"Huh? These people are the reinforcements you were talking about, Sister Vill-V?"
Pardo looked oddly at the group of "ordinary people." "Aren't they just—a bunch of regular people?"
"Sister Hua, do they know martial arts or possess some kind of powerful supernatural abilities?"
Hua shook her head when she heard the question. "Their steps are unsteady, their muscles are lax, and I don't see any bloodthirstiness in their expressions. They're clearly accustomed to lives of luxury. They can't possibly be martial artists or ability users."
Pardo turned and asked Vill-V and Bronya, "Then could they be really amazing mechanics or hackers?"
Vill-V and Bronya both shook their heads.
The next moment, Pardo received the answer she didn't want.
Under the Honkai Beasts' attacks, those "reinforcements" were slaughtered and torn apart.
Vill-V spoke in a pained voice. "That's right. They're genuinely nothing more than ordinary people—a group of... human bombs completely controlled by Heliopolis Life Sciences."
As soon as Vill-V said that, those people began demonstrating the true meaning of art is an explosion.
Rumble!
The bodies of those who had been torn apart began to explode.
Violent explosions surged through the city like a tide, one after another. Whether there were hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands was impossible to tell.
Every single blast marked a life extinguished in an instant. Every explosion meant that one living soul no longer existed in this world.
"That's way too cruel..."
Pardo covered her mouth and murmured, her eyes filled with shock. Lives were treated as cheap as weeds on Dusk Street too, but this was the first time she had ever seen human lives used like firecrackers.
"How could they... Those are human lives. What exactly do those people think human life is? Humanity... shouldn't be like this."
For a moment, Hua couldn't tell whether Honkai was crueler or humanity was.
She would rather face the cruelty of Honkai than witness humans slaughtering one another. A sight like that was simply too heartbreaking.
As for Bronya, Vill-V's broad chest had already covered her eyes.
"Mm? What's happening?"
"Little Duckling shouldn't be seeing something like this yet."
Even though Vill-V had encountered this in the previous worldline, and the MOTH leadership of Heliopolis Life Sciences had even used it against her, seeing it again still left her deeply shaken.
To make it easier for Heliopolis Life Sciences to control everyone, every resident of Time District had undergone mandatory modification surgery provided by Heliopolis Life Sciences. As a result, every one of them had been implanted with control devices and self-destruct devices.
If implementing this mandatory modification surgery weren't so expensive, Heliopolis Life Sciences would definitely have expanded it into Minute District, or even throughout the entire Dusk Metropolis.
The greatest obstacle to implementing this mandatory modification surgery was—
People outside Time District simply couldn't afford the cost of the mandatory modification surgery.
Poverty had saved them.
Of course, the residents knew absolutely nothing about the control devices or self-destruct devices. They believed these were merely benefits Heliopolis Life Sciences provided to Time District residents, improving their health so they could complete their work assignments more efficiently.
This special self-destruct device wouldn't explode during everyday life. Even a traffic accident wouldn't trigger it. It would only activate when the brain received a specific command signal.
And the brains of those ordinary citizens were now also being controlled by the neural network Collective.
Or rather, they themselves were part of Collective.
Why did the AI Collective possess computing power surpassing MOTH?
Precisely because it had been assembled from the combined computing power of countless human brains. That was also the origin of the name Collective.
The residents controlled by Heliopolis Life Sciences' AI Collective... or rather, the people who had now become Collective, fearlessly charged toward the snarling Honkai Beasts.
Rumble!
A truck carrying passengers slammed into a Chariot-class Honkai Beast. The passengers' explosions blew the roof off the truck, while a chunk of the Chariot-class Honkai Beast's shell was blasted away as well, revealing purplish-pink "muscle."
"Truck?"
The Chariot-class Honkai Beast scratched its head, clearly unable to understand why those people had suddenly killed themselves just as it was about to kill them.
After all, it stood more than ten meters tall, while the truck was only about three meters tall, smaller than one of its palms.
A Chariot-class Honkai Beast's defenses were difficult to deal with, but medium and small Honkai Beasts below Chariot-class, as well as zombies, couldn't withstand the explosions.
Under the repeated baptism of detonations, they returned to dust and soil, back into the embrace of Imaginary Space.
And so, only the giant Honkai Beasts remained on the battlefield. Vill-V and the others no longer had to deal with harassment from smaller Honkai Beasts and zombies.
Yet the Time District residents throwing away their lives was merely the beginning of the battle. To Heliopolis Life Sciences, those replaceable laborers were nothing more than cannon fodder.
What came next was the main event.
The ground of the soccer field began to tremble. The turf sank, revealing a mechanical pattern resembling a crop circle.
"Oh~ Is it here? This is exactly what I've been waiting for!"
Vill-V stood up, a trace of excitement mixed into her furious gaze.
Within her blurry memories of those worldlines, this was the first time she had ever seen this thing's true appearance.
An enormous metal radish grew out of the crop-circle pattern.
The "giant radish" embedded in the ground was covered in cracks and scorch marks. Honkai energy could faintly be seen flowing through the fractures.
Its two enormous eyes spun around, apparently searching for something.
Very soon, its pair of crossed eyes locked onto Vill-V and the others not far away.
"Judgment—Child of Man."
"Communication. Exchange. Cooperation—abandon hostile protocol. Disarmament. Communication possible. Exchange possible. Cooperation possible."
The "metal radish" broadcast its announcement in a mechanical voice, apparently still intending to communicate with Vill-V.
After accumulating memories across several cycles, Vill-V now knew what this thing was. It was the core of Heliopolis Life Sciences, the true body of Collective.
It could even be said that it was the true body of the Dusk Metropolis itself.
Almost the entire Dusk Metropolis existed within its body.
During one particular restart, Vill-V had even fought grass. Could you believe that?
Its computing power covered the entire city. Every blade of grass, every tree, every human here was part of it.
Minute District and Second District merely counted as the outskirts of its body, which was why its perception there was relatively weak.
But within this region, it was the absolute ruler—an AI crisis created by humanity itself.
It had completely broken free of human control, spiraling beyond recovery.
The entire human augmentation project had been planned by it. Those executives who opposed it had already been turned into fertilizer.
It could be said that as long as this thing was destroyed, every major problem in the Dusk Metropolis aside from the Sixth Honkai Eruption would be solved. It was the fusion of every source of evil here.
Thanks to the MOTH executives who had planted this radish seed back then. It had now grown into an incomparably wicked existential crisis for humanity.
All that remained was for it to climb out of the ground and harvest the entire human race.