10:00:00.
The instant maintenance ended, it was like a depth charge detonating under a calm sea.
Countless fingers stabbed at phone screens in the same heartbeat, hard enough that it seemed the tempered glass would crack outright.
The ascending elevator didn't open onto the bridge right away. Instead, it cut into a CG cinematic.
["Reporting, Colonel. Unidentified objects detected over Soukai City."]
[A shrill alarm split the air. Every screen in the city lit up with two enormous characters: AIR RAID.]
[Then a vast horde of snarling, hideous creatures tore past overhead, dense as a cloud of mosquitoes, relentless as locusts.]
[2 years, 5 months, 16 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes, 22 seconds since the outbreak of the Third Eruption.]
["Battle plan confirmed! Drone units, launch. Cover the Valkyrie's boarding!"]
[The sky belonged to the monsters. And above that skin-crawling swarm hung a colossal warship, hundreds of meters long.]
[The shot cut. A white-haired girl dropped into frame.]
["Kiana, move it!"]
["Yeah, yeah, yeah. Easy for you to say."]
[The girl fired the words back at the voice in her comms without much patience - and then a confident grin spread over her face.]
[Drones screamed past and slammed into the monsters ahead. The blast wind whipped her braid straight up.]
[Her legs coiled and launched her high into open air, and she brought her left foot up over her head.]
["Neko charm - !"]
[A giant cat's paw reached out of empty space, tracing her motion, and stomped down on a drone.]
[The drone flipped clean over under the impact.]
[A woman's voice crackled through the radio: "You're completely insane!"]
In university dorms, subway cars, and bathroom stalls being used for paid slacking all across the country, a single synchronized shout erupted at almost exactly the same moment:
"Holy shit?!"
The cinematic ended.
No black screen between cutscene and gameplay.
No spinning "Loading" wheel.
The camera lifted straight out of the dust of Kiana's landing and flowed seamlessly into the player control interface.
A college student hiding under his blanket instead of attending his eight a.m. pressed the [Attack] button in the lower right corner with a trembling thumb. On screen, Kiana burst into motion, driving a clean, decisive kick into the Zombie in front of her.
"BAM!"
That tiny bite of hitstop at the moment of contact, paired with a perfectly judged buzz of haptics, sent a rush of satisfaction straight up through the screen and into the player's brainstem.
Left thumb sliding the stick, right thumb hammering attack, then a lazy, offhand tap of [Dodge].
"Hmmm-!"
Time froze on the spot. A purple Time Fracture effect swallowed the entire battlefield, and the monsters locked in place.
In the upper right corner, the frame counter sat nailed to [120 FPS], not budging a hair.
"This is running on a PHONE? Did my phone secretly evolve an RTX card behind my back?!"
"The impact! The combo flow! And this is FREE?! Is miHoYo running a charity?!"
"It's over, boys. Every stand-still card game I used to play is officially electronic garbage."
Within five minutes of launch, the entire player base online had boiled over into something close to religious fervor.
An action system that was Outclassed by None and art fidelity that crushed the era came down like a sledgehammer, smashing everyone's baseline expectations to powder.
There were, however, always a few miserable unfortunates in this world who, thanks to damned capitalism (work) or the wretched eight a.m. lecture (school), couldn't get their hands on this landmark masterpiece the moment it dropped.
Only a lucky few could sneak in some play on the subway.
At 9:59:59, most of them were still sitting in the morning meeting, listening to a manager use fifty slides to say something three sentences could have covered, pretending to study an Excel sheet.
Phone under the thigh, refreshing forums like a madman.
If you couldn't play it yourself, you watched someone else play it.
In the fifteen minutes after ten o'clock, a flood of traffic poured into every major streaming platform.
The front pages of every site presented a spectacular sight - console category, mobile category, esports category, even the pretty-face category.
Someone in the sleep-aid category was streaming under a Honkai Impact 3rd title.
Small streamers, mid-tier streamers, huge streamers. Everyone was grabbing for the same cake.
But in that churning flood of broadcasts, one room had held the most prominent carousel slot on the entire site's front page from the second it went live.
Its frame was gilded gold, stamped with an official verification badge.
[Honkai Impact 3rd Official Brand Ambassador - Elysia's Bizarre Adventure]
Fine pink motes of light clung to the four corners of the frame, as if someone had ground up a whole bottle of stars and sprinkled them over it.
Click in.
The instant the picture lit up, every viewer flooding into the room experienced a visual whiplash.
The backdrop was one enormous floor-to-ceiling window, the Arc City skyline beyond it, sunlight filtering through gauzy curtains to lay soft pools of light across the floor.
On the left sat a white grand piano, a bouquet of pink roses still beaded with dew resting on the closed lid.
On the shelf to the right, rows of adorable plushies were arranged in a color gradient, pale pink to rose to deep violet.
Top-grade fill lighting bathed the whole frame in a warm, creamy tone.
One glance was enough to make a person feel warm inside.
And seated before the camera was the elf who could steal the breath out of anyone at first sight, even set against a galaxy of dazzling concept art.
"Heya~ Good morning, everyone!"
Her voice was sweet and soft, carrying a strange magic that seemed to melt straight into the bones, the final syllable lifting a little, like a pink petal brushing gently against the tip of everyone's heart.
"Let me see... wow, so many adorable Captains showed up in the room all at once!"
Elysia leaned in close to the microphone, cupping that flawless face of hers in both hands.
"I bet a lot of you poor things are hiding right under your boss's nose right now, or down behind the lecture desk, sneaking a look at Elysia. Aren't you?"
"It makes my heart ache~ Everyone out there working so hard for a living, for your studies - in Elysia's eyes, you're all shining heroes."
The comment feed lost its mind on the spot.
[Aimen!!]
[Single-oshi confirmed! I hereby declare Elysia my one and only for life!]
[Sob, I'm slacking on company time and I'm crying real tears. My boss just docked me two hundred off my attendance bonus, but with Elysia comforting me, it was all worth it!]
[I say Miss Pink Elf is the cutest being in the world. Who agrees? Who dares object?!]
So this was emotional value. So this was what top-tier emotional value looked like.
[You see that, boss? Elysia says I'm a hero. Who the hell are you?]
[I don't care anymore! Keep the overtime pay, I'm watching this stream!]
"All right, all right, I know everyone's had it rough. So let Elysia be your eyes and your controller, and experience this wonderful world on your behalf~"
She lifted the controller in front of the camera and waggled it.
"The prologue's starting. Ready?"
The screen cut to gameplay.
Unlike the flailing of the average player, the Kiana under Elysia's control moved like water.
Three-hit basic string into branch attack, the final hit of the branch cancelled out of its recovery straight into a dodge, the dodge window timed to the frame - and purple Time Fracture bloomed across the screen.
She had, after all, been in the closed beta. A tutorial stage was hardly a challenge.
She fought and chatted at the same time, in the tone of ordinary conversation.
"Oh, everyone look at Kiana's entrance animation. Isn't it unbelievably cool? Even I couldn't help falling for her a little when I saw it~"
On screen, Kiana punted a Zombie into the air.
"But shall I tell you a little secret? Off duty, she's an absolutely monstrous glutton."
"How much can she eat? A whole roast chicken, two big bowls of rice, and a dessert. Wiped out in five minutes."
The feed filled with [garbage-disposal female lead hhhh].
"And the cutest part is, every time she finishes she pats her stomach and says, 'So full. I'm going on a diet tomorrow.' And then the next morning she charges into the cafeteria to grab the first breakfast in line anyway!"
[It's over, I already love her]
[Wait, that's literally me. Is this white-haired girl my long-lost sister?!]
"So, Captains, once you board the Hyperion, remember to drop by the cafeteria now and then. You might just catch Kiana sneaking a midnight snack. She'd be so happy."
[I adore the lovable idiot archetype! Though when it comes to cuteness, our Miss Pink Elf still rules the world!]
Elysia set the controller down, lifted her black tea with elegance, and took a sip. Something genuine surfaced in her eyes - anticipation, and warmth.
"All right, the prologue warm-up is over. Now, my lovely players, please keep your eyes wide open."
She looked into the camera, her smile radiant, as if it could pierce the screen and shine into every player's heart.
"You're going to watch a group of girls give everything they have to protect what matters to them, in a world overflowing with disaster and despair."
"Sometimes they'll win. Sometimes they'll lose, and lose badly."
"But even covered in wounds, even with nothing but setbacks ahead, they never once give up."
She paused.
"Because they believe that as long as there's still something worth protecting, as long as one small beautiful thing still exists in this world -"
"- then it's worth fighting for."
The comment feed skipped a beat.
Then it surged in like a tide.
[For everything beautiful in this world.]
Different people sent it in different formats, different colors, different font sizes, and in an instant it papered over the entire screen.
At that same moment.
The atmosphere in another room could not have been more different from Elysia's.
Among the countless streams full of people wailing about not being able to squeeze onto the servers, one broadcast with an outrageously cocky title - and the buff of an official front-page push - turned up unexpectedly on a great many players' recommendation pages.
[Interstellar Genius Girl's Higher-Dimensional Review: Does Clearing Honkai Impact 3rd Even Make You Sweat?]
Sparks sat in her gaming chair.
She'd changed clothes. For today's stream she had dug her other outfit out from the very bottom of her storage.
Brand new, and apparently pressed with a flat iron on purpose. The red bow at her chest was tied dead straight, not a fold out of place.
Her white twintails had been redone, every stray strand smoothed away.
Light, precise makeup on her face, eyeliner drawn clean and sharp.
On her phone screen, the progress bar crawled through its final segment.
[Unpacking resources 100%]
The glow of the screen sat in her eyes.
The red light on the stream camera was on.
Viewers: 1,000, and climbing at a rate of dozens per second.
For a streamer whose numbers were normally buried somewhere near the earth's core, this was probably the largest audience Sparks's channel had ever seen.
The unprecedented launch-day fever had crammed a flood of traffic - all of it stranded outside the server gates and fuming - straight into this cramped, peculiar little room.
Sparks pulled the strawberry lollipop she'd been chewing on out of her mouth, flicked it away with a careless fingertip, and watched it arc across the room and drop dead-center into the trash can by the desk.
The thin plastic stick clacked against the thin plastic wall of the bin with a crisp little snap.
Then she lunged forward, and that delicate face swelled across the stream frame until it was nearly pressed against the lens.
"Ta-daaa!"
She flung her arms wide like a stage actress who had just completed an impossible illusion, and let out a cheer so sugary it bordered on pathological.
"Good morning, my darling little wretches! Welcome to Sparksy's Theater of Elation~"
Her eyes curved into a brilliant, blinding smile.
"My my, the comments are scrolling so fast I can barely read them."
She cupped a hand behind her ear and tilted her head with theatrical affectation.
"Let me guess. Right now you're all staring at that little spinning wheel on your phone - 'In queue: position 89,403' - frantic as a little pet on a hot skillet, ready to bite someone?"
The feed detonated. Players already twitching with impatience were set alight by that single jab.
[Damn! How does this streamer know I'm in the queue?!]
[Streamer, your mental state is a hundred years ahead of mine. Stop, stop roasting me, I'm at an internet cafe smashing the keyboard!]
[Opening a sponsored stream by mocking the viewers - you trying to never get another brand deal?!]
[I'm so mad! I skipped my eight a.m. to queue in a toilet stall, why does SHE get in?!]
[Lady Sparks, I'm begging you, click in already! I can't see live gameplay and it feels like ants are crawling on me!]
Sparks watched the screen fill with broken souls, and the amusement in her eyes deepened.
She loved this - poking at emotions, watching other people squirm.
"Shhh. Don't be so worked up."
Then she deliberately waved her phone screen in front of the camera.
As a sponsored streamer, she had an internal priority access channel reserved for her.
"Seeing you all this pitiful really does break Sparksy's heart~"
She covered her mouth and giggled, her tone sliding into something playful and wicked.
"So allow the great and merciful Lady Sparks to taste this wildly overhyped game first, on behalf of all you poor things who can't even get onto the server, and find out exactly what kind of fun it's hiding!"
She tipped her head slightly, and one white twintail slid off her shoulder to sway lightly against the red bow at her chest.
"Don't you dare blink. Are you ready to witness... my mad little performance?"
The public beta had only just opened, and the launch-day sponsorship push was pulling its weight. The viewer count in the corner climbed like a rocket.
Sparks let her gaze drift sideways over that wildly inflating number and gave a soft snort through her nose.
"Oh my, so many lost little pets have wandered into my theater all at once."
She lifted that fine chin toward the camera, her voice sweet enough to pull threads.
"Relax, little wretches. Sparksy isn't picking on anyone in particular."
"I'm just honestly curious - code that Earth natives hammered out on their backward pile of scrap metal, and it dares to wear an 'action masterpiece' label?"
[Damn, that's arrogant]
[New here. Is this streamer always this ballsy?]
[White hair, red eyes - okay, the face is actually cracked!]
[Sponsored streamer, save the trash talk. It'll be hilarious when a trash mob wipes you.]
[Hold on, what do you mean by that? Don't tell me you're not from Earth??]
Sparks read the comments, and the corner of her mouth curled.
"Let me put it on the record right now."
With arrogance, she tapped the opening cinematic that had just finished playing on her screen, as if handing down a final verdict on this pack of ignorant Earthlings.
"If the Chapter One boss can so much as brush a corner of my clothes... then that adorable little designer of yours does have some usable gray matter rattling around in his skull after all."
"And if that actually happens, the great and merciful Lady Sparks will wash her hair upside down in a handstand for you little pets. Purely as a bit of entertainment."
She held the pause for half a beat, eyelids lowering as she looked down at the camera from on high.
"A pity. That's absolutely never going to happen~"
[Oh HELL yes! My fists are clenched!]
[Total passerby here, and honestly - how did I never notice there was a mesugaki streamer in this corner of the site?]
[Screenshotted and recorded! Don't try denying it later!]
[This streamer's mouth is writing checks. Don't cry in a bit!]
The stream moved into actual gameplay.
To accommodate players of every stripe, this public beta build of Honkai Impact 3rd thoughtfully offered three difficulty options for the main story.
Story Mode, Normal Mode, and Hard Mode.
Sparks, being an "elite gamer," naturally picked Hard with her eyes shut.
On that setting, enemy attack frequency and aggression both spiked enormously, and some enemies gained entirely new move variations.
The classic example: on Story Mode, Titan Daddy telegraphed his ground slam with a long charge-up wind-up and a red warning circle.
Unless your hands were made of tofu, getting hit was practically impossible.
On Hard Mode there was no charge-up wind-up at all, and the attack telegraph lasted barely a blink.
Su Yu had even thoughtfully restored that one absurd monster design from the original: charge, blink, one punch, done.
It was time to let this world's players taste the agony of being one-shot like a small child.
Of course, ordinarily nobody would go picking Hard Mode for fun. Su Yu had positioned this game from the start as a mass-market ACT mobile title.
Same principle as always.
If the difficulty was too high, if the barrier to entry was too steep, it would quietly filter out an enormous chunk of the playerbase.
So player-protection mechanics were always the core value of a game like this. If people got ground into the dirt just trying to clear the main story, who could stomach playing on?
Since the goal was to spread the game as far as humanly possible, the entry bar had to sit low enough that even a player with terrible reflexes could jump in and have a blast.
Still, he was a veteran Captain reincarnated, so Su Yu had considerately preserved a slice of the soul of action gaming - the unnerfed monsters were waiting in Hard Mode for players to come test themselves.
Go forth, brave boys and girls, and face the fire archers whose flame rings don't vanish even after you dodge, the dual-blade Zombies that parry the instant you lift a hand, the Honkai Emperor that punishes your wake-up, the workaholic boars rolling all over the street that kill you if they so much as graze you, and the summoner bitch that screams for reinforcements nonstop until you put her down~
Oh, and stay alert for Titan Daddy's zero-frame teleport punch~ That, right there, is where Valkyrie fragments come from!
Practically the instant the UI lit up, every trace of laziness drained out of Sparks.
The slender fingertips resting on her keyboard blurred into terrifying afterimages within a single second.
She was, after all, a "Masked Fool" who had come running out of the endless sea of stars, a monster who walked the Path of Elation.
Even without a Path's power now, her neural reflexes and hand speed were an Outclassed by None advantage over any human.
The starter character, [Domain Unit: White Comet], moved under her control as though some System limiter had been unlocked.
She timed the invincibility frames on her dodges down to the millisecond.
A Zombie was only halfway through raising its scythe before her silky "Perfect Dodge into Time Fracture into spin kick into branch launcher combo" had already deleted it, the whole sequence flowing like running water.
On screen, Kiana flipped and landed cleanly, surrounded by the dissolving light-dust of Zombies.
Off screen, Sparks was still slouched lazily back in her chair, lollipop in her mouth, her breathing rhythm entirely unchanged.
"That's it? The dodge window is this generous?"
Her commentary came out slightly muffled.
"Is that producer of yours worried the clumsy little pets will get beaten up and run home crying to mommy? My my, that's considerate to the point of insulting."
[Holy crap, the play is genuinely something!]
[Say what you want, the streamer can actually play. The micro is insanely tight!]
[Foul mouth aside, that was buttery smooth. Looked like a cutscene!]
[Girl, isn't this the tutorial stage? Making a whole production out of one scythe Zombie lmao!]
"These trash mobs have such long startup frames, the attack telegraph is practically pasted onto the player's face. Are Earth action games all like physical therapy sessions?"
She slid White Comet in close, tight to an enemy's body, and cleared a wave with a basic string into a branch finisher.
"At this rate I doubt I'll break a single drop of sweat today."
The minutes ticked past.
The room's viewer count blew through a hundred thousand without the slightest resistance.
On every major short-video platform, sharp-nosed clip UP-loaders started frantically reposting screen captures, each title more inflammatory than the last:
[Honkai Impact 3rd public beta first kill! Venomous white-haired streamer stomps the designers into the floor from start to finish!]
[Hard mode on launch day? This woman's mouth is unforgivable, but the gameplay is genuinely vicious!]
[Handstand hair-wash incoming? No - this is an actual god descending to earth.]
Sparks could see the numbers exploding along the edge of her screen, but she couldn't be bothered with them.
Right now, that brain of hers, which pursued nothing but amusement, had reallocated its attention: most of it sunk into the feedback of the gameplay, a smaller portion hooked into the entertainment value of the stream.
And that last sliver had, unexpectedly, developed a flicker of curiosity about the game itself.
The combat feel of this thing was too smooth.
So smooth it didn't seem like something Earth's average taste and industry tech level could possibly have produced.
The way the camera moved between story, combat, and set piece, the pacing locked in tight.
It knew exactly which second a player would feel tension, which second they needed release, which second the plot would spike their heartbeat, which second they'd be itching to slam the attack button.
Sparks had drifted through the sea of stars for far too long, and played the games of countless civilizations.
She had also strung countless people along in circles.
No, strictly speaking that was Sparkle. Not that it made much difference - sooner or later she was going to grind Sparkle under her heel anyway.
In any case, she understood better than anyone: someone capable of orchestrating emotion this precisely had a very black heart and very dirty methods.
She pressed down the smile tugging at her lips, kept the thought to herself, and murmured it silently instead:
"Now this is interesting."
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