That fist, wreathed in a terrifying wave of air.
The sheer, crushing pressure had already widened the cracks across Rita's visor even further,
and tiny slivers of glass pricked at her cheeks.
"Kiana."
Fenghuang's voice rang out at that very moment.
In that instant, time seemed to freeze.
"Su Yu isn't dead yet."
Kiana cut her off. "I know."
Having refined the Tai Xu Sword Qi to the consummate realm of divine essence, Kiana had, through that brief touch just now, already felt Su Yu's body healing at an astonishing rate.
"His cells are recombining at a speed that defies all common sense—and what's more, he's cultivated the Tai Xu Sword Qi as well."
"Squad Monitor, you're the one who taught him, aren't you?"
Fenghuang fell silent for a moment. This was a secret she had not yet told Kiana.
"There's no need to apologize. I know your concerns, and I know that idiot must have insisted on it himself."
Deep within her heart, Kiana let out a barely perceptible sigh.
"That battle in the dream—the one between him and Sirin—that wasn't a dream at all, was it? You don't have to keep hiding it from me anymore. The way that idiot went utterly berserk just now, throwing caution to the wind—it was exactly the same as back then."
"Kiana, I—"
"I'm not a child anymore, Squad Monitor. I can tell what matters and what doesn't."
Just as Kiana said, Fenghuang discovered to her astonishment that the lake of Kiana's heart was utterly, perfectly calm.
Though on the surface she was indeed seething with fury, Fenghuang could sense that this single punch would not kill Rita outright.
She couldn't help but recall the words Su Yu had spoken earlier.
"The truth is, Kiana has always known exactly what she ought to do."
"There's no way a Schicksal S-rank Valkyrie would cross the dimensional barrier for no reason at all, descending into this peaceful world where Honkai energy doesn't even exist."
"Some enormous upheaval must lie behind it. On her person, there is very likely a hidden, crucial clue—one that could lead us back to that world and put a final end to this absurd crossing."
"And that is the very thing that idiot is risking his life to find. We all need that intelligence."
Kiana calmly laid out her decision.
"But even so, I still can't forgive her—I'll smash that iron shell she's so proud of into a pulp, knock her out cold, and then drag her back."
"Then I'll pry her mouth open and make her spell out everything."
"After that, whether she lives or dies will be for Su Yu to decide."
This was the final verdict Kiana handed down.
As her consciousness space reached out, Fenghuang's eyes went wide—within those eyes lay both a comfort at how much Kiana had grown, and a tangle of complicated feelings and self-reproach.
But now, she could clearly hear another kind of voice rising up from within her own heart.
It was the fury of one whose precious friend had been wounded.
"Go and do it, Kiana—do it for my share as well."
The stalled time began to flow once more. To Rita, that entire conversation had, in reality, taken no more than a scant half-second.
In Kiana's azure eyes, those leaping flames of rage had not gone out—if anything, they had grown deeper, and more dangerous.
She did not call upon the Authority of the Herrscher of the Void, capable of tearing space apart, nor did she use any of the gorgeous, devastatingly lethal sword arts of the Tai Xu Sword Qi.
The next second.
Her body dropped abruptly, her right arm drawn back like a fully bent bow, the muscles of her waist erupting with force, dragging up a visible current of white air.
And slammed viciously into the thickest armor plate on the chest of the Argent Knight: Artemis.
"BOOM—!"
A dull, metallic detonation.
Beneath this terrifying blow, one carrying the full physical density of a Herrscher.
The top-tier Schicksal martial arts Rita was so proud of, all those exquisite techniques of parry and counter, became nothing more than a laughable ornament.
Before absolute speed and power, any technique was futile.
Rita's body was hurled backward as though struck head-on by a battering ram, skidding violently in reverse.
Her two feet plowed two deep furrows across the ground littered with shards of ice.
But she wasn't even given the chance to steady herself.
Kiana's body once again turned wraithlike, hugging the very trajectory of Rita's retreat as she gave chase.
"Bam! Bam! Bam!"
There was no form to speak of.
A left hook, a side kick, the savage smash of an elbow.
Every blow poured down onto that sturdy armor without the slightest reservation.
That outer shell of the Argent Knight, forged from special alloy, which had once withstood the assaults of countless Honkai Beasts, began to cave in and warp across vast stretches under Kiana's rain-like barrage.
"Crack."
The chest armor plate finally gave way under the relentless, extreme pressure, splitting open into a hideous gash.
Inside the armor, Rita was rattled senseless.
She tried to swing her ice scythe in retaliation, but Kiana clamped down on that heavy hilt with a single hand and flung it aside like a piece of scrap iron.
The Skadi Ondurgud tumbled several times through the air before crashing far into the rubble.
"BOOM—!"
A final, heavy knee strike drove solidly into the armor over Rita's lower abdomen.
This Argent Knight: Artemis, of immeasurable cost, under this string of savage blows, had every one of its life-support systems and power engines shriek out shrill short-circuit alarms all at once, and finally, amid a burst of electric sparks, sputtered out completely.
Rita's body flew high into the air, then like a heavy stone, slammed hard against a stone pillar several meters away and slid down to the ground.
She spat out a great mouthful of fresh blood.
Within those eyes churned extreme shock and utter, unwilling defiance.
Her vision began to blur, and her brain's self-protective mechanism was at last triggered.
Her head lolled to one side as she sank completely into a deep coma.
Kiana stood where she was.
She looked coldly at Rita lying motionless on the ground, that Valkyrie armor representing Schicksal's highest technology now all but reduced to scrap.
The pent-up rage that had been lodged in her chest all this time, the fury that had nearly driven her mad, was at last vented in good measure along with that armor beaten into ruin.
She turned around and hurried back to Su Yu's side.
That man still lay there quietly.
But just as Kiana had sensed earlier, the ghastly wounds across his body had indeed stopped bleeding and were slowly knitting themselves closed.
"What an incredible power."
Fenghuang's voice sounded in Kiana's mind.
"I've lived all these years, and I've never seen an existence like this—it isn't a mutation of Honkai energy, nor artificial Stigmata, nor Fusion Warrior technology."
"I don't know how Su Yu came by this power, but there's no mistaking it—after this shattering and rebirth, he will only grow stronger."
"He can finally make good on his promise to you, Kiana."
"Against that cruel destiny that is sure to come, he will face it together with you."
Kiana gazed at that face—its breathing gradually steadying, a smile still lingering at the corner of its mouth.
She bit down on the soft flesh of her lip.
"You big idiot."
And then, ever so carefully, she gathered him into her arms, as though cradling the most precious treasure in all the world.
In the distance.
The piercing wail of sirens, like a murder of crows tearing through the dusk, came drifting nearer from afar.
The glow of red-and-blue police lights flickered wildly through the gaps in the abandoned building's broken windows, across the dim hall.
Arc City's official forces had, only after the dust had fully settled, finally arrived—fashionably late.
Two jet-black bulletproof armored off-road vehicles rammed straight through the rusted barbed-wire gate ringing the abandoned building, and, with a screech of brakes, halted before that heap of ruins.
A car door was flung open.
Lewis emerged, wearing the snug uniform of the SWAT bureau chief, her burly arms still bearing a bulletproof vest thrown on after rushing straight from some conference.
She swept her large hand through the air, issuing crisp orders to the fully armed SWAT officers behind her:
"First Squad, lock down every traffic artery within a two-kilometer radius immediately! No one is to come near!"
"Second Squad, put up the isolation net and cut every last surveillance camera!"
Clearly, after her earlier experience with the Tiger Claw Gang, Lewis was already well-versed in handling a scene of this magnitude.
On top of that, with Eden's tacit backing, though she had no idea what Su Yu had been cooking up lately, she was, after all, in his and Kiana's debt—so naturally the job had to be done cleanly.
Then, stepping down from the other armored vehicle.
Was a middle-aged man in a dark trench coat, a deep-blue scarf wrapped around his neck, and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.
Welt Yang.
This leader of Anti-Entropy, treading over the lime powder crushed to dust by the battle, strode swiftly toward the core of that ruin that had been all but leveled flat.
His palm was clenched tight into a fist, the veins on the back of his hand faintly bulging.
When they had received the intelligence that Su Yu had gone alone to intercept an unidentified high-energy reaction, they had already braced for the worst in the laboratory of the Anti-Entropy base.
Until.
He rounded that fractured load-bearing pillar.
And came face to face with the white-haired girl who was carefully wiping the blood from Su Yu's face with a handkerchief.
The glow of the police lights fell upon that head of disheveled long white hair.
Hearing footsteps, the girl jerked her head up like a startled little beast, and an extremely intense wariness surged instantly into her azure eyes.
But the moment Welt's gaze met those two eyes.
This man, who had weathered countless storms and even dared to face a Star God's Emanator head-on, went rigid all at once.
His pupils contracted violently, his lips trembling faintly.
There was none of that lofty, murderous golden light.
None of that violent aura that seemed poised to annihilate all things.
In those eyes, clear as crystal.
What he saw was a familiar light—guarded, yes, yet radiating a resilience and an unyielding spirit that ran to the very bone.
It was the gaze he had once seen across countless lecture halls, behind those desks piled high with snacks.
"You're..."
Welt's voice carried, incredibly, an almost disbelieving tremor.
"...Kiana?"
Kiana held her half-kneeling posture, the blood-soaked handkerchief still pinched between her fingers.
She stared blankly at that bespectacled face—still gentle and refined, only with a few fine wrinkles newly etched at the corners of the eyes.
In this world full of strangers.
In this Arc City where she could only hide behind Su Yu like a ghost.
In this ruin that stretched out battered and broken on every side.
Those memories of St. Freya Academy—distant, yet incomparably warm.
Suddenly, like an unstoppable current of warmth, they crashed brazenly through the barriers of time and welled up into her heart.
It was the voice that always recounted the tales of ancient heroes in history class, unhurried and measured.
It was the figure that would, each time she failed an exam, shake its head helplessly and tutor her.
It was the most carefree time of her life.
Kiana's eyes reddened all at once.
She opened her mouth, and those few words—needing no thought from her mind at all—slipped out utterly naturally:
"Teacher... Yang?"
Upon hearing that long-unheard title, one belonging solely to that St. Freya Academy which had grown so incomparably far away.
Welt's shoulders, which had been strung taut as a bowstring all this while, in that instant, utterly collapsed.
He exhaled long and hard, releasing the turbid breath pent up in his chest.
Behind the lenses of his glasses, a faint film of moisture swiftly welled up in those deep eyes.
But with great speed he pushed the frames up with a finger, masking away that trace of fragility.
On his face appeared a smile carrying a measure of relief.
"Thank goodness..."
He murmured softly, his voice very low, yet as though a great mountain had been lifted from him.
"That kid Su Yu, he didn't lie to us..."
"You really... came back."
Half an hour later.
Deep beneath Arc City, the Anti-Entropy core research base.
The smell of disinfectant filled this broad, cold, silver-white space.
All manner of exceedingly precise instruments, their indicator lights blinking, gave off an extremely faint hum.
Su Yu lay within an enormous, transparent medical pod filled with pale-blue repair fluid.
Kiana stood outside the medical pod's massive bulletproof glass.
She pressed both hands against the cold surface of the glass.
Through that layer of repair fluid, she stared fixedly at the man's face.
She dared not breathe too loudly, terrified that even the slightest sound of her own might disturb his recovery.
Welt came over carrying two paper cups.
He held out one of them—cocoa still giving off steam—to Kiana's hand.
"Drink it while it's hot. Dr. Mobius says his vitality is recovering fast; afterward there won't even be any aftereffects."
Kiana took the paper cup, lowered her head to glance at the dark-brown liquid, and cupped it in both palms.
"Teacher Yang..."
She looked at the medical pod, her voice very soft.
"That guy... he's just an ordinary person who can't even fight."
"He usually hates trouble more than anything. He'd even play rock-paper-scissors with me over walking a few extra steps to buy a bottle of soy sauce."
"Why would he go this far..."
Welt turned his head and looked at Su Yu inside the medical pod.
"That question. I asked him too."
Old Yang's voice was steady, as if giving a student that final history lesson.
"A great many things happened during the time you slept."
He did not exaggerate, nor did he use any ornate phrasing.
Instead, in the plainest, most straightforward language, he slowly recounted the little details of all these days.
To prepare for a Honkai that might one day come.
To protect Kiana Kaslana.
All the efforts he had made, the endless maneuvering against the Herrscher of the Void, the various technologies and powers he had produced that defied all reason to help himself, the persuading of Tesla and Einstein.
The founding of the Anti-Entropy research team.
And afterward, to protect this body of Kiana's, resolutely going to battle against an S-rank Valkyrie he could never possibly defeat.
Every detail, great and small, he told to Kiana Kaslana, little by little.
Welt paused.
He glanced at Kiana's somewhat stiffened back.
"Everything he did—it was never for the sake of saving the world, nor to become some kind of savior."
Welt took off his glasses and rubbed the space between his brows.
"He only."
"He only wanted you to be able to eat a hot, steaming meal every single day in this world. To never again have to shiver like a stray cat on a rainy night."
Kiana stood there.
She said not a single word.
But within that long, seemingly endless silence.
In those eyes that had been fixed unwaveringly on Su Yu's face.
Great, warm drops of liquid slid down her cheeks.
They struck the cold metal rim of the glass pod's door, shattering into countless glittering droplets.
Back when the Herrscher of the Void had seized her body and harmed the people she cherished. And later, wandering through Arc City, those days of endless, lightless dark.
She had once believed that she had been cast aside by the entire world.
She had once believed that the sins she had committed deserved nothing but endless torment and loneliness.
This was the punishment meant for Kiana Kaslana.
But in this unfamiliar world.
There was one man, foolish to the utmost extreme.
Who, in his clumsy yet incomparably resolute way.
In this desperate strait where Honkai energy didn't even exist, had built her a home anew, brick by brick and tile by tile.
As long as he was there, Kiana Kaslana would never bow to fate.
Kiana pressed her forehead against the cold glass.
She closed her eyes.
That Void Drifter who had wandered through Arc City, covered in wounds, forever prepared to atone with her death.
At last, in this very moment, before this quiet medical pod.
By that heavy yet incomparably warm love.
Was, completely, caught and held.
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