While Elias was battling the million Herrscher of Dominance.
St. Freya Academy had also fallen into a state of intense activity.
After returning from the Nation of Domination, the girls immediately began the final large-scale search for the puppets. However, locating a puppet hidden somewhere in the real world was no easy task.
"We can't exactly plow through the entire Earth, can we? Mobius, do you have any ideas?" Mei asked.
"There is a method, but... it only reduces the difficulty from searching for a needle in the ocean to searching for a needle in a river." Mobius bit her nails, her expression bitter.
"That's fine. If it's just a river, with so many of us searching, it shouldn't take too long," Sakura said.
Right after returning, Mobius, MEI, and Vill-V immediately held a meeting. They even brought in Einstein and Tesla from Anti-Entropy to explain the situation.
Understanding the severity of the situation, the two eccentric doctors spared no effort in assisting everyone.
This could be considered the most luxurious collaboration between the greatest scientific minds of the Current Era and the Previous Era. After half an hour of discussion, they finally came up with a solution.
"Let me state the conclusion first. Directly finding a puppet hidden somewhere in the real world is nearly impossible. If the final puppet hides in something like a deep-sea crevice, a tropical rainforest, or even digs a hole and buries itself, we might not find it even after years of searching." Mobius explained.
"Then what should we do?!" Kiana asked anxiously.
"Let me finish. There is still one method. As long as we can find the human host of the puppet, we can trace it back to locate the puppet's true body." Mobius clapped her hands.
Soon after, Danzhu and Cangxuan escorted a handcuffed B-rank Valkyrie into the meeting room.
"This D-rank Valkyrie is also one of the hosts of the Herrscher of Dominance. The puppet that invaded our dormitory back then was a clone created using her mind. So, in a sense... she is the true Herrscher of Dominance."
The moment Mobius finished speaking, the air in the entire meeting room turned cold.
If there hadn't been an internal threat, with the defensive level of St. Freya Academy, even the most covert Herrscher of Dominance wouldn't have been able to infiltrate silently.
Now, looking at this D-rank Valkyrie, killing intent burst forth from the crowd. Even though she was a Valkyrie, quite a few people almost couldn't hold back from attacking her.
"D-rank Valkyrie XXX. A new student who enrolled this semester. Her reason for enrollment was that her family was killed by Honkai Beasts, and she wanted revenge against Honkai."
"However, due to insufficient talent, she couldn't step onto the battlefield and could only serve as a logistics Valkyrie. Her hatred toward Honkai is genuine, but... that very hatred is also the reason she was chosen by Honkai to become a Herrscher."
As soon as those words were spoken, the girls revealed complicated expressions.
Filled with a desire for revenge and possessing some level of Honkai adaptability, she indeed had the qualifications to become a host of the Herrscher of Dominance.
According to her testimony, one night she suddenly heard a voice asking if she wanted to obtain great power. She answered: [Yes].
"You foolish girl! That was Honkai's voice. You've already been chosen to become a Herrscher..." Cecilia sighed deeply.
"Principal Cecilia, isn't becoming a Herrscher a good thing? I also want to become a Herrscher who fights for humanity, just like Lord Elias and Senior Kiana!" the D-rank Valkyrie said stubbornly.
"Your idea is admirable, but unfortunately reality isn't that simple. Honkai used your negative emotions to create a Herrscher puppet. It has already completely stood against humanity." Cecilia shook her head.
This poor girl no longer had any chance. Honkai had learned its lesson. After all, in the Current Era, too many Herrschers had defected and turned against it.
The Herrschers that would appear from now on would likely be the same. It would no longer be easy for humanity to recruit them to their side.
"H-How could this be..." The D-rank Valkyrie froze, then suffered a huge shock. She had wanted to kill Honkai, yet she had become part of it. Her conviction shattered instantly, and she coughed up blood.
"That's enough. If you want to repent, you can do it later on my experiment table. For now, everyone focus on her—and put on this device." Mobius distributed several devices resembling AR glasses. Vill-V had created them on the spot during the meeting.
They allowed one to identify who was part of the Herrscher of Dominance.
After putting on the glasses, everyone looked at the D-rank Valkyrie again and immediately noticed something unusual.
"Hmm? Why does she have two lines on her body?"
"I remember those puppets also had them..."
"I see... so that's how it works."
Everyone present wasn't foolish and quickly understood the situation.
Whether it was the puppets or their human hosts, all members of the Herrscher of Dominance shared a common trait—two puppet strings on their bodies.
While these strings could be seen with the naked eye on puppets, on human hosts they could only be observed with Vill-V's special glasses.
"Simply put, anyone with these puppet strings on their body is a host of the Herrscher of Dominance! And each puppet is connected to its host through these strings. Do I need to explain the rest?" Mobius swept her snake-like gaze across the room.
The puppets absorbed negative emotions from their hosts through these untouchable strings, converting them into Honkai energy.
Right now, the puppet clone of this D-rank Valkyrie was inside the Nation of Domination, fighting Elias. So even if they followed the strings, they wouldn't find her puppet in the real world.
However—
There was still one puppet currently in the real world. It was the key to why the Herrscher of Dominance could endlessly revive!
Therefore, no matter how well the final puppet hid itself, as long as the girls could find its human host, they could follow the puppet strings to locate its true body!
A single puppet could hide very easily.
But hiding a human was not nearly as simple.
"According to our investigation, the Herrscher of Dominance could not have been born more than ten days ago! Although this is a Herrscher skilled at concealing itself, at the moment it was chosen by Honkai, it would still release a certain level of Honkai energy."
"We have already extracted data from Echo of the Sky and recorded every instance of Honkai energy fluctuation across the globe in the past ten days that could possibly correspond to the birth of a Herrscher of Dominance."
"Now go! Based on these fluctuation locations, find the positions of the hosts of the Herrscher of Dominance! No matter what, we must find the human host of that final puppet!"
As Mobius' words fell, everyone's terminals had already received the intelligence.
Looking at the densely packed data—numbering in the millions—everyone's eyes grew resolute.
Clearly, this was not an easy task.
The Honkai energy fluctuations produced when a Herrscher of Dominance was born were extremely low, comparable to those of ordinary zombies. Over the past ten days, there had been nearly ten million similar fluctuations worldwide.
In other words, only one out of every ten locations they searched might lead to a host of the Herrscher of Dominance.
And from among these million hosts, they still had to find the single one connected to the puppet hidden in the real world.
A probability of nearly one in ten million. Although it was far better than blindly searching the entire world without clues, it was still painfully low.
However...
"Go! We must find the final puppet as soon as possible!"
"That's right. Eli is still fighting right now."
"Contact Anti-Entropy, World Serpent, and Schicksal as well. The more manpower we have, the better!"
"Bronya, mass-produce those glasses—ah... sorry, I forgot your authority was taken. Then immediately contact the factories cooperating with the academy and begin large-scale production of these glasses that can identify the hosts of the Herrscher of Dominance!"
"Vill-V, send me the blueprints. I've already acquired over a dozen large manufacturing companies. We can begin production immediately."
"Well done, Eden! I'll send them right away!"
At a time like this, no one remained idle. Everyone was doing everything they could.
After all, the boy most important to them was still fighting the enemy. Whether that battle could end sooner depended entirely on their efficiency.
However, one person did not go to search for the hosts.
After silently leaving the meeting room, she hesitated for a moment before ultimately tearing open the space in front of her, intending to return to the battlefield.
"I'll leave this side to you. Compared to searching for puppets, I'm better suited to fighting alongside him."
...
Within the Nation of Domination.
"Tch! Now this is actually getting troublesome."
Elias frowned deeply as he flew to the side, dodging an attack from the Herrscher of Dominance.
This was the first time in this battle that he had taken an evasive action.
With the divine puppet directing them, although the overall combat strength of the Herrschers of Dominance had not increased, their difficulty to deal with had risen dozens of times over.
If previously the puppets had been nothing more than a disorganized rabble, attacking randomly without coordination—
Then now, under Honkai's direct command, their threat level had skyrocketed. They perfectly utilized the advantage of possessing numerous Herrscher authorities, drastically reducing Elias' efficiency in eliminating them.
As a side note, Elias' invincible quantum state had now been countered. Otherwise, he wouldn't have needed to dodge at all.
"All units, continue maintaining the authority of the Herrscher of the Void. Fix his existence within this space. As long as this is maintained, he cannot ignore your attacks through quantumization."
Surrounded by other puppets, the divine puppet continuously issued commands.
The Cocoon of Finality—Honkai—monitored Earth at all times and was an omniscient existence.
Thus, its precision in command was comparable to predicting the future. It even developed effective countermeasures against Elias, including the only method capable of restraining the power of a Pseudo God.
Divine Puppet: "Continue maintaining imaginary renormalization. Only then can his [Infinity] be reduced back to [Finite]. Even so, our chance of victory remains at 0.0001%, but we have plenty of time to turn that into 100%."
Herrschers of Dominance: "Understood!" xN
Under Honkai's command, the Herrschers of Dominance surged with morale and launched even more fearless assaults toward Elias.
However, in the very next moment, they were once again reduced to broken puppets under the attacks of [Deliverance] Elias.
"What a troublesome bunch. Damn it all—how many have I killed already? This infinite resurrection is seriously annoying." Elias glanced around.
The scene before him made him feel a sense of repulsion.
Broken limbs of puppets were scattered everywhere—severed arms and legs, heads rolling on the ground, bodies riddled with holes. Such wreckage covered the entire battlefield.
There were even small mountains formed from the corpses of puppets.
These were all the "bodies" of the Herrschers of Dominance that Elias had destroyed.
Fortunately, they weren't made of flesh and blood. Otherwise, this place would already have turned into a river of blood.
But it was endless. No matter how many he killed, it was useless. As long as the final puppet was not found, their total number would not decrease by even one.
[Deliverance] Elias: No matter how I kill, they just won't run out... what a hollow battle.
Divine Puppet: "In that case, you may choose to surrender. Honkai is very willing to accept your submission."
[Deliverance] Elias: "Heh! That's my line. Honkai, how about you surrender to humanity—to me? If you surrender now, I might even keep this puppet you're possessing as a decoration and put it on my dorm shelf."
Divine Puppet: "...I refuse."
[Deliverance] Elias: "Fine, whatever. A puppet that ugly isn't something I'd want anyway~ As long as I hold out until everyone finds the final puppet, that's enough. Buying time... I happen to be very good at that!"