Anti-Entropy had numerous bases established across North American territory.
Cocolia was not being held at the Salt Lake Base.
Today — Anti-Entropy's Yellowstone Base.
Inside the underground detention area.
"Ka!"
The bars of a single-person cell were unlocked from the outside.
A petite girl with gray hair and gray eyes walked in.
She had vortex-shaped twin tails and wore a brown women's suit.
From the knees down, her legs were encased in a pair of mechanical prosthetics.
The person inside the cell saw her and——
"Bronya!"
Cocolia was clearly overjoyed. "Why have you come?"
She hurried forward and pulled the girl into her arms.
Perhaps only at moments like this was the maternal love real.
As for before...
The maternal love that used her own daughter as an experiment subject.
The maternal love that installed a biochip in her daughter's brain.
The maternal love where she lived in luxury hotels while her daughter couldn't afford cake.
The maternal love that forcibly hijacked her daughter's body and made her hurt her closest friends.
Cocolia's maternal love was something no normal person could bear.
But now, she had lost everything. She no longer took lives on a whim like before.
Finally, genuine feeling surfaced.
Facing all of this——
"Mother Cocolia."
The gray-haired girl spoke slowly. "We've encountered a situation and need to ask you some things."
"It's urgent. I need your cooperation."
"A new Herrscher has appeared."
Just those few short lines——
!!!
Cocolia's heart skipped.
A new Herrscher?
Related to her?
Now... honestly, she didn't want to hear this at all.
She knew exactly what she'd done.
She didn't want her image in her daughters' hearts to get any worse than it already was.
But now...
"Fine. Ask."
"Bronya — I'll tell you everything I know."
Cocolia let go of the embrace, but her hands stayed on the girl's shoulders. She couldn't bring herself to let go entirely.
She wanted to be closer to her daughter. Even if only for this moment.
And right then——
"Several years ago, when you triggered the engineered Honkai eruption in Nagazora, you had me capture a black-haired youth."
The gray-haired girl asked directly: "I want to know — why did you give that order?"
"What was special about him?"
"And how did you learn about him in the first place?"
Hearing those questions——
"Er~"
Cocolia hadn't expected that Bronya would dig up something from so far back.
But she gathered her thoughts quickly.
After a long pause, she answered carefully...
"Back then, to make sure the engineered Honkai experiment went off without a hitch, I'd planted eyes and ears all over Nagazora."
"But this was strange, even to me."
Cocolia frowned. "That black-haired youth — suspected to be from Shenzhou — was clearly just an ordinary person. Yet somehow, he knew in advance what I was planning."
"He passed the intelligence to Raiden Mei... your Big Sister Mei."
The gray-haired girl's expression shifted slightly. But she stayed silent.
"Unfortunately..."
Cocolia's face took on a strange look. "The Raiden Mei of that time had never encountered anything related to Honkai."
"Raiden Ryoma had shielded her too well."
"So when this stranger came to her with his warning — knowing nothing about any of it — she didn't trust him. She called the police."
"After all, to a sheltered young woman who'd never known the truth of the world, everything about 'Honkai' must have sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. Right?"
"And it was precisely because of that — my subordinates intercepted Raiden Mei's emergency call, and then——"
"Heh!"
The gray-haired girl standing before her suddenly laughed.
The shift was instant — one moment, that blank, three-nothing expression; the next, the corners of her mouth had split nearly to the back of her ears, radiating pure unhinged madness.
Cocolia flinched.
Her hands flew off the gray-haired girl's shoulders as if she'd been electrocuted.
In her field of vision——
"Heh! Heeheehee! Hahahahahaha!"
The gray-haired girl had completely forgotten Cocolia existed. She was laughing as if no one else was in the room, her entire state tipped over into full-blown insanity.
She was clutching her stomach. She couldn't even stand straight.
"So it was such a laughable cause."
"A clown! A clown!"
"Ling Ke, you're nothing but a waste, a simp, a goddamn idiot (bleep~)."
"Self-indulgent, self-righteous... screaming about how beautiful the world is, and in the end she didn't trust you at all."
"Turned around and sold you out — hahahaha!"
She cursed like this, hysterical, laughing and raging at the same time. Her mental state was visibly coming apart.
By now, Cocolia had caught on.
Her own daughter... Bronya almost never used the word "I."
"You — who the hell are you?"
Cocolia stumbled back several steps. Her face had gone hideous.
The thought that just now she had actually——
"Yo, dear Co~co~li~a~ Mom~my."
Only then did the gray-haired girl seem to notice her.
She turned sideways, tilting her head at an angle as if her spine was about to snap, and looked over in a posture that sent chills down the spine: "I deliberately showed you a flaw, and you still couldn't tell her apart from your own daughter?"
"What a failure. Huge failure."
"Is this your maternal love?"
"In the end, you and I are the same — both bona fide 「failures」!"
Right then——
"Tap tap tap~"
Hurried footsteps in the corridor outside the cell.
Moments later——
"You!"
Another gray-haired girl appeared on the other side of the bars.
Bronya Zaychik.
Behind her trailed a squad of Anti-Entropy special-ops.
And... several faces that Ling Ke still remembered very well.
"Who are you?"
The first words out of Bronya's mouth were almost reflexive.
She couldn't help it — the girl on the other side of the bars looked exactly like her.
But the instant the question left her lips, she caught herself.
"You're Ling Ke? The Herrscher?"
She'd already confirmed it.
She hadn't expected him to have transformation abilities.
She could know even less that this wasn't a traditional shapeshifting ability at all.
It was something else entirely——
After wiping out every last one of the thirty thousand people at the West Asia Branch, Ling Ke had drawn the corresponding Game Character Template.
[Game Character Template: Dawn of the Silver Wolf] [Origin: Honkai Impact 3rd] [Character Traits: Level Mechanism, HP Mechanism, Infinite Stamina, Equipment Indestructible, Psy Attribute, Physical Core, Stun Core, Weaken Core, Spacetime Core, Character Switching...] [Game Skills: Normal Attack — Heavy Particle Cannon, Dodge — Voidtime Blink, Special Attack — Explosive Impact, Ultimate — Roaring Shock, Captain Skill — Harmonic Resonance...] [Background Talent: High Honkai Energy Adaptation Constitution, World's Number One Assassin, Firearm Mastery, Frogman Elite, High IQ (180), Stock Trading Expert, Programming Master, Top Hacker, High-End Gamer...] [Related Info: Full name — Bronya Zaychik. This armor is the formal dress she wore during her Anti-Entropy days. The earrings are a gift from "Mother"...]
Right now——
"Long time no see."
The gray-haired girl stood inside the cell, in front of Cocolia, and used that same face to look toward Bronya with a mocking smile. "Tell me — don't I count as your shameful past?"
"A malicious aggregate you personally dragged into the first circle of hell, now crawling back out of it..."
As she spoke, the girl raised her left hand——
"Ka!"
A massive cannon materialized at her side.
Its muzzle aimed straight at Cocolia behind her.
"Stop!"
Like a reflex.
The real Bronya summoned her Heavy Rabbit in the same breath.
Its cannon leveled at the smiling gray-haired girl.
Behind her, a white-haired girl and another gray-haired girl (?) had also gone on alert.
Weapons already gripped tight.
Seeing them——
"Kiana Kaslana, and... should I call you Hua? Or Fu Hua?"
The gray-haired girl raised her voice deliberately. "Huh? How come Raiden Mei isn't here?"
"Bronya's already gotten her Seele back — but where's your Mei?"
"Oh, right right right..."
"Mei's in World Serpent!"
At this point, the name Herrscher of Legion was well earned.