The mouse clicked.
Background music drifted up from the screen, lilting and threaded with sorrow.
The story picked up seamlessly from the animated short that had shaken the entire internet - The Queen's Descent.
On screen, Anti-Entropy's Titan mech corps had already been wiped out to the last unit, reduced to a field of burning scrap iron.
Raiden Mei knelt on one knee amid the ruins, her Valkyrie armor shredded, her stamina completely spent. She no longer had the strength to lift her tachi.
High above her, the Herrscher of the Void looked down with the expression one might give an ant, a lethal lance of Honkai energy gathering at her fingertip, an instant away from ending Mei for good.
And in that razor-thin sliver of a moment -
A small figure fell from the sky wrapped in golden light, and an enormous cross slammed into the ground with a roar, blocking the killing blow.
It was Theresa!
At the sight of her, the Herrscher of the Void showed no alarm at all. If anything, a flicker of amused surprise crossed her face.
Through the barbed exchange between the two of them, a long-buried past came to light - fourteen years ago, on the battlefield of the Second Eruption, Theresa had already clashed with this Herrscher of the Void, Sirin, in a fight that had cost them both dearly.
"Whoa, Auntie's entrance is so cool!" Elysia clapped her hands.
But faced with Theresa and Mei digging in for a last stand, the Herrscher of the Void could not even be bothered to fight them herself.
She snapped her fingers and summoned that colossal Judgment-class Honkai Beast - the dragon Benares.
A savage frost breath gathered in Bella's maw and burst forth as a pillar of pure Destruction, blasting straight toward the two of them, who had nowhere left to retreat.
And in the instant every player's heart climbed into their throat -
BOOM - ! ! !
A heavy, muffled roar tore across the battlefield.
An energy shield flickering with yellow hexagons took the dragon's breath head-on and held.
Machine gears meshed with a satisfying clack, and a girl's voice - the most reassuring sound in the world - rang out across the battlefield:
"Yamabuki Armor, all functions released, commencing operation at maximum output!"
The smoke cleared.
A girl with spiral twin-tails, clad in Valkyrie armor of primarily yellow tones, hovered quietly in midair.
A silly little HOMU pin was still fastened at her chest.
And behind her, the massive steel mech Project Bunny raised an enormous cannon radiating terrifying black gravitational waves.
That was the Divine Key forged from the last era's Ninth Herrscher Core - the Star of Eden!
"Long time no see, Big Sis Mei. Academy Director."
The firelight of the battlefield reflected in Bronya's gray eyes.
"Looks like Bronya arrived just in time - Bronya has rested long enough. Bronya is rejoining the squad, now!"
The moment that scene played, the danmaku across every stream hit its first truly unhinged peak since launch.
Dense walls of text swallowed the screen like a tsunami.
[Holy crap holy crap! ! ! Ducky's back on top! ! !]
[She spent four whole main-story chapters lying down! Bronya finally woke up!]
[So cool! Rejoining the squad with a Divine Key in hand - THAT'S what a main cast entrance looks like!]
[Sob sob sob, the Trio is finally together again... wait, Kiana is the enemy boss right now. Does that still count as together?]
Watching the danmaku erupt in celebration, Elysia laughed along with them. "I knew it. A girl as strong as Bronya was never going to stay down forever!"
The players' euphoria, however, lasted less than two minutes.
With the three of them working in concert, the dragon Bella was driven back for the moment.
Which annoyed the Herrscher of the Void on her throne.
"A tedious little farce."
She let out a cold snort, impatience flickering behind her eyes.
The next moment, she raised her hand a fraction.
Space twisted and folded at her fingertips.
There was no time to react at all. Theresa, Mei and Bronya felt the world spin, and in a heartbeat all three were teleported into some unknown pocket dimension.
At the same instant, their comms link to the Hyperion dissolved into a shrill dead tone.
The hopeless one-sided slaughter had begun.
Even with Theresa unleashing the blood-boiling power of the Violet Executer, even with Mei and Bronya fighting at her side.
Against the Herrscher of the Void's absolute mastery over space, every struggle looked like a joke.
Soon Theresa's small body was seized by invisible Imaginary hands and yanked violently into the air.
Her throat was crushed in their grip, her limbs locked rigid, unable to move an inch.
Theresa fought desperately to invoke the Oath of Judah, only to find a ceaseless green radiance welling from inside the Herrscher of the Void - the Gem of Serenity of the Herrscher of Death.
Against that terrifying power of creation and self-regeneration, Judah's attacks vanished like stones dropped into the sea.
On screen, the Herrscher of the Void drifted slowly to hover before the struggling Theresa.
In those dark golden pupils there was no anger. Only a mockery so pure it raised the hairs on the back of your neck.
She looked down at the despairing Mei and Bronya below, the corner of her mouth curving into something cruel, and her words rolled through the freezing space, each one aimed at the heart:
"You want to take this body back? You want to save this girl?"
"Is that so? She's your precious companion? Your precious family?"
"You made sweet, treasured memories together? You forged promises that could never be broken?"
The Queen's voice changed all at once.
"In that case -"
"Let me use her body, her own two hands, to kill every last one of you!"
"Let the people she cherishes most suffer the most vicious agony, the most brutal deaths, all for the sake of saving her!"
"Let that beautiful past shatter piece by piece and crumble into nothing, in despair and in grief!"
"I will make your twisted faces and your broken limbs the last thing her eyes ever see!"
"Family, friends, happiness, dreams, the future, hope -"
"...She should not have them! She does not deserve them! She will not have them!"
Dead silence.
The streams that had been overflowing with cheers a moment ago now felt as though all the air had been sucked out of them.
Ten million players sat in front of their screens and shivered without meaning to.
A bone-deep chill crawled up the spine and settled at the base of the skull.
That was pure malice.
Not for the sake of ruling the world. Not in service of some lofty ideal. Just a simple, poisonous desire to grind one beautiful soul into pulp and trample it into the mud.
[This... these lines...]
[My scalp is crawling. That voice acting - I genuinely feel like she wants to reach through the screen and strangle me.]
[So vicious... this isn't villain arrogance at all, this is a curse from start to finish!]
The smile had slipped from Elysia's face at some point without her noticing.
She pressed both hands tightly over her mouth, and something pained and unwilling passed through her pink eyes.
She could feel exactly how deep the hatred buried in those lines ran.
Beside her, Himeko quietly set down her beer can too.
A gravity settled over that mature face. "That kid Su Yu really does have a knack for writing villains. That kind of pressure, the kind that makes your teeth itch with hate - not just anyone can put that on a page."
In the game, the merciless judgment went on.
The Herrscher of the Void ran Raiden Mei through the chest without hesitation and tore the Gem of Conquest, crackling with purple lightning, straight out of her body.
Feeling that immense power return to her, the Herrscher of the Void spread her arms wide like a god truly descended upon the world, gazing down at the ants below:
"Come. Become offerings to a god - the hour of judgment is here!"
In the last second before Theresa and the others were sent to their graves.
A black speck appeared at the edge of the sky.
With a deafening sonic boom, a streak of light crashed down like a meteor and, in that hair's-breadth instant, planted itself between the Herrscher of the Void and Theresa and Bronya.
The dust settled. A figure in armor woven of black and gold - Shadow Knight: Moonwheel - stood before the Herrscher of the Void like a mountain that could not be crossed.
It was Fu Hua!
[HOLY CRAP! Squad Monitor, save me! ! !]
[Shenzhou Tablet, justice from the heavens! Sob sob sob, my sense of security is maxed out!]
Fu Hua's arrival set the danmaku off again in a wave of relieved, we-just-survived cheering.
But the story didn't jump straight into a fight. A gorgeous CG flashed past, and the timeline leapt back thirteen minutes.
Schicksal Headquarters, Helheim Laboratory, Containment Pod Seven.
It was a cramped room of barely fifteen square meters, originally built as a cage for dangerous test subjects.
On screen, Fu Hua and Rita stood before a hibernation pod.
And lying inside that pod, eyes shut tight and face bloodless, was Himeko.
Treatment had stabilized her vitals, but between the long-term Honkai energy corrosion and sheer exhaustion, she remained in a deep coma with no sign whatsoever of waking.
"Ho?"
In the stream, Himeko raised an eyebrow at the sight and couldn't resist a jab. "So I've been asleep this whole time in the game? Not a bad deal, honestly. No life-and-death brawling on the battlefield, pure paid vacation."
She was joking, but her brows had drawn together slightly.
She could feel it sharply - the mood of the story was sliding somewhere suffocating.
In the game, Fu Hua stepped up to the hibernation pod, golden light blooming at her fingertips.
Several crystalline feathers drifted down and melted into Himeko's body, and her breathing evened out.
"At least... this should ease some of the pain."
Fu Hua thought it silently to herself.
But that gentle moment lasted less than ten seconds.
A piercing, top-level alarm blared out over the whole of Schicksal Headquarters.
The Second Herrscher had awakened.
And all of it, every last piece, had been part of Archbishop Otto's plan.
Fu Hua and Rita charged out of the containment bay and began clearing the swarms of Honkai Beasts drawn in by the Herrscher's awakening.
When the fighting ended, Otto issued further orders over comms - the two of them were to hold position, and Durandal would arrive with the Immortal Blades to take over.
But as a warrior who had guarded Shenzhou for fifty thousand years, Fu Hua caught the wrongness at once.
Durandal wasn't monitoring the Herrscher? Then aside from Schicksal's strongest Valkyrie, who exactly was out there fighting the Herrscher right now?
From the other end of the comm came Otto's voice, forever elegant and forever flippant:
"Rest easy, my old friend. Everything is under my control. My adorable Theresa will help us obtain the Herrscher's power."
The words landed like a thunderclap out of a clear sky.
"What did you say? ! Theresa is fighting the Herrscher? !"
The color drained from Fu Hua's face.
Before she could press for details, the comm equipment died completely under the massive electromagnetic pulse of the Herrscher's outburst.
Fu Hua made the call on the spot: she would head for the battlefield first and stall the Herrscher.
But an enormous, cold-edged scythe swung out to bar her path.
It was Rita.
The maid who always wore that flawless smile had not the slightest trace of it in her eyes now. She stated the merciless truth in a flat voice:
Otto had never given any order to reinforce Theresa or to fight the Herrscher.
On the contrary, the Bishop's standing order was absolute - Rita was to stop Fu Hua at any cost, and under no circumstances allow her to disrupt this "great plan."
Bang!
In the stream, Elysia slammed a furious palm down on the desk.
"Otto, you old fox! He's scheming against his own granddaughter! That's Theresa! How could he have the heart to send her off to die!"
Himeko said nothing.
She watched the Fu Hua on screen bracing herself for a duel to the death with Rita for a friend's sake, and her eyes turned graver than they had ever been.
Just as Fu Hua and Rita both unleashed their full power, poised to settle it in one exchange -
An enormous lance blazing with brilliant gold light fell from the sky like a shooting star and buried itself in the steel floor between them, cutting the civil war dead in its tracks.
The next moment, a stunningly beautiful woman with long, radiant golden hair, clad in white and blue armor, appeared before them.
The aura she carried belonged to the absolutely strong, an undefeated paladin made flesh.
Schicksal's mightiest S-rank Valkyrie - Durandal!
What Durandal did next, however, took everyone by surprise.
She told Rita to stand down and made no further move to block Fu Hua.
"We can't provide you with any assistance. We have our own position to hold."
"But if our positions were reversed, I think... I would make the same choice you are making. Go."
Fu Hua thanked her gravely, then turned into a streak of light and raced without pause toward that battlefield where there was death and no way out.
Rita watched the direction Fu Hua had vanished in, then asked Durandal, her gaze complicated.
"Why didn't you stop her? Going like that, she'll die."
Durandal's hand closed around the great Black Abyss, White Flower, her voice calm and heavy.
"That was her own decision to make."
"...What a shame."
Rita lowered her eyes.
"The truth is, I don't dislike her at all."
Watching that exchange, ten million players felt their hearts drop.
So Rita knew. Durandal knew. Even Fu Hua herself knew.
All of them had understood perfectly well from the start - in a contest between a mortal and a god, Fu Hua was walking into certain death.
The scene cut back to the present timeline.
Fu Hua ordered Bronya to retreat with the gravely wounded Theresa and Mei, then stood alone against the insufferably arrogant Herrscher of the Void.
In that clash of titans, the Herrscher of the Void suddenly recognized her - she had seen Fu Hua before, during the Second Eruption.
And Fu Hua unleashed the full power of the Divine Key, Grips of Tai Xuan.
Her fists blurred like dragons; the shockwaves ripped space itself.
Fu Hua displayed strength far beyond anything the main cast could reach, hammering blow after blow into the Herrscher of the Void, carving wounds deep enough to show bone.
[SO strong! Squad Monitor is a monster! This is the pinnacle of martial arts!]
[Kill her! Avenge Mei!]
The players in the danmaku cheered themselves hoarse for Fu Hua.
Reality, though, was cruel enough to break you.
Those fatal wounds punched out by the Divine Key didn't even have time to bleed a single drop before the outrageous creative power of the Gem of Serenity sealed them shut in front of your eyes, restored to perfection in an instant.
A mortal body, in the end, cannot stand against the Authority of a god.
As her stamina drained away, Fu Hua's movements grew slower and slower.
At last, with one dull impact, Fu Hua fell.
The Herrscher of the Void clamped one hand around Fu Hua's throat and hoisted her broken body high into the air.
Those dark golden pupils brimmed with contempt and derision:
"I'll grant you a little praise. You truly are different from the rest. But when all is said and done, you're still only a human."
And in that hopeless moment, as the Herrscher of the Void prepared to crush Fu Hua's throat in her grip -
A man nobody expected stepped into this battlefield between gods.
Otto Apocalypse.
He strolled in as though taking a walk through his own garden.
Crimson fluid seeped out of his body like living blood, spiraling up along his arm, gathering at last into several sharpened spikes that radiated appalling pressure - all of them aimed at the Herrscher of the Void.
"She is my friend. I would prefer she not be harmed."
Facing this unfathomable man, the Herrscher of the Void felt an instinctive prickle of danger and discomfort.
"I have no interest in you people. Those little girls are my targets."
With open disgust, the Herrscher of the Void tossed the badly wounded Fu Hua onto the ground like a piece of garbage.
"But to think someone like you became a king. Humanity really is a pitiful thing."
With those words, space folded and the Herrscher of the Void vanished into the sky, off to continue hunting down Theresa and the others.
That single scene threw every stream into total, baffled chaos.
[? ? ? What is going on? !]
[Otto... saved the Squad Monitor? ! He grew a conscience? !]
[Is Otto getting redeemed? Has he been playing some huge long game this whole time?]
Elysia was stunned too.
She stared blankly at that elegant man on the screen, her thoughts a tangled knot, genuinely unsure for a moment whether she should keep cursing him or not.
But it was only now that the trap Su Yu had so painstakingly woven finally bared the fangs that would drive the whole world to despair.
"Ah, what a sorry state. The last time I saw you this badly hurt was five hundred years ago, at Skyward Peak, wasn't it?"
Otto walked over to Fu Hua where she lay in a pool of blood and looked down at her.
"In any case, allow me to treat you first. Consider it a celebration of the successful conclusion of the experiment's first phase."
"...Why."
To Otto's surprise, Fu Hua - gravely wounded, barely able to move - gritted her teeth and dragged the question out with every scrap of strength she had left.
"Why... did you let her leave... don't you know... her target is..."
"It's Theresa. I know."
Otto gazed at the distant sky.
"I'm afraid it won't be long before they're caught. And this time, no one else will interfere - their battle will be carried through to the very end."
There in that silent field of rubble, Otto Apocalypse finally laid bare, to the old friend he had known for five hundred years, the ultimate plan that could only be called monstrous.
K-423 was not dead yet.
Otto needed the power of the Herrscher of the Void, but he understood perfectly that a Herrscher was an uncontrollable monster.
And so this sage of five hundred years had conceived of an idea that made every player's back run cold.
Compared to controlling a Herrscher who possessed power, controlling a "human" who possessed a Herrscher's power was obviously far easier.
In other words...
From the moment Otto created K-423 fourteen years ago, his goal had been to produce a "human" capable of wielding a Herrscher's power flawlessly.
He intended for that human girl named Kiana to seize her own body back from the depths of endless despair.
And to complete that brutal ritual of awakening.
K-423's companions had to be sacrificed - all the people she had, over these years, come to share such deep Bonds with.
That was why Otto had quietly allowed a clone of unknown origin to enroll in Theresa's St. Freya Academy.
He watched them meet, understand each other, love each other. He watched them forge Bonds nothing could break.
Because only that way -
When Theresa, when Mei, when Bronya, when every person Kiana treasured most was cruelly slaughtered one by one before her eyes by the Herrscher of the Void.
Only that ultimate agony, that love torn apart, would wake the human soul sleeping in the Abyss.
It was an undertaking great enough to change the world.
Archbishop Otto hoped Theresa and the others would pay for it with their lives.
- To kill a Herrscher with love!
Quiet.
Deathly quiet.
In Elysia's stream, the danmaku that had been scrolling a thousand lines a second hit a full ten seconds of absolute vacuum the instant Otto spoke the words "kill a Herrscher with love."
Ten million players. Ten million people in front of ten million screens.
In that moment it felt as though an invisible, freezing hand had closed around every one of their hearts. Even breathing became a luxury that hurt.
What kind of twisted, conscience-free logic was this?
Beautiful feelings used as fuel. Innocent family used as offerings.
All of it, all of it, just to finish forging one perfect weapon in his hand.
Clatter.
The can of ice-cold beer slipped from Himeko's fingers without warning and struck the floor hard. Pale yellow liquid and white foam spread everywhere across the boards.
She was in no state to wipe it up.
The mature, striking woman simply stared at the screen, her eyes full of shock and horror she could not suppress.
She understood at last. What Su Yu had invited her here to "enjoy" was not some rousing, righteous hero's tale.
It was a merciless massacre that pressed every player's soul into a meat grinder and ground it to pieces.
In the game.
Having heard out Otto's magnificent plan.
Fu Hua, lying in a pool of her own blood, suddenly laughed.
"Heh heh... hahaha..."
There was not the faintest trace of joy in that laughter.
Only grief and fury, a cold that reached the bone, and utter despair over the man standing before her.
Facing Schicksal's Archbishop looming above her, Fu Hua held on to her last breath and poured fifty thousand years of accumulated rage into a final verdict upon this man who had once been her friend:
"...Friend? There isn't a shred of conscience in your words... only bottomless selfishness and lies."
"Trampling on other people's feelings, toying with other people's fates..."
"...And not once... have you ever thought of yourself as an evil man!"
"Otto Apocalypse..."
"You make me feel, from the bottom of my heart... pity... and loathing..."
Thunder split the sky, and darkness swallowed the heavens.
- And at the same time, swallowed Otto Apocalypse's face.
Golden radiance gathered in his right hand and slowly took the shape of a firearm.
- Mimicry: Judgment of Shamash.
He leveled the muzzle, slowly, at the person lying on the ground.
It was a long, long process.
Long enough for five hundred years of memory to pass before his eyes one by one like a dream, like a bubble, dissolving into nothing.
It was an extremely short process.
Short enough that by the time he came back to himself, the choice had already been made.
"Fenghuang... never... lied..."
BANG - ! ! ! !
One deafening, muffled gunshot tore the whole world apart.
Golden fire devoured the screen in an instant.
And then.
The screen sank into pure, suffocating darkness.
"..."
In the stream.
Elysia sat frozen in her gaming chair, hands still clamped over her mouth.
Those pink eyes that were always full of starlight and life had contracted sharply, the black screen reflected in her pupils, brimming with disbelief.
A single tear slid out without warning and struck the back of her hand.
"Ah Hua... Ah Hua..."
Elysia breathed the words out, barely more than air, as if her brain hadn't finished processing what she had just watched.
After a full five seconds of eerie blank silence, the danmaku finally came back like a volcano that had been held down too long, rebounding with terrible force.
[? ? ? ? ? ?]
[What just happened? ! What was that gunshot supposed to mean? !]
[Otto FIRED? ! He fired at the Squad Monitor? ! I don't believe it! !]
[Wasn't he saving her! Didn't he say he didn't want his friend hurt! You lying piece of garbage, AAAAH!]
[The Squad Monitor is an immortal of Shenzhou! She can't die, right? Right? Su Yu, you old crook, say something! Don't play dead!]
[You trick us into eating candy and then it turns out it's packed full of broken glass? ! Su Yu, I have never hated a producer this much in my entire life!]
[The knives... the knives are coming out, everyone... I've got a bad feeling about this...]
Seeing the panic in the danmaku about to spiral completely out of control, Elysia gave a hard sniff.
She lifted the back of one pale hand and swiped away the tear at the corner of her eye before it could fall.
Then she slapped her own cheeks and forced out a bright, slightly stiff smile.
And launched into the most classic ritual known to Honkai players: "self-deception" combined with "desperate candy hunting."
"Everyone, don't panic! Listen to me, listen to me!"
Elysia raised her voice into the microphone.
"Ah Hua is definitely fine! Think about it - she's Fenghuang, the Immortal, who guarded Shenzhou for thousands of years! What storm hasn't she seen? How could one gunshot take her down that easily?"
"And go back over the story we just saw! Before Otto rescued Ah Hua, didn't that arrogant Herrscher of the Void say it out loud herself - that Ah Hua still has a second Divine Key she's been hiding and never used?"
Elysia pressed her palms together and delivered her final deduction, her face shining with hope.
"Even the Herrscher could tell she was holding a trump card. So how could she possibly just sit there empty-handed waiting to die at a moment like this? I think there has to be a turnaround coming!"
"That gunshot just now - maybe Ah Hua blocked it with a Divine Key, or maybe Otto deliberately missed! This is absolutely a smokescreen from that awful Su Yu, thrown out on purpose to scare us and steal our tears! Yes, that's definitely it~!"
That well-reasoned "analysis" landed among a crowd of drowning people like an enormous life ring.
The danmaku, which had been nothing but terror and cursing, paused briefly, then seized on it like a straw, and the wind began to shift in subtle ways.
[Holy crap! Ellie has a point! The Immortal hasn't played her trump card yet!]
[Right, right, right! Su Yu the old crook loves this kind of build-it-down-to-lift-it-up reversal. It's got to be a smokescreen!]
[That scared me half to death, I nearly smashed my keyboard. Ellie's analysis pulled me straight back from the edge of the cliff.]
[As expected of Ellie! She saw right through that old crook Su Yu's tricks! The Squad Monitor absolutely cannot die!]
[No body means no death! Schrödinger's Fenghuang, the Immortal!]
Watching the danmaku recover its optimism, even turning to eager speculation about what the second Divine Key might be, Elysia finally let out a long breath, and the smile on her face grew far more natural.
Himeko, sitting beside her, was nowhere near that optimistic.
The older woman propped her chin on one hand, looked at the loading screen lighting up again, glanced at the frantically self-soothing danmaku, and sighed helplessly to herself.
Kids, you're so naive.
But she didn't say a word to break that hard-won "optimistic atmosphere."
She just quietly cracked open another beer and braced herself for the real storm ahead.
The ten million players in the streams chanted along with Elysia - "it's definitely a smokescreen," "believe in the Squad Monitor" - but the truth was that the vast majority of them still had a heavy stone hanging in their chests.
So what, though? From the moment they clicked into Chapter 9, The Journey to Tomorrow, Su Yu had welded them onto this pirate ship called Honkai Impact 3rd.
Right now they were like passengers on a roller coaster hurtling into unknown darkness, with the safety bars locked and the doors welded shut.
Even if there was a thousand-meter chasm ahead, there was no getting off now.
All they could do was grit their teeth, cling to that pitiful scrap of self-deception, and watch as Elysia clicked into the next story stage.
Under the gaze of ten million pairs of eyes, the gears of fate ground on without mercy, pushing them inch by inch toward that final execution ground called Final Lesson.
____
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