Chapter One — After The Message, Comes Ajin
One more warning right up front: this is not a beautiful story!!!
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Schicksal, West Asia Branch.
Deep inside a hidden underground lab, in a place filthy enough to pass for a prison cell.
A black-haired young man, all skin and bone beneath his thin clothes, suddenly peels back his cracked lips in a ghastly grin.
He has become the Tenth Herrscher of the Current Era — the Herrscher of Domination.
Also known as the Herrscher of Legion.
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Ling Ke was a Chinese transmigrator.
At the start, there was nothing special about his story.
A few years earlier, sometime in the autumn of 2013, he arrived in the HI3 world he knew all too well.
Back then, he had been the kind of veteran Captain who kept up the daily grind for years on end — the sort of old player who lived in the game. He liked those people, admired them, even respected them: the ones willing to fight for everything beautiful in this world.
Because he knew he himself could never throw his life away that selflessly.
So once he realized he had arrived before the Third Eruption, he thought that even if he could never be that kind of person, maybe he could still help them.
For example: stop Cocolia's plan.
In his memory, the millions of innocent people in Nagazora had all died in that manufactured disaster.
And because of it, one of the three protagonists — Raiden Mei — became the Third Herrscher and spent a long time trapped in guilt, suffering for it.
So much so that later she even had a miniature bomb implanted near her own heart.
A way of limiting the possibility of another Herrscher rampage.
Ling Ke knew that if the future of this world kept moving along the original track, humanity in this era would survive extinction.
It would even produce a "god of Earth."
But even so, too many people would still be left with too many regrets.
"If what I do can help undo some of those regrets — save Himeko-sensei, for example."
"Or keep Elysian Realm from disappearing, so the Flame-Chasers can see this era's human civilization cross Finality with their own eyes…"
"Wouldn't that make this story a little better?"
Back then, Ling Ke really did think that.
So even knowing full well that the Third Eruption was going to break out in Nagazora, he still chose not to leave that place immediately.
He found Raiden Mei before she had become the Third Herrscher and personally told her part of the critical information he knew.
That included Cocolia using an economic case to send Raiden Ryoma to prison, and what Mei herself would go through after losing that shield.
He gave Raiden Mei what Honkai information he could, and after deciding he had at least won a little of her trust, he urged her to contact her father as soon as possible and pass the warning along.
He did not tell her directly about the Third Herrscher… because he wanted to keep her from falling into outright panic.
Ling Ke had originally thought that once Raiden Ryoma learned all this — a man who already knew the field, and an Anti-Entropy executive besides — things should not end up following the same road again.
But then…
Ling Ke still does not know what happened after that.
He only remembers that the very next day, he walked straight into Cocolia's trap.
He was surrounded by armed special-ops personnel.
Cocolia even sent Anti-Entropy mechs after him.
And there was one more familiar face in the hunt…
The girl called Bronya Zaychik.
Even back then, she had already reached the top of Charon's List — the number-one killer in the world. Ling Ke, as he was then, never had a chance.
Worse, he was a complete amateur at counter-surveillance, so they could track him with embarrassing ease.
In the end, they dislocated his limbs and dragged him back.
Ling Ke never saw Bronya again after that.
Because in the underground facility Cocolia ran, he got the full The Message treatment.
Somewhere in that process, he realized his will was even tougher than he had thought.
So no matter how hard they tortured him, he never gave up any of the truly dangerous information.
Ling Ke knew perfectly well what kind of person Cocolia was. If he handed over everything he knew, that lunatic woman would probably turn it into something even worse.
A woman like that did not get her reputation for tearing things apart from the inside by accident.
And once he stopped being useful…
Death?
To be honest, there were plenty of times when Ling Ke wanted exactly that.
But by then, something dark had already been planted inside him.
He wanted Cocolia to pay for what she had done.
It was during that same stretch that he made another discovery: things like truth serum simply had no effect on his will.
Clinging to that obsession with revenge, he endured those months by sheer force until the Third Eruption from the original story arrived on schedule and fully broke out.
Too much happened in late March of 2014.
So much that Cocolia did not even have time to retrieve Ling Ke from Nagazora before she had to pull out in a rush.
A few days later, Ling Ke saw another familiar face.
Rita Rossweisse.
After the Far East Branch withdrew, she came to Nagazora as an investigator for Schicksal.
With her abilities, it did not take long for her to discover the underground base Cocolia had abandoned.
She found him.
In that moment, Ling Ke thought he had finally gotten out.
Instead, he had only fallen into another abyss.
By then, after so long in dense Honkai radiation, his body had clearly already started undergoing zombification… and yet those symptoms were also slowly receding.
When Schicksal's scientists saw him, they treated him like a priceless specimen.
They mistook Ling Ke for an Anti-Entropy experiment, and so…
After he was transferred to the West Asia Branch, Ling Ke did not see the real sun again for years.
What he suffered there was far crueler than the torture he had gone through before.
At times, the whole thing reminded him of Ajin.
He no longer felt like a living person. Just a chunk of flesh kept around to be used up whenever someone wanted it.
Until today…
"…"
In that eerie subspace, facing the vast, familiar Theater of Domination, Ling Ke said nothing at first.
He simply stood there, empty-eyed, unable to focus on anything.
Like a puppet with no soul left in it.
But slowly…
"Heh…"
"Ha!"
"Hahahahaha!!!"
He could feel the complete Herrscher core in his chest — something that could split from "one" into "a thousand" at any moment.
And with that came certainty: he really was the central core-body of the Herrscher of Domination.
Ling Ke laughed.
The look on his face was pure madness.
Maybe he had gone insane a long time ago.
Because even now, there was still no life in his eyes.
Like Kiritsugu Emiya in the Fourth Holy Grail War…
What remained there was only…
That dark obsession — no longer a seed, but something that had already fully sprouted!!!
Its name was—
"For nearly four years, I endured every kind of torment. I've finally waited long enough for this chance."
"Good. Good! Very good!"
"If the chance is already right in front of me, then…"
Standing before the gates of the Theater of Domination, looking like a man whose mind had already split open, Ling Ke threw up both hands. "From here on, in this world…"
"I'm going to finish my revenge."