Collapse, Kaslana's Way of Survival

"That's unnecessary, isn't it?" Keno shrugged nonchalantly. "The collapse of nature can't be stopped artificially, and the birth of the Herrmetics is almost inevitable. If we engage in battle, Destiny's satellites will be able to detect us and come pick us up directly."

"Oh, you're quite confident." The pilot smiled, then his face turned serious. "Although they're different from true Herrschers, the strength of the Pseudo-Herrschers shouldn't be underestimated."

"I've also read some of your information and know you possess a family heirloom, the Divine Key. This is truly rare among A-rank Valkyries, but I hope you won't get carried away. After all, the most taboo in battle is carelessness."

"This is my warning as someone who's been through this. I had a teammate back then, and she..."

"Oh, okay, okay, aren't you annoying me with your nagging?"

Just as Kaino was blinking and listening, overwhelmed by the other party's enthusiasm, Xier waved her hand irritably, interrupting him, "We're not stupid. How can we have any problems with three people taking on a Herrscher?"

Xier felt that the other party underestimated her.

How careless could they be to be killed by the enemy when they were definitely stronger than the enemy? They were not children.

"Uh..." Xier choked him, and the driver scratched his head awkwardly for a moment. "Well, it's a good thing to be confident. Since headquarters assigned this task to you, it must mean they believe in your abilities."

"Well, okay, I'll take your opinion next time." Kainuo quickly took over the conversation, worried that Xier would retort to the other party with words like "Of course we are powerful."

The pilot shrugged without saying anything, gave Kenobi a thumbs-up, and decisively closed the hatch. Then the engines throbbed again, and the transport plane slowly ascended.

"Huh, the troublemaker is finally gone." Looking up at the crescent moon rising from the horizon, Xier smacked her lips and said, "She keeps nagging non-stop. If I hadn't chased her away, who knows how long she would have continued."

"Drivers are probably quite enthusiastic and like to talk, right?" Kainuo scratched his head and reached out to pull the suitcase from Xier's hand. "Last time in Sky City, Bianca and I met a driver like that. He also kept us talking non-stop."

It was just because they were strangers to each other, and that time he still choked the other person to the point of being speechless.

"Oh, let's just leave it at that." Xier shrugged noncommittally, her eyes becoming uncertain. "It's so late now, where are we going?"

"Since you took the initiative to invite me to join the mission, you should have made a decision, right?"

"Master, you don't need to think about this. I have already planned it all."

Before Kayno could say anything, Bella took out a small notebook and stepped forward to stand in front of the two of them.

"On the way here, I have read and analyzed the map of Changkong City." Bella continued, gently flipping through the notebook in her hand.

"Considering that Miss Xi'er and the Master haven't had dinner yet, we will go to a restaurant near the airport first. Considering that the people of Changkong City are being evacuated, I will unlock the door and borrow the kitchen there to prepare a delicious dinner for you."

"But unlike the food issue, you masters must not be careless about your rest at night." Having said that, Bella's eyes became a little serious.

"Through collecting information, I found that most hotels have some privacy risks. In this case, checking in directly is not the best option. So I borrowed the key from Miss Mei who originally lived in Changzora City in advance. We will stay there when the time comes."

"As for tomorrow's itinerary, I've already arranged it. One of them is Changkong City's most famous Homu Park. As the largest and most luxurious Homu Park in the world, I think you, my masters, will really enjoy it."

"And after going to Houm Paradise..."

"Stop, stop, stop. Bella, something's wrong?"

Kaino interrupted Bella with a strange look on his face.

"We're here to deal with the impending Houkai, so why is your plan only about having fun?"

"Solving the Honkai Impact is indeed necessary, but balancing work and rest shouldn't be overlooked either," Bella said seriously. "Also, Heavenly Fate doesn't know your true strength, Master, so they might be being conservative. But a mere Pseudo-Hermaphrodite poses no threat to you at all. So, in my opinion, solving the Honkai Impact and playing games don't conflict."

In reality, even she could easily fight against or even suppress several Herristics. And if Kaynor gave the order, she would definitely lead the charge and single-handedly resolve the Honkai incident.

"...Although what you said is indeed true, it doesn't mean that we can relax." Suddenly realizing that Bella, who had been working and not been able to attend classes properly, probably didn't know much about the specific measures to fight the Honkai, Kayno covered his face with one hand and explained to her.

"Unlike the sudden and unprepared Houkai events, the predicted Houkai outbreak in Changkong City is a rare and fortunate occurrence. An entire city will be spared, and the Houkai outbreak's economic impact on Changkong City will be minimized."

"But correspondingly, what we need to do is not a simple and direct operation like finding the Herrscher and the Honkai beasts and then dealing with them. Instead, we need to go a step further and establish relevant facilities in Changkong City to minimize the impact of the Honkai."

Having said that, Kainuo glanced at Xier, who was rubbing her belly and starting to feel dazed, and Bella, whose expression was still serious but starting to look dazed, and sighed helplessly.

Unlike Lan Xier, Hong Xier wasn't particularly interested in learning, and being hungry made it even harder for her to listen. While Bella was eager to learn, as a friendly Honkai Beast, she struggled to fully grasp the message of Kayno's words.

"Forget it, there's no rush for this matter anyway. It won't be too late to do it tomorrow."

He glanced around and found that there was no one around, so he quickly put the suitcases on the ground into his portable device.

After a slight hesitation, Kainuo took Xier's hanging left hand, waved to Bella, and walked out of the airport first.

"Come on, Bella, let's go to the restaurant you mentioned and have dinner."

Chapter 157 Yae Shrine

Dinner and accommodation were nothing special.

The head chef was Bella as usual. The ingredients in the restaurant were not much better than those in Saint Freya, and were even a little worse. In this case, it took Bella a lot of effort to make the food as delicious as usual.

The villa where Mei Raiden, the daughter of the ME Club, lived was indeed exquisite, but it certainly couldn't compare to Theresa's. Even though the Far East branch was financially strapped, the academy's dormitories were built with the assistance of the Destiny Bishop, so the granddaughter-obsessed man naturally paid special attention to this aspect.

But the next day’s breakfast was...

"I am so sorry, Master."

Looking at Keno with a strange look on his face at the dining table, Bella, who had just tasted her breakfast, lowered her head slightly and her voice became very low.

The table was filled with simple toast, hot milk, fried eggs, and grilled sausages. It looked delicious just from the looks of it. But Kayno, starving after a long night's sleep, could swear by her cooking skills, which far surpassed those of her family, that this breakfast wasn't even as good as her own.

"There's no need to apologize for that, Bella. After all, you're not obligated to prepare breakfast for us every day."

After taking another look at the food in front of him, Kaino hesitated for a moment before continuing, "But Bella, were you tired from cleaning the room last night? With your level, no matter how many mistakes you made, it shouldn't be this serious."

The salty ones weren't salty but sweet, and the sweet ones weren't sweet but fishy. If it were simply unpalatable, it would be fine, but the taste was close to the average of Kaslana's cooking while also ensuring the food looked beautiful. Kaino couldn't understand what Bella had gone through to make such food.

No, rather than calling it food, it might be more appropriate to call it a trap prepared for foodies.

"Preparing food for the host and hostess is one of my duties, so there is no such thing as obligation or non-obligation."

"But as a Honkai Beast, the idea of ​​being tired is completely nonsense. As for the reason why breakfast was missed, I think it's probably because of Miss Mei's kitchen."

Shaking her head, Bella probably knew why the food tasted so bad. She glanced at the kitchen behind her, a slightly frightened expression on her face.

"I guess Mei-san was learning to cook before she left the kitchen... or rather, she was just starting out. At least now that I think about it, she probably mixed the salt and sugar together and then separated them, which led to my misjudging the seasoning."

Kainuo blinked when he heard this, and was a little bit incredulous.

He ate the meal made by Mei on his birthday and it seemed quite delicious, but was Mei's cooking level really this terrible before?!

"Is it really as scary as you say?"

Xier, who was sitting aside listening to Kainuo and Bella singing in unison, raised her eyebrows with a look of disbelief. She used a dinner knife to gently cut off a piece of ham with sauce, and then put it into her mouth without hesitation.

The next moment, the ham stained with a little saliva was spit out intact.

"Ugh! What kind of devilish food is this? It's even worse than Kiana's, isn't it?"

Staring at the breakfast on the table with a look of fear, Xier's eyes twitched as if she was staring at a devil.

Kiana's cooking is just not tasty with strange ingredients and can easily cause diarrhea, but this is completely unacceptable to humans.

"So, please trust our judgment more or less."

Taking a glass of water from the side and handing it to Xier, Kainuo sighed helplessly.

"I see you two both say it's unpalatable, but your expressions haven't changed." After gulping down the water in one gulp, Xier looked at Kainuo and Bella with a strange expression, "What's wrong with your mouths and stomachs?"

"How should I put it? I've been used to this kind of breakfast since I was a kid. My dad sometimes makes something even worse than this."

"As for Bella... Bella is essentially a Honkai beast, why are you competing with her?"

After putting the food on the table into the imaginary space, Kainuo stood up and looked at the two of them.

"Anyway, we still need to place micro-devices to detect Houkai energy concentrations in various locations throughout the city today, so we might as well have breakfast on the way. With the help of Tianming, the people in Changkong City should have almost all evacuated by the end of the day. We can just find a restaurant along the way to eat."

Although it was a bit hard to bear to throw away the breakfast that Bella had carefully prepared, it was better not to eat it for Xier's mental and physical health.

……

"Yae Shrine... this should be the right place, right?"

Looking at the four large characters with dim marks on the ancient shrine built on the mountain in front of him, Kaino took a bite of the crepe in his hand and asked Bella who was holding the GPS positioning beside him.

As a famous and distinctive area located on the border of Changkong City, it was the first location where the Tianming Plan deployed its detection equipment. Although the name was exactly the same as Tianming's, the place looked eerie no matter how you looked at it.

"That's right," Bella replied without hesitation. "As an ancient shrine that has existed for hundreds of years, Yae Shrine has a good reputation in Changkong City. That's why it was included in my original itinerary."

"Good reputation? Is that true?"

Xier, who was concentrating on eating, twitched her ears when she heard this, raised her head and looked at the shrine in front of her with a suspicious expression.

"If it really had a good reputation, would this place be so dilapidated?"

Kaino nodded in agreement.

The torii gate had faded so much that its reddish hue was barely visible, and the wooden house had corroded and shattered. The windows and doors, which should have been closed after the evacuation, were now open. The enormous cherry tree in the courtyard lay bare, a large scar on its trunk standing out in plain sight.

The only relatively intact things in the entire shrine were the money box that was obviously placed in front of the gate and the stone fox statue at the highest point.

It was obvious that it had existed for hundreds of years, but the heritage and fame... To be honest, if it weren't for the brand new money box, Keno would have almost thought it was a pure ruin.

For example, there is also a legend about Taixu Mountain where Xiaoshi is located. Even when Xiaoshi had not yet occupied the land, the people nearby helped the Chiyuan Immortal to repair and maintain the buildings on the top of the mountain beautifully. In comparison, this shrine is indeed not good enough.

"There's a theory about this on the Changkong City website," Bella explained. "In fact, this shrine doesn't actually have any shrine maidens or chief priests. When Changkong City was first built, there were plans to completely demolish it and rebuild it. But every time someone entered the shrine with that intention, they would suddenly fall seriously ill and the renovation work would be stopped."

"At the time, people thought the shrine's deity was acting with power, so they stopped digging and spontaneously decided to repair the site. But who knew that even those who came in with planks and hammers, even those with no ill intentions towards the shrine, would suddenly become seriously ill, and in the end, only the onlookers were spared."

"It's said that the Changkong City government was neither interested nor in what to do about this matter. In the end, a mysterious figure came forward and bought the land where the shrine stood and started a tourism business. They simply added a coin box there, so the matter was eventually forgotten, and the legend has been passed down."

Chapter 158: Born with Holy Marks and Mutations

“It always sounds like a made-up story.”

After hearing what Bella said, Keno had a strange expression on his face and didn't completely believe it.

Although many things cannot be understood by common sense due to the existence of Honkai, the existence of supernatural powers and the like is indeed groundless. In fact, most myths can be traced back to the surviving heroes of the previous civilization and the Key of God, or some powerful Honkai beast.

But even a powerful Honkai beast definitely does not have the ability to affect a whole hell and interfere with a specific group of people for hundreds of years. Even the giant beast Chi You, who left a great reputation in Shenzhou, is still lying in the sea like a corpse, and was transformed into a biological weapon by Klein.

Rather than believing that there was something hidden here that had been affecting the world for hundreds of years, Keno felt that it was more likely that someone was deliberately creating a hype in order to make money.

"I'm sorry, Master. I can't verify this." Bella shook her head. "In fact, even in my plan, this place is ranked relatively low."

After pondering for a few seconds, Kainuo shook his head, finished the crepe in his hand, took out a square sealed collapse energy detection device about the size of a computer host from his portable device, and placed it steadily on the ground.

"Forget it, this has nothing to do with us, and we probably won't be visiting this shrine."

Kainuo clapped his hands and stood up, taking out the monitoring device that matched the detection device to determine its operating status while speaking.

"After all, we still have a lot of testing equipment to install. After this, there are a bunch of tourist spots recommended by Bella. If it were really their turn here, I'm sure the Herristics-Pseudo-Herrs would have been killed countless times. OK, the testing equipment is working properly, we can go to the next location."

"Come to think of it, I've been wanting to ask this for a while now. Why are we the only ones installing these facilities?"

Looking at Kainuo's smooth movements, Xier frowned and showed her confusion.

"Why do we have to carry out this event as a team?"

"Even though it's a pseudo-herrscher, it still has the word Herrscher in it. In this case, why doesn't Tianming simply mobilize the majority of its forces to disperse throughout Changkong City and wait for the pseudo-herrscher to appear before directly dispatching them? At the very least, shouldn't they be the ones installing the detection equipment?"

When dealing with something like the Herrscher, Destiny never used the moral code of the martial world, which was why Xier was puzzled. Against an enemy like this, whose location was known, wouldn't it be better to just mobilize the majority of the people and charge forward?

"I knew you didn't listen carefully in class." Kainuo said helplessly.

With a soft sigh, he explained to Xier and Bella who was listening attentively beside him:

"Unlike when the Herrscher has already been born, when you know the Honkai is about to break out but the Herrscher hasn't actually been born yet, you absolutely cannot use the human wave tactic. You must know that when the Honkai breaks out, a Herrscher isn't created out of thin air. Instead, a human is randomly selected within the area of ​​the Honkai outbreak and transformed into a Herrscher or Pseudo-Herrscher."

"Imagine this: Seele and your teammates are on a mission in Changkong City, as fate would have it. Suddenly, with a bang, the concentration of Honkai energy rises rapidly, and your teammates instantly transform into Mimic Herristics and wield their butcher knives against you..."

"Okay, okay, stop saying unlucky things."

Waving her left hand to interrupt Kainuo, Xier paused for a moment, frowned, and stared at Kainuo with suspicion, asking, "That's not right. If that were the case, why would Tianming let you lead the team into Changkong City? And you specifically brought us along?"

She is not worried about Bella being a Honkai beast, but she should know that she and Kayno are living humans.

Xier didn't think that Kainuo would deliberately lead her into the fire pit, but it was true that she was confused about it.

"Because we have stigmata, innate stigmata." Poking his chest, Kayno continued, "According to the Destiny textbook, innate stigmata not only grant their bearer the adaptability to Honkai energy at the level of a Herrscher, but also offer many other benefits."

"Things like the various powers that resemble the weakened Herrscher's authority, the knowledge of previous civilizations recorded in the stigmata, the lovely extra consciousness within my body... cough."

Noticing Seele's cheeks suddenly puffed up and she was staring at him unkindly, Kaino coughed lightly and continued calmly, "Besides the aforementioned benefits of each stigmata, there's another characteristic that almost all stigmata holders possess—an almost natural resistance to Honkai's erosion."

"Resistance?"

Xier was puzzled.

"Right." Kaynor nodded. "Unlike the vague and glossed-over textbook notion of a true Herrscher being dominated and controlled by Honkai consciousness, the Pseudo-Herrschers are actually just a group of pitiful individuals who, after being corrupted by high concentrations of Honkai, gained power without their dark thoughts being amplified. The only difference between them and Emperor- and Judgment-level Honkai beasts is their mature wisdom."

"Even the most gifted Valkyrie couldn't completely resist that level of erosion, but it's different for those born with the stigmata. A concentration of Honkai energy that would be lethal to an ordinary Valkyrie is like going from an oxygen-deficient zone to an oxygen-rich zone for one born with the stigmata."

Xier blinked in surprise when she heard that.

"So, for us, a Hermetic-Pseudo-Hermitor-level Honkai explosion is not only harmless but also beneficial?"

"Not really. After all, the Honkai explosion only lasts a moment." Keno shrugged, his expression unconcerned. "After that moment, the extremely high Honkai energy concentration will continue to spawn Honkai beasts and then quickly decrease. Although it will still be much higher than before the explosion, that's all."