Honkai: Fire Moth Herrschers-Chapter 257: Dr. MEI

It wasn't until they got closer—no, to be precise, until Michael was actually walking on top of "it"—that he realized what he had initially mistaken for elevated aqueducts were actually connecting corridors linking different sectors of the ruined city.

Makes sense, he thought. The lunar surface has no lakes or rivers. What need would there be for aqueducts?

A small, dark pebble lay near his feet. Michael casually nudged it aside with the toe of his boot. Unexpectedly, the "pebble" tumbled twice across the seemingly stone-paved corridor, producing a crisp, familiar clinking sound.

"This is—"

Michael crouched down, pinching the dark object between his fingers. He squinted at it for a moment, then closed his hand around it tightly.

When he opened his palm again, the corroded outer layer of the dark "pebble" had flaked away, revealing a pale yellow, amber-like crystal within.

He materialized a specialized test tube, dropped the crystal inside, and applied a gentle heat. With a faint hissing sound, the crystal melted into a constantly flowing, transparent liquid. However, if one could magnify it countless times, they would see it wasn't liquid at all, but rather active nanobots.

"What is it?" Mei asked, approaching.

"This is... Soulium."

"!"

Similar "stones" were scattered everywhere. Nearly every corner of these ruins was littered with black crystalline fragments, large and small – all Soulium.

"Such a massive amount of Soulium..." Mei mused aloud, baffled. "Why would it be left exposed like this? It's like an open-pit mine, but Soulium is supposed to be artificially manufactured... Unless... unless some immense force scattered it all."

Understanding seemed to dawn on Michael. He first knelt, placing his palm flat on the corridor floor, sending faint tendrils of blue energy seeping downwards.

He frowned suddenly, as if the situation wasn't quite what he'd expected. Then, he quickly ran towards a nearby cluster of ruined buildings and began touching everything, running his hands over surfaces incessantly.

If someone were to edit together just his actions and display them on a large screen, it would be hard to believe he was caressing cold, rough stone ruins and not something... warmer and softer.

After a short while, he opened his eyes, a look of "just as I thought" on his face.

"The stone portions of the buildings have a composition similar to lunar regolith; they were likely built using materials directly sourced from the Moon's surface," he reported. "Certain structures, presumably important defensive installations, have Soulium armor plating of varying thickness embedded within the stone walls. The exposed Soulium we're seeing scattered around now is probably the debris left when those fortified buildings were destroyed."

"Oh?" Elysia let out a soft sound of interest. With a few effortless, graceful leaps, she vaulted over the massive, crumbling wall directly in front of them to examine the other side.

"Wow, Michael! You're right! It's all solid Soulium inside here!" she called back, her voice echoing slightly.

Hearing this, Mei also instinctively reached out, touching the rough stone surface beside her. She couldn't sense the internal structure like Michael, nor could she effortlessly scale the high wall like Elysia to observe its inner layers directly.

Separated by her bulky spacesuit, she couldn't even truly feel the texture of the ancient stone wall.

She remained silent for a moment, then, with sudden boldness, removed her large, heavy helmet visor. Like someone who had been drowning for a long time finally reaching shore, she inhaled deeply, greedily, almost desperately, breathing in the air that had lingered here, trapped in the river of time, for tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years.

"Are you sure that's okay, Mei?" Michael asked, concerned.

"It's... it's fine..." Mei managed, shaking her head slightly.

She casually tossed the heavy visor onto the ground and, without hesitation, began unfastening the cumbersome outer layers of her spacesuit.

Michael understood her sudden rush of emotion. It wasn't simple excitement or exhilaration.

Quite the opposite. This impulsive action stemmed from a weight, an immense, suffocating burden that had been pressing down on her.

A weight that neither Mei, nor Elysia, nor Michael could possibly bear alone.

Moreover, back at the base, as the leader, Mei's every action, every expression, was constantly scrutinized by everyone.

Leaders weren't forbidden from showing negative emotions, of course, but such moments of vulnerability were precious and rare. One slip could shatter morale.

It was precisely this understanding – and perhaps someone else's self-awareness of their own emotional volatility – that had led to Mei becoming the sole, undisputed leader of Fire Moth after the recent restructuring.

Now, finally, here, with no "outsiders" watching, Mei allowed herself a moment. A chance to do something slightly more "reckless," more cathartic than her usual disciplined demeanor permitted. A way to vent the accumulated negative emotions she could never openly display.

She leaned forward, finally pressing herself against the ancient stone wall, letting the warmth from her body, conducted through the thin inner layers of her suit, flow into the cold, lonely stone that had stood silent through countless days and nights.

And, quite unsurprisingly, she sniffled quietly, wiping her nose.

Ten minutes later, Mei, having regained her composure, began meticulously examining the scattered Soulium fragments nearby.

She scrutinized every fracture point on the black crystals, despite the faint, ominous purple veins of residual Honkai Energy marring their surfaces. When a detail was unclear, she leaned in closer, her face mere centimeters away... sometimes so close Michael half-suspected she might try to take a bite out of the Soulium...

He felt compelled to issue a warning: "Mei, maybe be a little careful about the radiation? Honkai Sickness is unpredictable stuff, you know."

"Hm?" Mei shook her head dismissively.

Right, Michael recalled. While Honkai Energy adaptability and resistance were quantifiable metrics, outside of active Fire Moth combat personnel, ordinary people rarely underwent quantitative testing. The testing procedure itself involved significant exposure to Honkai radiation.

So, for most people, these metrics remained qualitative assessments – 'high resistance,' 'low adaptability,' etc. It was no wonder that despite Mei repeatedly assuring them of her high natural resistance, Michael and Elysia still worried about her pushing her limits.

"Let Prometheus handle that kind of close analysis," Michael suggested gently. "If you somehow contracted Honkai Sickness, Kevin would probably actually flay me alive. Besides," he added, trying a different angle, "apart from you, there's really no one else capable of... leading Fire Moth right now."

Mei shook her head again, silencing Michael's nagging with a single, pragmatic sentence: "Given the ambient Honkai Energy concentration within these ruins already, does my proximity to these specific fragments really make much of a difference?"

He had to concede her point. Most regular Fire Moth soldiers were forced into medical retirement after just three to five years of service due to chronic Honkai Sickness, often requiring amputations.

Only a lucky few ever received the rare, life-saving serum treatment. Even someone like SPACY, their leading expert who spent years researching the disease, had lost an arm to it and had required serum treatment twice afterward.

Yet Mei, despite constantly working with Honkai-related materials and phenomena, had never shown any symptoms. It was nothing short of miraculous.

Michael was forced to finally, fully accept what she'd told him before: her inability to become a MANTIS wasn't due to poor Honkai Energy adaptability, but rather a fundamental incompatibility between her cellular structure and the specific ICHOR factors used in the surgery.

Perhaps sensing her previous tone had been a bit too curt, Mei added, softening slightly, "While the portable terminal is convenient, its processing power and memory are ultimately limited. I'd rather save its resources for more critical tasks. Simple observation and preliminary assessment like this... my own eyes are sufficient."

"Oh? If you say that, Mei, you must have made an important discovery!" Elysia suddenly popped up beside them, effortlessly slinging an arm around Mei's shoulders.

Behind her back, hidden from Mei's view, Elysia subtly conjured a delicate crystal flower in her palm, silently working to dilute the ambient Honkai Energy in their immediate vicinity as much as possible.

"Not entirely a discovery," Mei admitted. "More like... deductions based on observation."

"Oh, come on! Discovery, deduction, whatever! Just tell us already!" Elysia urged playfully.

Mei scratched her head slightly, quickly organizing her thoughts: "Firstly, neither of you pays much attention to Fire Moth logistics, so you might not grasp the sheer scale of what this means." She gestured towards the massive ruined wall behind them. "Just the Soulium plating reinforcing this single wall contains enough raw material to manufacture thirty Seventh Divine Keys."

"That extravagant?!" Michael and Elysia exclaimed in unison, clicking their tongues in amazement.

They both remembered Mobius complaining more than once about Commander Phamas's initial reluctance to fully fund the Soulium project back in the early days. Her exact words, dripping with sarcasm, had been something like: "The production cost of a single gram of Soulium is enough to completely re-equip Fifth Squad."

While that was likely a rough, hyperbolic estimate lacking strict financial rigor, if they used it as a basic benchmark:

A standard Fire Moth combat squad back then had consisted of twenty to thirty members. Equipping a new squad of that size required approximately the equivalent of one year's worth of 'Grade A' survival resources for one hundred people.

The Seventh Divine Key, Judgment of Shamash, excluding manufacturing wastage, weighed roughly two kilograms (2000 grams). Therefore, by Mobius's crude metric, one Seventh Divine Key represented the resource cost equivalent to sustaining two hundred thousand people for a year at Grade A levels.

And the armor plating behind this one wall conservatively equaled the mass of thirty Seventh Divine Keys. That translated to the staggering equivalent of sustaining six million people for a year at Grade A resource levels.

Grade A, the 'relatively comfortable' tier, was typically reserved only for the families of high-ranking United Government officials. Its resource allocation was more than three times that of the bare minimum 'Grade D' survival level.

Which meant, converting the cost of just this one wall into basic sustenance, it could feed at least eighteen million people for an entire year at the minimum survival standard!

And walls like this... how many thousands of them existed throughout these sprawling ruins? Even if not every single wall was reinforced with costly Soulium plating... even if only one percent were... the implications were still mind-boggling.

"Exactly," Mei confirmed their silent calculations. "Even if we transported all the Soulium currently stockpiled by Fire Moth across the entire planet to the Moon, it likely still wouldn't be enough to construct a city of this scale, fortified to this degree."

Michael understood Mei's unspoken question immediately— "And why? Why expend such astronomical resources to build a fortified city like this, here, on the Moon?"

Their gazes met silently across the ruins. Michael gave Mei a slight, confirming nod, silently validating her line of reasoning.

"Furthermore," he added, building on her point, "why specifically use Soulium for structural reinforcement? While Soulium is undoubtedly far stronger and tougher than even our most advanced specialized alloy armor plating, using it purely for architectural strength on this scale seems illogical. Weight isn't a primary concern for static defenses like this; they could have achieved similar defensive capabilities simply by using much thicker, heavier layers of conventional alloys. So..."

The three of them arrived at the same inescapable conclusion simultaneously, voicing it almost as one:

"It was meant to block Honkai Energy radiation!"

"Considering the extremely high ambient Honkai energy levels concentrated around this basin," Mei continued, her voice low and serious, sketching out the grim scenario, "my hypothesis is that this... this might have been the final battlefield. The place where the civilization before ours made their last stand against the Herrscher of Finality – the very last Herrscher.

"Imagine," she elaborated, her words painting a vivid, terrible picture, "the arrival of the Herrscher of Finality would unleash an overwhelming wave of Honkai Energy, instantly converting most conventional forces into mindless zombies or worse. So, they built these heavily shielded strongpoints, embedding Soulium armor deep within crucial structures. These fortifications were designed to allow their elite forces to weather that initial, catastrophic radiation surge. Then, once the initial energy wave subsided slightly, they would emerge en masse from these hardened shelters to engage the final enemy."

Mei's description hung heavy in the air, the image stark and chilling. The reference to "the civilization before ours" was now an understood, if unspoken, reality between them.

"In that case," Michael spoke up quickly, breaking the heavy silence before it could fully settle, "we should prioritize exploring buildings confirmed to have Soulium reinforcement. Compared to the others, they were clearly deemed more strategically important." It was the logical next step, and both Mei and Elysia nodded in agreement.

He immediately realized his mistake, however, as both Mei and Elysia turned to look at him expectantly. Right. Heavy lifting and dangerous exploration... guess that falls to the guy, huh?

"..."

Michael silently vaulted back over the massive wall and began rummaging through the pile of rubble on the other side. After several minutes of searching, he found nothing of interest besides more Soulium fragments.

When he climbed back over, he saw Elysia had once again perched herself on the cliff edge, gazing thoughtfully towards the enormous, dark pit dominating the center of the basin. Mei, meanwhile, had activated the Prometheus terminal and was already running complex calculations.

"Hm? I thought we were supposed to be conserving Prometheus's processing power?" Michael teased lightly as he approached Mei.

Her response, however, was utterly serious. "I just considered a possibility. Since Soulium construction was used so extensively here, there should logically be stockpiles reserved for repairs and replacements. At the very least, there ought to be surplus materials left over. After all," she added grimly, "if they were truly preparing for a final confrontation with the Herrscher of Finality here... there would have been little point in planning to transport any leftover Soulium back to Earth afterward."

Makes sense, Michael thought grimly. Either they won, in which case they'd have all the time in the world to salvage later... or they lost, in which case the unused Soulium would be as meaningless to their extinct civilization as unspent money left in a dead man's bank account. Whether it's stored safely or hidden under a mattress makes no difference then.

"Doctor," Prometheus's synthesized voice suddenly emanated from the terminal, "Based on analysis of the lunar ruin schematics derived from your uploaded scans, there is a large, relatively intact structure located approximately five kilometers further along the crater rim from our current position. Based on architectural style and structural integrity readings, it is highly probable that this building served as a large-scale storage warehouse. However, I cannot confirm its contents contain Soulium without direct sensor readings."

Michael followed the projected directional indicator, quickly locating the distant structure Prometheus had identified.

"Well, that's convenient," Mei remarked. "It's located right near the central crater anyway. Saves us a detour. Michael, could you trouble yourself to use your Void abilities? Let's teleport directly there. Further exploration of the peripheral ruins will have to wait until the mass-produced MANTIS units arrive. Our primary objective for this mission is to investigate that central crater."

"Hey! Mei, do you always have to wait until the absolute last second to reveal the actual mission objective?" Michael grumbled good-naturedly, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation. He walked over to the cliff edge and gently tapped Elysia on the shoulder.

"Come on, Ely, time to go!"

Perhaps his voice was too soft, or maybe Elysia was lost deeper in thought than he realized, but she gave absolutely no reaction.

"Hm? Ely? Elysia? Miss... Pink... Elf (Fairy)?"

Still nothing.

Refusing to believe she was that zoned out, Michael leaned closer, putting his mouth right next to her ear. He hesitated for a split second, then his downward glance caught sight of the slight indentation the decorative band around her thigh made against her skin.

A mischievous glint sparked in his eyes, his lips curled into a wicked grin, and he suddenly yelled—

"PINK FATTY!"

---||---

Ten minutes later, before the designated "warehouse."

A spatial rift tore open, and Michael stumbled out first, his ears bright red, looking utterly mortified and on the verge of tears.

The massive warehouse doors were, predictably, sealed shut. Michael first tried pushing them, placing his hands flat against the cold metal. They didn't budge an inch. Recalling the heavy blast doors back at the Fire Moth HQ, he changed tactics.

Wedging his fingers into the thin seam between the two colossal doors, he braced himself and began pulling outwards with immense force.

"GROOOOAN—RUMBLE—"

After untold millennia, a thick layer of fine lunar dust coated the door surfaces. The intense vibrations caused by Michael's efforts sent clouds of it billowing outwards, creating a choking haze.

Showers of small pebbles and debris rained down from the top of the doorframe, pelting Michael's head and shoulders like gritty hail.

By the time he had managed to pry the two door sections – each easily a hundred meters tall and nearly ten meters thick – open just wide enough for two people to walk through side-by-side, he turned around looking like a complete idiot who'd stood outside in a blizzard all night, utterly covered head-to-toe in gray dust.

"Pfft!"

Elysia, Mei, and even the holographic Prometheus projection erupted in simultaneous laughter.

"Phoo—" Michael pursed his lips and blew sharply, sending a small cloud of dust puffing away from his face.

Finally, Elysia, still giggling so hard she nearly doubled over, stepped forward and kindly helped brush the thickest layers of dust off his face and clothes.

Mei watched them from the side, biting her lip to suppress a smile. Prometheus suddenly spoke quietly to her: "Doctor, would you like to take a short break? It is almost time for your scheduled communication uplink with Captain Kevin."

"Oh? How long until the scheduled time?" Mei asked casually.

"Er... There are currently two hours, thirty-two minutes, and fifty-seven seconds remaining until the scheduled communication window."

"..." Mei sighed softly, making a mental note to personally remove the "Kevinesque Dry Wit" subroutine from Prometheus's emotional simulation module as soon as they returned to base. The AI had clearly surpassed its source material in the art of deadpan trolling.

The interior of the warehouse was pitch black. A cool draft flowed out from the relatively narrow gap between the massive doors.

"Urgh!" Michael suddenly clutched his head, stumbling slightly.

"What's wrong?" Elysia, only a step away, immediately steadied him. But Michael just shook his head, waving her off, indicating he was alright.

He had just swept the interior with his Herrscher of Sentience powers. There was nothing inside that could remotely be called 'alive'. Despite expecting this, despite holding no real hope, he had checked anyway. The confirmation still sent a pang through him.

He held out his hand, palm up, and a small, bright flame ignited above it. Then, taking the lead, he stepped cautiously into the darkness.

Elysia linked her arm through his, leaning slightly against him as they walked. "Why not just create lights?" she whispered.

Michael shot her a sideways glance. Honestly, it was only at times like this that he remembered his primary Herrscher core was Reason, not Void, Sentience, Death, Flame, or Thunder... Ugh, what other powers did I even absorb again?

If Elysia could hear his internal monologue, she would undoubtedly cover her mouth to stifle a giggle and remind him of the self-deprecating nickname he'd given himself years ago during a moment of profound weakness – the Herrscher of Nerfs.

While the two in front clung together, Mei followed them inside, holding the Prometheus terminal aloft.

The holographic projection of Prometheus herself emitted a soft, blue luminescence, illuminating a far wider area than the flickering flame in Michael's hand.

Because of this, she was the first to spot the humanoid shadow lurking just inside the doorway—

"Doctor, watch out!"

Being a pure projection, Prometheus, despite her protective instinct, couldn't physically shield Mei.

All she could do was instantly divert maximum power to her illumination function, hoping to clearly reveal the potential threat to Mei. But even as she did, a sliver of doubt crossed her digital mind – Michael and Elysia might be joking around, but the probability of both of them simultaneously relaxing their guard and making such a basic tactical error should be extremely low, shouldn't it?

"It's alright, Prometheus. It's just a mech suit," Michael called back casually from ahead, without even turning around. He hadn't made such a rookie mistake, of course.

The piercing blue light from Prometheus cut through the darkness, revealing Michael was correct. It was indeed just a mech suit, roughly human-sized.

It stood frozen mid-stride, one foot forward, one back, its arms outstretched unevenly before it, as if reaching for something or recoiling in its final moment. It was no wonder Prometheus had initially perceived it as a hostile figure in the gloom.

However, the energy indicator light on its chest and the optical sensors in its 'eyes' were completely dark, covered in the same lifeless, gray dust as everything else. It was clearly inactive, powerless for millennia.

Mei suddenly took two bold steps forward, stopping directly in front of the dusty machine. She reached out, pressing her index, middle, and ring fingers against the mech's chest plate. Then, she applied gentle, steady pressure.

"CRASH!"

The mech, weighing hundreds of kilograms, toppled backward with a deafening clang, crashing heavily onto the warehouse floor. Yet, strangely, its limbs remained locked in the exact same walking/reaching pose it had held while standing.

Mei didn't stop there. She took two more steps, crouching down beside the fallen machine.

"Snap!" Michael finally decided to fulfill his duties as the Herrscher of Reason. With a crisp snap of his fingers, cold, brilliant white light flooded the entire warehouse, banishing every shadow, illuminating the vast space as brightly as day.

Now, in the stark light, Michael and Elysia finally understood Mei's unusual reaction. The humanoid mech wasn't just any ordinary machine.

Although its internal circuitry and control systems were still unknown, its external design... its overall shape, size, and proportions... bore a striking resemblance to a general-purpose humanoid combat frame Mei herself had designed shortly after joining Fire Moth years ago.

While superficial resemblance alone didn't prove anything conclusive, similar mechanical designs often implied shared functional principles.

For example: a strictly humanoid form is rarely the most optimal structure for a purely mechanical combat unit. Designers typically modify the humanoid template significantly to better align with mechanical kinematics and combat efficiency, rather than adhering strictly to biological anatomy.

Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com.

The reason Mei had designed her original model to be so rigorously humanoid, in both shape and scale, was because it was intended from inception for single-pilot operation.

To put it more bluntly, like Tony Stark's suits, it was designed to be worn, directly controlled by a human operator inside... less a 'mech' and more accurately described as advanced powered armor.

And Mei had every reason to suspect, looking at the fallen machine before them now, that this ancient precursor followed the same design philosophy...

Which meant...

Mei clenched her fists, her expression hardening with resolve. Without hesitation, her fingers moved with practiced familiarity, finding the external emergency release latch on the mech's chest plate.

"TSSSSSHHH—CLANG!"

With a sharp, ear-splitting hiss of escaping pressure and a loud metallic clang, the mech's armored faceplate violently ejected outwards. It shot past Mei's head, skimming her cheek so closely it actually sliced off a few stray strands of hair near her temple. This mechanism is different, more forceful than mine, the thought registered fleetingly in Mei's mind.

"Clunk—Clunk—"

Two more dull, heavy sounds followed as internal locks disengaged, and the mech's limbs suddenly went limp, slumping lifelessly on the floor.

"Well?" Michael asked, though he already knew the answer.

Beneath the ejected faceplate... there was nothing. Empty space. The void left behind induced a strange, poignant sense of sorrow, especially for Mei. She had seen the mech's final, frozen posture and had perhaps subconsciously hoped, against all logic, to find someone still inside.

No, she corrected herself mentally—of course someone had been inside. How else could it have assumed that final, desperate pose?

It was just that... tens of thousands of years had passed. And unlike the vacuum outside, there was oxygen within this sealed warehouse. The pilot's body had long since decomposed, returning to dust, leaving absolutely no trace behind.

This outcome was entirely predictable, of course. Mei wasn't grieving for the inevitable decay.

Her thoughts were simpler, colder, yet resonant with empathy— What a pity. They died unknown, unheard. And after death, they remain so. Will we...?

Her sadness was merely a kindred sorrow, an empathy born of shared potential fate. The fox grieving for the death of the hare.

However, from Michael's unique perspective, empowered (or perhaps cursed) by the Herrscher of Sentience, he witnessed something far more horrifying:

Over hundreds of thousands of years, the physical body had long since turned to dust. Within the Sea of Consciousness associated with this suit, all memories, all traces of identity, had been utterly eroded away, leaving only a terrifying, echoing void.

Yet, permeating that void, thick and suffocating, was the raw, undiluted agony, despair, and unyielding defiance of the pilot's final moments—

That was the source of the sharp pain Michael had felt upon entering the warehouse. His own Sentience powers felt like a tiny rowboat tossed on a tempestuous ocean before this ancient, concentrated wave of despair, threatening to capsize him at any moment.

"Hey! Cheer up, you two!" Elysia suddenly chirped, forcing a bright smile, though her eyes remained slightly narrowed. "Finding nothing is definitely better than having a creepy skeleton suddenly pop out and scare us all, right?" She offered a weak, slightly off-key attempt at a joke.

With her intelligence, Elysia had surely reached the same conclusions as Mei, perhaps just a fraction of a second slower. (Honestly, just a tiny fraction!)

But the heavy silence was becoming unbearable. Someone had to try and lighten the mood, right?

Yet, no one laughed. Not even a strained, awkward, or pitying chuckle.

Elysia opened her eyes fully, puzzled by the lack of response. She saw Mei, Michael, and even the holographic Prometheus completely ignoring the mountains of equipment and potentially priceless Soulium stockpiled deeper within the warehouse. Their gazes were all fixated on something near where the mech had fallen.

A small, unassuming glass stele, a rectangular plaque standing upright on the floor.

It wasn't large, maybe the size of four adult hands placed together. After Michael gently blew away the thick layer of accumulated dust, they could see its surface was densely engraved with intricate, unfamiliar characters.

Mei and Michael exchanged a look. He nodded grimly. With a wave of his hand, Michael materialized a complex array of sophisticated scanning and analysis equipment.

Mei connected the Prometheus terminal to Michael's newly created devices. Meanwhile, Michael carefully approached the glass stele and used a fine tool to scrape off a minuscule sample – thankfully, the vibration from the falling mech hadn't shattered the ancient artifact.

In less than a minute, Prometheus delivered the dating results—

"Sample analysis indicates this glass stele was manufactured approximately two hundred and fifty thousand years ago."

"Can you decipher the inscription?" Michael asked immediately.

He couldn't believe the previous occupants would leave an inscribed monument here for no reason. It had to contain crucial information – perhaps even details about the Herrscher of Finality's powers, secrets his own fragmented future knowledge hadn't yet revealed?

Though, a part of him knew that was unlikely. If humanity had truly faced the Final Herrscher and managed to ascertain its abilities, they likely wouldn't have had the time or opportunity to calmly carve inscriptions afterward.

"I cannot guarantee full accuracy without comprehensive linguistic analysis," Prometheus replied cautiously. "However, theoretically, as long as the language originates from Homo sapiens sapiens developmental lines, I should be able to achieve a partial or approximate translation through comparative analysis with known linguistic databases."

This was exactly what Mei had been waiting for. She used a handheld scanner to capture high-resolution images of the entire inscription, uploading the data directly to Prometheus. Then, she stepped back, waiting patiently for the AI to work its magic.

"Something's wrong," Mei murmured, frowning deeply.

"What is it?" Michael asked. He too felt an instinctive sense of unease, something fundamentally discordant, though he couldn't quite pinpoint it.

He glanced at Elysia; she wore a similar expression of faint confusion.

Mei pushed her glasses up her nose, hesitating slightly before voicing her concern: "Two hundred and fifty thousand years ago... Modern archaeology has found traces of hominids dating back that far, but as you both know, those were largely proto-human species like Homo erectus or Neanderthals. Our direct ancestors, Homo sapiens sapiens – anatomically modern humans – are generally believed to have only emerged and begun migrating out of Africa around one hundred thousand years ago. Let me put it another way... If a human civilization capable of confronting the Herrscher of Finality existed on Earth a quarter of a million years ago, why is there absolutely no corresponding archaeological evidence?"

"Hmm? Maybe these ruins were built by Moon people after all?" Elysia quipped, trying once more to inject some levity.

But Mei, trapped in her hyper-rational analysis mode, didn't even register the joking tone. "Impossible," she countered automatically. "If an advanced civilization had originated on the Moon, it's highly unlikely this would be their only major settlement... Granted, our exploration of the Moon is far from complete. But more importantly, this site shows no evidence of large-scale agriculture or sustainable food production. It couldn't have supported a self-sufficient civilization..."

Her words tumbled out faster and faster, her mind racing through logical contradictions, until Prometheus thankfully interrupted her—

"Doctor, the preliminary decryption of the inscription is complete."

The AI's synthesized voice sounded... hesitant? Strange, almost uncertain. The three of them frowned simultaneously, their unease deepening – but not because of Prometheus's odd tone.

The entire decryption process had taken less than a single minute. What did that imply?

It meant the language inscribed on the ancient stele was extremely similar to the languages they currently used.

It clearly originated from the same linguistic root – that of Homo sapiens sapiens.

But modern humans only left Africa 100,000 years ago! How could this possibly be???

However, as the translated text began scrolling onto the projected display... Mei's pupils contracted violently. It wasn't really an 'inscription' in the monumental sense. It read more like the final, hastily written page of a diary. Or perhaps... a last will and testament. And in that instant, all the baffling contradictions suddenly, chillingly, resolved themselves—

To you who come after, greetings.

By the time you read this inscription, our era has surely long since ended.

Yet, I am still glad—if someone truly can read these words, then it means, at the very least, the traces of our existence have not completely vanished. The flame of human civilization has ultimately not been extinguished.

But simultaneously, this also likely means that your civilization now faces circumstances similar to our own, doesn't it?

A small piece of advice for you: the final Herrscher, the Herrscher of Finality, will appear shortly after the Twelfth Herrscher is defeated. Its point of arrival is fixed. Yes, I'm certain you've seen the large crater just outside.

Alright, Προμηθε... ah, that is, my artificial intelligence partner, she is urging me again to keep this brief. After all, with the Honkai Energy concentration reaching this level, the battle should be starting any moment now. We don't have much time left.

I hope Kevin and the others achieve victory. Though, if they do succeed, I'll definitely destroy this inscription before they return, hehe.

-- Dr. MEI