The next morning, eight o'clock.
Arc City Tower, miHoYo Studio, the holographic projection conference room.
Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, Arc City was baked pale white by the afternoon sun, while inside the conference room the air conditioning was cranked down to sixteen degrees.
A massive countdown panel hovered above the holographic projection table.
Blood-red digits pulsed like a death-summons talisman—
[Time until Official Launch: 7 Days]
Su Yu sat at the head of the long table, hands crossed and propped beneath his chin.
The blue glow of the hologram struck his lenses and refracted into a chillingly cold reflection.
In truth the lenses had no prescription—they were just blue-light filters.
But in Bronie's words, the whole effect made him look like some scheming, well-mannered scumbag.
Especially paired with the way the corners of his mouth kept curling up no matter how hard he tried to suppress it… he was the spitting image of a supervillain who'd just pressed the nuclear launch button and was now savoring the destruction of the world.
"September first."
He spoke.
The air in the entire room tightened a beat.
"All platforms—Official Launch!"
Nuwa's pen dropped onto the table with a clack.
Kevin's hand, holding his thermos, paused.
Bronie's jaw stopped chewing her bubblegum for half a second, then she blew out a huge pink bubble.
Su Yu stood, planting both hands on the tabletop. The hologram's light shone from behind him, stretching his shadow long enough to swallow the entire row of people across from him.
"Starting today, the Operations Department launches the full promotional campaign."
The holographic panel switched, popping up concept illustration after concept illustration, each one gorgeous enough to steal your breath.
St. Freya Academy's cherry-blossom avenue. Kiana and Mei walking side by side on their way home from school. Bronya sitting on a bench reading with HOMU in her arms. Theresa holding up an ice cream cone, laughing like a child.
Every single one was warm enough to melt your heart to mush.
"Every day, on schedule, we release a set of slice-of-life setting art for the Valkyries."
Su Yu's finger tapped past one image after another.
"Campus life, club activities, festival celebrations—I want every peaceful, gentle moment of St. Freya Academy put on full display!"
He turned, and the cold light flashed across his lenses once more.
"Draw every Valkyrie's smile as sweet as it can possibly get!"
Nuwa nodded frantically, the fire of creation already blazing in her eyes.
Su Yu lowered his voice half a degree.
"I want every closed-beta player to fall completely, hopelessly in love with these characters before the servers even open!"
He raised his index finger and wagged it gently in the air.
"Remember our core KPI: the deeper the Bonds we forge in the early phase—"
He paused deliberately for a full second.
"—the more heartbroken they'll cry when we start twisting the knife later. Tragedy, after all, is taking every beautiful thing in the world and tearing it to shreds right before their eyes, piece by piece."
The conference room fell silent for two seconds.
The System notification popped up right on cue, visible only to Su Yu:
[Ding! Detected the Host performing an S-rank act of pure malice! Emotional Harvest Contingency Rating: SSR! It is recommended the Host secure a tissue-brand sponsorship deal, as the projected internet-wide tear output is expected to shatter all historical records!]
Without changing his expression, Su Yu swiped the notification away.
Players, don't blame me for my cruel methods—I was forced into becoming a "tormentor" by this godforsaken apocalypse too!
Only your most sincere tears and emotional resonance can form the final line of defense protecting this world!
For the peace of all mankind, Captains—please, go and die!
Kevin set down his thermos and looked at Su Yu with a blank face. "How did I never notice before just how black your heart is?"
Su Yu flashed an utterly harmless smile. "Thanks for the compliment. This is what we call being a professional."
Bronie peeled the last shreds of bubblegum off the tip of her nose while rolling an enormous eye-roll.
"Boss, this combo of yours would count as aggravated telecom fraud even on the dark web. Give them candy first, then force-feed them razor blades—the classic Cyber-Stockholm cultivation method."
"It's called Emotional Engineering," Su Yu corrected her with a straight face. "A serious, legitimate field of study."
"Which fly-by-night university teaches that?"
"One I founded myself."
Lin Zhaoyu sat in the corner, silently crossing out a line on his tablet and writing a new one: [Official Launch Promotion & PR Crisis Budget — Emergency Triple Increase].
Su Mei had already pulled out her backup phone, ten fingers flying as she started contacting the KOLs of every major platform, muttering to herself, "Cozy slice-of-life, peak healing-genre content, the pure and innocent campus youth of the Valkyries… this wave of first-impression-kill traffic is mine for the taking."
Su Yu clapped his hands to pull everyone's attention back.
"The promo campaign is just the appetizer."
The holographic panel switched again, popping up a massive model of a livestream interface.
"August twenty-ninth, eight PM. Special pre-launch preview livestream."
He held up three fingers.
"Three people on stage together."
"Me, appearing as the villainous game producer to take all the flak."
"Elysia, as brand ambassador, handling the beauty-crit barrage."
"Eden, as music director, delivering an Outclassed by None performance."
A chorus of sharp breaths hissed through the conference room.
Elysia and Eden could each set the trending searches ablaze on their own—and now you want all three of them in frame together?
Do you think the livestream platform's servers have lived too long?
The new bubble Bronie had just blown popped again.
"Boss, so before the servers even open, you're planning to physically detonate every server on the internet first."
Su Yu looked at the god's-eye-view hacker girl. "So that server stress test I had you run—did you do it?"
Bronie rolled her dead-fish eyes. "Ran it three times. First time it crashed on the spot. Second time the motherboard burned out. Third time I borrowed all of Anti-Entropy's backup military-grade computing power just to barely keep it from smoking."
"Then run it three more times. Make sure nothing goes wrong."
"…You planning to pay me triple overtime, you capitalist?"
"I'll buy you three cases of limited-edition HOMU Happy Water."
"Deal. What can I say—I'm a hacker with professional integrity."
At the other end of the long conference table, in the prime spot by the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Elysia lounged lazily in a swivel chair.
Her legs were crossed elegantly, one hand cradling her cheek.
Having heard out Su Yu's utterly heartless arrangement, she tilted her head slightly.
"Aiya—"
She drew the single syllable out soft and long, as if it came with a little pink hook.
"Sending beautiful, adorable girls out to show their faces and draw all the fire—Boss Su Yu really knows how to work his people."
Her sentence ended on a playful upward lilt, sounding half like coquettish teasing, half like a blatant calculation.
Su Yu turned his head to look at her.
Elysia tapped her fingertip lightly against her own cheek, those pink eyes curving into two pretty arcs—no, curving into two shapes that set off every alarm bell in his head.
"Once it's all done, doesn't that mean you'll treat Eden and me to a super, super luxurious feast, just the two of us?"
She said the word "super" twice, stressing it harder each time.
Su Yu's eyelid twitched.
He glanced instinctively at Eden.
Eden sat beside Elysia, one leg crossed over the other, holding a glass of red wine that had appeared from who-knows-where.
She said nothing, only swirling the wine gracefully before raising the glass toward Su Yu.
The meaning of that smile was crystal clear: I have no objections.
Su Yu's wallet let out a mournful wail from inside his pocket.
No—that was his own heart, bleeding.
"No problem."
He forced a cheerful smile through gritted molars.
"The most expensive restaurant in all of Arc City. Take your pick."
Elysia clapped her hands, satisfied. "It's a promise~ No backing out!"
Su Yu cleared his throat and steered the topic back.
"I've already had Ai draft the livestream program flow; she'll send it to the work group chat shortly. The key parts are the live gameplay demo and the on-site gacha segment. I've arranged separate people for the gacha part."
"And the customer-service scripts?"
"Ready too." Lin Zhaoyu flipped open his tablet. "For high-frequency questions like 'why do you have to torment my favorite character,' we've prepared thirty-seven standard reply templates."
Su Yu nodded with satisfaction.
This round-table meeting—which could rightly be called the "Eve of the Earth Defense War"—finally, amid all the chaos and commotion, drew toward its end.
Promotional schedule, server stress-test plan, customer-service crisis-defense scripts, livestream technical safeguards, online public-opinion monitoring contingencies…
One item after another, hammered out down to the last detail. The head of each department took their share of hair-loss-inducing tasks and filed out one by one.
The conference room's sensor door slid shut and open, open and shut, hurried footsteps gradually fading into the distance.
Across the entire floor's open-plan workstations, the clatter of pounded keyboards and ringing phones began to swell densely, like a machine whose start button had just been slammed down hard.
Su Yu leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.
He took off those pretentious blue-light glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
In the most inconspicuous corner of the conference room.
Kiana sat cross-legged, all dignity abandoned, on a spare folding camp chair.
On the little glass coffee table before her, the aftermath was nothing short of a war zone: three jumbo potato-chip bags torn to shreds,
two plastic wrappers from starch sausages licked utterly clean,
a half-drunk bottle of iced black tea still fogged with cold,
and assorted cracker crumbs scattered everywhere.
At this very moment, this world-saving Valkyrie had her head tilted back, doggedly using a single finger to tip the last of the salty, savory crumbs from the bottom of a chip bag straight into her mouth.
Su Yu looked at her, then at the wreckage on the coffee table.
"Did you come to attend a core confidential meeting, or did you come here for a spring-outing picnic?"
Kiana reluctantly tossed the empty chip bag into the trash, wiped the seasoning crumbs from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, and wore an expression of complete self-righteousness.
"All those things you people were spitting out just now—promotional matrix, emotional engineering—this young lady didn't understand a single punctuation mark of it, okay?!"
"Then what were you doing sitting here doing nothing for two whole hours?"
"Eating!" she answered, her words landing with a thud. "And also, silently counting how many times you pretentiously pushed up your glasses."
"…How many times?"
"Seventeen exactly."
Su Yu fell silent for a second, feeling his intelligence had somehow been insulted.
"If you put that astonishing observational power and focus into studying code, you'd have been able to develop your own little game independently by now."
Kiana let out a huge, bored yawn, squeezing a single tear from the corner of her eye, utterly indifferent to her boss's workplace PUA.
Su Yu stood up from his chair and walked over to her.
Five meters.
The number flashed through his mind.
From that original one meter—when she had to stand guard right outside the door even when he went to the bathroom—to the five meters of now.
How many days and nights, how many breakdowns, how many brushes with death lay in between, he didn't bother to tally.
But the mere fact that Kiana could sit in a corner now and eat her chips in peace was itself already worth celebrating.
The System panel flickered in the corner of his vision, displaying his current free-activity time balance: 14 hours, 32 minutes.
A full fourteen-plus hours of "outdoor time"!
Enough. More than enough.
Su Yu crouched down to Kiana's eye level.
"There's nothing left for us to do here at the studio for now."
Kiana's ahoge twitched.
"Want to come with me out to the special-training base in the suburbs and check on things?"
The ahoge stood up a third of the way.
"Consider it a break in the fresh air."
Two-thirds of the way up.
Su Yu turned up the heat.
"And while we're at it, you can get to know the special-ops recruits who might join us in the future. You are, after all, our ready-made ceiling of Valkyrie combat power. When the time comes, this bunch of black-and-blue rookies might just have to be handed over entirely to you to personally drill."
The instant she heard those four words—"personally drill."
The ahoge shot completely, perfectly upright! Like an antenna at full signal!
Kiana's blue eyes—which had lost some of their shine to boredom—instantly blazed as bright as two two-hundred-watt searchlights.
Go be the boss? Go teach people a lesson?!
Now that's a bargain!
But Su Yu knew the real finishing move was still in reserve.
He added, feigning nonchalance, "I hear the base cafeteria just got a new head chef. Used to work at a five-star hotel."
Kiana sprang up from the chair in a flash.
Chip crumbs rustled off her body.
"Let's go!"
She wiped the last speck of potato-chip crumb from the corner of her mouth, the light in her eyes brighter than the conference room's holographic projection.
"This young lady has long wanted to go see that devil training camp you people set up!"
She paused deliberately, then, poorly concealing her intent, added the true—and only—point of the whole trip:
"Did you just say… the cafeteria food is really, really especially good?!"
Su Yu stood up and brushed the chip crumbs off his pants.
"Let's go, Paramecium. I'll take you for a good meal."
"Hey! How many times do I have to say it—don't call me Paramecium!"
"Then what should I call you? Kiana Kaslana, the Potato-Chip Terminator?"
"Su Yu, are you asking for a beating—?!"
Kiana huffed after Su Yu, the ahoge on her HOMU cap trembling with each step, like a little flag fluttering in the wind.
The two of them walked out of the conference room, one in front of the other.
In the corridor, Nuwa was rushing toward the Art Department clutching a stack of setting drafts, and nearly collided with them.
"President Su! Big Sis Kiana! Where are you two going?"
"Out to handle something." Su Yu waved a hand without changing expression.
Kiana poked her head out from behind Su Yu and waved at Nuwa. "I'm off to be the instruc—ah, no, I'm off to save the world!"
She'd nearly forgotten there was such a thing as a nondisclosure agreement.
Nuwa froze in place, blinked, then wore a complicated expression that said, "I have absolutely no idea what that meant, but I hope you both come back alive."
The elevator doors closed.
Su Yu leaned against the elevator wall, watching the descending floor numbers.
Kiana stood beside him, a little under fifty centimeters between them.
Not too far, not too close.
Just close enough that she could reach out and touch his sleeve, and just far enough that she could pretend she wasn't reaching.
The elevator's ad screen was playing a perfume commercial Elysia had endorsed, the pink imagery filling the entire wall.
Kiana stared at the ad for two seconds.
Then she muttered under her breath, "Tch… she does look pretty when she smiles."
Su Yu kept his hands in his pockets and didn't answer.
After a second or two, Kiana added, "But definitely not as pretty as this young lady."
Su Yu was still watching the ticking floor numbers, still not answering.
"Hey! Are you mute? Say something to argue back!" The white-haired girl, half embarrassed and half indignant, stamped a foot on the floor.
The corner of Su Yu's mouth curved slightly, and he turned his head to glance at her.
"Mm. Not as pretty as you. You're the prettiest."
"…Su Yu, could you make that perfunctory attitude of yours any more fake?!"
"I swear, I absolutely mean it."
"Big liar! Like hell I'd believe you!"
Amid the pointless bickering, the elevator settled smoothly onto the first floor.
The stainless-steel doors slid slowly apart to either side.
The blinding, blazing sunlight of late August poured in without reserve through the lobby's enormous floor-to-ceiling glass doors.
Su Yu walked in front, Kiana following behind, her ahoge bobbing in the sunlight.
Before long, in the underground parking garage, Su Yu pressed the remote key.
A black Jeep flashed its lights twice.
"Get in."
Kiana yanked open the passenger door, plopped herself in, and the first thing she did was flip open the glove compartment.
"Su Yu! How come there isn't a single backup snack in this car?!"
Su Yu had just buckled his seatbelt, and he turned his head, speechless.
"Big sis, ten minutes ago in the conference room you demolished three jumbo bags of chips and two starch sausages like a hamster."
"That was the brainpower-compensation stipend I burned through during the meeting!"
"You spent the entire meeting spacing out and counting how many times I pushed up my glasses."
"Does counting not burn calories?!"
Su Yu completely gave up any intention of reasoning with this creature from another dimension.
He pressed the ignition and started the car.
The whole way there the two of them bickered—all of it pointless nonsense—but it was plain to see Kiana was in high spirits.
The vehicles gradually thinned out as Su Yu drove the Jeep, turning into the Arc City Special Defense Zone training base, where the sentries verified both their identities.
The parade ground thundered with noise. Under a brutal thirty-percent first-week elimination rate, the original five hundred were down to a full count of three hundred and fifty.
His phone chimed with a message—it was Welt Yang. Wotan's energy core had finished encapsulation; the first startup test would be held on September second, and he invited Su Yu to witness the moment a miracle was born.
Su Yu replied with a single "Sure."
Cleared to pass.
He stepped on the gas again and noticed a technician in an electrician's uniform fiddling with something not far off.
"Working in heat like this—that uncle's really got it rough," Kiana chimed in.
"Yeah." Su Yu answered, and drew his gaze back.
The August sun beat down viciously on the earth. Siegfried Kaslana wiped a hand across the fine beads of sweat on his face and shot a glance at the Jeep that had just entered the training base.
Local plates, but fitted with a large array of blast-proof equipment, the glass a one-way lens—from this angle there was no telling who was inside.
Preliminary estimate: some important, high-profile figure.
"That dog Otto."
Siegfried tipped a mouthful of Huoxiang Zhengqi tonic down his throat—the stuff tasted awful, but it worked wonders against the heat.
If not for a single transfer order from him, Siegfried would probably be off in the beautiful Antarctic right now, on a sweet vacation with Cecilia.
Instead of dressed in an electrician's outfit, wearing a ballcap, gathering intel disguised as an electrician in forty-plus-degree weather.
"Once this whole business is over, I am absolutely raiding that old fox's wine cellar for a few good bottles!"
He muttered, hefting his toolbox as he walked toward the entrance, and handed over the credentials Schicksal had forged.
"Hey there, buddy. I'm the water-and-electric guy from Anti-Entropy Infrastructure—heard the dorm AC isn't cooling too well?"
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