The silence in the command room broke to the tap of knuckles on metal.
Su Yu straightened up from the swivel chair, fingers rapping twice against the edge of the console.
He wasn't looking at anyone. His eyes stayed fixed on the shrinking countdown number on the screen.
"No evacuation."
Su Yu tossed out those three words, and everyone nearby froze for a beat.
"Turn the whole building into an airtight iron tortoise shell. Let them sit inside blind and deaf. They won't see the monsters outside, and they won't hear whatever's happening over their heads."
Su Yu turned his head, his gaze landing on the holographic projection beside him.
Bronie's virtual image sat with her legs crossed, blowing a pink bubble of gum.
"Take over every central system in the tower."
Su Yu issued the order to Bronie.
"Cut the lighting power on every floor. Lock down all fire doors and freight elevators, permissions set to maximum. And the most important part — the smart glass curtain walls, all of them — switch them all to blackout mode."
"I don't want the people outside to see so much as a sliver of light in there, and I don't want the people inside to see a single drop of rain out there."
The bubble gum popped.
"Thirty seconds."
Bronie's fingers were already flying across the floating holographic keyboard in front of her, moving so fast they blurred.
"I'll make sure they can't pry open so much as a crack in the doors. Even with C4, they're staying sealed in."
A new window popped up on the command room's main screen — the backend interface for Arc City Tower's central control system.
A green progress bar raced from left to right, and every floor it passed switched from green to gray.
Thirty-two seconds.
The lights across all sixty-six floors of Arc City Tower went out, bottom to top, one floor after another.
They fell in sequence like dominoes, following the order of the floors.
Warm yellow office lights, fluorescent tubes in the hallways, the floor displays in the elevator lobbies — all of it sank into darkness within a matter of seconds.
Only the green emergency indicator lights still glowed, casting dim pools of light down the corridors.
Then came a click—
A near-inaudible mechanical locking sound rang out from the glass curtain wall outside.
The once-clear, spotless floor-to-ceiling windows turned into a dead, solid black in an instant.
From outside, the entire tower looked like a shadow that had been deliberately painted over.
From inside, the city's countless lights, the neon signs, the light trails of passing traffic — all of it vanished.
There was nothing left to see.
At the same time.
Up on the top floor, in the miHoYo Studio that had stayed behind, Nuwa was hunched over her tablet, rushing through a fresh batch of character art.
Her fingers kept moving, her eyes fixed on the lines on the screen, a lollipop still clamped between her teeth.
That was when the lights began to die.
Starting from the overhead fixtures, they dimmed one after another.
It was as though something were licking the light away, mouthful by mouthful.
In the sprawling office space, only the tablet screens still stubbornly glowed — the sole light source left, illuminating the dazed look on Nuwa's face.
The stylus slipped from her fingers and clattered onto the desk, its tip dragging a crooked red line across the screen.
"Whoa, is it a blackout?!" Another artist sitting nearby bolted upright from their seat. "Did a breaker trip, or — wait, why are the emergency lights on already, is this a zombie outbreak?!"
Nuwa pulled the lollipop out of her mouth, not bothering with the red line that had ruined her artwork — thankfully her computer had backup power — but she'd lost the mood to keep drawing anyway.
She stared at the window, now turned solid black, for a full five seconds.
"Look outside," she said, lowering her voice.
A few heads turned to look.
Pitch black outside.
The usual sight after a late night of overtime — the lit windows of the building across the way, the noisy traffic on the street, even the bright moon overhead — all of it was gone.
It was as if the whole building had been shoved, none too gently, into a black trash bag.
"What is going on—" someone had already pulled out their phone, meaning to call security.
Before they could finish the thought, every phone in the room buzzed at once.
It was a high-priority push notification from miHoYo's official internal corporate account, popping up right on everyone's lock screen.
Nuwa swiped her phone open, and one line was highlighted at the very top of the announcement:
[TOP SECRET INTERNAL TEST: 4D Anti-Gravity Immersive Vibration Engine — On-site Field Test Notice]
"To our hardworking colleagues still on overtime: in support of the pre-launch promotional buildup for the new Honkai Impact 3rd update, the studio will be conducting a cutting-edge immersive scene stress test inside Arc City Tower tonight."
"You may experience brief power outages, forced color-change and sealing of the glass curtain walls, mild sensations of weightlessness, and realistic thunderstorm sound effects."
"All of the above are normal physical feedback effects of the test — staff remaining on-site have absolutely nothing to worry about. The test is expected to conclude within three hours. For your complete personal safety during this time, please do not leave your workstation or wander about."
"Director Su is with you in spirit."
Nuwa stared at her phone screen for three full seconds.
Her mouth opened, then she looked up at the coworker beside her, who wore an equally baffled expression.
"What the hell is that big idiot Su Yu even doing?" She slapped her phone down on the desk. "Running some internal test without even a heads-up to us poor overworked artists, just plunging the whole building into darkness like a savage?! Does he think he's shooting a Hollywood blockbuster?!"
The coworker scratched their head, looking a bit pale. "This is way too sudden... My heart nearly jumped out of my chest just now."
Nuwa let out a long breath, popped the lollipop back into her mouth, and spun her stylus between her fingers.
"Whatever. Can't leave anyway, the power's out."
She folded her legs up onto the chair and bent back over the tablet.
"Though I have to admit... this immersive vibe is genuinely impressive."
"Pitch black like this, it really does feel like the end of the world, downright terrifying. He'd better actually pull off something amazing tonight — otherwise, first thing tomorrow morning, I swear I'm stuffing chewed gum under his keyboard!"
Elysia sat on a couch at the other end of the studio, a stack of unreviewed art drafts spread across her lap.
She'd just finished flipping through the last page when the lights went out, and she was about to get up and brew a cup of rose tea.
Now she leaned back against the couch, setting the stack of drafts on her knees.
Her phone screen was lit; she'd already swiped away the announcement pop-up.
But she hadn't bothered to read it, and unlike Nuwa, she hadn't relaxed at all.
Her brow furrowed.
Her instincts were sounding the alarm — Miss Pink Elf's instincts told her that this sudden test was hiding some kind of secret behind it.
While Nuwa carried on obliviously gushing about how "impressive" the immersion was, Elysia had already pulled up her chat window with Su Yu.
Her message was short, but a string of pink bunny stickers burst onto the screen one after another.
A bunny holding a hammer, a bunny stomping its foot, a bunny slamming a cake down on a table, then a giant red question mark.
"You bad boy, did you sneak back into the tower right now? Running this kind of test without telling us first?"
The reply came just a few seconds later.
Not a voice message — text, unusually long for him.
"Elysia, this really was a spur-of-the-moment decision, I didn't have time to tell you all. My bad."
"Just hang tight a little longer, the test will be over soon. Once it's done, I'll explain everything properly — you can hit me or yell at me, whatever you want."
Attached was a sticker of a little figure kneeling and sliding with both palms pressed together.
Elysia looked at the sliding, kneeling little figure, and was quiet for about two seconds.
She bit her lip, then jabbed her index finger at the screen, sending a pink-haired bunny waving a fist, along with three words.
"Fine. Waiting."
She flipped her phone face-down on the couch and turned to look at the solid-black floor-to-ceiling window.
There was nothing to see outside, but her instincts told her something was wrong.
It felt like walking down a familiar street where everything looked exactly as usual, except for an unexplained shadow at the mouth of the alley that shouldn't be there.
Overhead, the first crack of muffled thunder rolled out.
The thunder wasn't natural.
Above Arc City Tower, the thick rain clouds had originally been too thin to squeeze out even a light drizzle.
But ten minutes ago, a handful of inconspicuous rain-seeding rounds had been fired silently deep into the cloud layer.
Right behind them came the thunder-seeding rounds, detonating inside the clouds with a dull roar.
The clouds began to churn, water droplets and ice crystals rubbing against each other in a frenzy, catalyzed by the electromagnetic field.
The first bolt of lightning split the clouds just outside the window no one could see through.
Thunder followed close behind, making the floor-to-ceiling glass shudder in a faint resonance.
The furious sheets of rain lashed against the solid black curtain wall, hissing in a dense rush.
The sound smothered a great deal else — mixed in with the thunder, it wrapped up every strange noise an old high-rise might make in a storm, sealing it away tight.
The faint groan of rebar under strain, the clatter of loose gravel on the rooftop being swept up and dropped again — all of it was swallowed by the roar of the thunderstorm.
The phone screens lit up again.
This time it was a message from Su Yu in the work group chat, its tone nothing like the seriousness of Eden's earlier announcement — instead, that familiar, breezy tone that made people want to punch him.
"Great work tonight, everyone! Threw together a killer new project on a whim, wanted to give all you hard workers a surprise."
"The test will be over soon. Until then, everyone just be good and stay put in the studio, don't wander off. To make up for scaring your poor little hearts, I'm generously covering a fancy lunch spread for everyone tomorrow — order whatever you want, get the receipt and I'll reimburse you!"
Nuwa rolled her eyes hugely at the screen. "You think a midnight snack bribe is going to win me over?"
The lollipop stick in her mouth bobbed up and down, but her hands had already, honestly, started redrawing the line art.
The downpour showed no sign of letting up.
The thunder grew denser, crashing one after another over Arc City Tower.
The flash of lightning occasionally leaked in through gaps in the curtain wall, lighting the faces in the studio dead white for an instant.
Nuwa's stylus glided across the tablet, producing a fine scratching sound.
Elysia picked the art drafts back up off her lap and turned to the next page.
She flipped through slowly; her eyes stayed on the paper, but her attention never left the thunder outside.
Elysia suddenly paused, as though remembering something — if the tower had lost power, how was Bronie doing right now?
She hadn't come out of her little den. If this had happened before, a sudden blackout would've had that hot-tempered little rabbit wailing about her lost game save and coming out to forage for food already.
Elysia sent Bronie a message. No reply.
She thought about it for a moment, then turned her attention back to the art drafts in her hands.
Once she finished reviewing these, she'd go check on Bronie.
At the same time.
What the people trapped inside Arc City Tower didn't know was this:
Outside, on the tower's exterior wall, four figures were climbing upward through the storm.
Su Yu's feet pressed against the vertical glass curtain wall, and with every step down, a ring of gravity-correction field lit up beneath him.
The silver-white metal cylinder had already come off his waist, gripped in his hand, rain sliding down the liquid metal's surface and splashing across his glove.
Welt was on the left, the Star of Eden hovering at his shoulder, its layers of deep-red gravitational field unfolding to turn the vertical wall into level ground.
Rita followed close behind Su Yu, her movements light as though she were stepping across the surface of water, barely splashing a drop.
Kiana brought up the rear.
Under Su Yu's and Welt's Gravity Control, the four of them scaled the exterior wall at a startling speed.
The rooftop's edge passed beneath their feet in a single leap.
Su Yu was the first to land on the rooftop.
The wind up here was a good deal stronger than below, rain striking his coat with a dull thud like beans hitting cloth.
He looked up at the sky.
A violet-black vortex was forming, slowly spinning within the clouds, its edges glowing with an unsettling dim light.
The rift hadn't fully opened yet, but the pull was already there — the standing water on the rooftop had begun to drift upward against gravity, drop by drop, like some kind of black-and-white footage played in reverse slow motion.
Loose gravel rolled faintly across the ground, clicking against the base of the lightning rod.
Welt landed beside Su Yu, and the Star of Eden drifted from his shoulder to hover in front of him, its deep-red sphere steaming with white mist in the rain.
He pushed up his rain-spattered glasses and looked up at the violet-black vortex expanding overhead.
"What do you think?"
Su Yu didn't answer right away.
His gaze dropped slightly, landing on the System panel that only he could see.
The dim blue light-screen popped up red mission text.
In a synthetic voice only he could hear, the System poured a half-joking warning straight into his head.
Same old bad taste, as always.
[Honkai High-Risk Mission: "Honkainado"]
[Mission Description: This vortex is going to sweep the tower like a purple tornado. You've seen that third-rate B-rank movie Sharknado, right? Yeah, well, instead of sharks flying around, it's Honkai Beasts!]
[Mission Requirements: Destroy the Honkai energy core within the time limit and close the Spatial Rift. Failure means the Honkai invasion arrives ahead of schedule.]
[PS: Your bullshitting skills are getting better by the day, aren't they? Tsk tsk tsk, your foster father is so proud~]
Ignoring the System's usual little urge to score cheap points.
Su Yu pulled his gaze back from the panel and looked up again at the rift overhead.
The landing point had settled precisely above Arc City Tower, dead center, as if someone up in the sky had drawn a bullseye.
City center, landmark building, densely populated district — the rift was closing in on where the crowds gathered.
Su Yu drew a breath and laid out his suspicion to Welt.
And more importantly—
This time they could get away with a hologram and a 4D simulation. But next time?
If it showed up next time in a shopping district, in the middle of a rush-hour crowd, what would they do then? And the time after that?
A flash of lightning reflected white across Welt's glasses lenses; he pulled his gaze back, his voice steady even over the thunder.
He clearly understood what Su Yu was thinking.
"We'll deal with those things later." He raised a hand and pointed overhead. "First, let's close the one in front of us."
Su Yu nodded, and handed out the assignment for this operation to the others.
Kiana and Welt would hold the rooftop, guarding against any mishap.
Now that Kiana was wearing her armor, with her Imaginary energy core running stable, the Herrscher of the Void's Authority could be used steadily.
And Welt, through the Imaginary energy core generated by the scepter in his hand, could still conjure the Star of Eden — and when the Spatial Rift opened, it would produce a massive pulling force.
With Kiana and Welt here, Arc City Tower could stay safe.
As for why Su Yu wasn't the one using the Star of Eden to assist — on one hand, the power granted by the Tarot card had a cap, and the Herrscher of the Void's Authority felt rather redundant standing next to Kiana, the genuine Herrscher.
Also, Welt's physical body wasn't strong enough right now; sending him into the rift to fight would be dangerous.
This was the combat assignment he'd settled on after weighing all four of their fighting strengths.
"No problem, leave this to me and Uncle Yang!"
Kiana stretched, limbering up before the big fight.
"This is on us — you two focus on your side."
Welt pushed up his glasses, giving the pair one last word of caution.
"Please don't worry." Rita smiled faintly beside them. "I'll keep an eye on Su Yu, and make sure he doesn't do anything reckless."
"Then I'll leave that to you, Rita," Kiana said, pouting slightly. "If that idiot acts up again, just chop him with a karate strike and drag him straight back!"
A helpless smile crossed Su Yu's face. "Does it really have to be that rough? Isn't there a gentler way to do it?"
"Would a gentler way hold back that runaway horse of yours?"
"Where'd you even pick up that comparison? Your gym teacher?"
"Blah blah blah."
After a round of bickering, the tense atmosphere on the rooftop eased considerably. The group began working out the details of the operation and settled in to wait for the rift to fully arrive.
Not long after.
The countdown hit zero in Su Yu's mind with a sharp chime.
The violet-black vortex overhead abruptly contracted inward, then burst open all at once.
The pull was no longer that faint, tentative tug from before — now it was like a starving beast finally tearing through the bars of its cage.
The standing water, gravel, and a few broken lightning-rod fragments on the rooftop were all yanked violently upward.
The entire tower let out a dull groan in that instant, as though the sound came from deep within its foundation.
"Not happening!"
Kiana's voice cut through the storm.
Her mismatched eyes suddenly flared with blinding gold light.
Spatial chains erupted from beneath her feet with a crash, spreading down along the tower's steel skeleton like lightning.
The reflections across the glass curtain wall all shifted angle at once, and the skyscraper — already trembling slightly from the pull — was pinned in place in that instant by countless chains from a higher dimension.
Welt said nothing.
The Star of Eden shot out from his shoulder and hovered in the exact center of the rooftop.
The deep-red gravitational field, like an invisible giant palm, cradled the tower's skeleton from below.
The two of them, one above and one below, one propping up, one anchoring down, forcibly pinned that steel forest — which had been on the verge of being torn from its roots by the void beast — down against the earth.
"Su Yu! I've locked the building down! Go!"
Kiana's shout was torn ragged by the wind, but every word still drove straight into Su Yu's ears.
Su Yu reached out and wrapped an arm naturally around Rita's waist.
Rita didn't resist, didn't say a word, just quietly rested her hand on the arm he'd drawn around her, fingers closing, grip perfectly matched.
The liquid metal burst from his waist.
Pure white armor swept over his entire body in an instant, from ankles to shoulders, before sealing shut over his face.
The pure white [Key of Blankness] battle armor cast a hard, cold light through the storm, the faint click of the face guard sealing shut swallowed whole by the thunder.
He didn't fight against the terrible pull overhead.
The thruster's tail flame burst through the sheets of rain, blinding white.
Not only did he not pull back — instead, holding Rita close, he cranked the thrust to maximum, and using the upward pull itself, launched like a reverse-fired cannonball straight into the dark violet depths of the rift.
A pure white meteor tore through the pitch-black stormy night, dragging a fleeting trail of light across everyone's vision.
Lightning flashed.
The edge of the opened rift glowed with a ring of dim violet light, swallowing and spitting out currents and rain like the throat of some deep-sea creature.
That streak of white lingered at its entrance for less than a frame before being utterly swallowed, leaving nothing behind.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 60 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉