The three people Kiana had just encountered, Lara, Leon, and Ada, were all "Puppets of Dominance" under Ling Ke's command, each carrying the template of a different video game character.
Incidentally, many others in this temporary camp shared the same origin.
This was the survival team Ling Ke had mentioned earlier, made up of a whole collection of "little supermen."
And now...
"You guessed wrong."
Standing amid the wind and snow, Kiana did not know why she had answered.
She could have simply turned around and left.
Perhaps Ada's casual question, "You've never killed anyone with your own hands, have you?" and the certainty in her voice had made Kiana uncomfortable.
Or perhaps...
That question had stirred up too many painful memories.
Of course Kiana had killed someone with her own hands.
And this time, "with her own hands" involved no wordplay about another personality that had once existed within her.
It had happened on December 7, 2013, back in the Old Era, once known as the Current Era. Kiana had only recently enrolled at Chiba Academy in Nagazora.
At around 7:30 that evening, she shot and killed a girl named Miyuki Asakura.
Miyuki had been raped by a group of street thugs.
At the time, she had been powerless to resist. Later, after becoming infected with Honkai energy and displaying a certain degree of adaptability, she gained "Power."
But after becoming strong, she did not seek revenge against the thugs who had attacked her.
Instead, she confessed her love to one girl after another, then murdered every girl who rejected her "love" in true yandere fashion.
That night, Miyuki Asakura confessed her love to Kiana as well.
When Kiana rejected her, Miyuki revealed her true nature.
And so...
Kiana shot her dead.
Only a short while earlier, Kiana had rescued her from those thugs and received her gratitude.
Miyuki had even given her a birthday present.
But the moment Kiana realized that she was "broken," she acted without hesitation.
Looking back, Kiana could hardly believe how decisive and ruthless she had been.
When had she become so hesitant?
She had to admit...
Being confronted with that question so suddenly made her feel strangely... How should she describe it?
It was as if she had just "woken from a dream."
Yes.
Fighting the Honkai and defying fate had never been a game of make-believe.
Looking back on her time at St. Freya Academy, Kiana remembered how she had constantly declared that she would become the strongest Valkyrie, yet never once took her studies seriously.
She played video games through the night, arrived exhausted the next morning, slept through class, skipped lessons, ignored her homework, climbed over the walls to sneak out of school, and failed her exams. It had all been routine.
Even during training, she had never once given it her all.
She would fight her classmates, win, and bask in her own smugness. Then she encountered Class Monitor Fu Hua and lost. So she fought Fu Hua again, lost again, and repeated the same cycle.
Not once had she conducted a proper, systematic review of her battles.
During those years, her own strength had not improved in the slightest.
Instead, after donning White Comet, she relied on its external equipment and fell under the illusion that she had grown stronger.
Then she became complacent.
She had never improved herself in any meaningful way.
She had wasted more than two years of her life, idling away inside a comfortable cocoon.
Later, she claimed that she would fight for all that was beautiful in the world, yet she had ignored one crucial question from the very beginning.
Was what she considered "beautiful" also beautiful to everyone else?
She had never seriously thought about it.
Then...
"Is that so?"
Ada shrugged, apparently amused by Kiana's answer. "So I can misjudge someone after all."
"You look like a harmless kitten, but beneath the surface, you have the nature of a wolf."
"No, that isn't quite right. You weren't deliberately pretending. Instead, something 'bound' you and caused you to mistake 'something belonging to someone else' for the purpose of your own life?"
"And in the end..."
Ada's tone remained playful.
"At your core, you're still 'Void.'"
"Even that wolfish nature you started with is..."
"Enough."
Kiana cut her off, her voice harsh.
"What are you trying to do this time, Ling Ke?"
The question came without warning.
It sounded as though she had already uncovered their true identities.
However...
"Huh?"
All three people before her looked confused and slightly stunned.
"Ling Ke? Who's that?" Lara asked curiously.
Leon said nothing.
Ada merely shrugged again and spread her hands. Her expression seemed to ask, "Is this kid having some kind of breakdown?"
There was no mockery on her face.
Instead, she wore a look of sudden understanding, as if to say, "Oh, I see."
Because of that, she said nothing more.
Kiana watched them.
"..."
Unaware of the truth, she fell silent again.
In fact, she had only blurted out Ling Ke's name as a bluff.
She had not seen through the group's true nature at all.
But she could hardly help it. Everything Ling Ke had done to her had left her with a bit of PTSD.
Now, whenever she looked at someone, she could not stop herself from wondering, Could this person be Ling Ke in disguise, trying to deceive me?
Besides, the way Ada had just lectured her really did resemble his style.
But judging from their reactions...
"..."
Kiana no longer intended to stay.
Without another word, she turned and left.
After all, she had rushed over only because of a sudden impulse to save someone.
But the conflict was already over, and three people were dead.
Moreover, at least according to Lara and the others, they had acted in self-defense.
As for whether that explanation was true...
Kiana could verify it for herself.
Step by step...
She walked a long way from the camp.
No voices called after her, nor did anyone make another unnecessary move.
They merely watched her leave, then returned to their tents.
"Phew~"
Kiana released a long breath.
It seemed she had interfered in something that was none of her business.
That made sense.
The world around them was buried in ice and snow, while behind her stood a warm temporary camp. In such a brutal struggle for survival, the uglier sides of human nature would inevitably become more blatant.
Although Lara, Leon, and Ada had just shot two men and one woman, the other people in the camp had done little more than poke their heads out of their tents. None of them looked surprised.
They clearly trusted the three of them.
Then there were the pleas for mercy Kiana had heard earlier...
"So the three people they rescued repaid their kindness with betrayal, then were killed in self-defense when they turned on them?"
Kiana gradually pieced together what had happened.
She had noticed many details during the confrontation.
Back when she attended St. Freya Academy, she would never have bothered thinking about any of this.
She had once traveled the world alone in search of her old man, Siegfried, and maintained this degree of vigilance. Yet later, she grew complacent and "willingly regressed."
It was not until Teacher Himeko sacrificed herself to deliver one "final lesson" that Kiana finally woke up.
And now...
"That's right!"
Kiana stopped abruptly despite already being far from the camp.
Standing amid the wind and snow, she stared aimlessly up at the sky.
"I never had the power to save everything in the first place."
"I couldn't even protect Mei and the others."
"How arrogant and delusional I was, never understanding my own limits."
As those thoughts passed through her mind, Kiana gave a self-mocking smile.
I really was too naive.
So naive that I could not even match the decisiveness of those people back there. I could not see through the illusions right in front of me.
Those people saved others, too.
But they did not foolishly try to save everyone.
They knew what they were capable of.
And those who saved people also killed.
That, too, was because they understood their limits. They could discard unnecessary hesitation and recognize when they had to cut the Gordian knot.
There was an old saying from Shenzhou: Kill one evil person to save a hundred good people.
Kiana had understood that truth since she was barely more than ten years old.
"I've regressed as I've grown older."
At that moment, everything in Kiana's mind finally became clear.
It had been nothing more than a chance encounter amid the extreme cold...
Just a few simple lines of conversation.
The two sides did not even know each other, or so Kiana believed.
Yet the encounter had made her think about a great many things.
She knew she could no longer keep deceiving herself.
The Old Era, once known as the Current Era, had vanished completely. Bronya was dead, and Mei had become a genuine killing machine.
According to the latest news, Class Monitor Fu Hua had already chosen to return home, while Auntie... Lady Theresa's whereabouts remained unknown.
Then there was the fact Ling Ke had personally revealed to her: Teacher Himeko had perished long ago.
Everything was gone.
If that was the case...
Why should I keep living the same way I did before?
Then...
Kiana stopped "restraining" herself.
Furthermore...
Enduring alone until the "Twelfth Honkai Eruption" had passed, then becoming the "God of Earth"?
Ultimately, even that was nothing more than charity from Ling Ke.
Would he truly allow her to reclaim everything?
Or, thinking one step further...
Did the "Cocoon of Finality" possess the power to reclaim everything at all?
Yes. Kiana should have considered that question long ago.
But she... She had to admit that she had always avoided thinking about it.
Until this moment...
"Expectations for the future are false."
The white-haired girl stood amid the wind and snow, murmuring to herself.
"The world before me is false."
"The beliefs I once held, the life I once lived, even my name... All of it is false."
"If everything I gained was false, then... everything I lost must also be false."
"In the end, all I have left are the 'Impressions' etched into my mind."
"If that's the case..."
The girl seemed to arrive at a sudden realization.
"Everything in existence is an illusion."
"Only 'Remembrance' is eternal."