Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

Traditional bands are dead.

This wasn't a joke. It was the reality of what had happened to the arts world under Academy City's influence.

It sounds a bit abstract, but the outcome was all but inevitable.

Some forward-thinking talent managers for bands had a wild idea: what if they could use technology to allow the human ear to distinguish more sounds? What if they could use technology to enhance the coordination of one's fingers and limbs? And while they were at it, why not use technology to boost a person's physical abilities?

Although Academy City had always been closed off from the outside world, word of some of its experiments had inevitably leaked.

And many people were eager to use this kind of gene modification to achieve their dreams.

As it turned out, it actually damn well worked!

Around Tokyo, a wave of such people rose to catch the last crest of the musical tide, and the existence of traditional bands was swiftly rendered obsolete.

It might sound ridiculous, but it was actually a perfectly logical development.

Talented prodigies, once a rarity, became a dime a dozen. Within a year, the scene was flooded with tech-augmented bands whose members could become masters of their craft in a matter of months.

Chihaya Anon didn't even get the chance to join a band before the whole concept became utterly commonplace. And dying right alongside them were the various idol groups. The most famous entertainment right now was...

She looked up at a massive screen on the side of a building, which was broadcasting a stunning live event. On a rubber track, beautiful girls in bizarre, flashy outfits were competing in a footrace.

They ran at speeds beyond normal human comprehension, and the race was punctuated by fierce, high-speed collisions.

Inside Academy City, it was all-out combat between espers. Outside, it was sporting events like this, where records were constantly shattered by hardcore bio-hacking. It was real, intense tech, all with the singular goal of comprehensively enhancing human abilities.

"Sigh..." Chihaya Anon sighed, deciding to ignore it all.

Thanks to all this hardcore tech, Anon could actually communicate fluently with foreigners using their native languages. For instance, a cloud-based quantum communication instant-translation app had made her life abroad seamless.

But without it, she was like a headless fly, and in the end, she had scurried back to her home country.

She returned only to find that the entire idol and band scene in the Far East had been obliterated. But gene modification wasn't the sole cause of the idol industry's collapse. The real killer was something else.

It was a completely side-effect-free, face-sculpting cosmetic surgery system, spearheaded by an organization called Entropy Inc., with participation from major South Korean medical aesthetic companies, and jointly created with Academy City.

This special gene modification system was the nail in the coffin for the Far East's "idol group" industry.

Of course, some people insisted on keeping their original "face models." But these people were either saving up for a new face or lived in areas where the new genetic ID system hadn't been rolled out yet, and changing your face could lead to a host of security risks.

The Far East was currently in a state of unregulated chaos. Countless businesses, flying the banner of an "Academy City Research Institute," were using scraps of leaked technology to unscrupulously reshape a land that lacked any regulatory oversight.

The government of the Far East was at its wit's end. All it could do was use the media to constantly hype up Academy City's great achievements to distract the public.

The effect was better than nothing, but the countless entertainment industries that had been destroyed—including many AV companies—were beyond saving.

The young woman had thought her life would change a bit after returning home, but she never imagined the change would be quite this... extreme.

It was just so bizarre. How could there be three people in the same school who looked so similar but weren't related by blood?

The cheap, one-click face-swapping system led many people to subconsciously choose faces they considered handsome or beautiful, resulting in a terrifying, Tomie-like effect in schools.

Some people didn't even save the genetic data for their original appearance. Once they changed, their old face was gone forever. You couldn't just keep tweaking someone's face until it looked like their old one, could you? Even if you had the patience, who had the time or money for that?

The schools in the Far East... are a little too scary...

This was Chihaya Anon's heartfelt cry. She felt like she no longer belonged in this country. It was a nation that felt like a demon's den, a terrifying aura hanging over all of the Far East.

A returning student who had hoped to cruise to the top with a bogus degree from abroad, she had instead been hit head-on by Thomas the Tank Engine.

Was it really so hard just to follow the trends and get by?

You bet it was.

Because all these competitive advantages were products that could be bought with "income."

If I can just buy talent, why should I practice? I can just tweak the settings with a cheat tool and get whatever I want, right?

And so, three years of painstaking practice were rendered obsolete by a three-month genetic plug-in update.

The cheapness of it all led to the collapse of the effort and sweat that people once romanticized.

The ones who were hit the hardest—those dedicated girls in idol groups who had practiced tirelessly—were left utterly crushed and demoralized.

Even Chihaya Anon felt a little sorry for them.

But at the same time, the technology brought improvements in other areas. For example, vocal cords could be enhanced through gene modification, allowing people to fearlessly hit ever-higher notes. In effect, it meant that more music lovers no longer had to suffer from a lack of natural talent.

Life for the people of the Far East was just too eventful. The fans of these now-defunct idol groups had already started rallying online, calling for a crusade against Academy City.

This just went to show that the idol economy's biggest source of revenue was never the fans themselves, but the added value generated when the idols broke into the mainstream. The fans' true purpose was to inflate that added value.

Chihaya Anon didn't understand any of that. She just wanted to find something to do.

How could she have known that the Far East would turn into this after she came back?

She was just a student, after all, with no control over national affairs. All she could do was drift along with the tides.

It's fine. This is probably just a few isolated cases at school. It's just stuff rich people got from a quick trip to Academy City. Most of the other students are still normal. Things like forming bands and idol groups have died down, so it'll all get better in the future!

Just as Chihaya Anon was thinking that the government would surely deal with this mess eventually...

Her last sliver of hope was shattered by a pop-up notification from her phone's browser.

[Academy City to Begin Full-Scale Student Recruitment Across the Far East!]

[The illegal misuse of biotechnology will be curbed, as Academy City is set to launch even cheaper, officially-guaranteed channels!]

[We welcome people from all over the world to join this biotechnological revolution!]

[The Far East and Academy City will engage in comprehensive, in-depth cooperation for the future!]

[Want to become the all-powerful superhuman of your dreams?]

[What are you waiting for? Come and join Academy City!]

Chihaya Anon's eyes rolled back into her head. Her phone slipped from her hand with a pathetic clatter, and she fainted on the spot.