Rita's eyelashes flickered.
Her fingers, folded on the desk, didn't shift; her posture was still flawless.
But Su Yu noticed that the tip of the ring finger on her right hand was tapping rhythmically against the back of her left.
Su Yu didn't linger on the detail.
"But there's a layer of something between me and Raven."
He gestured across the desktop, as if drawing a line between two cups.
"For now I'll call it the World Barrier."
"Physical attacks can't punch through it, energy attacks can't either. I tried attacking with the Star of Eden's gravity field, Kiana attacked with the Skyward Destroyers, all useless."
"It's like being separated by a transparent wall. You can see the person on the other side, hear their voice, but you can't touch them."
Then Su Yu laid out the intelligence exchange between himself and Raven, and along the way handed the constantly worried Rita a bit of reassurance.
"That's really wonderful, Miss Mei and Alvitr and the others are safe…"
This maid, who normally kept herself elegant and composed, patted her own chest, feeling a great stone settle back to the ground.
Su Yu said, "I've disrupted Raven's intel as much as I could, buying more time for Mei and the Valkyries of the Immortal Blades."
Rita nodded. "I'm deeply grateful, Lord Su Yu."
Schrödinger had been leaning against her chair back the whole time, listening, holding a cup of instant coffee she'd swiped from somewhere.
When she heard the words "World Barrier," her hand holding the coffee paused a beat.
After thinking a moment, she set the coffee down.
"This barrier you mentioned." Schrödinger's index finger drew a circle on the desk. "Is it uniformly distributed, or does it have weak points?"
Su Yu thought back.
"Uniform. At least within the range I could observe, I found no weak points. It's more like a… membrane, a membrane sealing two worlds tightly apart."
"A membrane." Schrödinger repeated the word.
She scooted forward a little, propped her elbows on the desk, and rested her chin on her interlaced fingers.
"Then let me ask it a different way."
Her gaze moved off Su Yu, turning to Tesla.
"Tesla, when the Spatial Rift appeared tonight, what did your monitoring equipment record?"
Tesla set down her energy drink, pulled up a set of data from her laptop, and turned the screen so everyone could see.
"Thirty seconds before the rift appeared, our gravitational wave detectors caught anomalous fluctuations. Very low frequency, but the amplitude kept climbing. Then, at a certain critical point, space just tore open."
"How long did the rift last?"
"From appearance until it closed on its own after Su Yu and the others destroyed the core, forty-seven minutes total."
"Longer than last time," Schrödinger said.
The meeting room went quiet for two seconds.
"Last time?" Siegfried cut in. "It's happened before?"
"When Rita crossed over, it came with a small-scale Spatial Rift too." Welt picked up the thread. "That rift lasted less than three minutes, and no Honkai Beasts poured out."
"Three minutes to forty-seven minutes." Schrödinger tapped the desk twice with her index finger. "The duration has grown nearly sixteenfold. And this time, the Honkai Beasts came pouring in as organized formations."
She picked the coffee up again and took a sip.
"Everyone, let me offer a conclusion you won't like to hear."
The coffee cup was set back on the desk with a soft clink.
"That World Barrier you spoke of, it's thinning."
In Su Yu's mind, the System let out a whistle.
[Ding— As expected of a heavyweight in the quantum field. That comprehension saves this System the trouble of pushing eight hundred words of beginner tutorial at you.]
Su Yu rolled his eyes internally and ignored it.
Schrödinger continued.
"Every time a Spatial Rift appears, it inflicts irreversible physical damage on this barrier. Picture it as a load-bearing wall, and each time a rift opens, it's like someone taking an electric drill and boring a hole into it."
"The more holes, the more brittle the wall. Once it reaches a certain critical point…"
She spread her hands, making an exploding gesture.
"The whole wall comes crashing straight down."
"And after it collapses?" Siegfried asked.
Schrödinger glanced at him.
"Between the two worlds, there's no barrier left at all. Honkai energy can flow as freely as air, and the Honkai Beasts… can wander through as casually as strolling a market."
She paused, spitting out the words one by one:
"A full-scale invasion."
The air in the meeting room seemed to have a layer drawn out of it.
"So here's the question." Su Yu spoke, his voice no different from before. "Doctor, why do you think the rifts appear?"
He looked at Schrödinger.
"Or rather, what's boring the holes into that wall?"
Schrödinger didn't answer right away.
She lifted the coffee for another sip, then turned the cup half a rotation, the handle moving from her left side to her right.
"Su Yu, let me ask you a question in return."
"Go ahead."
"Before you released the game Honkai Impact 3rd, how many people in this world knew the concept of 'Honkai'?"
Su Yu's fingers paused beneath the desk.
"…Very few."
"And now?"
"Over ten million players have preregistered. Add the reach of the PV, and the number of people who've encountered the concept of Honkai, conservatively, is over a hundred million."
"A hundred million." Schrödinger repeated the figure. "Nearly a hundred million human brains, all holding the concretized concept of 'Honkai' at once. They know what Honkai Beasts look like, they know Herrschers can destroy heaven and earth, they know the sky can be torn open."
She set the coffee cup down, eyes blazing as she fixed them on Su Yu.
"Su Yu, have you ever considered that it's precisely this collective cognition of these people that gives Honkai—an originally nonexistent higher-dimensional concept—an Anchor to touch down in this physical world?"
No one in the meeting room spoke.
Su Yu leaned back into his chair, tilting his head to look at the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling.
"…I have."
His voice was very soft.
"You're saying the rifts appear because I made this game?"
"Not entirely." Schrödinger shook her head, rejecting that buck-passing conclusion. "The game is only a catalyst. The real cause lies with them."
Her gaze turned to Kiana, then to Rita.
Kiana's body stiffened.
Rita's fingers stopped tapping the back of her hand.
"Kiana and Rita, they themselves are existences from the Honkai world."
"Their bodies carry that world's information, like a signal transmitter broadcasting coordinates to the Honkai world around the clock, twenty-four hours a day."
Schrödinger tapped two points on the desk with her finger.
"As long as they remain in this world, Honkai will always be able to find its way here."
"The game's spread has accelerated the process, but even without the game, the rifts would appear sooner or later. Maybe in a year, maybe in ten, but they would definitely come."
Tesla sat bolt upright.
"Then it's simple!" She slapped the desk. "Just shut the game's servers down, right? At least it'd buy time!"
Schrödinger glanced at her.
"Can shutting down the servers solve the problem of the signal transmitter?"
Tesla opened her mouth, then closed it.
"Shutting down the servers only removes the catalyst." Schrödinger sighed. "The signal source is still there. Honkai will still follow the coordinates here, just a bit slower."
"And in that slightly-slower stretch of slow death, what can you do?"
"Without the enormous player Emotion Points the game brings, without the resources converted from those emotions."
She leaned hard against her chair, arms crossed.
"When the day Honkai truly descends in full arrives, what are you going to fight with? Ram it with your heads? You'd be a pack of unarmed primitives, standing before a tsunami, waiting to be scoured to dust."
The silence in the meeting room grew heavy.
"However." Schrödinger's tone suddenly took a strange turn. "The barrier vanishing isn't entirely a bad thing for certain people."
Rita's gaze sharpened.
"The barrier vanishing means the passage between the two worlds is thoroughly, violently opened. Honkai energy flows freely, Honkai Beasts pass through at will."
Schrödinger looked straight at Kiana and Rita.
"But turn it around… you two can go back as well."
Kiana raised her head.
"While the barrier exists, you're like insects trapped in a glass jar, battering yourselves bloody and still unable to get out. But the moment the barrier fully collapses is the absolute moment when [two-way passage] opens."
"That's the starting point of Honkai's full-scale invasion of our world."
"But at the same time, it's the only window for you to return to your original world, back to everything you know."
Once Schrödinger finished this, she lifted her coffee cup and found it empty.
She set the empty cup back on the desk and said nothing more.
Rita's fingers pressed tight beneath the desk.
Go back.
The thought was like a needle, jabbing in through the seam of the perfect composure she'd maintained all night.
Her expression still didn't change; the corner of her mouth even held that signature gentle smile.
But her breathing, in that instant, clearly stumbled half a beat.
Su Yu took it all in.
In his mind, in an almost teeth-gritting tone, he asked the System:
"So this whole logic Schrödinger deduced, and all those settings you conned me with earlier, are the same thing?"
The System's reply carried an electronic lilt of insufferable smugness:
[That's exactly right, dear Host! Barrier vanishes = two-way passage = Honkai's full-scale invasion = Kiana and Rita's route home.]
[Two sides of one coin, buy one get one free, no cheating young or old. Surprised? Shocked?]
[…In other words, Host's current situation is: don't make the game, everyone waits to die together; make the game, everyone rushes to die together.]
[Bingo! To be more precise, making the game accelerates the rush to death, but at least you can hoard some divine gear before dying and put up a token resistance. You following?]
Su Yu, ever the refined and gracious gentleman, extended his regards to the System's development team.
"If Kiana and Rita return to the Honkai world this way, how are we supposed to close the door afterward? Don't tell me we just let Honkai come and go through this world as it pleases."
[Come and go? You're overthinking it, Host—you think this is a public toilet? This world's repair ability is far stronger than you imagine. Otherwise why would one Herrscher and one S-rank Valkyrie teleporting over both get their MP zeroed out for you!]
[Of course, specific cases get discussed specifically. Worrying about this now is pointless anyway.]
Su Yu sat up straight, hands folded on the desk.
"All right, let me sum up."
He rapped the desk, pulling everyone's eyes back to himself.
"Kiana and Rita's existence is the coordinate that locks Honkai onto us. That's a dead knot, unsolvable. The game's spread has indeed sped up the barrier's erosion, but even if we smashed the servers right now, the barrier would vanish eventually."
"The only difference is this: make the game, and we can trade Emotion Points for real, tangible combat power like vampires. Don't make the game, and when Honkai comes, all we can do is hold hands and croak together."
He paused.
"So we actually have no choice at all. Not only can the game not stop, we have to floor the Throttle and push it faster!"
"The public beta date will absolutely not change, and I want the marketing push doubled! We'll use the shortest time to harvest the most Emotion Points and Cognition, and convert them all into usable arms!"
His gaze swept across everyone present.
"When the day the barrier vanishes and Honkai descends arrives, we need enough firepower to do two things."
"First, blast every one of those disgusting things that pour out of the rift into dust, protecting this world."
"Second…"
He glanced at Kiana and Rita.
"Using the two-way passage, send Kiana and Rita back, and let them go clean up the whole mess on the Honkai world's side."
"Simply put, this is drinking poison to quench thirst. But regretfully, this cup of poison wine, we have to drink whether we want to or not."
The silence in the meeting room lasted a long while.
The fluorescent tubes gave off a faint electric hum.
The air conditioner's vent blew cold air, lifting the corners of the folders on the desk slightly.
Kiana lowered her head, staring at the hands resting on her knees.
Her fingers curled, then loosened.
She badly wanted to say something.
Something like "I'm sorry, I brought this disaster down on all of you," or "or just kill me now, destroy the signal source."
The words circled at the edge of her lips, and she swallowed them back.
Because she knew that if she actually spoke such nonsense, that man named Su Yu beside her would definitely give her that punchable look that said "this dumb Paramecium is having another fit."
Then he'd turn around and buy her a full-sugar milk tea with double pearls, mocking her a few times along the way.
So she said nothing.
She only moved her hand off her knee, sneaking it under the desk like a thief, and with trembling fingertips gently hooked Su Yu's pinky.
When his pinky got hooked, Su Yu was thinking about how to arrange the work ahead.
He didn't look down, only hooked back with his pinky.
"Enough, enough! What's with all this brooding over here!"
Tesla's palm smacked the desk, jolting the energy drink can.
"Where's all this time to mope about the injustice of fate!"
She stood, her chair sliding back half a meter, the wheels grinding harshly against the floor.
"Drinking poison to quench thirst, huh? Rushing to die, huh? Then drink it! Then go rush to your death! But before drinking poison, you at least have to wash the bowl it's held in, don't you!"
She snatched up the folders on the desk and waved them toward Su Yu, Kiana, and Rita.
"You three! Now! Right now! Come with me to the equipment department on basement level two! I need to extract your live combat data and give those hunks of scrap metal of yours an emergency update!"
She tucked the folders under her arm.
"Assemble at the equipment department in ten minutes! Anyone who doesn't come, watch out or I'll bang your head with a wrench!"
That said, Tesla headed for the door without looking back.
Einstein silently closed her tablet, stood, and followed.
As she passed by Tesla, she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it over.
Tesla took the handkerchief, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and stuffed it into her own pocket.
The two of them vanished, one after the other, at the end of the corridor.
Eden rounded the corner of the meeting table on graceful heels.
As she passed Su Yu, her index finger, painted with nude polish, tapped his stiff shoulder lightly.
The touch was feather-light, carrying a faint trace of expensive perfume, like a casual reassurance.
"I've got the studio side covered. See you later, big boss."
She didn't stop, the wine-red hem of her dress tracing a pretty arc through the air as she walked straight to the door and soon disappeared around the corridor's turn.
Su Yu watched the direction she'd left, the spot on his shoulder where she'd tapped still seeming to hold a bit of warmth.
He drew a deep breath, forcibly shaking off the untimely post-battle relaxation in his head, and turned to look at the holographic screen on the wall.
"Bronie."
The gray-haired girl in the holographic projection was sprawled against her chair back, goggles pushed up onto her forehead, the bubble gum in her mouth snapping loudly.
"Hm?"
"Keep an eye on the studio's servers. The public beta's imminent, don't let anything go wrong. Also, help me wipe the storage records of every civilian camera near the overpass tonight, don't leave a tail."
Bronie rolled her eyes.
"You need to teach me how to do my job? While you lot were over there moping and brooding, this genius hacker already finished sweeping the scene."
Her slender fingers hit enter on the virtual keyboard.
"Every camera within a three-kilometer radius has been overwritten at the base level. Even the dashcam on the tricycle of that old man selling roasted sweet potatoes at the intersection, I hacked it while I was at it."
Su Yu couldn't be bothered to ask why a tricycle would have a dashcam.
"Thanks for the trouble."
"Cut it out." Bronie blew a bubble. "Just remember to put the overtime pay in my account."
Her figure began drifting toward the edge of the holographic projection, as if about to disconnect.
But just then, she stopped.
Half her body had already melted into the projection's deep-blue light curtain, leaving only a face wearing a wicked grin and that gum-chewing mouth showing outside.
"Oh right, friendly reminder."
Her tone suddenly turned eerie and drawn-out.
"Miss Theresa, starting three hours ago, has been calling you like crazy."
"As of now, the number of missed calls has already broken seventeen. By the way, the content of the last text she sent you was—"
Bronie deliberately cleared her throat.
"Su Yu! You bastard, just you wait! Tomorrow morning I'm going to storm into your office with a forty-meter-long slab brick and settle the score with you good and hard, in front of the whole company's employees!"
The meeting room went quiet for a second.
Kiana burst out laughing with a "pfft."
Su Yu gave the girl a helpless look. "You can still laugh? Isn't this all trouble you stirred up?"
Kiana paused. Oh, right, it did seem to be because of her.
"You'd better think up a reason that'll save your dog life and fool her past it. Good luck, amen."
Once Bronie said this, her whole self melted fully into the holographic light curtain. The projection flickered twice, then went dark.
The wall returned to being an ordinary white wall.
Su Yu stood in place, his phone still lying face-down on the desk.
He reached out and flipped the phone over, glancing at the notification preview on the lock screen.
Theresa's last message was indeed exactly what Bronie had read out, not a word off.
And it was followed by three furious emojis and a sticker of a slab brick.
Su Yu shoved the phone back into his pocket.
Just now on the overpass, when he'd faced the Honkai Emperor, his second-stage Genetic Lock fully open, White Dwarf gripped in hand, one punch could send a monster of dozens of tons flying.
Now, facing seventeen missed calls from Theresa on the phone screen, a cold sweat began to break out on his back.
"Why don't you call her back?" Kiana tilted her head at him.
"Call back what." Su Yu's voice went hollow. "Have you ever seen someone stick their own head into a meat grinder voluntarily?"
"Then what are you planning to do?"
"Stall. When the enemy advances, I retreat. Drag it out one day at a time."
Kiana looked at him for two seconds. "You were so brave fighting the Honkai Emperor, this doesn't add up."
"That's different." Su Yu walked toward the door. "The Honkai Emperor at least respects the laws of physics. If I can't beat it, I can still run. But that Auntie of yours doesn't respect the laws of physics. I feel like I'd be hunted to the ends of the earth."
Kiana shrugged, matching his stride, and the two of them walked out of the meeting room, one ahead of the other.
"It's fine, worst case I'll cover for you when the time comes."
"Then I really have to thank Miss Kaslana in advance for saving my life."
Siegfried was still sitting by that long table, holding the same posture as before.
After a few steps out, Su Yu glanced back at the meeting room.
Welt hadn't moved either.
Su Yu's gaze, across half a length of dim corridor, met Welt's inside the meeting room.
"Uncle Yang, the work of cleaning up the mess and the psychological counseling, I'll leave to you."
Welt pushed his glasses up, said nothing, only gave a nod.
The meeting room's soundproof door wasn't fully shut, leaving a two-finger-wide gap.
Siegfried sat in Kevin's seat.
He stared at his own interlaced fingers on the desk, motionless.
Welt sat at the other end of the table.
Between the two men lay an entire long table, twelve chairs, and… many, many years of heavy past that had gone unspoken.
The air conditioner's vent blew cold air, lifting a corner of the stack of folders Schrödinger had left on the desk, then letting it fall back.
Lifting up, falling back.
Siegfried spoke first.
"Old Yang." "Mm."
"When did you find out? About all this Honkai business."
Welt didn't answer at once.
He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with the hem of his shirt.
There was a fine scratch on the lens, ground in by sand grains in the rain on the way rushing to Anti-Entropy tonight.
He put the glasses back on.
"A long time."
Siegfried nodded.
He didn't press on how long "a long time" was. On this already ravaged night, chasing down those timelines no longer held any meaning.
"Didn't you say you'd give me a full explanation? About Honkai, about the apocalypse, and that damn six-month countdown."
Welt pushed his glasses up.
"It's a long story."
"Then make the long story short." Siegfried tugged the collar of his leather jacket up. "I'm not a patient man when it comes to listening to stories. Give me the key points."
Welt looked at him deeply.
In that look hid too much unspeakable weight, helplessness, and a resolve toward the future.
But in the end, Welt said nothing extra, only nodded solemnly.
"Where to? Can't we just talk here?"
"There's an executive lounge upstairs. The coffee machine there still works."
"Got any liquor? I badly need some alcohol right now to numb these nerves that are about to blow."
"No, only extra-strong black coffee."
"Tch, Anti-Entropy's hospitality really is lousy."
The two men walked out of the meeting room one after the other.
Siegfried walked behind, and as he passed the doorway he reached out and pulled the not-fully-shut soundproof door closed.
The lock clicked shut, and that thin sliver of light in the corridor vanished.
The meeting room fell completely dark.
On the desk remained only the four energy drink cans Tesla had emptied, and that stack of folders Schrödinger had left behind.
The air conditioner still blew cold air tirelessly.
The corner of the folders lifted in the darkness, then fell back.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack, clack.
Honkai world, Arc City industrial district.
The downpour hadn't stopped.
When Raven tumbled out of the void, her tactical boots landed in a puddle, and the splashing mud spattered halfway up her shins.
She knelt on one knee, right hand bracing against the wet concrete, left hand already on the grip of the pistol at her waist.
Her pupils contracted rapidly in the curtain of rain, sweeping the surroundings—abandoned factory buildings, rusted barbed wire, a collapsed chimney.
No Honkai Beasts.
No Spatial Rift.
None of that spherical, eerie space split in two by the World Barrier.
Nothing at all.
The air held only the patter of rain slamming the tin roofs, and the gushing flow of water in the distant factory drainpipes.
Not even the faintest residue of Honkai energy could be detected, clean as if nothing had happened.
Raven released her grip on the gun.
She raised her left hand, rainwater trickling down through the gaps of her tactical glove, revealing the tactical watch on the inside of her wrist.
The digits on the dial flickered in the rain.
21:47:03.
Raven's breath caught half a beat.
The time she'd been sucked into the Spatial Rift was 21:46:58.
Five seconds.
From being pulled into that space to being bounced back into reality, only five seconds had passed in total.
But inside that space, she and Su Yu had faced off for at least ten minutes.
They'd exchanged intelligence, probed each other, and she'd even fully observed the whole process of the other side using the Star of Eden's gravity Authority.
Ten minutes' worth of content, compressed into five seconds of real time.
That man called Su Yu hadn't been wrong.
Raven slowly rose to her feet.
Rainwater dripped in strings from the edge of her hood, striking her shoulder guards with a fine clatter.
She didn't wipe it away, only stood in place, staring at the patch of air where the rift had just vanished.
An independent flow of time.
It meant that space possessed its own physical laws, completely isolated from the world they were in.
To construct an independent space of that caliber required not technology, but an instinctive mastery of higher-dimensional physics.
Raven began to run through every detail of the last while again in her mind.
That man called Su Yu.
He'd appeared with a Herrscher of the Void who should have vanished without a trace.
The Herrscher of the Void was not only alive but looked stable, even able to act in coordination under his command.
He wielded the Star of Eden.
He knew World Serpent's intelligence inside out.
He knew even about her small island, the children she'd taken in, even her codename and rank within World Serpent, all crystal clear.
The most terrifying thing was that man's attitude when he mentioned "the Lord"—utterly without reverence, even somewhat offhand.
He'd simply called him "Kevin."
Two syllables, spoken so casually, like calling an old friend.
Raven's fingers hovered over the communicator at her waist for two seconds.
Rainwater dripped down her chin, splashing on the communicator's metal casing.
She drew a deep breath.
Then pressed the switch for the highest-encryption channel.
"Raven calling headquarters."
A brief burst of static came through the earpiece, followed by the beeping of the encryption protocol handshake.
"Connecting to the Lord."
In the gap of the channel switching, Raven tilted her head up, letting the rain strike her face.
The icy droplets slid from her forehead past the corners of her eyes into her mouth, carrying the taste of rust and dust.
She confirmed that conclusion once more in her mind.
Su Yu.
This man with "Su" in his name was absolutely no nobody.
Able to tame the Herrscher of the Void, holding the Divine Key Star of Eden, knowing World Serpent's core secrets like the back of his hand, and daring to speak the Lord's name in that tone.
He was very likely an existence from the same era as the Lord.
An old monster who'd survived from a previous civilization into the present.
The static in her earpiece vanished.
In its place came an extremely pure silence, as if all the background noise had been absorbed clean away by some force.
Raven knew this meant the line was connected.
On the other end of the channel, no one spoke.
But she could feel that person listening.
Like standing at the foot of a glacier, no sound at all, but you know it's there.
"My Lord."
Raven's voice was pressed very low in the downpour.
"I encountered an unanticipated spatial displacement event. Extremely short duration, but the internal flow of time was out of sync with the outside. Within the displacement space, I made contact with two targets."
She paused.
"First target, the Herrscher of the Void."
"Female, estimated age sixteen, white hair, heterochromatic eyes. Honkai energy reaction confirmed, identity verified beyond doubt."
The other end of the channel remained silent.
Raven continued.
"Second target, male, calls himself Su Yu."
"Estimated age early twenties. Holds the Divine Key Star of Eden, able to skillfully wield the gravity field Authority. His grasp of World Serpent's internal structure, personnel information, and…"
She hesitated a second.
"…and intelligence relating to you personally, far exceeds that of any known external intelligence network."
The sound of rain filled the gaps between her words.
"This person has some kind of cooperative relationship with the Herrscher of the Void. The Herrscher acts under his command, showing no signs of losing control. My assessment is that this person possesses some unknown means of Herrscher suppression or taming."
Raven finished the last sentence and closed her mouth.
The silence in the earpiece lasted a long time.
Long enough that Raven began to wonder whether the communication had cut out.
Then a voice came through from the other end.
"His name."
No extra syllables, no rise or fall of tone.
"Say it again."
Raven's back tightened.
She had never once heard the Lord ask her to repeat any piece of intelligence.
"Su Yu."
She spoke it one word at a time.
"Su. Yu."
The silence on the other end of the channel changed in texture.
Before, it was a glacier.
Now, it was an Abyss.
World Serpent headquarters.
An extremely oppressive, cold, sunless throne hall.
The throne hall had no windows.
World Serpent's Lord, Kevin Kaslana.
He sat like a perfect sculpture drained of all warmth, alone upon that cold throne belonging to the savior.
His ice-blue eyes gave off a suffocating faint glow in the darkness.
When Raven's report came through the earpiece, he listened without moving.
The Herrscher of the Void revived.
His fingers didn't move.
An otherworldly Spatial Rift.
His breathing didn't change.
An independent flow of time.
He didn't even blink.
For a man who'd lived fifty thousand years, this intelligence hardly counted as anything new.
Spatial rifts were more common than jellyfish in the Sea of Quanta, and the appearance of Herrschers was routine fare.
But Raven had spoken that name.
"Su Yu."
Su.
Kevin's finger, resting against his temple, paused.
The motion was very small.
Small enough that without deliberate observation, one would never notice.
Fifteen hundred years ago.
The British Isles.
Kevin remembered that man with his eyes always closed, who always seemed so gentle.
The close friend he'd known since his high school days in the previous civilization.
The forerunner who executed Project Ganges and shouldered Project Overseer—Su.
To stop the radical Project STIGMA, that ever-gentle friend had lured him into the "Sumeru Seed."
To keep him there, Su had drawn on the power of the Divine Keys Black Abyss, White Flower and the Star of Eden.
But so what?
Before Kevin's absolutely overwhelming violence, even Divine Keys were nothing but fragile toys.
The two Divine Keys were gravely crippled under his assault.
In the end, to stop him.
Su gave up all defense, and heedless even of his own life, forcibly activated the first rated output of the second Divine Key, One Vehicle of a Thousand Worlds.
He meant to drag the two of them together into the deepest depths of the Sea of Quanta, to sink forever.
The Kevin of that time had drawn the Key of Destruction, the symbol of annihilation.
Heavenly fire roared forth.
That blaze, enough to burn all things to ash, should have vaporized Su in an instant.
But at the very moment Su was determined, whatever the cost, to take that strike head-on… this cold savior hesitated.
He forcibly froze the flames of that heavenly fire.
Perhaps it was the fifty thousand years of friendship they'd depended on each other through, perhaps some weakness even he himself refused to admit.
In the end, he did not kill one of the few friends he had left in this world.
At the last moment before the World Bubble was about to be wholly swallowed by the Sea of Quanta.
Kevin, with all his strength, hurled Su and those three Divine Keys hard out of the Sea of Quanta.
"Go and fulfill your duty as a forerunner, Su."
And he himself was imprisoned at the dark bottom of the Sea of Quanta.
The images of memory shattered like glass.
Kevin pulled himself out of that sealed-away memory.
He sat on the cold throne, his gaze refocusing.
In his mind, countless clues began to close into loops on their own.
Su Yu…
No wonder.
No wonder he'd felt a certain higher-dimensional gaze upon him when he left the Sea of Quanta.
Though Kevin didn't know it was actually the gaze of Kiana, who'd accidentally stumbled into the Sea of Quanta.
But to Kevin, it was unmistakably a gaze from a higher dimension.
His old friend, in these fifteen hundred years, had not given up.
Su had not only found a brand-new World Bubble independent of the Sea of Quanta, but had even found a new plan to turn a Herrscher's power to his own use!
That was why he dared let the Herrscher of the Void appear before Raven, alive and lively.
"Su…"
Kevin slowly opened his eyes, and in those ice-blue depths a shiver-inducing light rekindled.
He rose slowly from the throne.
Though his power was still far from restored to its prime, as he stood, the soul-freezing absolute zero throughout the hall was torn apart in an instant by a violent, blazing heat.
He extended his right hand.
A greatsword burning with red flame emerged from the void, gripped firmly in his hand. Kalpa Doom.
An apocalyptic blaze surged skyward, dyeing the deep-blue energy conduits at the top of the hall red.
"Tell Jackal."
Kevin spoke coldly, his voice echoing through the empty hall with an irresistible pressure.
"I will arrive in Arc City in person very soon."
On the other end of the line, Raven felt a flicker of shock.
"My—My Lord… you're coming yourself?"
Raven hadn't expected this matter to draw such attention from Kevin. Could that man called Su Yu truly be an old friend of Kevin's?
Su Yu, Su—could there be some connection between him and that great figure called Su?
Kevin watched the flames roiling on the blade, his eyes so profound they seemed able to see through all the void.
"You don't understand Su."
He said slowly.
"Since he dared bring that Herrscher girl and appear before you so brazenly, even deliberately letting you return to relay intelligence…"
Kevin's gaze pierced through the void, as if he already saw that old friend sitting upon a throne in the otherworld, playing a game against him.
"Then it means he already has full confidence."
"He believes he already holds in his hand the trump card that can utterly overturn the table and stop Project STIGMA."
Kevin abruptly swung the greatsword.
A massive tongue of fire roared out, shredding the shadows on the hall's walls to pieces, the heat warping even the air.
"Project STIGMA cannot allow any flaw whatsoever."
This savior who'd borne fifty thousand years of despair handed down the final verdict.
"No matter the cost… humanity will surely triumph over Honkai."
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