Getting new gear was certainly an exciting thing.
But at the end of the day, people still had to work. After leaving Anti-Entropy Entertainment, Su Yu wasted no time and got into that birthday present Eden had given him—a black Jeep that looked understated and dignified on the outside, fitted with military-grade armored protection plating.
God only knew why a car needed a defense system like that. In Eden's words, it was probably out of fear that one day he'd be walking down the street and get sent flying by an RPG.
Hoisting heavy firepower right under the nose of the Arc City police and firing an RPG at himself?
That would honestly be a bit too impressive.
Back at the miHoYo game studio, Su Yu first dealt with his usual daily work, and along the way observed the data from the studio's internal testing.
The current game demo was more or less problem-free by now, and what remained was the classic bug-hunting stage.
After all, no matter how well a game was made, it inevitably ended up with some strange, bizarre bugs—and as everyone knew, players were always eager to find the game buried within a massive pile of bugs.
But with a hardcore veteran playtester like Old Yang and a genius hacker like Bronie around, plus the black-tech AI the System had granted him, Ai Hyperion, this was one area he didn't need to worry much about himself.
Su Yu exhaled a breath of stale air, his gaze shifting to the [White Dwarf] inside the System's storage slot.
And then there was that second enhancement serum, the one still tucked deep inside his backpack, still unused.
Come to think of it, what exactly was this stuff made of? Dragon blood?
A thought stirred, and the syringe of the enhancement serum appeared in Su Yu's hand.
Looking at the liquid inside, with Su Yu's current level of perception, he could clearly sense the powerful energy it contained.
[Note: The Host's current physical condition has reached the threshold for using the second injection. However, please be advised that each injection produces the agonizing pain of every cell in the body being torn apart and recombined. After injecting the serum, the body requires at least three days of dormant sleep to repair itself. Please plan your time reasonably, Host.]
Su Yu still clearly remembered how the first enhancement serum had felt entering his body—a pain that had already exceeded the physiological limits a human could endure. And obviously, the agony brought by this second enhancement serum would only be greater, never less.
But what worried him wasn't the pain of the injection—it was that forced-coma side effect.
God only knew what earth-shattering catastrophe Sirin might stir up while he slept for three whole days.
It was exactly like going back to your hometown for New Year and leaving a cat master alone at home—nobody knew just how thoroughly that cat master would tear the place apart.
Just as Su Yu was sighing, a familiar sound of footsteps came from outside the door.
Su Yu put the enhancement serum away, and soon a head of white hair poked in through the gap in the door.
Sirin.
Today she was wearing a loose white hoodie, with a pair of black athletic shorts underneath.
On her feet was a pair of white canvas shoes, the laces tied crookedly.
This outfit formed a bizarre contrast with those lofty, condescending golden pupils of hers.
It was like a tiger wearing Hello Kitty pajamas.
Though it was admittedly a bit cute.
"Human." Sirin stood in the doorway, chin slightly raised.
Su Yu turned his head to look at her.
Sirin's expression was very strange. The corners of her mouth were straining to press downward, but the muscles on both sides kept curling upward out of her control.
Her whole face wore the conflicted look of "I have a huge secret but I will absolutely not tell you."
"What is it?" Su Yu asked.
"Today." Sirin cleared her throat. "This Queen has important business and needs to go out."
"Oh."
"At noon, come home once." Sirin's tone suddenly became extremely serious. "You are not allowed to go anywhere today. Wait for my call."
"Why?"
"No reason needed!" Sirin's volume jumped up half a pitch. "It is This Queen's command—you simply do as you're told!"
With that, she yanked out a neatly folded eco-friendly shopping bag from behind the door.
That shopping bag was printed with a giant HOMU—a piece of merchandise Bronie had sent over last time.
Sirin flung the shopping bag over her shoulder, turned, and walked off.
Her canvas shoes stepped across the hallway floor, giving off brisk "pitter-patter" footsteps.
Su Yu stood in his office doorway, watching that white figure disappear at the elevator.
He blinked.
What had just happened?
The Herrscher of the Void.
A Boss who had once nearly destroyed the world.
Had just walked out the door carrying an eco-bag printed with a HOMU.
Su Yu scratched the back of his head, turned around, and sat back down at his workstation.
He had just picked up the coffee cup on his desk when a burst of electrical crackling suddenly came through his earpiece.
"Hey, BOSS."
Bronie's voice wormed its way out of the earpiece, trembling with the strain of a laugh held in until it hurt.
"Hack Bunny." Su Yu took a sip of coffee. "You hacked into my comms channel again?"
"This is called remote technical support," Bronie corrected. "I just saw a very interesting scene through the studio's surveillance."
"What scene?"
"That white-haired girl of yours, carrying a HOMU shopping bag, like a little something heading out to forage..." Bronie paused, seemingly choosing her words. "Anyway, she went out to buy groceries."
Su Yu set down his coffee cup.
"Groceries?"
"Yep." The laughter in Bronie's voice grew even thicker. "And not just any casual shopping. She's going to cook herself."
Su Yu's brain stopped running for about two seconds.
"Say that again?"
"Cook. Herself." Bronie said it one word at a time, leaving ample pauses between each. "She learned quite a few dishes' worth of cooking from Welt. Word is she can already independently pull off a plate of radish-braised beef brisket."
Su Yu figured it out at once. "This was your idea."
"Hehe." Bronie had no intention of denying it whatsoever. "I merely gave her a tiny little suggestion when she asked me how to make that foolish human completely submit to her."
"What suggestion?"
"To conquer a man, first conquer his stomach." Bronie's tone became insufferably punchable. "This is a golden maxim this Hack Bunny distilled from over three hundred romance anime."
"Oh, right, though I don't know what's up with that white-haired dummy—sometimes she blurts out some strange way of referring to herself, something like 'This Queen'—this couldn't be some kind of second personality of hers, could it? Well, whatever. It seems pretty entertaining."
Just as expected.
No matter how well Sirin disguised herself, she could never fool the keen eyes of that little bunny, Bronie.
And honestly, this girl's disguise had been getting more and more half-hearted lately. Although, with her sometimes silly, dopey appearance, she and Kiana were more or less cast from the same mold.
Well, looking on the bright side, at least when it came to playing the fool, Her Majesty the Queen didn't need any more practice.
But the moment he thought about how Bronie might have secretly instilled some more "strange" knowledge into this Queen of theirs—
Su Yu took a deep breath.
"Bronie."
"Hm?"
"Do you think you're pretty funny?"
"Very funny." Bronie answered without hesitation. "BOSS, just obediently prostrate yourself beneath that white-haired dummy's skirt. And once you two tie the knot, remember to treat me to a nice meal—oh, right, when you're making little people, remember to close the curtains. I really don't want to see anything not-suitable-for-minors on the surveillance."
"Get lost, you little brat."
"Roger that. Hack Bunny, ending transmission. Enjoy your meal, BOSS."
"Ksssh—"
The transmission cut off.
Su Yu leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.
Sirin was going to cook.
Cook for him?
That Herrscher of the Void, who had once wished she could trample all of humanity underfoot, had run off to learn cooking from Welt for a few days, all just to make a single meal for him to eat?
The key thing was, the relationship between those two was hard to describe—calling them mortal enemies wouldn't be an exaggeration.
What kind of situation even was this?
The corner of Su Yu's mouth twitched.
He couldn't quite say what he was feeling.
It felt a little absurd, but at the same time it felt a little bit happy.
But right after that, a terrifying thought floated up from the depths of his mind.
Sirin was currently using Kiana's body.
Kiana.
Kaslana.
That woman who could turn plain boiled noodles into a biochemical weapon.
That woman who had once made Mei's kitchen explode three times.
That woman who had been permanently banned from the back kitchen of the St. Freya Academy cafeteria.
"The Kaslana Family Kitchen Curse."
This thing... it couldn't be carved into their DNA, could it?
Even though it was Sirin now, the body was still Kiana's.
No, wait—Kiana was originally some kind of continuation of Sirin to begin with, and his own body carried the Kaslana DNA as well.
Su Yu's stomach spasmed.
He now understood why he'd been feeling stomach pains these past few days.
He lowered his head and glanced at his belly.
"Hold on," he said in a low voice. "You've absolutely got to hold on."
That expression looked exactly like someone who'd just downed a cup of bitter melon juice.
Just as Su Yu was doing psychological preparation for his own stomach—
From the depths of his mind, a cool, clear voice sounded.
It didn't come from his earpiece; it echoed directly within his consciousness.
"Su Yu."
Fenghuang.
Su Yu's body stiffened slightly, then relaxed. He closed his eyes and focused his attention on that Spiritual Link.
"Squad Monitor?" Su Yu responded within his consciousness. "I'm here."
"I have a piece of news to tell you. Kiana's Tai Xu Sword Qi has reached full mastery."
Su Yu opened his eyes.
"Full mastery?"
"The cultivation of the Heart Essence Chapter is over ninety percent complete. Her spiritual core is being reshaped at a very stable rate," Fenghuang's voice echoed in Su Yu's mind. "At the current pace, in three to five days at most, she will be able to completely master her own consciousness and retake control of this body."
Su Yu's fingers stopped on the desktop.
Three to five days.
Kiana was about to come back.
His gaze fell on that half-empty coffee cup on the desk.
Faint pale-brown coffee stains still lingered on the walls of the cup.
The sunlight outside filtered through the gaps in the venetian blinds, casting rows of neat light and shadow across the desk.
The light and shadow swayed gently with the faint breeze outside the window.
"I understand," Su Yu said.
He said nothing more.
Neither did Fenghuang.
The Spiritual Link quietly disconnected.
Su Yu leaned back in his chair, watching that row of swaying light and shadow.
Three to five days.
That dummy he'd been waiting so long for was finally about to come back.
...
Meanwhile.
Arc City, Commercial Street, District C.
Inside a twenty-four-hour unmanned supermarket.
Sirin stood before the vegetable shelf, her golden eyes fixed intently on the row upon row of neatly arranged white radishes before her.
Her right hand pinched one white radish, her left hand pinched another white radish.
The two radishes were almost identical in thickness and length.
She had already been agonizing over these two radishes for a full four minutes.
"Welt said radishes should be chosen with smooth skin and no cracks."
Sirin muttered under her breath, bringing the radish in her right hand up to her eyes and narrowing them to inspect it carefully.
"This one's tail is a little crooked."
She looked at the one in her left hand again.
"This one has a pit on its top."
Sirin's brows knitted into a knot.
She put both radishes back and took a third one off the shelf.
"This one..."
She turned it over and over, examining it for a long while.
This one'll do. Good enough.
Sirin tossed the radish into her shopping bag, turned, and headed toward the meat freezer.
The glass door of the freezer reflected her image.
White long hair, golden eyes, wearing a loose hoodie.
She didn't look like a deity out to take revenge on humanity and destroy the world.
She looked more like a girl-next-door out buying groceries to cook for her boyfriend.
She picked up a box of thin-sliced beef with a yellow discount sticker on it and glanced at the price.
"On sale?" Sirin tilted her head.
She recalled what Bronie had taught her: "You should buy more of the things on sale—this is called being thrifty and calculating."
Although Sirin had no concept of being thrifty and calculating, Bronie had said, "Su Yu will be pleased. This will be a big help to your Conquer-Su-Yu plan."
So Sirin decisively grabbed another box.
Carrying three boxes of thin-sliced beef and one white radish, she walked toward the potato section.
While picking potatoes, a scene began to automatically play out in Sirin's head.
In the scene, she was wearing an apron, carrying a pot of steaming, piping-hot radish-braised beef brisket and setting it down on the dining table.
Su Yu sat across from her, picked up a piece of brisket, and put it into his mouth.
And then.
Su Yu's eyes instantly went wide.
His chopsticks dropped from his hand.
With a "thud," he slid down from the chair, dropped to his knees, raised both hands high above his head, and gazed up at her with tears streaming down his face.
"My Queen! This is the most delicious thing I've eaten in my entire life! Please allow this lowly human to serve at your side forever! Let me be your servant for a lifetime!"
Sirin stood before the pile of potatoes, and the curve at the corner of her mouth was already completely impossible to suppress.
That's exactly the expression—this is precisely what I want to see!!
She tossed three potatoes into her shopping bag and strode toward the self-checkout machine.
Scan.
Pay.
The shopping bag was stuffed full to bursting.
The tail of a white radish poked out from the mouth of the bag.
Sirin carried the bag out through the supermarket's main entrance.
The sunlight struck her white hair, refracting a faint silver halo.
She glanced at the time on her phone.
Ten fifteen.
Taking the main road back to Su Yu's home from here would take twenty minutes.
But if she cut through the little alley off to the side, passing through that abandoned unfinished-building construction site, it would only take eight minutes.
Without hesitation, Sirin turned into the alley.
Her canvas shoes stepped across gravel and withered weeds, giving off a fine, crumbling rustle.
Passing through a gap in a rusted chain-link fence, before her stood an unfinished concrete-frame building.
No walls, no windows—only exposed load-bearing columns and rebar jutting out in every direction.
Sunlight slanted down through the gaps in the unsealed floor slabs overhead, cutting alternating bands of light and dark across the ground.
Sirin carried her shopping bag, treading across those bands of light as she walked forward.
In her head she was still replaying that beautiful scene of Su Yu kneeling on the ground and weeping.
She had even begun conceiving the second dish.
Bronie had said that if the main dish was a success, she could make a dessert as well. A cake or something.
"If it's a cake..." Sirin muttered. "I'd need eggs and flour. I forgot to buy those just now. I'll come back and—"
Her footsteps stopped.
Because she smelled the scent of blood.
A rust-like, thick, bloody odor came drifting from deep within the unfinished building.
Sirin's golden pupils constricted slightly.
She took a few steps forward, rounding a thick load-bearing column.
On the other side of the column.
A woman was slumped against the base of a wall.
That woman was covered in blood.
Her armor was extensively shattered, and there was a long, deep wound on her left ribs plugged up with some kind of gel.
Her short hair clung messily to her forehead, her face so pale it was nearly drained of all color.
But her eyes were open.
And in the instant Sirin appeared, a light like the edge of a blade burst forth from those eyes.
Sirin's foot came down on a piece of gravel.
"Crack."
The sound of the gravel shattering echoed through the empty unfinished building.
That woman abruptly lifted her head, her gaze stabbing straight over.
Sirin saw that face clearly.
In her mind, fragments of Kiana's memory automatically surfaced.
St. Freya Academy.
The Valkyrie assessment.
That woman in a maid outfit, wielding a scythe, who made even Theresa wary.
Schicksal's S-rank Valkyrie.
Rita Rossweisse.
Sirin's pupils suddenly contracted.
This was no cosplay enthusiast.
The battle marks on that armor, the real blood seeping from those wounds, and the undisguised, well-trained killing intent in those eyes.
This was real.
A genuine, one-hundred-percent-authentic S-rank Valkyrie from the Honkai world had, through some unknown means, appeared in this world.
And on the opposite side.
Rita completed her own judgment in the very same instant.
Those golden pupils.
That head of white long hair. That arrogant aura radiating from the very bones, one that towered above all things.
The Herrscher of the Void.
"Cha-click."
Skadi Ondurgud unfolded in Rita's hand.
The enormous ice-blue scythe blade nearly hugged the ground, and the extreme frost instantly froze the dust and gravel within three meters into ice crystals.
The water vapor in the air condensed into a white mist, slowly rising from the scythe's blade.
Sirin's fingers let go.
Time seemed to freeze solid in this moment.
At the very same time that Sirin encountered this visitor from another world.
Su Yu, who was in his office studying the [White Dwarf]—
A vast expanse of glaring crimson splashed across his vision like sticky, viscous blood-water.
[Extremely High-Risk Mission Forcibly Assigned!]
[Objective: Subjugate the maid Rita Rossweisse.]
Su Yu looked at that name, his pupils suddenly contracting.
Rita? That S-rank Valkyrie from Schicksal?
The text on the System panel was still scrolling rapidly downward like a waterfall.
[Mission Content: The Host is to immediately proceed to the abandoned unfinished-building construction site in District D-4! Protect Sirin, the Herrscher of the Void, who is currently under attack.]
Su Yu's breathing stalled for half a second.
His gaze continued to sweep downward.
[Intel Correction: The target, Rita Rossweisse, has, due to an "unidentified" spatial interference, accidentally crossed dimensions and descended into this world. Suppressed by the absolute physical laws of this world's Honkai-energy-free environment, the target's reserve energy is draining at an extreme rate. At present, the peak combat power she can bring to bear is less than one-fifth of that at her prime.]
"Unidentified"? He already understood this System's rotten nature well enough. Calling it "unidentified"—in truth, it couldn't be entirely separated from its own doing.
[Intel Correction 2: In her extreme stress-response state during the early stage of her descent, the target accidentally encountered Sirin, the "exclusive model" who was out shopping. Based on the information gap that exists between the two parties, the target has developed an irreversible, fatal misunderstanding regarding Sirin's existence, and has already designated her as a top-level threat target.]
[Important Reminder (From Your Foster Father's Love): Don't even think about trying to reason with her. This is a life-and-death duel with no way out, one you can only win and absolutely cannot lose. She will not listen to any verbal explanation right now—use your force to subjugate this visitor from another world.]
The red warning glow was still flickering, and the last line of text had been deliberately enlarged twofold, shoved directly in front of Su Yu's eyeballs.
[If you think that woman with only one-fifth of her power left is a soft persimmon you can knead however you like, and you want to stand idly by—then you'd be gravely mistaken.]
[The moment Sirin is defeated and carried off by her, forcibly exceeding the Reality Anchor limits of the "Absolute Freedom Time" and the "five-meter observation range," your model will vanish on the spot like a soap bubble under the sun.]
[And as for what will become of you, Host, being the sole binding Anchor, once the rules backlash against you... your Foster Father needn't remind you further, right?]
[All the bonds you've painstakingly cultivated, all the power you've gained, will vanish in an instant, and then, in the face of the coming apocalypse, unable to resist your predestined fate, you will die painfully.]
[Good luck—you'll need it, Su Yu.]
Su Yu's stomach violently contracted.
Vanish.
If Sirin was taken out of range, she, who had no foundation of existence in this world, would be instantly erased by the physical laws.
If she was gone, then Kiana—who had finally found a place to belong in this little apartment, who would clutch at the hem of his clothes in the dead of night because of nightmares from the past—would also be completely and utterly gone.
"Fuck!"
He didn't wait for the elevator. Instead, he shattered the office's floor-to-ceiling window with a single punch and leapt out toward the tall building beside it.
The physical prowess of a body with the first level of the Genetic Lock unlocked was driven to its absolute limit in this moment.
Beneath his feet was a drop of dozens of meters; in his ears was the piercing shriek of the raging wind.
In midair, he pulled out his phone, blindly jabbed with one hand, and dialed Bronie's number.
"Bronie."
"Boss? I'm in the middle of a team battle. If you're not calling to give me a raise..."
"Where's Sirin?"
Su Yu borrowed leverage off the air-conditioning units and the building's protruding edges to descend rapidly. Below was the bustling downtown district, and quite a few people had already noticed this man plummeting at extreme speed down a building dozens of stories tall.
"Oh my god, is that Spider-Man?!"
"Damn, is this some kind of stunt movie?!"
"That's it! There's no washing away the rumor that these Shenzhou people know kung fu now!!"
The crowd below was in an uproar, everyone whipping out their phones to film that figure.
In less than half a minute, Su Yu landed on a rooftop terrace.
He wasn't out of breath. His voice was pressed very low, his pace of speech extremely fast.
From Bronie's end came the rapid "clack-clack" of keys being struck.
"Her positioning signal has stopped in District D-4, seven kilometers from your current position. That's a patch of unfinished buildings where construction has been halted for two years." Bronie's voice had turned cold as well. "Do you want me to pull up the surveillance there?"
"Don't bother with the surveillance. Notify Old Yang and Eden—we'll need cleanup."
Su Yu hung up the phone directly.
If he drove, in the downtown core of Arc City during rush hour, it would be utterly impossible to get there in a short time.
But shuttling across rooftops and alleyways in a straight-line distance... the time could be drastically cut down.
Su Yu clenched his teeth, his legs surging with force. The gravity control of the Star of Eden switched on in this moment. Su Yu felt his whole body tense, and the next instant he shot out like a cannonball.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 40 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉