Honkai Impact 3rd, a simulator of lifelong regret!

Those eyes, cold and gleaming with an eerie green like those of a venomous snake, suddenly narrowed sharply.

?

?

???

--ocean? !

……

Inside the lobby of the Fire Moth, two real people and three virtual projections sit in the center, representing the representatives of the organization's five largest countries, who are gathered at the same time, some wearing pajamas and others simply shirtless.

At any other time, anyone who dares to be so pathetic will be subjected to merciless ridicule and used as a focal point for hype and public opinion to seize more power and influence.

Politicians never miss an opportunity to attack others.

At least verbally, it's ingrained in their very being.

But at this moment, only at this moment.

Everyone is the same.

Those who stand at the top of the human pyramid, regarding the insignificant individual as ants or consumables, are just like ordinary people, their eyes trembling as they stare intently at the virtual screen in front of them—connected to humanity's largest satellite.

From space, a satellite captured a strange yet incongruously large gap appearing suddenly in the clouds above the coral island.

The sky was torn apart—

The sky, which was originally shrouded in white clouds and served as a protective layer for all of humanity and even the entire world, shielding the planet from radiation, was torn open by a huge hole from where the deep black light emanated.

A colossal, inverted tornado-like or Tower of Babel-like energy resides on what should have been a peaceful resort island.

The display of that energy was unlike anything seen from any previous Herrscher.

Pure darkness.

If I absolutely had to find an adjective, if I had to explain it from my own perspective, like an incompetent ordinary person believing in a deity...

—The starry sky.

It's like a distorted, upside-down starry sky.

The brilliant, bright starry sky, like lamps or eyes, adorns the dim, indifferent darkness that is enough to overwhelm all reason.

It was as if a god had intervened, tearing down the brilliant night sky and hurling it to the ground. Countless, dark, gloomy spheres, like decorations on a Christmas tree, surrounded the towering energy structure.

Meanwhile, the instruments nearby showed that the Honkai energy level that erupted instantly in the Coral Island area reached a terrifying level that even exceeded that of the Herrscher of Death by several times.

……

what……

that's terrible.

The aftermath of the human Herrscher of Light's calamity is still unresolved...

In just a short period of time, it killed a quarter of humanity, claimed billions of lives, and destroyed billions of families.

Now, a monster whose combat power might even surpass that of the Herrscher of Death is about to appear.

No one present could appear relaxed anymore.

……

If there's anything more desperate, more terrifying...

If a completely new Herrscher has truly been born before us.

death.

Extinction.

It seems that humanity only has these two possibilities left.

That's unlikely, isn't it?

The continuous emergence of Herrschers is already excessive enough, but the wide range of Herrschers is also excessive enough.

The crowd could only pray that the next Herrscher's abilities were actually quite weak, which was why an extremely large reserve of Honkai energy was needed to save their lives.

—The best scenario is that the Herrscher's ability is a large amount of Honkai energy.

—The best thing to appear is not a Herrscher.

But in this extreme despair, when even the sound of breathing was barely audible in the entire meeting room.

An elderly man wearing glasses shakily wiped his glasses, but the scene he saw through the newly cleaned lenses remained unchanged, and his extremely old skin wrinkles began to tremble visibly.

"This……"

"The light is being swallowed up!"

“Those black spheres that surround the energy are miniature celestial bodies, celestial bodies with spacetime curvature so great that even light cannot escape from their event horizon.”

……

The whole world seemed to fall silent in an instant. Everyone shut their mouths, not even breathing, and eyes of all colors stared intently at the screen.

The satellite magnified the area it was observing, focusing on a tiny energy sphere within the vast starry sky.

That seemingly insignificant object, perhaps only a few dozen meters in size at most, spread a power that even disrupted the surrounding space.

This is not an adjective.

Because you can definitely see the air distorting.

If there's still air?

The situation presented before us is already quite obvious.

Everyone who sits here, even amidst the rampant chaos, knows what this scene represents.

That was the most desperate fear in the universe, and almost the greatest disaster that humankind could observe.

"That is……"

"—Black hole."

……

At thirty-five, you should have died a violent death at the height of your achievements, perishing alongside the love of your life beneath the Spiral Workshop.

But today, eight years after your death, your fading consciousness has been miraculously gathered together. False stars and reflections in the water lower their tentacles, and your shattered soul is awakened by a rule called wish.

[This is the result of the girl's all-out effort; the power of origin forcibly recalled a power that should not belong to this point in time and merged it with the power of the sea.]

It doesn't matter what happens.

[You can be indifferent no matter what.]

You are her only wish.

[Your body will be reshaped, and the laws of the Quanta Sea will be absorbed and consolidated by the Cocoon of the End. Under the power of desire, rules, and the love of a young girl, you will undoubtedly become the luckiest one.]

[A stroke of luck that might make you personally feel disgusted.]

[Because you will no longer be human, having accepted the projection of the Cocoon of the End, belonging only to the gods, supreme authority now rests in your hands.]

Its name is...

star……

Jiang Cheng looked at everything before him.

Perhaps it wasn't that they hadn't considered that after they ended, the simulator system might very well continue simulating until the world finally collapsed and ended, rewarding them according to the changes they had made.

Instead of simply sealing away this simulated world at the moment of death and distributing meager rewards based on all the merits made during one's lifetime.

But I never imagined it would turn out like this.

It didn't even cross my mind for a moment as a possibility.

He was resurrected.

I've been resurrected!

I've been resurrected?

The girl who, in his eyes, actually cared nothing about him, actually spent several years traversing what Otto had taken five hundred years to accomplish.

Why did Alicia ignore her in the first place?

Why did he only arrive so late, after his own death?

Like a shameless bystander, he tore himself and Vilvie apart, and then presumptuously resurrected himself. Was it simply because he liked this kind of plot?

Jiang Cheng found it hard to accept, and even harder to understand.

I won't go into my childhood.

It's too far away, and it's meaningless.

The disregard for travel, including turning one's own birthday into a gathering or festival celebration, a day that is like everything except a birthday.

He made himself lose all hope of talking to Vilvi until she invited him to join her later.

If she had ever done even the slightest thing...

She showed even the slightest bit of importance!

If Alicia's feelings for him weren't so sudden, then the reason why she didn't wish him and Alicia well in the first place would become clear.

— Utterly ridiculous.

Even during the period when he was struggling desperately before his death, unwilling to end things as they were, he was never given a single hug.

Perhaps at that point in time, Alicia still didn't see herself as having any status.

The reason I'm in this state now is simply because of the love that arose after my death. It's like how we often only realize the value of something after we've lost it. Once I'm resurrected, I'll probably be ignored and indifferent again.

The boy mentally marked the worst-case scenario for the girl he had once valued so much.

It's not that I've started to hate it.

This is not to deny the girl's efforts.

only……