Humans are in chaos, despicable outsiders.

Einstein emerged from the woods to the side, observing the two on the field, ignoring the Donquixote that had appeared in the basin beneath their feet.

"Wait, Dr. Einstein, step back! She's in danger!"

Upon seeing the blue-haired girl, Walter's composure from his previous confrontation with Horaiji Kusho vanished, replaced by anxiety on his face.

"Wow, don't be nervous. Do you think I'm being too intimidating right now?"

Jiuxiao chuckled and took a few steps back to give the two opposite him some space.

"Alliance Leader, I have something to report to you," the Doctor said to Yang, temporarily ignoring the goofy Jiu Xiao beside him.

"What? Doctor, it's dangerous here—"

"I met the daughter of Archbishop Otto Apocalypse..."

The man's words came abruptly, accompanied by a look of utter disbelief.

"...Dr. Einstein, do you know what you're saying?"

"She used her blood certificate to open a classified laboratory that I would have otherwise had to access through a back door I'd left long ago, allowing us to persuade Ms. Theresa to join our project much faster."

"At the time, the verification system in the Destiny Underground Laboratory scanned her blood during the verification process, personally acknowledging her lineage and granting her the highest level of access..."

Finally, she mentioned wanting to meet with us.

The blue-haired girl recounted everything she had just experienced in the underground laboratory.

"Where is she...?"

"There," Einstein pointed to another spot.

Before Einstein could finish speaking, a voice that Walter Young knew all too well came from the forest path.

“Snow?” Walter Young looked at yet another familiar face emerging from the woods.

"Why does this boss's second phase include beauty and height-increasing abilities?"

The blonde girl, arriving late, ignored Welt Yang, who was on high alert facing two Valkyries of unknown strength and allegiance. Instead, she glanced at Jiuxiao, who was already nearly 1.75 meters tall, and pouted in dissatisfaction.

"So what if it gets bigger? Are you jealous—?"

Jiuxiao moved closer to Snow's face, her ample breasts pressing against the blonde girl's chest, which was neither barren nor particularly large.

"…Claws!" Snow grabbed the super long bangs on Jiu Xiao's head and pulled hard.

"Ouch—don't pull! It's going to fall!"

The tall woman seemed to have been caught off guard; with a forceful tug from Snow, her entire figure shrunk back to the 1.59-meter frame that Walter Young usually saw her as.

"Uh... Miss Penglai Temple's Nine Heavens and Miss Snow Apocalypse, right?" Yang interrupted their interaction, looking at the two enigmatic figures in front of him, and asked.

"It's me, it's time to formally meet—Mr. Walter Yang, the leader of Anti-Entropy," Snow nodded to his history teacher, whom he often saw.

"You said you wanted to talk to us... So, whose will do you represent? Yourself? Or the will of your father, the protagonist of destiny?"

“If you represent Otto’s will, then there’s nothing for us to talk about—”

Yang looked at the girl before him with a solemn expression, his body tense, ready to defend against a sudden attack from the Valkyrie.

"You've found an ally perfectly suited for Anti-Entropy, Walter Yang—"

"My friend died during the Second Honkai Impact due to his grandfather's orders, and his bloodline, including my friend himself, was extensively used as a genetic sample for cloning."

"And the fate of her children is unknown after one of the escape operations she assisted in. Now, they are even pinning their hopes on the most successful sample of the Otto Experiment, and the individual they are most concerned about, the Second Herrscher's prototype K423..."

"However, K423, as the most crucial link in Otto Apocalypse... her fate was destined not to be as Theresa wished—"

“The Far East branch is destined to betray us—and now Anti-Entropy has extended an olive branch to Theresa, so what reason does she have not to accept?” Snow looked at Yang beside him with a smile in his eyes.

"Hmph, so you really are Otto's agent! Joachim, you messy-haired girl, I think we have nothing more to say to her!" A red-haired girl with twin ponytails and glasses suddenly appeared on the projected screen.

"...You don't seem to understand what I mean... Dr. Tesla, the Far East Branch's betrayal—was itself part of Otto Apocalypse's, my father's, plan..."

"The friendships, family ties, and all the bonds that the experimental girl left behind in this academy will all be restored when the Herrscher consciousness within her awakens once more—"

"—To become pawns sent by my father to the battlefield against her, to die one by one, in order to stimulate the awakening of the kind-hearted consciousness you see now...in order to create a Lawgiver who, like Mr. Yang, exercises divine authority with a human heart."

The blonde girl calmly recounted her father's plan, while the expressions of the Anti-Entropy trio opposite her grew increasingly grim.

"Can't we just take the test subject away?" The grumpy Dr. Lobster Head once again proposed a seemingly simple and crude solution.

"She was the most crucial element in my father's plan spanning over five hundred years..."

"What do you think Otto, as the Archbishop of Schicksal, would do if she suddenly disappeared...?"

"That's the Archbishop of Schicksal, not some ordinary office worker—Dr. Tesla."

"This won't work, that won't work! Ugh... so annoying! Of all the Apocalypses, only that little dwarf is somewhat pleasing to the eye; the rest just look like they deserve a beating!!!"

Tesla, enraged by its impotence, lost communication and disappeared somewhere to vent its frustration. Snow shrugged, looking at the now-off projection screen.

"So, Miss Snow, do you have a plan?" Walter Young looked at the blonde girl who still wore her signature smile.

"Of course...and I also have a request and a condition you can't refuse—"

"The resurrection of Walter Joyce... no, to be precise, the history of Walter Joyce's death should be changed—"

The blood-red earth spread silently, and a golden tree appeared before the Anti-Entropy duo. Golden leaves fell—merging into Yang's hand.

"What is this? You...!" Yang felt his body, riddled with wounds, beginning to regrow life.

"As a token of sincerity and a deposit for the cooperation—although I think Mr. Yang, you'll eventually pull the same trick again," the Valkyrie said, arms crossed, sizing up the history teacher before her, seemingly well aware of his character.

"...Tell me your plan...Miss Snow, and...to be honest, we don't have much hope for Joyce's resurrection...we haven't found Joyce's soul within the core of the First Herrscher."

"We don't need such a thing as a soul... I said—we will rewrite the history of their deaths literally."

It is another child who needs a soul to be resurrected.

So don't even think about kidnapping K423...

--

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Glorious Alliance

"Hatcher—what did you slip to Walter Young after your last private conversation?"

The next morning, Jiu Xiao and Snow, who hadn't returned home all night, stood yawning in front of their dormitory, which had been completely demolished.

In the dormitory, the sound of Dean Theresa cursing a certain anti-entropy vixen was incessant.

"You mean that data disk...?" Snow looked at the dormitory building, which had almost had one corner dug out.

"Or who else?" Jiu Xiao rolled his eyes at his companion.

"That...that's the blueprint for the Glorious Covenant."

Snow spoke calmly, yet his words made Jiu Xiao's hand tremble.

"Who are you going to blast with this thing? The Queen, your own father, or the World Serpent's ancestor?"

"Be bold, bomb them all! Whatever you say makes me sound like some ungrateful, disloyal daughter."

"Hiss... I don't think they deserved to be punished like this."

"Perhaps."

--

"According to the design drawings, this warship's power far exceeds the standard for dealing with Herrschers or Judgment-class Honkai Beasts... I don't understand, Miss Snow, what is the purpose of having us build this super warship?"

"Or rather, what are you trying to deal with...?"

Walter Young looked at the girl in front of him, his eyes filled with confusion.

"To deal with me"

The girl's words were spoken without the slightest hesitation, so decisive that Yang thought he was hallucinating.

"Deal with... yourself?"

Yang pondered what the girl in front of him had said, a look of astonishment on his face.

"But why???" Walter Yang, having understood the girl's words, was now filled with even greater confusion.

"This is the answer... Now, look into my eyes."

Yang looked towards the girl's face—moonlight filtered through the treetops, scattering fragments of light onto her, adding to her icy aura.

However—even colder than that were those eyes. The clear azure had turned into a deep, dark blue, and just looking at them made Yang feel as if his body was sinking into an endless abyss. They were cold and piercing, and the pupils were filled with arrogance and tyranny. It wasn't arrogance directed at any person or thing.

That was contempt for the world, a sneer at the existence of the universe.

"Just a branch on a tree, just a leaf on that branch—"

"You...?!" Walter Young looked at the girl in front of him with surprise and doubt.

Leaves will eventually fall...falling into the endless sea, turning into bubbles and shattering; branches will eventually wither and decay, cut off, stripped of all possibilities, turning into dust.

"The world is coming to an end, but it is not merely the end of this world, but the end of everything born from this golden tree—a world of competition, of waxing and waning."

Why should I care about the rise and fall of this leaf... their fate was already predetermined.

His indifferent eyes glanced at Walter Yang beside him, devoid of arrogance, disdain, mockery, or sneer.

— [He doesn't care]

In a daze, Yang thought this—until a woman's voice brought him back to his senses.

"Do you understand now?" The godlike state emanating from the girl in front of him vanished without a trace.

"...What is that?" Yang looked at the girl in front of him after a long silence.

"Imaginary power...or rather, the pillar of the world, is also the most necessary condition for their resurrection—"

"They may also be the enemy you ultimately face—different from the [gods] you call the Honkai..."

"But a god above gods—"

I cannot maintain this state for long, but rewriting history from five hundred years ago to the near future... is destined to be something that cannot be achieved in an instant.

"To put it in a more gamified way—my [humanity] cannot maintain this state for long. If I forcibly continue, [divinity] will begin to dominate my thinking, and I will eventually become a true god."

"However, humans... they don't need such a god—"

A man and a woman, an old man and a young man, spoke up together; they reached a consensus at that moment.