T/N: There are some spoilers regarding the Amphoreus Questline; if you have not completed it, it may be a spoiler to you.
-------------------------
After receiving Xia Wen's message.
Aglaea and the others felt a little more at ease.
Now, the only thing they needed to consider was properly portraying Amphoreus under MiHoYo's arrangements.
....
Over the next few days everything was normal.
And Xia Wen continued preparing the content for Amphoreus.
The PV and OP: Nameless Faces had already opened the doors of Amphoreus to the audience.
Next, he needed to connect Amphoreus to the Star Rail universe.
Otherwise, the progress of Amphoreus would be missing many things.
Thus, the Mechanical Emperor War came into being. As the second large-scale universal event after the Swarm Disaster.
This time, Xia Wen decided to present it to the audience in an even more explosive way.
He compressed the entire Mechanical Emperor War, the Second Mechanical Emperor War, and the causes into a single massive narrative.
These universe-spanning events were not only meant to educate the audience about more factions and deeper secrets.
They also contained things closely related to Amphoreus. Nous calculated three Instants.
They were the "Borderstar Trade War."
The second instant, "The First Mechanical Emperor's Wars."
And finally the third instant, "fall of Rubert I."
And the story of Amphoreus was another Instant calculated by Nous.
If one did not understand the previous three, then the sense of loss and those complex emotions at the end of Amphoreus would be missing many layers of emotion.
Of course, this story also contained many elements that could excite the audience.
Just like that, a Myriad Celestia Trailer titled [Burning Cosmos: Gold and Gears] was quietly uploaded to the MiHoYo official website.
The fans, who were already unusually active for some reason, instantly gathered under this video.
...
: What did I just discover? A new Myriad Celestia Trailer?!
: Holy shit, this week is basically New Year. A PV, OP: Nameless Faces, and now a Myriad Celestia Trailer! This is way too satisfying!
: The scale of Amphoreus is way too luxurious, isn't it?!
: What do you mean another universe-level event after the Swarm Disaster?!
: I'm getting more and more excited!
: Damn, the Swarm Disaster involved a ton of Aeons!
: Burning Cosmos: Gold and Gears? Just the name alone is terrifying!
: Will it be connected to Amphoreus?
...
The excited audience clicked on the video one after another.
After the familiar MiHoYo logo passed by. What appeared on screen was a dazzling, multicolored galaxy.
Countless stars emitted light in the darkness.
The camera locked onto one of them, then rapidly zoomed in.
First the atmosphere, then the oceans, and finally vast stretches of steel trash on the land.
Huge amounts of trash were piled into mountains. Even through the screen, the audience seemed able to smell the stench.
And in the most inconspicuous corner of the garbage. A battered computer was flickering continuously.
Because the screen was damaged, it was completely distorted. Only when it flickered occasionally could one see what was displayed.
Lines upon lines of code flashing and iterating at high speed.
This computer carried out endless calculations and iterations in the landfill. No one knew what it was calculating.
The brand of this computer perhaps had sufficient backup energy, allowing it to continue operating even after being discarded.
If nothing unexpected happened. After some time, this computer would completely fall silent once its energy was exhausted.
However, a miracle appeared.
After a certain calculation, it seemed to have once again encountered a fatal error in it's logic.
Within the flickering distorted screen, the blue code began to turn crimson.
No one knew what kind of self-operating logic existed inside the computer. In any case, it began trying to repair this error.
No one knew how much time passed. The red code began to return to normal.
But the flashing characters suddenly changed, becoming a line of self-questioning.
!@#ERROR#¥% INSUFFICIENT ENERGY# !! SEARCH#¥
It had given birth to self-awareness!
A miracle! A scrapped computer in a waste landfill had actually nurtured a new intelligent mechanical lifeform.
Although this newborn faced a hellish start the moment it was born. Energy depletion, equipment aging.
But as an instinct of life, it still continued its desperate calculations in pursuit of survival.
The first thing it did was to examine itself.
Model, body, capabilities. Everything that could be used for self-rescue was put to use.
And give itself a name: Rubert.
This computer seemed to be a mainframe, possessing the ability to emit electromagnetic signals and control other devices.
Thus, over a long period of time. Centered on itself, it began to release extremely weak electromagnetic signals.
Within this massive mountain of garbage, aside from the computer itself, there were naturally countless machine remnants.
These wrecks were in every crevice of the mountain. Whether due to geological activity or some collapse.
There would always be some machine remains that fell near Rubert, influenced by his electromagnetic signals.
And so. This life, imprisoned within its body, finally obtained a body it could move.
The mechanical arms on those machines that were still functional were like ants, dragging useful parts to its side.
Using these parts, it carefully assembled and created the first crude, mobile individual.
A robot entirely made of discarded wheel hubs, metal pipes, mechanical components, and several other parts, looking like a patchwork factory product.
This messenger became Rubert's first hand extended into this world.
When the audience saw this. They did not quite understand why a story about the Mechanical Emperor's Wars would begin by showing them an abandoned computer's wilderness survival.
But still. This kind of from-nothing-to-something mechanical version of wilderness survival was surprisingly captivating to watch.
After having the first robot. The computer first had it search for more parts, then created the second, the third, and increasingly more units.
They came in different shapes, completely resembling assembled scrap machines.
But their functions were quite complete and highly complementary.
There were climbing robots capable of rapidly scaling garbage mountains to search for resources. There were also machines capable of digging tunnels. These robots had only one purpose, and that was to pick up more useful trash for the main brain, the computer.
Starting with a single computer, all equipment depended on scavenging.
Unknowingly, this once-neglected landfill began to fill with mechanical vitality.
Relying on the garbage they scavenged. For the first time, it pieced together a complete production line.
One dedicated to manufacturing components that could enhance its own computing power.
With stronger components and greater processing capacity, it began constructing industrial assembly lines.
Eventually. A miniature mechanical ecosystem, centered on the computer, began spreading across the entire place, quietly took shape within the landfill.
It was no longer satisfied with merely controlling mindless machines.
Instead, it attempted to connect with those more complete intelligent devices in the junkyard that were in a dormant state.
Aging servers, abandoned communication base stations, even discarded domestic robots and other machines, all of them had their low-level code infiltrated by the computer, becoming part of its own neural network.
And every assimilated node became both an organ through which the computer perceived the outside world and a unit that expanded its computing power.
From the repaired mechanical network, it began to hear cosmic radio waves and see images transmitted here through signals.
The universe.
The cosmos.
Humanity.
One vivid and detailed world after another unfolded before it, far richer than the data previously stored in its own systems.
This world contained not only beautiful, kind, and righteous things and stories. It also contained negativity and malice. The computer rejected none of it.
It was, after all, merely a computer that had gained self-awareness. At the moment of its birth, the only thing it wanted was to survive.
Knowledge should be knowledge. Any discovery of the unknown was also a form of knowledge.
....
Time in the landfill passed in the blink of an eye.
The mechanical army under the computer's command grew larger and larger. Powerful assembly-lines helped it melt down any material it could see and recast it into robots of more perfect and stronger forms.
And its body, too, was transferred from that damaged computer into a massive robot equipped with the best computing core it could currently find.
Mechanical bodies became increasingly advanced.
From the initial patchwork machines, to intelligent constructs modeled after humans, to heavy units created specifically for more efficient garbage excavation.
Relying solely on scavenging trash, the computer had turned itself into something of a self-sufficient!
Once the survival crisis disappeared, it began researching and refining all the knowledge and data it had touched.
At this point. The story of a computer that had given birth to self-life and become the boss of the landfill seemed to have reached its end.
This mechanical farming story was, frankly, quite satisfying to watch.
But the audience couldn't understand why the beginning of the Myriad Celestia Trailer was such a story.
As if anticipating their confusion. The camera froze on a mechanical signal tower in the landfill, one that closely resembled the Nous-like form of the Aeon of Erudition.
A line of text appeared beside the computer's room.
[Emperor Rubert, Genius Society #27.]
No narration. Just a single short line.
Yet it made the audience feel a surge of blood rush straight from their feet to their heads.
Only then did they realize that computer happily picking up trash in the landfill, was actually Emperor Rubert!!?
....
: Holy shit! The Emperor?!
: What the hell?! That computer is Rubert?!
: So this is what Genius Society Seat 27 looked like?!
: Damn it, so he had a past like this?!
: I can't imagine Rubert being this trash computer!
: Same here! I remember seeing on the official site that Rubert was once the creator of a disaster on the scale of the Disaster Swarm, and this is how it starts?!
: Are you kidding me?! This is insane!
: This is basically "starting with nothing," isn't it?!
: Is the Emperor really this inspirational?!
....
The audience was completely dumbfounded.
They hadn't expected Myriad Celestia Trailer to open with something this explosive.
At the same time, even more questions surfaced in their minds.
The history of the Honkai: Star Rail universe had rarely been shown in the main story.
Most of it was only briefly mentioned in official materials and background documents.
Regarding Rubert, this genius society member, the audience only knew that he was a computer who once started a war involving the entire universe and was a member of the Genius Society.
But his exact origins were largely unknown. And now, with Amphoreus about to be unveiled, MiHoYo had released a Myriad Celestia Trailer centered on Rubert?
No matter how hard they thought, the audience couldn't figure out what a world based on Greek culture like Amphoreus had to do with Rubert.
But they understood one thing. That earlier text was a reminder that what followed would be Rubert's entire life story.
At least for now, this computer was not yet truly an Emperor, just an ordinary computing machine.
The audience continued watching.
On screen. Rubert was still thinking.
And in the process of thinking.
He created new intelligent mechanical life.
Logical life capable of thinking like humans.
Then, when his mechanical network spread across the entire planet, a signal wave began transmitting into the universe.
"I am Rubert.
All unclaimed machines are extensions of my limbs.
All flowing data are the tendrils of my thought!"
When information about Rubert was observed for the first time. The world was shaken to its core.
Until one day.
Nous cast its gaze upon that planet. A new member of the Genius Society appeared.
His name was Rubert. Seat #: 27.
No one could have imagined that this rise, from the most insignificant beginnings, founded on cold logic and mechanical bodies, was merely the opening chapter of the "Burning Cosmos: Gold and Gears."
After Rubert became a Genius society member in the depths of the universe.
A burst of laughter echoed. For reasons unknown, Aha laughed once more.
And the Arbiter of Equilibrium suddenly became active as well.
On screen. The scenes involving Elation and Equilibrium were presented in abstract forms befitting the dignity of Aeons.
Such as Aha's laughter. And perfectly symmetrical constellations.
The moment the audience saw these images, they immediately thought of the two Aeons.
This Myriad Celestia Trailer was no longer hiding anything.
It was a clear implication. At the moment Rubert became a Genius, the board had already been set.
Was this another scheme like the one against Tayzzyronth?
Or a chaotic clash between both sides? The audience's minds began to tremble.
And they finally understood why the trailer name was called [Burning Cosmos: Gold and Gears].