Su Yu opened his eyes, the snow-blinding, pure-white afterglow of the consciousness space still lingering on his retinas.
Then his senses returned, and with them came a heavy, warm sense of reality.
His left arm felt as though it were being pressed down by something; it had long since gone numb, leaving only a dense swarm of pins and needles dancing across his nerve endings.
He turned his head slightly.
The dawn light slipped through the gap in the curtains, into the dim bedroom, falling precisely upon Kiana's face.
She was sleeping deeply.
That head of white hair lay scattered across the pillow like loosened silk, a few strands stuck to the corner of her mouth.
With every breath, her chest pressed rhythmically against his arm.
Utterly defenseless, lips slightly parted, she let out tiny sounds, like a kitten purring in its sleep.
"You really have no sleeping manners at all…"
Just how Kiana had managed to sneak into the bedroom again last night—or perhaps in the small hours of this morning—Su Yu could no longer quite remember.
Maybe the memories had stirred up those old events, and, just like last time, she had come seeking comfort.
Su Yu was just about to pull his arm free when a window with striking visual impact suddenly popped up dead center in his field of vision.
[SYSTEM UPDATE COMPLETE]
[Community System · Bond Module has been updated]
Su Yu blinked, then used a mental command to open the flashing icon.
The [0. The Fool] card that had originally belonged to Kiana was, at this very moment, undergoing an eerie transformation.
The Kiana on the card's face was as bright as ever.
But in the card's reflection—that is, the back, which should have been blank—a deep, profound silhouette had surfaced.
The silhouette shared the same outline as Kiana, yet carried an utterly different bearing.
She wasn't sitting on high with her legs crossed; her skirt spread out like a blooming datura flower, and several sharp lances hovered behind her, as if ready to pierce through the screen at any moment.
Under Su Yu's gaze, that silhouette suddenly flipped, peeling itself away from the Fool's shadow, standing alone as a brand-new card that radiated an air of danger.
[NEW CARD UNLOCKED!]
[XIII. The Death]——Herrscher of the Void
Position: Second Personality / Agent of Destruction / Tsundere (struck out) Her Majesty the Queen
Bond Level: Lv.1 (Accomplice of aligned interests / Ally who could turn on you at any moment)
Current Status: Dormant (but watching you)
[Studio Bonuses]:
[Subspace Might (Sealed)]: Kiana's aura undergoes a qualitative change at certain moments. It produces a genuine mental suppression effect against all of the projects' haters and trolls.
[Queen's Coercion]: Produces a natural suppressive effect against certain individuals of weaker willpower.
[System Note: She is a thorned black rose, arsenic wrapped in a sugar coating. Host, congratulations—you haven't just raised a cat, you've raised a tiger that's ready to claw your face open at any moment. This is an extremely dangerous collaborator; I advise you to keep yourself in a groveling kneel-slide posture at all times when dealing with her—though, of course, if you can tame her, she will be the sharpest blade in your hand.]
[P.S.: I have to say, dangerous as this Miss Death may be, that haughty, above-it-all aura… tsk tsk, simply top-grade. To conquer a woman like this, one who's always wanting to crush you underfoot—to watch those amber eyes, once brimming with contempt, mist over with submission—surely that sense of accomplishment would be absolutely unparalleled?]
Su Yu stared expressionlessly at this heap of text packed with smutty filler.
He did, in fact, feel a certain tension.
The Herrscher of the Void's beauty was beyond question; that destructive, dangerous aura of hers really could stir the instinctive urge in a male creature to conquer—or to be conquered.
It was carved into the genes, a primal craving for power and beauty.
But right now he only felt tired.
That mental exhaustion of repeatedly bouncing back and forth along the edge of life and death left him without the slightest interest in this kind of cheap sensory teasing.
He didn't need the System to remind him of Sirin's allure in such an explicit way, nor did he need it to dissect whether his own heart had wavered for even a single instant.
Shut it, you horny Sys with nothing but smut on your mind.
He closed the System interface, and his gaze settled back onto reality.
Kiana seemed to be dreaming of something delicious; she smacked her lips, nuzzled her cheek against his arm, and her warm breath spilled across his skin, bringing a tingling, ticklish sensation.
This was the vessel of that Death.
Dangerous? Dangerous indeed.
But looking at this utterly defenseless sleeping face, Su Yu felt that this deal, perhaps, wasn't too much of a loss after all.
Ever so carefully, he tried to slide his numb arm out from beneath her neck.
However, the instant he moved it even a single millimeter, Kiana suddenly furrowed her brow, let out a discontented grunt from her throat, and then—like an octopus—wrapped herself around him with both arms and legs, hugging him even tighter.
…It's over.
Now he couldn't move at all.
Outside the window drifted a fine, dense drizzle; the gray, overcast daylight, filtered through the floor-to-ceiling glass, cast large patches of soft, slightly desolate shadow across the living room carpet.
Today was a rainy day, no good for going out.
But it was good for putting on a piece of music, drinking a cup of coffee, and then grasping at something within one's memories.
Su Yu sat before the computer, serving as the faithful scribe.
Kiana, meanwhile, was curled up in a corner of the sofa, hugging that giant HOMEI plushie, her chin resting on the plushie's round little head, her eyes a little vacant from reminiscing.
"After the Moonlight Throne incident, the academy gave Bronya the most thorough full-body examination."
Kiana's voice rose in the quiet room, carrying a trace of hindsight-tinged lament.
"Theresa thumped her chest and guaranteed it was just electronic interference, but who could have guessed? Maybe Cocolia, that old fox, used some method to slip past Schicksal's technology. If only we'd been a little more careful back then…"
She didn't go on, only subconsciously tugging at the plushie's long ears.
Su Yu didn't look up; he merely typed the words [Foreshadowing: chip hazard] into the document.
He had no intention of letting Kiana touch those blood-colored fragments Sirin had displayed in the dream last night—that despair and madness were enough for him alone to bear.
The Kiana of now only needed to hand him these jigsaw pieces in this relatively peaceful way.
"In the stretch of time before the exam, Teacher Himeko pulled out every trick she had to keep me from flunking."
Kiana pursed her lips, her tone carrying a touch of nostalgia—then turning abruptly stiff the moment she mentioned a certain name.
"She even brought in the Squad Monitor to tutor me… but it was just that rote-memorization stuff, nothing worth talking about. Let's just talk about the day of the exam instead—now that was spectacular!"
"Nothing worth talking about, huh…"
In the depths of Su Yu's mind, Fenghuang's voice trembled softly with a barely perceptible bitterness.
Su Yu could feel that desolation coming through the Spiritual Link, bleak as fallen leaves in late autumn.
To Kiana, that stretch of tutoring time might just have been a dull "footnote brushed past," but to Fenghuang, it was the guilt-laden beginning of her lurking as a watcher at the side of that innocent girl.
Su Yu let out an imperceptible sigh, offering no words of comfort, and merely moved the cursor down to the next line.
"That day, an inspector named Rita Rossweisse suddenly dropped onto the exam grounds—smiling so fakely, looking every bit the maid, yet more terrifying than anyone."
As if recalling something infuriating, Kiana abruptly sat bolt upright, squashing the plushie out of shape.
"She insisted on naming me as her opponent—to see who could kill more Honkai Beasts in the simulation training ground. I charged in for all I was worth back then, and I still came up way short of her."
Kiana gritted her teeth, cheeks puffed out like an angry muskrat, hands gesturing in the air.
"Only later did I find out this woman was actually an S-rank Valkyrie of the Immortal Blades! Su Yu, you be the judge—an S-rank coming to a Valkyrie academy's rank exam to bully the small fry, just how twisted does your psychology have to be for that? Is she sick in the head?! She's definitely the type who'd hide behind something and snicker while watching elementary schoolers get beaten to tears, right? Definitely, right?!"
"Rita's mission that time was, in truth, no different from mine."
Fenghuang's voice resounded heavily within Su Yu's consciousness, stripped of anger, leaving only a cold, austere statement.
"I was the presence left behind at St. Freya to surveil Kiana, while she had been sent on Otto's orders to personally confirm Kiana's awakening status. Every Honkai Beast she slew was, in fact, testing the response threshold of that will inside your body—we were all watching you, Kiana."
Su Yu's fingers stiffened for a moment, then struck the keyboard all the harder, trying to drown out that heavy, oppressive feeling in his mind with the crisp clatter.
He raised his head, just in time to see Kiana's chest heaving violently with indignation, the hem of that oversized hoodie swaying up and down with her movements, baring a sliver of pale waist.
Her air of pure, simple griping, set against the backdrop of this truth steeped in calculation and conspiracy, seemed so fragile and precious.
"But the unluckiest thing that day was the simulation device malfunctioning." Having vented her displeasure with Rita, Kiana slumped back into the sofa again, her tone now carrying a hint of smugness.
"The simulation database actually generated an Emperor-class Honkai Beast, Ganesha. Theresa said it was flat-out impossible for the database to generate an Emperor-class Honkai Beast, and everyone in the whole exam hall was scared stiff—but at the time I only thought… isn't this just a performance show delivered right to my door?"
She stood up, casually grabbing a long-handled umbrella by the door, and deftly twirled it into a flourish, those heterochromatic eyes glinting in the dim living room with a light of sure victory.
"This young lady is destined to become the strongest S-rank Valkyrie—a mere Ganesha? I took it apart into spare parts in two or three moves!"
"Su Yu, you'd better make that scene look cool in the game—I want that kind of… 'clang!', a flash of white light, and the monster blowing up with special effects!"
Su Yu stopped what his hands were doing, turned his head, and looked at the energetic girl brandishing the umbrella in the middle of the living room.
"Took it apart in two or three moves?"
He arched an eyebrow, his tone carrying a hint of teasing.
"Of course! Do you really not believe in this young lady's strength? A mere Ganesha, and just a data simulation at that—taking it apart was a piece of cake for this young lady, wasn't it?"
Kiana smugly tipped up her chin, like a proud little swan.
But faced with Su Yu's stifled-laughter expression, Kiana suddenly felt a bit embarrassed: "All right, all right, I know nothing gets past you! Fine, I'll grudgingly admit it—it really was a bit of a strain!"
But she quickly started covering for herself: "But! Before this young lady crossed blades with that Ganesha, I'd already gone hand-to-hand with Mei, Bronya, and that S-rank scheming maid! If I hadn't burned through too much stamina, I'd have finished off that Ganesha without even catching my breath!"
"What? You don't believe me?"
Su Yu nodded again and again: "I believe you, of course I believe you. To be able to single-handedly defeat the Emperor-class Honkai Beast Ganesha with the strength of a B-rank Valkyrie—it seems the B-rank tier has already become a bit unworthy of Miss Kiana."
"That's right, thoroughly unworthy! Hmph, actually my combat level reached A-rank long ago—no, I've already surpassed those A-rank Valkyries! But who knew that Schicksal's Valkyrie ranks would actually need to be tied to a theory exam!"
The moment this topic came up, Kiana felt as though the sky were about to come crashing down.
"Su Yu, you be the judge! Don't Valkyries only need to charge into battle on the front lines?! Isn't it enough as long as you can fight?! Why do you have to study all that pointless theory junk?! Can theory be eaten as food?!"
Watching Kiana's grumbling, Su Yu thought it over, then spoke up: "Although I've never been a Valkyrie, by your own earlier account, the theoretical knowledge Valkyries study also includes how to deal with different kinds of Zombies and Honkai Beasts, right?"
"Oh, you mean that." Kiana scratched at her hair. "Fine, I admit it, that course really was pretty useful. Schicksal is, after all, the expert at dealing with the Honkai, and there really are a lot of things this young lady didn't know."
Su Yu recalled how, back when they'd been gathering data on Zombies and Honkai Beasts, Kiana could often speak about it with great authority, which couldn't help but make him a little curious: "Looking at it that way, Miss Kiana's grades in at least this one course can't be too bad, then? So how did you still nearly flunk and almost get demoted to a C-rank Valkyrie?"
"Uh."
Kiana's gaze drifted guiltily off to the side.
"For courses that have to do with fighting, of course I listen carefully. But the other stuff—let me ask you, why does a Valkyrie need to study calculus?"
"Cal—calculus?"
"Exactly!" Kiana felt a surge of indignation. "Back when I was at Senba Academy I hated math the most, and now it turns out Valkyries have to study math too, and they even say it's to train your logical reasoning, to keep a Valkyrie highly focused and clear-headed on the battlefield at all times."
"Kiana, have you ever heard a certain saying?" Su Yu looked at Kiana. "If a person can even master mathematics, then no matter what they do, they'll succeed."
"And besides—mathematics is probably the fairest thing in this world. Haven't you heard the saying? When pushed to the brink, a person can do anything—except a math problem."
Listening to Su Yu spout this nonsense with such a straight face, the corner of Kiana's mouth twitched.
"You—you're finding a roundabout way to call this young lady stupid, aren't you!"
She hurled the sofa cushion at Su Yu.
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