Outside the tower ran a wide lower-level road beneath an elevated overpass.
Su Yu lowered his center of gravity.
His brain's danger perception was fully unleashed, and the ceaseless stream of traffic around him was broken down, in his eyes, into slowly moving lines of trajectory.
His right leg stomped hard onto the hood of a moving sedan, and the hard metal shell instantly caved in with a distinct footprint.
Borrowing that recoil, he forcibly twisted his waist in midair, shot through the narrow gap between two trucks, and landed steadily on the maintenance catwalk along the side of the overpass.
The wind tore past his ears.
"Boss, your heart rate has already broken one-eighty, and your body temperature is climbing." Bronie had linked into Su Yu's earpiece, speaking even faster than before. "You need backup. What you're about to face probably isn't some street thug with a baseball bat."
"Locate me." Su Yu spat out the two words mid-sprint.
The breath he exhaled formed a brief white mist in the air.
Arc City Tower, in the dimly lit server room of the studio.
Bronie was practically pressed against the main control console assembled from six holographic screens.
She bit through the pink bubblegum in her mouth, her hands becoming a blur of afterimages on the keyboard.
On the main screen directly in front of her, a red dot flashed wildly and moved at high speed across the three-dimensional map of Arc City.
That red dot represented Su Yu.
Bronie stared at the column of real-time physical data being relayed on the left side of the screen.
[Current movement speed: 34 m/s... still climbing]
[Skeletal pressure load: Overloaded]
[Muscle fiber activity: Extremely hyperactive]
Bronie's eyelids twitched involuntarily twice.
This was simply not data a human should have.
Even during the last kidnapping case with the Tiger Claw Gang, when Su Yu had unleashed that inhuman combat power, the data on the panel hadn't been this... brutal.
Though it still couldn't compare to that white-haired monster-strength girl.
But this had already completely exceeded the category of those so-called "special forces soldiers" and "underground brawl kings."
Had she not been watching the data with her own eyes, Bronie would even have thought that red dot was a runaway military mech.
"What a lunatic..." Bronie cursed under her breath, but her hands didn't pause for even a moment.
She pulled up another hidden interface, her finger slamming down on the Enter key.
"Boss, look up! The airspace to your front left!"
Su Yu's foot shattered a rusted iron plate on the catwalk as his body leapt into the air, landing on the rooftop of a three-story shop across the street.
He looked up at the sky.
Below the clouds.
A quadcopter heavy-duty logistics drone, painted black, dove toward his position.
The cargo bay door on the drone's belly had already opened in advance.
A long black metal tactical case dropped from the sky, a small deceleration parachute popping out from its tail.
Su Yu pushed off the concrete railing of the rooftop, his body extending in midair.
His right hand precisely grabbed the handle of the metal case; the enormous downward inertia yanked at his arm muscles with an ache, but he rolled once on the ground with the momentum, dispelling the impact force.
"Click."
As the case landed, Su Yu knelt on one knee, his thumb pressing directly against the biometric lock on the front of the case.
The latch sprang open.
Inside there was none of that fancy protective foam.
A strong smell of gun oil mixed with gunpowder smoke rushed at his face.
Two dark-gray Uzi micro submachine guns.
A Desert Eagle whose body gleamed with cold silver light.
And an RPG launcher, disassembled into two halves and carelessly stuffed at the bottom.
Bronie—this hacker who claimed she never got her hands dirty in reality—had forcibly crammed a small arsenal into this case.
Su Yu didn't bother asking how these things had been obtained in gun-banned Arc City.
He reached out with both hands, and after figuring out the guns' construction in an instant, his movements were as practiced as if he had rehearsed them a thousand times.
His left hand grabbed one Uzi, his index finger pressing the magazine release catch.
"Click"—the fully loaded magazine slid halfway out, and Su Yu's palm caught it from below, slamming it forcefully back in with a crisp clack.
Then, with a flick of his thumb, he pulled back the bolt.
His right hand performed the same operation, chambering a round in the other submachine gun.
He hung the two submachine guns on the tactical rings at his waist.
Next, the heavy Desert Eagle was shoved directly into the holster at the small of his back.
Finally, he picked up the RPG's launch tube and forcefully rammed in the front half loaded with the high-explosive warhead.
Twisted it tight.
The whole set of movements flowed like drifting clouds and running water, without a single wasted pause.
In less than ten seconds, he had transformed from an ordinary young man in casual clothes into a mobile heavy-firepower gun platform.
But Su Yu's gaze did not relax because of the addition of these firearms.
He knew all too well.
In that damned worldview.
Those kinetic bullets capable of penetrating steel plates, those high-explosive warheads that could blow an armored vehicle sky-high—
to those S-rank Valkyries who were like humanoid nukes, they were just a pile of smoking pokers.
At most they could annoy the opponent; they couldn't even break through her defenses.
Though everyone liked to mock Big Sis Rita, she was, after all, a genuine S-rank Valkyrie, and if equipped with Valkyrie armor, she would be an absolute Humanoid Tyrannosaurus in this world.
No—she wasn't that weak.
Of course, if the one who came were Durandal, then Su Yu could just declare he was giving up resistance and surrendering.
Rita was an S-rank Valkyrie because she met the standard of an S-rank Valkyrie, but Durandal was an S-rank Valkyrie only because S was the highest rank Schicksal had.
That kind of beyond-category power—even if he unlocked the Genetic Lock to the second level, he would just be plowed straight over like a speed bump.
Durandal-class was just that absurd.
Su Yu slung the RPG on his back, stood up again, and continued sprinting toward the unfinished building.
His brain was running at high speed.
The wind whipped past his ears.
Fenghuang, in order to help Kiana with her training, had now gathered all her mental power into the deepest part of the consciousness space.
Right now he simply couldn't draw upon that Tai Xu foundation from fifty thousand years ago.
The only one he could rely on was himself.
The firearms served only as a smokescreen.
They were bait—used to create chaos, obscure vision, or force the opponent into evasive movements.
It was like a card game.
You play out all those cards in your hand that look flashy and loud but actually have no killing power, just to force your opponent to reveal an opening.
And his true killing move.
Su Yu glanced down at the bottom right corner of his vision, at the dagger icon in the System panel that lay quietly in the storage slot, glowing with a faint red light.
That physics freak weighing over eighty kilograms.
[White Dwarf].
It absolutely could not be carried around openly.
It had to be after the opponent had fully adapted to the attack rhythm of this pile of scrap metal.
At the razor's edge between life and death, when the distance had shrunk to a point where evasion was impossible.
When that powerful enemy who thought she had everything under control was completely off guard—
he would manifest it in an instant.
Using the full explosive power of the first-level Genetic Lock, combined with the maximum infusion of Tai Xu Sword Qi, he would drive that eighty-plus-kilogram high-frequency oscillating blade solidly into the opponent's vital point.
This was his final trump card.
The wind passed through this windowless unfinished building, carrying a faint, sobbing whimper.
Rita's fingers gripped tightly on the long shaft of Skadi Ondurgud.
Inside the Argent Knight: Artemis armor, the independent, sealed S-rank energy reserve core began operating at full load.
A dim blue glow radiated out from the gaps in the armor, dispelling the gray shadows around her.
In this world that was practically a Honkai energy "vacuum," she was the only source of radiation.
Fifteen meters away, Sirin's plastic bag containing discounted sliced beef rolls still lay dropped at her feet.
Her golden eyes, originally full of disdain and arrogance, trembled subtly the instant the Argent Knight: Artemis burst out with energy.
Then, those golden halos, like wildfire being ignited, expanded wildly in the depths of her eyes.
It had been too long.
Ever since she had been trapped in this body called Kiana and come to this damned peaceful world.
Her lofty Herrscher Core had been like a sponge tossed into the desert and baked in the sun for months, so dried out that not even a scrap could be squeezed from it.
She had to rely on Su Yu even just to maintain her daily manifestation, let alone use those space-tearing Authorities that had originally belonged to her.
But now it was different.
On that woman holding the scythe, she smelled that scent so familiar it couldn't be more familiar.
It was high-purity Honkai energy.
Like sweet rain after a long drought.
The Herrscher Core, dormant in the deepest part of Sirin's chest, instinctively began to awaken.
Without her needing to actively guide it, the core, like a ravenous black hole, began madly tearing at and absorbing the tiny bit of residual energy dispersed in the air.
Sirin's long white hair stirred without wind, beginning to dance wildly in midair like snakes.
Inside this dilapidated unfinished building, the originally stable air pressure began to form extremely chaotic vortices.
The dust floating in the pillars of light, as if repelled by some invisible force, was instantly cleared away.
The pressure unique to the Herrscher of the Void, centered on Sirin, began to climb outward in geometric multiples.
She didn't even bother with the groceries at her feet; her body slowly levitated, her toes leaving the rubble-strewn ground.
"You..."
Sirin tilted her head up slightly.
She looked at the woman raising the scythe, the corner of her mouth curling into a cruel and haughty arc befitting a Queen.
She was just about to use that opening line she was most accustomed to—to proclaim the return of her sovereignty, to demand why this ant had appeared here.
But this lasted only half a breath.
Rita moved.
Sensing that the aura on this white-haired girl before her was surging at a rate that defied common sense, Rita's prized elegance and composure were utterly shredded.
The Immortal Blades members who had died in the underground lab.
Her own inexplicable exile to this dead-end place.
And this Herrscher of the Void before her, who was clearly absorbing her armor's energy and had very likely struck some terrifying deal with the World Serpent.
All the clues converged in Rita's mind into an absolute and irrefutable conclusion—
She had to kill her here.
This was the decision of a Schicksal S-rank Valkyrie, with no room for hesitation.
The thrusters of the Argent Knight: Artemis lit up with a dazzling blue light at Rita's back and legs simultaneously.
"BOOM—!"
The concrete ground beneath her feet was stomped into a large crater by that terrifying propulsion, the surrounding rebar buzzing from the shock.
Rita's body became a blue afterimage almost impossible to catch with the naked eye.
The fifteen-meter distance was instantly shortened to zero under the burst of the S-rank armor.
The enormous, cold scythe blade of Skadi Ondurgud, carrying an absolute zero cold enough to freeze the air, tore through the chaotic vortices that had just formed inside the building, slashing mercilessly down diagonally from the upper side toward Sirin's neck.
Before the blade even arrived, the bone-piercing chill had already scraped a shallow bloody mark across Sirin's fair face.
That word "ant," not yet uttered, was forcibly caught in Sirin's throat.
Before the boundary of life and death, the arrogance of a superior being meant nothing.
Sirin's pupils suddenly contracted.
She had no time to ponder why this woman didn't play by the rules, why she went straight for the kill without even a single line of pretense.
The instant the scythe's fatal blue edge reflected in her golden eyes.
Sirin forcibly mobilized the tiny bit of faint Honkai energy she had just stolen from the air like a thief.
"Crack."
A sound like glass shattering.
This was the sound of space being forcibly folded.
The enormous ice scythe of Skadi Ondurgud fell, cutting down almost right against the tip of Sirin's nose.
The deep-blue edge struck directly at the position where Sirin had originally been levitating.
"KRRRAAACK—!"
The struck air did not bleed but was instantly frozen by that absolute-zero chill.
Massive frost spread along the trajectory of the blade's descent, extending across the riddled ground of the unfinished building into a terrifying glacial crack over ten meters long and bottomlessly deep.
The frozen gravel and rebar let out teeth-grating cracking sounds under the pressure of the ice crystals.
"Thud."
About five meters to Rita's rear left, the air distorted once again.
Sirin crashed heavily onto the dust-covered ground.
Spatial Jump.
It was an instinct as simple as eating or drinking for her in her complete-form state.
But in this damned world now, in a "vacuum tube" without Honkai energy to nourish her, forcibly activating this Authority involving dimensional refraction came at a cost both expensive and lethal.
Sirin lay sprawled on the ground, gasping heavily for breath.
She despairingly discovered that the tiny bit of Honkai energy she had just barely managed to absorb had been drained clean—principal and interest—in that single brief short-range jump.
A profound sense of weakness surged up like a tide.
Her complexion instantly turned paler than the cement dust on the ground.
Her limbs felt as if filled with lead; she couldn't even lift a finger.
Even those golden eyes began to flicker dim and bright due to the depletion of energy.
"Cough..."
Sirin coughed dully, propping herself up on the ground with her elbows, trying to get herself up.
But soon her arms gave way, and she collapsed back down again.
Rita turned around.
Carrying that enormous ice scythe still radiating bone-piercing chill, she walked step by step toward the fallen Sirin.
A wounded beast was still a beast.
In this life-or-death duel, there was no mercy to speak of.
Rita's tactical visor locked onto Sirin.
She did not use the thrusters again, but instead closed in on her prey with a gait that fully concentrated its killing intent onto the blade.
Sirin lay on her side on the ground.
She could feel that extreme cold spreading toward her along the ground, freezing her fingertips stiff.
That deep-blue scythe was raised high once again, the reflection off the blade stinging her eyes.
The shadow of death, for the first time, so clearly and without obstruction, enveloped this Queen who had once regarded humanity as ants.
She had nowhere left to retreat.
This body had no strength to flee, and there was no space around her to borrow force from.
Was she going to die?
In this inexplicable world that didn't even have Honkai energy, to be slaughtered like a pig by an ant wielding scrap metal?
Sirin's fingers clawed several bloody streaks into the dust-covered ground.
"It's not yet time to give up, Sirin!"
A stern shout, without any warning, thundered in the deepest part of her consciousness.
That voice was cold, dignified, carrying a powerful pressure that brooked no argument.
Fenghuang.
That ant who had long occupied the depths of Kiana's consciousness, teaching Tai Xu Sword Qi like some old relic—the one she had once utterly loathed.
At this cliff's edge of life and death, she had finally intervened.
Sirin's eyes snapped open.
In those golden pupils that had dimmed, the ice scythe—already half-swung down by Rita—was reflected.
"Listen!"
Fenghuang spoke extremely fast, her voice bypassing the auditory nerves entirely, echoing directly in Sirin's mind.
"This body is Kiana's! That man named Su Yu established an Anchor with her! This isn't merely a chain restricting your range of movement!"
"It's a bridge connecting your two dimensions! A channel for energy to flow between you!"
"Just like what you did in the Sea of Quanta—sense it! Borrow his power! This body can bear it all!"
Anchor.
Borrow.
The instinct for survival, in this moment, completely took over her body.
Those memory fragments buried deep in Kiana's subconscious—about how to tear space in the Sea of Quanta, how to borrow that terrifying gravity to save the Herrscher of Reason.
They swept through Sirin's mind like a storm.
If it was something that white-haired fool could do.
There was no reason the great Herrscher of the Void couldn't.
Sirin clenched her teeth hard, a rusty, bloody taste spreading through her mouth.
She did not dodge that ice scythe already within inches, whose chill had even frozen several strands of her hair.
Instead, she used every last shred of strength in her body.
And violently swung out that right arm covered in dust and abrasions.
Her palm spread open, pointing at Rita in the midair directly ahead.
Her eyes, in this moment, burst out with a golden light more brilliant than at any time before.
That was not the light of Honkai energy.
It was an extreme fury—drawn forcibly, via the Anchor, across physical distance from that man sprinting over the city, then unleashed here as an overloaded dimensional-reduction strike.
"Star of Eden..."
Sirin's voice was no longer weak, but carried a sharpness and madness that seemed capable of piercing through the dome of this unfinished building.
"Release—!!"
"HMMMM—BOOM!!!"
There were no light-and-shadow special effects of energy, nor any flashy windup to the move.
In the millisecond Sirin shouted those words.
A terrifying invisible gravity field, utterly incalculable by common sense, came crashing down with the midair spot where Rita stood as its center!
"CRACK!"
Rita, who a second ago had been swinging the ice scythe down with an extremely elegant and cold posture.
In an instant, her body was as if slammed down from midair by an invisible, towering giant hand.
The surface of the Argent Knight: Artemis armor let out a piercing metallic wail.
The outer armor forged from advanced alloy showed large-area dents and cracks the moment it contacted the ground.
"BANG—!!!!"
Rita, together with the Skadi Ondurgud in her hand, was pressed firmly against the ground by this terrifying gravity.
The gravity field continued to bear down.
Within the five-meter radius centered on Rita.
The scattered gravel, dried lime chunks, and rusted threaded rebar ends.
Amid a continuous, dense series of "pop" sounds.
They were ground by this invisible immense force into a uniform, almost mist-like white powder.
The hard concrete ground was forcibly pressed down by nearly half a meter, forming a bizarre, smooth-edged circular depression.
Rita knelt on one knee within it.
Her face, which had always maintained its indifference, was now covered with veins bulging from extreme pain.
The built-in life-support system of the Argent Knight: Artemis issued a shrill, highest-level alarm, warning that the Host's bones were bearing pressure beyond critical value.
She wanted to stand up.
She wanted to raise her weapon.
But it was futile.
Before this gravity of absolute dimensional reduction, the S-rank Valkyrie's prized armor and physical strength couldn't even move a single finger.
That sense of despair, like a mountain range pressing on her spine, made even breathing a luxury.
Sirin still held the posture of her outstretched arm, gasping heavily.
Looking at Rita pinned at the bottom of the pit, she glanced somewhat disbelievingly at her own trembling palm.
She had done it.
Borrowing the power of that ant of a man, she had pinned this lackey of Schicksal to the ground.
"Now, while you can."
Fenghuang's cold voice sounded again in her mind.
There was no praise for her successfully borrowing the power, only an unquestionable decisiveness and urgency.
"This power was forcibly projected over through the Anchor. It's extremely unstable—it can suppress her for ten seconds at most."
"Don't get caught up in the fight—her armor's energy isn't yet depleted."
"Run!!"
Sirin's body shuddered.
Of course she knew what state she was in now.
That burst just now had nearly drained the last bit of life force from this body.
If not for her will forcing her to hold on, even standing would be a problem for her now.
Sirin bit through her lip, using the pain to stimulate her nearly fainting nerves, and turned around.
Like a startled, stumbling wildcat, she ran with all her might toward the glaring sunlight outside the unfinished building.
Behind her.
Inside that huge gravity pit.
The engine of the Argent Knight: Artemis was roaring under overload, trying bit by bit to push open that invisible crushing weight.
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