Chapter 58 (volume 2)

"Interesting, so this is what happened?" Otto murmured in contemplation when he heard Ryusuke's story.

After Ryusuke and Otto returned to the real world, everyone calmed down and sat in the room. Ryusuke then began to tell Otto and Theresa the same story he had told Welt and the others.

Needless to say, Theresa had an expression of disbelief and concern while she was sweating when she understood the seriousness of the situation when she heard about the Herrscher of Corruption.

"I already told you the whole story. What are you going to do now, Otto Apocalypse? Will you give me Kallen's genetic material as promised?" Ryusuke asked while he crossed his arms while he was sitting on the couch.

"But of course I will give it to you. What I most wish for is for Kallen to return to this world..." Otto had an expectant smile as his 500-year long desire could finally be fulfilled.

Otto did not even try to disguise how he felt in front of others, because the moment when Kallen is brought back to life, everything else was insignificant.

Theresa was incredulous at Otto's vision like that, after years of living in the care of her grandfather she naturally knew of Otto's great desire to revive Kallen. Looking at it now, Theresa had a bitter expression on her face because Otto's current actions are almost as if he were submitting to Ryusuke.

Theresa is very afraid to think of a situation where Ryusuke would ask Otto to sell Schicksal and Otto would offer Schicksal on a silver tray at the same moment with a smile on his face.

Fu Hua managed to keep a calm expression on her face but inside she had a bitter mood when she saw Otto. As she had known Otto for more than 500 years, she knew that he would do anything Ryusuke says as long as it results in Kallen's resurrection.

"By the way Ryusuke, can I ask you how you intend to resurrect Kallen? As you asked me, I brought a lock of hair from Kallen. I must assume that you intend to use the powers of Serenity Gem to replicate Kallen's body, but how do you intend to transfer Kallen's consciousness to the new body?" Otto asked with interest and concern for Kallen, after all he who transferred his consciousness to other bodies of Soulium understood how dangerous it was transferring consciousness to other bodies.

Ryusuke already expected that question. He crossed his arms and spoke.

"I originally intended to use the Herrscher of Corruption’s powers to transfer awareness of Kallen-san and Rin-San, but as I found a better option I decided to make a change of plans." Ryusuke responded with a smile, pleased to have received the unexpected earlier.

The night Ryusuke was supposed to steal Serenity Gem he thought of everything that was in his mood, he took into account everything in his power.

And one of those things was the Herrscher of Corruption’s powers. Even though he could only use a small part of the power of Corruption he still could use corruption to transfer Kallen Kaslana and Yae Rin without any problem since they didn't offer any resistance.

In these three years that Ryusuke had the Herrscher of Corruption imprisoned inside him he had a good understanding of Herrscher’s power. He discovered some interesting ones.

In Ryusuke's past life, the Honkai Impact 3rd manga was not very accurate about detailing Herrscher of Corruption’s powers, the only thing he knew at the time was that the Herrscher of Corruption was a self-conscious lethal virus covers to infect and control living beings and machines that have electronic processors.

After Ryusuke imprisoned Herrscher for Corruption he had a great understanding of her powers and he was very surprised that Corruption was not as simple as it looks.

In the biological part, the Herrscher of Corruption has the capacity for biological modification, so it has the ability to create and change any disease it wants. It can change the level of contingency and the severity of the disease any way it wants. It can also change the biological body of itself or others to cause mutations in the way it imagines.

As for the mental part, she was able to control the minds of infected people to do whatever she wanted with them. Of course, this mental manipulation was not as strong as that of the Herrscher of Sentience, if a person had enough mental strength then it was possible to avoid being controlled by the Herrscher of Corruption and even escape from mind control as Yae Sakura did in the past.

It could also break into and control any electronic system very easily.

Ryusuke felt that there was still a lot to be discovered in the powers of Corruption but that is all he has managed to discover for now.

"Oh, a change of plans? And what will be the new method to help Kallen? If you don't already have it then Schicksal will give you full support to help you get what you need." Otto spoke with a friendly smile.

Ryusuke had no doubt that Otto was serious about using all of Schicksal.

"You don't have to do so much fanfare, after all yesterday you already sent her to me." Ryusuke spoke quietly to Otto.

"She? Oh... got it." Initially Otto tilted his eyebrow in doubt because of Ryusuke's words but he soon understood what Ryusuke wanted.

Otto turned his head and gave a small smile of sympathy to his old friend Fu Hua. He could already imagine a little of her feelings. But even so, he won't think twice about asking her to help resurrect Kallen.

Fu Hua just put her hand on her forehead and let out a tired sigh because of Otto's actions. She has known him for over 500 years so she already expected these actions from him when she met Ryusuke. But of course she would be lying if she said she had no hope that Otto would not kneel for Ryusuke, and the result had already left her with a bitter face.

"Have you thought about the deal I proposed to you earlier?" Ryusuke asked her.

This morning, when Ryusuke and everyone at Anti-Entropy went to the stigma space, he proposed a deal to Fu Hua after he told the story about the Herrscher of Corruption.

The deal was that if she agreed to help him transfer Kallen and Yae Rin's consciences he would use Serenity Gem to heal the incurable wounds that were tormenting her body.

Ryusuke does not have a perfect memory and some parts he may have forgotten over the time he lived in that second life. But from what he remembered, these incurable wounds on her body were caused by her disciples who betrayed her 500 years ago.

The reason for this betrayal was because Fu Hua was almost an emotionless killing machine that killed anyone who was infected with honkai, even those who had a tiny, almost harmless infection were not spared. She followed the philosophy that she created "without mercy for the corrupted" without exception. Her only goal was to purge the honkai, and she would do whatever it took to achieve that goal.

She was almost like Kiritsugu Emiya at that time.

One day one of her disciples was infected with honkai and that fact was hidden from her for a while. All the other disciples knew about the state of the infected companion and they knew very well what their teacher's decision would be when she found out about it. So all the disciples decided to get together and kill her in an ambush when she was going to eliminate the infected disciple.

The disciples' ambush was a success and they managed to kill her, they knew that her teacher was immortal and that is why they tried to make her death permanent, they chopped up and burned her body.

At that time they thought they managed to kill her but Fu Hua managed to resurrect 20 years later. But when she was resurrected she lost two things.

The first was her immortality, after her death her regenerative powers were drastically reduced.

The second and most important loss for her was the loss of her memories, when she revived she lost most of her memories. Nowadays the oldest memories that she could clearly remember are those of 600 years ago, the memories of before that are very blurred and confusing for her to understand. Although she might be able to access some of her old memories if she had a certain old specific technology, but that is for another time.

A curious detail about Fu Hua's body injuries that Ryusuke discovered was that these injuries had a degenerative Honkai energy that prevented Fu Hua's body regeneration from healing completely, despite being very weak Ryusuke was a little familiar with this Honkai energy.

It was a Honkai energy similar to that of the Serenity Gem. Ryusuke was a little confused at first, as 500 years ago there was no Herrscher at that time other than the Herrscher of Corruption who was trapped in the black cube.

After thinking a little, Ryusuke came to the conclusion that this energy may originate from a Natural Stigma based on the Herrscher of Death from the Previous Age.

Probably one of the disciples had this natural stigma.

But this imitation of the Herrscher of Death’s ability meant nothing to Ryusuke if he wanted to cure Fu Hua.

After all, if he used the power of Binding carefully he could erase that energy without affecting her MANTIS body, and he could also use Serenity's powers to heal her body injuries just like he did with Welt Yang.

Physically he could help Fu Hua but mentally he cannot do anything to help her memories.

The reason he proposed this deal with her is because he couldn’t use Fenghuang Down. It is not that he is unable to use it, after all given enough time he could learn to use the eighth Divine Key efficiently. The problem was that Ryusuke's body would not be able to bear the burden of using Fenghuang Down.

Ryusuke tried to use Fenghuang Down only once this morning and so he found out a little about that Divine Key.

The eighth Divine Key, the Fenghuang Down, was made from the core of the Herrscher of Sentience. As Ryusuke does not have a very clear understanding of the power of Fenghuang Down, but speaking in a simplified way the power of this Divine key is mental manipulation. She is able to manipulate people's minds, that was all Ryusuke was able to understand about the power of Herrscher of Sentience.

Now on the question of him being unable to use that Divine Key. The use of Fenghuang Down requires a continuous drain on the user's life force to use his powers. Ryusuke cannot say whether this is a feature of the Herrscher of Sentience core or whether this is a feature of the Divine Key but he decided not to take too much risk when using it.

Unlike Herrschers and MANTIS who have a body far superior to that of humans, Ryusuke is currently just a human boy with Herrschers powers. For now the details about the use of life force was not very important for Ryusuke since he currently had the Serenity Gem and with that he could recover the life force he had spent.

But even so he doesn't want to take any chances, he doesn't want to become dependent on the Serenity Gem which was just a temporary power. Ryusuke remembered the rise of Raiden Mei as the Herrscher of Thunder and what happened to the Conquest Gem. He knew that if the Herrscher of Death arises in that Age and she has a complete awakening, the Serenity Gem will disappear from Ryusuke's hands.

In the case of Fenghuang Down Ryusuke is just a novice; he was not confident that he would be able to transfer consciousness from Kallen and Yae Rin safely using the Divine Key.

So he will use Fu Hua, she is an expert in using this Divine Key so she would have no problem transferring their consciousness to the new bodies.

Fu Hua looked at Ryusuke with a little hesitation, she didn't know how to respond to him. What does she think of Ryusuke? She couldn't say exactly. Looking at all the facts presented so far she would say that he was not a typical Herrscher who wanted to destroy humanity. She knew that if Ryusuke wanted the end of humanity he would not have to work so hard to arrest the Herrscher of Corruption within him to prevent it from destroying the world.

He was certainly quite different from Welt and Sirin in his own way.

Her personal opinion of him was quite confusing, although she was a little resentful that he had taken her hostage using his own blood, she does not completely hate him. She understood that it was she who broke into his room and that he doesn't trust her and that's why he made her ingest his blood to restrict her.

In addition there were also her blurry memories.

'Damn it! My memories are still so confusing, I can't understand why I feel like I can trust him even after all this has happened... and there is something else, for some reason I feel like I should ask him for something but I don't know what it is. This is so strange, yesterday was the first time I saw that boy, so why do I feel this way?' Fu Hua was very confused about Ryusuke and his own emotions.

Even with these strange feelings in his head, Fu Hua did not fail to keep his expression calm for a moment.

"And do I have another choice besides accepting your agreement?" Fu Hua asked with a slight sarcastic smile, after all if she refused to help Otto it would certainly be very insistent and Ryusuke could always force her to cooperate using the blood inside her, not that it was easy to succumb to pain.

"Hey don't look at me like Fu Hua-san. I also would not like to force others to act against their will." Ryusuke tried to defend himself from her sarcastic eyes.

"So does that mean you are going to draw that blood that you put inside my body?" Fu Hua asked.

"Obviously not. I don't even know you, how am I supposed to know if you're not going to blow my head off with a punch the same instant you're released? Didn't you swear to destroy all Honkai and all Herrschers? Do you really want me to be unprotected in front of someone like that?" Ryusuke spoke with a small frown and a little suspicion.

As much as he liked Fu Hua in the Honkai impact, here in real life he really can't make a soft choice. As for the fact that he tried to convince her that he had no interest in fighting humanity, he would waste time speaking those useless words.

Actions are worth more than words.

He will simply let her draw her own conclusions about him after she watches him and sees him live his normal life.

As for what he will do to her after today, he will only let her go with Fenghuang Down. From the moment he managed to put the blood inside her, she stopped being a threat so he has no problem letting her go.

Fu Hua was silent. She couldn't find words to deny what Ryusuke said. Although she would not resort to violence if she were released.

"My old friend..."

At that moment Otto spoke to Fu Hua with a friendly smile.

"My old friend, I think you better accept Ryusuke's proposal, because in the current situation you have no choice, right?"

Fu Hua took a tired and stressed sigh at the situation. She just wants to get out of there.

"Okay, I'll accept your deal."

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Author's note: hi guys, I just want to warn you that the next chapter is going to be the epilogue to volume 2.