NOVEL NEXT WORLD Chapter 427: The Truth
Previous Era Herrschers were beings purely controlled by Honkai energy.
After their deaths, their Herrscher cores would become inert, losing their consciousness and becoming mere power sources. Fire Moth exploited this, modifying the cores of deceased Herrschers into Divine Keys usable by ordinary humans, weapons wielded by MANTIS soldiers.
However, the black Fenghuang Down was different. It was essentially Ren's Herrscher of a Legion core, though it had taken on the form of a pseudo-Divine Key due to the influence of the Herrscher of Sentience's authority.
As an extension of Sentience's authority, it possessed the active thought processes of the Herrscher of a Legion.
If Ren's guess was correct, this core had undergone some unexpected changes in the past few days.
To verify this, Ren picked up the black feather. Upon inspection, he immediately noticed something was off.
"It's… afraid?" Theoretically, a core, as the source of a Herrscher's power, shouldn't exhibit any aversion. Yet this core, after being separated from Ren for a while, seemed to be developing a rudimentary self-awareness.
As I suspected, it was influenced by Sentience's authority.
Looking at the increasingly dim feather, as if trying to escape his grasp, Ren had his answer.
The Herrscher of a Legion was born from humanity's negative emotions. It inherently contained intense negative attachments. However, while in Ren's possession, these emotions were bound together and channeled through him, due to his authority. The burden fell solely on his shoulders.
Now, separated from Ren, the dormant negative emotions within the core were unleashed. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a major issue. Without external stimuli, the core would simply remain dormant…
Unfortunately, the influence on the core wasn't from just anyone, but from the Herrscher of Sentience.
The formless negative emotions, under the influence of the Herrscher, gradually developed their own consciousness, instinctively mimicking Ren's personality, its master, and learning to conceal its existence.
"…"
Ren hadn't anticipated his own involvement in this. He had merely intended to use the core to help Senti through her nascent stage. He hadn't expected the Honkai to exploit this loophole.
Now that he had confirmed the core's influence, the solution was simple. With a soft hum, he tightened his grip. The protective shell of the black feather shattered like glass.
The beautiful black feather lost its luster, reverting to its original form as the Herrscher of a Legion core. Ren focused his consciousness into a thread, piercing the core and bringing it back under his control.
The faint sense of interference he had felt before now became crystal clear. He finally understood the source of that dissonance.
A weak consciousness resided within the Legion core, and it was this consciousness that had been subtly influencing him.
When the Will of the Honkai created the Herrscher of Sentience, it hadn't anticipated her breaking free from its control, especially not after being influenced by Ren.
Senti had completely escaped the Honkai's grasp. Left with no other option, it had transferred a portion of its energy into the core, using Ren's personality and the Herrscher of a Legion's authority to create this incomplete consciousness.
Understanding the sequence of events, Ren effortlessly erased the imitation consciousness. What he needed wasn't this, but to find the reason for Kiana's change in demeanor.
As he had surmised, for the first part, the black feather had merely served as a Divine Key, helping Senti maintain her charade as Fu Hua.
However, that night in ARC City, he hadn't expected Senti, after receiving the name he had given her, to abandon Fu Hua's identity and discard the Fenghuang Down.
Even more unexpectedly, the feather had fallen into Kiana's hands.
His thoughts turned somber. So, Kiana's nightmare on the plane was also caused by this core?
The rest was history. Unbeknownst to him, Kiana had brought the feather to Taixu Mountain and absorbed its energy when the main Fenghuang Down's power was insufficient.
"…" Ren had assumed that the feather Senti had brought was the cause of Kiana's unconsciousness. He hadn't expected this twist.
It didn't make sense for Senti to be this calculating.
Now it seemed that the Honkai eruption at the airport, while caused by Sentience's energy, was simply a loss of control on Senti's part. The illusion she had created at Taixu Mountain, as she had said, was meant to be a surprise.
No wonder she was so aggrieved when I attacked her.
Ren wasn't unreasonable. While the root cause of the incident was Senti's inability to control her powers, he bore some responsibility. A flicker of guilt sparked within him.
But this was good. It meant it was all a misunderstanding. Senti hadn't truly betrayed him.
After their fight, I should apologize.
Having made his decision, only one question remained: what exactly had Kiana seen in the memory space?
The black Fenghuang Down wasn't a normal Divine Key. What she saw wouldn't have been Fu Hua's memories. The only possibility was his memories, as the Herrscher of a Legion.
"Herrscher of a Legion…"
Through Kiana's perspective, Ren reviewed everything she had experienced in the memory space, from the initial puppets to the burning earth… Memories flooded back, intertwined with the emotions Kiana had felt while witnessing them.
A moment later, he stopped, finally understanding the girl's worry.
"She's worried I'll become… that?"
Honestly, Ren hadn't expected Kiana to see that particular memory. He hadn't expected the consciousness within the black feather to link Kiana to his identity as the Herrscher of a Legion. Like a haphazardly pieced-together collage, it had formed a seemingly coherent memory.
Seeing the girl's tear-stained eyes, a mix of emotions welled up within him.
Ren came from a destroyed world, so that memory was, in a sense, real. But his actual experience hadn't been like that.
Long before arriving in this world, he had encountered Kiana thousands of times. That memory was from a world without Kiana, a past he had experienced elsewhere.
Or rather, it was the fate that awaited him according to the predetermined course of events.
It was the world's blessing and the Imaginary Tree's curse, only…
"You foolish girl… You changed my destiny tens of thousands of years ago."
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I have been thinking for a long time, and now I want to express my gratitude to:
1. Luke The Duke
2. Gursewak Dhaliwal
3. WeissAkumu
4. Ang
5. MaRcEpAn
6. BerialAstral
And my Other member!
From now on, I will upload two chapters every day here. Most of my extra translations will be available on Patreon (R. Arven) for members. I don't want to become some kind of capitalist or anything, but these supporters deserve appreciation because they fund this translation and other fanfiction I work on.
The two-chapter upload is not a limit but a minimum—I will post at least that much daily. The raw source requires some fixing, such as OCR corruption, text meaning adjustments, and other refinements. This takes time, so it's not just a simple copy-and-paste from a chapter dump.
see you tomorrow!