Chapter 240: Otto: I Hope You're All Right
"Haah, so not even this can stop you, Miss Irene." Otto turned his head to look at Irene, who had come in through the back door. At this moment, layer upon layer of chains were coiled around Irene's hands.
But that did not mean Irene was being Bound. On the contrary, Otto could feel that Irene was drawing upon an Authority that should have belonged to him — and that was precisely why Irene could come and go as she pleased.
Irene was simply not affected by the Binding at all, which only made Otto all the more curious. What exactly was Irene's situation? By all rights, the power of Binding ought to take effect equally upon everyone.
"Why so surprised~" Irene walked forward, raising her hand and looking at her own arm coiled in golden chains of light. "Don't be surprised, this is just a little trick."
"For Miss Irene, this can only be counted as a little trick?" Otto shook his head. "Then I really do look forward to seeing what kind of earth-shaking spectacle it would be if Miss Irene later made some grand move. A pity that I won't get to see it."
"Then hurry up and go die." Irene looked at Otto with a smile, and upon hearing her words, Otto seemed somewhat surprised, then said in a slightly wounded tone.
"Ah, my goodness, I had thought Miss Irene would want to make me stay."
"Then it's not me you should be taking this up with — you should go find Kallen." Irene showed not the slightest inclination to play along with Otto. "Speaking of which, where is Kallen?"
"I've shut her in a room. Haah, this really is the first time I've done such a thing." Otto shook his head. "With Soulium for material, not even Kallen can break free so easily."
"In other words, what comes next basically has nothing to do with Kallen either." Irene saw through Otto's intentions in a single glance. To say that Otto didn't care about Kallen at all — that was surely impossible.
Kallen was Kallen. No matter how clear-headed Otto was, he couldn't disregard that fundamental premise. There were certain things he ultimately didn't want Kallen to know, which was exactly why he'd done this.
Otherwise, for Kallen to be able to find Otto — that cunning hare with three burrows — was naturally impossible. So this was Otto deliberately letting Kallen find him, in order to temporarily exclude Kallen from this whole affair.
Theresa and the others would most likely have great difficulty finding Kallen at that place, and Kallen wouldn't tell anyone beforehand that she had come to find him.
Because Kallen surely still meant to persuade him. Kallen was very kind — that was her virtue, but for him, it was also a point that could be exploited, though he very much disliked putting it that way.
Had he, without even realizing it, already reached the point where he could exploit Kallen? Haah, how time truly flies. The self of the past would absolutely never have dared to do such a thing.
After lamenting his own degeneration for a while, Otto looked toward Irene and nodded: "Miss Irene truly does have a discerning eye. But why come to find me again now?"
"Shouldn't you be going to find Theresa and the others instead?"
Hearing this question from Otto, Irene turned her face slightly aside. Seeing Irene like this, Otto nodded as though he understood: "So next time, you really should just hand the gem over to me in private."
"You still expect there to be a next time." Irene rolled her eyes, then, without the slightest courtesy, stretched out her hand toward Otto. "Come on, cough up the gear, Otto."
Looking at the utterly unceremonious Irene, Otto shook his head with a wry chuckle. At last he raised his hand, and a golden core rose up from within it.
Otto gave it a slow push, and the Herrscher of the Legion Core returned once again into Irene's hands: "As for the Void Archives, I still have a use for it. I'll find a way to send it out when the time comes."
"If I can't manage to send it out, then we'll talk about it then."
"Wah, putting it that way, aren't you afraid of hurting the Void Archives' feelings?" Irene accepted the Herrscher of the Legion Core. If that Void Archives thing could be retrieved, then she'd just give it to Joyce to use.
Joyce, being a native Herrscher of Reason, would have his combat power boosted a bit if given a core to use — no loss there. As for whether the Void Archives might pull some kind of bewitching trick?
Heh, if it had the guts, then let it try doing so right under the noses of Dr. MEI and Dr. Vill-V. With those two not even sparing it a thought, it'd be lucky if it didn't just get dismantled by then.
So that fellow would definitely not dare to stir up trouble when the time came. As for whether it could get out, Irene wasn't worried — because in the Post-Honkai Book, this thing had already come out.
If worse came to worst, she could simply make another trip to find the Will of the Honkai and have it lend a hand — if it could help, that is. And even if it really were lost, it wouldn't matter.
They weren't short of that little bit of combat power.
Irene accepted the Herrscher of the Legion Core, and Otto looked at her, asking softly: "Miss Irene surely didn't come just to ask me for the Herrscher of the Legion Core. After all, by then Miss Irene ought to know what's going to happen, so wouldn't it be enough to just collect it off my corpse?"
"Did Miss Irene come to confirm my mental state?"
"It's just for the sake of insurance." Irene looked at Otto. "Mm, fortunately, your condition does seem to be a little better than I'd imagined."
"Only for now." Otto shook his head. "My old friend is quite the stingy sort. But as long as everything goes according to plan, I think I can still achieve my goal."
Irene looked at Otto, a faint smile rising onto her face as well: "Telling me this — aren't you afraid I might make trouble for you, or that your old friend might make trouble for you?"
"Haha." Otto laughed a couple of times. "Miss Irene has already done me such a great favor, so naturally I'm not afraid that Miss Irene would make trouble for me. And as for my old friend, that goes without saying — he doesn't care about this matter in the slightest."
"That said, I'm also a bit worried about whether Miss Kiana's ability will be enough when the time comes, so..." Otto stealthily turned and took out a light orb, then pushed it toward Irene.
Irene looked at the light orb in her hand — or rather, at the tree leaf inside the light orb — and raised an eyebrow: "Cosmic Juggernaut?"
"That's right. When the time comes, I may need Miss Irene to lend me a bit of strength." Otto nodded. "At that point, I'll have to trouble Miss Irene to safeguard my plan."
"Then we'll talk about it then." Without the slightest courtesy, Irene put the light orb away. There was no reason not to accept something Otto delivered right to her door, but Irene still asked one more question.
"That said, did you not consider handing this thing to someone else? There's no need to give it only to me, surely?"
"Naturally I did give it to someone else. I handed its secondary access permissions to Miss Ningguang — after all, right now the Cosmic Juggernaut is being kept in Miss Ningguang's safekeeping for the time being."
"According to my plan, when the time comes Dr. Tesla or Dr. Einstein would do a little handover, and Ningguang would naturally bring it out."
"But now that Miss Irene has actually delivered herself to my door, then naturally it goes to the more capable party."
"Fine, I'll just take that as praise for me." Irene nodded. This fellow Otto had basically already arranged everything, so she really had no need to worry about anything.
"If there's nothing else, then I'll be going."
Just as Irene was about to rise, Otto looked at her: "Oh, right, I almost forgot to ask — though for Miss Irene, my asking this might come across as a little odd."
"But I still want to know how the relationship between Miss Irene and my granddaughter is developing right now?"
"..." Irene turned her head back to look at Otto. "It's developing very well. Why do you ask?"
"Mm, that's good. In that case I can set my mind at ease." Otto nodded. If one ignored Otto's identity and the things he'd done in the past, at this moment he was just like a family member worrying about the direction of his granddaughter's love life.
"I've done many things in the past that wronged Theresa. I hope Miss Irene can keep her good company — and also, do keep her in line for me."
In Otto's eyes as he looked at Irene there was a rare tenderness. For Otto, there were already very few people who could draw such an expression from him. Theresa was absolutely one of them.
After falling silent for a while, Irene looked at Otto and smiled: "It's all right. Your New Year's Eve dinner magic — I'll keep helping Theresa make it."
"This time, the magic won't be cut off."
"...Thank you." Otto nodded, then watched Irene leave the cathedral once more through the back door. After watching for a while, he let out a somewhat speechless chuckle.
He could tell — there had been that flicker of awkwardness across Irene's face earlier, and given how well he understood Theresa, Irene doing this meant that eight or nine times out of ten she'd be lectured by Theresa afterward.
Going by the relationship between Miss Irene and his good granddaughter that he'd observed and surmised, well...
Come to think of it, that hidden chamber space where he'd put the Kallen figurines after his death was rather spacious. He hoped Miss Irene would be all right by then? But given Miss Irene's personality, it'd probably be Theresa who'd be the one not all right?
After indulging in such musings for a while, Otto walked to the center of the cathedral. The surrounding environment was quietly undergoing a tremendous transformation — the originally gray stone bricks began to take on an additional layer of gold.
A great many peculiar golden structures spread out from Otto as the center, extending across the entire cathedral.
"Old friend, come — I too have come to fulfill the contract between us." A trace of golden phantom light flickered in Otto's eyes, and then he raised his head, his gaze passing through the heavy stone walls to look outside.
"Come, heroes. Do what you ought to do."
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"Now isn't the time to be fretting over whether Sister Irene has run off or not." Kiana pointed at the cathedral ahead, still continuously expanding. "That thing's still right there, isn't it?"
"That's right. Let's not fret for now over whether Miss Irene is once again withholding what she knows." Einstein nodded, looking at the barrier ahead that was still ceaselessly expanding.
"What we need to deal with right now is this Barrier of Binding."
"And it's not just that — although that bastard is very likely diverting our attention, what if what he said is true?" Tesla looked at the barrier before her.
She still remembered how Otto had just said that to stop all of this, you'd have to kill him. Although, going by Otto's usual character, when the other party said such a thing, eight or nine times out of ten he was probably diverting attention — in reality the key didn't lie with him.
But as things stood now, Otto had been doing many things himself, so the linchpin of that plan should be right there on Otto's side. And if what Otto said was true — namely, that supposedly only the people of this little town could be spared the effect of the regression.
So Tesla now had a conjecture. She didn't believe Otto could so precisely state that only the people of this town would be spared the regression — but what if there were a cage, or rather a protective dome, that allowed him to control it precisely?
And what, right now, best fit that condition? Tesla looked at the barrier before her — it could only be this Barrier of Binding, surely. If that were the case, it would also explain why Otto had just said that only by killing him could all of this be stopped.
If the Herrscher died, the Barrier of Binding would naturally break without needing to be attacked. But the problem was how to manage to kill Otto, who was inside the Barrier of Binding, while inside the Barrier of Binding.
As for Otto's earlier statement that only by killing him could this be stopped, there were two directions in which to understand it: one was the attention-drawing he'd mentioned at the start — making everyone focus their attention on Otto, thereby concealing the core of the plan hidden elsewhere. But another interpretation also held: namely, making others think the core was somewhere else, thereby overlooking him himself.
But in any case, Otto absolutely could not be left alive now. If the Barrier of Binding were allowed to spread unchecked, then the Tragedy of Binding might well be about to play out right here among them.
Theresa looked toward Durandal and Rita: "Durandal, Rita, I'll trouble you two to command the Immortal Blades squad and have them keep away from the barrier."
"Understood." Rita immediately nodded and at once left to take command, having the members of the Immortal Blades squad withdraw to a distance, while also using some ranged means to check the strength of this barrier.
It might not necessarily be useful, but there was no way they could just do nothing.
"Do you two doctors have a way to destroy the barrier?" After Rita left, Durandal looked toward the golden barrier still expanding before her.
"Letting it keep expanding is no solution either. Besides, we're going to have to enter the barrier to fight before long — we surely can't count on Otto coming out, can we?"
The Durandal of now no longer called Otto "Overseer" either. In her view, what Otto had done already exceeded her bottom line. She could accept Otto saying that certain plans might require a degree of sacrifice.
Durandal was not naive. Some things were inevitable. Becoming a Valkyrie meant fighting against the Honkai, meant that people would die — these she could understand, and could comprehend.
But if the plan Otto had spoken of earlier was true — that they were to regress to 500 years ago — that would mean abandoning the billions of people still alive now. Durandal could not accept it, and even less could she approve of it.
Such a sacrifice was simply too great. They had not yet reached the point where they needed to flee.
Joyce looked toward Bronya and Welt: "Bronya, Welt, and I will conjure up as many Moonlight Thrones as possible to siphon away the Honkai energy."
"At the end of the day, the Binding Authority is itself a kind of Honkai energy. In theory, the Moonlight Throne ought to be able to take effect."
"If there's no way to succeed, or if it falls just a bit short, then I'll make up the difference." Theresa also stepped forward. Her Judah was itself the Key of Binding.
There was no way to contend against a living Herrscher of Binding, but if she couldn't even contend against a weakened Barrier of Binding, then she might as well go find a block of tofu to dash herself to death against.
"We could also call Sister Kallen over." Kiana raised her hand to suggest. It wasn't that Kiana didn't understand propriety or didn't respect seniority — it was just that Kallen herself wasn't willing.
With "Ancestor Kallen" this and "Ancestor Kallen" that, Kallen herself was thoroughly uncomfortable. After being called it a few times, she flat-out forbade Siegfried and Kiana from calling her that, and uniformly had them call her "Sister" instead.
About this, they too were quite helpless. After all, who'd be a fool to seriously work out the generational ranks here? Who could ever have imagined that an ancestor from 500 years ago could still pop out and give them all a surprise?
Otto excepted, of course — because this fellow was an old undying one, a scourge lingering on for a thousand years.
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