Chapter 79: According to Welt's Account, Otto Once Called Him Father
"But in exchange, I can't directly interfere with anything anymore."
Rekka shook his head, his form shimmering faintly under the warm lights of the parlor car. He looked entirely solid, yet there was an ethereal, detached quality to his presence, as if he were merely a projection cast from a higher dimension.
"What does that mean...?" March 7th tilted her head, her pink hair bouncing slightly.
"To put it simply, I am now a living rule. If you don't take the initiative to touch those rules, then my hands are tied," Rekka explained, his gaze sweeping over the gathered crew. "Suppose there is a universal standard. As long as you remain within the allowed parameters of that standard, no matter how chaotic or excessive your actions might be, I cannot directly stop you. As long as you don't cross the absolute bottom line, I am entirely hands-off."
Welt pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, the lenses catching the light. "So, you're essentially a passively triggered cosmic security system now."
"Exactly," Rekka said, floating upward until he was sitting cross-legged in mid-air, entirely defying gravity. "However—just because I can't use direct means doesn't mean I'm out of options. I can still use indirect ones."
"Indirect means?" Dan Heng crossed his arms, his sharp eyes narrowing. "Such as?"
"Well, I could use you as a baseline standard to create a perfect, mirrored opposite of yourself. Someone with identical strength, but a completely inverted personality, and just let you fight your own evil twin. That's the most obvious, heavy-handed method," Rekka listed off casually, ticking a finger in the air. "A less obvious method would be tampering with certain macro-scale variables that you wouldn't even notice until it was too late. For example—I could tip the scales of the Interstellar Peace Corporation's wealth right now, forcibly returning exactly one percent of their total riches to the common people of the galaxy."
For a long moment, the parlor car fell completely silent.
Dan Heng's stoic facade cracked. His lips parted slightly, and his eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated shock.
Returning the Corporation's wealth to the people of the galaxy. It sounded like a simple, almost poetic Robin Hood fantasy. But the Interstellar Peace Corporation controlled the vast, overwhelming majority of resources across the entire cosmos. Just one percent of their total assets was a number so astronomically massive it defied mortal comprehension. It was enough to buy and sell entire star systems.
"You... can actually do that?" Dan Heng asked, his voice unusually tight.
"I can," Rekka smiled faintly. "But not right now. It isn't necessary."
"...Not necessary?"
"Because the IPC's wealth scales have already been tipped before," Rekka stated, his tone carrying a sudden, ancient weight. If the invisible hand of Equilibrium hadn't moved against the Interstellar Peace Corporation in the past, the absolute totality of the galaxy's wealth would already belong exclusively to them by now.
"Then what if someone wanted to destroy the entire galaxy?" Stelle suddenly chimed in, leaning forward on the sofa, her golden eyes practically sparkling with morbid curiosity. "What would happen then?"
"In that extreme scenario, I would have to let the Arbitrators exercise the true power of Equilibrium," Rekka answered calmly. "When an inclination reaches a critical extreme, [Equilibrium] will automatically give rise to an equal and opposing force to counteract it. It wouldn't even be a conscious decision on my part. That is simply how the rules of the universe operate."
Stelle blinked. "So what can you do right now? With such an overpowered state, you must be able to do something fun, right?"
"I'm sorry to disappoint, but I really can't do much of anything. I can only maintain the balance of the galaxy on a macroscopic level. It's a state of absolute power, bound by absolute restrictions."
Unconvinced, Stelle leaned in close and poked Rekka's chest with her index finger.
Her finger phased right through his shirt, hitting absolutely nothing but empty air. Intrigued, Stelle shoved her entire hand straight into his chest cavity, waving it back and forth inside Rekka's virtual torso. She stared intently at the point where her wrist clipped through his clothes, testing the collision mechanics like a gamer trying to break a glitched NPC.
"Wow. I really can't feel anything," Stelle muttered, swiping her hand left and right through his spectral ribs.
"While I'm sitting here chatting with you all, the other half of my consciousness is actually processing a few billion localized issues on the far side of the galaxy," Rekka sighed gently, ignoring the girl currently rummaging through his phantom internal organs. "There are far too many ambiguous problems in this universe. Many conflicts have no absolute right or wrong, only shifting weights on a scale."
March 7th watched Stelle's hand phase in and out of Rekka's chest with a look of utter exasperation.
"Can you stop playing with his ghost-body?" March groaned, rubbing her arms. "It's seriously creeping me out."
"But it's really fun," Stelle protested, poking Rekka's intangible nose twice more before finally, reluctantly, withdrawing her hand. "Alright, alright, I'll stop. Time to get some rest anyway."
Three days later.
"It's been three whole days since I last heard Mr. Yang tell stories from his hometown," Stelle said, rubbing her hands together in anticipation as she plopped down on the plush sofa opposite Welt. "Even though he hasn't been very fond of using his Herrscher powers to project 3D movies for us lately, his stories are still top-tier entertainment."
She leaned forward, eyes shining. "Mr. Yang, Mr. Yang! Tell us more about you and that Overseer of Schicksal!"
Stelle sat perfectly centered on the couch. Dan Heng sat quietly to her left, and March 7th perched eagerly on her right.
In ancient poetry, there was a famous line about a great hunter riding out with a yellow hound on his left and a fierce falcon on his right. Sitting there flanked by her two companions, Stelle looked exactly like a mob boss ready to unleash her enforcers.
(Pop Quiz: In this scenario, who represents the loyal 'yellow hound'?)
A) An actual yellow dog.
B) Teacher Dan Heng.
(Answer: Stelle would, of course, point directly at Dan Heng without a single second of hesitation.)
"Ahem." Welt cleared his throat, adjusting his posture. "Since you all want to hear it so much, I suppose I can continue the story today."
He pushed his glasses up his nose, a brief flash of rationalization crossing his mind.
Look, Rekka wasn't even from his original world. So even if there were... slight discrepancies in his historical retelling, it was completely inevitable, right? After all, parallel universes always had minor differences! Sometimes, alternate histories were perfectly understandable.
"Now, where did I leave off yesterday?" Welt asked, adopting his best wise-mentor tone.
"You were at the part where Otto, the Overseer of Schicksal, disguised himself as a creepy clown-masked guy to backstab you!" March 7th raised her hand enthusiastically. "And then you dodged his sneak attack with a physics-defying, Bollywood-tier sidestep!"
"And you also saved Siegfried, who was standing right next to you and couldn't dodge in time," Stelle added, nodding sagely.
"Ah. Right, right." Welt nodded slowly, his expression perfectly grave.
"Unfortunately, my strength back then still wasn't quite enough. Otherwise, I wouldn't have fallen for his subsequent tricks later on."
Right?
Right.
Embellishing these tiny, insignificant details was completely harmless.
[System Status: Saving_Face_In_Front_Of_The_Juniors.jpg]
Besides, from a narrative standpoint, he couldn't make Otto out to be too weak. The villain needed to be threatening! He couldn't exactly sit here and admit to these bright-eyed youths that he was actually almost killed by a dirty sneak attack back in the day.
Welt shook his head with a heavy, dramatic sigh. Saying the absolute truth out loud would be a devastating blow to his reputation in his twilight years.
Without even realizing it, Welt's thought process had become dangerously inclined toward the Path of Elation.
For a brief, terrifying second, Welt wondered if this was a lingering side effect of Rekka's Elation form from a few days ago. Was Rekka's chaotic energy passively altering his consciousness and thinking patterns? If so, that ability was far too overpowered, far too terrifying, and completely unreasonable!
But no. That wasn't the case at all.
The harsh reality was simply that Welt Yang wanted to look cool.
It had absolutely nothing to do with the power of Elation.
Don't blame Aha for your own ego, Old Yang.
Once you truly understood what kind of person Welt was beneath the mature, stoic exterior, you wouldn't find it strange at all for him to quietly rewrite history to give himself a bit more of the spotlight. He was a mecha-loving nerd at heart, after all.
"Mr. Yang is the best!" Stelle gave him a double thumbs-up.
"Mr. Yang is so amazing!" March 7th clapped her hands, completely entirely bought into the hype.
Welt waved a hand dismissively, his face arranged into a perfect mask of humble modesty. "Please, it's really not worth mentioning."
"By the way, Mr. Yang," Stelle tilted her head, her tone shifting to genuine curiosity. "What actually happened to that Otto guy later? Was he finally brought to justice?"
The question hung in the air. Welt fell completely silent for two full seconds.
"His end..." Welt slowly took off his glasses, pulling a microfiber cloth from his pocket to carefully wipe the lenses. He took his time, letting the silence stretch before sliding the frames back onto his face. "It's quite complicated. He did many terrible, unforgivable things. But... he also truly did a lot for that world. In the end, he fulfilled his ultimate wish in his own twisted way."
Welt leaned back against the plush cushions of the sofa, his gaze distant. "From a purely objective human perspective, he could be considered a pioneer in the fight against the Honkai disaster. But that title does not, and never will, negate the horrific crimes he committed."
The parlor car was quiet, the three Trailblazers absorbing the heavy, subtle weight of their senior's words.
"..."
No.
Internally, Welt's eye was twitching.
That bastard Otto was absolutely disgusting when he was alive, and even after his death, the man had left behind so many lingering shadows and messy plots that Welt still couldn't sleep well on certain nights. Nuance be damned, the man was a menace!
Wait.
An invisible lightbulb suddenly flickered to life above Welt's head.
He was a history teacher. Or at least, he used to be. And historical interpretation was right up his alley.
Of course, as an educator, he would never beautify or whitewash the terrible things Otto had done. He would never cover up the man's atrocities. That would be academically dishonest.
However...
Adding a tiny bit of reasonable speculation to fill in the gaps of the historical record? That was just standard academic practice, wasn't it? If he happened to speculate that Otto was secretly terrified of him, or perhaps even looked up to him in a pathetic, groveling sort of way... well, who was going to fact-check him? Otto was dead.
Welt adjusted his glasses, a very faint, highly uncharacteristic smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he prepared to deliver a heavily revised history lesson.
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