After regaining consciousness inside 'Yae Village', Aaron glanced at Bronya, who was wearing a kimono, and Yae Sakura, who had lost her donkey ears, before immediately shifting his gaze to himself.
Unlike the two who had been forced into a cosplay session, Aaron was still wearing the simple clothes he had secretly changed into after leaving the sight of the Schicksal Valkyries.
Aside from the black cloak draped over him, his attire looked completely modern no matter how you looked at it.
Precisely because of this, Bronya, who was standing beside him, felt a sense of wariness toward Aaron due to his mismatched style.
Although Bronya was well aware that she had been captured by an enemy and brought to this place—which wasn't the real world—that didn't mean someone in the same situation was necessarily an ally.
Even though that woman no longer had donkey ears, she looked exactly like the Herrscher Bronya had encountered before being pulled into this world.
And that man... his clothes hadn't been forcibly changed. From that point alone, his situation might not be the same as Bronya's.
Moreover, his presence here meant he was likely one of the people active in Nagazora City.
How many normal people could still be remaining in Nagazora City and moving around freely?
When Bronya previously discovered Schicksal Valkyries searching for something in Nagazora City, she had suspected there were other survivors.
Now, this man's appearance confirmed Bronya's hypothesis.
However, combined with the faint sense of oppression radiating from him, Bronya felt that showing even a shred of contempt for this man would be an insult to her own intelligence.
She had to be careful. Absolutely careful.
Otherwise... Bronya had a feeling something bad would happen.
On the other side, Aaron looked at the bewildered Yae Sakura and Bronya, who was eyeing him warily, and decided to ignore them for now.
After being forcibly pulled into this consciousness space by Higokumaru, Aaron could feel that his body was still connected to his consciousness.
Although in this state he couldn't expect to control his body to fight and kill as usual, he could at least confirm that this situation wasn't a total disaster.
Looking back at his current state:
Since he was in a consciousness space, his power was suppressed. Abilities like his bloodline, Whale-Slaying Tyrant Fist, and Pure Eye were temporarily unusable.
At the same time, however, Aaron could feel that he still maintained an absolute connection with 'a certain existence'.
Added to the fact that his clothes hadn't been replaced, it seemed that while Higokumaru had pulled his consciousness into a special space, it couldn't completely toy with his body and mind the way it had with Theresa.
Right, controlling a body through Stigmata and trying to control a body by directly releasing Authorities were two completely different things.
I can't be bothered to care what Yae Sakura is thinking... but why is that little girl looking at me like that?
Making it look like I'm the one who abducted you here.
After assessing the situation, Aaron glanced at Bronya again and spoke.
"What are you staring at?"
"..."
Bronya had imagined many things he might say, but she hadn't expected an attitude that suggested he had no intention of communicating with her at all.
To be honest, this man's attitude instantly annoyed Bronya, whose emotions had returned to a normal state.
But remembering that she had lost ninety percent of her power and Project Bunny 19C wasn't with her, the rational Bronya suppressed her irritation.
"Ah, forget it. I didn't come here for you two anyway."
Ignoring Yae Sakura's hesitant expression, Aaron walked out of the room.
He immediately saw a group of villagers staring at him with unkind expressions.
"Lady Shrine Maiden! You actually brought a strange wild man and a Raksha brat back to our village?"
"Lord God, this was not our intention. Please, do not send down your punishment upon us..."
"What are you standing there for? Drive these two outsiders out!"
Upon seeing the three of them, the villagers immediately split into two groups.
One group began berating Yae Sakura, who still hadn't grasped the situation.
The other group approached Aaron with hostile looks, ready to get physical with him and Bronya behind him.
"Ah, so annoying."
Ignoring the villagers, Aaron looked at a middle-aged man among them.
To be fair, for ancient villagers who knew nothing of meteorology, worshipping a god to solve a drought wasn't a strange phenomenon in the Far East.
Although it seemed idiotic from a modern perspective, such idiocy was everywhere in the past. If this were a real situation, Aaron might have considered reasoning with them first.
But right now, these villagers weren't real people. If they weren't real—why should Aaron care about their feelings?
He actually wanted to test how much combat power he had left after having a portion of his strength stripped by Higokumaru.
"Ah, you guys are annoying... Forget it. Since none of you are real, I can't be bothered to waste time."
Concentrating that power into his fist, Aaron punched directly at the ceiling.
Under his precise control, aside from Yae Sakura and Bronya behind him, the wooden house he was in and the restless villagers were blown away by the wind pressure of Aaron's punch.
Following several seconds of freefall, before Bronya and Yae Sakura could even react, they saw the mangled corpses of the villagers crash heavily from the debris-filled air onto the ground.
"You... What are you doing!"
Although Yae Sakura resented her father, the Head Priest Yae, for causing her sister's death, and didn't have much goodwill toward the villagers who indirectly caused it, these people were still her family and neighbors!
Seeing someone kill them all in a single strike, Yae Sakura immediately...
Felt that this scene was too wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong...
Everyone should already be dead!
Back then, because of my incompetence, I caused their deaths!
So what exactly is this scene?
Because the shock of the scene was too great, it actually stimulated Yae Sakura to recall parts of the memories Higokumaru had sealed away.
On the other side, Bronya watched all this coldly, not screaming like an ordinary little girl.
On one hand, as a former child soldier assassin, Bronya had taken lives with her own hands more than once.
A girl with such experiences wouldn't scream just because corpses appeared before her—even if their deaths were gruesome.
On the other hand, she hadn't lost her memories from before the two entered.
Before they came in, she had already beaten these people until they couldn't move.
Then, after seeing a giant demon fox, she suddenly returned to that room, and these people spoke those words as if they had never seen her.
Combining this with Bronya's experience as a gamer, she concluded she had entered a loop state.
This kind of scene wasn't rare in games. Famous works like *Steins;Gate* had such tropes, and even more niche titles like *3Days: A Life Given to the O-side of Time* featured such plots.
So, in this situation, using brute force to clear the stage was actually quite normal.
Although Bronya didn't agree with killing people straight away, she couldn't control the man's actions. In this moment...
Stepping back unobtrusively, Bronya looked at Aaron with even greater vigilance.
Thinking carefully, Bronya had just met this terrifying guy. After all, he could instantly kill people who just said a few harsh words to him... Bronya absolutely had to stay away from him!
Completely unaware that he had been labeled as something strange by a certain little girl, Aaron walked up to a 'corpse' and stared at it with an unkind expression.
"Huh? Still playing dead? You think I don't know what you're planning?"
Stomping heavily on 'Head Priest Yae's' face, Aaron ground his heel into it while speaking irritably to the 'corpse'.
"Didn't you pull me in here to fight? If you want to fight, why are you dragging your feet?"
"You don't really think you can restrain me, or use this fake illusion to guilt-trip me, do you?"
"You bastard...!"
At this moment, 'Head Priest Yae', who should have been dead, suddenly opened his eyes viciously and vanished completely before the trio's eyes.
At the same time, all the 'corpses' before them turned into an invisible force, gathering toward a single direction.
After pulling Aaron into this world, the first thing Higokumaru did was check this guy's memories.
According to its standard routine, it should have used the created illusion to trap the man and stall for time, then, after viewing his memories, find his weakness and target it.
But Higokumaru had only just started looking at the memories based on what this guy had been thinking recently!
Before coming here, this man named Aaron had fought a Schicksal Valkyrie and won... Wait, that Schicksal Valkyrie used a Divine Key?
No, she used a Divine Key and was still easily suppressed by this man? Have the Honkai warriors of the Current Era degraded to this level?
And what's this 'Master Otto is inexplicable'? Who is Master Otto again?
Following this keyword, Higokumaru became more alarmed the more it read.
Otto Apocalypse, the Schicksal Overseer who has lived for over five hundred years.
This man is despicable and shameless, with no bottom line. When a Herrscher attacked, and someone was helping fight the Herrscher, he backstabbed them to interrupt their attack and helped the Herrscher escape... Ah, isn't Schicksal an organization that fights the Honkai?
Is it really okay for your boss to commit such treason?
Of course, that wasn't the main point. As Higokumaru continued reading, it realized this person was truly terrifying.
Back then, when his attempt to recruit the Herrscher of Reason failed and he found out the Herrscher of Reason was 'the man he couldn't have', he got slapped in the face by the Herrscher of Reason.
As a result, Otto immediately flew into a rage and used Honkai Fission Bombs, planning to force the Herrscher of Reason to defend. If the Herrscher of Reason didn't act, that Honkai Fission Bomb would send an entire city's population to the afterlife.
Excuse me? The Herrscher is protecting humanity, and the leader of the anti-Honkai organization is using moral blackmail to force the Herrscher to block a bomb????
Is it really okay for this era's anti-Honkai organization to have this kind of person as a boss?
Reading further, at the end of the Second Honkai Eruption, the Herrscher of the Void lost to a man named Siegfried.
Siegfried is Otto's subordinate. I need to be careful... Wait, what is this?
Looking at the memories in Aaron's brain, Higokumaru felt its brain short-circuiting.
After the Herrscher of the Void was defeated, logically speaking, Schicksal, having paid a huge sacrifice, had finally defended its home. This should have been a good thing for Schicksal.
But this man named Otto, after his subordinates won the war, his first reaction was 'Subordinates are hard to control, might as well bomb them to death'???
Damn it, damn it, damn it! Have some humanity!
Is this something a normal person could come up with?
The result of this bombing was that the subordinate he wanted to eliminate, Siegfried, didn't die, but the other, easier-to-control subordinate, Cecilia, did.
And this Honkai Fission Bomb made Siegfried completely lose faith in Schicksal.
Great, now Otto didn't need to worry about subordinates being hard to control.
Of his two strongest subordinates, one died and one was heavily injured. The heavily injured one then defected... I mean, what exactly was he trying to achieve?
Incomprehensible.
Completely incomprehensible.
Of course, these weren't the main points.
Through these events, Higokumaru knew Otto was definitely not a good person. If it had no connection to him, it wouldn't be a big deal.
The problem was, at the end, after Higokumaru finished viewing Aaron's memory regarding Otto, it discovered the thing that made it feel most screwed.
Otto was Kallen Kaslana's fiancé, and everything this man did was to resurrect the woman he loved deeply.
And Kallen Kaslana... Wasn't that the white-haired girl who beat it with a cross back then?
In that battle, Higokumaru had injured Kallen.
And if Otto would use Honkai Fission Bombs on his loyal subordinates at the drop of a hat, what if he found out what it did back then...
Didn't this mean that as long as that guy knew I was still alive, I would definitely be sliced into a thousand pieces by him???