Just as Amber had reported…
during this stretch of time, Ling Ke's operations around the world had almost all leaned toward guerrilla warfare.
In the process, he made full use of the convenience of his side's spatial gates. Early on, he had already loaded some of the Puppets of Domination with game character templates that had high movement speed, and scattered gate-opening marks all over the place.
Under those ideal conditions, it was common for great swarms of Puppets of Domination to come pouring out of spatial gates, every one of them wearing Kallen Kaslana's face while slaughtering people like mad. And by the time rescue forces arrived, the area would already be drowned in blood.
As for the Puppets of Domination, they would have long since vanished without a trace, leaving behind only the hatred of the survivors.
This method kept grinding away at the nerves of every major power.
Otto in particular had reached the point where even the eyes in his soul-steel body had gone bloodshot.
And yet, all of them had overlooked one very important fact.
Ling Ke had his Puppets of Domination fight guerrilla warfare not because he lacked frontal combat strength.
It was because this way earned points quickly.
And easily.
After all… once more than ten thousand Puppets of Domination were scattered across the world, their numbers were bound to thin out no matter what.
But if today they demolished buildings, tomorrow they blew up bridges, then sniped political figures in the street one moment and attacked vital facilities in major cities the next… and the governments of every nation still had no way to stop them…
then sooner or later, the whole world would fall into chaos.
Because ordinary people would stop trusting their governments.
And those governments, in turn, would stop trusting the anti-Honkai organizations.
That effect spread layer by layer.
The overly developed internet of the present age had become a double-edged sword instead.
Because it let these incidents ferment at terrifying speed, until they became public opinion crises no one could pull back.
By that point, Ling Ke would not even need to act personally.
The various factions, all so used to throwing blame at one another, would start tearing each other apart on their own.
In the end…
a Herrscher of Domination who hated all of humanity, like Ling Ke, had been forced into being by Schicksal and Anti-Entropy.
And the dirty secrets tied to those latter two were far from few.
No matter how they tried to cover them up, people would tear them apart with their mouths and their pens.
And then those things would become the outlet the so-called innocent victims used to vent their anger.
As for Ling Ke, the "great world-ending player," as long as some intelligent lifeform died because of an action he had subjectively taken, even if only through indirect consequences, he would still gain points.
In short, this was only one phase of the plan he was carrying out.
And once the time came for open battle…
North America. Anti-Entropy's Salt Lake Base.
"Wummm—"
Unlike before, a spatial gate of absolutely enormous size opened several dozen kilometers away.
The moment it appeared, the detection systems inside Salt Lake Base picked it up.
And that instantly triggered endless panic inside the base.
The alarms began to howl—
"Enemy attack! Enemy attack! Level One battle stations!"
The broadcast rang through every corridor and every chamber in the base.
Welt. Einstein. Tesla. Kiana. Bronya. Seele. Theresa. Fu Hua…
every one of them tensed up.
And at that very same moment…
"Switch to siege mode—"
A cold command rang out from beyond the base perimeter.
"Clank. Clank."
Heavy machines rolling out of the spatial gate bared their fangs.
[Game Character Template: Siege Tank]
[Source: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty]
[Character Traits: HP system, infinite energy, infinite ammunition, indestructible equipment, heavy armor — mechanical unit…]
[Game Skills: Shaped Blast, Directed Shockwave, Tank Mode, Siege Mode…]
[Background Traits: twin 90mm cannons, 180mm shockwave artillery, high-temperature tungsten shells, high-strength cockpit climate control system, holographic video navigation system…]
[Related Info: Full designation: Crucio Siege Tank. An upgraded product used by the Dominion to replace the Arclite Siege Tank. It saw widespread use in the war against the Zerg Swarm…]
Clearly, Ling Ke's recent "gacha" pulls had not brought him only humanoid game character templates.
True, he still had not drawn any high-end single-unit combat power on the level of a Herrscher.
But…
a Siege Tank was a weapon used for interstellar war in its original setting.
What they had once faced were swarms numbering in the hundreds of millions.
And now…
"Fire!"
"Boom!"
"Boom!!"
"Boom!!!"
The unbroken roar of artillery fire shook the earth.
The direction of Anti-Entropy's Salt Lake Base was already shaking like the world was coming apart.
Inside the Siege Tank line, one Puppet of Domination—Anby—stood there wearing a black headset, completely ignoring the explosions going off again and again all around her.
Wave after wave of force swept over her body, stirring her silver-white hair and the black hem of her dress…
and still she did not move.
The bombardment went on for more than half an hour.
That was what a game character template with the trait "infinite ammunition" looked like.
By the time one looked ahead again, the former Anti-Entropy Salt Lake Base had already been completely leveled.
Everything had happened far too fast.
From the moment the large number of Siege Tanks were transported through the giant spatial gate, to the moment they switched forms and began their continuous bombardment…
the whole process had taken less than thirty seconds.
And in those thirty seconds, Salt Lake Base, the headquarters of Anti-Entropy, had no time to activate its shields.
The combat personnel had no time to get their equipment in order or man the Titan mechs.
The hangars had been blown apart.
It was like an enemy launching a blitz attack straight at an air base.
A humiliating loss. A helpless loss.
Now, looking at the ruins ahead…
it seemed as though nothing in the bombardment zone could still be alive. As though not a single person could have survived.
And yet…
"Buzz~"
The Puppet of Domination—Anby—who had come here as the field commander, used a spatial gate to jump in and out once, then arrived near the ruins of Anti-Entropy's Salt Lake Base.
The moment she got there, another spatial gate opened at her side.
From within it stepped a tall figure with a single ponytail and strangely dark-purple skin.
[Game Character Template: Widowmaker]
[Source: Overwatch]
[Character Traits: HP system, infinite ammunition, indestructible equipment, immunity to fall damage…]
[Game Skills: Widow's Kiss, Venom Mine, Grappling Hook, Infra-Sight…]
[Background Traits: world-class sniper, high-grade living weapon…]
[Related Info: Full name: Amélie Guillard. Once subjected to intensive neural reconstruction. She is now one of Talon's top killers…]
The moment she appeared, she raised her left hand and pressed the trigger button on the side of the device attached to her head.
At the same time, she spoke in a cold voice—
"No one can hide from my sight!"
In the original game Overwatch, that was Widowmaker's ultimate voice line.
Once she activated her ultimate, both she and all her teammates would gain a special field of vision.
A field of vision that let them see the location of every enemy unit and the outline of each body through walls.
And now…
"Just as I thought. It wasn't going to be that easy to wipe them all out."
Using the Infra-Sight vision given by that Puppet of Domination—Widowmaker—the Puppet of Domination—Anby—narrowed her eyes slightly as the field commander and looked down toward one point in the ground below.
There, several red human outlines were running farther and farther away.
It was not hard to see that Anti-Entropy's Salt Lake Base still had an underground escape route.
And the direction it led to…
"The Great Salt Lake."
To the northwest of Salt Lake City in North America lay a massive saltwater lake.
One could say the former got its name from the latter.
Since the survivors in the base were all running in that direction… it was not hard to guess the reason.
"So that's why I never saw the Hyperion."
"So it was hidden there."
Inside the Theater of Domination, Ling Ke's true body, hidden behind the curtain, slowly opened his eyes.
He had been watching the situation in North America the whole time.
Not long ago, he had told Bronya that the form his revenge would take against her was to leave her all alone again.
And the first step of that plan was simple.
Anyone belonging to Anti-Entropy would die.
And not just once.
They would be hunted without end.
Over these last few days, because Welt Yang, the current Sovereign, had chosen to make the relevant information public, a great number of people had resigned from Anti-Entropy.
The entire anti-Honkai organization had shrunk by more than two-thirds.
And yet, even under the pressure Ling Ke had brought, there were still some people inside Anti-Entropy who had chosen to stay and fight to the death.
To be honest, their choice was actually the correct one.
Because from the very beginning, Ling Ke had never planned to spare a single person on this planet.
Those who resigned from Anti-Entropy were not guaranteed to live much longer either.
Who knew—at some point, one of those nameless extras from the original HI3 plot, whether a he or a she, might still die in one of the indiscriminate massacres carried out by the Puppets of Domination—Sixth Serenade, and turn into points in the hands of Ling Ke, this "great world-ending player."
But the people who had chosen not to resign from Anti-Entropy were not exactly living comfortably either.
Just like now. The number of dead and wounded at Salt Lake Base was hard to even count.
"Bastards!"
Inside the underground escape route that the Puppet of Domination—Widowmaker—had just discovered, Dr. Tesla and the others—Welt, Bronya, and the rest of their comrades—had only just run into one of the train cars on the underground line. She had not even sat down yet before slamming a fist into the window at the side.
Just half an hour.
And once again, too many people had died right in front of her eyes.
And she… and the companions around her… had not been able to save them all.
Looking around now, quite a few people were covered in blood and worn to the bone.
Two special forces soldiers in standard armor had both lost an arm.
They had not even had time to wrap proper bandages around the wounds. All they could do was tie strips of cloth over the stumps to stop the bleeding for the moment.
At the side, even the quantum robot that had always followed Bronya around—Project Bunny—was carrying several wounded people who could not move on their own.
Bronya had only just told Project Bunny to gently set the wounded down…
and the train car was already crowded.
Kiana. Fu Hua. Theresa. Seele. Rozaliya. Liliya. Those girls, all of them, had fallen silent.
Clearly, for some of them, this was the first time they had gone through something like this.
Among everyone here, Fu Hua—whose condition had recovered somewhat compared to before—was without question the one with the most experience in this kind of thing.
Because the Herrschers born in the Previous Era had, for the most part, felt exactly like this.
Even Captain Himeko, whom she had once respected deeply, had shown no mercy after becoming the Herrscher of Fire, and had destroyed the entire Australian continent.
The only exception…
"Get moving."
The silent thoughts of everyone present, Fu Hua included, were cut off.
Welt Yang said with a grim face, "I've got a bad feeling."
"We need to get to the underwater hangar where the Hyperion is as fast as possible."
"As long as we can escape successfully, we still have a chance to turn this around."
No one objected to his proposal.
At once, under Dr. Einstein's control, the train car slowly began to accelerate.
Following the rails laid down by fate, it sped ahead.