MGSFV?! Chapter 455. Blade at Map's End; Bliss
"Ahem ahem."
Hokuto cleared his throat twice, trying to steer things back on track. "Slip of the tongue! Don't overthink it. I only added that part for narrative purposes—nothing more."
"Really?"
Elysia followed up with a subtly suspicious tone.
"Of course." Hokuto's voice radiated sincerity. "What would I even gain by lying to you?"
"..."
Elysia went quiet for a moment, then pointed out a harsh truth:
"'Otto'-san, you've always had a habit of doing things that seem pointless on the surface... but then you end up having fun with it, haven't you?"
They say once bitten, twice shy.
And since she met Hokuto, she'd been bitten more times than she could count—
More often than she'd seen Vil-V perform solo magic shows in Mobius's lab.
Which... really says a lot.
So just how many times did Vil-V hold one-person team-building events in Mobius's lab...?
Ahem ahem.
"Uh..."
Hokuto racked his brain for a moment before offering,
"Well, that was the old me. I've changed. Look—"
He paused, as if to make his point land harder.
"The main story's gone this far without a single tragedy. I'd never have done that before."
"Hmm..."
Elysia hesitated, just for a moment.
Because Hokuto had a point—the main story really hadn't dropped any knives so far. That wasn't like the old days.
Still, it was just a momentary hesitation.
Because—
As Elysia tapped the screen to continue the game...
In the story:
Hare finished viewing the memory of Otto explaining the origin of the Schariac Saint Blood to Cecilia. She wasn't surprised.
She had already known all of it.
Next, seeking deeper understanding, she changed perspective—
And used her ability on the snowy plains around her.
She could even see what had once happened here?
This ability was... kind of insane...
Just as everyone began to process this—
The scene jumped forward to shortly before Hare's present moment—
To the final moments of what would come to be known as the Second Eruption.
"Huff... huff..."
Cecilia's weakened breathing rang out.
The background music suddenly turned heavy.
"Sorry, Siegfried. I lied to you... This time, I won't be able to go back with you."
"Sorry, Kiana... When you grow up, please take care of your dad..."
Having said that—
The strongest Valkyrie drew upon more than half her blood and hurled her final, all-consuming strike toward the absolute calamity.
—Saint Blood Unleashed: White Bloom Drenched in Crimson.
Blinding blood dyed the White Flower red.
The power of Saint Blood fused with the strength of creation and bloomed above the skies of Siberia.
And on the earth below, Cecilia's namesake flowers blossomed around the hero whose life was ebbing away.
The game deliberately froze the screen at this moment.
Truly... such a cruel move.
Elysia: ???
She knew she shouldn't have hesitated earlier...
Trusting "Otto"-san? She might as well believe that Emperor Qin Shi Huang was watching her livestream right now!!
[???]*n
[Knives I thought long dead have suddenly returned to stab me again.]
[Blade hidden at map's end—this map of Yan Kingdom goes on forever.]
[miHoYo even re-recorded the lines. I'm crying, for real.]
[We just gained another set of lines to use in fan edits of the Second Eruption.]
...
Elysia deeply regretted ever hesitating to distrust Hokuto.
The writers, fortunately, seemed to know the limits.
After the freeze-frame, no further brutal content appeared.
They didn't go all-out and instantly traumatize players.
Hare had already found the answers she sought from that brief memory.
The Schariac Saint Blood—under extreme circumstances—briefly breached the boundary between reality and the Imaginary.
It allowed a space known to humanity as the Stigma Realm to first appear in a form resembling a person.
That was the first empirical proof of a conceptual form descending into the world—
The crystallization of the Schariac Saint Blood...
In other words—herself.
With this, the origin of Hare was made crystal clear.
Although many players had already guessed most of it—
Having it confirmed in writing still hit differently.
[Hare's birth is even more complex than I imagined.]
[As Otto predicted, Hare emerged thanks to his adjustments to the Saint Blood.]
[So it's Otto's fault again—source of all world sins.]
[Not just this century—he's been a walking calamity for 500 years.]
Of course, the usual Otto blame game unfolded in chat.
After all, if there's one thing that's never wrong in Honkai Impact 3rd, it's "blame Otto."
Something goes wrong and you're not sure who did it?
Blame Otto for 20% of it—nine times out of ten, you'll be right.
That said—
Other players were preoccupied with a... different question.
A slightly complicated one.
[So... what exactly is Hare's relationship with Durandal? And with Kiana?]
[Are they supposed to call Hare stepmom? Aunt? Sister? Little sister?]
[Maybe we need to clarify Hare's relationship to Cecilia first.]
[She was born from the Saint Blood Cecilia released—so in theory, "sister" to Durandal?]
[Eh... I think you're overthinking it. Hare's just a Stigma crystallization. No real relation to them.]
[Based on the narrative logic of the Stigma Project, Hare could be considered a "story born from Cecilia's story."]
That last comment was quite sharp—
And very apt for this context.
In fact—
Players' reflections on Hare's relationship to Cecilia mirrored the larger theme of the plot.
Hare was born because of Cecilia—
And yet Hare seems to have no true connection to her.
That parallels the relationship between conceptual forms and humans.
...
And coming up—
We finally begin to understand why the Stigma Project almost completely excludes humanity.
Why it deals only in conceptual forms and awakened Stigma users.
After understanding her origin—
Hare immediately realized something else.
The knowledge she had just acquired now turned into a deadly strike against her.
Remember what she learned the first time she used her ability?
[Destroyed during recovery of the Sixth Divine Key due to unidentified excess Honkai energy...]
Anyone familiar with the history knew what this meant...
Anyone who read the Second Eruption manga certainly did.
Not long ago, the woman named Cecilia had given her life to scatter crimson blossoms of redemption across the snowfield.
She saved tens of thousands of lives—
Preserved countless families.
At the moment of her death, Cecilia Schariac perfectly grasped the flow of the Saint Blood.
The so-called "reversal" Otto feared never happened.
If it had, no one in Siberia would've survived.
But—
If that's true, then why did Hare see nothing but ruins along her path?
There could only be one answer.
Compared to the miracle Cecilia created—
Hare did not receive that same miracle.
[What does this mean?]
[Hare... became a walking Honkai contamination source.]
[Siberia was once purified, but Hare's birth reintroduced massive Honkai energy.]
[A conceptual form born in salvation brought only destruction.]
[Maybe these forms can't even coexist with humans... not a matter of will, but of fundamental incompatibility. Like: look at them and boom, you're dead.]
And maybe, to certain "people," this destruction is a form of joy?
Someone once said—
There is joy in disaster.
There is seduction in annihilating everything.
Hmm...
Hard to grasp?
Let's use a crude analogy—
It's like the joy of opening a package.
Now that I understand (not).
Still—
Hare was clearly not someone who took joy in destruction.
If anything—perhaps due to being born from Saint Blood—
Her sense of morality might've been even stronger than a human's.
And thus—she was overwhelmed by guilt and grief.
"No..."
"This isn't... because of me..."
"I... am not..."
...
[If Hare was this sensitive and remorseful—how did she end up becoming that person on the Moon?]
Players now had a burning question.
It was hard to reconcile—
How someone who once grieved over her own destructive nature...
Could become the carefree "chaotic fun" girl Kiana and co. met on the Moon.
That's way too big a shift.
They watched closely, hoping for answers.
And then—
The scene cut back to the Moon.
"...So it's finally begun?"
Prometheus remained in her quasi-prison world bubble, feeling Hare's past flowing through the Herrscher of Reason's core.
She hadn't seen the events with her own eyes.
But the shift itself spoke volumes.
"Bronya... have you finally figured out how to control those key nodes?"
Undoubtedly—
Bronya was now following Prometheus's plan, reversing the tide—
Using her connection to the Herrscher core to identify and strip away the false data Hare had planted.
Ah!
Prometheus's inner monologue reminded the players:
They'd been so immersed in Hare's memories, they'd almost forgotten—
They were supposed to be helping Bronya regain control of the Herrscher core.
So how was Bronya doing?
Well, per tradition—before Bronya fails miserably, she usually has a brief moment of triumph, right?
So no need to worry too much.
Wait... why is everyone just assuming she'll fail later?
Bronya: There's no such tradition. Don't assign weird tropes to me.
Regardless of Bronya's future—
For now, her plan to reclaim the Herrscher of Reason core was progressing smoothly.
"So... a Stigma taking physical form..."
Bronya was surprised—
She hadn't expected Hare to be a fully manifested Stigma entity.
Hmm...
As a Russian, she probably didn't know the Chinese folklore concept of "turning into a spirit."
After all, in Russian mythology, animals don't really train for centuries to become beautiful women.
Maybe foreign spirits just find humans too dumb to bother transforming for (not).
Ahem, back to topic.
After leaving that memory—
Bronya now stood before a fragment that Hare had embedded into the Herrscher core—
Its form nearly identical to a "Conceptual Seed."
She could use her perception to correct it.
Just now, she had successfully corrected one such seed.
Looking ahead at the many remaining—
Bronya understood:
A tough challenge awaited her.
So, she wasted no time.
After a brief rest, the girl dived into the second memory.
Still in Siberia.
Hare hadn't gone far.
But this time, someone new appeared beside her.
"I've heard of hell's horrors,"
"A land of exile and pain, where the earth is covered in burning thorns... and rivers of flowing sulfur..."
This new presence spoke solemnly beside Hare.
At this point—
Every Honkai 3rd Captain likely had one image in mind.
World Serpent—no, more accurately: Honkai's resident literary snob...
[Now this is a classic Grey Serpent entrance.]
[World Serpent's Literature King—no question.]
[Wait, Literature King?]
[Bro... clearly you haven't spent much time on the forums. There was a whole debate.]
"..."
Hokuto remembered it too.
The official forums once had a massive thread discussing which character was Honkai's most literary—Queen, Otto, or Grey Serpent.
Thousands of replies.
Sure, part of that was him "stirring the pot"—
But still, the thread's sheer popularity showed how into it people were.
And if you think forum lurkers are lame for making a thousand posts about that...
Well, as the saying goes:
If you're on the forums in the first place...
Isn't that just because you're bored?
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