The air went utterly still.
Even the flames burning in the background seemed to stutter and freeze for a beat, as if embarrassed.
The Herrscher of the Void's proud face went blank — just for an instant.
She stared at the man before her as though she were looking at a lunatic.
"You... what did you just say?"
The Herrscher of the Void's voice shot up eight octaves. That air of absolute, unshakeable control — shattered.
"I am showing you hell! I am telling you she is a monster with rivers of blood on her hands! And you're thinking about your stupid game?!"
Her Majesty the Queen had lost it.
She swung her hand. Several Subspace Lances shrieked through the air and drove straight at Su Yu — then stopped, hovering one inch from the tip of his nose.
"Aren't you afraid to die? Doesn't this disgust you? The blood of destruction flows through this body. I could grind you into powder any time I please!"
Faced with that point-blank threat, Su Yu didn't so much as blink.
He smiled.
Standing before the Herrscher of the Void's threat — before those lances that could take his life at any moment — he simply reached out, ignored the razor-sharp weapons entirely, and flicked his finger through the air as if tapping the Herrscher's forehead from a distance.
"I think you've got something confused, Your Majesty."
Su Yu let the smile drop. His gaze deepened, turned soft — as if he were looking through this violent Herrscher at an entirely different soul.
"I never needed you to tell me who she is.
"I have known everything about Kiana from the very beginning.
"Her past. Her present. Even her future."
Su Yu stepped forward, pressing close, holding the Herrscher of the Void's eyes.
"Even you — Herrscher of the Void. Sirin."
"I know what you went through at the Babylon Tower. I know your rage, your hatred — and your final fate."
The Herrscher of the Void's pupils contracted sharply. She took an involuntary step back.
This human... what was he saying? Those were memories even K-423 didn't know. How could he know them?
"True — to me, those memories were originally just electronic signals on a screen. Not real. Not tangible."
Su Yu's voice cut through the burning ruins with unusual clarity, carrying a strange, penetrating weight.
"But before I came to this world — through countless lonely days and nights — I watched Kiana Kaslana fall down and get back up, over and over. I watched her kindle a flame in the heart of despair. Those stories gave me strength.
"That strength is the very reason I, Su Yu, can stand here today and look a god like you in the eye."
Su Yu spread his arms wide, as if to embrace this ruined world — or scatter every shadow within it.
"So put away your tired tricks, Herrscher of the Void.
"No matter what kind of world-ending demon lord you are in everyone else's eyes — no matter how much sin this body carries —"
Su Yu paused. The corner of his mouth curved into the grin Kiana knew best — that slightly roguish, unhurried smirk.
"To me, Kiana Kaslana is just a greedy, playful, absolutely feral little junior sister who loses her mind the second she sees an amusement park, like a Husky off the leash.
"Nothing more than that."
On the other side of the mirror.
Kiana — who had already shut her eyes in despair, bracing for judgment — snapped them open.
The chains binding her shattered, link by link, the instant Su Yu's words fell.
She stared, dazed, at that man standing before the Herrscher — his silhouette not particularly broad, and yet as immovable as a mountain.
Idiot little junior sister... Husky...?
Not a heroic description in the slightest. In the most terrifying scene imaginable.
And yet...
"Uu..."
Kiana covered her mouth. Tears burst from her eyes like a dam giving way all at once.
Along with them came a feeling so bittersweet it felt like her heart would explode.
He had always known she was a monster. And yet he'd shoved pizza into her mouth without missing a beat. Handed her his back without a second thought.
He wasn't a fool who'd been kept in the dark.
He was an idiot who had seen every shadow clearly — and chosen to hold her anyway.
Idiot Su Yu.
"...Idiot."
Kiana wept in the consciousness space like a child who'd lost a toy and miraculously found it again, her voice breaking apart with every sob.
"You could've just... just run away... Why do you have to be so good to me..."
In this frozen nightmare, Su Yu's words were like an overbearing, unreasonable ray of sunlight — tearing through every shadow by sheer force, pouring into that heart of hers that had been riddled with wounds for so long.
Back in the ruins.
The air was scorched enough to set the lungs ablaze.
Faced with killing intent close enough to breathe on him, Su Yu didn't retreat. He didn't even tremble.
He raised his eyes slightly, and his gaze passed through that beautiful, twisted face — as if he were looking at a lost child beyond it.
Pity.
Yes.
The Herrscher of the Void saw pity — on this man's face. On the face of this man who clearly didn't know the meaning of self-preservation.
"As for you, on the other hand — Herrscher of the Void."
Su Yu's voice was quiet. But it landed like a needle driven precisely into Her Majesty the Queen's towering pride.
"You really are... a little pitiful."
On the other side of the mirror, Kiana's eyes flew wide open.
Tears fell like snapped beads, scattering everywhere.
Idiot. Absolute idiot!
You're practically dead already — why are you still provoking her?! A little humility and maybe you'd survive — !
But then — why was a warm tide rising in her chest all the same?
So this is how much he cares about her.
Even in front of a monster like this. Even knowing full well he would die. He still cradled her in the palm of his hand like something precious, and went out of his way to mock a so-called "god" who stood above all things.
In this moment, Kiana thought — even dying for this idiot might not be such a bad thing after all.
The Herrscher of the Void, however, was not moved in the slightest.
"...Pitiful?"
The Herrscher of the Void's voice was squeezed out from between clenched teeth.
She was a Herrscher!
An apostle of Honkai!
A Queen destined to destroy this world!!!
A mere ant — a mortal without even a trace of Honkai energy — dared to look at her like that? Dared to call her... pitiful?!
"Shut up!"
She changed her mind.
Killing this man outright was too merciful.
This was a dreamscape.
Here, she was an omnipotent god.
"Since you want to play the hero so badly — I'll grant your wish."
The fury on the Herrscher of the Void's face vanished. In its place bloomed a smile — chilling, sickly sweet.
"I'll show you what true hell looks like!!"
The next second, she raised her foot.
Those white high heels, with their razor-sharp stiletto points, came down hard — directly onto Su Yu's chest.
Crunch —
That was no sound effect.
That was the sound of a heel piercing fabric, piercing skin, wedging itself into the gap between ribs.
The dreamscape was an illusion. The pain was synchronized at one hundred percent.
"Ngh..."
Su Yu let out a muffled grunt. The color drained from his face instantly. Cold sweat cascaded from his forehead like a waterfall.
The searing agony of his heart being physically compressed blurred his vision in an instant.
"Scream! Scream for me!"
The Herrscher of the Void ground her heel with gleeful excitement, watching blood soak through Su Yu's white shirt, watching the muscles spasm across his body from the raw agony.
"Beg me for mercy! Say you were wrong! Say Kiana is worthless! Say I am the supreme Queen!"
She wanted to watch him break.
She wanted to see him crawl at her feet like a dog and lick the soles of her shoes.
"Come on! Get on your knees and beg like a dog! You worm!!"
But.
Su Yu clamped his jaw shut. His lips were already bitten raw and bleeding. His throat was already thick with the iron taste of blood.
He kept his eyes open anyway. Kept them locked on the Herrscher of the Void.
Those eyes held no fear. No pleading.
Only contempt — denser, more palpable than ever. Almost solid.
Su Yu wrenched the corner of his mouth into a crooked shape, spent every last ounce of strength to spit out one sentence: "You really are... pitiful... Sirin."
"Die —!!!"
The Herrscher of the Void's eyes flew wide — then an irrepressible surge of fury overwhelmed her.
The spatial rift behind her tore open with a roar.
Several Subspace Lances, reeking of annihilation, descended like divine judgment — and in an instant, ran through Su Yu's body from every direction at once.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Limbs. Abdomen. Shoulders.
Su Yu was pinned to the burning ruins like a broken scarecrow.
Blood erupted like a fountain, dyeing the ground red in an instant.
"Su Yu —!!!"
Inside the consciousness space, Kiana let out a scream that tore from the very depths of her soul.
She fell to her knees, clawing desperately at the invisible barrier with both hands. Her nails snapped off and she didn't even feel it.
She knew it was a dream. She knew.
But the pain — the pain of watching the most important person in the world be butchered before her eyes — hurt ten thousand times worse than dying herself.
Please... please, no... I'm begging you...
Kiana's vision went blurry.
Her heart felt like someone had grabbed it in a fist and squeezed. The pain nearly drove her unconscious.
This was her sin.
Everyone who came close to her ended up suffering.
Teacher Himeko. And now Su Yu, the same way...
Up in the ruins.
The Herrscher of the Void crouched down gracefully, extended a finger, and dabbed it into the blood welling from Su Yu's chest.
She brought the finger to her lips. Licked it clean.
The vivid red made her lips look more wicked than ever. The golden pupils shimmered with a deeply warped, ecstatic delight.
"Ah... delicious."
The Herrscher of the Void half-lidded her eyes, as if she had just tasted the finest dish the world had to offer.
"Kiana... can you see? That man's blood — it really is warm.
"This taste of despair... this sensation of a life slipping away... is this the thing you wanted to protect? How utterly fragile."
Just as the Herrscher of the Void was basking in the euphoria of victory, already savoring the sight of Kiana's impending collapse —
Something changed.
The body beneath her feet — which should have been growing cold and stiff — flickered like a hologram with a bad signal.
Then it dissolved into streams of green data and vanished into thin air.
"...Huh?"
The Herrscher of the Void froze mid-lick.
Then, from directly behind her, came a voice so familiar it made her scalp crawl.
Tired. And carrying just the faintest trace of — mockery.
"You really don't hold back, do you, Your Majesty. Would it kill you to dial it back a little? That genuinely hurt."
"!!!!"
The Herrscher of the Void spun around.
On the perfectly intact set of steps behind her.
Su Yu was standing there.
His white shirt was pristine — not a single crease. No hole in his chest. All four limbs intact. Even the cold sweat from before was gone.
He was looking down, adjusting his cuffs, face as impassive as ever — as if the person who'd just been gutted wasn't him at all.
"This... this is impossible!"
The Herrscher of the Void's pupils shook violently.
Even if Su Yu couldn't truly die, after experiencing a death of that magnitude inside a dreamscape, his mind should have shattered! To reconstitute a physical form so quickly, and maintain his sanity on top of it — that was simply not something that could be done!
"What... what are you?!"
The Herrscher of the Void pointed at Su Yu, her finger visibly trembling.
Su Yu finished adjusting his cuffs, and slowly raised his head.
In this moment, the calm on his face was gone.
In its place — a smile.
The corners of his mouth split wide. His eyes blazed.
That smile was identical to the one he'd worn on the rooftop — when the Herrscher of the Void had her hand around his throat.
Exactly the same.
The smile of a man who had placed his life as a chip on the gambling table — and called it a bargain.
"Still don't understand, Your Majesty?"
Su Yu started walking. Step by step, toward the Herrscher who had once been untouchable.
"You think death can bring me down — because you assume I'm a normal person.
"A fragile little human who fears pain, fears death, and crumbles under pressure."
Su Yu stepped directly in front of the Herrscher of the Void, leaned in, and let her look straight into those black eyes — eyes in which something burned far more terrifying than Honkai energy.
He grinned, showing every tooth: "But it seems you've misunderstood something... when exactly did you get the impression — that I was anything close to a normal human being?"
The Herrscher of the Void's pupils contracted violently.
Staring at that face, written all over with absolute certainty.
Deep in Su Yu's chest, something utterly inexplicable began to rise — an irrepressible urge to laugh.
What an expression.
Like a lofty god who had just looked down to find the ant she casually crushed — calmly dusting itself off, standing back up, and flipping her the finger.
That world-collapsing bewilderment. More entertaining than any drama ever written.
"What kind of face is that?"
The smile on his face was warm in a way that felt faintly wrong — like an older brother telling a bedtime story to the little girl next door, except this particular story was probably nothing like Little Red Riding Hood.
"It seems that even Her Majesty the almighty Queen has things she can't comprehend."
Su Yu tapped his own chest — the spot that had just been run through by a Subspace Lance, and now bore not even a scar.
"Have you been puzzling over it this whole time? Why I dared to grab Kiana's hand that day on the rooftop?
"Why, even after knowing she had a walking bomb like you inside her — ready to blow at any moment — I still waltzed home with her, and even dared to stand here trading words with you?"
The Herrscher of the Void took an involuntary step back.
Her instincts were screaming. The aura coming off this man had changed.
Gone was the mild, harmless "Eldest Senior Brother."
What was here now was something that felt like it had crawled up from the very bottom of hell.
Su Yu tilted his head. His gaze drifted, turning slightly unfocused — as if he were looking through this dreamscape at something distant, somewhere that didn't exist in this world.
"Because — I am someone who has genuinely, firsthand, experienced what it means to [die]."
"Not a simulation inside some dreamscape. Not a near-death experience."
"Heart stopped. Brain dark. The whole person sinking into eternal nothing — that kind of complete, total death."
Su Yu's voice was soft. And yet it carried a weight that made breathing difficult.
"Even the King of Hell found me too unlucky to keep and refused to take me in.
"So I clawed my way back — with this body, with this absurd System, into a world so peaceful it makes you nauseous — and got a second life."
He looked at the Herrscher of the Void, a self-deprecating curve forming at the corner of his mouth.
"Do you want to know why Mobius was willing to pay me those generous 'nutrition fees'? You really think she just had money to burn?"
"No — she's simply curious about me.
"Because in this world — what specimen is more valuable than a person who has died once, and then showed back up alive and kicking?"
On the other side of the mirror, Kiana clamped a hand over her mouth. Her pupils shook wildly.
He died...?
Su Yu... died before?
The sheer volume of that information crashed into her brain like a system failure.
She had always assumed Su Yu was just a slightly mysterious game developer. She'd had no idea — not a clue — that beneath that face which was always half-smiling, a past like this was buried.
"Yeah. I'm a thoroughly salted fish by now."
Su Yu shrugged.
"All I want is to lie flat. A quiet life — sleep till I wake up on my own, drink soda, play games. 'Saving the world' sounds cringe to me. Chuunibyou nonsense."
And then his expression changed.
The mild facade tore away. Beneath it was a soul that had been pried apart and put back together too many times — and a madness so absolute that even the Herrscher of the Void felt her breath catch.
Su Yu lunged close to the Herrscher of the Void's face. In those black eyes burned a flame so wild it looked ready to swallow the Herrscher whole.
"Oh — I forgot to mention something. You share Kiana's memories, so you must remember the first time I met Elysia, right?"
The Herrscher of the Void froze.
She did remember, of course.
That pink woman. That woman who shone like light itself. Who had, inexplicably, taken an enormous interest in this man.
"You think Kevin and Mei only sent Elysia crashing into my life — to keep me from becoming 'detached from this world' — and to build some kind of so-called connection?"
The smile on Su Yu's face grew wider. Wide enough that it started to look warped. Unhinged.
"No. That wasn't the only reason.
"There's another reason I've never told Kiana — one I don't even like admitting to myself. Because tell me — do you really think a person who has personally lived through death could ever be anything close to [normal]?"
Su Yu tapped his own temple. His voice went hoarse with the force of his own exhilaration.
"Yeah — you can probably figure it out, can't you?"
"The truth is... I'm genuinely not well up here.
"And not just a little bit, my Queen — HAHAHAHAHA —!!!"
The mad laughter rang out across the burning ruins.
Sharp. Grating. Filled to the brim with contempt for fate and derision for death itself.
That was not the laughter of a hero.
That was the cackling of a lunatic.
The Herrscher of the Void stared, golden pupils pinprick-small.
She had witnessed the ugly faces of countless humans confronting death.
Ones who wept and begged. Ones who dropped to their knees. Ones who lost control of their bodies from sheer terror. She relished those sights — because they proved her power.
She had witnessed the so-called Valkyries, too.
Some met death with open eyes, some with somber dignity — but all of them had, in their gaze, some final reverence for death.
But she had never seen anyone like this.
Someone who treated death as a punchline. Who wagered his own life without hesitation. Who felt superior precisely because he had died once.
Fear.
A fear unlike any she had ever known — the fear of the unknown — coiled around the Herrscher of the Void's heart like a serpent.
This thing that refused to stay within her control — it drove her into a fury.
"Bluffing! This is all just bluffing!!"
The Herrscher of the Void screamed, her voice cracking from sheer panic into something shrill and jagged.
She could not accept that a mortal could overpower a Herrscher in sheer presence. That was impossible —
"If killing you once isn't enough — I'll kill you ten times! A hundred times! A thousand times!"
"I want to see just how long this pathetic little ant can keep talking back!!!"
Even she wouldn't admit it, but every shred of that composed, elegant, divine demeanor was gone now.
As the Herrscher of the Void's scream tore through the air, the spatial rift ripped open again.
CRACK —!!!
Dozens of Subspace Lances, carrying the weight of total annihilation, drove into Su Yu's body from every direction simultaneously.
This time, no mercy whatsoever.
Su Yu was pinned in place like a ragdoll, skewered from every angle in an instant.
The mad laughter stopped dead.
Su Yu's body went rigid where it stood. The light in his eyes — like a light bulb losing power — dimmed rapidly and went out.
He died again.
The kind of agony that would reduce any ordinary person's mind to rubble in an instant.
"Ha... haha..."
Staring at the man who had finally gone quiet, the Herrscher of the Void's face twisted into a derisive, contemptuous smile.
"You see... this is the consequence.
"A lunatic. A revenant. Against absolute power — they're all just —"
She was still speaking, already stepping forward to admire the ruined corpse.
But.
This time, she didn't even make it to Su Yu before —
Hummm —
A faint tremor moved through the air.
The skewered body — and the Subspace Lances with it — dissolved like a wisp of green smoke.
No corpse.
No blood.
Just empty air.
"Wha —"
The smile froze on the Herrscher of the Void's face.
The next moment.
A razor-sharp snap of air, carrying savage intent, exploded from her left — without any warning!
The sound of a fist tearing through the air itself!
No flashy special effects. No Honkai energy signature. Just raw, pure physical force — carrying the absolute will to kill.
The Herrscher of the Void whipped around.
In that instant, her retinas captured only one image —
Su Yu's infuriating face — and a fist expanding in her field of vision at terrifying speed.
"Impossible —?!"
In the razor-thin moment before that fist could pulverize her nose, she activated the Herrscher of the Void's Authority.
Whoosh!
Space bent.
The Herrscher of the Void blinked out and reappeared more than ten meters away in an instant.
BOOM!!
Su Yu's fist smashed into empty space — and the shockwave alone drove a ripple through the air that was visible to the naked eye.
The Herrscher of the Void stood at a distance, chest heaving, completely shaken.
She stared at the man holding his punch-through pose, and the fear in her eyes was now completely, utterly beyond concealing.
That man —
He had not only reconstituted his body instantly — he hadn't hesitated for even a fraction of a second. Not even the momentary rigidity that should have come with resurrection. He had launched his attack the instant he rematerialized.
How was this possible? This defied all logic!
"This... this can't be..."
The Herrscher of the Void murmured to herself, voice trembling.
Su Yu slowly drew his fist back. Turned around. Looked at the Herrscher of the Void.
He tilted his head. Rolled his neck. There was a sharp, clean crack.
Then — he smiled again. That warm, unhinged smile that made even a Herrscher feel a chill crawl down her spine.
"Quick on your feet, Your Majesty."
"But that's fine."
Su Yu laughed.
This time, beyond the madness, there was something else in that laughter — something icy and deliberate, the kind of cold that reached into the bone.
"You said something to Kiana once, didn't you?"
"Wh — what?"
"You told her — that you would appear in her deepest nightmares, over and over, until she no longer had the strength to resist —"
The Herrscher of the Void seemed to realize something. A wave of cold shot up her spine.
This man — still smiling — had eyes that held absolutely no trace of a smile.
Only a cold that cut to the marrow.
"Now I have something to say to you in return.
"Herrscher of the Void.
"Starting today — I will hunt you to the very ends of hell.
"Until you are completely, thoroughly broken."
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