August 30th.
Twenty-four hours left until the full-platform public beta of Honkai Impact 3rd.
Top floor of the Arc City Tower, miHoYo Studio.
Su Yu sat at his desk wearing a pair of dark circles that could have gone bidding against a giant panda's, eyes fixed on the countdown widget in the lower right corner of his monitor.
Every time the red digits ticked over, his eyelid twitched along with them.
On the desk sat three drained cans of iced black tea, a bowl of instant noodle wreckage congealed into a solid brick, and the half-bag of potato chips Kiana had gnawed through and abandoned there last night.
The whole studio had entered a sprint bordering on possession.
Final build optimization, stress-testing the servers to their limits, blanketing the entire net with promotional material, packaging and distributing the launch rewards...
Every last task came down at once, like an avalanche off the Himalayas, with absolutely no regard for fair play.
Fortunately, Theresa had a new announcement to handle today, and on top of that Bronie had put on a heartfelt, tearful performance of "talking her out of it."
So this particular Auntie had decided to put Su Yu on her tab for now, and find another time after launch to settle accounts with him.
Death sentence commuted to a suspended one. Cause for celebration.
Su Yu rubbed the bridge of his nose and was about to go pour a fourth cup of iced tea.
Gold light detonated across his retinas.
The System's settlement screen popped up without warning, its gaudy effects nearly blinding a brain that hadn't fully woken up yet.
[Ding! Time-limited high-risk mission [Rainy Night, Overpass, Maybach] has been settled.]
[Mission Rating: S]
[Reward dis—]
The golden particles spun three times across his vision and condensed into an intricate engineering blueprint.
[Reward credited: Enhanced Honkai Energy Detector (Blueprint).]
[Description: A detector built from this blueprint can pinpoint coordinates 120 minutes before a Spatial Rift tears open. It can be upgraded continuously by destroying more Honkai cores, unlocking Honkai Beast grade detection, expanded warning radius, and other functions.]
[System friendly reminder: The gold content on this drop is off the charts! Recommend the Host treasure it accordingly, because next time you want an S rating you might have to throw in a few more ribs, dear~]
Su Yu stared at the dense tangle of lines on his retinas for a full five seconds.
Then he let out a long breath.
Two hours.
Two entire hours of advance warning.
It meant that the next time a Spatial Rift opened, he wouldn't have to do what he'd done last time, tearing off toward the overpass like a madman the second the news reached him.
Two hours was enough to mobilize Anti-Entropy's rapid response units, enough for Rita and Kiana to reach the site and set up a defensive line.
From taking hits to laying the ambush.
In this screwed-up apocalypse of a game, holding the intel was the first step toward victory.
Su Yu didn't waste time marveling at it.
He exported the blueprint out of the System interface with practiced ease, converted it into a top-tier encrypted file, and dumped the whole package straight into Dr. Tesla's private intranet inbox.
The body of the email was pure swagger, a single line:
"New toy. Rush it."
Send.
He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling.
"System."
[Here.]
"How much of the tech in that blueprint can Tesla actually follow?"
[At Dr. Tesla's level of raging genius, she can probably force down about seventy percent of the core principles. The remaining thirty involves observational logic for higher-dimensional space and will need Dr. Schrödinger's quantum theory to crack. But don't worry. Given how hard that pack of science lunatics at Anti-Entropy grinds, they could hand-build a prototype in a week at the fastest.]
Su Yu nodded.
A week.
More than enough time before the Honkai came down.
He was just getting up to fetch that iced tea, now ten minutes overdue.
The office door swung open.
Kevin walked in.
Yes.
That Kevin. The one who, just yesterday, had snapped four ribs on the overpass and been wrapped up like half a mummy before being stuffed into a recovery pod.
Right now he wore a thin black hoodie, sleeves pushed up to mid-forearm, and the skin they exposed was clean and unmarked. Not even a scar.
His work tablet was tucked under his left arm, two cases of Red Bull rode on his right shoulder, and his stride was as steady as if he'd merely twisted an ankle the day before.
Coming through the doorway he even had energy to spare, shoving the rebounding glass door back with his shoulder before setting the two cases down on the low cabinet with a thud.
"Morning," Kevin said, face as blank as ever.
Su Yu stayed slouched in his chair, gaze traveling from that severe face down to the right hand that had just carried two cases of energy drinks, and back up again.
"As I recall, you still had four broken ribs yesterday before dawn."
"Mm."
"Plus extensive muscle tearing."
"Mm."
"And this morning you can haul two cases of Red Bull one-handed?"
"Mm."
"Doesn't your recovery rate strike you as a bit unconstitutional?"
Kevin pulled a can out of the case, popped the tab, and tipped his head back for a swallow.
"Core principle: if you're not all the way dead, you can keep going."
The corner of Su Yu's mouth twitched.
He knew this was Dr. Mobius's biological miracle at work, but if the medical world outside ever saw this ungodly healing rate, it would be good for thirty lead papers in Nature.
Kevin set the can on the desk, pulled out the nearby chair, and sat.
His posture hadn't changed: upper body tilted slightly back, one leg stretched out long, looking lazy as anything, spine perfectly straight the whole time.
"How are things over at Anti-Entropy?" Su Yu asked.
Kevin leaned into the chair back, his gaze drifting out to the Arc City skyline.
"Everything that needed explaining got explained. Welt told my dad all of it. The Honkai, the doomsday countdown, the Genetic Lock. Everything."
He paused.
"Now the old man's holding some do-nothing title, 'Anti-Entropy Special Tactical Advisor,' and refuses to leave. Says that now that he knows the truth, there's no way he's just going to dust himself off and walk away. He's going to help us carry the apocalypse six months from now."
Su Yu could picture the exact expression on Siegfried's face as he said it.
That absurd middle-aged man who'd botched a family reunion in a coffee shop and gotten chased around a restroom by Theresa was, underneath it all, still a Kaslana.
The kind who wouldn't back up with a blade at his throat.
"Good," Su Yu said. "One more fighter means one more percent on our odds six months from now."
Kevin didn't pick up that thread.
He looked down at the can in his hand, thumb brushing twice along the edge of the tab.
"Su Yu."
"Hm?"
"Thank you."
When those words came out of Kevin's mouth, they came a beat slower than his usual speech.
"If it weren't for you, I might have gone my whole life without understanding him."
Su Yu turned to glance at him.
Kevin's eyes were still on the can, and his face was as cold as ever.
But the thumb that had been rubbing the tab had stopped.
Su Yu looked away, reached over to grab a can off the low cabinet himself, and yanked the tab open.
"All right, all right, don't get all sappy about brotherhood on me this early in the morning."
He drank, then pointed the can at Kevin.
"You and me, we're way past that."
Kevin looked at him for two seconds. The corner of his mouth moved, barely enough to see, and he said nothing more.
He finished the drink and tossed the empty into the wastebasket beside the desk, metal ringing off plastic, the sound echoing once through the quiet office.
Su Yu changed direction, his tone turning serious.
"By the way. What about Dr. Mei?"
Kevin's movements, relaxed a moment ago, locked up.
"She's in the deepest lab under Anti-Entropy, running a core simulation project. Semi-sealed research conditions. Outside information reaches her with a serious delay."
Su Yu noticed that while Kevin spoke, his gaze pulled all the way back from the window and fixed hard on the desktop.
"So she doesn't know yet about what happened to you on the overpass last night?"
"She doesn't."
Kevin's voice was as flat as still water.
"I've already had a word with Uncle Yang and the rest. The part where I forced open my first-stage Genetic Lock and nearly threw my life away, Mei can never find out about that."
He stopped, his throat moving slightly.
"She faces those hopeless numbers in that lab every day. It's hard enough on her already."
He left the rest unsaid.
He didn't need to say it.
Su Yu understood.
Kevin was that particular species of awkward creature.
He would chew up every scrap of fear, pain, and dying despair and swallow it down himself.
He could throw his life away without blinking, but he would never let Mei see him wrecked and covered in blood, and even less would he let her split her attention in that high-pressure research environment to sit around worrying about him.
That clumsy, borderline idiotic tenderness. Su Yu had seen far too much of it.
"Understood."
Su Yu reached out and clapped Kevin hard on the shoulder. Through the thin hoodie he could feel the explosive strength packed into that body.
"I'll double-check with Welt too. Guaranteed airtight."
Kevin nodded without a word.
Su Yu withdrew his hand, turned, and pointed at the wall behind him.
Several small mountains rose from the long table against it.
Printed promotion schedules, distributor contracts, launch reward manifests, technical reports on server expansion, all of it heaped together in one glorious mess.
Under the table sat three servers, indicator lights flashing like a mini rave was in progress.
"Now that you've successfully opened your Genetic Lock, Anti-Entropy's definitely going to work you as core firepower. But that's all for later."
Su Yu drew a circle with his index finger around those paper peaks.
"Right now, the CEO's workload has piled up to avalanche height. Public beta is ten tomorrow morning. We need to keep this company breathing first."
Kevin took one look at that suffocating stack of documents. He was silent for two seconds, then stood abruptly.
"I get it, Su Yu."
He put out his right fist, holding it in midair.
Su Yu looked at that fist and, without a moment's hesitation, clenched his own and met it.
Two men, at a desk buried in noodle cups and empty Red Bull cans, knocked their fists together hard.
The knuckles met with one crisp, solid thud.
Kevin pulled his hand back, his eyes sharpening.
"Then I'm counting on you, you unfilial son."
Su Yu swore at him with a grin.
"Get your ass to work. Leave it all to your foster father."
Kevin picked up his work tablet and headed for the CEO's area.
Passing the pile of documents, he pulled the top contract off it without looking, flipped through two pages, and frowned slightly.
"The revenue split on this channel is wrong."
"Which one?" Su Yu didn't lift his head.
"Tenlong Platform. They want thirty percent off the launch. Too high. That's daylight robbery."
"Then go cut their heads off."
"Mm."
Kevin carried the tablet and the contract into the neighboring office and pulled the door shut behind him.
Su Yu watched the door close and shook his head.
From patient with four broken ribs to CEO auditing contracts. Seamless. No transition whatsoever.
Core principle: not all the way dead is good enough.
For the next fourteen hours, the entire top floor of the Arc City Tower became a war machine running at full load.
Tech department.
Bronie's front line.
Three monitors arranged in a half arc, the air above the keyboard trembling faintly from the frequency of her typing.
Gray spiral twin-tails hung down either side of the chair back, tactical goggles pushed up on her forehead, the music in her headphones loud enough that the workstation next door could hear the bass thrumming.
Six empty cola cans stood at her feet. The seventh was pinched between the index and middle fingers of her left hand, lifted to her mouth now and then.
The five fingers of her right hand beat out afterimages across the keys, the screens filled with green low-level code and server load curves.
At one node, the curve spiked.
Bronie's eyes narrowed.
She set the cola down, dropped both hands onto the keyboard, and doubled her typing speed in an instant.
Fifteen seconds later, the curve leveled out.
Bronie let out a long breath, slammed back into her chair, pulled one side of her headphones off, and yelled across the open office:
"Emergency expansion on server three, complete! If anybody dares hit me with a DDOS attack during launch tomorrow, I'm crawling through the network cable and blowing up their motherboard along with their whole electrical panel!"
Nobody answered her.
Everyone was buried alive in work.
Bronie shrugged, snapped the headphones back on, and kept coding.
Promotions department.
Eden's workspace was the private room at the end of the hall, door half open, warm yellow light spilling out.
Her title at the studio might be music director, executive producer, and the deep-pocketed patron behind everything, but at a moment when the company lived or died, even a superstar had to get down on the line and turn screws.
She sat at her desk in a sharply cut dark suit, jacket draped over the back of her chair, a fitted cream knit top underneath.
A tablet stood in a stand on the desk, its screen crammed with promotion schedules.
Her left hand held a cup of black coffee, a faint lip print on the rim.
Her right held a phone against her ear.
"That's right. The promotional assets must blanket every platform's front page by nine fifty tomorrow morning, on the dot."
Her tone was gentle enough to lull someone to sleep.
"One second late, and there's nothing to discuss about the final payment."
A rush of explanation came from the other end of the line.
Eden didn't interrupt. She listened to all of it in silence, then answered in exactly the same gentle voice:
"Then it's settled. If anything goes wrong, I'll have my legal team invite all of you out for tea. Thank you for your hard work."
She hung up, took a sip of coffee, and tapped open the next number on the list.
Logistics area.
Kiana came barreling down the corridor with an entire case of "HOMU physical blind boxes" in her arms, a white tornado tearing from one end to the other.
The case was wider than her upper body, but she held it perfectly steady on Valkyrie strength alone.
"Su Yu, Su Yu! Where do these go?"
Su Yu didn't look up, just pointed at the storeroom door on the right.
"Zone A shelving, third row! And handle them gently, my lady, don't go flattening the blind boxes on me!"
"I know, I know!"
Kiana executed a drift turn in the corridor with the case still in her arms, canvas shoes squealing across the floor, and vanished behind the storeroom door.
Three seconds later, a white head poked back out around the door frame.
"Su Yu! Is there any pizza left? I'm starving!"
"Second shelf in the fridge! Work first, eat after!"
"Ugh! Capitalist!"
The head withdrew in a huff.
Nuwa lay sprawled across the big worktable in the art department, the final version of the shop interface UI draft spread in front of her.
Her stylus flew across the drawing tablet, both eyes red as a rabbit's from too many all-nighters, her hand never pausing for a second.
Fuxi came over holding a calculator, pushed a square of chocolate into her mouth, and went back to running cost figures without turning her head.
Griseo sat on a small stool in the corner, drawing board propped on her knees.
She was finishing the last illustration for the launch loading screen, paint smeared all over her hands and a spot of it on the tip of her nose.
The whole building was in motion.
The clatter of keyboard combos, the endless negotiating over phones, the hum of printers swallowing and spitting paper, the quick tread of running feet...
Somebody in the corridor screamed in despair, "Who took my Type-C charging cable?"
Bronie bellowed into her mic from half an office away, "Potato server, you are going to hold today or else!"
Kiana stuck her head out of the storeroom and wailed, "There's no pizza left! Su Yu, you lied to me!"
All of it blended together like a symphony with no conductor.
Chaotic, deafening, thick with the smell of life.
On the giant digital clock.
Bright red digits ticked mercilessly across a pure black panel.
[Time remaining until the full-platform public beta of Honkai Impact 3rd: 24 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds.]
Outside the window, Arc City's morning sun pierced the cloud layer left behind by the rain.
Golden light struck the glass curtain walls of the office towers and bounced onto the walls of the building across the way.
The calm before the storm was over.
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