The world seemed to have been put on pause, Elysia was frozen in mid-air, and Pardofelis on her back had her mouth wide open, as if she had forgotten how to cry.
The battlefield was also silent, making people forget that a fierce battle had just taken place here.
The Herrscher's back was to Ryan, there was a fist-sized bloody hole in her left chest, and the spear was stuck inside it. Further away, Mobius and others were emitting a faint light, like a pile of sculptures.
Ryan also didn't move, his hanging heart turning with his eyeballs, until he looked at the end of the spear, seeing a scarlet blood bead flowing down the shaft, touching his finger and feeling a warm sensation.
It's done.
The constraint has reached its end, otherwise not even the air would be able to flow.
His suspended heart immediately dropped, as if he had crossed the most difficult hurdle in this long war. One must know that the original version of the Herrscher of Binding beat the Fire Moth to only the Thirteen Flame-Chasers remaining, and this one was a combination of two Herrschers, with their Honkai energy and authority both reaching their peak.
An almost insurmountable peak!
"What is this?" The Herrscher turned her head, her core locked, with only residual energy in her body. Her purple heavy pupils were scattered, and she slightly opened her mouth.
"Using human courage to face everything directly? Using human will to cross everything? Trying to prove to me that only humans can create miracles?"
She was indeed different from the previous Herrschers. Before, when they died, they just died, only looking for a way to perish together. She actually talked nonsense with me, wanting to seek an answer.
Ryan didn't dislike this feeling, but rather found it somewhat interesting.
"Neither, and both. Of course, for a Herrscher, the concept of a miracle doesn't exist."
"What do you mean?"
The man slightly raised his chin, his gaze showing the same arrogance and coldness as the previous Herrschers: "I have been preparing for this day for a long time, and you die, I live, that is the final result."
There was no gentle comfort, or a grand lecture. This was an enemy. Ryan wanted to take away even her pride, how could he leave her with any dignity.
As he finished speaking, he saw that her eyes were filled with anger and regret. If she could have not been affected by human nature, why would she have fear and greed?
Without the fear of death, she would have just released her authority step by step, killing as many as she could.
Without greed, she would have already executed her first objective, and there would have been no need to entangle with Ryan.
It was precisely because she wanted to live, to live to reap a perfect victory, that she gave Ryan an opportunity. With her strength, ten million people, hundreds of Fusion Warriors, three High-Ranking Fusion Warriors, couldn't even fill the gaps between her teeth.
That's right, no matter how difficult the process, the result was already predetermined, and the loser has no right to be proud.
"Just one more person, even if I drag one more person into hell!"
The remaining Honkai energy began to surge rapidly, mixed with anger to swallow everything. She finally felt the texture of 'emotions', and the bonus this thing provided to her strength.
A strong desire driving instinct, and then instinct to achieve miracles, this was the lesson that humans taught her.
But at this time, all her wishes and power seemed to have hit a lock, being desperately compressed towards the center. Her scattered pupils were contracting. This feeling was too familiar.
"This is binding. I'm sorry, but it's now in my hands." Ryan bowed like a gentleman, twisting his wrist, as if holding a brush, and gently sweeping.
Severing all life!
"Is she dead?" Elysia remained vigilant, seeing the Herrscher in front of her frozen in place, her eyes still wide open. She poked her with her hand and found that there was no reaction.
"She's dead, just like the ten million people she killed, silently falling into cold stillness." Ryan pulled out the spear, and found that after crossing the binding, he didn't feel much excitement, nor much sadness.
This was undoubtedly a tough battle. The Fire Moth exerted two hundred percent of their power, yet she still wiped out more than a dozen cities and dozens of military bases, and consumed millions of various types of ammunition. The already suffering world was like a broken rag with holes everywhere.
Not to mention the distant things, Ryan only needed to lower his head to see the small island that had been sunk on the sea, with intact bodies and ship fragments drifting with the current.
But this was the price, the price that had to be paid for the turning point. There was nothing to be sad about. Theoretically calculated, even if the casualties were expanded five times, being able to take out the Herrscher of Binding was a sure profit. At least the Fire Moth's vitality was not damaged, and the loss rate was less than twenty percent.
Absolute rationality made his thoughts cold. Even when he saw Zheng's body, seeing him floating on the sea, his eyes wide open looking at the sky, Ryan didn't feel sad. Instead, he felt that this problematic person's curtain call here meant that his control over the Fire Moth had reached another level.
From now on, in order to win, he could better use the currency of life. Just like right now, I was too impulsive, appearing too early, and the risk probability reached thirty percent. If I had let Mobius and the others stall for one more minute, the risk could have been reduced by several times.
As he was thinking, a warm hand suddenly held him. Ryan raised his head as if waking from a dream.
"Ryan, were you influenced by the Herrscher?" Elysia didn't have the joy of victory. Instead, she was more serious than ever before.
Influenced by the Herrscher? Oh, it seems so. I just seemed to have become a supercomputer, without even Prometheus's emotional function.
Ryan also came back to his senses. He had experienced this similar feeling when dealing with the Ninth and Tenth Herrschers, but it wasn't as obvious in the Sea of Quanta. But just now, he had fallen into the whirlpool of absolute rationality. Fortunately, Elysia woke him up.
Does this count as different roads leading to the same destination? What if it wasn't Elysia next to me?
Fortunately, I had a backup!
A cold sensation crawled up his back, and his cheeks began to twitch uncontrollably, almost making him forget that the binding had been lifted by Mìng.
"Elysia, you are truly one of a kind. I am very happy to bear your destiny."
"Huh? What are you saying?"
"A kind of mutual achievement. With a 'True Self' Flame-Chaser by my side, no matter how deep I go, you can pull me back." Ryan couldn't explain this feeling. It was a bit like enlightenment, one thought of hell, one thought of heaven.
"Don't worry, it's okay for now. We are lucky, at least you weren't taken away by the Herrscher."
Ryan smiled. He also wanted to control luck, so he specifically brought a certain lucky cat. But when he reached out to stroke the cat's head, there was not much reaction.
Pardofelis had fainted. The quantum barrier blocked the authority, so she wasn't affected much. She was obviously just scared and fainted.
"So cowardly, I wonder who she's like."
"Yeah, I wonder who's student she is." Elysia's eyes curved like a crescent moon with a smile, and the burden in her heart was swept away.
She didn't get in the way, or rather, the authority of the Human was already in Ryan's plan, and was even the core of the entire plan.
What Ryan wanted was a full victory with complete certainty, just like a puzzle, where the answer is revealed at the last moment. All the passiveness and struggle before were just a prelude. From the beginning, he wanted to use 'human' as a necessary condition to push everything forward.
'He really doesn't follow the routine. He made me worry for so long. No, he made me look stupid. Fortunately, I didn't ask more questions.'
Elysia gently patted her chest, and then thought of another Herrscher who had regained her humanity.
Was Calis also calculated? Did Ryan guess and deliberately not remind me to be on guard? When will he use her?
Looking at the man's side profile, the girl couldn't help but feel a little suspicious. Her curiosity surged, but she forcefully held back. On one hand, she would probably be teased if she asked, and more importantly—
Since it was a puzzle game, it would be boring to know the answer too early.
At this moment, a huge aerial battleship appeared in the distance. Kevin, Eden, and others were rushing over at the forefront.
In this situation, Ryan didn't know what to do. Should he raise the spear high and vent the excitement in his heart? But he was not good with words, there was really nothing to express.
But after the Herrscher's mental pollution, that joy finally surged out. The meaning of this battle was huge. It pulled back a lot of the distorted destiny track he was on, and it signaled the complete failure of the Honkai's organizational attempts.
"It doesn't have many cards left. From now on, until the end, it can create difficulties for me, but it's hard for it to cause despair again."
"What are you muttering about?" Just then, Elysia suddenly said: "Mobius and the others are falling into the sea, you know. If you only care about being handsome, be careful of a reckoning later."
Instantly, Ryan turned his head and saw that the pile of 'sculptures' had exhausted their last strength and were being pulled by gravity towards the sea. Without thinking, he directly swooped down, and a gentle wind lifted them into the air.
That wasn't the end. Ryan hugged Mobius, checked her carefully, and then hurried to check Hua and Sakura.
"You're not going to bother with Kalpas and the others? You always say Kevin favors girls over friends, but it turns out you're the one." Elysia pouted. She didn't go to help, just watched quietly. After a long time, a slight arc appeared at the corner of her mouth.
You were wrong, Ryan. The 'True Self' Flame-Chaser is just a link. The ones who can truly pull you back are them.
Hmm, I guess I'm there too.
...
Just as the Herrscher of Binding appeared suddenly, her demise was also just as sudden, and not as magnificent as the Seventh Herrscher's.
But no one dared to say the word 'easy'. The damage caused by this Herrscher was unprecedented. Just look at the traces she left behind. It was a dead zone, where no living thing could survive.
They even fought two full-on head-to-head battles, and she had encountered all the military forces of the Fire Moth.
There was no river of blood and corpses. She just turned the places she passed into dead zones, and her journey ended at a place two hundred and fifteen kilometers away from the Sea Abyss City.
She was contained, but no one in the Fire Moth dared to relax. The aftermath work was carried out non-stop, and then they found that there was not much to clean up.
Except for the few dozen people who charged at the end, including the three High-Ranking Fusion Warriors, no one survived against the Herrscher. Bodies and ship debris filled the ocean. The cleanup work was to continuously salvage bodies and recover equipment.
They didn't know that the Herrscher of Binding in the original worldline had almost slaughtered all the Fusion Warriors. From the current situation, there was no doubt that the losses were heavy. The ordinary warriors were not like Ryan, who could realize the ebb and flow after a battle.
Facing the Herrscher's rampage, there was only a strong sense of exhaustion left, besides the relief of surviving.
The Eleventh Herrscher had already made everyone determined to die. The Twelfth Herrscher has not yet shown her monstrous face. So what about the Thirteenth Herrscher? The Fourteenth Herrscher? Not to mention more, can the earth still withstand it?
Thinking about it, the only thing that could barely comfort people was that Ryan had said they would definitely win, and the result was just as he had expected.
The winding process could not cover up the result. The entire operational plan had already begun when Elysia became a Herrscher. It was just that, except for the person in charge of the big picture, most people only woke up when they summarized it later.
"From victory to victory, and finally from victory to destruction. There is no time to mend the wounds left by the Herrscher of Binding." Mei threw the post-battle report onto the table, took off her glasses, and pinched her brow with some exhaustion.
"We clearly won, why are you saying such disheartening words?" Kevin didn't quite understand, even though the numbers in the report were a bit shocking.
"Because we were only a little bit away from making a huge mistake, you and I. Even though the result is not bad, the losses are huge."
Kevin licked his lips, not knowing how to answer this question, because this encounter was a bit too intense, just like the curve on the casualty statistics.
Before this, the curve was very stable, and then it hit a turning point and shot up sharply.
Just taking High-Ranking Fusion Warriors as an example, only three had been killed in action before. If Yun was included in the statistics, the Herrscher of Binding alone had killed four, and had also broken the structure of thirteen squadrons.
[Floating Life], [Scarlet], [Symphony] were almost completely wiped out, and the rest also had more than one-third of their members lost. It reminded Kevin of a cruel truth again:
The Honkai can fail a hundred times, but the Fire Moth cannot fail even once.
"Actually, it's more optimistic than I thought. With her strength, I thought the Fire Moth would only have a few people left, Mei. You shouldn't think of things as too perfect."
Kevin was very good at finding joy in hardship, but unfortunately, he only smiled for a moment before his girlfriend glared at him.
"It was my mistake. In fact, Ryan had already started calculating the Herrscher. Except for a few accidents, it was generally according to the plan."
"Then you still..."
"It's not enough. I don't want to go through similar troubles again. No one knows if we can get through the next one, or rather, we can't afford this kind of 'smooth sailing' many times." Mei's eyes flickered, and she began to seriously consider the 'Seed Plan' again.
There was too little time. It was not enough for her to lay out a plan. The only way was to exchange time for a higher success rate...
At this time, Kevin put his hand on her shoulder, making Mei subconsciously look up, meeting the young man's determined gaze, leaving no room for rebuttal.
"It's okay. Even the abyss has an end. I believe Ryan is already trying, even though he has never explained it to me."
That's because he thinks you're too stupid, and it's too much trouble to explain.
Mei didn't know how to answer. After a few seconds, she put her hand on the back of the hand on her shoulder.
"Kevin, I suddenly remembered that Ryan asked me to say something to you."
"Hm? What did he say?"
"He told you not to be handsome, and to read more books."