Long Night Moon tilted her black umbrella slightly backward. With her free hand, she slowly reached forward, fingers slightly splayed, palm facing down, pressing against the cold air as if it were a solid surface.
She closed those crimson eyes that always carried a lazy smile.
Raven held her breath, subconsciously tightening her grip on the handle of the pistol at her waist.
A few seconds, or perhaps longer passed; there was only the sound of the wind.
Suddenly, a faint purple light, like a drop of ink in clear water, quietly bloomed from the point where Long Night Moon's palm met the air.
The light was not dazzling, yet it seemed to draw away all the sound and warmth from the surroundings.
The purple light rapidly spread and traced out a complex pattern about two meters in diameter on the snow, spinning slowly.
Long Night Moon opened her eyes.
The swirling purple light was reflected in the depths of her crimson pupils. The customary mysterious smile at the corner of her mouth deepened slightly, curving into an expression of near satisfaction.
"Found it."
She said softly, her tone like someone pulling out a long-sought rare book from a dusty, settled corner of a library.
"Fo... found it?"
Raven looked bewildered, her gaze darting between the purple magic circle and Long Night Moon's face. "Found what? A mineral vein? An entrance to ruins? Or some treasure buried here?"
She truly couldn't imagine what "thing" in this godforsaken place—which was nothing but snow and frozen earth, used by Schicksal as an outpost—could be worth such a huge fuss.
Long Night Moon didn't answer directly. Maintaining her posture with her hand pressed against the void, she turned her head to look at Raven and Stelle (the latter having walked over silently at some point, still holding half an unfinished energy bar). Her voice carried clearly through the wind and snow:
"Miss Raven, and Stelle, please keep watch outside. Don't let anything disturb me."
She deliberately emphasized the word "anything" with an imperceptible shift in tone.
"Disturb?"
Raven was even more confused. She looked around, "Isn't this camp already..."
Before she could finish, the intuition she had honed from years of walking on the edge of danger suddenly sounded an alarm!
It didn't come from inside the camp, but from outside, in the direction of the white, snow-covered coniferous forest obscured by the blizzard.
A humming sound came, mixed into the noise of the wind and snow. It was extremely hard to detect, yet it made the hair on the back of Raven's neck stand up instantly.
Immediately after, eerie, semi-transparent figures with constantly twisting and flickering outlines appeared in the field of vision at the edge of the camp, as if seeping out from the snow.
They took various forms—some beast-like, some humanoid—but they all shared an unstable appearance, like a quantum superposition state, and emitted an aura that was different from ordinary Honkai Beasts yet equally dangerous.
"Quantum Honkai Beasts?!"
Raven couldn't help but exclaim, her eyes widening. "How can this thing be here?!"
How could a "specialty" of the Sea of Quanta end up in the frozen lands of Siberia?
This was completely unscientific! And it didn't make any sense in Honkai studies either!
But reality gave her no time to complain.
The number of those Quantum Honkai Beasts was increasing rapidly, and they all locked onto the center of the camp, where Long Night Moon was—or rather, they locked onto the thing emitting the strange purple light beneath her hand!
Raven instantly understood her "role".
Fine, goalkeeper and janitor; she was used to this kind of work.
"Stelle! The front is yours! I'm finding a high vantage point!"
Raven spoke rapidly. Without waiting for Stelle's response, she dashed like an agile snow fox toward the cover formed by several wrecked armored vehicles and supply crates on one side of the camp; there was a relatively stable shooting angle there.
She quickly set up the special sniper rifle she carried, the cold metallic feel giving her a slight sense of comfort.
Through the high-magnification sniper scope, she saw Stelle had silently walked to the vicinity of the camp entrance, facing the approaching swarm of Quantum Honkai Beasts head-on.
Then, under Raven's somewhat numb gaze, the baseball bat that Stelle always kept with her disappeared, replaced by a long spear with an ancient design, dark red all over, with inextinguishable sparks winding around the spear tip.
Flame Lance.
Raven's mouth twitched violently.
(It really exists... the Flame Lance of Preservation?)
The battle erupted almost instantly.
Stelle didn't test the waters at all. The Flame Lance turned into a crimson meteor in her hands, carrying a scorching wave of heat as she actively crashed into the swarm of Honkai Beasts!
The spear swept across, sparks flying. The Honkai Beasts it touched let out silent screeches, their bodies flickering violently between solid and illusory, with some directly disintegrating into drifting data particles.
Every one of her strikes was powerful and heavy, without any flashy moves, yet terrifyingly efficient. Soon, she had "plowed" a clearing in the snow that was burning with dark red embers.
Raven lay prone behind the cover, the crosshairs of her sniper scope moving steadily.
She didn't rush to fire, instead observing the battle.
Stelle's combat power was even more exaggerated than she had expected. Those Honkai Beasts posed almost no threat before her; she alone held back the vast majority of the pressure.
(So my role is to fill in the gaps?)
Raven knew this clearly in her heart.
She adjusted her breathing and began to pull the trigger occasionally, her special Honkai Energy piercing rounds precisely picking off the stragglers that tried to bypass Stelle's line of defense or pounce toward the center of the camp from tricky angles.
The sound of the gunfire was not conspicuous amidst the wind, snow, and the explosions ahead.
But at least half of her attention was actually not on the battle before her.
The sniper scope shifted slightly, silently aiming at the center of the camp, at Long Night Moon, who was still holding her black umbrella and pressing one hand against the void amidst the wind, snow, and chaos.
Then, the finger Raven had on the trigger froze, and her breath hitched.
Through the lens, slightly blurred by the wind and snow, she saw that the light at the center of the purple magic circle in front of Long Night Moon was becoming dense and was... "growing" upward!
A hazy, glowing phantom emitting a soft white light was slowly rising from the center of the magic circle, its outline gradually becoming clear.
It was a woman.
Her long white hair seemed to have a luster even within the energy phantom, and her face was gentle, eyes closed as if still in a deep slumber.
She was wearing the attire that Raven had seen countless times in reference pictures, belonging to one of the strongest Valkyries of Schicksal who had long since fallen.
Cecilia Schariac.
Kiana's mother, Siegfried's wife, the... Cecilia who was confirmed to have sacrificed herself during the Second Honkai War.
Raven felt her throat go dry, and her heart uncontrollably beat faster a few times.
She stared fixedly at the scene in the sniper scope, watching that phantom becoming more and more solid, as if it would open its eyes at any moment, and watching the corner of Long Night Moon's mouth, which was slightly curved in a way that carried some indescribable meaning.
(What is she doing?!)
A chill, more biting than the Siberian blizzard, quietly crept up Raven's spine.
She abruptly moved the sniper scope away, refocusing her sight and crosshairs on the twisted Honkai Beasts ahead, and pulled the trigger hard, shattering the head of a beast-like Honkai Beast that was trying to pounce.
(Can't look, can't think too much.)
She warned herself in her heart, forcing herself to focus on the battle at hand.
(The more you know, the faster you die... especially when you know things that shouldn't even exist in the 'plot'...)
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