Webcomic / Honkai Impact 3rd: Second Eruption

Honkai Impact 3rd: Second Eruption is a prequel comic to the game of the same name, published by miHoYo Comic. The story chronicles the Second Honkai Impact of the setting's Current Era, taking place in 2000 (roughly 16 years before the game's main story). With the awakening of the Second Herrscher, Sirin, anti-Honkai organizations Schicksal and Anti-Entropy must set aside their rivalry and join forces to prevent this new threat from annihilating civilization.

You can read it on miHoYo's official manga publishing page, or on MangaDex's page.

---

Second Eruption provides examples of:

• The '90s: Siegfried's first meeting with Cecilia happens in 1991 at the Danish border, and they spend an entire day visiting a vibrant neighbouring town, complete with an old arcade shop called "Homu Spiel-Hall".
• And the Adventure Continues: Obviously, the events of Honkai Impact 3rd wouldn't happen if Sirin wasn't stopped here, but the incredible amount of casualties that piled up to make it happen isn't pretty to look at, setting the stage for many of the subplots in the game proper. Many powerful Schicksal Valkyries die, including Cecilia, who shares a tender last moment with the dying Sirin; Fu Hua's overexertion of her powers deteriorates her memories even further, eventually leaving her with no choice but to come back to Otto's side; Otto himself constructs the lie that Schicksal alone was able to defeat Sirin, keeping the infant Kiana in custody and thus beginning Siegfried's quest to save her. Last but not least is K-423, the game's playable Kiana, awakening as a functional clone thanks to her Herrscher Core's memories of Sirin's last moments with Cecilia.
• Batman Gambit: Welt's master plan was never to defeat Sirin in a fair fight given the latter's ridiculous raw power, but to strike at her when she leasts expects it, counting on the fact that Herrschers are drawn to the power of other Herrschers. He purposely let Sirin consume his Core after getting defeated on the Moon in order to hide his will within her mind and strike at the right moment, with the Core of Reason's 300,000 personality fragments playing a large part in preventing Welt's own personality from being erased. The bait was successful, but the moment he was freed by the Edge of Taixuan, Welt had to adjust himself to unexpected outcomes and play his cards way ahead of time, leading to a serious case of Xanatos Speed Chess from that point.
• Blank White Void: The Will of Honkai resides in a parallel dimension devoid of anything but a white emptiness, with the only furnitures being dependent on whoever interacts with it. In Sirin's case, it sits comfortably on a rock throne; in Otto's case, it's seen praying before a blue crucifix.
• Call-Forward: During the finale, Siegfried saves the world from Sirin's dying Core Cascade by unleashing the full might of the Judgement of Shamash and launching a single fiery Sword Beam, Might of An-Utu, at his target, resulting in an massive explosion that's picked up by Schicksal's satellites. Fast forward to the ending of the main game's fourteenth chapter, Kiana saves Arc City from a Honkai bomb by taking it away and detonating it in high atmosphere, resulting in a bright purple explosion that's visible from outer space.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Otto is notified about Welt's meeting with Siegfried, he reminisces about him or rather the original Welt Joyce punching Otto's face, which is a pivotal scene in the Anti-Entropy visual novel, and thus is surprised when he doesn't recognize the current Welt.
  • When confronting the Will of Honkai on how to resurrect Kallen, Otto is faced with memories of his guilt in killing Eleanor Schariac and subsequently performing experiments on her corpse; events that happened in the Elan Palatinus comic.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Cecilia's fight against Avrora is hilariously lopsided in Cecilia's favour. The Pseudo-Herrscher creating a hurricane to protect herself from incoming attacks? No worries, just drop from high atmosphere and chuck Black Orchid at her, instantly blowing a hole through her torso.
  • When Fu Hua comes to Lixue's rescue, she immediately traps Agata in one of Fenghuang Down's illusions, forcing the pseudo-Herrscher to get perpetually beaten to a pulp in her mind and thus reducing her to a vegetative state on the outside.
  • Sirin gets utterly trounced by Fu Hua when the latter uses Fenghuang Down on the Herrscher before she even has time to react. She ends up wrapped in an illusion where Fu Hua picks apart her defense with impunity and lands countless physical blows on the untrained girl, culminating in Fu Hua stabbing her with the Waterblade to keep her pinned down and maintain Fenghuang Down's illusion long enough to let Otto peer into Sirin's subconscious. Unfortunately, Sirin snaps out of it and starts adapting herself to Fu Hua's tricks, swiftly turning the tables in the dream world.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Once Sirin breaks free of Fenghuang Down's entrapment, Fu Hua realizes that there wouldn't be anyone to stop the Herrscher's rampage, so she settles for crushing Sirin with a single attack while they're still in the dream world: the Edge of Taixuan, made by burning Fenghuang Down's feathers (and by extension some of Fu Hua's memories). The attack ultimately fails because of the Will of Honkai's interference, and Fu Hua ends up so crippled, she loses memories of her time with Cheng Lixue. Otto, himself incapacitated by his encounter with the Will of Honkai, notes that the Edge of Taixuan burned over half of Fu Hua's Fenghuang Down feathers and taxed her body and mind beyond human limits.
  • The Oath of Judah's Zeroth Level, which neutralizes any and all Honkai energy within a large area, is very hazardous for Theresa, whose genes are partially made up from a Honkai Beast; it's so bad that Otto has her locked up until she mastered it. When she finally deploys it against Sirin, the Herrscher easily goes down as planned, but Theresa herself has trouble even moving inside the field for the finishing blow.
  • Siegfried's Judgement of Shamash, particularly when combined with the ICHOR infection stemming from his dormant Kaslana genes. The infection allows him to wield the flaming Divine Key to its full power without losing a limb or his life, but partially transforms his body into a demonic, Honkai-like monster and eats away at his psyche; in this state, he's afflicted with the Kaslana line's suggestions of purging the Honkai, and as such becomes more of a berserk warrior than a protector of humanity. As the fight against Sirin progresses, Siegfried is pressed between using this dangerous power and retaining his humanity. He ultimately chooses to unleash it to break out of the Infinity Corridor and defeat Sirin for good.
  • Shub-Niggurath's Murmuring Carnage has the nasty ability to emit powerful vibrations that tear a target apart once she spears them and activates the EX-Frequency Vibro-Eviscerator, but not even she will come out unscathed from the indiscriminate vibrations. While using the attack on Benares' weak point, both the dragon and Shub-Niggurath slowly feel their bodies being torn apart, and Shub-Niggurath doesn't let go until both are mortally wounded.
  • Cecilia's blood is capable of temporarily neutralizing the Honkai, and when combined with the Abyss Flower, she can even kill a Herrscher, but overspending it puts her life at risk. She decides to put most of her blood into one attack, Lilium Sanguineum, so that she can halt Sirin's Core Cascade and allow Siegfried to strike the exposed Void Core. Afterwards, Cecilia is too weak to shield both herself and Siegfried from Otto's nukes, so she decides to burrow her husband deep underground with what little power she has left.
• Decoy Convoy: Some years prior to the 2nd Honkai War, Welt attacked a Schicksal convoy that supposedly carried a secret weapon and guarded by some A-rank Valkyries. When Welt checked the container, he only found an empty box instead. He then planned to pursue Cecilia, one of the aforementioned Valkyries, to get information about the weapon from her.
• Depower: The only real way to defeat Sirin is to yank the Herrscher Cores away from her. The Arhat manages to extract the Core of Conquest and launch it far away from the battlefield, depriving Sirin from that Core's powers. The regenerative powers of the Gem of Serenity prove to be problematic, as Sirin manages to come back from being killed after being Brought Down to Normal by the Oath of Judah's Zeroth Level. Siegfried eventually overpowers Sirin and removes the Gem of Serenity, leaving her permanently and fatally wounded. Unfortunately, her death throes cause the now-uncontrollable Void Core to undergo a Core Cascade.
• Disney Death: Welt's duel against Sirin on the Moon leaves Welt thoroughly dead in all but name, failing to detonate his Herrscher Core alongside Sirin's at the last second, on top of Sirin absorbing the Core of Reason and thus gaining Welt's powers in time for her invasion of Earth. It's only much later when Fu Hua exhausts herself in the dream world battle that we learn that Welt's consciousness still exists, albeit imprisoned by the Will of Honkai up until the Edge of Taixuan severed its connection with Sirin. From that point onwards, Welt is able to operate freely inside Sirin's mind in accordance to his gambit, waiting for the right opportunity to strike back in her subconscious and hold her attention long enough for the Arhat to extract the Cores while Sirin is immobilized in the real world.
• Dramatic Chase Opening: The prologue has 2 frightened scientists in the Babylon Lab running away from a ghost-like figure. One of them got captured by the ghost girl while the other tried to escape with an elevator, but she then phased through the shutters and called him out for abandoning his comrade, leading him to stand back and shoot the ghost. Then somehow, the bullets hit him instead. Before he lost unconsciousness, he saw the ghost girl approaching him.
• Enemy Mine: Welt, upon introducing himself to Siegfried and Squad Snowwolf, offers to assist them in investigating the Babylon incident, to which Siegfried accepts after thinking it through. Otto, who only learned about the truce after the fact, is frustrated that a loose cannon like Siegfried is making decisions on his own, but relents and allows them to work together, all while plotting how to make the most out of this unexpected alliance then dispose of Anti-Entropy once it ends.
• Eye Awaken: After Theresa gets sucked in by the Honkai chrysalis (despite Welt's pleas not to touch it), Siegfried tries to rescue her by touching the chrysalis, only to find out that it has turned solid and two eyes, one blue and one purple, start glowing, revealing two halves of the Assaka-class Honkai Beast, who promptly attack Siegfried at once.
• Get It Over With: When Theresa catches Sirin in the Oath of Judah's Zeroth Level field, the latter gets completely stripped of her Herrscher powers and is helpless as Theresa reluctantly moves in for the kill. After seeing a hallucination of Benares whispering a hint to her, however, Sirin simply asks Theresa to end it and spare the apologies. Theresa accordingly impales her dead, but Sirin resurrects herself right after the Oath's field is lifted, having used the Gem of Serenity to restore her impaled heart.
• Job-Stealing Robot: Played for Laughs. While Welt, Siegfried and Theresa continue investigating the origin of the Babylon incident with the Oath of Judah's tracking function, Einstein is ordered to help Squad Snowwolf defend the Tower from an incoming Honkai horde. She does so by deploying multiple Eins auto-drones which easily fend off the Honkai Beasts by themselves, much to Salome's displeasure. Shub-Niggurath, for her part, is elated that she can just slack off, which only further annoys Salome.
  Salome: [Pointing at Shub-Niggurath] Stop fooling around, stupid goat! We're tasked with defending the perimeter! We can't let any of these beasts get through!
  Shub-Niggurath: What you said may be true... but our allies are doing most of the heavy lifting for us. We can just sit back and relax, right?
  Salome: Grr! That's exactly why I'm angry! (They took our jobs!)
  Einstein: This is more boring than I thought.
• Lost in Translation: During the scene where Otto struggles to comprehend the knowledge he gets from the Will of Honkai, the official English translation omits the part where the narration says "Otto would only understand its meaning 10 years later". By contrast, the Japanese translation retains it.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Sirin's plans to instill a nightmare world upon trapping Siegfried and Cecilia with the power of Fenghuang Down end up inadvertently foiled when she observes that the alternate world she created is a happy one, much to her frustration. Siegfried is initially oblivious to the signs that it's a dream world, while Cecilia gains awareness much earlier than she lets on, but plays along to spend some quality time with Sirin, who inserted herself into the dream world in hopes of understanding why her original goal isn't working. It's implied that this dream world is made from Sirin's unconscious desire to live a life where she never experienced the hell she was put through by being subjected to horrible human experiments by Schicksal.
• Meet Cute: Siegfried and Cecilia's romance story is explored in a flashback in 1991, starting when the latter is sent flying afar by Welt during a cargo escort mission, prompting Siegfried to catch her as she falls. Siegfried, seeing how Cecilia has no knowledge of the world outside of her duty as a Valkyrie, decides to stall their return to Schicksal's base and spend the day enjoying the various delights of the neighbouring town, with their mutual trust steadily budding. When Otto comes to retrieve Cecilia following Welt's attempt to take her, Cecilia reluctantly leaves Siegfried, making the two of them long for each other for the next two years, after which they finally reunite in Schicksal's headquarters and officially get engaged.
• Meteor Move: Siegfried ends the final confrontation against Sirin by leaping high into the air towards her, dodging her spikes, then cutting off her left arm, before turning around and hitting the Herrscher with an overhead sword slam that sends her plummeting to the ground. Sirin isn't fully neutralized until Siegfried plunges his Honkai arm into her chest and extracts the Gem of Serenity, removing Sirin's regenerative abilities and leaving her to die.
• Missing Floor: The Babylon Lab was stated to have 50 floors, 20 of them filled with Honkai reactors and the other 30 being various laboratory rooms. However, as Theresa discovered and Einstein blurted out, there are secret floors underneath the Honkai reactor ones where the human test subjects were placed in.
• My Skull Runneth Over: Otto nearly gets his mind broken from all the knowledge the Will of Honkai imparts him with, but once it disappears with the cryptic gesture of impaling itself with a sword, he finds out that he can't even hold on to a shred of knowledge except for the memory of that last gesture, leaving him thoroughly bewildered.
• One Degree of Separation: This being a prequel comic that ties in to the main game, some relationships between characters who don't interact together in HI3 are explored here.
  • Raiden Ryoma, Mei's father, is shown here to have met Siegfried during the preparations to land on the Moon, disdainfully wondering why Welt is trusting such a loose cannon like Siegfried.
  • Cocolia, at the time a Spetznaz captain under the command of the man who would turn out to be Bronya's father, found herself caught in the Honkai Eruption happening in Siberia, got rescued by Cecilia, and drove Bronya's mother to safety while the latter was pregnant. One bubble world that Bronya explores in the main game shows that if Cecilia had survived the 2nd Honkai War, she would've founded St. Freya's Academy and Cocolia would've become a teacher and a Valkyrie there.
  • When pondering about the difficult task of getting out of Sirin's dream world, Cecilia mentions that she knows of a friend who is skilled with the use of Fenghuang Down's mind attacks and false realities, which immediately refers to Fu Hua, whom Sirin acquired Fenghuang Down's abilities from.
  • One of the two Siberian children who get hit on-panel by the dying Sirin's Core Cascade is eventually revealed in the game to be Raven of the World Serpent organization, explaining her misplaced grudge against Kiana.
  • Lewis, the mannish B-rank Valkyrie showcased aside from Squad Snowwolf's members, is revealed in the game's "Post-Honkai Odyssey" mode to be the mother of Carole Peppers, one of the mode's three playable characters.
• Painting the Medium: In line with the other Honkai Impact 3rd comics, whenever Honkai-affiliated beings speak, the speech bubble turns black and the font is romanticized in lowercase, in sharp contrast to the rest of the cast, who use white speech bubbles with the standard comic uppercase font. This is most apparent with Sirin, who uses the former pattern when hamming it up as the angel of the Honkai, but reverts to the default comic uppercase in situations where she doesn't have her Herrscher powers.
• Prequel: Second Eruption is published after a number of comics like AE Invasion and Moon Shadow, but its events chronologically happen 16 to 18 years before the game.
• Self-Parody: Within the dream world that Sirin created for Siegfried and Cecilia, the Honkai have been defeated, with Schicksal and Anti-Entropy rebranding themselves into game companies to alleviate the loss of their anti-Honkai purpose following the end of the 2nd Honkai War. A pannel containing miHoYo's logo and motto ("Tech otakus save the world") can be seen at the entrance of Nova-Schicksal's office. In this alternate world, Siegfried is a lead game designer known for making Guns GirlZ, and his design pitch for a new game happens to be Honkai Impact 3rd, arguing that it should be a game with sleek 3D graphics on mobile phones and trusting that the target audience will have strong enough phones to play it by the time it releases. Coincidentally, this is exactly how the popularity of the real-life Honkai Impact 3rd came to be.
• Ship Tease: As Tesla and Welt interact when making preparations for the trip to the Moon, it's clear that the former has feelings for the latter, even though neither fully acknowledges it. They do share a waltz that Welt once wished to do with her when he was young. When he requested Tesla to use the "silver bullet" (i.e tactical nuke) to hit Sirin, Tesla is shown tearing up, thinking that he might be killed by the nuke too. When Welt asks her how to detonate his Herrscher Core, Tesla gets angry and tells him to get out, given she hates people who throw their lives away to solve problems. She eventually gives him the info, but she's incredibly saddened by it, and tears up when Siegfried returns from the Moon and brings her news of his defeat.
• Shoot the Dangerous Minion: Otto is not happy that Siegfried is allying himself with Anti-Entropy in the Babylon Tower investigation, though he's forced to relent once he takes a step back and looks at the benefits of such a temporary alliance. Once he witnesses the full might of the Judgement of Shamash, Otto concludes that he simply can't let someone with so much destructive power live and orders Honkai fission missiles to be fired on Siegfried's location.
• Superpower Meltdown: Sirin's final defeat, along with her despair of being unable to do anything about it, triggers the loss of her control over the Void Core, creating a massive pillar (dubbed "Core Cascade") that keeps emitting intense levels of Honkai energy throughout the Siberian plain and would likely cover half of Asia and claim tens of thousands of lives if left unchecked. Cecilia's Lilium Sanguineum ability manages to briefly disperse the Cascade and reveal the Core, allowing Siegfried to strike it with the Judgement of Shamash's ultimate power; the Core is then neutralized, and the flowers created from Cecilia's blood helped minimize the death toll to less than 3000 people.
• Too Happy to Live: The beginning of the comic has Theresa hanging out with the Kaslana Family, having fun together and hoping that this peace can last. Not long after, she's called by Otto to investigate the Babylon Lab... and that's the start of her and Kaslana Family's hardships.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Sirin seemingly ends her first duel with Welt tossing him towards the emergent Benares, who swallows him. After a moment of reminiscence on how he got his powers and the responsibility behind it, Welt makes it out of Benares' mouth, smacks the wyrm down, and resumes the fight against Sirin.
• Unreliable Narrator: It's said in the main game that Cecilia died fighting and keeping Sirin busy long enough for Otto to order Schicksal to fire the Honkai fission missile upon them, killing them both as a result. The climax of this story, however, makes it clear that Cecilia and Siegfried managed to subdue Sirin's Superpower Meltdown before they were hit by the missile, and that the missile strike was really Otto trying to kill Siegfried, as he considered Siegfried too powerful to let loose. He even rewrites Theresa's memories with Fenghuang Down to draw her suspicions away from the truth. As Otto succinctly puts it:
  Otto Apocalypse: ... I shall fabricate a version of history that benefits Schicksal most.
• Wham Line:
  • "Chapter 63 - Epilogue" closes with a line that puts several things about the plot in a completely new perspective as it reveals that the soul driving K423 has always been Sirin from the start, wishing to live the life of an ordinary girl in the hopes of experiencing Cecilia as her mother again.
    Sirin: If I were given another chance... Another chance in life... I wish I can hear her say those magic words to me again... Ich liebe dich.
  • This one is also alluded to in Chapter 11-EX in the game.
    Herrscher of the Void: You'll never be rid of me. ... Escape? Where can you hide? I *AM* YOU, Kiana!
• The Worf Barrage: Fu Hua's ultimate attack, the Edge of Taixuan, would've annihilated Sirin completely inside the dream world, if not for the Will of Honkai blocking the attack at the last moment. Sirin comes out unscathed thanks to that intervention, though the dream world's Tower of Babylon gets completely cleaved in half as a testament to the attack's destructive power. Additionally, the Edge of Taixuan had the side effect of severing Sirin's connection to the Will of Honkai, depriving her of any further guidance and freeing Welt from his mind imprisonment.
• Written Sound Effect: Just like the other Honkai Impact 3rd comics, panels with lots of action contain an equally large number of onomatopoeias, though they're usually written so that they don't obstruct the scene. In addition to onomatopoeias, named attacks are also written in the same unobstructive manner, and a couple of unsound effects slip in whenever a character makes an inspirational speech.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Welt's master plan against Sirin ends up encountering a lot of roadblocks that force him to play his cards ahead of time. He originally intended to strike in her mind after being freed from the Will of Honkai's binding, but realized that Sirin acquired the powers of Fenghuang Down, thus making it nigh impossible to fight her in her mind. His plan then hinged on either using the Arhat's Selene reactor to weaken Sirin for one minute, or praying that Schicksal's soldiers would distract Sirin long enough for him to strike. Then, Sirin trapped both Siegfried and Cecilia in her mind, forcing Welt to directly intervene to get the Kaslana couple out of Sirin's mind and stall her while Einstein starts extracting the Herrscher Cores away from Sirin, whose connection to the Cores is weakened by the Arhat's Selene reactor.
  Welt: Alea iacta est (the die is cast).

---

"Here we are, at the last moments of our lives. At least you won't be lonely now. See, I'm here with you, sharing a moment of warmth together... Ich liebe dich."