In The Honkai World: Transforming Into An IF-Route Valkyrie

Well, that went a lot smoother than expected. Irene watched Little Senti's retreating figure as he hurried away, and after a small smile, fell into step behind him.

Just as she'd said — once Little Senti came to terms with who he was, he actually opened up more. He was, after all, a child barely a few days old in any meaningful sense.

What he'd been seeking wasn't really the identity of Fu Hua, specifically. It was recognition from others. The only surprising part was how quickly he'd gotten there — a little faster than any of them had anticipated.

"We're back." Little Senti sauntered in with an armful of Keys of Domination, shouldering open the half-latched door of Fuyun Temple. "Nuwa, Fuxi, you old relic — come see if this is enough."

"Mm, Fu Hua, did you go and pull up the entire vegetable patch?" Fuxi leaned over to peer at the Keys of Domination in Little Senti's arms. "Xiao Xuan doesn't need that many."

"You don't have to call me Fu Hua anymore..." Little Senti glanced to the side at Fu Hua, who had just drifted into view. He'd mentally prepared himself for this moment, but now that it was actually here, he felt a little awkward.

"You explained everything to him?" Fu Hua looked at Irene, a trace of puzzlement in her eyes. "This doesn't seem to match the plan you laid out at the start. Weren't we supposed to take it slow?"

"Plans never keep up with reality." Irene shrugged. "Little Senti figured it out faster than any of us. He just refused to admit it until now."

"Alright, enough." Little Senti reached out and patted Irene on the head. "So... just call me Little Senti. Irene gave me the name, and I should clarify again — it's temporary. I'll come up with my own name when I'm ready. Until then, Little Senti it is."

"Then welcome, Little Senti." Nuwa smiled warmly and gave him a little wave. The others followed suit with their own welcomes. Feeling the warmth radiating from everyone around him, Little Senti let out a long, deeply relieved breath.

Fuxi then looked over the Keys of Domination that Little Senti had set down. "Okay, but why did you haul back this whole pile? One or two would've been plenty. There's enough here to build another whole Book of Fuxi."

"Eh, if there's extra, we can just give Xiao Xuan a full upgrade." Little Senti waved a dismissive hand. "Who cares about an Armed ELF — let's just make Xiao Xuan into a Reanna. If Otto could do it, so can we. And I can use the leftovers myself anyway."

"Reanna?" Nuwa tilted her head at the suggestion, then looked over at Irene with a puzzled expression.

"She was Schicksal's strongest Valkyrie over seventy years ago. Heavily modified, though." Irene explained at a measured pace. "Her body is almost entirely Soulium. The result of extensive human augmentation."

"I think her brain is still biological — honestly, I don't remember the exact details — but that's roughly the situation."

"Wow, what an extravagant method." Fuxi tugged at the corner of her mouth. Though, to be fair, Soulium could genuinely substitute for human tissue, and rejection rates were relatively low.

Back in their era, quite a few MANTIS soldiers who lost limbs with no hope of regeneration would apply for Soulium replacements. High defensive capability, decent self-repair — and unlike ordinary mechanical prosthetics, no need for dedicated Honkai energy conduits. Soulium was, after all, one of the essential materials for producing Divine Keys.

The only downside was the ceiling. Metal was metal — no room for growth. But if you were already at that level, growth wasn't really the point anymore. Restoring combat capability as quickly as possible was what mattered.

Still, building a person almost entirely out of Soulium from head to toe — that was extravagant by any era's standards, theirs or the current one.

Soulium was a strategic resource. Using it to patch up a soldier's combat capability was one thing. Constructing an entire person with it was another matter entirely. And for the Current Era, where Soulium was essentially obtained through archaeology, that was even more absurd.

Hard to imagine just how valuable that person must have been, to justify burning through that much Soulium for a single body.

"Well, that was Otto building a combat body for himself." Irene closed the door behind her and shrugged. "Going all-out on it is pretty on-brand for him. That was his dedicated combat vessel."

"Though it did end up backfiring spectacularly — but let's get back on track. So, is this enough? If not, we can head back to the Hyperion and ask Tesla."

"More than enough — I could build another Book of Fuxi and a Book of Nuwa with this." Nuwa turned to look at the Book of Fuxi, rubbing her hands together with a gleam of pure hobbyist excitement in her eyes. "Back then I was worried these might have some other use, so I never had the heart to dismantle them."

She'd always wanted to build a puppet of her own, but materials had been scarce, and there hadn't been enough pressing need, so she'd put it aside.

Nuwa reached over and pulled the Book of Fuxi into her lap. "Now I can just swap out the power core for a Herrscher of the Legion core — no more worrying about running out of power or breaking down."

"Well, looks like we're gaining another Herrscher." Irene watched as Nuwa immediately began invoking her authority to disassemble the Keys of Domination. "Little Fuyun Temple somehow managed to produce three Herrschers. Quite the creative arrangement."

"Uh, does that count me?" Xiao Xuan raised a hand and pointed at herself, then looked at the Keys of Domination being taken apart in Nuwa's hands. "This is only like... a one-in-a-thousand fragment of the core, right?"

"I'm just joking. Either way, we're not short on your type anymore."

"At least until the real Herrscher of the Legion shows up, Xiao Xuan is the only one walking around with a Legion core inside her." Little Senti nodded in agreement from the sidelines.

"In that case, why wouldn't it count? And when the Herrscher of the Legion does emerge, I'll just cut them down and settle it that way."

"The Herrscher of the Legion isn't easy to kill." Fuxi shook her head. "This isn't a thousand runaway pigs. Though... if that method had worked back in the day, maybe we could have had Xiao Xuan try. Would you even be able to probe for them?"

"Probably not. The Herrscher cores from our time and the cores from this era aren't the same system." Nuwa shook her head. "At the very least, the Herrschers from our time weren't possessed of the same degree of self-awareness as Miss Irene and Little Senti."

"Some kind of evolution may have occurred — higher ceiling, and they've become easier to turn. So if our plan succeeds, I'm afraid the selection criteria for new Herrschers still won't be able to change."

"If the selection criteria haven't changed, the Legion one should be the hardest to turn."

Although Nuwa only knew the full contents of Project Ember, she had participated in the formulation of other plans — or at least contributed theoretical support — and had a rough idea of what those plans would lead to.

For instance, she'd once overheard the Doctors complaining that Dr. MEI had made him revise a certain plan dozens of times.

If their plan proceeded smoothly, the Herrscher of the Legion should be a fixed variable — but the Legion Herrscher's situation was simply too peculiar. The odds of turning them were very low.

Senior Klein, whom Irene kept in mind, had also been considered — but Senior Klein's circumstances were equally exceptional. All other Herrschers had died, leaving Senior Klein as the very last Herrscher of the Legion.

With no other Herrschers to contend with, Dr. Mobius had stuffed every Legion core into Senior Klein's body, granting her a complete Herrscher of the Legion core — and thus creating a Herrscher of the Legion who had returned to her humanity. Replicating those conditions was a near-impossibility for them.

It would require simultaneously suppressing a Legion Herrscher individual who already had some hope of returning to humanity, while also eliminating every other Legion Herrscher, and only then could the chosen individual have any chance of overcoming the Herrscher's consciousness.

There was simply no way to hold any real hope for that outcome.

"Yeah, that does make things a bit tricky." Fuxi nodded. In their time, if you had to name the Herrscher who caused humanity the most trouble, the Herrscher of the Legion would be near the very top of the list.

Whether through assassination operations or covert sabotage, they had inflicted devastatingly serious damage. Their ability to infiltrate anywhere and everywhere had driven human society into a state of pure paranoia.

Though Fire Moth had moved quickly to contain the information, the survivors of that era weren't fools. A perfectly normal person doesn't just suddenly develop anti-human tendencies — it had to be the Honkai's doing.

In no time at all, everyone was living in fear, which only amplified the destruction the Herrscher of the Legion could cause — and humanity began to tear itself apart from within.

You had no way of knowing whether the comrade you'd fought side by side with yesterday, the one you'd entrusted your life to, might turn around and plunge a blade into your heart as a Legion puppet.

Or whether the person fighting alongside you yesterday had truly been your ally — and not a Legion Herrscher wearing their face.

"Alright, alright, stop talking — give me some quiet so I can finish this upgrade, will you?" Nuwa waved everyone off, cutting through the conversation. She'd already gotten her tools ready.

"Go ahead, we won't bother you." Fuxi shrugged, not giving her little sister an ounce of face, then pointed toward the inner room. "Isn't it pretty empty in there?"

The room Fuxi was pointing to was none other than the one where they used to live — and where Xiao Xuan had first been born. Nuwa glanced over, gave a small nod, and carried Xiao Xuan inside.

Once in the room, Nuwa closed the door behind her, shutting out the discussion outside. She'd ask about the conclusions later — for now, the only thing on the agenda was fixing up Xiao Xuan.

"I never thought I'd see my maker again." Xiao Xuan sat atop the table where she'd first been brought into existence, looking up at Nuwa. "But it seems I wasn't able to stay by the side of that blockhead the way you hoped."

"Blockhead — yes, that does suit Fu Hua's wooden brain perfectly." Nuwa smiled and nodded. "But that's on us too. If we'd had better resources back then, you wouldn't have had to sleep for so long."

They had simply been too rushed, too pressured. After they'd finished building Xiao Xuan, they'd immediately charged off to face Chiyou — without managing to leave Fu Hua so much as a repair manual or an emergency guide.

Let alone any spare replacement parts.

Strictly speaking, Xiao Xuan couldn't even be called a proper Armed ELF. At most she'd been a puppet — a purely cut-corners product of desperate circumstances. But now, at last, there was a chance to make up for that.

"Alright. Now get some rest for a while." Nuwa reached out and switched off Xiao Xuan's cognitive circuits. Then, looking at the quietly sleeping Xiao Xuan, Nuwa set the dismantled Soulium components aside.

"Now then. Time to really go to town."

As a seasoned model kit enthusiast, Nuwa had already mapped out exactly how she was going to upgrade Xiao Xuan in her head. True, Fu Hua no longer needed it — or rather, the Hyperion no longer had a need for Xiao Xuan as a combat asset.

But there were still all those scientists, weren't there? And if the two of them ever got physical bodies later on, having Xiao Xuan around as a capable fighter would mean proper protection for them both.

Besides — when a hobbyist had a project right there in her hands, did she really need any more reason than that to start modding?

"Heh heh heh." Nuwa gripped her tools, an unsettling grin spreading across her face, as she slowly extended a hand toward Xiao Xuan, who lay slumped on the table, completely oblivious.

Outside, meanwhile, the others continued their discussion.

"The Herrscher of the Legion situation can be put on the back burner for now." Fuxi crossed her arms. "Going by the sequence, the one who should appear next — and will appear next — is the Herrscher of Ice."

"Does sequence even matter anymore?" Little Senti looked at Irene, then pointed at himself. "The order got scrambled a long time ago. Besides, Sirin was already a Five-Core Herrscher back then."

"Fair point, but we can still roughly map it out." Fuxi nodded. She herself couldn't figure out where things had gone wrong — how had the sequence gotten this chaotic all of a sudden?

Herrschers popping up in jumbled order, overlapping order — the Second Eruption had somehow produced a multi-core Herrscher, and it was honestly a miracle the Current Era hadn't been annihilated by Sirin.

Sure, there'd been help from their Previous Era, but frankly, if they'd been dropped into the current environment themselves, their hands would've been just as tied.

Irene had told them all of this once already — and it was precisely because she had that they felt so helpless.

The Herrscher of Reason: erupts, immediately devours a whole cohort of top scientific minds. The Second Eruption: produces a Herrscher of the Void who immediately advances into a multi-core Herrscher. What did that even mean?

If not for the Herrscher of Reason — that entire crowd of people physically dragging the Herrscher's consciousness back over the line — a being that innately understood the full breadth of human technological knowledge would have shown everyone the true meaning of suffering.

And the Herrscher of the Void, that multi-core Herrscher — if she hadn't been too reckless and crashed on the spot, just lobbing meteorites down from orbit would have been enough to end civilization on the spot.

In a direct confrontation, if not for that same recklessness, operating on multiple cores simultaneously would have left humanity with almost no chance of winning. It truly came down to extraordinary luck and everyone pushing to their absolute limit before Sirin was finally brought down.

But now, Sirin had come over to their side. And while Welt wasn't quite the equal of that original Herrscher of Reason, he had already passed the core on — the future held room for development.

"As for the Herrscher of Ice — if the candidate is already fixed, I might have a move for that." Irene tapped her fingers lightly against her arm. "As for the Herrscher of the Legion..."

"Mm... we'll figure something out when the time comes."

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