"Seele, be careful. These cowards hiding in the shadows must have other tricks up their sleeves."
The spontaneously appearing Titans and Plaster Monsters were no match for the two girls, and even the hidden puppets were found and eliminated by them.
The offensive slowed down; the decreasing number of puppets seemed to make it harder for the mastermind to keep up.
The assault from the Titans and Plaster Monsters suddenly intensified. A puppet abruptly darted out from a dark corner, rushing into a rippling space and disappearing.
Should they pursue a cornered enemy or cut the weeds and eliminate the roots!?
Time was of the essence, leaving the two girls no time for further thought.
Li Sushang remembered the foul-mouthed insults from these despicable creatures, and her pair of amber eyes overflowed with killing intent.
"Seele, we're going after them!"
The two girls pursued without hesitation, much to the secret, triumphant laughter of the mastermind.
He wasn't afraid of them giving chase; he was afraid of them quitting while they were ahead.
Valkyries... were ultimately just a bunch of simple-minded, ignorant brutes!
...
A vast, gloomy structure replaced the dark interior, filling the two girls' vision.
In the center of the massive complex of buildings, a grand stage floated in the void, waiting for the main characters to arrive.
Looking out beyond the buildings, the bizarre and motley scenery of the Imaginary Space was a feast for the eyes, filled with an indescribable sense of mystery, while also exuding a faint feeling of threat.
Based on their knowledge and experience, the two girls realized their current location: "It seems this is the base of those puppets."
"Yes, we're probably not on Earth anymore."
Li Sushang remained vigilant, wary of potential attacks.
This building complex was located in the mysterious Imaginary Space, using an ability similar to the Herrscher of the Void's to deploy forces to the world of Earth, creating the illusion of enemies appearing out of thin air.
In other words, the puppets controlled by those individuals were all stationed in this massive complex. They could be attacked at any moment.
This was the enemy's main base!
"Sister Sushang, Seele knows!"
Despite being in a dangerous place, Seele wasn't particularly worried about her safety.
She had sent a message when they were surrounded; her dear brother was surely on his way now.
As long as she held on for a little while, everyone on Earth would be able to find this enemy base and capture all the puppets in one fell swoop.
A puppet appeared before the two, its erratically twitching body combined with the gloomy environment giving off a sinister feeling.
"Li Sushang... Seele... greetings!"
Li Sushang: "What do you people want? And who are you!?"
"Want? Who?"
The puppet's voice took on an emotional tone. "Although some of us didn't want us to be exposed so early, it was bound to happen sooner or later."
"We... are Herrschers!"
"A Herrscher formed from the failures you all look down upon, the Herrscher of Domination!"
Having brazenly declared its identity, the puppet's words were filled with an undisguised sense of triumph!
Perhaps in this fellow's eyes, having become a Herrscher, he had already distanced himself from his ordinary past self and this pathetic world, becoming the superior being he had always dreamed of, free to exact revenge on this garbage-like world!
Herrscher was another name for power!
Even Herrschers like them who were not skilled in combat possessed the mighty authority to easily decide the fate of ordinary people.
In this Theater of Domination, that power was magnified infinitely, to the point where it could even decide the life or death of an S-rank Valkyrie.
"What... do you want?"
Her opponent was a Herrscher, but Li Sushang wasn't flustered.
Just a Herrscher of Domination. The three-foot azure blade in her hand was forged from a Herrscher Core.
She had many Herrschers by her side, and even powerful individuals with multiple cores.
"Want?"
The puppet, asked this question again, almost wanted to clutch its head and laugh maniacally.
"Li Sushang, oh Li Sushang, has your brain been eaten by a paramecium? Do you really think we let you into this place to be our guest?"
A dangerous aura flared up!
"We... of course, we brought you here to kill you, an S-rank Valkyrie!"
As the words fell, the puppet scattered into a pile of parts without any delay. A chilling sense of threat made the two girls' backs go cold.
"Seele, we need to find a way out of here, fast!"
Boom—!
Controlled Plaster Monsters and Titans appeared once more, smashing a crater into the hard ground.
These controlled puppets were completely different from the types the two girls had encountered before, filled with haphazardly pieced-together fragments and a cheap feel, as if they were crudely manufactured.
Their opponents were so weak, yet it didn't bring the slightest hint of joy to Li Sushang's and Seele's faces.
Such a setup could only mean that the Herrschers of Domination's sole purpose was to stall for time. Their real killing move was yet to come!
"Sister Sushang, be careful!"
A fierce beam of light swept across, slicing the Plaster Monsters and Titans in the girls' vision in two.
The martial artist, holding Seele and dodging the attack, looked heroic and valiant as she glanced in the direction of the attacker.
"An opponent I've never seen before."
At the edge of their vision, some things that looked like constructs occupied the space.
These things all had construct-like structures, with a spherical object as a core extending outwards; they didn't distinguish between friend or foe, not only fighting the Herrscher of Domination's puppets but also attacking each other.
They were like a pack of mindless beasts.
Seele and Li Sushang didn't know what these things were and could only proceed with caution.
But the Herrschers of Domination's plan had only just begun!
Boom—!
Amidst a violent tremor, the area the two were in broke away from the Theater of Domination, and the space in all directions was sealed off by some force.
And...
"Sister Sushang, the space is gradually shrinking! This place is collapsing!"
Indiscriminate destruction annihilated the puppets and the monsters from the Imaginary side one by one, slowly closing in on the two girls.
From the looks of it, the Herrschers of Domination intended to use this move to eliminate the two of them in this place.
"I'm sorry, Seele. This time, I've dragged you into this."
Li Sushang suddenly felt a pang of regret.
If she hadn't, out of anger at the puppet's foul mouth, rashly charged into this place, Seele wouldn't be trapped here with her.
If she died alone, it would be a small matter, a release from the troubles of her life; but her recklessness had also implicated an innocent girl, and this was the one thing she felt extremely guilty about.
Seele smiled and shook her head: "It's okay, Sister Sushang. We just have to believe in Brother Brian and the others!"
"They will definitely find the right way to rescue us!"
There was no reason, just pure belief.
Seele believed in her sister Bronya, and she also believed in her dear brother.
Unconditional faith!
"..."
Seele's demeanor made Li Sushang fall silent for a moment.
She, a wanderer who considered the four seas her home, had been homeless since five hundred years ago.
That Rakshasa fellow might consider her a friend, but he saw her more as a valuable pawn; although she had some connection with Fu Hua, this Ancestral Master Celestial, the mistakes her father's generation made five hundred years ago were ultimately a thorn in her heart.
Looking around, she found she had no place to call her own, nor anyone she could entrust her life to and trust.
In the end... she had to rely on herself for every difficulty!
The girl lowered her eyes.
"Seele, protect yourself. I'm going to use my strongest move to break through these forces restraining us. It might affect you!"
Her strongest move was, without a doubt, Taixuan Sword God.
With just the three-foot azure blade in her hand, Li Sushang was confident she could kill a Herrscher with this move.
The Herrschers of Domination, no matter how strong, were only at the level of Pseudo-Herrschers. Their large number had not produced a new qualitative change.
In the Shenzhou martial artist's mind, this one move was enough for them to escape their predicament.
Before Seele could react, the collapse of space suddenly accelerated, closing in on the two girls until it was just a hair's breadth away.
At this distance, Li Sushang using Taixuan Sword God would be tantamount to launching an indiscriminate attack on herself, causing her to perish under this powerful technique.
Reality was not a game; there was no friendly fire damage reduction.
The martial artist girl clenched her hands tightly, but ultimately had to lower them helplessly.
"It seems we can only try to find another way."
The collapse of space continued, only slower than before. It seemed the recent acceleration had consumed a lot of the mastermind's power, and they could only advance slowly now.
After some searching, the two discovered that the space sealing them followed a certain pattern, but their knowledge didn't allow them to understand more, and they could only sigh in frustration.
"Looks like we can only wait for others to rescue us."
Li Sushang's expression was complicated; it was unclear what the martial artist was thinking now.
Seele felt none of the urgency of facing death. Her delicate little face showed the same trust as always: "I believe in everyone. We definitely won't be hurt by these horrid puppets!"
"Let's hope so."
Li Sushang's expression was complex.
The collapsing space pressed closer and closer, the situation becoming critical, so much so that Li Sushang had almost thought of her last words.
Suddenly...
"Found you!"
A slender arm broke through the restraining force from the outside, picking up the area where the two girls were as if it were a building block, and placing it back where it should be.
Seele's expression was full of joyful surprise: "It's Brother Brian!"
It was her dear brother, come to save her!
Crack—!
The sound of something shattering rang out, and the black-haired youth, along with a silver-gray-haired girl, stepped into the area that had confined the two girls.
The youth Brian's stern gaze softened with a hint of warmth: "Seele, Sushang, you two should leave. Bronya and I will handle things from here."
"Okay, Seele and Sister Sushang will leave right away."
The considerate girl knew she would only be a hindrance here. Without hesitation, she pulled the emotionally conflicted Li Sushang along and left through the passage Brian and the other had opened.
As she passed Brian, the martial artist's figure paused slightly.
She turned to look at this man, seeming to want to say something, but in the end, she silently returned to Earth.
Bronya witnessed all of this, knowing full well what it meant.
"Congratulations, you've successfully captured another girl's heart."
As a woman, and one with a protagonist template at that, Bronya certainly knew what women needed most.
—A sense of security.
Inside every woman lives a little woman who yearns to be cherished, and even powerful Valkyries like Li Sushang and Durandal are no exception.
This is determined by a woman's nature and cannot be changed by individual will.
A woman's physiology determines all of this, determines that they will always have moments of vulnerability.
And the man beside her was an expert at invading a girl's soul when she was at her most vulnerable, stamping his mark upon their hearts, and finally making them his, from body to soul.
Without a doubt, Li Sushang had already started down this path. Bronya could even see the ancestors of the Li family laughing heartily in the afterlife.
"We'll talk about that later."
The youth Brian was noncommittal about the girl's assessment. "Daring to lay a hand on Seele and Sushang, this mob needs to be taught a good lesson."
There were priorities.
Since these Herrschers of Domination had so brazenly attacked them, it was time to teach them a lesson.
Originally, Brian's plan was to wait until all one thousand Herrschers of Domination had appeared before wiping them all out in one go.
But since they were so insolent, he would have to reluctantly make a move and teach them a lesson first.
"I'll take the left, you take the right!"
The silver-gray-haired girl agreed without hesitation.
Now was the perfect opportunity for her to eliminate dissenters and further establish her dominance over her own kind.
The time for slaughter had come.
A black mist of death spread throughout the Theater of Domination, and wherever it passed, everything was broken down into the most basic material particles.
The monsters of the Imaginary side had been lured here by the puppets to launch an indiscriminate attack, but in the face of the endless black mist of death, they still had no ability to resist.
A puppet appeared before Brian, and under the control of its strings, it began to curse at the man: "You fatherless, motherless thing, what right do you have to destroy our theater!"
Not knowing anything about this man, it couldn't find any more aggressive language.
At this moment, the foul-mouthed puppet's attack was so weak, it was laughable.
"Is that all? Is this all you've got?"
The power of the Herrscher of Death swept through. The puppet's body was disintegrated in an instant; no obstacle could withstand Brian for more than a single breath.
A second puppet appeared: "You traitor of Schicksal, you have been abandoned by the human world!"
"I have few friends, but my harem is large!"
"You are nothing but a pitiful failure, just like us!"
The second puppet disappeared, and the third followed close behind.
"I have a harem!"
"You are a traitor to the Honkai!"
A fourth puppet appeared.
"I have a harem!"
"You—!"
It was a soul-crushing blow. The pitiful puppets were stabbed in their fragile hearts by this simple and direct strike.
They were failures in human society; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say they were invisible people in human society.
No one cared if they lived or died, no one paid attention to their future.
Naturally... no one loved them.
Other than hurting others to find some insignificant sense of existence, these puppets couldn't even find a direction to strive in.
"You are all just a bunch of pitiful wretches that no one loves or cares for!"
The theater crumbled, almost becoming floating debris in the Imaginary Space under the power of the Herrscher of Death.
The mob could only tremble in the shadows, not even daring to appear before this merciless man.
This guy... would really kill without mercy!
Unable to vent their frustration on the main culprit, the Herrschers of Domination could only direct their anger at the one who acted alongside Brian.
"Bronya Zaychik, why are you colluding with that traitor?! Destroying our theater, harming our compatriots!?"
One blast shattered the noisy clamor.
The silver-gray-haired girl's eyes were cold: "Who gave you the nerve to harm my sister?"
"Who gave you the nerve to dare question me?"
A hush fell.
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