Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

[Do you hear... the sea is using fire...]

The rest was gone, cut off by a new dream that had intruded and affected her.

'Here we go again...'

She looked up at the sky, or rather, what should have been the sky.

A sky was something that existed relative to a planet's gravity. Here, in this sea of stars, there was nothing but an empty void ahead and an empty void behind.

Only a single, bizarre lifeform drifted through this sea of stars like a fish.

It was hard to even call it life. It was part organic, part inorganic, and even mixed with all sorts of other strange things.

Things she had never seen before.

'Fine, I know my world is a Bubble Universe.'

'Okay, I also know that Bubble Universes are destined to perish.'

'But can you please stop haunting my dreams... Why am I the only one who dreams of these things?'

'She' didn't yet know that she wasn't in her own dream. The one dreaming all this was an entity from another place. 'She' had merely entered someone else's dream and gotten caught up in it.

That other entity probably never expected the folks on Earth to be so fierce, going into the Sea of Quanta to hunt Herrschers.

Noldrei's cognitive pollution had swept across several planets in his own world, and unfortunately, Mars had been swept up in it as well.

In his memory, Martians had never existed. The era of '03' was an age of chaos among the stars for humanity.

So, the solar system had long been wiped clean by humanity itself. Places like Earth and Mars were barren. The terrestrial planets, Mercury and Venus, had even less of a chance of surviving.

The little sister was also an unfortunate soul. She vaguely felt someone calling her in her dreams, but each time, the call was hijacked by another dream fragment.

It was so strange. Where were these Herrschers? What were Herrschers?

It sounded strange, but she couldn't figure out what was going on in the dream.

The most ridiculous part wasn't even that, but the fact that there seemed to be a struggle for ownership of information within this dream.

'What kind of person fights an information war inside someone else's head?'

She felt like she was in the middle of a debate, one moment drifting to one person's standpoint, the next to another's.

She had no energy left for work, constantly in a dazed, sleep-deprived state.

"How strange..."

"Although I can't read the text inside, I can clearly understand its content, translating it in my own way. This means the information density is higher, so high that I can use my own brain to analyze what's useful to me."

Anyone who has studied semiotics knows that writing was born as a supplement to graphics.

The main purpose of symbols isn't for memorization, but to train a person's imagination as much as possible. By evoking the power of imagination, the meaning of the text itself is fed back, thus achieving the effect of conveying information recorded in writing.

But she hadn't gone through this process, yet her brain had automatically filled in the missing parts.

This also showed that the communication method of the being who created this strange dream was incomparably powerful.

What was it like?

She glanced at the sign language interpreter on the TV and realized the subtle difference.

It was as if she had traveled back to ancient times. She could clearly use language, writing, and even video recordings to communicate, but in the end, she could only use her hands, feet, and howls to convey her meaning to the primitive people.

Because the primitive people couldn't understand anything else.

This absurd thought was somewhat terrifying, but the feeling in her dream was just that clear.

It seemed to be a way of communication that could directly convey cognitive feelings. The other party even seemed worried about "saying" too much and polluting her fragile brain.

But...

The problem wasn't how terrifying that entity was.

She had her own things to do. If she was constantly plagued by such absurd dreams, how could she work? If she didn't work, would she have an income? Without an income, wouldn't she starve to death?

Who would feed her then?

"I'm not some protagonist from a novel, so why am I encountering something so ridiculous? Could it be that an entity from beyond the world has its eyes on... my... Bubble Universe?"

She was confused, feeling as if she was being messed with by something.

...

"Another failure!"

Noldrei was furious. He had already killed a good number of Quantum Shadows to vent his anger. He'd even eaten a fair amount of quantum life, but the one who was supposed to appear still hadn't.

"What's wrong with all the parallel worlds? Why won't they respond to me?"

"Aren't Herrschers supposed to destroy the world and annihilate humanity? Don't they want to destroy humanity? If just one or two Herrschers came out and told me that the humans over there won't hand over their Herrschers, couldn't they use my hand to kill all the humans there?"

Noldrei was indignant, thinking that these Herrschers didn't even know how to use a borrowed knife to kill. He, a man from the future, had already learned the schemes of primitive people. Why hadn't these Herrschers fallen for it yet?

Durandal had just finished clearing a wave of monsters in the Sea of Quanta. She, too, was wondering why it was so quiet. When she came out with Rita before, she hadn't encountered a similar situation.

Kiana thought for a long time before saying uncertainly, "Maybe you scared them? Look, if I were a Herrscher. Let's assume I'm a Herrscher. I receive your message, and humanity also receives your message."

"It's a parallel world, after all. I'll just assume the humans of that world can also observe the situation in the Sea of Quanta, just like with Cocolia's X-10 experiment and the existence of this Eye of the Deep."

"The Herrscher wants to destroy humanity, but what about humanity? If they observe the outside from the Sea of Quanta and then just send out the information that this world has a Herrscher, letting you lock onto that parallel world... wouldn't that mean the Herrscher of that world would die too?"

"In that case, wouldn't humanity have a bargaining chip to negotiate with you and the Herrscher? The Herrscher would surely coexist peacefully with humanity for the sake of self-preservation, right?"

Bronya looked at Kiana in shock. She never would have thought Kiana could think of this. Little Bronya couldn't help but ask, "But if that's the case, it's impossible that not a single parallel world would reveal itself, right? Look, just like how senior Kevin existed in the Sea of Quanta for so long and only located our world because we opened the Eye of the Deep."

"As you said, Kiana, humanity and the Herrschers have maintained a delicate balance. But humanity can't have zero conflict with the Herrschers. There must be those who are desperate for revenge and want to take human civilization down with the Herrschers. And didn't the boss also say? He would give humans great power and life. There's no reason not to take a gamble."

Kiana, having studied the art of being an emperor, was equally shocked. She retorted, "Would anyone really entrust something important to those who have nothing and only want revenge? Isn't loyalty and obedience the first priority for very important positions?"

Kevin couldn't help but frown. He felt like he and his former Fire Moth comrades were being subtweeted.

Who was she talking about? Was she deliberately alluding to the matter of the Sakura and Rin sisters?

A lot of question marks popped up over Ancestor Kevin's head. Had he misheard something just now?

There were actually Herrschers who were afraid of death? If you're afraid of death, why become a Herrscher?