Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

Noldrei relentlessly hammered and forged the human body and mind.

The members of the Kengan Association were all, without exception, crazed individuals. They had a fanatical pursuit of a power system built on martial might, and the foundation for this system was the Stigma battlesuit, linked through the Mother of Stigma.

The genetic information within it had forged this group of people.

Having finally broken free from their cruel, unchanging lives, these people would rather die than allow the era to regress.

The Self-Defense Forces, the Far East government—what was all that nonsense?

They believed in only one thing: "struggle."

Machine guns had no effect on them. Even explosions were nothing to fear. The regenerative abilities of this group had undergone an incomprehensible change.

Their attacks were simple and direct, filled with a violent aesthetic.

The members of the Self-Defense Forces thought they were defending their country. In reality, they had long been sold out to Academy City by the Far East government. Yet, these people still believed they were protecting their nation.

"What a pathetic bunch. Do they even understand these changes?"

Otto wondered if he should pour Alliance Leader Yang a drink.

What he loved to see most was these people fighting to the death for the traditional concepts of nation and ethnicity. They had completely become the "local protectionists" Noldrei spoke of.

People born on a future Earth, in an era of a unified planet, would certainly not recognize the fragmented state of nations today. To a person from the future, it was as boring as two villages fighting over their own interests.

Ethnicity, nation, race, culture, and all other divisions were, in Noldrei's eyes, worthless concepts not worth upholding.

You say your ancestors' genes were superior? What a joke.

Who would assign a hierarchy of superiority to a toy that could be changed at any time? Have you ever heard of people playing with 4WD race cars and trying to kill each other over a win? Are they children?

"You know," Welt Yang said, "I feel like I'm one of the people who discovered the New World during the Age of Discovery, and now I'm ruthlessly slaughtering the natives."

Yang's words made Otto chuckle.

"Alliance Leader Yang, this is the Far East's own decision. When the New World was being explored, did those people care if Indians killed other Indians? I doubt the Indians even considered other Indians to be the same people as themselves. I've also never heard of a slave revolt in a slave-owning society for which the outsider needs to bear any moral guilt. Besides, you can't compare them to the Native Americans."

The people appearing here now were, of course, those who had been disgusted by the Self-Defense Forces in the past.

"Punching in for work! I'll give you 'punching in for work'!"

"You don't dare to do a thing about the rapist American soldiers, but you're brave enough to crack down on your own people!"

"Useless! If you have the guts, go kill those old men sitting on their asses in high positions!"

"Beat you sons of bitches to death!"

Alliance Leader Yang listened to the muffled curses from outside, his face flushing slightly as he showed a sliver of respect for the locals.

Clearly, the North Americans these people were talking about sounded a lot like him.

"See? This has nothing to do with me, does it? They've long been fed up with this useless, self-serving Self-Defense Force. They clearly believe this force hasn't defended anything at all."

Otto was also teasing Yang about his hypocrisy. On this land of the Far East, whether it was the rivalry between Schicksal and Anti-Entropy in the background, or the battles for so-called national interests, the locals already hated their own government to the bone.

Now that they finally had an opportunity, they certainly wouldn't let these Self-Defense Force guys off the hook.

"These people aren't so-called patriots. In essence, they are only fighting to protect the interests of their own Self-Defense Force."

Otto cut to the heart of the matter with a single sentence, sneering, "They're not even as cute as my Valkyries."

Theresa walked back in a daze, her forty-something-year-old brain having received a major shock.

She probably never expected the people of the Far East to hate their own kind to this extent.

What did it have to do with her, an outsider, if they were killing each other?

"Grandpa, I'm back. There's nothing left for me to do."

She had thought these people were trying to destroy the management of Academy City, or perhaps disrupt the entire strategic direction against the Honkai.

Now, Theresa realized she was wrong. These people were simply fighting for their own interests.

"Come, my good granddaughter. This is the bitter melon juice I prepared especially for you. When the time is right, I'll find someone to fix your sense of taste. I definitely won't make you drink this stuff forever."

"Grandpa—!"

Theresa was incredibly moved.

"Theresa—!"

Alliance Leader Yang took out a handkerchief and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. The surreal grandfather-granddaughter dynamic here was making him a bit awkward.

"This is... this is... just too shocking! I never thought so many sinful things were happening in the Far East!"

Yang was extremely embarrassed. He had never imagined that the problem with the Self-Defense Forces was that they couldn't defend themselves against the US military.

What was he, a staunch supporter of North American independence, supposed to do now?

The faces of liberty and democracy had been completely disgraced.

Forget it. Let's just look at the oil in the Middle East, brothers.

---||---

While the people of the Far East were enthusiastically killing each other outside, Sirin, in a distant location, had a hole blown through her.

Her brand-new clothes were now GG.

The power of the Herrscher of Death flowed through her body. Although she didn't know how to use it, nor did she understand the structure of her own body, Sirin still used this power to heal herself.

"You were in Siberia?"

Sirin was angry at herself for not having eliminated all loose ends, yet she also felt a strange sense of guilt, a reluctance to face her opponent.

"Oh? So you do remember what you did?"

Raven asked mockingly, "Is it because you've been around humans for too long that you think you've developed a sense of morality?"

Sirin was speechless. She retorted with equal mockery, "Unfortunately for you, I was originally human. It was you people who forced a human like me to become a being who wants to destroy humanity. You talk to me about human morality now, but during the Babylon experiment, why didn't anyone stand up and speak a single word of morality for me?"

"There were plenty of Russian researchers in there, weren't there? There were even Russian military personnel protecting the place."

Raven also fell silent. On these matters, she had no counterargument.

Schicksal's dirty deeds weren't just Schicksal's problem. The indifference of many nations to Schicksal's actions was what led to the birth of the Second Herrscher.

"In that case, let's just kill each other..."

In Sirin's golden pupils, countless black and red crows took flight.

Raven's figure also vanished from her sight.