"Hua..."
Murmuring her comrade's name softly, in a moment of daze, Mobius recalled that rigid, perpetually serious, unbearably dull Hua who did everything by the book.
"She now goes by Fu Hua. I can guarantee that I did not alter her consciousness," Selene said, pausing deliberately. "She chose it of her own will."
"Someone like her would voluntarily surrender..." Disbelief filled Mobius' face as she shook her head firmly. "Impossible. You're lying!"
Though Fu Hua often quarreled with her over some of her inhumane little experiments, Mobius had to admit that Fu Hua was an exceptional warrior—someone who valued her promises even more than her own life.
"You must have done something to her!"
"Done something?" Tilting her head, Selene let out a soft laugh. "What a ridiculous claim." Her expression remained unchanged as she replied calmly, "Sometimes, coerced willingness is still a kind of willingness."
In the instant Selene blinked, Mobius suddenly sprang forward. The ground where she had been standing caved in, leaving behind a crater kicked out by immense force.
"Devouring Darkness!"
Clatter—
Countless spikes formed from inky-black plasma fused together, thrusting straight toward Selene.
Bang!
A piercing collision rang out, kicking up a storm of sand and shattered stone.
Selene opened her eyes. The Imaginary Claw held horizontally before her blocked the spikes Mobius had conjured in her sudden assault with perfect precision.
"Tch... so cautious?" Mobius' pale face turned slightly livid when she saw her attack stopped, clicking her tongue in displeasure.
Selene's indifferent, lofty arrogance—as if she had already won—infuriated her to no end. It made Mobius want nothing more than to smash that smug, self-assured face.
Just a mere Herrscher of Finality—what was there to be so proud of? If only she had another fifty thousand years to develop. Ambushing a scientist without honor—how shameless.
"It seems you're a rose with thorns, unaccustomed to gentler methods."
Boom—!
The massive Imaginary Claw crashed in midair. In an instant, the surrounding Honkai energy particles trembled violently, and the spikes disintegrated at the atomic level.
"A rose? Hehe. Let me repeat myself—I am but a shy young maiden as delicate as a flower."
Her pupils narrowing into dark golden serpent eyes, Mobius seemed unwilling to give up the verbal sparring. She stuck out her tongue and spoke in an alluring tone.
Zzzzt—crackle!
Selene snorted softly. A faintly pitying smile curved her lips.
"Are you that eager to provoke me? Clinging to your pathetic sliver of hope?"
Though she appeared arrogant and overbearing on the surface, Selene harbored not the slightest contempt for Mobius within her heart.
A mask was always just a mask—meant for others to see. If one started believing in it oneself, that would be sheer stupidity.
Only you know your true thoughts. As long as you do not speak them aloud, no conclusion is ever final—there is always room to maneuver.
"You won't know unless you try." The smile faded from Mobius' face. Within a sea of inky lightning, she spread her arms wide, her expression turning icy. "Devouring Darkness · Withered Heart!"
Rumble—!
With a thunderous roar that split the earth, the ground trembled violently. Cracks over a thousand meters long spread outward from the impact point, and within those fissures flowed tangible, molten plasma.
This was Mobius' first full-power eruption in fifty thousand years—the Devouring Darkness lightning from the shadow domain of the Umbra of Ouroboros unleashed in its entirety.
Unparalleled speed, explosive force, and piercing properties combined into the absolute truth of Devouring Darkness.
In an instant, the winds howled and the heavens shifted. Dark clouds blanketed the sky. Even the clouds above were infected by the escaping inky lightning, transforming into thunderheads flashing with fluorescent green serpents of electricity—and they continued to expand.
The vast cloud cover spanning dozens of kilometers was stirred. Positive and negative charge clouds collided within the mass.
Boom boom boom!!
In a flash, lightning and thunder raged. Air heated and expanded instantly, forcing aside surrounding air and producing violent explosive shockwaves.
The concentrated current was enormous.
The surging discharge made the sky resound with terrifying roars. With the Padmanabhaswamy Temple at its center, the ground within a radius of more than ten kilometers rose and fell unevenly, making it impossible to stand steadily.
It was as if a natural disaster had descended.
The violent hurricane it stirred flattened surrounding buildings with irresistible force, uprooted trees entirely, and even the distant Imperial Army outpost camp fell into chaos amid the roaring surge.
At this moment, Mobius' green-haired loli form vanished, replaced instead by a true colossal serpent.
Hiss—!
Only now did Selene clearly see the serpent's true form.
"World Serpent—true to its name. Kevin was merely the figurehead. The true sovereign was you, this mother serpent."
Its head was as large as the Padmanabhaswamy Temple itself. A humanoid upper body merged with a serpent's lower half—though not entirely human-headed, more like a fusion of metal and living flesh.
Its body glowed fluorescent green beneath pitch-black outer armor. The torso and limbs were pure black, accented with golden patterns, and its serpent head resembled the broad tip of a spear.
"I truly feel sorry for Kevin Kaslana," Selene said with feigned sorrow. But no matter how hard she tried, not even a drop of crocodile tears emerged. The performance was painfully insincere.
"Your disgusting act makes me sick!"
Boom!
In the next instant, a massive tail swept toward Selene, tearing through the air, breaking the sound barrier. The raging wind devastated everything in its path.
Unfortunately...
Crack!
It sounded like glass shattering.
A powerful golden force washed over Mobius, inducing a strange hallucination.
The gigantic serpent she had transformed into suddenly froze in place. The ground beneath her warped violently as countless spatial fractures appeared without warning, swallowing the lower half of the fully unleashed Flame-Chaser and pinning her in place.
"Roar—!" Her near-feral howl pierced the ears as Mobius struggled to break free from the spatial field's restraint.
"The outcome has already been decided." Selene extended a finger, and her eyes flared with sudden brilliance.
"No! It's not over yet!" A trace of fear crept into the serpent's voice.
In a single instant, a pillar of lightning materialized from Selene's fingertip. The overwhelming current it carried was even more terrifying than the lightning Mobius had gathered by harnessing nature's might.
Already restrained by Selene, Mobius had no space left to evade.
Boom!!!
Amid a blinding white flash, Mobius felt her body grow light. A strange erosive force penetrated through muscle and bone, spreading throughout her entire being before blasting her away.
The manifested Infinite Ouroboros form began to disintegrate midair before crashing against the wall of a deep crater, carving out a spiderweb-like pit.
Immediately afterward, unending pillars of lightning reduced everything around them to dust, driving Mobius even farther back.
Tearing a tunnel open from the bottom of the crater with her own flesh, she burst out of the ground, smashing through who knew how many hills, forests, and buildings along the way.
Towering tree trunks and reinforced concrete structures offered not the slightest obstruction. They were annihilated instantly without even producing a sound.
Hoo...
Lowering her finger, Selene did not pursue in the direction Mobius had been blasted away. Instead, she glanced down at the deep pit beneath her feet and let out a soft chuckle before descending to the ground.
"Found you."
Peeling back layers of earth and digging three feet down, Selene located a lump of black-gold remains emitting a fluorescent green glow within a region of churning magma.
"Golden cicada shedding its shell... Provoking and attacking me nonstop, performing your unwillingness, desperation, and terror so convincingly. Tsk. I almost feel like awarding you an Oscar statuette."
At this moment, the outer shell of the black-gold remains had already vanished, faint smoke rising from it and revealing the slightly charred, writhing flesh within.
Holding it in her hand, the diamond-shaped pupils in Selene's eyes gradually lit with violet-red radiance.
"Isn't that right... Dr. Mobius?"
...
"Where... is this... How much time has passed? That damned pervert should be gone by now, right?"
When Mobius' consciousness revived once more, what greeted her was an indescribably bizarre and distorted space... hazy yet real.
Faint Honkai energy drifted through the surroundings. As she absorbed it, it emitted sizzle sizzle sounds, like water droplets falling into hot oil. Fortunately, a portion of her core remained intact. Given time, she could recover.
"Awake already?"
The sudden voice that rang directly inside her mind startled Mobius so violently that her emotions rose and fell like a roller coaster.
If she still had a physical body, Dr. Mobius' expression would certainly have been spectacular.
"Finality?!"
She knew that voice all too well. Even though she had only exchanged a few words with the Herrscher of Finality, she would never forget that voice.
As the blockade lifted and her perception cleared, Mobius realized—she was resting in the palm of the Herrscher of Finality.
All around them, low-rise residential districts in South Asian architectural style lay within arm's reach. Not far away stood the ruins of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple.
"Impressive. Such resolve. You left behind only a sliver of nearly extinguished origin and gambled the remaining ninety-nine percent to draw my fire. A true, life-risking golden cicada shedding its shell."
A true mad scientist indeed. Mobius' escape contingency plan had walked the very edge of death—it was a pure gamble with her life.
To evade Selene's perception to the greatest extent possible, the 'revival seed' she left behind minimized her origin to the extreme. Its vitality was nearly nonexistent.
It could be said that even if Selene had failed to detect this backdoor, there was still a significant chance Mobius would have lacked sufficient stored energy to revive, effectively killing herself through her own scheme.
Yet her choice was both unexpected and perfectly reasonable. A scientific fanatic—ruthless to others, even more ruthless to herself.
"Don't go silent now. Come on. Keep talking tough and let me hear it."
Sensing that Mobius' consciousness had stopped thinking, Selene's smile grew gentler. She continued to inject more Honkai energy to replace what the 'snake shedding' required, speaking cheerfully.
"..."
As if mentally broken into silence, Mobius remained mute.
Squish... squish...
With the ample Honkai energy Selene supplied, the remains began to writhe visibly, growing before the naked eye.
Very quickly, as though reaching a critical point, the fluorescent glow intensified. What broke out of the husk was, astonishingly, a miniature Mobius.
Compared to her previous green-haired loli form, she had regressed into a green-haired child. That size—an immediate life sentence by default.
"Ha! Why did you save me? Even if you did, don't think I'll thank you! I'll say it again—I will not be your dog!" the tiny Mobius shouted fiercely in her childish voice.
"Fine. Not a dog. How about my bedwarming maid?" Lifting the miniature Mobius with one hand, Selene flicked her forehead without hesitation, speaking maliciously.
"I would rather die here—jump off from here—than submit to you—"
Smack!
Before she could finish, a crisp sound rang out. A burning pain spread across her lower body, and Mobius' eyes widened abruptly.
"Y-you—you actually dared to spank me?!"
Smack! Smack! Smack!
"Waaah—! I'll fight you to the death!" Kicking her tiny legs wildly, Mobius screamed in humiliation and fury.
"Give it up, brat. This revived body of yours is filled entirely with the energy I injected." Selene laughed heartily, no longer maintaining her regal posture, pinching Mobius' little cheeks.
Absorbing my energy to revive—how could I, as the Herrscher of Finality, not add a little extra seasoning? Did you really think a maid could rebel against her master?
"Huff... huff..."
After flailing angrily for a while and probing Selene's true intentions—realizing she genuinely had no immediate desire to kill her—Mobius stopped courting death. Sigh... the spirit of Hua it is. If you can't resist, you might as well endure it.
Coincidentally, Mobius was extremely interested in Selene herself—especially the evolved soldiers within her human legions.
"Hey, Finality. Those Asta—"
"Astartes," Selene corrected. "And calling me Finality is so distant. My name is Selene. Remember it, little maid. From now on, it is the name of your master."
"Ghh..." Grinding her teeth, Mobius had no counter to Selene's verbal suppression. Now that things had come to this, if she didn't study this phenomenon thoroughly, she would never accept it.
Taking a deep breath, Mobius said, "Then could I—"
Before she could finish—
"Your Majesty!" ×N
A large group of Death Angels descended from the sky.
The edges of their deep blue power armor were inlaid with midnight silver-gray. Their legion insignia was outlined in blood-red. The bat wings emblazoned upon their pauldrons unmistakably declared their identity.
They were the Astartes Eighth Legion—the Night Lords. Under Selene's command, they were the nocturnal hunters who spread pain and fear.
With the arrival of the Night Lords, the world itself seemed to fall silent. The wind weakened. High above, the dense thunderclouds gradually dispersed, as if sensing something, then suddenly spiraled apart, splitting open a fissure.
The day's final slanting rays of sunlight descended like a miracle, shining directly upon Selene. Her entire figure seemed to be consumed by radiance, leaving behind only an indescribable holiness and brilliance...
Welcomed by the kneeling of a group of bloodstained butchers, the scene carried a strangely profound meaning.
This very sight was also witnessed by countless civilians hiding in dark corners. One after another, they fell to their knees, muttering prayers under their breath, desperate to offer their devout faith to a deity.
"Go ask them yourself. As it happens, little maid, you're in luck. They've arrived."