Once upon a time, New Zealand was a beautiful and tranquil paradise where white clouds drifted across the sky.
The people of this land were surrounded by emerald seas and lush forests, living in harmony with nature.
But that peace was overturned by a sudden outbreak of tornadoes, and their paradise was shattered.
These tornadoes were unlike any recorded in history. They were massive in scale, numerous in number, and their peak wind speeds reached an astonishing 1,200 kilometers per hour.
For comparison, the strongest tornado ever recorded—observed in Bridge Creek, Oklahoma—reached a wind speed of only 511 kilometers per hour.
What did 1,200 kilometers per hour mean?
It was like a colossal drill descending from the sky, obliterating everything in its path.
And in New Zealand, there were more than a dozen tornadoes of that magnitude.
Despite their best efforts, the people of New Zealand were unable to stop the swarm of tornadoes. The government attempted to launch missiles to destroy them, but once the missiles entered the vortex, there was only a single explosion—and then nothing.
As they began to realize that this was no ordinary storm, something even more bizarre unfolded across the land: people collapsed to the ground, and when they awoke, they had turned into pallid, corpse-white zombies that began attacking others. At the same time, massive and grotesque Honkai Beasts landed upon the islands.
The New Zealand military's conventional weapons were powerless against these steel-skinned monsters. The airflow of the tornadoes disrupted missile guidance systems, making precision strikes impossible. Several ballistic missiles missed their targets entirely and struck residential areas instead.
Boom!
"Fire! Fire!"
The soldiers continued to discharge their weapons with unwavering resolve, trying to halt the advance of the monsters and the undead. They had nowhere left to retreat. Behind them was the last remaining sanctuary. Half of New Zealand had already fallen—and it had not even been half a day.
Reinforcements from MOTH's Australian base arrived belatedly. However, the commanding officer seemed to have made a grievous miscalculation by dispatching fighter jets. The aircraft were all blocked outside the tornado perimeter. A few that attempted to break through were swept up by the violent currents and torn apart.
Watching MOTH's fighter jets explode helplessly within the storm, the New Zealand soldiers' faces turned ashen.
At that moment, a torrent of red particle beams pierced through the heart of the tornado. The immense energy contained within the scattered particle field slowed even the gigantic vortex.
A warship, larger than the nuclear fusion battleships that had appeared during the Third Honkai Eruption, revealed its true form—armed with a fully operational heavy particle cannon.
Tethys—the aerial warship named after the sea goddess—boasted a majestic structure, wide at the front and rear, narrow in the middle, resembling an incomparably powerful mechanical beast.
Unlike the semi-finished propulsion system once produced by the Engineering Department for testing purposes, Tethys was equipped with a refined four-core nuclear fusion propulsion system. This significantly reduced energy loss and made the heavy particle cannon far more stable.
In the past, firing the heavy particle cannon required shutting down the main propulsion system. That was why, during the battle against Shesha, the airborne warship had been reduced to a stationary target under her lightning barrage.
Now, the multi-core fusion power system allowed the heavy particle cannon to charge while the vessel remained in motion, granting Tethys considerable mobility even during energy buildup.
Although the heavy particle cannon still required one minute to charge, its destructive power had doubled.
Beyond the standard MOTH warship configuration, the vessel named after the sea goddess possessed unique armaments of its own. Both sides of the hull were equipped with directional guidance beams and plasma homing torpedoes.
The plasma homing torpedoes were not physical projectiles. As their name implied, they were composed of plasma energy, a weapon designed based on the plasma shield of the Herrscher of Thunder.
If the Herrscher of Thunder were to appear again, these plasma torpedoes could neutralize her plasma shield through opposing properties and inflict damage upon her.
The directional guidance beams served to guide the plasma torpedoes. As non-physical weapons, the torpedoes could execute large-angle deflections by following the guidance beams, tracking their targets to achieve precise strikes—preventing misses caused by excessive enemy speed or accidental friendly fire.
The one commanding this era-defying warship was none other than the captain of MOTH's Fifth Squad—Himeko.
After the Third Honkai Eruption, the Third and Fourth Squads of MOTH had been annihilated, and the captain of the Second Squad, Siegfried, had gone missing. Thus, the newly produced Tethys ultimately fell under Himeko's command.
Standing upon the bridge, Himeko rolled her neck and issued her orders with spirited authority. "Activate plasma homing torpedoes. Target the Honkai Beast swarm!"
"Fire!"
Mechanical alloy panels along both sides of Tethys slid open. Particle acceleration rings began charging. As the directional guidance beams locked onto the Honkai Beast swarm, oval-shaped plasma torpedoes were launched.
Although the tornadoes interfered with the plasma torpedoes to some degree, under the guidance of the beams they still struck the colossal Honkai Beasts with precision, melting their limbs instantly.
Rumble—Rumble—
The massive Honkai Beasts collapsed one after another.
The plasma torpedoes successfully halted the further rampage of the beast tide, buying precious time for the military and civilians to regroup.
But Himeko was far from satisfied. With a technological behemoth like Tethys at her disposal, she was now capable of far more.
"Concussion bombs ready. Target the eye of the tornado."
"Fire!"
One concussion bomb after another shot down from high altitude into the center of the tornado, detonating within its eye.
The energy contained within the tornado vortex was immense. The concussion bombs alone did not possess sufficient force to destroy it outright.
But the turbulence they generated could.
After detonation, the bombs produced violent turbulence within the heart of the storm, ravaging the interior of the vortex.
The turbulence expanded upward and downward from the center, gradually merging with the tornado's own vortex. The storm's energy was converted into fuel that fed the growing turbulence.
Even though the tornadoes were formed from Honkai energy, they could not withstand the immense damping force produced by the ever-expanding turbulence. They began to disperse and collapse.
After three volleys of concussion bombardment, the tornado swarm gradually subsided. The sky returned to its former calm, leaving only scattered Honkai Beasts on the ground to be dealt with.
A signal operator reported, "Captain Himeko, New Zealand's Honkai energy level has dropped to 230 gigawatts."
Himeko frowned.
Everything had gone too smoothly. It felt unreal.
Earlier, this place had registered 1,400 gigawatts of Honkai energy—equivalent to the simultaneous detonation of fourteen nuclear power plants.
If all of that energy had been fully unleashed, New Zealand should have become a wasteland like the Far East during the Third Honkai Eruption—not merely the devastation of the North Island.
Although the tornadoes had been neutralized, with that level of Honkai intensity, a Herrscher should have manifested in theory.
It was precisely because such enormous Honkai energy had been detected that MOTH's Pacific Fleet had received orders from headquarters and rushed here immediately, prepared to deal with a Herrscher.
But...
Where was the Herrscher?
Why were there only a few stray Honkai Beasts? Where had such an enormous Herrscher gone?
"This isn't right! Pull up data from MOTH's global Honkai energy monitoring network."
The information officer suddenly slammed the desk and turned around, disbelief written across his face. "Captain! The Pacific Honkai Energy Monitoring Station has detected a massive spike—1,600 gigawatts!"
At the same time, the communications officer reported urgently, "Captain! North America is requesting contact. They're experiencing an enormous Honkai energy surge—nearly 2,000 gigawatts!"
"Multiple meteorological centers across North America confirm widespread tornado disasters!"
Himeko exclaimed, "What? That's impossible! How could a Honkai Eruption break out in multiple locations at once?"
But after her initial shock, she quickly calmed down.
There was a time gap.
This was not a simultaneous outbreak.
The Honkai Eruption was moving.
But...
Less than an hour had passed between the disappearance of the Honkai reaction in New Zealand and the outbreak in North America!
To cross the Pacific and reach the opposite side of the Earth in under an hour—what kind of concept was that? Could it be spatial transfer, like the Second Herrscher?
Even the Second Herrscher had never displayed anything so extreme. Each of her spatial movements was limited to a few hundred kilometers at most, and there were brief intervals between transfers. To travel from New Zealand all the way to North America would have required at least an entire day.
The distance between New Zealand and North America was thirteen thousand kilometers. An airplane would take eighteen hours to make the journey. Even a rocket would need half a day.
So how had the Fourth Herrscher carried a Honkai Eruption across the globe to North America in a single hour?