Honkai: It’s broken, I have become the Herrscher of Corrosion?

July 2017, 7, Klosten.

Melide still followed Otto like a follower. She was used to the strange looks others gave her.

Ever since she came to Klosten with Otto, she finally understood how difficult it was for Amber to carry out her work with a leader like him.

For a secretary, the most frightening thing is that when the leader is needed to show up, the leader disappears with you and leaves you with a message "You can handle it yourself."

On the surface, this sentence is about delegating power, but in fact, "see what happens" is often the most difficult time. If problems arise during this period due to the leader's previous wrong decision, congratulations, you are the chosen scapegoat.

And Otto is such a leader who disappears at any time.

Fortunately, Amber's qualifications are high enough, and Otto has the final say and veto power in the appointment and dismissal of personnel in the entire Tianming. As long as he does not intend to fire Amber, no matter how big the responsibility is, her job will not change.

"Your Excellency the Bishop, the experiments on Yulandel have been completed and everything is ready. Anti-Entropy is still cleaning up the problems left by the Thousand Herrschers around the world."

"The World Serpent has not been active recently, but..."

"But what?"

"Although Enosia has not made any movement, she is still too dangerous. With her ability, she is capable of interrupting our plan at any time."

After a moment of silence, Otto smiled confidently:

"It can be seen that even you, who will not be corrupted by her, are extremely afraid of her... After all, in theory, there are too many things she can do in a short period of time..."

"From the Bishop's tone, has he found a way to deal with her?"

Otto did not answer, but asked Mailide a new question.

"What kind of existence do you think would make people feel scared?"

Melide was already used to Otto's irrelevant answers. When talking to him, it was best to follow his train of thought and not expect him to follow your train of thought.

"Powerful? So powerful that even if you try your best and exceed your limits, you still can't defeat him, while the other party can destroy everything in the blink of an eye?"

Otto smiled and shook his head:

"No, facing such existence, people usually have only two emotions: indifference or despair."

"When a bird flies higher, its figure becomes smaller in people's eyes. Instead of caring about gods that are far away and out of reach, people will obviously devote more energy to what they should do."

“And when the gods bring down divine punishment, people will fall into despair because they cannot change the outcome no matter how hard they try.”

“What really scares people is not power, but the unknown.”

"Let's get back to the topic of Enosia. Seventeen years ago, around the time of the second collapse, I was indeed afraid of her from the bottom of my heart, and I thought she was the most difficult opponent I had faced in the past 17 years, bar none."

"The reason is just as you said. There are too many things that can be done by the power of the Herrscher. It only takes a thought for her to stop my plan. Even if I use all means, I have almost no countermeasures."

"Could it be that after 17 years, the Bishop has found some countermeasures?"

Otto smiled and shook his head again:

"No, no, no. The former civilization was able to subdue the Herrscher of Corrosion because it took advantage of her early birth when she was unfamiliar with her abilities and the surrounding environment. Even so, the former civilization still suffered very heavy losses."

"And Enosia, after being born, became very aware of her own abilities within a few days. Especially how to ensure her ability to stay alive."

"From a purely numerical point of view, the attack and defense power displayed by the Herrscher are both the lowest among the Herrschers. But she can forcibly modify the cognition of others and tamper with any program at will. Even if she is killed, she can be resurrected like me. This combination of mechanisms is really unreasonable."

"At least with my ability, I can't find any way to break through this mechanism. After all, we can't put the cart before the horse and actively destroy human civilization in order to eliminate the Herrscher of Corrosion."

"So, until now, she is still the most difficult enemy, but... I am no longer afraid of her. The reason is that she is no longer an unknown to me."

"She is growing very fast, and this is precisely her weakness. After years of observation, I found that although she has been working hard over the past decade, she has not grown in any essential way. It's like a student who has been studying hard but whose grades can never improve."

"Of course, the reason why Enosia's grades couldn't improve was that she got full marks on her first test. She reached the upper limit of what a normal Herrscher could achieve at an extremely fast speed. And then... nothing happened. When you know the maximum your opponent can achieve, you naturally won't be so afraid."

"More importantly, after more than a decade of observation, I not only understand her upper limit, but also her bottom line. Human beings are complex beings. For various reasons, people often say one thing and mean another, and even immediately break the oath they just made."

"It is a science to know which words a person says are true and which are false; which words he will actually act on and which words he says are just bluffing. And I happen to be quite knowledgeable about this subject."

"Enosia is, without a doubt, a herrscher who abides by the bottom line, or is very moral. Although she is not like Walter, she will rush forward when she sees injustice, and will fight to the end even if she cannot win. But no matter how you provoke, abuse and attack her, she will never really destroy the world, and will never hurt the innocent people she thinks."

Melide raised her head, her dark green eyes filled with surprise:

"Very moral? She? But as far as I know, in recent years, the number of people who have died directly or indirectly because of her is probably in the five digits."

"It has nothing to do with how many people are killed. After all, the thing that this world lacks the most is people who deserve to die. I've said before that the people that Enosia will never harm are those she believes to be innocent. This has nothing to do with the laws or regulations of any country. In her eyes, those who like to use moral kidnapping and profit from disrupting community order and talking nonsense online have already received a death sentence."

"What's more, it's only in the five digits. Except for the Thousand Herrschers... and the Herrscher of Knowledge, no other Herrschers have directly caused a lower death toll than this. It took more than ten years to kill tens of thousands of people. By the standards of a Herrscher, it's really too merciful."

The two walked and talked along the retro-looking road, and soon arrived at the old headquarters of Tianming. In a room that was out of tune with the surrounding environment and full of various high-tech, a tiny crystal was placed in a transparent container. This was the core of the Thousand Herrscher, or to be more precise, one of them.

When Theresa fought with Anti-Entropy and Enosia fought with the Thousand Herrscher, Otto was also secretly observing the battle. When the Thousand Herrscher died and the Domination Theater collapsed, the core of the Thousand Herrscher split into a thousand parts and floated in all directions.

Unlike Anti-Entropy, which attacked from all sides, Otto pinpointed one point, got a core, and ran away. The result of this was that Dr. Tesla spoke a lot of beautiful words to the Herrscher core with a completion rate of [999/1000].

"There is no doubt that with the last piece of the puzzle of the Thousand Herrscher core, they will come here even if they know it is a trap. But this line of defense alone cannot stop Enosia."

Otto stared at the core of the Thousand Herrscher for a while, wondering what he was thinking. When he turned his gaze to Melide again, his expression changed significantly:

"Since we've mentioned her again, let's continue. You just said that the first line of defense I shot down might not even be able to delay her."

"You see, this is the result of Enosia reaching the upper limit too early. Whether it is for K423 or others, it is a gamble until the final result comes out."

"Back at the Sentence Headquarters, although I believed that [love] could create a Herrscher who would fight for humanity, before Himeko Muruta died and K423 really took control of her body again, I didn't know if she could give me a satisfactory answer. After all, there was no precedent to refer to. But in the end, she relied on the [love] and [friendship] of others and did achieve a satisfactory result for me."

"But Enosia is different. We know very clearly that she can do many things as long as she wants to do them. In the face of collapse, it is such a luxury to know in advance that something will definitely happen without gambling."

"So, the bishop specially arranged a second line of defense for her."

Otto shook his head for the third time:

"You are wrong again. The ultimate purpose of all my arrangements is not to stop her. Because I know clearly that she already knows what I really want to do and has no intention of stopping me. Otherwise, she would not let me stay here alive and kicking until now."

"The real purpose of my doing this is to prevent other people who are unaware of the situation from doing unnecessary things. As mentioned before, Enosiya can do a lot of things on her own. As long as we can control her, the things she would have done originally will be shared by others."

“And you know, the second line of defense, from the beginning, was never just a line of defense.”

"Well, the consequence of doing this, Bishop, will inevitably put you on the opposite side of everyone. At that time, no one except me will help you."

Otto chuckled:

"But in Klosten, you can do just as much as Enosia. As the most crucial card, if you play it at a very good time, you can suppress the entire field."

Melide sneered:

"Even if... Enosia is very likely to have known my true identity? And... if I am not careful, before the critical moment arrives... first..."

"You should know better than me that if Enosia knows your true identity but has not taken any action yet, she must want to do something to you. Isn't the reason why we are cooperating because you want to take advantage of the situation and achieve the result you want before everything is settled?"

"So, unless you change your mind temporarily, you won't do that. You've seen K423's growth, and you know how valuable the death of one person is to the growth of another. If you really do that, there will be too many unstable factors at that time."

Mailide did not answer, but Otto knew that she agreed with what he said.

A few minutes later, the two of them left here and walked into an old castle at the former site of the Destiny headquarters. Standing on the balcony and looking out into the distance, Otto felt quite emotional.

"You seem to feel sorry for Enosia..."

This time, Otto nodded:

"Yes, she is clearly qualified to be a living superhero, but she voluntarily becomes a camel carrying a heavy load. She carries the morality that could have been shattered on her back, and moves forward with the cheers of other camels."

Meride knew that the "Superman" that Otto mentioned had nothing to do with the Superman in the cartoon. It was a philosophical concept. If we really wanted to explain it further, it should mean transcending humans.

"Eroding the power of the Herrscher is a process of negating all original values. When all the values ​​and actions that humans abide by are the result of a metaphysical existence bypassing free will, then what is the point of following the so-called [correct] path?"

"Bishop, you are starting to speak incoherently again."

"Ah, sorry. Just treat what I said just now as my own monologue. What I meant was that if I were the Herrscher of Corrosion, I would conduct a large-scale social experiment. I would swap the ideas of all the leftists and rightists in a country, and then swap them back, and let them know that there was a time when they gave up their belief in a certain doctrine that they believed to be the truth..."

Melide: …………

"It seems that using political issues as an analogy is still too abstract. Let's get closer to life. We know that many people in this world hate coriander. If I change these people's cognition to [like to eat coriander], let them eat coriander for a month and then change it back, and let them know that their cognition has been changed. What do you think..."

"You mean, they will think about whether the knowledge of [not liking to eat cilantro] itself has any meaning."

"Yes, that's what I mean. When a person breaks everything that has always been the case and taken for granted, he will be qualified to become a superman."