As the screen slowly brightened, the hushed BGM began to flow again.
The scene cut to Containment Pod Seven, Helheim Laboratory, Schicksal Headquarters.
Beep... beep... beep...
The flat, ice-cold tone of a vital signs monitor echoed through the empty room.
Murata Himeko forced her eyes open.
"Ngh..."
Himeko let out a low groan of pain, breathing in ragged, greedy gulps.
Her memory stopped at the moment she had been surrounded, run out of strength, and been taken.
"Theresa... Kiana..."
Himeko clenched her teeth against the needling agony stabbing through her skull.
She had to get out of here, but her body felt like it had been filled with lead. Moving even an inch was almost impossible.
And then, an instant before her legs gave out again, she froze.
Because she felt something in her palm - a cold, hard cylinder that hadn't been there before.
Himeko lifted her hand with effort and opened her fingers.
It was an injection vial sealed in a transparent glass tube, glowing a deep, ghostly blue.
A single line of small print was stamped clearly on the outside of the glass - [HSN-b46].
"This is..." Himeko's cracked lips trembled faintly, her voice full of shock.
The next moment, something miraculous happened.
A few feathers, radiating a warm golden light, materialized in midair without warning.
They drifted around Himeko as if they were alive, circling her gently.
As the feathers settled, Himeko felt the raging Honkai energy tearing at her insides subside - impossibly - into stillness.
Her head snapped up. She looked out past the containment pod.
In a dim corner that should have been completely empty, a figure stood in silence.
She simply stood there, at the border of light and shadow, her eyes calm and full of pity.
It was Fu Hua, in her Fenghuang form.
"Huh?"
In the stream, the crowd that had been agonizing a moment ago over whether Fu Hua was alive or dead saw this and threw a single enormous question mark at the camera.
The danmaku across the entire stream stalled for exactly one second - then detonated.
A blizzard of question marks buried the screen.
[??????]
[What's going on?! The Squad Monitor isn't dead?!]
[That can't be right! In that last scene, didn't that old fox Otto just shoot her down into the rubble? How is she suddenly in the containment pod looking for Himeko?]
[Is the timeline scrambled? Or can Fu Hua do shadow clones?]
[Hold on... look at what the Squad Monitor's wearing! Why is she in that Fenghuang, the Immortal outfit?]
[Holy crap, don't tell me the Squad Monitor died and came back as a ghost to visit people in their dreams?!]
In an instant, ten million players had ten million questions crammed into their heads.
Sitting beside Elysia, Himeko watched the scene playing out in the game and raised an eyebrow.
"That's some seriously mystical special effects. Looks like she's settling her affairs before dying."
Himeko took a swig of beer and kept commentating.
"Though that glowing tube she stuffed into my hand looks pretty high-end. Does that count as the game handing me a revival coin?"
But the atmosphere in Su Yu's office was nothing like the puzzled, joking mood in the stream.
The air in there was so heavy it might as well have congealed into lead.
Elysia's stream was playing in sync on the enormous screen.
Kiana stared at that screen, those clear blue eyes locked on every frame.
She knew how it ended.
So this scene wasn't some "suspenseful glimmer of hope" to her. It was a flashback with another name: death by a thousand cuts.
"Squad Monitor..."
Kiana didn't say it aloud. She closed her eyes and called out from the depths of her own consciousness, and the call was full of pain.
She knew that the soul who had always accompanied her, always guided her, was dwelling inside her mind right now.
"That Fenghuang on the screen... is that your soul, after Otto killed you?"
For more than ten seconds, the depths of Kiana's mind stayed dead silent.
"That isn't a soul, Kiana."
Fenghuang's voice was faint, so faint a breath of wind could have scattered it.
"That's the residual power of Yu Ducheng. I left Yu Ducheng's feathers on all of you, in fact..."
Kiana's body shuddered violently, and the tears came harder. "Why... you were already dying yourself, and you still gave your power to her..."
"Because I knew what she was about to face. A choice harder and crueler than death."
There was a weathered solemnity in Fenghuang's voice.
"Watch closely, Kiana. This is what you never got to see with your own eyes... the road she walked to reach you."
On screen, the story pushed forward.
Himeko, a prisoner, had nothing pleasant in her expression for the student standing before her - the one who had betrayed the academy and dragged her here.
"So then. What does someone like you want with a prisoner like me?" Himeko asked coldly.
The Fu Hua on screen paid no attention to the hostility. Her voice stayed as calm as still water.
"What you're holding is Schicksal's highest-grade Honkai energy neutralization serum. It can completely halt the erosion Honkai energy is causing in your body. Find somewhere safe, and inject it."
The danmaku exploded into celebration.
[Holy crap! An actual lifesaving drug!]
[Yes! Big Sis Himeko's body can finally be saved!]
[I knew that old crook Su Yu wouldn't dare write Himeko to death! The Squad Monitor delivered the cure with her dying breath!]
And then Fu Hua's next words landed like a bucket of ice water over every head in the room.
"But... the price is that this serum will wash the Honkai energy out of your body entirely. You will lose all ability to control Honkai energy and become an ordinary human being. For a Valkyrie, that is the same as being stripped of every ounce of your combat power."
The players' optimism didn't waver in the slightest.
[So she's ordinary, who cares! Staying alive beats everything else!]
[Exactly! Ducky's awake now anyway. Once Teacher Himeko finishes this fight she can step back from the front line, go home to St. Freya and teach in peace. What's wrong with being a gorgeous single lady of a certain age?]
[Serum in hand, the world is mine! Teacher Himeko's safe for sure!]
Watching the screen fill with "she's safe" and "she lives," Kiana couldn't hold herself together another second.
She clapped both hands over her face and let out a sob crushed down as far as it could go.
"I didn't know... I really didn't know..."
Kiana cried until her whole body convulsed, biting down hard on her lip so no sound would escape.
She had always believed Auntie Himeko died in battle. Died fighting, to the last.
It took until today, until this scene, for her to understand.
The choice between living and dying had been in Auntie Himeko's own hands the entire time.
The serum that could have let her live, that could have carried her back to an ordinary life - it was right there in her palm.
"She could have lived..." Kiana wept out to Fenghuang inside her own head, falling apart. "She could have taken the injection, found somewhere safe to hide... why... why did she still..."
"Because on her scales, Kiana..."
Fenghuang's voice carried a tenderness and a cruelty that broke the heart at once.
"Your life weighed far more than her own. Keep watching. This was her last act of stubbornness as the adult in the room."
In the game, Himeko dragged her ruined body onward, cutting down isolated guards and slipping deeper until she reached the core of the laboratory.
There she found Anti-Entropy's executor - Doctor Tesla.
And the moment Tesla appeared, a thread of absurd comedy cut straight through the suffocating mood.
The red-haired, twin-tailed scientist with the notoriously explosive temper was currently trussed up on a metal chair.
Not one part of her could move. Even her mouth was sealed shut with an exquisite black silk handkerchief. Most ridiculous of all, the rope binding her had been tied into an enormous bow across her chest, one worthy of a gallery exhibit.
No prizes for guessing which Schicksal maid's handiwork this was.
[Pfft - HAHAHAHA! That is some seriously professional rope work!]
[That's Rita for you! Even tying someone up has to have maid elegance and OCD precision!]
[Big Sis Tesla's look is legendary, screenshot, screenshot!]
The heavy air in the stream lightened considerably under the brief comedy.
Even Elysia laughed out loud.
Himeko sighed and untied Tesla.
The moment the furious redhead got her freedom back, she launched into a frenzied denunciation of Rita's utterly deranged conduct.
"That damned maid - ! Don't ever let me see her again!! How dare she humiliate me like that!"
"And the worst part is, the whole time she was tying me up, she kept bowing her head and apologizing! Going on about 'I'm sorry, this may be somewhat uncomfortable, please forgive the offense' - then how about you untie me, you lunatic! And the absolute worst of it, she thoughtfully sprayed expensive perfume on both sides of the gag... she was messing with me on purpose, wasn't she!"
With Tesla's rant still going, the two of them hacked into the lab's master control system in search of a way to fight the Herrscher of the Void.
Buried in a mountain of top-secret data, Tesla found the file on an ultimate weapon capable of turning the entire war around - [the Godkiller Spear].
It was the "Herrscher killer" Otto had finally developed using Cecilia's Sacred Blood combined with Doctor Magi's research.
Inject it into a Herrscher's body and even the untouchable Herrscher of the Void would be stripped of her power in an instant. Killed, even.
But the reason this weapon was buried under the highest classification was that it lacked one core, utterly irreplaceable ingredient.
"To synthesize the Godkiller Spear, you need high-concentration Honkai energy neutralization serum as the base..."
Tesla stared at the data on the screen and ground her teeth.
"But the entire stock in all of Schicksal is probably just..."
Tesla never finished the sentence.
Because behind her, Himeko slowly extended her right hand.
Under the pale white lab lights, that vial of [HSN-b46], glowing its deep ghostly blue, lay quietly in her palm.
The serum that was supposed to save Himeko's life.
The key that was supposed to open the door to her ordinary future.
Looking at the serum being held out to her, the Tesla in the game went rigid.
And the ten million lines of danmaku that had been flooding the screen with jokes came to a horrifying halt in that same instant.
Tesla understood exactly what that vial meant to Himeko.
"Himeko... have you lost your mind?"
There was a tremor in Tesla's voice.
"This is the only vial that exists! It can save your life! If you spend it on the Godkiller Spear, then what happens to you?!"
Himeko didn't answer.
She only looked at Tesla, and in her eyes there was no fear and no hesitation. Only a kind of quiet.
Without a moment's pause, she set the serum down on the lab bench in front of Tesla.
Which meant one thing.
At the crossroads of life and death, Murata Himeko had reached out with her own hand and severed the only hope she had of surviving.
[No... no, don't...]
[Teacher Himeko, take it back! That's your life!]
[Why... why does it have to be this cruel? There has to be another way, right? Right?]
The players in the stream finally began to understand, and panic spread through them like plague.
In the game, Tesla stared at the vial on the table and clenched her jaw until it hurt.
So that Himeko's sacrifice wouldn't be wasted, so that this one and only chance at synthesis wouldn't be lost, Tesla sent Himeko away with the excuse that she didn't want to be disturbed.
And once Himeko was gone, the loud, brash Anti-Entropy doctor made a decision that left everyone watching slack-jawed.
She grabbed a syringe loaded with high-concentration Honkai energy solvent and, without a second's hesitation, drove it into her own arm.
She was using her own body as the living vessel to purify the serum.
Her screams tore through the lab as her arm began turning the horrible ashen gray of Zombie transformation, veins bulging beneath the skin.
But at the last possible moment, sheer superhuman willpower carried her through, and she completed the synthesis of that crimson-glowing [Godkiller Spear].
[Tesla is unbelievably brave! She just made herself the test subject!]
[Everyone in Anti-Entropy is insane... every last one of them, all to fight the Honkai, all of them insane!]
[They threw seventy percent of their mech corps in too... they really did bet everything!]
The viewers were shaken to their core by the tragic, blood-stirring scene.
And with the Godkiller Spear born into the world, a blind emotion called "hope" flared back to life in the players' hearts.
[It's getting better! That's all I'm gonna say, it's getting better!]
[We've got the Godkiller Spear! Once the Herrscher is beaten, Schicksal's other tech can definitely cure Himeko's condition!]
[Told you that old crook Su Yu wouldn't dare kill Himeko off! This is textbook shonen battle manga structure, push it down before you lift it up!]
"Exactly! Don't lose heart, everyone!" Elysia cheered loudly at the camera. "Our Teacher Himeko is so strong. She'll absolutely get through this!"
And yet.
Inside the miHoYo office.
Watching the screen fill with cheers for the "happy ending," watching the hope-filled smile on Elysia's face...
Kiana felt her heart being shoved into a meat grinder and torn apart.
They didn't know anything.
All those hopeful players, all those people cheering in front of their screens - they had no idea that what they were cheering for was a one-way ticket to a funeral.
That tearing sensation, of being the only one awake in a world of drunks, the only one who knew the tragedy, made every breath Kiana took taste thickly of blood.
She had a death grip on Su Yu's sleeve, her nails already digging into his arm, and she didn't notice at all.
"Su Yu..." Kiana looked at the wall of danmaku through blurred eyes, her voice wrecked past recognition. "Watching her seal off every road to survival for me, piece by piece... watching her pronounce her own death sentence with her own hands... it hurts so much..."
Su Yu said nothing.
He turned his hand and closed it around her cold, trembling one, and pulled her gently into his arms.
Those deep eyes of his went over the top of her head and fixed on the enormous computer screen.
He knew better than anyone what a bastard he was. What a man deserving of a thousand cuts.
But he also knew better than anyone that only by carving this cruelty to its absolute limit would that name be branded into this world as an immortal monument.
And that was the only path that led to saving Himeko, and to reconciling Sirin and Kiana.
Let the hatred fall on him. He would carry it.
As long as the tears of ten million people bought that one miracle.
Even if they cursed his ancestors eighteen generations back, it would be worth it.
In the game, fate's final trial arrived.
Guided by Fu Hua, Himeko dragged her broken body down to the core sanctum at the very bottom of the laboratory.
The place was like a solemn mausoleum, housing the prototype armor of every generation of Schicksal's Valkyries.
And at the deepest point of the hall, in the most prominent position of all.
There stood, in perfect silence, a suit of blood-red Valkyrie armor radiating terrifying heat and the aura of Destruction.
"This is the secret Otto buried down here. The ultimate weapon meant for a head-on confrontation with a Herrscher -"
Fu Hua's voice echoed through the empty sanctum.
"The Godkiller armor prototype. Vermilion Knight: Eclipse."
"It is not a product of this era, but a legacy left behind by the previous civilization. Otto linked the [Gem of Haste] to this armor, creating a weapon system capable of fully reproducing the terrifying destructive force of the Herrscher of Flame. This is the last resort against a Herrscher."
"However..." Fu Hua's voice grew heavier than it had ever been. "While the Gem of Haste grants you the power of a god, it will also savage and erode your body and your mind. The moment you put it on, what little life you have left will burn out all the faster, like a candle in the wind."
Life and death were laid out in front of Murata Himeko once again.
This time, she didn't hesitate for even half a second.
Himeko strode forward and stepped into that armor bay reeking of death without a backward glance.
"I will do everything in my power to hold back the gem's erosion with the last of Yu Ducheng's strength."
Fu Hua's afterimage began to fade.
"But whether you can master this power is something only you can decide."
Blinding red light poured down over Himeko.
And in the next moment.
The world in her eyes bleached slowly into searing, absolute white.
There was no grand battle. No roar of explosions.
Elysia found that the Himeko she was controlling had arrived in a consciousness space so quiet it was frightening.
Every sound effect in the game had been stripped away, replaced by a piano piece sad down to the marrow.
In that white space.
The enemy standing in Himeko's way was no Honkai Beast. Nor any mech.
It was... herself.
- That's far enough. You've done everything you could.
A phantom of Himeko wearing the [Crimson Impulse] armor appeared before her and spoke the cold words of persuasion.
- You're only mortal. You've already reached your limit. Stop throwing your life away for other people.
A phantom in the [Valkyrie Triumph] armor raised its Greatsword and blocked the way ahead.
This was the trial of the [Gem of Haste].
It had taken the most honest, most primal will to live buried in Himeko's heart and shaped it into these phantoms of her past, hoping to shatter her resolve.
- That girl was born a Herrscher! That is her destiny!
- No matter how hard you try, you can't change her fate!
The phantoms recited the logic of reality, over and over.
And they were right.
Who isn't afraid to die?
Murata Himeko had never had a single sweeping, world-shaking romance. She had never once worn a white wedding dress.
She wanted so badly to live. She wanted so badly to hold on to all that ordinary happiness.
Staying alive is the most powerful instinct a human being has.
These phantoms were the softest part of Himeko's heart, the part that wanted most desperately to live.
- You still have your own life! Your own future!
- Stop this! You're walking straight into your own destruction!
Facing down these phantoms of her own will to survive.
Murata Himeko raised the heavy Greatsword in her hands.
"All this noise. You're wearing me out..."
There in that silent consciousness space, Himeko looked her own desire to live in the eye, and a tired, easy smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.
"Are you finished talking?"
"I know exactly what I'm doing."
"And if it were them instead... if it were Theresa, if it were Mei, if it were Bronya... they'd make the exact same choice I'm making."
As she spoke, those familiar figures rose into being one by one around her.
They stood behind her, becoming the strength that lifted her sword.
"So since this is the one thing I can do right now."
"Then I'm going to do it."
Himeko's eyes snapped open.
She gripped the Greatsword in both hands and, with the finality of a stroke that cuts through everything, brought it down on that phantom called [Haste's Flame] - the last, fiercest form of her own will to live.
"They're all still waiting for me..."
"Our journey... is absolutely not ending here!!!"
BOOM -!!!
The sword fell, the phantom shattered, and the pure white space was swallowed whole by a sky-devouring inferno.
In that moment.
Murata Himeko, with nothing but a mortal body, cut down her own instinct to survive with her own hands, crossed fully past her fear of death, and subjugated that raging Gem of Haste.
Heroes are not people who feel no fear.
They are the ones who, standing before fear and death, still choose to look straight at it - and then smile, and take another step forward.
In the stream, ten million players had their souls shaken to the foundations.
There was no storm of danmaku across the screen. Only a scattered few words drifting slowly past.
[A real hero...]
[Teacher Himeko...]
Even Himeko, who had been steadily working through her beer this whole time, found her eyes going red.
She looked at the woman on screen, reborn out of fire, and quietly lifted her can toward the monitor in a silent toast.
"To you. You magnificent idiot."
"Thank you, Fu Hua."
With that final farewell, Fenghuang's phantom dissolved completely into the light.
In the empty sanctum, slow, heavy metal footsteps began to sound.
The blinding red light faded.
On screen, a woman clad in armor as red as fresh blood, holding a [Godslayer Sword] wrapped in towering flames, stood there like a war god come back from hell.
A mortal body, set against a god.
- [Vermilion Knight: Eclipse], announcing her arrival.
On the way out of the laboratory, Schicksal Divine Machine mechs blocked the path.
But this time, the fight had reversed itself from top to bottom.
Himeko had the power of the Vermilion in her hands now, and nothing could stand in front of her.
"Burn to ash!"
With that piercing, explosive battle cry, every swing of the Godslayer Sword dragged a blade of fire that ripped the air apart.
The heavy mechs that had given players so much trouble were sliced, melted and incinerated under the Vermilion Knight's sword like fragile toys, swept aside as easily as rotten wood.
Enormous machines crashed down and became a field of burning scrap iron.
[Himeko drove her Greatsword hard into the floor and let out a long, scorching breath.]
- My heart is boiling.
- My body has never felt this light.
- Those fatal wounds... I can't feel any pain from them at all anymore.
- Power. Like it's about to burst out of every cell in my body.
"Haaah..."
Himeko lifted her head toward the vaulted ceiling far above, and in those eyes burned a fire that would never go out.
"Everyone. Wait for me."
"...I'm coming back."
BOOM -!!!
With those three words - I'm coming back - the atmosphere in the stream detonated to a height it had never reached before.
The sheer visceral satisfaction of that fight, the desperate counterattack that finally arrived after three full chapters of suffocation, sent ten million players' adrenaline through the roof.
[That was so damn COOL!!!]
[THIS is Auntie Himeko's real strength! Vermilion Knight number one in the world!]
[Go carve up that Herrscher of the Void! Show her what human rage looks like!]
[I'm going to whale so hard! Su Yu you old crook, put this battlesuit in the banner RIGHT NOW, AAAAH!]
In the middle of that screen-wide fever of cheering.
Elysia took a deep breath. She looked at that magnificent red figure on the monitor, and something almost too faint to catch flickered through her eyes. Sadness.
She turned to the stream camera and said softly, "I wonder if anyone noticed a very particular detail during that fight just now?"
The danmaku slowed a little.
"All the Valkyrie battlesuits we've used to play as Himeko before - Crimson Impulse, Battle Storm, Valkyrie Triumph..."
Elysia's voice was very gentle, as if she were afraid of shattering something.
"Every single one of them, without exception, has a dodge button that defaults to a forward roll or a forward dash."
"That's actually a little easter egg our development team designed on purpose. Because Himeko is a teacher, and a soldier, and she always carries the courage to charge in at the very front line."
Elysia paused, and a film of water gathered over her eyes again.
"But... when everyone was controlling the Vermilion Knight just now, did you notice?"
"The Vermilion Knight's default dodge... goes backward."
Ten million players in the middle of celebrating went still.
"She has power that can burn anything to nothing. She can melt those steel mechs in an instant."
Elysia's voice trembled faintly as she peeled back the gentlest and cruelest secret in this world.
"So why is it that in this one suit, the strongest armor of all, her dodge goes backward?"
"Because..."
Elysia raised a hand, wiped the tears from the corner of her eye, and produced a beautiful, sorrowful smile.
"Because she knew exactly who the enemy waiting for her was."
"The Vermilion's dodge goes backward for one reason only - so that in the fight, those raging flames and that sword qi wouldn't hurt the girl she was about to face."
"It's so that she wouldn't hurt Kiana. That's all it ever was."
Dead silence.
The stream that had been screaming for the Herrscher of the Void's head a moment earlier heard that answer and sank completely into a suffocating mixture of awe and grief.
An ache that went straight to the soul struck every player's heart at once.
[I'm sobbing... Su Yu you old crook, how many knives and how much tenderness did you bury in these details?!]
[Teacher Himeko... she really does love Kiana like her own daughter!]
[Stop talking. I'm a six-foot guy crying like an idiot in an internet cafe right now.]
[Take that tenderness into battle with you! Teacher Himeko, you're going to win, I know it!]
That perfectly tender easter egg didn't drive the players to despair.
Just the opposite. It worked like the strongest stimulant imaginable, driving the "hope" and the fire in ten million hearts to an absolute, unsurpassable peak.
They believed it, completely.
With the Godkiller Spear, with the Vermilion armor, and above all with this incomparable love, Murata Himeko was going to defeat that cold-blooded Herrscher of the Void.
This had to be the grand happy-ending counterattack Su Yu had written!
[Elysia! Start the next stage already! I can't wait to watch Teacher Himeko show them what she's made of!]
[Go go go! Get Kiana back for me!]
[The happy ending is waving at us!]
Amid the impatient urging of ten million players, in an ocean of danmaku that stood for victory and hope.
Elysia dried her tears and took hold of the mouse, full of confidence.
"All right! Hold on tight, everyone! Let's go into battle together with Teacher Himeko!"
"Click."
The crisp click of a mouse sounded in front of ten million screens at the same instant.
And yet.
Inside that dim office at miHoYo.
Watching the sky full of danmaku on screen, all of it standing for "hope."
Watching ten million people who didn't know the ending cheer their hearts out on a train bound for the execution ground.
Kiana bit down hard on Su Yu's sleeve and buried her face in the crook of his arm.
"They don't know... they don't know anything..."
Deep in her mind, Yu Ducheng's Fenghuang let out a faint cry of grief as well.
Su Yu stood where he was and let Kiana tremble against him.
He offered no comfort, and he didn't close his eyes.
He kept staring at the loading bar on the computer screen, the one about to carry them into the next chapter.
"That's right. They don't know."
There was a solemn, unshakeable resolve in Su Yu's voice that raised the hair on the back of the neck.
"Which is why..."
"When that Greatsword that burns away everything finally comes down into the empty Abyss."
"That's when this world will truly remember what it means to call something..."
"Final Lesson."
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