Honkai: Fire Moth Herrschers

Mikael beckoned with a finger, and a pair of simple, unadorned, silver-white gauntlets encased his hands.

A bolt of lightning descended, threatening to cleave the sky above Shanghai City in two. The enormous Templar-class Honkai beast adjusted its form mid-fall, aiming its thick lance at the skyscraper before it, and at the human atop it who dared to face it.

Just as the lance was about to strike the building, a mechanical arm dozens of meters long appeared out of thin air, gripping the lance firmly by its tip. With a powerful twist of his torso, the human flung the Templar-class Honkai beast, which was nearly as tall as the building itself, away!

Boom!

The Honkai beast's massive body crushed five or six skyscrapers, burying countless people who had no time to react beneath the rubble.

"Mika…zzz…el…what…zzzz…doing?" Himeko's voice crackled over the comms, clearly hampered by a strong electromagnetic field. Mikael didn't bother replying.

He surveyed his surroundings from the rooftop. As far as he could see, there were three Honkai beasts as large as the one he'd just thrown. The other two were farther away, and he couldn't attend to them yet.

The Templar-class Honkai beast clambered from the debris, supporting itself with its lance. It emitted an unintelligible roar from its throat. It noticed a little girl clutching a red balloon at its feet, crying her heart out as she looked at two mangled corpses.

The crying irritated the Honkai beast. It slammed its massive shield down, silencing the cries. Only the red balloon floated upwards, quickly rising past the height of the beast itself and drifting towards the distant sky.

The beast then looked back at the still-standing skyscraper. A faint blue glow emanated from the figure on the roof.

It charged, lance couched. Predictably, the semi-transparent blue metallic arm reappeared, attempting to seize the lance's tip. However, the Honkai beast abruptly stopped short of the building. Just as its lance was about to connect with the metallic arm, it swung upwards, aiming to cleave the building in two.

Mikael quickly adjusted the arm's movement, switching from a grab to a swat, deflecting the lance with a resounding clang. The lance still struck the building beneath Mikael's feet. The skyscraper, like a cream cake, was sliced open, revealing its layered innards.

Simultaneously, the Honkai beast's massive shield swept in from the other side.

Mikael snorted. Another metallic arm materialized on his right, firmly blocking the incoming shield.

Then, two large-caliber floating cannons appeared behind him.

"Fire!"

The shells struck the Honkai beast's face. While they didn't penetrate its armor, the face being its most vulnerable part, the attack still staggered the creature.

Seizing the opportunity, the metallic arm on Mikael's left tightened its grip, crushing the lance's tip with a bang. The lance, being part of the beast's body, caused it to howl in pain.

Mikael followed up with a swift punch to the chest with his left metallic arm.

Though it wasn't his own body, Mikael could feel the metallic arm's attack being blocked by the beast's white exoskeleton.

Unfazed, the metallic hand rapidly transformed, finally morphing into a plasma cannon as thick as the arm itself.

A faint smile played on Mikael's lips. The next moment, amidst a deafening explosion, a blue beam pierced straight through the Honkai beast, even carving a furrow through the dark clouds above.

The Honkai beast collapsed.

A smile began to form on Mikael's face, but as he looked around, he realized that within a hundred-meter radius, only the building beneath his feet remained standing.

"...It seems I couldn't protect... anything after all..."

Mikael crossed his arms, his fingers tapping idly against the Soulium gauntlets.

"Good work, Void Archives."

He praised the gauntlets, knowing he wouldn't receive a reply.

These weren't the Void Archives from the original story, of course. Mikael had given them that name out of a sense of playful irony.

After the Ruruye mission, Himeko had requested a set of Soul Steel weapons for both Mikael and Elysia. Given Fire Moth's limited weapons development capabilities without Vill-V, Mikael had joined the design team himself.

Elysia's weapon, naturally, was the bow named "Whisper of the Past." His gauntlets, however, held a hidden secret.

Within the gauntlets was a microcomputer containing blueprints for numerous weapons, from Himeko's Surtr and Elysia's Whisper of the Past, to the Fire Moth One…

It even held blueprints for things theoretically possible with current technology but impractical due to resource constraints – like the mecha he had just used.

Like cheating on an exam, Mikael only needed a rudimentary understanding of the object he wanted to construct. The Void Archives' AI would then transmit the blueprint directly to his brain. This transmission, of course, required him to utilize the Herrscher of Reason's powers.

The weapons development team couldn't comprehend why he'd designed such a "half-finished" system.

It couldn't be helped. Without his cheat-like passive ability to understand something after constructing it, the best way for Mikael to quickly and efficiently construct objects was to emulate Welt Yang, committing the construction of frequently used weapons to muscle memory.

But he didn't have the time. His daily training, in addition to constructing commonly used weapons, also included a significant amount of close-quarters combat training – a lesson learned from his powerless melee encounter with Sakura.

This reliance on external tools was naturally inferior to the ingrained skill of muscle memory. But as a hastily assembled workaround, it worked well enough.

At least after this brief engagement, Mikael felt no ill effects; his mind remained clear. If he'd had this during the Ruruye incident, the process of eliminating Yaksha wouldn't have been so tumultuous.

But this was just the beginning. Mikael looked towards the east, towards the coast, his face filled with worry.

The building beneath him was short, but now he could easily see the nearly kilometer-tall skyscraper dozens of kilometers away in the eastern part of the city – that was where Elysia and Eden were.

But not only was the distance vast, but it was also separated by a tributary of a great river. The river that traversed the land had split at Shanghai City, its main course flowing straight into the ocean while the tributary cut through the city, dividing it into east and west.

"But with Elysia's strength, surely there wouldn't be a problem, right?"

As Mikael thought this, a dazzling flash of lightning erupted from the skyscraper, painting the eastern half of the sky a dark purple.

"!"

After the blinding light subsided, despite the distance of tens of kilometers, Mikael clearly saw the skyscraper sway. Every steel beam within it twisted and groaned.

Then, as if all the bones had been removed from a body, the hundreds-of-meter-tall skyscraper imploded, collapsing into rubble.

"Elysia!"

Mikael cried out, knowing his voice wouldn't reach the eastern city.

"Mikael!"

Hearing his name, Mikael looked down. Fire Moth personnel were streaming out of the building. The soldiers spontaneously engaged the lower-level Honkai beasts and zombies appearing nearby.

The support teams began their duties, guiding panicked refugees into underground shelters and spraying water into the air to absorb the high concentrations of carbon dioxide produced by the burning silicone oil from the Honkai beasts.

Mikael clenched and unclenched his fists.

The simulated Second Herrscher core rested in his palm.

"No… I should go to Elysia… That lightning storm just now, she…"

But he held the core, standing on the rooftop, hesitant to make his next move.

The core was practically digging into his palm. Elysia needed him – he knew this.

But he also knew his duty. The other two fifty-meter-class Honkai beasts were still rampaging through the city. There were countless people he needed to save…

Moreover, the Void Archives couldn't assist him in using the Second Herrscher core. With the Third Herrscher's location unknown, recklessly wasting a spatial translocation was incredibly dangerous and wasteful.

If… between the individual and the group, between love and responsibility, what would Elysia want him to do?

He had to make a choice.

With a long, resigned sigh, the simulated core dissipated. Mikael leaped from the broken rooftop.