Fire-Moth Academy boasted a massive athletic field. A vibrant red synthetic track completely encircled a standard soccer field paved with lush, green artificial turf.
But right now, there were no energetic teenagers volleying soccer balls back and forth. Nor were there any young girls strolling hand-in-hand along the outer lanes, basking in the simulated sunlight.
You couldn't even spot those overly competitive runners who inevitably exhausted themselves into blushing messes while endlessly trying to lap each other.
Instead, the enormous field was densely packed with children of all shapes and sizes.
Thousands of kids stood in crooked, chaotic columns facing the flag-raising podium. Aside from the few holding signs at the very front of each line, everyone else was eagerly craning their necks.
Amidst these uneven columns—some of which stretched almost halfway across the soccer field—the large, empty clearing right in the very center was conspicuously eye-catching.
About a dozen pint-sized figures stood together in a sparse, loose cluster. Bronya and the rest of the St. Freya squad looked left, then looked right, realizing that everyone else was lined up in organized columns. Sharing a mutual glance, the girls silently shuffled themselves into a line sorted by height.
Then, a few staff members suddenly appeared, carrying a stack of tiny plastic stools. They promptly broke up the girls' hastily formed line and directed them all to sit down smack-dab in the very center of the field.
While this deliberate arrangement was ostensibly for their comfort, almost all of them felt like they were sitting on pins and needles. It was as if the little plastic stools beneath them were burning their butts.
No, wait. What was actually burning them were the intense, bewildered stares of their "peers" surrounding them on all sides.
None of the girls were particularly tall to begin with. Now that they were sitting down, the long columns of standing children on either side effectively formed two massive human walls boxing them in.
And, as expected, a tidal wave of whispers began flooding in from both sides.
"Who are they? Why did the teachers bring them chairs?"
"Wait, were we allowed to bring our own chairs?"
"No... the teachers never said we could."
"Then why do they get to sit?! My legs are killing me. The teachers must be playing favorites..."
"No, no, no! My mom told me about them! They're from the St. Freya Branch! They're super amazing!"
"St... what?"
"Whoa! Your mom is so smart!"
In a child's world, the concept of "special privilege" doesn't hold much weight. Or rather, at this age, the center of a child's universe is entirely themselves and their immediate surroundings.
So even if these kids blatantly called someone a liar to their face, they still retained an attitude of half-believing curiosity.
Seeing that he had suddenly become the center of attention, the boy with the "super smart mom" immediately puffed up with pride and took his role as an informant very seriously.
"It's Project St. Freya!" the boy earnestly corrected the others' mispronunciation.
"My mom said everyone in that class is incredibly powerful! The classes they're taking are completely different from ours, and their futures will be completely different too!"
"Different how?" Someone stubbornly sneaked a few more glances at Bronya's group, their expression shifting. "Is it because they're all super pretty?"
"No way! It's because when they grow up, they're going to join Fire-Moth!"
"But isn't this place literally Fire-Moth Academy? That's not a big deal."
"You idiot! Xiaoyuan means that when those older girls grow up, they're going to join the actual Fire-Moth military and fight Honkai Beasts!"
The moment those words dropped, a collective epiphany struck the crowd. The children experienced absolute enlightenment, and the chatter instantly exploded.
"I knew it! I thought a few of them looked familiar! I thought they were celebrities!"
"That's way cooler than a celebrity! Hasn't that older girl with the silver twin-tails been on TV before?"
"What TV? Where do we even have TVs?"
"The giant screen in the lobby on the fourth floor of the base! Do you guys never look up?"
"No, we just moved here from Arc City a little while ago."
"Yeah, me too!"
"Whoa, so Xiaoyuan has lived in the base this whole time?!"
Amidst the endless chirping, the boy named Xiaoyuan—having been praised yet again—puffed out his chest, looking exactly like a kid waiting to be called up on stage to accept an award.
The kids around him were still digesting the new information.
However, concepts like "fighting Honkai Beasts" and "joining the military" were still a bit too abstract for them to fully grasp.
It wasn't until someone opened their mouth and posed a highly constructive question that the conversation truly shifted: "Does that mean they don't have to do homework?"
Dead silence fell over the crowd. A second later, a storm of completely unhinged debate erupted.
"No way, are they really just here to go to school then?"
"But they have to fight Honkai Beasts! Isn't fighting Honkai Beasts harder than doing homework?"
"That's completely different! You have to do homework all by yourself, but you fight Honkai Beasts with a bunch of people!"
"So doing homework is harder?!"
"That's not what I meant... Wait, is it?!"
Once a child's train of thought derails, it is nearly impossible to put it back on track.
In less than a minute, the topic miraculously mutated from "Do they have to do homework?" to "What if we made the Honkai Beasts do our homework for us?" to "But Honkai Beasts don't have hands!"
Eventually, the escalating chaos was shut down by a single, severe glare from the teacher standing at the front of the column.
Sitting on their little plastic stools, totally surrounded by human walls, the St. Freya crew remained completely oblivious to the nature of the conversation.
They were all too busy dealing with the awkwardness of being the only ones sitting down.
Bronya sat perfectly straight, her posture immaculate from the very beginning. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, her gaze locked dead-ahead on the podium.
Combined with her signature deadpan expression, she became an island of absolute tranquility amidst the endless sea of murmurs.
In reality, she had heard every single word being whispered around her.
However, through her tumultuous life experiences, Bronya had mastered a high-level skill: In one ear, out the other!
This wasn't just a basic trick! And it certainly wasn't a skill exclusive to idiot Kiana.
Naturally, as one of the legendary 'Original Trio,' Mei was also a master of this technique.
Of course, this skill didn't mean she literally forgot everything she heard. It meant she listened with purpose. Selective listening. Dialectical listening... filtering out the noise to capture only what was important, what she wanted to hear, and what had nutritional value...
Hm? Did someone just say I was pretty?
Whatever. She'd quietly file that compliment away for later.
Unlike Bronya's stoic 'coldly facing the pointing fingers of a thousand men' approach, the others had plenty of opinions regarding the ongoing commentary.
Directly behind Bronya, the Vodka Girls, Rozaliya and Liliya, were currently conducting a highly rigorous analysis of the surrounding gossip.
"Liliya, did you hear that? Someone just said we're pretty!" Rozaliya tilted her left cheek slightly, speaking through completely unmoving lips, squeezing the words out of the corner of her mouth.
"Right there! The girl with the ponytail on the right! She said, 'Is it because they're all super pretty?'—Direct quote! I swear, direct quote! I didn't change a single syllable!"
"Idiot sister, that is clearly a delusion," Liliya replied without breaking eye contact with the podium, her posture somehow even straighter than Bronya's.
"According to Liliya's statistics, since we sat down, there have been a total of 127 remarks concerning us. Out of those, only three mentioned 'pretty,' while forty-one mentioned 'short.'
"What you should be doing right now is standing up to show everyone exactly how tall you are, not fighting for copyright over three measly compliments."
"Huh? Why are you talking like Bronya?!" Rozaliya looked at her sister in absolute horror.
Even Bronya, whose heart had been entirely undisturbed just a second ago, nearly broke character at that line.
Completely oblivious to the fact that she had just inflicted friendly fire, Rozaliya's brain finally registered the core issue in her sister's logic.
"Wait, Liliya! Did you just call me short?! Damn it, no matter what, I'm definitely taller than you, idiot Liliya!"
Liliya silently puffed out her chest. "That is a thing of the past, sister. From now on, Liliya will absolutely never be shorter than her idiot sister!"
"What?!" Rozaliya's pupils quaked.
She couldn't comprehend it. Why was Liliya suddenly exuding such overwhelming confidence? How could she confidently declare she would definitely surpass her in height?
Could it be—
A faint, undeniable trace of smugness surfaced on Liliya's chronically tired face.
"Because... Liliya has been drinking one extra glass of milk every day!"
"WHAT?! Liliya, you despicable traitor!!"
The pink-haired girl furiously accused the blue-haired girl, reaching out to ruthlessly punish her underhanded, rule-breaking sister.
Before their brawl could even start, the girl sitting next to them shot them a vicious glare. Instantly, the vibrant, energetic sisters went completely mute, shivering like cicadas in winter.
Retracting her glare, Sin crossed her legs and resumed bouncing her knee out of sheer boredom.
Just like Bronya, she had heard every single whisper circulating around them. And, as expected, even though Sin had abandoned her aristocratic upbringing years ago, "maintaining a polite smile while listening to a barrage of absolute nonsense without letting it affect you" remained a core, foundational skill.
Right now, she was only thinking about one thing.
Who the hell came up with this torturous arrangement? She was going to throw dirt in their eyes and hit them with a string of highly un-aristocratic greetings.
Seele tilted her head slightly, glancing at Bronya, then at Sin. Realizing both of them were employing the exact same coping mechanism without prior coordination, she couldn't help but smile softly.
"Hm?" Sin acutely caught Seele's 'peeping,' turning her head in annoyance to flash a mouth full of shark teeth. "What are you looking at, coward? Are you feeling shy and hoping this Great One will comfort you?"
"No. Seele just thought Sin would hate being gossiped about like this... Seele didn't expect Sin to be so gentle."
"Ugh~" Sin exhaled a long, exaggerated breath, her face twisting in pure disgust. "Great. I'm completely grossed out now."
"Heh..." Bronya couldn't hold back a soft chuckle, instantly drawing Sin's furious glare.
But unlike Rozaliya and Liliya, Bronya wasn't intimidated by Sin's supposed tyranny.
Everyone from the orphanage knew Sin was ultimately just a softie!
"Seele is right. Sin is actually very yasashii to everyone," Bronya said, her smile gentle, her eyes practically overflowing with a maternal, entirely infuriating sense of pride.
"WHAT?!" Forget the look in her eyes—the fact that Bronya deliberately used the ridiculously anime-trope word 'yasashii' instead of just saying 'gentle' was enough to make Sin's blood boil.
If she wasn't trying to leave Bronya a shred of dignity in public, she would have tackled her to the ground and exacted swift justice!
Sin forcefully whipped her head away with a loud huff.
"Sin is acting tsundere again."
"Sin is definitely being tsundere again."
"SHUT UP!" Sin ground her teeth, glaring venomously at the two Vodka Girls before aggressively turning her head to stare at the empty field, adhering to the age-old philosophy of 'out of sight, out of mind.'
While the orphanage crew kept themselves entertained in their own chaotic bubble, Bianca remained completely locked out of their world. Or perhaps, she simply had no time to pay attention to them.
Like Bronya, she sat perfectly straight on her tiny stool, her face set in a serious, solemn expression, trying her absolute hardest to present her best side to the thousands of eyes watching her.
She didn't entirely understand what the crowd was whispering about, but... they were definitely praising her, right?
In that case, she couldn't afford to slip up... Wait.
Bianca turned her head in slight surprise. At some point, Azhar had dragged her little stool over and practically glued herself to Bianca's side. The girl who had once engaged in a life-or-death ideological debate with a Herrscher was currently shivering like a wet quail.
She was also aggressively muttering something under her breath. Bianca blinked, leaning down slightly to decipher the whispers of the Old Gods.
"So many people, so many people, so many people... why are there so many people? Why, why, why..."
"Uh... Azhar?" Bianca sucked in a breath of cold air, nervously asking the girl who was currently vibrating at a high frequency.
Azhar lifted her head, her face completely drained of life. "I-I-I-I don't feel so good..."
Why—are there—so many people?!
Was this what going to school was like?! Although Azhar had only attended a few months of school before the Great Eruption forcefully expelled her, she specifically remembered school not being like this.
Weren't you just supposed to leave home when it was time, go to class, and then immediately go home when class ended?
Why did school involve a public execution segment?! Why did one school have this many people?! Why were they receiving such blatant special treatment just for showing up?!
If you asked Azhar whether she liked being treated as special?
Hell yes, she liked it! In the past, she had dreamt of being a highly respected hero adored by the masses!
But this was way too many people! And their "admiration" was completely different from what Azhar had imagined.
Shouldn't admiration involve everyone gathering around, lavishing her with praise, and throwing her on a pedestal, just like the cheering crowds welcoming the Homu Hero?
Why was everyone in Fire-Moth just staring from a distance and loudly gossiping amongst themselves?!
Azhar didn't feel like a hero. She felt like a rare animal in a zoo, and everyone else was just tourists coming to gawk at the exhibit.
And there really are way, way, way too many people...
Azhar was rapidly losing her ability to function. She continued to mutter a stream of pure despair into Bianca's ear, completely devoid of any capacity for coherent communication.
In stark contrast, on the other side of the group—
Sirin sat with her head held high, arms crossed proudly over her chest, fully embracing the crowd's undivided attention as if it were her absolute birthright.
With her purple hair, golden eyes, and a lavish, gorgeous princess dress—not to mention the incredibly elegant Frelly serving as her personal attendant right beside her—the picture was complete.
Was she a princess?
No.
She was the Queen!