User blog:Sirin of the Void/Pure Evil Proposal - Herrscher of the Erosion

Continuing with the Honkai Impact 3 franchise, I've been reading many of its comic books and mangas and finally found a new one, a very RARE one.

What's the Work
Set not only in the sequel world of Honkai Impact 3 but also in the old world, Guns Girl Z, is a sidescrolling third person shooter developed by the Chinese company miHoYo Games and distributed by 4inch games. It's set in a post-Apocalyptic world where zombies took over the world (needless to say who started it).

The Apocalypse is a periodic phenomenon. It occurs once every hundred years. It appears in all sorts and forms, such as wars, epidemics, natural disasters, asteroids that hit the Earth, giants, etc ... According to historians' interpretation, Revelation can be presented as a will of "God". The last known Apocalypse happened in the 14th century and was called the Black Death. It was a horrible event that destroyed nearly a third of an entire population at the time.

The prequel story we are going to talk about is not from the games, but from the prequel manga Guns Girl SchoolDayZ EX, a prequel manga set 500 years ago that shows the true MASTERMIND behind the Second Apocalypse, the Black Death in the dark ages; centuries before Sirin from the New World could appear.

Guns Girl Z
Herrscher of the Erosion, or also known as the 12th Herrscher, was a sentient self-aware virus that was fused with Honkai enery and gained free will to act and think by itself which was coloured black, which infected everybody and turned them into zombies. After it gained freedom to think the disease quickly considered itself to be superior and saw all humans as food and its plaything. The virus then infected a little innocent girl and used her as a host to spread one of mankind's most deadly plagues that killed 90,000,000 people in a few months. When the innocent girl was discovered to be the host of the disease, the now Herrscher of the Erosion used its energy to bring the army straight to her, resulting in the innocent girl being arrested and then executed in cold-blood.

Once its host was destroyed, the Herrscher quickly left her body and infected all civilians in the North Asia, turning half of China's population into zombies and hacked into America and Asia's nuclear bases, launching nuclear missiles and destroying half of the world, killing billions more just to create its own Plague Kingdom. Professor Mei then sealed the disease inside of a Purple Box, where it would be kept sealed for 49,500 years.

Honkai Impact 3
49,500 years later after God Kiana/Sirin reseted the world, the Herrscher of the Erosion continued locked inside of the Purple Box until one day the organization Shicksal found the cube and began to experiment on it. Once it was free, Herrscher of the Erosion evolved and infected half of Europe with the Bubonic plague, starting the Black Death and the Second Apocalypse. When the main heroine discovered her lover Otto Apocalypse (who was still a good guy back then and became the story's Big Bad thanks to Herrscher of the Erosion) was perfoming human experiments to fix Herrscher's cruelty, she stole the Purple Box and fled from Europe and went Asia.

In Asia, when the main heroine is rescued by the innocent Yae Sakura, Herrscher proceeds to self-call itself as Yakujin, God of Disaster and infects Yae's body, controlling her and her emotions. As the years passed, Herrscher cursed the village with plagues and scarcity of food and water, leading the villagers to adopt cruel methods to save their village; sacrificing children to the Gods. Inside of her body, Herrscher forced her to kill children in sacrificial rituals that were supposedly to be sacrifices to please the Gods when in fact it was only giving more power to Herrscher of the Erosion.

One night, Herrscher of the Erosion takes over Yae's body and kidnaps a young girl from the village. In the forest, it tied the girl in a tree and killed a bear that was just passing by before turning the animal into a Honkai creature and gave the defenseless girl to the Honkai to devour alive. One day later, Herrscher dispatches the creature to attack the village, killing dozens of men, women and children to force the villagers to sacrifice even more children for their safety. When the ritual was interrupted by Kallen who considered their ceremony heartless, Herrscher transformed into a giant ghost fox and devoured the child before crushing her mother with its paws. When Kallen asked the creature was doing it (to Yue who was being controlled by the Honkai), it simply said villagers should be thankful for being devoured by a God and then states it is going to destroy everything Yue and Kellan loves the most.

After devouring and killing all the villagers, Herrscher burned the village to the ground. After a long fight, Herrscher of the Erosion defeats Kellan and forces Yue (who is currently watching inside of her subconscious) to watch it killing her lover but Yue breaks out of its mind control and commits suicide to prevent herself from killing her loved one. Herrscher returns to its Fox monster form and devours Sakura right in front of Kellan to show how much she is powerless before a "God". It then fights Kellen and is sealed for more 500 years.

500 years later, Yae Sakura was revived and found by Kiana and then has a fight with Kiana group. With her revival, Herrscher of the Erosion also came to life and tries to invade Yue's body again, stating its desires never changed even after 500 years; its desires of the creation of a Plague Kingdom.

Freudian Excuse/Mitigating Factors
Unlike Sirin who had a true tragic past and had a strong Freudian Excuse, this little virus never had one. Even if you consider it being a virus and had moral agency issues, can you explain its sadism? Sacrificing children for nothing but fun? Destroying half of human civilization from the past to create a world where it rules as a God over a dead planet?

This bastard has nothing.

Heinous Standard
For Guns Girl ,  where barely any villain has such long list of crimes or an agenda, it easily pass in this world (old world of Honkai series).

And now, Honkai Impact 3's world. Like I said before, the Honkai Impact 2 series is lighthearted and funny but its heinous standard are extremely high. Even so, Herrscher of the Erosion showed up before EVERYONE. It was the first Apocalypse to have consciousness when no one in the franchise had appeared yet to estabilish the Heinous Standard.

Even before Herrscher of the Void (the one who kicked this standard to the skies 500 years later), Herrscher of the Erosion was there thousand years before her. Besides, the very Big Bad of the series was born because of it when it was directly responsible for killing his love interest, Kellen. Back then, when Herrscher of the Erosion created the Black Death, Otto Apocalypse (the Big Bad) was merely a saint being a hero with no crimes on his back.

Final Veridict
I say a strong yes.