Put the chat aside for a moment.
Eden and Elysia, sitting in front of the stream, were utterly absorbed by the exchange between Otto and the Void Archive. On the surface they argued about Otto resurrecting Kallen — but beneath the talk was something much deeper: the human heart.
"Void Archive, do you remember the letter I wrote to Walter?" Otto asked. "We are so fragile that we can only buy fleeting peace by threatening one another… and we hide those sordid motives behind grand words like 'order' and 'ethics.'"
Otto sneered. "Those lines still hold. Humanity repeats the same mistakes and even looks away from the fact of repetition."
Void Archive agreed, but offered a jibe-laced warning: "Isn't that exactly the critique you should apply to yourself?"
"Indeed," Otto smiled. "K423, Durandal, Theresa, Walter — in different ways they all inherit Kallen's mantle. 'Heaven and earth are unkind; they treat all things as straw dogs.' For this world, Kallen's brave heart need not beat anew from the grave."
Void Archive scoffed. "Some people pretend ignorance while fully aware. You? You deliberately play dumb while knowing the truth."
Otto laughed — but attentive viewers noticed his laugh had something hidden in it; his voice grew oddly agitated.
"Human feeling is a desire willing to harm self or others just to release itself," he said, voice trembling with intensity. "Good people use reason to govern feeling; wicked people let feeling rule reason. 'Rational wickedness' — those people have turned their lives into profit-calculating machines, hardly worthy of the name 'human.'"
Void Archive: "…Really? I'd say you are a rational wicked man."
That cut like a blade: to call Otto "less than human." Otto did not flinch. If anything, he answered rawly, honest in his shame.
"I do not deny it," he said. "I am precisely such refuse. I know how vile my deeds are — and yet I do them. I am a fool whose reason is governed by desire, endlessly calculating a cost-benefit for a single obsession."
His voice tightened, a tremor beneath the words.
Players were stunned. The man who'd done monstrous things articulated his own self-loathing with crystalline clarity: not mad, but behaving as if maddened; not innocent, yet unable to deny the heartbreaking logic that drives him. The contradiction — a villain who clearly understands his monstrosities yet persists from devotion rather than ignorance — made the portrayal intoxicating.
Eden murmured, awed: "The difference between good and evil is whether reason rules desire or desire rules reason… 'Heaven and earth are unkind…' This script is brilliant."
The chat blew up in praise. Usually Otto appearances sparked calls for execution; this time viewers were discussing his inner state, his grief. The baying for punishment quieted — replaced by stunned admiration for writing and voice acting.
Then the scene shifted: Durandal had arrived at the church.
"You see — the first of those who want to judge me is already at hand," Otto greeted warmly. "Welcome, my dear old friend — Schicksal's finest S-rank Valkyrie."
His tone shifted; the music turned grave, like a horn before battle.
"If this had been an hour earlier, I would have greeted you differently, Durandal."
Durandal, blunt as ever, asked straight: "Someone said you intend to destroy the present, then remake the past. What does that mean?"
Otto smirked. "Changguang must've told you."
He explained: he'd asked Changguang to design several world-restructuring schemes; the most stable was also the costliest. He outlined the mechanics — save/load metaphors — and the plan: spend the present as fuel to reset the world's starting point to five centuries ago. In that reset, massive disasters like the Second Honkai could be undone; modern people would carry their knowledge back to shape a stronger human future.
He admitted he disliked the World Stigma project, but argued Earth had missed the chance to stop it. Resetting the timeline would create another chance to reconfigure the world to resist extinction. The Honkai Will, curious and pleased by the theater of time, would grant him access — the Imaginary Tree would open its gate; Otto would act as its agent in the human realm.
Durandal finally understood.
"An agent…" she repeated. "Bishop, are you going to become a Herrscher?"
Otto did not flatly deny it. "From the perspective of power, yes. Contact with the Imaginary Tree will elevate me beyond a Herrscher — I will cost my physical self in exchange for the authority to reshape the world."
Durandal's face turned ashen.
She protested: "You refine the present into ashes to rebuild? That is near-murder of everyone on Earth!"
Otto's reply was chillingly calm: "Yes. Break to make. And from the human concept called 'humanity' I will extract a living free will — the thing that is Kallen Kaslana."
Durandal reared back. "That does not justify mass murder. Most would think the same — and you will not succeed if you simply murder your way through ethics."
Otto smiled faintly. "As a representative of 'ordinary humanity,' you are correct. So I'll give you a chance."
He placed the choice before her: kill him — and his plan collapses.
Durandal hesitated. In all these years Otto had not treated her cruelly when his obsession did not conflict with her; she had prepared to draw her blade, yet the real moment tested her. Otto kept speaking, distant and scathing, describing himself as a construct of sin and desire, a being who knows ethics yet tramples them, worships beauty to deny ugliness, sees life wasted and therefore sees life as cheap.
Durandal was not swayed by theatrical rhetoric. "Nice villain speech, Bishop. But your words are full of showmanship. I sense you are calm, lucid — not the frame of mind of a man who truly intends to annihilate the world."
Perhaps Otto did conceal things, he admitted — but did that matter? Durandal said it did: she needed the truth because he had been kind to her in the past. Otto paused, then said the thing that changed the room.
"If you don't stop me," he said flatly, "I will kill everyone."
And with that, the combat flag dropped.
Otto's health bar appeared.
Chat detonated.
"I can see Otto's HP!"
"Only four bars? That's too little!"
"Elysia, beat Otto up!!"
"Durandal, don't lose!!"
"He's provoking her like he wants to die — why anger her if he can deceive?!"
"Relax — Durandal should be fine."
And so the fight began.
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