Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

To the outside world, Academy City was shrouded in a veil of mystery. This was despite the best efforts of its residents, many of whom tried to share what life was like on the inside, insisting that their home wasn't nearly as strange as the rumors claimed.

For example, the tales of human experimentation were complete nonsense! Nobody had ever seen anything like that! It was just that a few people had developed some mental issues due to experiments gone wrong.

Even the shady dealings of Heliopolis Life Sciences Pharmaceutical had become far less frequent. It wasn't because Academy City's police force had grown stronger, but because the widespread adoption of Stigma-powered armor and a new level of personal surveillance had forced them to clean up their act.

Heliopolis Life Sciences no longer had the freedom to act as recklessly as it once did; one wrong move and they could be exposed at any moment. As a result, the corporation was now working more closely with Academy City's various research institutes, gaining legitimate research permissions in the process.

All these conflicts were resolved with the popularization of new technology. An uninformed observer might have thought Her Highness, the Crown Princess, had put in a monumental effort to make it all happen.

But even with the dark cloud of human experimentation rumors hanging over it, countless people were still trying to get into Academy City. The reasons were simple.

First, many of the Far East's upper class had sent their own children there. If these elites were willing to entrust their kids to the city, how bad could it really be? Not bad at all, surely!

Second, details about Academy City's reconstruction plans had been leaked, including information on its medical care and social security systems. While anything related to Stigma was intentionally obscured by data filters online, information about its social welfare system was fair game.

That alone was enough to make the common folk of the Far East green with envy. If it weren't for the economic investment Academy City was pouring into the surrounding areas, the public would probably be marching in the streets, demanding to be incorporated into the city's territory.

In the eyes of the outside world, Academy City was currently seen as a place of high risk, but also high reward.

This was incredibly appealing to those who had nothing to lose and no one to tie them down. If they had no attachments, why not try their luck in a better place?

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"What do you think those people in Academy City are after?"

At the Far East police headquarters, a group of officers was grappling with a new directive.

They had received an order, not for a dangerous mission, but to assemble a team to assist Academy City with its preparations to open up to the outside.

They were well aware of the resources pouring into the city. The endless stream of construction materials, the fleets of "unseen" industrial mechs from Anti-Entropy—all of it was flowing into Nagazora City.

But that was precisely what they couldn't understand. What was Academy City's endgame?

"Could they be trying to research Honkai Energy?"

"Impossible. Didn't they already give away their Honkai Fission Bombs? I remember the national news said they sold them for a symbolic one dollar, and two countries ended up dropping them on enemy territory. Now Academy City thinks that kind of deterrence isn't enough, so they're planning to cooperate with other nations, designate land to drop more Honkai Fission Bombs, and then let the locals mine the Honkai Crystals left behind."

"Didn't they say that stuff is radioactive? How can they just drop it in other countries? And have you seen the recent news? I heard a lot of Palestinians and Israelis are so tempted by the huge profits from Honkai Crystals that they're trying to sneak in and steal them without any protective gear. Just one of those things is enough to set a family up for life."

The officer who said this clicked his tongue in amazement. It was the first time he'd ever seen such a wild and insane method of energy extraction. The whole operation was brutally straightforward.

"Who knows about this stuff? Even if Academy City takes over that region, they can't possibly make everyone listen to them overnight. It's not like the situation in Nagazora City, where they had local organizations helping to maintain order. But..."

The police chief gestured to his men in the conference room. "Academy City directly purged the entire upper leadership of both countries. We're talking tens of thousands of people. Then they quickly selected a new batch of leaders loyal to them. Who knows what methods they used to control those people and get the situation under control so fast. Do they really need our help?"

His question cast a heavy silence over the room.

Was their help truly necessary? If not, then why contact them at all?

Academy City had powerful figures who had developed robotic weapons. Not even a human bomb had managed to scratch one of their people. If Kennedy had that kind of protection back in the day, he never would've had his mind blown.

"Do you think... the rumors about human experimentation are true? Remember that international news story? The guy who got hit by a human bomb at a press conference and just continued on without a scratch. Is he really human? Could he be some kind of machine in a human skin suit?"

Hachiman Hikigaya's outer skin was made from a Honkai-derived epidermis. A conventional bomb couldn't hurt him in the slightest.

"Don't talk nonsense. He's one of us, from the Far East. We still have his official records. How could someone who grew up here..."

The chief trailed off, falling silent.

Suddenly, he wasn't so sure if Hachiman Hikigaya was human anymore.

If one of their Middle Eastern brothers strapped a bomb to him and blew it up, he definitely wouldn't survive that kind of attack.

"Forget it. Let's drop this topic. Don't go prying into things that don't concern us. Even the United Nations hasn't said a word, so what are you hoping to accomplish?"

The chief abruptly changed the subject. "Putting that aside, I believe the Middle East is heading for a war, especially the oil states! Think about it. Academy City has developed a powerful, convenient, and superior energy source that can replace oil and all its by-products."

The products created with Honkai Energy were indeed superior. The entire body of a Honkai Beast, for instance, was constructed from Honkai-based particles. It was a technology that completely overshadowed the production empire built on petroleum.

"So one energy source replaces another. Oil can still be used for other things."

"But what if everything else oil is used for is also replaced? All the plastics, the organic materials... think about it. At that point, can oil production still feed those nations?"

"The Honkai Fission Bomb allows for surface-level extraction, completely eliminating the old processes of mining and drilling. It uses the power of Honkai fission to create energy-rich crystals through direct collisions at the atomic level."

"This world is on the brink of war."

The chief grew more and more excited as he spoke, as if he could already see the day when the Far East would rise to become the world's number one superpower.

The officers in the conference room exchanged glances, thinking their boss had gone a bit Shōwa. After all, wasn't the top brass of Academy City mostly composed of white Europeans and Americans?