"I don't know."
After searching through his own memories, Raiden Ryoma gave that answer.
ME Corp was, at its core, an electronics R&D, design, and manufacturing company. It truly didn't have much that could be called a "secret." Even patents—so-called core technology—were really just open secrets.
Yes. About what I expected.
Su Ming had already anticipated this outcome the moment he asked. Earlier, in order to verify whether this world's "setting" matched what he knew, he had already toured ME Corp from top to bottom—and also visited both Schicksal and Anti-Entropy headquarters. He hadn't found the slightest trace of Honkai energy anywhere.
By the same logic, his "father-in-law," as ME Corp's president and as Uncle Yang's subordinate, probably wouldn't know anything deeper either.
But Su Ming's second question mattered far more.
"Do you have any particular impressions of the World Serpent Group?"
As an anomaly that clearly shouldn't exist in this era, even if this world truly was just a peaceful, slice-of-life timeline, the existence of the Thirteen Flame-Chasers—Dr. MEI included—had to mean something.
"If you ask me," Ryoma said, "it's their chairman. He's obviously just a mascot, isn't he? Their head of equipment development looks much more like the real leader."
Of course.
With Elysia's chronic troublemaker personality, everyone should be grateful she didn't spend her days harassing female employees and tanking productivity. She was fine for corporate culture, morale, and vibes. Asking her to actually manage operations? No—Dr. MEI already had to run research and handle management. She was practically carrying the company on her back.
Su Ming complained internally, but this was all common knowledge. It wasn't what he wanted.
"Anything else? For example—when were they founded?"
While investigating World Serpent, Su Ming had never been able to find a concrete founding date. He thought maybe someone older—like Ryoma—might know.
"I do remember that," Ryoma said, nodding. "World Serpent was founded the year Mei was born. I remember it clearly because their technology shocked the entire world back then."
As he spoke, admiration showed on Ryoma's face. As the head of a tech company, he understood better than anyone what that level of technology implied. Even Anti-Entropy might not have been able to match it.
The year Mei was born—meaning, if you mapped it onto the original Honkai Impact 3 timeline—was the year before the Second Honkai Eruption. Su Ming remembered that node precisely; before coming here, he'd done timeline research for his own writing.
But knowing this alone didn't really help.
What, were the Thirteen Flame-Chasers a bunch of cryo-preserved ancient relics who just happened to wake up en masse that year?
His thoughts hit a wall. Su Ming, irritated, grabbed a lock of hair and tugged at it back and forth.
"Is something wrong with World Serpent?" Ryoma asked with concern, watching him.
"It's not that there's necessarily a problem," Su Ming said. He didn't know how to explain it—he couldn't exactly say, They're a bunch of Previous Era cryo-mummies. And he still hadn't figured out how this world's logic was constructed anyway. So he went for a third question instead.
"What impression do you have of Schicksal's previous Overseer?"
Otto Apocalypse—the source of countless evils in the Honkai world. A large share of that world's problems were directly or indirectly tied to him. Yet in this timeline, he had vanished by some unknown mechanism.
All Su Ming knew was that, in the year they graduated from St. Freya Comprehensive School, Theresa—then the academy headmistress—had hurried back to Schicksal headquarters to assume the role of Overseer.
"Schicksal's previous Overseer, Otto Apocalypse," Ryoma said, delivering a remarkably precise assessment, "was a man of immense drive and ambition. Anyone who met him even once would reach the same conclusion."
He paused, then added thoughtfully, "But as for why he stepped down—there's no confirmed information publicly available. Based on Anti-Entropy's intelligence, there was no internal turmoil in Schicksal during that period—neither at headquarters nor among the branches. It was most likely a smooth transfer of power."
A smooth transfer of power meant Otto almost certainly hadn't died outright. He might even have issued a formal abdication announcement within Schicksal's upper ranks. But where did he go afterward? Otto wouldn't step down just to crawl into some dark corner and hide.
That familiar pattern made Su Ming think of Otto's infamous maneuver—
Charging the Tree.
In the original story, that was exactly what led to Otto's abdication and subsequent disappearance from the world's stage.
Su Ming hadn't seriously considered this possibility before, but if he was going to untangle the world's underlying logic, he couldn't ignore it now.
And that raised the next question: where did Otto's Sea of Quanta technology come from? At that point in history, he had neither the Thousand Worlds One Ride nor the Herrscher of the Void assisting him. How could he possibly have had the technical capability to "charge the Tree"?
Once Su Ming followed Otto's thread, another issue surfaced immediately:
Where did Anti-Entropy come from?
If this truly was a peaceful, everyday timeline, then even if Anti-Entropy currently maintained decent relations with Schicksal under Theresa's administration, it should have been called the Schicksal North America Branch.
If Honkai didn't exist, then the First Herrscher—Welt Joyce—wouldn't exist either. There would be no Honkai fission bomb. The entire incident in which Otto dropped a world-ending explosive on Anti-Entropy to kill Joyce would never happen, which meant Anti-Entropy's historical split from Schicksal wouldn't exist.
And yet Anti-Entropy was sitting there perfectly intact, still led by Welt Yang, with Dr. Einstein and Dr. Tesla in their familiar roles.
If one insisted this was a "slice-of-life timeline" and waved away inconsistencies, maybe it could pass.
But Su Ming was only digging because the System itself had signaled abnormality. He was investigating precisely because he wanted to understand this world. He couldn't just ignore these contradictions.
So annoying. My brain is overloading.
And I originally asked all this to solve Mei's Bond Quest II. How did it unravel into this many problems?
With information threads tangling together, Su Ming—whose intelligence was, self-admittedly, only a 10—knocked on his own head in misery.
I really want to dump all this on Dr. Einstein to think through. Or Dr. MEI. With brains like theirs, their intelligence has to be eighteen and above.
"Sir," Su Ming asked, forcing himself back onto a more practical angle, "do you know anything about Schicksal or Anti-Entropy's spatial technology?"
Mentally exhausted to the point of lifelessness, he could only probe around the topic.
"Years ago, when I followed the Alliance Leader, I did see some related technology," Ryoma said. "But in recent years, I haven't kept up with how it developed…"
Then, seeing how much Su Ming's questions were tied to Anti-Entropy and to the Alliance Leader, he offered a suggestion.
"Since your questions all connect back to Anti-Entropy, why don't I introduce you to the Alliance Leader directly? I already mentioned to him that I intend to choose you as my successor. In about half a month—half a month from now—I'll take you to the North America headquarters for the formal succession ceremony. At that time, you can discuss these questions with the Alliance Leader face to face."
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