The Twelve Trials Starting from Zero

The man in black still rested his chin on his hands, striking the classic pose of Commander Ikari, and said in a calm but serious tone, "Miss Kiana, Miss Bronya, and Miss Raiden Mei, the end of the world is coming, and humanity needs your strength."

"Huh? But we're just ordinary high school girls."

"No, you are the chosen ones. Only you, who have reached the pinnacle of synchronization with the Honkai, can wield the strongest battle suits secretly developed by our Schicksal, forcibly interfere with the Honkai will, stop the increasingly severe Honkai disaster, and restore peace to the world."

"The strongest battle suit!?"

Kiana's eyes lit up, and she asked excitedly, "What is that? Is it very powerful? Can I defeat a Herrscher by wearing that strongest battle suit?"

"Ha, what a stupid question. As long as you put on our Destiny's secret creation of the strongest idol battle suit, you'll become incredibly cute, making otaku go crazy spending money on you, and pleasing the true supreme god, Nicholas David. At that time, not to mention Herrschers, you can even kill the toilet beasts that are high-dimensional beings."

"Huh? The ultimate idol battle suit? Super cute? Don't you want us to wear it and fight?"

"Don't talk nonsense. You three aren't even B-rank Valkyries yet. How could you possibly be involved in a fight? Anyway, that's how it is. Your mission is to join Schicksal and become idols to protect this wonderful world."

"What does this have to do with idols? I don't understand what you're talking about at all, uncle."

Kiana clutched her head, completely bewildered.

"Sir, please stop joking with us, okay?" Raiden Mei frowned slightly, her displeasure evident. "If we keep wasting time like this, we'll have to go back to class."

Su Qi took off his glasses and sighed softly, "Alas, you really can't understand. I'm telling you the truth about the world."

The emotionless loli Bronya finally spoke calmly: "Bronya doesn't believe there's such an illogical truth about the world as that becoming an idol can fight against the Honkai."

"Alright, since that's the case, I'll just have to change to a topic you can understand."

Su Qi shrugged, looked at the three of them, and said in turn, "Bronya, do you want to see Seele again? Kiana, do you want to find your father Siegfried? And Mei, your father entrusted me to take you to the Schicksal headquarters to prepare for the treatment of your Honkai Erosion Syndrome."

……

Without any suspense, relying on his understanding of the three and his negotiations with the forces behind them, Su Qi easily lured... no, he persuaded them. He successfully convinced them to leave Qianyu Academy with him, head to the Far East Branch, and board the airship bound for the Destiny Headquarters.

The situation has changed drastically. The main reason Su Qi took Kiana and the other two away was not to turn them into combat power, but to prevent others from making a move or to prevent unexpected changes, such as the Herrscher of the End arriving ahead of schedule.

After all, they are still young. No matter how talented they are, without the protagonist's luck in the game, their combat power cannot compare with top Valkyries like Durandal in a short period of time. Therefore, the important matter of eradicating the Honkai, which concerns the survival of human civilization, cannot be entrusted to three young girls.

His real goal was simply to recover the three individuals as valuable experimental subjects to aid Roseril's research. Of course, while they were experimental subjects, they wouldn't engage in cruel human experiments like Otto; it was a mutually beneficial arrangement—treating the abnormalities in the three while obtaining relevant data.

Now that the first goal, integrating human forces, has been completed, Su Qi will not need to intervene much anymore. Therefore, with the Honkai disaster becoming more and more serious, he will naturally do his best to help Roselier advance her research so that she can find and kill Otto as soon as possible and obtain that key.

The following day, on the newly rebuilt floating island of the Destiny Headquarters, in a laboratory that had just been established.

"Hey, sir, really... really nothing's going to go wrong, right?"

Kiana, dressed in loose white clothes, lay on the lab table, her hands and feet restrained by restraints, a hint of unease on her face.

Su Qi, dressed in a white lab coat, stood beside the lab table, looking down at her with confidence, and said, "Don't worry, young lady. I, Su, am known as the Master of Dreams and the Prince of Hearts. I'm a professional at infiltrating other people's consciousness to solve their psychological problems. Also, don't call me 'uncle.' I think 'handsome man' suits me better."

"Okay, sir. No problem, sir. But sir, is the Second Herrscher's consciousness really hidden within me?"

"Of course, we found the experimental files from when Otto experimented on you. But don't worry, her consciousness shouldn't be fully awake yet, and I'll handle this this time. Also, this is for Mei's sake; if she were a Herrscher, she might know how to extract the Herrscher core from a human body."

Upon hearing Mei's name, Kiana's hesitation vanished instantly, replaced by determination and courage. She exclaimed, "Then let's go, Uncle, I'm ready!"

Su Qi nodded slightly, and with a thought, golden feathers appeared from the void, instantly extinguishing the light in Kiana's eyes.

……

A moment later, Su Qi's consciousness appeared in a slightly cramped but cozy wooden house.

He turned his head and looked around. He saw Mei's posters and photos hanging all over the walls. A yellow Houmu doll sat on a chair not far away. A photo of Kiana and Siegfried stood on the table, bathed in a ray of sunlight streaming in from the window.

"The home where Kiana and Siegfried used to live?"

Su Qi looked around for a while but didn't find anything special. He then pushed open the door, walked out of the wooden house, and came outside to a peaceful and serene snow-covered landscape.

With a thought, he flew into the sky and looked down. He saw that the area around the cabin was peaceful, just an ordinary snowy scene in the north. However, in the sky above the deep mountains behind the cabin, dark clouds were gathering, lightning was flashing, and a tower-like building could be faintly seen rising into the clouds, like a scene of the big BOSS descending at the end of the world.

"It's really conspicuous."

With another thought, Su Qi transformed into a streak of light and flew out, instantly crossing the towering ice peaks and treacherous mountain ranges between them, arriving deep in the snowfield, directly below the cloud vortex, in front of a rocket-shaped silver-white tower.

"The site of the Second Great Collapse, the Babylonian Laboratory, huh..."

He looked up at the tower, then went inside. His senses expanded, and he quickly discovered something unusual at the top of the tower.

Snap, snap, snap, snap...

In the desolate and deathly quiet top-floor experimental subject detention area, Su Qi's footsteps, which sounded extremely loud against the backdrop of the environment, arrived at the door of a solitary confinement cell. His gaze pierced through the gaps in the iron bars of the door, and he could vaguely see a petite figure quietly curled up in the shadows of the corner of the room.

Su Qi walked forward, and the steel gate vanished without a trace. He didn't stop, but slowly stepped into the room, walked to a corner, and stopped in front of the huddled figure.

"Mommy...Mommy...Mommy..."

The cool moonlight illuminated the other person's purple rectangle, and a soft, dreamlike murmur drifted over.

Su Qi sighed softly, having basically confirmed that this one was the Second Herrscher Sirin's consciousness transferred into Kiana's body because Otto had experimented on Kiana when she was a child—no, to be precise, on the clone K423 of the real Kiana.

In a sense, whether it's the Second Herrscher Sirin, or the Third Herrscher Mei and the Fourth Herrscher Wendy who should have appeared in the original timeline, they were all victims of human experimentation. But even if Sirin's past was pitiful, it cannot erase the fact that she directly or indirectly killed tens of millions of people during the Second Great Honkai Impact.

Therefore, Su Qi pities her past, but he will not be lenient.

"Second Herrscher, Sirin, it's time to wake up from your dream."

Su Qi stretched out his hand, and the power of Yu Duchen condensed into a light sword in his hand, and then he pierced the air with the sword.

Just before the lightsaber reached her, the intense killing intent finally awakened Sirin's consciousness. Her figure suddenly became ethereal, dodging the attack like a ghost.

"A human!?" Sirin floated in mid-air, her eyes wide with shock and killing intent as she stared at Su Qi. "Why are you here!? Why are you in my consciousness space!"

"Because of Yu Duchen."

"Yu Duchen!?"

She remembered that a human had once used the power of Feather Dust to fool her, which made her even angrier. "You mere ant, how dare you enter my territory? You're courting death!"

Sirin had also stolen the power of Feather Dust, which is why she was able to cause trouble frequently in Kiana's consciousness. In addition, she had the advantage of being on her own, so she was not someone to be easily slaughtered in the consciousness space.

However, when she tried to use her own power to interfere with the consciousness space, she found that everything around her was imprisoned by an even more powerful force, and no matter how hard she tried, it did not budge.

"It's no use. Your territory is mine now, so there's no need to keep struggling."

"How is this possible?! What did you do?"

"That's not important. What's important is whether you know how to extract a Herrscher core from a human body? Also, how much do you know about the so-called 'god'?"

"Hmph, of course I know, but why should I tell you?"

Su Qi raised his sword. "Believe me, even if you don't tell me, I'll find out anyway. If you don't want to suffer too much, you'd better tell me everything you know honestly."

"Dream on! You think I'd be afraid of a mere ant's threat?"

Su Qi sighed softly, "Being a chuunibyou is an illness, it needs to be cured."

With that thought, under the manifestation of Yu Duchen's power, dangerous electric sparks began to crackle on the lightsaber.

……

The flow of time in the consciousness space is different from that in reality. In the blink of an eye, Su Qi ended his friendly exchange with Xilin and returned to reality.

"OK, the treatment is over."

"Huh, is it over just like that?" Kiana blinked, puzzled. "I didn't feel anything at all."

"It is indeed over, and you couldn't have felt the commotion in the consciousness space anyway."

After extracting all the information Sirin possessed, Su Qi swiftly erased her consciousness. Thus, the mighty Second Herrscher, who could have staged a queenly comeback, vanished from the world without a trace.

This is certainly not because Su Qi is now so strong that he can easily annihilate the Second Herrscher; it's just that the latter is in a very poor state, with only a remnant soul left, making it impossible for him to compete on the same stage as the former, who possesses the Feather of the Crossing and whose soul strength is already overpowered.

Roselle, who was standing nearby, asked, "Did you find anything of value?"

Su Qi smiled slightly, "Of course. It seems that the moment one becomes a Herrscher, the Honkai consciousness automatically instills knowledge into the Herrscher on how to manipulate and utilize Honkai energy, so this is a great harvest."

……

A year later, in the Far East, above the ruins of St. Freya Academy, a supersonic transport plane swept across the sky shrouded in rolling dark clouds.

“Su Qi, just half an hour ago, Kiana saw Mei accepting another man’s confession and had a mental breakdown on the spot. She transformed into the Herrscher of the End and easily wiped out the armed suppression forces of the Far East Branch and surrounding cities. Now we can only rely on you.”

Inside the cargo hold of the plane, Su Qi brushed a strand of hair from his forehead and calmly said, "Don't panic. After hellish training, I'm not the same person I was two years ago. For me, who has now become One-Punch Man, there's no problem in this world that can't be solved with one punch. If there is, then two punches will do."

Theresa, sitting opposite her, said with deep concern, "I hope that's really the case."

"Hehe, don't worry, I, Su, never make empty promises."

As they were talking, a voice suddenly sounded in the cargo hold: "Beep, we have arrived at the drop point. Please prepare for attack."

"Okay, that's all for now. Remember to chill me a Sprite. I'm going to save the world, I'll be right back."

Su Qi hung up the call, got up and walked to the hatch. He casually pressed the hatch opening button next to him, and the hatch slowly opened. A cold, gust of wind rushed in from the increasingly wide gap and swirled wildly in the cargo hold.

But he stood proudly with his hands behind his back, dressed in a cool and tailored black combat suit, as steadfast as a mountain, unmoved in the slightest.

Soon, the hatch opened fully, and Su Qi spread his arms and leaped down in a leap of faith. Then, while in mid-air, he performed a series of high-difficulty and cool poses, including aerial spins, knee-tuck somersaults, standing on one leg, roc spreading its wings, a tornado destroying a parking lot, and a crow riding a flying chicken, finally landing perfectly a few minutes later.

boom!!

The ground shattered, dust flew everywhere. In the courtyard of the former St. Freya Academy, he slowly rose in a half-kneeling position, like the Terminator descending, exuding an aura of dominance and murderous intent.

"Are you... my opponent this time?"

Su Qi slowly raised his head and saw a goddess-like figure in mid-air, dressed in a gorgeous purple gown, with wings of light spread behind her and a brilliant halo above her head, looking down at him.

Their gazes collided in mid-air, as if sparks were exploding and scattering.

Su Qi clenched his right fist and sighed with a lonely expression, "An invincible life is too boring. I hope you won't die when I throw this punch."

The Herrscher of the End coldly replied, "Get lost. I have no interest in fighting a bald guy."

"Baldy? What are you talking about? Look at my flowing hair..."

As Su Qi spoke, he reached out and touched his head. The texture was smooth and round like an egg.

His face stiffened, and his body began to tremble.

"How...how is this possible!? I deliberately controlled my exercise, used Bawang anti-hair loss shampoo, listened to beautiful classical music for my hair every night, and went to bed early and woke up early...how could I possibly be bald!?"

Su Qi was filled with despair and disbelief. He touched his head repeatedly, his last shred of hope finally shattered by the cruel reality. He broke down on the spot, hysterical, and roared to the sky under the disdainful gaze of the Herrscher of the End, "No...it...should...not...ah!!!"

The next second, Su Qi, who was lying on the bed, suddenly opened his eyes and woke up from the nightmare.

"Holy crap, my beautiful hair!"

He was startled and immediately reached up to touch his head. Thankfully, his hair was still there, but...

call……