Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

In the hands of the Herrscher of the Void.

That's right, it was in Sirin's hands. She no longer deserved to be called the Herrscher of the Void. Who had ever heard of a Herrscher of the Void who couldn't use the Imaginary Space?

She had now regained her original body, restored through the power of the Gem of Serenity.

And now, Sirin faced an inescapable choice.

"Herrscher of the Void... no, I should call you the Herrscher of Death now."

Cocolia smiled as she looked at the purple-haired girl before her, who looked exactly like the Second Herrscher. She hadn't reverted to Kiana's appearance, but had directly restored her original form as Sirin.

"Just as His Majesty thought, you Herrschers always have these ridiculously flashy clothes that your bodies can't even hold up, and you even transform into completely useless strange leggings. Anyone who didn't know better would think you were putting on a fashion show. Hahaha..."

Cocolia's mockery was palpable. She didn't seem to take Sirin seriously at all.

An expression of disgust appeared on Sirin's face. She looked at Cocolia with the same coldness she had for the people at the Babylon Labs in Siberia.

"Shut up. You're not even worth a single hair on his head. At least he's willing to say, 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,' and is willing to treat sentient life as human. And you? Do you have any human emotions left?"

"The rotten stench coming from you is almost unbearable."

Sirin's eyes glowed with a golden light. She wished she could kill the woman in front of her on the spot.

But she didn't dare. Not just because of that, but because Cocolia had given her a choice she couldn't refuse.

Cocolia sneered, "Is that so? There are seven billion people out there for you to kill. You can kill for as long as you want, as long as you can manage it. Our dear Emperor has completely cut off their possibility of using Honkai Energy. The only way to get rid of such a weak body is to become one of the climbers of His Majesty's tech tree."

"Am I cruel? At least I couldn't do something like locking down the future of humanity..."

Sirin sneered back, "You just can't. You're full of admiration and envy for his power, like a fool clinging to the last straw. We've lived in the same house for so long. Do you think I can't see what kind of person you are? You think I'm that idiot K-423!"

Cocolia walked nonchalantly up to her, seemingly unconcerned about her status as a Herrscher.

"You're not much smarter than her. I just learned to use the Gem as bait, and you took the hook and reappeared before me."

"Come on. Choose to obey the Will of the Honkai and continue your great work of murder, or... submit at His Majesty's feet and forever be a knife in the hands of another's will?"

Cocolia really wanted to see Sirin's dilemma. The reason she had kept the Gem of Serenity until now wasn't because she didn't want to hand over such power.

It was because she wanted to see...

If Noldrei's idea of changing a person's perception of society to alter the target of a Herrscher's hatred could succeed with Sirin.

"The reason you think that being is a god is because it can do things that other beings can't. But this power you don't understand has appeared in another being who considers himself human. You're starting to doubt whether that will is truly a god, or... if it's just using you to achieve its own goals."

Cocolia had grasped Sirin's current state of mind.

It had to be said that Noldrei's cognitive modification was indeed successful. Sirin really couldn't tell if the Will of the Honkai was just using her as a dog.

The little girl's intelligence was on par with the pre-future-human Kiana.

Cocolia found the current situation ridiculous. She realized that the change Noldrei had spoken of was real.

The Herrscher of this era actually had human emotions, could weigh pros and cons, and even carefully considered whether there was a problem with the Will of the Honkai.

There's a famous saying: "Loyalty that is not absolute is absolute disloyalty."

When a person begins to doubt 'God,' the act of doubting itself is a betrayal of 'God.'

"The one trying to use me right now is you! Do you think I wouldn't dare to kill you right now?"

Sirin didn't think Noldrei would eliminate her for Cocolia's sake. In fact, Sirin clearly felt that Noldrei didn't care about the conflicts between people in this era. She even vaguely sensed that Noldrei was accelerating the outbreak of human conflict.

To this end, Noldrei had even suppressed the great conflict brought by the Honkai, allowing internal human conflicts to take center stage again.

"No, I never had that thought. In fact, I wish someone would kill me."

Cocolia didn't care about her own life or death. Her life should have ended during the Second Honkai Eruption.

Everything Cocolia was doing now was to bring about the new world Noldrei spoke of.

She wanted to know what the new era Noldrei spoke of was really like.

Sirin was speechless. She never thought someone would put their own life on the gambling table. The purpose was to intensify the conflict between humanity and the Honkai. This woman was even deliberately guiding her towards hating humanity.

'If I follow your path, wouldn't I become an idiot?!'

Sirin was furious, but she was helpless against Cocolia.

It wasn't because Cocolia was so powerful, but simply because... Sirin was a little scared.

Noldrei could control her life and death, take away the power of a Herrscher, and even make her life worse than death.

No matter what kind of being you were, once you fell into Noldrei's hands, you didn't even have the chance to commit suicide.

But Sirin knew clearly that she didn't want to die, especially when faced with the task of destroying human civilization given to her by the Will of the Honkai.

If destroying human civilization meant she had to die...

Then Sirin really had to consider the benefits of human civilization to herself.

'Then it should be... fine if I only kill the people I hate, right?'

"You can't beat Tesla."

Cocolia's words extinguished Sirin's inflated ego.

Sirin found that she was constrained at every turn in this world. There was only one way to escape this constraint, and that was to no longer care about her own life.

If Sirin had that level of mental fortitude, she wouldn't have shouted that famous line when facing Fu Hua's iron fist back then:

"Don't come over here—!"

"Second Herrscher... no, Sirin... I think you prefer to be called by this name."

Cocolia smiled. "His Majesty the Emperor is right. Only by offering up everything in one's life can one's spiritual will be completely sublimated into the real world!"

"A Stigmata, in essence, is the self-immolation of a material life in the face of the Imaginary."

A crazed look appeared on Cocolia's face. On her forehead, something that shouldn't have been there appeared—a Stigmata.