"Ah!!!"
Edelweiss's abrupt decapitation—her ruin laid bare—sent the surviving "guests" into soul-shredding panic.
Ling Ke? He'd already glided clear, pristine as fresh snow. Untouched.
And as he withdrew...
Thump~
The headless husk surrendered—vitality fled, support gone—slumping sideways in a graceless sprawl.
Fate's cruel jest, perhaps. Her blood-drenched gown hiked in the tumble, a bridal veil gone macabre. Baring it all: the void where legs once strode.
In that heartbeat...
"!!!"
The Branch Director—perched at her flank—drained to ash. Hand clamped mouth, futile dam. Then—hurk—it burst free. Vomit, acidic betrayal.
His retch ignited the trio across: curiosity's fatal spark. They knew—guts twisting—that cats died prying. Yet heads craned, traitorous...
One glimpse. Just one.
"!!!"
Ling Ke's earlier murmur? Hers alone. A deliberate veil. So the doctors, the Director—they clung to his broadcast taunt: Thanks to Miss Edelweiss for the ingredients.
Paired with that skirt-veiled nothingness...
Hurk!
All heaved. One measly slice, yet bile and worse evacuated—stomachs inverting.
And now...
"Seems our 'banquet' wraps early."
Ling Ke's tone iced over. "Pity—a few bespoke acts go to waste. But I won't indulge the overly rude." "Tasteless, that."
He pivoted for the doors, stride unhurried. The four remnants? Gutted, limp—scarcely able to lift heads, let alone flee.
They gawked, helpless, as he vanished.
Until...
Clap-clap!
Threshold crossed, Ling Ke summoned with palms' crack. Instantly—ripples—gates yawned wide across the hall. Each a maw to the West Asia Branch's underbelly: the dungeon's iron embrace.
Cells crammed with the broken. Some etched in purple veins, Honkai's curse. Others Frankenstein'd—Honkai Beast grafts sewn crude. Bellies scarred, needle-puckered voids where organs once thrummed.
All? Snatched by the Director's black-market strings. Funneled here, fodder.
Antonio. Egass. Moniz. They wrought the torments. Endless. Unyielding. Echoes of Ling Ke's hell.
Once, the lofty "humans" toyed with these "lab rats"—disposables, playthings. But they'd overlooked one truth.
Rats... ...bite.
"Enjoy the revelry of this night to the fullest!"
At the threshold of the grand hall, Ling Ke's eyes narrowed slightly, his smile a mask of impeccable courtesy. He slowly shut the doors.
In his parting glimpse through the final sliver of gap... One might aptly dub the tableau—
Demon Hunters!
The Schicksal West Asia Branch housed over thirty thousand personnel. In a single night, not a soul survived... No, a scant few got lucky.
They were the other Valkyrie squad stationed there, beyond Silver Lotus: Codename "Crimson Wing." On the very day Ling Ke ascended as this era's Herrscher of Domination, they happened to be out on assignment.
By the time their shuttle returned to base...
"This..."
Bloodstains everywhere. Mangled corpses strewn about.
The Crimson Wing Valkyries were all battle-hardened veterans, yet even they couldn't suppress a furrowed brow at the harrowing sight. One young rookie, barely initiated, collapsed straight onto her ass in terror. And... soaked her combat suit.
The squad captain had no bandwidth for such trifles right now. She hustled back to the shuttle, freshly landed, and reported the West Asia Branch's status straight to Schicksal HQ.
Truth be told, when she hadn't gotten the base's standard landing ping earlier, alarm bells had already rung.
And now...
Frankly, she had zero appetite for leading a sweep inside. Just the entryway was this nightmarish—what fresh inferno lurked within?
She figured every last Crimson Wing member, herself included, was scarred for life.
Thus, some half-hour later...
Schicksal HQ, the airborne archipelago suspended over the European Mediterranean.
"What? The West Asia Branch... obliterated? All internal personnel KIA?"
Durandal's heart seized at Rita's report.
Lately, as Schicksal's Grand Bishop... that man named "Otto Apocalypse" had vanished without a trace. With no choice, she—the reigning apex S-rank Valkyrie, no slouch in organizational clout—stepped in as interim overseer.
Only then did Durandal grasp just how Herculean it was to helm a globe-spanning behemoth. She wasn't cut out for it.
Truth be told, were it not for Rita at her side, this binary-thinker would've botched a mountain of critical tasks. Even with Rita's counsel, Durandal felt that each day in the hot seat drained her more than a month's straight beast-hunting ever had.
Mental attrition, the sort with no balm.
And right on this knife's edge...
"Per Crimson Wing's report, upon their return to West Asia Branch half an hour ago, no signs of life remained within." "It was as if... someone had butchered them to the last."
Atop one of the floating isles, Rita and Durandal shared a chamber. The former handed over an electronic tablet, its screen alive with West Asia Branch surveillance feeds.
Live shots: gore-slick floors, corpses in agonized contortions.
Then, as Durandal scrolled to the recordings... Hordes of short-haired girls, carving through the base like reapers through wheat.
Durandal and Rita confirmed they'd never clocked these faces before. And the masses? Identical in look, build, fighting form... down to the last.
"Clones?" Rita ventured a hunch. "Anti-Entropy's doing?"
Durandal mirrored the bafflement.
Mercifully, answers didn't tarry...
At one juncture, the feed caught a black-suited youth in tuxedo finery, poised like a refined majordomo. Facing a surveillance lens dead-on, he dipped a shallow bow in frame.
"Esteemed 'heroes' who fancy yourselves Honkai's bane, greetings." "Today, the 'villain' you've forged with your own hands is born." "From here, I'll play the foil to your tale."
The black-haired youth smiled, spreading his palms in natural equipoise—as if he himself embodied the scales. "A question:" "Can that 'beauty' you so crave truly outweigh the malice in my heart?" "By all means... watch and learn!"