He didn't know when it started, but this goddamn world had changed.
It had become incomprehensible, different from the common sense of the past.
While many were still trying to accept it, some had already run headfirst into a new era that was impossible to understand.
Welt Yang was one such person who felt this deeply.
Back when he was fighting the Honkai, he was still just thinking about whether he could communicate with the Herrschers, trying to turn them into beings like he had been as the Herrscher of Reason.
But later, the direction of events suddenly shifted.
When was it? Everything changed completely after Tesla arrived in the Far East.
Back then, everyone was still young. No one had imagined that such a being would pretend to be a Herrscher and just hole up in the Far East, fishing.
He fished from Schicksal to Anti-Entropy, from Anti-Entropy to the Herrschers, from the Herrschers to the World Serpent.
Afterward, he took this skill to a whole new level, catching aliens, people from other worlds, and the Cocoon of Finality in one go.
The rest was what Welt had experienced himself.
"Siegfried, aren't you going to do something about those daughters of yours? Even that girl Durandal is on the verge of being corrupted."
Welt really didn't know what to say.
During the process of disciplining Sa, Durandal seemed to have awakened some incredible attribute. In short, her long-suppressed desire for battle had been completely unleashed upon Sa.
Combined with the power of the Herrscher of Origin, it wasn't a daily occurrence, but it was at least once every three days.
Sa was enduring this merciless torture under these conditions.
After all, besides beating up Sa, Durandal didn't know who else to fight.
Now, forget Honkai crystals, even the Honkai Beasts had been completely unified under the authority of Finality.
Siegfried was also troubled, especially after seeing Sa's bald head.
Just a while ago, while he was discussing work with Kiana at Schicksal HQ, he saw Sa, head shaved, going to find Noldrei.
Sa, what a proud person she was. She used to call herself a god, and now she'd been reduced to this.
Siegfried thought carefully about his two daughters. Sirin couldn't be counted; her sense of family was more tied to Cecilia.
Siegfried hadn't been able to easily let go of his wife's death.
Kiana was doing fine, or rather, no one was doing better than her right now. Durandal, a perfectly good, straightforward, and simple girl, had now been educated into this state.
Siegfried said helplessly, "I want to do something, but the problem is... I don't have the ability anymore. Do you think I can reason with them? Or do you think I can get physical with them? Neither will work, right? If I had that kind of skill, why would I have tried to find someone to care for Kiana's education back then?"
Welt actually found it hard to sympathize with Siegfried's current troubles. Who told Siegfried to abandon his kids and run off back then?
Now that Kiana was trying to find that missing 'fatherly love' in someone else, it was bound to be very awkward for Siegfried.
Siegfried's bad luck was that he had been perfectly absent during the most important developmental stages of his two children's lives. And this absence was filled by Otto for one, and by Noldrei for the other.
He didn't want Welt to see his miserable state, so he brought the conversation back to business. "Compared to my own messy family affairs, how's your work in North America going? It seems things are much better than before."
Welt just gave a bitter smile. "In North America alone, the number of new political parties is no less than this."
He held up his hand and made a 'five'.
"Fifty?!" Siegfried was shocked, amazed by the crazy chaos in North America.
Welt shook his head. "No, five hundred! Over fifty states, with an average of ten new parties each! And that's not all. In the wealthier states, it can be as high as thirty!"
Siegfried was stunned, completely speechless.
This was even crazier than the multi-racial mess from before. Could so many chaotic political parties really get any work done?
"Shocking, isn't it? The most shocking part isn't even that." Welt said with a bitter smile, "With the establishment of the Third Academy City, an even more prosperous wave of reconstruction has emerged in North America. It's okay if you don't understand. The point is, under the effect of strong productivity, this chaos hasn't led to an economic recession. It has even brought about high-intensity economic prosperity. Even New York, which has lost its former financial power, shows no signs of decline."
Siegfried was now completely lost. He didn't understand why, despite such chaos, such a strong trend toward unity could still appear.
He asked curiously, "Welt, did you just... uh, suppress everyone who opposed you?"
He said 'opposed', but what he really meant were the organizations that had gone rogue in North America.
Welt explained his suppression of North America.
"It looks like I'm suppressing them, but in reality, I just need to regulate the factions of those newly established Stigma organizations. For North America as a whole, the leaders of the new Stigma organizations are actually united. The old capitalist forces, on the other hand, are not so scary. I'm not suppressing them; I'm just preventing them from turning all of North America into a giant Kengan Association arena."
"The work I'm doing now..." Welt thought for a moment. "Is more like an enlarged version of the United Student Council. It's just that our traditions here allow congressmen to speak with their fists. You can think of it as the parliament turning into a Stigma organization Kengan Association."
"Oh, I get it now! So you're the biggest faction leader in North America now, and you just wanted to establish a Third Academy City first. But what exactly does the Third Academy City do?"
The First Academy City was founded on genetics, the Second on the Stigma Space. So what about the Third?
"Life Machinery. It's based on Dr. Mobius's related work, focusing on research into digital life and biomechanical engineering. The Third Academy City is responsible for trying to break the material boundaries that constitute living beings."
"Noldrei has already arranged to separate the life machinery part from Academy City. Otherwise, constantly mixing it with the genetics side would cause a lot of trouble for the researchers there."
"You can think of it this way: the genetics side tends to believe in the upper limits of carbon-based life itself, while the mechanical side hopes to break the cage of carbon-based genetics."
"The organs constructed from the Honkai ICHOR factor are more suitable for facing the multi-dimensional, complex environment of the universe, and they have a fairly simple way of being replaced and upgraded. The purpose in America is to establish such a new Academy City. At least for now..."
"We have already established it."
Siegfried looked at this massive city of steel that didn't look like it was built by humans at all.
This steel wasn't actually developed; it was created by Welt himself using the Divine Key, the Star of Eden, after his own abilities had improved.
In Welt's eyes, this was something easy for him to do after his growth.
However, in Siegfried's eyes, Welt already possessed a power that surpassed the common sense of ordinary people.