He had no weapon in his hands. He hadn't worn his armor for the sake of stealth. His body hadn't fully recovered.
On the opposite side were twelve special Honkai Beasts with no recorded data. Each was on the level of the Smasher-class Lin had encountered before. Although there were no large-bodied Honkai Beasts, winning... was nearly impossible.
"Lin, what do we do?"
This was the first time Prometheus had directly asked Lin for a concrete plan. No matter how much she calculated with her state-of-the-art intelligence, the only possible outcome for him was death.
Now, he couldn't even send a message outside. He had sealed his own escape route, and he wouldn't abandon the other people in The Deepest Reaches and run away.
A death trap.
Prometheus's own data could be backed up and stored with a low chance of destruction, but she didn't know why she asked this question when she calculated that Lin was inevitably going to die.
Just seeing Lin's fate calculated as being utterly obliterated, she forcibly shut down the graphical computation.
"Can the door be opened again?" Lin tried to maximize the distance between himself and Rit to avoid being hit by stray attacks when the Honkai Beasts charged. After seeing all the Honkai Beasts exit the large door, he asked Prometheus.
"There is a sixty-second lock-down time after a forced closing."
Sixty seconds.
Before Lin could devise a way to break the deadlock, two azure Assault-class Honkai Beasts suddenly accelerated, spinning forward mid-air, transforming into two streaks of light to attack.
He couldn't confront them head-on.
The human body could not stand against the flesh of a Honkai Beast. This was like how even if Lin's neural response allowed him to track a bullet's trajectory, it didn't mean he could dodge it mid-flight. Avoiding a bullet still relied on anticipating the gun and the shooter's own judgment.
Lin side-stepped. This small movement evaded the two azure drills. He spun and kicked the torso of the Honkai Beast that had stopped spinning.
"Snap!"
The Assault-class Honkai Beast had one of the lightest bodies and weights. Lin easily kicked it flying. One was left. Before Lin could kick it, a bright red Knight-class Honkai Beast rushed in from behind. The flame ignited on its spear tip cast shadows of death on the reflection in his helmet.
With no time to think, Lin grabbed the remaining Assault-class Honkai Beast by its wings, leaped up, and threw the Honkai Beast away. It crashed right into the Knight-class Honkai Beast's spear tip, its core pierced.
"Gah—"
Lin landed on the rear of the Knight-class Honkai Beast's centaur-like body. Just then, Prometheus's urgent warning sounded—
"Miniaturized Honkai Beast approaching."
Miniaturized?
Lin felt a sudden, piercing pain in his side. Blood spurted from his waist. He tumbled off the Honkai Beast. Using the data from his helmet, he found the culprit: a Honkai Beast the size of a fly was licking his fresh blood and charging toward him again.
An ultra-small Assault-class?
The Knight-class Honkai Beast turned, raised its front hoof, and prepared to trample Lin's body.
Lin supported himself with both hands, dodging the Knight-class Honkai Beast's stomp, then reached out to intercept the small Assault-class Honkai Beast.
"Boom!"
Rit felt the entire floor tremble. He bit his lip, crawled toward the main server, and pressed the emergency contact button.
There was no response.
Logically, an alarm should have sounded in The Deepest Reaches the moment containment failed, and guards should have been dispatched for suppression. Even if they couldn't stop the initial assault, it would prevent the number of casualties from escalating.
But now, no alarm sounded, and even the emergency contact failed. A-3 Sector had become an isolated island.
Rit felt his heart freeze into a small shard of ice. A chill was freezing him from the inside out.
The moment he agreed to Lin, he had been designated as a disposable pawn. And he hadn't noticed the monitor on him at all.
The clothes? Or maybe during an ingestion? It didn't matter anymore. What mattered was that the person who once ordered him to attack the Fifth Branch now, just like he had once done, pressed the button to kill a fellow human.
"Is this... karma? Hahaha..." He collapsed powerlessly to the ground, looking up at the ceiling, letting out a bleak laugh. "This world is fair, after all."
At the end of his short life, Rit wasn't thinking of his sick daughter, but of the scene he witnessed while infiltrating the Fifth Branch.
In that mechanically ordered branch of the Moth of the Fire Chasers, a white-haired little girl treated the place like an ordinary amusement park, running, playing, and making mischief.
She didn't understand what the liquids in the raised transparent containers meant, nor did she understand what kind of experiments the busy researchers were conducting for humanity.
But her childlike innocence infected everyone. Those people, who put their lives in danger for humanity, stopped their busy work to play with her.
As long as children are born, the world possesses the greatest goodwill.
That was the most emotional sentiment the most rational people could express.
And after seeing that scene, Rit stood before that door of destruction, head bowed, too far from that dazzling light.
In the end, he casually pressed the button, allowing the photo of the family of three to vanish in the flames.
To end up like this... it was truly expected.
A Knight-class Honkai Beast arrived in front of him. Its scarlet eyes radiated a cold, heartless color, and it raised its lance.
Rit maintained his self-mocking smile, trying to face the death of his rotten life with composure.
But as the cold, sharp tip of the spear plunged down, he broke.
He didn't want to die.
"I can't even manage a gallant death."
Rit shielded his face with his hands, his face contorted by fear. The only grand gesture he could manage was to shout, mocking his own weakness.
"Clang—"
"You're overthinking it. This isn't karma; it's an arrangement made by someone behind a screen."
A drop of blood landed on Rit's cheek.
Lin held Rit's collar with one hand and clutched his shoulder, which had been torn open while saving Rit, with the other. He gasped for breath, running toward the main door. He had killed three more Honkai Beasts in the time Rit had been waiting for death. The remaining ones were impossible to kill with his bare hands.
There were nine seconds left until the door opened. Lin was truly familiar with countdowns. Almost every time he faced mortal danger, a life-and-death countdown hung over his head.
"You created a father who lost his wife and daughter, and a daughter who lost her parents. Cough..."
Lin coughed up blood. The high Honkai energy environment had caused his physical condition to rapidly deteriorate. He spoke weakly to Rit behind him.
"Could you have stopped the act of destruction at that moment? Did you ever have compassion? Did you ever consider another possibility?"
"And now, the person hiding behind the screen is doing the exact same thing you did. Now, tell me, is that person the so-called karma?"
"Finally... if you can't face death bravely, then live on first, and go accept your true 'karma'."
Rit stared blankly at the blood-soaked Lin, who was calmly saying those unbelievable words.
The door slowly began to open in front of them. Lin rushed out, but two tentacles emerged from behind him at that moment, wrapping around his ankles.
"Thud!"
The strengthless Lin was pulled down, lying in the middle of the door. This prevented Prometheus from closing the door, or Lin would be instantly crushed into a pulp.
But Rit was already outside the door. Lin immediately commanded: "Prometheus, close the door."
"...No."
Prometheus, who had always faithfully executed every command, at this moment, coldly disobeyed Lin's instruction.