"Hm? You're not Uncle Lu or Granny Tao."
The young man noticed that the two people before him were not the familiar faces he had expected, but he did not seem to care. It was obvious that he was not a cautious person.
"Whatever. Tell them that the preparations for the sixteenth batch of blood offerings must be reported as soon as possible. The experiment has made a major breakthrough."
His tone was nothing like that of a child speaking to his elders. It sounded more like a cold command.
"Also, notify the Ghostfire Syndicate and have them come to the 'company' immediately. We need more 'bodyguards' to protect us. The previous ones are all dead."
"Hm?" The young man seemed to notice the mirror shard in Vill-V's hand. "Ma's Mirror of Truth broke?"
"In that case, once the sixteenth batch of blood offerings arrives, I'll prepare a new Mirror of Truth as a reward. Remember to collect it from the warehouse."
"That will be all."
Beep—
The other party had no intention of listening to Vill-V at all. After hurriedly issuing his instructions and announcing the reward, he ended the communication.
His way of doing things was remarkably similar to MOTH's higher-ups.
"Mirror of Truth... So that's what this strange mirror is called, and that young man is connected to it. Truth, huh? That's rather similar to my title."
Vill-V pinched the shard between her fingers and examined it. No matter how she looked at it, the thing was utterly unworthy of the name "truth." At best, it was a funhouse mirror—
The kind that made anyone reflected in it burst into a healthy smile, laugh hysterically, and go insane.
After listening to the young man's message, Hua said, "The 'company'... It seems the key ultimately lies with Heliopolis Life Sciences."
"What exactly is the relationship between the National Boundary Guardian and Heliopolis Life Sciences?"
"Who cares what their relationship is? They're enemies either way. We just need to wipe them all out." Vill-V pulled Hua to her feet and rubbed her thighs, which had gone numb from sitting for so long while conducting research. "Liora has already infiltrated the Ghostfire Syndicate among the deserters. I trust it won't be long before she lures the president of the Ghostfire Syndicate into taking the bait and starting an all-out war with us."
"This will be a gang war in the truest sense—an all-out conflict between our Taixu Gang and the third-largest criminal organization in Barcelona."
"The Taixu Gang was only just established. The resources we can mobilize are nowhere near those of these entrenched local powers. We need to hurry back. The Taixu Gang needs Azure Empyrea there to hold the fort. The Kowloon Stronghold won't be able to hold out for long."
"Uh..." Azure Empyrea, standing nearby, felt rather unreliable. Even with her martial arts, fighting ten people at once would already be difficult, let alone taking on an entire heavily armed criminal organization.
Although Vill-V could play the role as well, Hua knew about the time limit on her ability.
She could deal with the special assault unit from earlier, but against the Ghostfire Syndicate after it had assembled all its special assault units, even she would probably struggle to gain the upper hand.
"Well, even if Azure Empyrea has no desire to contend for supremacy, we've invited an extremely powerful reinforcement~" Conductor gazed at the darkened sky and spoke mysteriously.
Inori was skeptical. "Reinforcement? How many people? What level of armaments are they carrying?"
The Mad Hatter organization had infiltrated this place without drawing attention. Even now, there were fewer than twenty Mad Hatter members in the entire city. How many people would they need to send as reinforcements to contend with a whole criminal organization?
As for the senior officers of the Mad Hatter organization, the Constellations, they were currently carrying out a classified mission in the Sea of Quanta. Otherwise, a newcomer like her would never have been sent into the field.
And at St. Freya Academy, the only person who could truly count as reinforcement was Blanche. None of the others qualified.
Vill-V counted on her fingers, folding them down one after another until only a single finger remained raised. "Mm, one person."
"Blanche?" Inori asked in confusion. Did this girl named Vill-V know that curly-haired king?
Within Mad Hatter, that fellow was the only one capable of serving as an army of one.
"Don't worry. Although it isn't the person you mentioned..." Vill-V shook her head, then looked at the electronic junk scattered everywhere around them and confidently patted her chest. "In this city, you can rest assured of the reinforcement I've invited."
"Wait, what did you say? Bianka?"
(Blanche is the transliteration of the Previous Era's Bianca.)
The anticipation in Inori's eyes turned to disappointment. "Yes, Senior Blanche, St. Freya's strongest graduate and a Valkyrie candidate. Vill-V, you truly know absolutely nothing about the students at St. Freya."
All right, yet another protagonist from the Current Era of Honkai Impact 3rd has brazenly slipped into the Previous Era.
Vill-V had long known that the transition between the Previous Era and the Current Era was actually a temporal cycle governed by the authority of Finality. Therefore, anything that existed in the Current Era would most likely have appeared in the Previous Era as well.
Furthermore, the Previous Era's Project EMBER had always intended for the civilization that followed to completely inherit its history, with the Honkai Will PROMETHEUS personally correcting it. It was only natural for identical histories to give birth to identical people.
Even so, the successive appearances of Kevin's descendants still felt deeply incongruous to Vill-V. Siegfried, Bianka... Did the Kaslana family not count as the Previous Era's influence upon the Current Era?
It seems the physical body cannot influence the archetype of a person's existence. Even if someone isn't born here, they will still be born somewhere else.
No matter what a person does, even if they completely betray their original ideals and will, and even if their body is replaced by an entirely different one, they are still themselves.
It was still the Swampman thought experiment. A great hand from outside history killed a person within history, then created a clone with the same biological structure and memories to complete everything that person should originally have done. From the perspectives of history and biology, that person had not changed at all.
Then was that person still the same person?
Therefore, external appearance and remembered information could not serve as proof of personal identity. The core of that identity existed on an abstract level above its material foundation.
The complexities involved probably concerned the powers of consciousness and time.
Following that logic, perhaps Bronya really is Bronya? Maybe treating her as Bronya's daughter before was a misunderstanding, and her mother's title, the Silver Wolf of the Urals, was merely a coincidence.
Judging by Honkai history, could the little Bronya I adopted actually be Bronya herself?
Doesn't that mean Vill-V has already assembled the entire protagonist squad that defeated Finality in the Current Era of Honkai Impact 3rd?
Dr. MEI was Mei, Idovia was Bronya, Hua was Fu Hua, Blanche was Bianka, and HIMEKO was Himeko...
Uh, all that's missing is the most important protagonist of Honkai Impact 3rd—the super-duper invincibly adorable Kiana...
Kevin, how about you put on women's clothing and fill in for her?
You wouldn't want to watch Dr. Mei die of Honkai Sickness and the world be destroyed by the Honkai, would you?