources across the entire world and travel anywhere on the planet, I wouldn't even bother cooperating with you."
Looking at Star Sovereign's arrogant bearing, the girl knew that this old friend of hers had truly forgotten who he once was, including all the memories of the life they had once shared.
If one really counted seniority, the girl was actually this man's elder and mentor.
But she had no intention of giving him some grand memory-restoration treatment. He was merely a tool she could use to change the world, and besides, he was already going to die.
A dead man had no need for memories. For him, perhaps that was actually a good thing.
During his final days, pretending to be this man's junior was rather amusing. Five thousand years was already more than long enough. The girl still only wanted to be a girl. She had no desire for her seniority to multiply into absurdity.
Being the second-oldest person in the world was still better than being the oldest.
The girl kicked down the stone wall, then spread both arms with her back toward the enormous hole. "Let's go, old friend. It's already too late to cling to the mortal world. The gates of Helheim, the underworld, have opened, and the curtain has risen on the drama of revenge—"
And you...
My student, my dearest friend, my toy, the target of vengeance I raised...
"Welcome to... the final grave I carefully selected for you!"
...
In the vastness of space, a uniquely shaped locomotive drifted slowly along, its surface covered in elongated panels of reflective metal armor, making it resemble an enormous silver whale.
And this whale was fleeing from a gigantic vortex.
A colossal vortex formed entirely from plasma.
Id stared at the vortex in shock. "Expert, you gave Magician the Planet-Destroying Bomb?!"
Expert folded her arms over her chest. "...I didn't. Id, you actually believed her? Magician was bluffing. That's one of Magician's specialties. If we used a Planet-Destroying Bomb at close range, even we would have trouble escaping unscathed."
Id looked out the window. Cosmic Juggernaut indeed showed no signs of having suffered any impact.
Id: "Then what was the point of that scene just now?"
Conductor replied, "An alien like that is bound to have a few trump cards for preserving its life. Magician was forcing it to reveal them."
"#%@...&%@#¥."
Sure enough, sensing a threat to its life, "Tenmon Soji" decisively leaped away from Cosmic Juggernaut, then instantly transformed into more than a thousand phantom figures.
Among those phantoms were old people, children, corporate wage slaves, and students.
Most of them, however, were gangsters. Their expressions were vacant as they spread throughout space and fled toward the outside of the vortex.
"What is this? Sun Wukong?"
Vill-V realized it was trying to escape.
"You came all this way and still think you can run? We're already in outer space. Where do you think you're going?!"
Magician revealed a wildly arrogant grin and imitated Pure Evil's tone. "Oh, wait, that's not right. I should say: Run? Go on, run! Where do you think you're running to?! Now get down to hell like a good little thing!"
With "Tenmon Soji" no longer obstructing it, Cosmic Juggernaut began accelerating at tremendous speed.
As its velocity continued to rise, Cosmic Juggernaut transformed into a streak of light circling through space.
In the span of an instant, Cosmic Juggernaut had already completed an entire orbit around Earth.
Vill-V had also successfully set a new Guinness World Record for the fastest trip around the world—one full circuit.
More than a thousand phantoms?
She would ram every last one of them!
The band of light swept past, and every phantom of "Tenmon Soji" it touched was annihilated on contact.
Originally, every one of these phantoms possessed enough power to contend with a prosthetically enhanced human. Unfortunately, in outer space, they had no room whatsoever to display that strength. The fact that they had not suffocated from the lack of oxygen already proved how tenacious their vitality was.
At last, as the phantoms were destroyed, "Tenmon Soji's" true body finally appeared.
It no longer looked even remotely human. It was nothing more than a transparent glass bead floating in midair.
If not for Cosmic Juggernaut's spatial scanning, Vill-V truly might not have noticed something so tiny. She might even have mistaken it for space debris and let it go.
"Come to think of it, there's something I've always wondered. Do androids dream of electric sheep?"
Thud!
Cosmic Juggernaut slammed viciously into the glass bead.
But this time, Vill-V had learned her lesson. Instead of using a spatial barrier to ram it, she directly smashed Cosmic Juggernaut's Herrscher Core of Void into it!
"Come on! If you've got what it takes, tear the Herrscher Core apart! If you can rip a Herrscher Core to pieces, I'll admit you're badass!"
Cosmic Juggernaut: FML.
Vill-V genuinely had no good solution for a boson-particle field capable of destroying spatial partitions. It had already gone completely beyond Expert's understanding of boson particles.
Clearly, with alien technology involved, certain advanced technological methods could become far more extraordinary than anything scientists were capable of understanding.
If this thing really could tear apart a Herrscher Core, Vill-V would have been overjoyed. That would practically make it an ultimate weapon for dealing with Honkai Herrschers.
Vill-V would have had only one thing to say: Thank you, aliens.
Unfortunately, the glass bead created by the alien was nowhere near as impressive as she had imagined. With a crack, it shattered.
"Huh?! Why are you so fragile? Come on, aliens, put a little more effort into it."
Vill-V sighed inside the cockpit. Her head had been filled with plans for a Herrscher Massacre, only for them to die in their infancy before they could even begin.
"Vill-V..."
Su suddenly spoke from inside the boiler.
"It's fine, Su. The aliens aren't anything special after all. Humanity will definitely be able to defeat them."
"No, that's not what I'm worried about." The utterly withered-looking Su removed the consciousness collector. "I mean... I can't hold on anymore..."
After all, Su was not yet the future top-tier psychic MANTIS who could perceive Project VALUKA with a single glance.
His mental strength was indeed formidable, but only compared to that of ordinary people.
After piloting the Second Divine Key around Earth hundreds of times, Su finally could no longer withstand Magician wringing him dry. Utterly exhausted, he collapsed with a peaceful expression on his face.
Su passed peacefully into eternal slumber at the ripe old age of twenty-one.
This time, it was Magician's turn to be shocked. "W-Wait a second! We're still in outer space! If you collapse, we're going to fall too!!!!"
Having lost its power source and been captured by Earth's gravity, Cosmic Juggernaut began plummeting toward the planet.
...
Back on the Fog Forest stage at ground level, two people and one bird had appeared.
Pardo pinched her nose and muttered, "Ugh, the smell here is so strong. Big Brother Odin, did your horse get diarrhea again?"
Although the prop Vill-V had created filtered out biological toxins, it did not filter the nontoxic components.
As a result, a whole mass of irritating gases flooded into Pardo's sensitive nose, leaving her thoroughly overwhelmed.
"Hmph." The man snorted coldly and beckoned with one hand. The enormous steel eagle immediately reassembled itself into a long spear.
Only the spearhead was actually assembled.
The spearhead looked ancient, even bearing traces of rust. It was simple and unadorned, as though some village blacksmith had casually hammered it into shape.
Yet the instant the man seized the spearhead, it immediately erupted with radiance.
"World Tree Yggdrasil—Gungnir!"
Whoosh!
"Huh?! Wait! I wasn't really insulting your horse, I was joking! You don't have to take it so seriously that you pull out your ultimate move just to hit me!"