Lately, the members of Kevin's Newborn World Serpent had not been the only ones struggling.
Otto and his group were hardly in better shape.
With the World Bubbles collapsing around them, continuing to use the Cosmic Juggernaut risked exposing their position. Otto, Durandal, Rita, Li Sushang, and the mind-controlled Theresa had therefore gone into hiding somewhere in South America.
Even then, the chances of rebuilding their strength anytime soon were practically nonexistent.
Otto had prepared a secret base in South America long in advance, and unlike his other facilities, this one had never been registered among the Cosmic Juggernaut's teleportation coordinates.
As cautious as ever, he had naturally considered the possibility that the Second Divine Key might one day be lost or fall into enemy hands.
That precaution had now paid off.
When Prometheus Prime attempted to use the Void Archives' Mimicry: Cosmic Juggernaut to reverse-trace the Second Divine Key through their identical energy signatures, the search failed to reveal the hidden facility.
Kevin and his followers, meanwhile, had certainly not stopped looking for Otto.
But before abandoning the Cosmic Juggernaut, Otto had deliberately teleported it across countless locations around the planet, leaving behind false traces everywhere.
Then he disposed of the most important clue of all by sinking the Cosmic Juggernaut into the Sea of Quanta.
The one lead that might have drastically narrowed the search had also failed to be recovered because of the earlier interference from the Herrscher of Blood and the Herrscher of Thunder.
As a result, Kevin's side had been unable to determine Otto's exact location in South America.
That gave Otto's group a brief chance to breathe.
Unfortunately, their luck ended there.
The global Cold Wave arrived.
Temperatures collapsed across the planet. Snow and ice swallowed region after region, and South America was no exception.
Otto's plan to use the supplies and infrastructure hidden within his final base to rebuild his forces died before it could properly begin.
Then the situation became even worse.
As the Cold Wave intensified, more and more civilians were forced to abandon their homes and relocate to the newly planned Base Cities.
And through sheer bad luck, the site MEI had selected for one of those Base Cities happened to overlap almost perfectly with Otto's last hidden base.
It was not actually that surprising.
Otto had chosen the location because its geography made it ideal for a concealed long-term facility.
MEI, working from many of the same practical considerations, had independently reached a similar conclusion when selecting locations for the new Base Cities.
The result was rather unfortunate for Otto.
Construction of the new city was about to begin almost directly above his underground base.
If excavation started, it would take a miracle for Otto and his people to remain hidden.
His luck truly could not have been much worse.
Fortunately for him, the rest of the world was already drowning in problems far more urgent than an undiscovered underground facility in South America.
While the Newborn World Serpent remained stretched thin, Otto still had enough influence to act.
Using his Path Ability, he secretly seized control of several key officials responsible for organizing the Base City's construction and manipulated the project from within.
He believed the operation had gone completely unnoticed.
And once the immediate danger had passed, Otto began preparing to rebuild his Clone Valkyrie Legion.
The Fourth Herrscher, Seele, had already been defeated by Kevin, but Otto had carefully preserved the research data left behind.
More importantly, this final secret base still contained a complete production line.
The problem was scale.
With every other production facility lost and only this single line remaining, Otto could no longer mass-produce troops at the absurd rate he once had.
A rapid comeback was impossible.
He would have to rebuild slowly.
Originally, Otto had assumed he could spend another few years gathering strength before returning to the board.
He had severely underestimated just how quickly civilization in this era was collapsing.
And there was another problem he knew nothing about.
One of the high-ranking Base City officials he had eliminated during his takeover had actually been one of Kali's Spawn.
For Kali, that was not something she intended to forgive.
Still, the greater conflict had not yet been decided, and she had far more important matters to handle.
For the sake of securing her eventual victory, Kali suppressed her anger and deliberately ignored Otto's interference.
If she moved against him immediately, she risked alerting him.
And Kali had never been the sort of Herrscher who wasted useful pieces on the board.
She excelled at turning whatever resources were available into weapons.
She knew perfectly well that she was not the only one who hated Otto.
Her primary enemies despised him too.
To the reborn World Serpent, Otto was an unresolved problem that had to be eliminated sooner or later.
So Kali saw no reason to dirty her own hands first.
Unfortunately for Otto, there would be no convenient case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Kali had something much simpler in mind.
Let one enemy kill the other.
Then stand aside, watch them tear each other apart, and collect whatever remained.
Today…
"Herrscher of Thunder, you may begin."
"Understood."
While Kevin and the others were already on their way to South America to wipe out Otto and the remaining Remnants of the Old Days in one decisive strike, the two Herrschers hiding in the shadows had begun moving as well.
Their first target was Europe.
It was the region closest to the former "Serene Miniature Garden," yet conveniently far from South America.
Boom!
Crimson lightning tore across the sky.
The Herrscher of Thunder raced over Europe at extreme speed, supported by the immense computational power provided through the Bloody Little Snake wrapped around her neck.
At the same time, she continuously emitted a carefully tuned electromagnetic signal across an enormous area.
It resembled a biological activation signal.
Crack.
Crack, crack…
Across the region, Cocoons that the Newborn World Serpent had failed to recover began splitting open.
One after another, they hatched.
The dormant "Seeds of Immortality" emerged as violet-black Phantasm Butterflies.
Within minutes, each began searching for a nearby host.
MEI had deliberately selected the locations of the Base Cities to avoid low-lying coastal regions and reduce the danger posed by future flooding.
She had never expected that decision to become irrelevant for an entirely different reason.
Because location was never the key.
As long as humanity gathered enormous numbers of civilians into concentrated Base Cities…
They could not escape what was coming.
Though perhaps "calamity" was not quite the right word.
Seele, who had originally planned to use the threat of racial conflict as leverage, had never intended to use her Authority simply to kill humanity.
Her original intention had been almost the opposite.
She wanted to grant people "Immortality."
Longer lives.
And bodies with far greater resistance to Honkai Energy.
The Phantasm Butterflies still obeyed the final command left behind by their dead creator.
So in the most literal sense, the ordinary people they selected as hosts were actually receiving a benefit.
Their lifespans would increase.
Their Honkai resistance would rise dramatically.
And because resistance to Honkai Energy was closely tied to how much power a human body could safely wield…
Their individual combat potential would increase as well.
Taken alone, none of this sounded particularly bad.
But fortune and disaster were often separated by little more than circumstance.
"Shenzhou has an old saying."
Hidden deep within her cave, Kali's lips curled into a faint smile.
"People do not fear scarcity as much as they fear inequality."
Her eyes narrowed.
"So first, I'll turn a portion of humanity into walking pieces of 'Tang Monk's flesh.'"
"And then…"
On the screen before her, a special audio track was still being synthesized.
Kali watched its progress in silence.
The previous day, she had discovered that many of Earth's remaining political and organizational leaders had been subjected to mental control.
Naturally, she immediately began searching for a way to break it.
The culprit was Aponia.
And Aponia's "Discipline" proved far more troublesome than Kali had expected.
She could not simply tear it apart by herself.
Silently removing it from every affected leader was even less realistic.
Given sufficient time, and with the Herrscher of Thunder's electromagnetic control assisting her, Kali believed she could eventually break Aponia's Discipline.
But being capable of something did not mean it was worth doing.
It was inefficient.
Too much work for too little gain.
After all…
"I'm not doing all of this just to rescue a handful of humans."
Kali understood both her position and her objective perfectly.
So if she could not remove the Discipline…
She would corrupt the way it was obeyed.
"If I can't break it, I'll make it go mad instead."
That was the real purpose of the audio track being constructed in front of her.
It would not erase Aponia's Discipline.
Instead, it would distort the emotional and psychological state of anyone subjected to it.
Those who heard it would become increasingly irritable, obsessive, and extreme.
And when it came to whatever command the Discipline had imposed upon them…
They would begin interpreting that command in the most radical way possible.
For example:
Suppose someone had been given a Discipline ordering them to preserve world peace.
After exposure to Kali's interference, that person might gradually come to despise humanity for constantly creating conflict.
They might begin seeing people as hopeless vermin incapable of ever achieving peace on their own.
And eventually…
They might reach the perfectly logical, utterly insane conclusion that the surest way to achieve permanent world peace…
Was to exterminate humanity.
Kali had no way of knowing that, in doing this, she was recreating something disturbingly similar to a tragedy from the original history of the Current Era.
A tragedy that had once completely extinguished humanity's final hope.
Except this time…
The scale would be far greater.