Cole Foster's daily life was very routine: he woke up at six in the morning, went for a jog, then returned home at seven to turn on the morning news and prepare his breakfast to the sound of it.
Although he lived alone, his life was prosperous and fulfilling, and he felt very satisfied, especially the girl named Kelly he met during his morning jogs, who motivated him even more.
However, today, during his jog, he noticed something seemed off.
There were so few people out for their morning exercise today.
Usually, there would be some elderly people in the park when he passed by, but today he didn't see many.
When he passed by Kelly's neighborhood, he didn't see Kelly come out to run either.
"Is something happening today?"
Cole felt as if he had become disconnected from the world overnight.
It seemed everyone had made some kind of agreement without telling him.
He looked up at the sun.
It was still rising.
He listened to the birds chirping.
The chirping was still clear and pleasant; the world hadn't changed.
"Forget it, maybe the mall has a special sale or something."
Cole thought this.
But even if there was a special sale at the mall, he didn't care. After all, although he lived alone, he wasn't short on money.
Returning home, Cole turned on the TV.
"Hmm? What's going on?"
After the TV turned on, it showed a scene of several girls fighting monsters. It looked like a plot from a movie, but he wasn't interested in it and wanted to change the channel.
However, no matter how many times he changed the channel, it was always similar scenes.
"What's going on? What movie is this? Is it being broadcast on all channels?"
Cole noticed something was amiss. He thought this might be the source of the anomaly he encountered today.
"Website?"
He didn't even eat breakfast. Cole sat on the sofa, watching the "movie" on TV, trying to discover something. Soon, he saw a website address scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
He took out his laptop and opened the browser.
He didn't even need to type in the website address; he saw overwhelming headlines pushed to the browser's homepage.
It was still early in the morning, but they had already been updated.
"Honkai? Valkyrie? YoRHa? Androids? Honkai Beast? Hacker, global TV signal hijacking? Live broadcast…"
He didn't click on it. Just looking at the pushed headlines, they were all terms he had never heard of.
Cole, who originally wanted to click in and take a look, gave up when he saw the overwhelming number of similar headlines. He knew without thinking that these things were all talking about the same event, and it was better to see it with his own eyes than to read the content edited by those editors who only created hype.
After entering the website address, there was no lag, and a website instantly popped up.
"Spark…"
He looked at a flame-like logo on the website and the name written below it.
There was a lot of content on this website called Spark. Cole simply looked at it, and he even wondered if it was a setting for some game or movie.
Things like cosmic periodic disasters and Honkai Beast settings, they all looked like games.
And these were just the basics. The first section of this website was an introductory section, like a setting collection, with simple graphic and text introductions to the types of Honkai Beast and Deadwalkers.
The second section was the so-called real-time Honkai intelligence.
After clicking in, the introduction stated that it would real-time publish the location of Honkai outbreaks, and the top pinned one was Manila, Philippines, with the affected area being the entire city…
"You're kidding, right…"
Cole wanted to find someone to confirm, but unfortunately, he was the only one there, and the announcements in this section did not have a reply function, so he couldn't find anyone to ask what he wanted to ask.
But…
"The fifth section is called the forum, which should be a place where I can speak."
He didn't look at the remaining two sections and directly clicked on the second to last section named Forum.
Tens of thousands of posts instantly popped up, almost crashing his webpage.
"No way…"
The posts in this forum refreshed tens of thousands of times per second. He didn't know what kind of server this website had to support such exaggerated data. Just logging in almost crashed his browser.
"No way, did Honkai really break out in Manila?"
It could be said that the Honkai in Manila was what everyone was most concerned about right now, so any post he clicked into was discussing Manila.
He quickly switched to a search engine and searched for Manila, but he found nothing, as if someone had directly censored and banned these keywords.
He also tried searching for Honkai and other terms, and the result was the same: nothing could be found.
Sometimes, not being able to find something is itself a definitive answer.
"These are all real…"
Cole was now certain that what was said in the forum was true.
An unknown organization created this website and publicly revealed the secret of Honkai, which had always been hidden on the other side of the world, on the global internet.
And all of this happened shortly after the Honkai outbreak in Manila.
Although it was still early morning in Southeast Asia at that time, it was daytime in other places.
At that very moment, global TV signals were hijacked and began broadcasting a live stream from someone called the Dominator. What he was seeing now was the footage of the camera switching to the Manila rescue efforts after the live stream ended.
And the website was the same, appearing out of thin air, breaking into the internet like a hot knife through butter. No VPN was needed, and regardless of the country's network, as long as it could connect to a signal, it could access this website without any hindrance.
There were also countless hackers and internet experts who tried to break into or block this website, but all of them returned empty-handed.
And these things were banned on other external websites, making it impossible to even discuss them.
So they were all put into this forum, which no one could control, for discussion.
Some even tried to hack into the website themselves and shared their thoughts.
That is, this website is not an impenetrable fortress; it is simply impossible to break through.
No matter how impregnable a city is, there must be a place where it can be breached.
But this website is not like that, because it is like a mirage; it can be seen, but it doesn't actually exist.
No matter what kind of attack, the target body cannot be found, just like a fist hitting the air of an illusion.
Both the signal hijacking and the hacker's methods greatly shocked Cole and made him believe in the authenticity of this website even more.
And in everyone's discussion, he also learned the content of the two sections he hadn't looked at.
One was an introduction to the organizations hidden in the dark around the world that protect the world against Honkai, and the other was a recording of the previous live broadcast.
As for the sixth section, which said "Coming Soon," it was rumored to be something that could change the world, but no one knew what it was.