ME Corp's headquarters—top floor.
A vast floor-to-ceiling window stood like a wall of glass, laying out Nagazora City's glittering nightscape with ruthless clarity.
This was the best vantage point to overlook the city. Neon lights merged into a sea of brilliance, and deep within that sea, countless ant-like crowds hurried for the sake of living.
From above, no matter when you looked, individuals became nothing more than abstract black dots.
Cocolia stood before the window.
She held a wine glass. As her wrist swayed lightly, red wine clung to the inner wall and slid down in dark crimson trails.
Like blood.
Behind her, an entire wall of surveillance monitors cast a cold blue glow across her silhouette. Data streams flickered endlessly—real-time feedback from ME Corp's labs, and the citywide Honkai concentration map.
"It should be about time. Bronya has arrived."
She didn't turn her head. She simply spoke into the air, to no one at all. There was only her here.
When it came to that child, she had absolute confidence.
Bronya would handle the people who took Raiden Mei. Mei would return to school, day after day, isolated and bullied until she could no longer endure it—until she finally became the Third Herrscher.
Cocolia turned. The click of her heels against the floor was crisp and unbroken.
She walked to her desk. A fresh report lay there: the progress on capturing the Third Herrscher's vessel, and the整理 of follow-up data from the long-reopened X-10 experiment.
Her thoughts drifted back to the past. Fingers flipped a page corner; paper snapped softly.
After that experiment ended, the objections—the accusations of inhumanity—had become like wind outside the window, sealed away by thick glass.
Even after no further experiments were conducted, the voices never stopped.
But this was sacrifice. The few for the many.
If it succeeded, more people would gain Honkai adaptability.
Anti-Entropy's conservative faction was always preaching morality—lines, principles, bottom lines.
Humans were simple. Without an external force to intervene, without a heavy enough price to push them forward, they would rot in comfort like bacteria in a petri dish.
As for gossiping behind her back?
That was the privilege of the weak. Only those powerless to change reality gathered together and spat their worthless dissatisfaction at the world.
She set down her glass and tapped the desktop lightly with her fingertips.
She had already sacrificed the children she raised.
Why couldn't other people's children be sacrificed too?
Sacrifice was necessary.
If sacrificing one child could buy power against Honkai—if it could let Anti-Entropy truly harness Herrscher power—then it was an arithmetic problem even elementary schoolers could solve.
And she was simply the one holding the pen, writing down the answer.
Before, it had been Seele.
Now, it was Raiden Mei.
Yes, many people would die.
This city might become ruins. Millions would become zombies.
So what?
If humanity could master Herrscher power—if they could manufacture gods that obeyed—then this price was entirely payable.
Like cutting out a chunk of rotten flesh in surgery. Blood was inevitable. As long as the operation succeeded, the whole body would live.
The math was so easy it made the opposition feel incomprehensible.
Cocolia finished reading the old report. The corner of the file curled upward, revealing a photograph pinned beneath it—Bronya's expressionless face half-covered by the paper.
She didn't look at it again.
She turned and walked back to the window.
Outside, Nagazora City was still the same—bright, blazing, annoying.
"Beep—"
A monitor console chirped. The sound wasn't loud, but in a room filled only with the hum of machines, it cut like a blade.
A warning ping—an alert from an outer-perimeter drone.
Cocolia's brow twitched. The irritation of being interrupted made her fingers tighten slightly around the stem of her glass.
She said nothing. She merely glanced at the split-screen that lit up beside her.
The feed showed a grainy night-vision view. Several kilometers away—on the roof of an office building—there was a dark shape.
"Zoom in."
She gave the order to the empty room.
The image flickered twice, and the silhouette sharpened.
A boy.
He wore a white plague-doctor mask and a black trench coat. In the gale, the coat snapped and flared. He sat brazenly on the edge of the rooftop, toes dangling into open air, head tilted up toward the sky.
He was facing ME Corp's tower.
Cocolia took a sip of wine.
These days, people with a death wish were everywhere. Jumping from a rooftop across from ME Corp was probably an attempt to extort a payout.
Boring.
She was about to dismiss the feed when the boy moved.
He wasn't about to jump.
He stood upright—his posture strange, like an actor preparing for his final bow. He reached into his coat and rummaged for something.
Cocolia's eyes narrowed slightly.
A gun? A bomb?
What he pulled out did resemble a gun—but it was oddly shaped: silver-white, the barrel absurdly short, the grip etched with markings that suggested something far more deliberate than fashion.
He didn't point it at ME Corp.
He raised it and pressed it firmly to his own temple.
Cocolia lifted an eyebrow. The sheer absurdity nearly drew a laugh from her throat.
Some new kind of performance art? A public suicide staged at ME Corp's doorstep?
"Confirm there are no accomplices nearby."
She issued the command, eyes still pinned to the screen. She wanted to see what this little ant thought it was doing.
In his other hand, he held something else.
Cocolia saw it clearly—a red calling card.
And slung across his back was a sniper rifle that hadn't been there a moment ago.
He flicked the calling card out. Despite the drone being nearly a hundred meters away, it slapped perfectly onto the camera lens, dead center.
He had come dressed for murder—to send Cocolia on her way.
The moment the calling card covered the lens, the boy pulled the trigger.
All of Cocolia's surveillance screens went black at once.
"What—?!"
Cocolia snapped her head up.
In the next instant, the massive monitor wall exploded into countless enlarged calling cards, tiled and unfolding across every display. At the same time, the speakers shrieked with piercing static.
And beneath the noise, a boy's voice rang out—cold, clear, and unmistakably pleased with itself:
"To Cocolia, drowning in the excuse of 'hope.'
You build shelters for children under the name of an orphanage, yet tighten the shackle called 'motherly love' around their throats.
You speak of humanity's future and righteous purpose, yet in the name of 'sacrifice,' you push the daughters who trust you into the abyss.
You treat countless lives as tools, using so-called 'necessary sacrifice' to whitewash your hunger for control.
Your arrogant, twisted heart can no longer tell the line between sacrifice and domination.
Since you cannot wake from your self-righteous dream, I will claim your warped desire—
and a heart no longer worthy of redemption."
Cocolia lunged for the glass window, staring hard in the direction the drone had been watching.
"How… is that possible?!"
Her eyes widened, unable to look away.
Because she had just seen something she would never forget for the rest of her life.
-------
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