The suddenly arising intense sense of crisis forced Herrscher Mei to hastily retreat, like a startled Haachama.
But after retreating just a few steps, her dignity as the Queen of Thunder made her feel ashamed of her timidity. So she stopped her retreat. Purple electric light flickered across her body, sharp demon horns sprouted from her forehead, and ferocious samurai armor draped over her.
"A mere bookworm—you know nothing about Honkai! I'll let you know what the power of the Herrscher of Thunder truly is!"
Since the psychological attack had failed, there was only combat left. Although she was unwilling to strike that familiar face, she absolutely couldn't allow the other party to take the dominant position.
Moreover, Herrscher Mei didn't think she would lose.
What a joke—she had accompanied Mei through the darkest moments, skillfully mastering the use of Herrscher power.
And the other party... was just a bookworm.
What combat ability could a bookworm have? Hit me with books?
Thinking of this, Herrscher Mei charged at Mei without restraint.
"Don't worry, I won't hit your face."
"Remember—the dignity of the Thunder Queen cannot be insulted!"
Herrscher Mei charged forward confidently.
Herrscher Mei was unstoppable, advantage overwhelming.
Herrscher Mei was utterly defeated, beaten to her knees.
"Ugh! Stop hitting, I surrender!"
Herrscher Mei covered her eyes that had been beaten to tears, kneeling before Mei in the humiliating dogeza position, her face showing a completely unaccepting expression.
"Im... impossible... it can't be!"
"Aren't you just a bookworm? Why is your use of Herrscher authority stronger than mine?"
Hearing Herrscher Mei's surrender, Mei extinguished the electric light dancing at her fingertips, put the coin in her hand back in her pocket, and pulled out a pair of glasses from her jacket's upper pocket to put on her face.
"You use the ability to command electromagnetic force like a club to swing around, and you still have the face to call yourself the Herrscher of Thunder?"
"Such an idiot actually shares the same face as me. Looking at you always gives me the feeling my IQ is being violated... Looks like I must re-educate you."
"I'm so sorry for being academically challenged..."
Ignoring Herrscher Mei's quiet muttering, Mei grabbed her and said: "Tutoring is for later. Right now, hand over the Herrscher authority."
...
In the outside world, after taking over the Herrscher authority, Mei fell into a daze.
Terrifying lightning continuously spread outward from her body as the center, like a Pikachu constantly releasing Thunderbolt.
Kiana tried throwing the baseball bat in her hand, only for it to be obliterated by lightning mid-air, not even leaving residue.
Seeing this, Kiana's little face turned pale as she retreated to Lucius's side.
Around Lucius, a layer of light blue shield extended outward, like an upside-down bowl covering Nagazora City—both preventing the lightning Mei emitted from affecting areas outside Nagazora City and blocking the Honkai energy in Nagazora City from leaking out.
Seeing Kiana retreat, Lucius snapped his fingers. Accompanied by a blue light, another identical baseball bat fell into Kiana's hands.
This was the authority of the Herrscher of Reason. Choosing this point to conclude was also to maximize the utilization of the Herrscher of Reason experience card's effects.
Of course he wouldn't waste an opportunity to transform into the Herrscher of Reason just for filming. So at this moment, the conclusion of Himeko's script over there was proceeding simultaneously—nothing more than hand-crafting a Herrscher core to give Joachim to complete the plot.
The key was borrowing the power of the Herrscher of Reason to prevent accidents.
Suddenly, Lucius noticed massive Honkai energy beginning to converge toward Mei. He knew Mei must have succeeded.
Sure enough, Mei quickly opened her eyes. Those purple pupils had electric light dancing in them. The pitch-black clouds pressed even lower, thunder resounding across heaven and earth.
Mei took out glasses from her upper jacket pocket and put them on.
The moment she put on the glasses, the electric light in her eyes vanished, seeming to return to that originally gentle scholarly appearance.
"Father, mission accomplished."
Mei smiled, then informed him about the other self calling herself Herrscher Mei in her head.
"Herrscher Mei."
Lucius pondered. He hadn't expected this to happen, since when he loaded the Herrscher experience card, nothing like this occurred.
This could either be attributed to his own special nature, or... it had to be attributed to Mei herself. After all, she was originally Mei's counterpart, and the Herrscher experience card the system gave was clearly modeled after the post-civilization Raiden Mei.
However, since Mei loading the Herrscher of Thunder's power resulted in an extra Herrscher personality, would giving Kiana the power of the Herrscher of the Void or Herrscher of Flamescion cause any accidents?
This question was interesting, but not the most important for Lucius.
Although Mei had already taken over the Herrscher of Thunder's power, the massive Honkai energy about to descend on the East Asian region hadn't been resolved yet. It was just temporarily sealed in Nagazora City by Lucius using the Herrscher of Reason's power.
But this was only temporary. The Honkai energy the Cocoon of Finality was deploying was still continuously pouring into Earth using Mei as coordinates, and he couldn't maintain the Herrscher of Reason's power forever.
If left unchecked, the Great Honkai would still erupt—it just wouldn't spawn a Herrscher in the short term.
So next, Mei as the Herrscher of Thunder had to use herself as a vessel to contain all this Honkai energy while using it to fill the energy lacking in her newborn Herrscher body.
Fortunately, Mei had already been doing this after taking over the Herrscher of Thunder's authority.
Just...
"Father, the amount of this Honkai energy is too large. I'm afraid I can't fully absorb it."
This made Lucius pause. He knew even Herrschers had limits, but most of the time they basically never reached their limits.
"How much will be left over?"
Mei calculated in her mind and immediately gave an answer.
"I'm afraid close to half the Honkai energy will remain."
Hearing this answer, Lucius knew this Great Honkai's intensity was probably much stronger than the Third Great Honkai on the original timeline.
On the original world line, this Great Honkai affected all of East Asia. If they hadn't intervened this time and just let the Great Honkai erupt directly, the disaster range would probably be even larger.
But honestly, Lucius wasn't surprised. In fact, he felt this blame had to fall on himself.
After all, to achieve his goals, he had taken various technologies from the system shop far beyond this era, causing this era's technology and productivity to be somewhat higher than the original pre-civilization. It was expected that Honkai's intensity would increase.
And he had prepared contingencies. Opening his hand, a crystal shining with faint light rotated in his palm—the Herrscher of Reason's core.
Lucius's fingers exerted force, directly crushing it into over a dozen fragments.
Massive Honkai energy surged into these crystal fragments, making them shine brilliantly, actually showing a trend of recovering to completeness.
This was also why he chose the Herrscher of Reason as his contingency plan. Even after the Herrscher of Reason experience card ended and the authority in the core was extracted, he could still obtain over a dozen high-concentration Honkai energy crystals.
Just as Lucius was planning this, he found an emergency communication coming through the communication channel, from Vill-V.
[Vill-V: Partner, while we were adjusting those little octopi from the Sky People, we discovered these individuals received an interesting message. You might be interested?]
[Lucius: Don't tell me the Sky People are attacking?]
[Vill-V: Yes! Yes!]
['Already reached solar system... approaching target... speed... arrival...']
[Lucius: ...]
[Lucius: I remember we did a safety assessment, right? Or did you all pull something behind my back?]
[Vill-V: ...We found their signals seem to be able to connect to a special frequency, so we tried letting some individuals connect to see if we could discover anything]
[Vill-V: And then...]
[Lucius: And then you exposed Earth's position?]
[Vill-V: Have a little more confidence in my technology! We didn't expose it, but we did detect these aliens are about to reach the solar system]
[Vill-V: More precisely, we accidentally decrypted their descent plan]
Lucius understood. They tinkered with the Sky People's individuals and ended up creating a radio, then heard from the radio that these aliens were about to arrive.
However, this actually puzzled him.
The Sky People's appearance time was fifty thousand years in the future. There were no clear records in pre-civilization. If these guys really weren't attracted by him but truly had visited the solar system fifty thousand years before the main storyline...
Then on the original world line, either this Sky People fleet had turned around and gone back, or... they had perished in the solar system.
So, what existed in the solar system that could easily crush them?
Thinking about it, Lucius found there seemed to be a bit too many such existences in the solar system. Even the heavily weakened Welt fifty thousand years in the future could easily crush their vanguard fleet. Their power really wasn't a threat to Herrscher-level existences.
Although the title "aliens" sounded intimidating, these guys were essentially just remnants who chose to commit civilizational suicide to evade Honkai.
And now in the solar system, there were quite a few existences that could eliminate them.
Sa lurking at the solar system's edge blocking the bridge, the Cocoon of the End buried on Mars waiting for a revival match, the Cocoon of Finality entrenched on the Moon constantly watching Earth—each of these guys had their own brutal tricks.
Besides these known ones, in the solar system that had been selected by the Cocoon of Finality as a cultivation ground for who knows how many hundreds of millions of years, who knew what absurd things might be buried under the remaining planets.
Although he didn't know who had eliminated these guys on the original world line, now it would probably have to be them.
But thinking of this, Lucius actually became excited.
The Honkai energy deployed to Earth by the Cocoon of Finality had nowhere to be released. Leaving it on Earth might increase the Cocoon of Finality's difficulty assessment for Earth, causing the difficulty of subsequently appearing Herrschers to increase.
Better to give it all to the Sky People—in the form of attacks.
Alright, he admitted he actually just wanted to see rivers of blood.
Lucius told Mei and Kiana his plan, then heard Kiana's retort.
"Is this what they call 'invincible on earth, so enemies come from the sky'? But do roadside strays like the Sky People even count as enemies from the sky..."
Having long understood the Sky People's technology, Mei naturally knew what level these guys with stagnant technology were at. She adjusted her glasses with cold light flashing across the lenses and said:
"How dare they invade Earth—what an arrogant bunch!"
"Just a bunch of cosmic hicks with stagnant civilization development. They probably don't know Earth has our heroic Herrscher squad protecting it!"
"My world-shaking wisdom tells me it's time to unleash world-shaking power."
"Father, please lend me the power of the Herrscher of Reason. I want to give these alien hicks an unforgettable lesson."
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