The types, natures, and energy tiers of each Valkyrie girl were all their own — but technique-based skills were essentially universal: once one of them learned it, everyone could use it. After all, at their core, every consciousness was Caelus.
Silver Wing had been drilling her marksmanship in the Honkai World. Dropped into any real army, she'd qualify as a crack shot.
That said — technique was one thing. The true power of Silver Wing's marksmanship lay in…
Caelus pulled the Contra Tracking D-Gun out of his equipment space, temporarily unequipped the [Human Outline Master] badge from Bronya, and clipped it onto himself.
He squeezed the trigger. The gun's resonance chamber let out a low, droning hum as six blood-jade orbs the size of soup bowls coalesced into being, arranged in a Star of David formation and orbiting slowly around him.
His mind locked onto the demon beasts lurking in the darkness. Six blood-jade orbs screamed outward.
"Nice nice nice — bro, are you not even going to pretend? Your barrel is literally pointing at the sky!"
Stelle had fished out the firearms she'd lifted from Herta Space Station specifically to cover her lack of ranged options. Watching Caelus hold the gun in his right hand and blast away at the empty sky, she couldn't help but fling her own gun aside.
"Not cheating, just a little third-party assistance."
The Tracking D-Gun and [Human Outline Master] were a match made in heaven.
The badge's effect read: when a firearm shot fails to directly hit an enemy, bullets have a 15% chance to deal 400% damage. (Simplified description.)
By firing at the sky, Caelus triggered the miss-check immediately. As the tracking rounds looped and curved to adjust their trajectories, the check fired again and again — multiplying that base 15% chance by four or five times over.
March 7th drew her bowstring back, sending arrow after frost-tipped arrow streaking through the air.
"Where are all these bats even coming from?"
As a girl, she'd always had a certain instinctive dread of bats to begin with. The sheer density of them — packed so thickly it would make anyone with trypophobia pass out on the spot.
The demon beasts, sensing the attacks, refused to go down quietly. An unending stream of blood-eyed bats poured out from the spreading darkness, intercepting bullets and arrows alike.
"Time for something bigger."
Caelus kept squeezing the trigger in a steady rhythm, guiding the flying carpet lower.
"Netherworld Judgment——"
Xueyi stepped forward, jade arms sweeping in an arc, both wrists crossing. The two dark-iron Demon-Quelling Awls struck each other with a resounding clang — twisting, rotating, as the Ten-Lords Commission decree runes engraved on their shafts lit up one by one.
In the instant she lunged back into a bow stance, a tide of Path energy erupted from beneath her feet, bursting into a pale, serene radiance that smelted together into a three-foot short spear.
"All demons shall be purged!"
With that fierce cry, the Demon-Quelling short spear shot forward trailing a soul-binding mandate, carving a meteor-fall arc across the air.
The short spear struck first despite launching second. The instant its shaft grazed the outer shell of the dark cocoon of light, an energy vortex exploded outward, punching clean through.
The 4x-amplified damage blood-jade rounds and Six-Phased Ice arrows followed in the wake of the Demon-Quelling spear, drilling through the broken defensive layer and striking the demon at the core.
BOOM!
Explosion and flame blossomed inside the dark cocoon — yet the sound was compressed to a fraction of its true force, so that from outside it looked no more spectacular than a child's sparkler.
The new-breed demon beast's golden mask shattered completely under the energy impact, revealing the pitch-black spirit-flame of a Heliobus beneath.
"That is…?"
Xueyi's fist clenched tight. The iron chain coiled around her wrist snapped taut, wrenching the Demon-Quelling short spear back to her hand.
The boiling dark energy scattered in every direction like someone had dropped a firecracker into boiling water. The demon's grotesquely misshapen head rotated slowly, and the group got their first clear look at its face.
A jester's makeup — red markings, yellow eyes. The jawbone had split all the way to the ear roots, baring a mouthful of spike-like teeth, corrosive yellow-green drool seeping between each gap.
"Yee——!!"
A bizarre screech rang out. It threw open its gaping maw and swallowed whole every small Heliobus that had seized on the chaos of the group's attack to attempt an escape.
Miasma billowed from behind it. The moment it made contact with the Heliobus spirit-flames, an entropic reaction detonated — exactly like a lit lighter being hurled by some destructive little kid into a methane pit.
Dark-violet slime seethed like living lava. From its back erupted two enormous arms — somewhere between flame and sticky mud in consistency — stretching over forty meters in length.
Those purple-black slime spirit-flame palms reached and grasped toward the group. Wherever droplets of slime fell on the ground, the surface dissolved into craters on contact — like a red-hot branding iron dropped into snow.
"Hold on tight!"
Caelus stowed the D-Gun, every ounce of his focus pouring into commanding the [Wind] to pilot the flying carpet.
"WAAAH WAAAH——!"
A creature that moved with agility wildly disproportionate to its size — combined with the carpet's relative velocity — left almost no room to dodge.
Caelus threw an arm around March 7th's slender waist, grabbed Huo Huo by the back of her collar with his other hand. Stelle wordlessly dropped into a crouch and gripped the carpet's edge, pulling Xueyi's hand in tight.
An instant later, amid the screaming shrieks of March 7th and Huo Huo, the flying carpet wrenched into a violent spin — tilting ninety degrees sideways to slip between the dark-violet mud-fire giant palms.
Using centrifugal force to hold steady, it continued rotating a full 270 degrees and righted itself upright again.
"WAHHHH!"
Huo Huo was still screaming, both her fair little legs trembling nonstop — looking for all the world like she was one second away from losing bladder control entirely.
If Caelus let go, Huo Huo probably couldn't even stay standing.
"Stop screaming!"
Tail shot Huo Huo's cowardice a disgruntled look, lips curling. Under normal circumstances it would've mocked her mercilessly — but what just happened really had been terrifyingly close.
"Is that… miasma fused with Heliobus spirit-flame?"
"If those hands touch us, it's over!"
"What in the world is this thing?"
Tail stared at the demon as it spread its vast bat wings and burst free from the crater. Countless phantom silhouettes drifted around its body — faces warped and twisted, being consumed and reconstituted by spirit-flames. The faces of the humans the Heliobus had swallowed.
Arms skeletal as bare branches, yet each the full length of its entire body. Enormous blood-red hands completely out of proportion with any living creature's frame. A tongue lolling out like a viper's. An inverted cross heraldry of corruption floating on its chest.
"DanteMon — Fallen Angel type Digimon, Ultimate level."
Caelus's voice was quiet, but it drew every eye to him.
"Digimon? What's that?"
"No time to explain — just think of it as an evil demon and call it a day."
Caelus maneuvered the carpet to put over two thousand meters of distance between them and it, then tried a few test shots with the D-Gun.
HP -1.
Critical hit, HP -2.
Unable to penetrate enemy's defenses.
"Hey, you little trash. You feel that?"
Tail's tone went uncharacteristically grave.
"I knew that thing was pure monster. Huiyan — whatever that thing is now, it's not just a regular Heliobus anymore!"
Under the circumstances, even Fuyan didn't have the presence of mind to object to what Tail was calling it.
"What do you mean?"
Xueyi's brow furrowed slightly as she looked toward the one-eyed Heliobus.
"You're a Judge — you should know that Heliobus merging with each other comes with its weaknesses, right?"
Xueyi gave a short nod.
For a Ten-Lords Judge who had dealt with Heliobus for centuries, merged Heliobus were powerful, yes — but not without their vulnerabilities.
Each Heliobus carried emotional residue and desires absorbed from the hosts they'd once possessed, and they despised each other for it — like a single person harboring multiple warring personalities inside their skull.
Under any external pressure, the Balance would collapse easily.
"Huiyan and the other Heliobus it absorbed have fully merged with that demon — body and soul. Unless you defeat it completely, it won't break apart."
As Fuyan spoke, its gaze shifted subtly left and right, already plotting. Once everyone's attention locked onto the monstrosity Huiyan had become, it would find its opening — and bolt.
"If what this one says is true, then we have a serious problem."
Xueyi's gaze moved to the Star Rail crew.
A monster that had swallowed most of the Spirits of Starfire — approaching the level of the great Heliobus Ignamar — now fused with a demon. Its power had reached a level Xueyi could scarcely believe.
Close to Emanator-level. This was not an enemy that a mere Judge or a Yama-officer could ever hope to handle.
In their current situation, the only hope lay in the Star Rail crew — the ones who had defeated the Lord Ravager.
"It's just a demon. Let's beat the living daylights out of it!"
Putting over two thousand meters of distance behind them, Stelle and the others leapt off the flying carpet — no technique whatsoever, just brute-force physiology eating the landing.
As she said it, Stelle opened the System Shop and started browsing transformation devices.
Fighting Phantylia had been a righteous group beatdown, and she and Caelus-cub alone definitely couldn't handle that — even transforming into an Ultraman would be a struggle.
But this DanteMon was still one tier below Rinnegan-Phantylia. Transforming into a Giant of Light should be manageable.
"Caelus-cub, you not buying?"
"Star-baby, let your little brother leech off you~!"
Caelus threw both arms around the big white thigh of Stelle's bare leg and started laying on the charm.
His Crystals were reserved for gacha rolls.
"Call me daddy."
Stelle planted both hands on her hips, expression imperious.
"Daddy!"
Not even a second's hesitation from Caelus.
"Good boy~"
Stelle grinned and ruffled Caelus-cub's head: "Big sis will bring you along… hmm, this one looks kind and benevolent — let's go with this one."
Caelus leaned over for a look. Stelle had bought a one-time-use transformation device.
Oh ho. The sun and moon shine together.
Master Gao — now that one really did have a kind and benevolent face.
"What about me, what about me?!"
March 7th was frantically jabbing her finger at herself.
"Here, take this."
Caelus fished out the Batara Earrings and held them out to March 7th.
"A-a fusion?"
March 7th stared down at the golden earrings in Caelus's palm, expression conflicted.
She'd admit it — in fusion form, March Stelle was devastatingly strong. But every time the word "fusion" came up, her mind leapt straight back to what had happened last time. Something like a surge of scorching heat shooting into her lower abdomen.
Her face went red again.
March 7th shook her head sharply. "Isn't Stelle turning into a giant? Who would I even fuse with?"
Half the reason for what had happened last time — more than half, really — was Stelle's fault. If she fused with someone else, that kind of accident wouldn't happen again, right?
"Xueyi? Or Huo Huo?"
March 7th looked the remaining members over, but neither felt right. Xueyi had a puppet body. Huo Huo was a little timid — hard to say what kind of personality the fusion would end up with.
"Obviously the adorable, loveable Seele!"
Caelus pointed back in the direction they had come from. March 7th turned to see two familiar silhouettes running toward them.
"Bronie and Seele? How are they here?"
"I called them, obviously. You can't go Trailblazing without the new members, can you?"
Caelus and Haxxor Bunny raised their hands and slapped a high-five.
"Whoa, so this is your idea of an adventure? That's exhilarating!"
Miss Haxxor Bunny looked toward the demon — swinging its mud-fire arms, casually demolishing buildings like toppling children's blocks — as it flew toward them.
"How do you even fight that thing?"
The oppressive pressure coming off it was unlike anything she'd felt before. Haxxor Bunny's gut told her: the her before she learned Aether Editing, going all-out, still couldn't scratch this thing's defenses.
This demon could effortlessly obliterate all of Arc City.
"Like this!"
Caelus tossed one earring to March 7th and slipped the other onto Seele's ear.
Not 'White' Seele — Caelus's own Seele.
"Sister March?"
Seele showed a sweet, obedient smile and tilted her head at March 7th.
"Mn! If it's Seele, then it's fine!"
March 7th nodded readily.
Soft, adorable little Seele — after fusion, she definitely wouldn't influence March into doing anything shameful.
March 7th put the earring on her right ear.
Under the astonished stares of Xueyi and Huo Huo, the two of them snapped together like opposite poles of a magnet, white light tracing out a slender, delicate silhouette.
Dark-purple hair, galaxy-shimmer-bright, falling just to the shoulder — deeper black on the inner layers. A face of breathtaking, lotus-blushing beauty set in a petite frame perched perfectly between loli and young girl.
Blue-purple irises paired with a soft blush. A soft, jelly-smooth little face that made something inside you melt just looking at it.
"Yue'er, pleased to meet you all~!"
The dark-purple-haired girl broke into a bright, adorable smile.
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