A short while earlier, on the outskirts of World Serpent's headquarters…
Fwoom.
A muffled sonic thump tore through the air.
The Helios had arrived in the skies above this yellow-sand-swept region.
Right now, anyone looking up would catch, at any moment, streaks of fire slashing across the heavens.
The Domination Puppets that had occupied the moon were using the Authority of the Herrscher of Reason and the Herrscher of the Void to pelt Earth with massive meteors.
There was no way to intercept all of them.
Every moment, countless lives were being lost.
The mood aboard the Helios grew more frantic by the hour.
After all, even this high-speed vessel had come close to being knocked out of the sky several times during transit, struck by indiscriminate moon-rock debris.
Right now, with Kevin having defected and Otto keeping his silence, Welt had only ten top-tier combatants to send here to stop 'Ling Ke.'
They were: Raiden Mei, Bronya, Seele, Rozaliya, Liliya, Theresa, Fu Hua, Rita, Durandal, and Kiana (K-423), who didn't even know what to call herself anymore.
There was no question that none of them were in good shape personally.
But even so, they had no choice but to shoulder this emergency assignment.
That much was obvious from the fact that Seele, along with Rozaliya and Liliya, the twin sisters who'd only recently started their formal training under Theresa, had all been forced onto the battlefield.
And then, finally…
"This is…"
The Helios hovered mid-air. The hatch opened. The ten of them stood at the threshold, looking down.
Their eyes went wide.
Because in their field of vision, stretching out below them, were tens of thousands of identical faces.
Kevin Kaslana.
"How are we supposed to fight this?"
When the thick-headed Rozaliya muttered that out loud on reflex, each of them felt their own breathing turn heavy.
An atmosphere of despair began to spread.
Suddenly…
Shing.
Durandal didn't bother waiting for anyone else.
Clad in the Bright Knight: Excelsis battlesuit, she leaped down from the hatch alone, the same way she'd launched herself into countless missions before.
Still mid-air, she was already drawing on the high-cost power of her divine sword Durandal. The power of 'Undying Starsteel.'
Maybe, the reason she was doing this right now wasn't entirely about confidence in her own strength.
It was that her mind was a mess, too.
Having once lost her childhood memories, her earliest memories started at the orphanage.
Her own story was a lot like Rita's. She'd met the Valkyrie called Ragna Lothbrok, and looked up to her, yearned toward her, wanted to become her.
In the end, she'd joined the Valkyries, grown into an S-rank Valkyrie, and eventually into arguably the strongest S-rank Valkyrie of any generation.
She'd always believed that effort was eventually rewarded, that her strength was earned through hard training.
And then, today…
She'd learned from the enemy's own mouth that all the creeds she used to believe in had been empty words. That to other people, they'd been poisoned bait dressed up as inspiration.
Even her mentor had been the man who murdered her mother.
He'd manipulated her entire life. And Rita Rossweisse, the comrade she trusted most, had kept her in the dark about all of it.
Right now, Durandal didn't want to think about anything that complicated.
She just wanted to fight. And through that, to vent all the negative feelings piling up inside.
Maybe, dying out here on the battlefield wouldn't even be so bad.
None of it was real anyway…
Crash!
Pure dumb luck.
Durandal hadn't expected this herself, but her reckless charge had revealed something startling the moment her attack slammed into the ground.
Not every 'Kevin' was as strong as the Lord of World Serpent.
That fact registered with the people aboard the Helios immediately.
In that instant…
"Lady Durandal…"
At the hatch, Rita, wearing the Argent Knight: Artemis battlesuit, watched the blonde girl below clearly venting her emotions, her own expression complicated. She couldn't find her voice.
She had no idea how to explain her position to the other woman.
To tell Durandal that her feelings toward her were genuine.
That missions were missions and feelings were feelings?
Who could untangle that?
And who would even listen?
Obviously, Durandal wouldn't accept that kind of explanation.
Rita understood that perfectly.
Still, even with her own mind in chaos, she knew what she had to do now.
Fight alongside her.
And from there, hopefully resolve the crisis threatening the whole world.
Because at the end of the day, if the world was destroyed, what did any of the rest of it matter?
So…
"Lady Durandal and I will clear the path."
She turned to the others beside her, her gaze ultimately settling on the small figure with the massive cross planted next to her. "Lady Theresa, the rest falls to all of you."
Without waiting for a response, carrying the resolve of someone ready to die, she dropped straight down from the hatch.
Faced with that…
Raiden Mei, Bronya, Seele, Theresa, Fu Hua, and K-423 all looked at one another.
Finally…
"Everything else waits until after this battle."
Theresa's expression was grim.
She looked at the white-haired girl next to her. "Foolish niece, no matter what happens, you're still my family."
"Your identity was acknowledged by Cecilia. And by that bastard Siegfried."
"And as a member of House Kaslana…"
Theresa raised her hand and pointed downward. "Now is the time to carry out your duty as a 'Knight.'"
Hearing that, K-423, Kiana, froze for a beat.
Her eyes went, almost involuntarily, to the unstoppable blonde figure below.
On the way here, the two of them had been sitting in the same cabin and not saying a word to each other.
Neither knew how to speak first.
Now…
"I was given a name that didn't belong to me."
Kiana clenched both fists. "Even if I have to give it back to you… that's the kind of thing that should be said face to face, in my own words."
"For now, let's fight together."
As the words left her mouth, seeing that Kiana had already started moving, Raiden Mei and Bronya hurried to follow.
Seele went after her Bronya big sis.
"Haa…"
Theresa, holding the Oath of Judah, looked down at the scene below and sighed. "How are there so many Kaslana idiots? Seriously…"
"Waaah, Liliya why are you pushing me…"
A startled yelp cut through Theresa's thoughts.
The Aryn twins had already dropped, or rather, fallen, out of the hatch in an extremely undignified posture.
Theresa's eyelid twitched.
It was fine. Experienced veterans wouldn't be that scatterbrained.
Like herself, and…
"Let's go, Fu Hua."
She turned her head to look at the person beside her. Huh, where'd she go?
Fu Hua, it turned out, had no intention of queuing up to parachute.
She'd muttered something to someone just now, 'talking to herself,' and then she'd already joined the battle below.
Seeing that, Theresa's brow twitched. She paused long enough to spare the Helios hatch from further damage, gripped the chains of Judah, and leapt down.
"Anyone who picks on my sweet niece is getting beaten within an inch of their life."
"Judah, let's go."
"Time to show these bastards what a former S-rank Valkyrie can do."
-----
On the ground.
Tens of thousands of 'Kevins' were being cut down, one after another, by Durandal, who kept materializing the Starchasm Nyx in her hands. She was tearing through them like a one-woman army.
She'd crossed blades with the Lord of World Serpent before.
She knew the real version hadn't been serious back then. But even that holding-back level of intensity was something this crowd of 'Kevins' couldn't hope to match.
To put it bluntly:
"These imposters' attack patterns and combat techniques are identical to the Lord of World Serpent."
"But their baseline strength falls far short of the strongest Fusion Warrior."
"They don't even have one percent of his power."
Indeed. That was the fact Durandal's sharp combat instinct had caught on to.
Right now, the tens of thousands of 'Kevins' guarding World Serpent's headquarters were each armed with the Sixth Serenade.
They could also deploy the ice-attribute offensive drawn from the Emperor-class Honkai Beast Parvati.
But even with that ice-and-fire dual arsenal, their strength was far more than a notch or two below the original.
Which matched the intel that the Herrscher of Dominance's 'individual combat power isn't top-tier.'
Still, on average, these 'Kevins' were each at the level of a standard S-rank Valkyrie.
Which was why Durandal could run wild through them, but Rita was having a much harder time.
And it wasn't just her.
Right now, Bronya and Kiana had both lost their Herrscher Authorities, so they were struggling badly.
If Raiden Mei, and the Kurikara she'd summoned, hadn't been working to cover them this whole time, the line would've collapsed already.
On the other hand, Fu Hua, who also couldn't use Herrscher Authority, and Theresa, who'd been retired for ages, were fighting with real form and polish.
It was precisely because he was monitoring the combat situation at the perimeter of World Serpent HQ in real time…
"Pathstrider power really is useful."
Inside the Theater of Domination, Ling Ke's main body laughed coldly and offered that flat assessment.
Clearly, those tens of thousands of 'Kevins' all originated from the same Game Character Template.
Its name was:
[Game Character Template: Sparkle]
[From: Honkai: Star Rail]
[Character Properties: Level mechanic, HP mechanic, infinite stamina, unbreakable equipment, Quantum element…]
[Game Skills: Basic Attack: One-Woman Show. Skill: Dreamdiver. Ultimate: Cast a Thousand Roles. Technique: Unreliable Narrator…]
[Background Talents: Masked Fool, Synesthesia Beacon, Imaginary Storage, Theatrical Virtuoso, Master of Mimicry, Transformation, Replication, Illusion…]
[Description: A powerful Pathstrider who walks the Path of Elation, carrying a thousand masks and capable of assuming ten thousand faces…]
This was currently the most versatile Game Character Template in Ling Ke's arsenal.
And even though he'd only just pulled it recently, and its template level wasn't that high yet, its background talents were useful, explosively useful.
Most importantly…
Right now, Ling Ke had set almost every one of his externally deployed Domination Puppets to use this specific Game Character Template, turning them all into Domination Puppet Sparkles.
This way, as meteors kept crashing through the defense lines of nations one after another, demolishing town after town across Earth's surface, Ling Ke's main body, the merciless 'World-Destroying Player,' could not only efficiently rack up massive amounts of points, but the Sparkle template itself would simultaneously absorb huge quantities of experience and level up at breakneck speed.
Of course, the Player One System wasn't so inconveniently designed that only the currently-deployed Game Character Template could gain experience.
Rather, every Game Character Template with the 'level mechanic' property could have experience distributed to it from the accumulated 'system experience pool,' allocated by Ling Ke as the main body, the host.
Right now, as Ling Ke began distributing his accumulated experience…
Those 'Kevins' guarding the perimeter of World Serpent HQ were becoming stronger by the second.
From Lv.1…
Lv.23.
Lv.39.
Lv.55.
Game Character Templates drawn from the System had no level-cap bottlenecks.
So in just a handful of seconds…
"Good. That's one percent of the original now."
He smiled, anticipating. "All the remaining experience goes into the Gilgamesh template."
"With that, my Branch-Breaking Plan, which was supposed to take another thirteen hours, now has only the last 1% left."
"Just give me a little more time…"
"Soon. Very soon…"
Ling Ke grew more and more excited. "I'll be able to keep the promise I made to myself…"
"I'll complete my revenge in this world."