"So, why exactly did you disguise yourself with an appearance identical to Edelhart?" Durandal asked.
We were currently walking alongside the river Thames in Honkai London. It was a rather strange experience, because even though all the iconic landmarks were there, including Big Ben and St. Paul's Cathedral, all of the large buildings located along the river Thames and around St. Paul's Cathedral was missing, replaced with trees and green spaces. In addition, there was only one bridge where Blackfriars, the Millenium Bridge, Southwark Bridge was supposed to be, Schariac Bridge.
Schariac Bridge was currently empty, as well as the surrounding area, even though it wasn't exactly subtle, it would hopefully reduce the work on Schicksal and the British Government for covering up what was about to happen.
"Actually this current body's appearance resembles how I looked as a child, around 540 years ago. It is in fact Miss Edelhard that resembles my appearance." Otto spoke up.
"Durandel, you can call me Lee, calling me Edelhart just feels strange, it isn't my real last name after all. As for why Otto and I look similar, the Imaginary Tree likes to reuse faces, personal motivations, and stories across scales and genres. It likes to reuse characters." I stated.
Actually my appearance was quite different from Otto's originally, my now pure blonde hair was slightly more brown, and quite a bit shorter. In addition, my eyes were originally much more dull green, but now they were much more vivid and noticeable. I just chucked it up to becoming part of this world with Yaoshi's blessing, so It reused a face type it already had.
"Reuse characters? That is a very interesting mindset." Rita spoke up, out of the entire group, she was the most conspicuous, since she was still wearing a maid outfit. Lucky there was nobody else here, or it would definitely draw looks.
"This is the mindset the followers of the Elation have. However am not one of them, but I always disliked the metaphor of the Imaginary tree to describe the structure of the Universe, it's more like a simulation attempting to extrapolate to try and solve some sort of problem." I stated.
"Is it all just a simulation? Then does that mean that someone intentionally created the Honkai? Or are they trying to use us to defeat their own Honkai? What happens if we fail? Besides the obvious." Durandal seemed a bit confused.
"I am not well informed on the origins of the Honkai, all I know is that it parasitisies the power of the Imaginary Tree. As for the failure to defeat the Honkai? I am not so sure." I started to explain, "This branch of the Imaginary Tree only grows in one direction, as far as I am aware. These leaves that fall into the Sea of Quanta are all failures to defeat the Honkai, however I am not sure if losing means that our current world falls into the Sea of Quanta, the Previous Era lost to the Honkai, and this world did not fall into the Sea of Quanta, but they did make major contributions, in addition there are many other failures to defeat the Honkai by other civilisations on this branch. In short, I do not know exactly what the conditions for this is, or if this is the one true direction of the branch, and that all others are offshoots that simply fell into the Sea of Quanta naturally."
"That explanation was very confusing and I still feel like I don't really understand."
Well that wasn't a particularly great explanation but the canon structure of this particular branch of the imaginary tree isn't that well defined, I have some explanations from the system but for the most part I only have the explanations of people like Su to go off of, and in some cases, these explanations collide or are mutually exclusive. I knew the overall structure, but I was unaware of the nitty gritty details.
The Sea of Quanta isn't exactly even really ever mentioned in Honkai: Star Rail, besides through the Quantum attribute and characters like Seele, whose abilities in HSR are unexplained.
I presumed that the Aeons were keeping branches of the HSR universe to split off or fall from the Imaginary Tree, or perhaps it wasn't the Imaginary Tree that was creating and discarding "Leaves" but the Cocoon of Finality.
I already knew that the Cocoon of Finality was deeply imbedded into this branch, perhaps it kept creating leaves searching for a successful "Embrace", when those options ran out or inevitably failed, the leaves, now unable to be supported by the Imaginary Tree after being abandoned by the Cocoon. It inevitably fell into the Sea of Quanta due to the fact that it was only ever designed to support one leaf on each branch.
I prodded the system for a response, recently it hadn't really talked very much, besides throwing in the occasional comment. I don't think it liked the fact that I had removed myself from all the romance targets that It had picked out.
[System: Recently I have been busy, working on something. You're close enough BTW.]
That wasn't ominous at all.
[System: This particular universe is much more elaborate and layered than I first thought, I am having to fix major issues caused by our incursion into this world.]
That was even more ominous, I noted the system wasn't using its text emoticons anymore.
Durandal was still staring at me, so I decided to say something encouraging, since the conversation was going in a rather Nihalistic direction.
I decided to quote from Myriad Celestia: Fables about the Stars part 1, which was my favorite. I had probably listened to it hundreds of times listening to Black Swans narration.
"Blindfold your eyes, so that the encroaching darkness holds no fear in you, let it not burden your soul, nor numb your stride." I preached.
Mostly I had just really wanted to say that line at some point.
Durandal just blinked, and Otto spoke up "Are you quoting someone?"
"This is from Fables about the Stars." Which I knew was a real book that existed in the HSR universe, in fact, there were apparently many volumes.
"I think what Miss Lee means is not to worry about it, Durandal." Rita spoke up.
I nodded, "Even if this world is a simulation, our lives are our own to live, so do not fall unto Nihility, for it is a path that cannot be escaped. By anyone."
This technically wasn't true since fate existed in this universe, through the power of beings like Nous, who endlessly calculated the future, manipulating events so that everything played out to the future that they wanted. Or Terminus, who I know little about, who supposedly traveled back in time from the end of the Universe, I wonder if I was included in that future, or if I am a completely unknown variable.
[System: I met Terminus a little while ago. They were the one who pointed out all the problems I am now fixing.]
I choked up a little bit.
"Are you all right?" Durandal asked.
"Yes, is everyone ready?" I responded.
"I am ready." Rita stated.
"I am ready as well." Said Durandal.
I turned towards Otto, now looking almost identical to me, but slightly shorter, complete with the softer more gender neutral voice of a child. He was the one who actually had control over the Asleikr mechs, which were currently located some distance outside of London above the English Channel.
"Remember, we might come under assault by World Serpent operatives, personally, I hope we do, that way we can gather more information about them."
Interesting that he always used we in a conspiratorial way, especially when he was the main party interested.
When talking to Otto, I hadn't spoken much of the World Serpent, describing them only as a group dedicated to carrying out the S.A.V.E Projects, which Otto knew about somewhat through Fu Hua and the memory deep dive machine. I had additionally told Otto that Kevin Kaslana was the leader of World Serpent, and that he was the most powerful Pioneer, and currently held the Cosmic Juggernauts "beacon".
I was hoping that ELF Shamash had a similar level of authority, otherwise I might have to let Kevin out a bit early in exchange for the beacon.
Otto made some gestures in the air, presumably using controls that only he could see. It looked a little strange, which is why I never used the systems panel when anyone was watching, instead just asking the system directly.
"The mechs are on their way, hopefully Miss Lee is correct about the location of the Divine Key." Otto spoke.
I was a little surprised that Otto was really here. I mean, it's a Soulium body, but I didn't think he would stay with the group instead of staying back.
I was hoping that the World Serpent would have no idea that we were after the 2nd Divine Key, I had ensured that nobody involved had contacted Catherine, the Director of the British Museum, and World Serpent lackey. All the Asleikr mechs had been prepared at Schicksal HQ and had only been delivered outside the city in the past hour, along with our own arrival.
I really didn't want to get one-shotted by Seven Thunders of Retribution.
We had waited only a few minutes before I heard the light wine of the Asleikr mechs as they rapidly approached.
They had been scanning the river the whole way, but presumably hadn't found anything so far.
They soon reached our location, and flew past for another few seconds before stopping in the air about 50 meters past the bridge, hovering above the water.
"They have found it." Otto announced, sounding a bit excited, "The mechas will now bombard the area with Honkai Energy to make it fall into normal space."
The Asleikr mechs had formed a circle around a seemingly arbitrary point in space, but if you looked closely you could now see a blue distortion at the center of the circle.
The mechas opened fire at once, each shooting out multiple purple beams of light that looked like scaled up shots from my Alloy Dominator.
Suddenly the Second Divine key appeared, a giant train that looked somewhat like the Astral Express was floating above the water's surface.
"Whoah. The Second Divine Key actually looks… awesome." Durandal noted.
"Hidden for so long in plain sight, we just need to defeat the guardian before we can bag this thing and take it home." Otto said.
Suddenly, fire erupted from behind the Second Divine Key, and the waters surface started to boil, flying up and over the Second Divine Key, the guardian, ELF Shamash appeared.
"Ooah, It's so small!" Durandal said.
It was my time to shine!
I had actually somewhat practiced aiming so that nothing like what happened with Herrscher Mei happened again, this time I had a short rapier to concentrate my energy along to better aim my shots. It had been custom constructed by Otto using his research into path energy, he noted that when the Path Energy came into contact with Honkai Energy, it wasn't outright deleted, instead it was converted into more Abundance Path Energy.
The rapier had several Honkai Energy sources arranged radially in a spiral around the handle, and when path energy was detected in the base of the rapier, it would automatically inject Honkai Energy, which was converted to Path Energy, amplifying its effects.
In addition, I had additionally found out how to make the Abundance Path actually harmful, before, if I had used my "Basic Attack" on a human, it would have simply healed them, making them weaker if they actively used Honkai Energy, like a MANTIS, but no permanent damage.
Now, the Path Energy still absorbed Honkai Energy, but I could manipulate it to cause accelerated decay.
I didn't know it was effective against machines, however since Abundance Energies conceptual healing could even heal machines, theoretically it could also be used to harm a machine.
However, since I wanted the ELF intact, and removing all the Honkai Energy would make it inoperable anyway, I was still planning on using "Healing" energy.
Only one problem, it was still 50 meters away.
I might have improved, but that was still an impossible shot, especially to make with what was essentially a wand. However, that problem soon resolved itself, as ELF Shamash started its assault.
A.N. Was feeling pretty bad this morning I passed out and woke up feeling terrible and spent most of the day in the bathroom, but I am feeling much better now that I swapped vials and pump to a new one so it was probably bad or something idk. So that's the reason behind my earlier post.
patreon now has 6 advanced chapters and probably 7 tommorow. I just checked my bank statement so now I am shilling please to to Patreon.com/Intraneer it's only 2$ and I feel I am cooking so it's worth it.