Honkai

The **Honkai** (法晦, *Hōkai*?, lit. *Ruling Darkness*) are the interdimensional entities that invaded beginning from the Fall—they are considered the enemies of humanity.

## History

Beginning on 21 December, 2012, interdimensional gates opened everywhere throughout the world with '*ground zero*' being huge swaths of land within a circle centered around East Asia. Japan, China, and Korea were the initially hardest-hit countries before the phenomenon spread throughout the rest of the world. Given the name of Honkai, these beasts indiscriminately attacked everything although their attacks were eventually seen to be focused on intelligent animals, humans included. Humanity's weapons worked against the Honkai but they were found to not be particularly effective. It was, however, enough to drive them back somewhat. The invasion soon slowed down to a simple splattering of disjointed incursions—nevertheless, the damage had already been done. More than three-quarters of the entire human race as well as massive swaths of animal populations perished. These casualties were mostly centered around ground zero (although despite being within ground zero, Japan felt the effects less than the others) with the exception of the African continent where—at least, with confirmed reports before the Honkai inadvertantly crippled global communications—more than ninety-seven percent of its population being deceased. India too was practically decimated with ninety-five percent of its population confirmed deceased.

Twenty years after the Honkai initially invaded, international correspondence broke down as the Honkai inadvertantly immobilized humanity's ability to communicate by destroying submarine communication cables and scrambling satellite communications. Connections between locales were still possible but anything further required proper repair which the crippled population could not manage with their dwindling resources, both materially and academically, as the Honkai did not discriminate between those who were educated and those who were not. As the Honkai were generally perceived to be unintelligent, the consensus was merely that in attacking humans, the Honkai would also indiscriminately assault human infrastructure...

## Characteristics

To put it simply, the Honkai are alien entities that can take any animalistic form. These forms include impressions of living and extinct animals as well as reproductions of mythological animals—the Honkai seemingly do not have a general consensus as to what they look like. More often than not, however, the Honkai will appear as chimeric monstrosities, combining many traits from different animals. They all possess a **core** (核, *kaku*?) that when destroyed, '*kills*' the Honkai; without the core's elimination, a Honkai will indefinitely regenerate even if everything else about it has been annihilated. In addition, Honkai are incredibly hard with conventional weaponry having a massively difficult time of breaking through—Honkai with defensive-leaning animalistic traits notwithstanding. Aside from the personal weaponry every Honkai has depending on the form it takes, all Honkai have the ability to fire off lasers of varying strengths which can range from being mildly destructive to truly apocalyptic in power.

### Classifications

Generally speaking, Honkai are classified into three categories—**Lower Constructs** (初級画像, *Shokyū Gazō*?), **Intermediate Constructs** (中級画像, *Chūkyū Gazō*?), and **Upper Constructs** (上級画像, *Jōkyū Gazō*?)—based solely on their size. Lesser Constructs are Honkai with sizes of twenty-five meters or smaller, Intermediate Constructs are Honkai with sizes of seventy-five meters or smaller, and Upper Constructs are Honkai with sizes greater than seventy-six meters. Depending on their classification, the size of a Honkai's core will vary as well with Lower Constructs having cores the size of golf balls and Intermediate Constructs having cores the size of basketball. Upper Constructs, however, are different in that among the Honkai, they possess a limited sense of intelligence as they are capable of carrying out simple tactics and differing attack patterns—if one were to speak in the sense of a game, Upper Constructs are akin to high-level boss enemies. Upper Constructs have multiple cores, ranging between three to seven, with the main core being the size of a large exercise ball—defeating an Upper Construct requires the simultaneous destruction of all cores as an Upper Construct can still indefinitely regenerate even with only a single core remaining (this regeneration will also extend to its cores).

#### Honkai Beasts

**Honkai Beasts** (法晦獣, *Hōkaijū*?) are the most fearsome Honkai in the sense that they are the most powerful. Information on them is limited as throughout the world, they only appeared four times before the termination of international communication. Within the jurisdiction of the South Kanto Tri-City Defense Liaison Conference, Honkai Beast appearances have been documented a further seven times. Despite their name, Honkai Beasts are Honkai who take human appearance and are surmised to have similar intelligence levels. They seemingly have their own language although it sounds like utter gibberish, discounting those Qualidea users who's power is the ability to understand other languages. Honkai Beasts also have shown the ability to speak the human tongue via consuming a human heart. From what little information is known about their invasions (which almost always end with no survivors due to their immense strength), Honkai Beasts are in search of a "Sovereign" who they claim is their ruler.

## Trivia

* The name of the Honkai is taken from the Chinese multimedia franchise of the same name, *Honkai*. While having the same phonetic reading, both use different characters: the multimedia franchise uses "崩壞" while "法晦" is the characters used for this story.