Aaaaa! I internally screamed.
There is a wild Siegfried on the other side of this door!
What should I do? He has to be here for me, right? No chance he got the wrong door.
I can always pretend not to be here; however, if he has been watching for a while, he knows I am in here.
Wait! There was the matter of Kiana! If Siegfried and Kiana had a confrontation, that means he probably hasn't been watching the door, unless he had some remote monitoring equipment.
Or asked his friends at Anti Entropy to track me down. It's not like I've exactly been concealing my online presence.
"If you don't open the door, I will knock it down," Siegfried said.
Fuck. Could be bluffing, but it's unlikely. The biggest question is what does he want from me? I already acquiesced to his request to stay away from Kiana.
Better open the door before he really does knock it down.
Opening the door, I see Siegfried in all his beat up glory. His clothes were torn and ripped, and his hair was messed up, but he did not seem to be injured.
Wasting no time at all, Siegfried entered and let the door close behind him.
"I have confirmed your words about the Anti Entropy radical faction being behind the increase in Honkai energy around the city."
Knowing Siegfried, and seeing his current appearance, he likely went to beat up whoever was actually distributing Honkai energy, presumably agents from Cocolia or the World Serpent.
I just stared at him, waiting for him to continue talking.
"I can't solve this myself, I need you to report this to Schicksal." Siegfried said.
Ah — that was it. He needed my imagined connection to Schicksal intelligence. Unfortunately for him, I wasn't actually with Schicksal yet.
"I can't report to Schicksal." I said.
"Why not?" Siegfried seemed confused.
"I am not actually a Schicksal agent." I confessed.
"Someone running away from the radical faction then?" Siegfried said, showing that he wasn't only a brick.
"Something like that, I currently don't have any support at all, not even a weapon." It was the best explanation that fit the situation, and he had provided it so it wouldn't be suspicious.
"Why didn't you defect to Schicksal or to us?" Siegfried asked.
Interesting that he considers himself truly part of Anti Entropy's conservative faction.
"I don't actually have a way of getting in contact with either faction," I said truthfully. I really didn't have an easy way to contact Schicksal; otherwise I would have already done so. Unless sending out messages into the void of the internet and waiting for Schicksal operatives to break into my apartment and interrogate me to learn what secrets I know is a valid option.
"So you told me, hoping that I would pass the message along." Siegfried stated.
Actually that was a mistake, I fucked up in the heat of the moment and told you about it. I wasn't exactly thinking clearly in the heat of the moment with a gun to my head.
Huh. Strange he wasn't threatening me now, or maybe he still was. Better to play along to raise my goodwill.
"Yes." I confirmed
"Thanks for the intel… and sorry about threatening you at gunpoint earlier," Siegfried said in response.
Huh, so Siegfried really wasn't threatening me right now, must be because of the talk with Kiana.
"You talked with Kiana." I stated. It wasn't a question.
"Yes." Siegfried said.
Well that was short, I don't really know where to go from there.
"So, what exactly do you want?" I finally said. He had already answered but now that he knew I wasn't affiliated with any faction he might want something different from me.
"I need your help in breaking into ME corp." Siegfried said.
Fuck that. Even just you being here makes it more likely for Cocolia and the World Serpent to lock onto my fake identity and figure out that I was the one who told you about the radical faction being behind the events of Nagazora.
"I don't exactly have a weapon, and I am in a rather precarious situation right now."
I hoped he would take it to mean that I was worried about being killed by Cocolia for leaking secrets, which I was in fact actually quite worried about.
"I have weapons that I can give you, and can vouch for you with Anti Entropy after it's all over." Siegfried stated.
That would be great, if I actually cared at all about Anti Entropy. However, even though Einstein and Tesla were great scientists, they still didn't hold a candle to Otto, who, after all, has been doing this for 500 years. Schicksal was going to end up with the divine key anyway, and I almost certainly needed that for my plan.
However, having a proper weapon would be nice though.
"What kind of weapon?"
Siegfried thought for a moment before replying, "I can get you a pair of Alloy Dominators."
Interestingly, while only a three-star weapon in-game, those three-star weapons were probably the weapons of C- and B-rank valkyries in real life.
More interestingly, that was a Schicksal-manufactured weapon, not an Anti Entropy one. I wonder how Siegfried had gotten ahold of a pair. Maybe it was from a poor valkyrie who had been sent after him at one point or another as one of Schicksal's most wanted.
I really wanted those pistols, and I had a plan to get them.
"I can't help you with fighting Cocolia, but I can help you out significantly." I said.
"In what way." Siegfried questioned
"I can heal your arm, in exchange, I want those pistols." I stated.
While at first this might seem like a terrible idea, since I wanted Siegfried to lose, and Cocolia to win. But healing Siegfried's arm actually wouldn't have much of a difference on any fights he might get into.
It was his left arm that little Kiana had cut off when the Herrscher of the Void persona had started to awaken. Siegfried was presumably right handed, and mostly fought using this hand.
Also, Siegfried's metal arm wasn't some clunky prosthetic, it was certified Anti Entropy tech, and was definitely of sufficient quality that it would not be too much worse than his original arm anyway.
So while it might seem like I am doing him a major favor, I am not actually improving his combat abilities. Just his quality of life.
"And, how exactly do you plan on healing my arm?" Siegfried finally said in response.
Well there was no good way to explain, so I just closed my eyes and reached out my hand, touching Siegfried's shoulder above the prosthetic arm, causing him to flinch a little bit on contact.
I stopped holding back the Abundance energy that wanted to flow out into Siegfried, instantly the prosthetic arm fell off and thumped on the floor. I could see in my mind Siegfried's arm started to grow back one layer at a time in an extremely grotesque way, but instead of feeling disgusted, it invoked feelings of holiness and sacredness.
Too bad I didn't have a cross, otherwise I would have held it out and said something like "Abyss Flower, bloom.", "Receive divinity!".
I opened my eyes to see Siegfried pointing Judgement of Shamash directly at my face.
"So you are Otto after all." Siegfried stated.
"Whaaaa…" I started to say stupidly.
"That power just now, it was extremely similar to the Black Abyss White Flower, you used the first divine key to replicate its power." Siegfried explained.
Well, I really didn't know what to say to that one, I wasn't actually Otto, even if I did resemble him a little bit. But I couldn't exactly explain the source of my power.
A short branch suddenly sprouted out of Siegfried's arm right above the shoulder blade, complete with a single green leaf.
This caused me to wince with imagined pain and rub my own shoulder, which caused Siegfried to move his finger to the trigger.
I slowly raised my hands and explained.
"That wasn't the Black Abyss White Flower, it was the power of imaginary energy." I said.
"What's imaginary energy?" Siegfried, who had obviously never spent very much time in a Schicksal classroom, said a bit stupidly.
"It's effectively the raw form of Honkai energy." Not really correct but good enough for now. "What I did just now, it didn't use Honkai energy, therefore it couldn't have been the divine key."
Siegfried seemed to think back a bit, "That's true, I didn't notice you using any Honkai energy. In fact, there is no Honkai energy in your body at all."
That was interesting, though not entirely unexpected. The main point of my blessing from Yaoshi was to cure my Honkai energy erosion, and it's not exactly like I have any Honkai antibodies, so the Abundance energy was doing a lot of work almost all the time to keep Honkai energy away from me.
More importantly, it made me remember that Siegfried was a MANTIS, even if not nearly one of the strongest. MANTIS's can sense Honkai energy much more easily than a regular person, allowing him to confirm the lack of a Honkai energy reaction. If Siegfried wasn't a MANTIS, there would have been no way to confirm my words.
"So I am not Otto, so you don't need to point those things at me" I said, trying to sound as nervous as I felt.
Siegfried put down Judgement of Shammash.
"You do look like him though, you could be his child." Siegfried said.
I hoped he meant that rhetorically, and that he wasn't actually thinking that I could be Otto's child.
"So, can I get the pistols now?" I said, remembering my main objective.
"I don't think I ever agreed to this trade." Siegfried said. Which was in fact true.
"You came here in person, you could have leaked my position to Cocolia, I could be threatened at any time, I need a weapon." I said.
"I wasn't followed." Siegfried stated.
Now I was actually convinced of that possibility I had just made up, in every single piece of media I had ever seen, that phrase was only ever uttered when the person had in fact, been followed.
"Will you give me the pistols or not?" I said, unwilling to argue the point.
"I need to go back to my hideout to get them." Siegfried finally replied.
More like a hidey hole.
"How long will that take?" I asked
Siegfried thought for a moment before replying, "Around 10 minutes? I need to go there and back."
I found it amusing that Siegfried's hidey hole was within 5 minutes of the hotel, and by extension, Kiana's apartment building that was across and down the street.
I agreed, since I really did need those pistols. I was a bit worried about being jumped as soon as Siegfried left, but he refused to take me with him to his little hidey hole. I was reassured by the fact that Siegfried would be back in around 10 minutes, and I would just have to hope that nobody arrived before then.
As it turned out, Siegfried was in fact, not followed. Or they had just marked down the location of the hotel and were unaware if I was a threat to them or not.
Siegfried soon returned with a set of rather boxy looking Alloy Dominators, along with several energy cells each one apparently capable of holding hundreds of shots.
I once again marveled at how omnipotent Honkai energy turned out to be, before I grabbed one of the power cells, and all the Honkai energy stored inside of it was instantly deleted.
"..." Siegfried stared at the now empty power cell.
I didn't reply as I pulled the path energy away from my hands and grabbed onto a new power cell and loaded it into the gun, I only had 5 left, which I didn't know if it was a lot or a little. I was still unaware of the weapon's true potential in reality.
Luckily, I had some firearms training and had been to a shooting range for fun several times back in my old life, so I knew how to use it, however the Alloy Dominators were clearly designed to be used with a HUD like the one Kiana started out with in the original game. It didn't have any sights and the top wasn't exactly flat.
I couldn't exactly test it out in the hotel room. So I just layed it out on the bed for now.
A.N. As per request, I now have a patreon at patreon com/intraneer. Spend 2$ to get early chapters? How many? However many I write, webnovel drops are now 4am est every day. (specifically to fuck over one person)