Drip—drip—drip—
The wind and rain had stopped, but from time to time, a crimson bolt of lightning would still streak across the sky.
Water dripped rhythmically from the ruined walls outside, perfectly in sync with the ticking second hand of the old watch on Bronya's wrist.
The black paint on the watch strap had long since cracked, and much of it had peeled away, leaving a trail of small white dots. A thick crack ran across the watch face, and it was covered in countless scratches, making one seriously doubt whether its owner could even see the hands clearly.
The watch face was army green with a red star in the center. It looked rather old-fashioned, at least on Bronya's wrist, where it seemed jarringly out of place.
Perhaps... it would only look normal on a bearded, pot-bellied man?
Bronya gave a faint smile.
That's right. Its previous owner, Uncle Maxim, had been exactly that kind of disheveled figure.
The next moment, however, her smile vanished.
"It's time."
Her voice was not loud; it was almost a whisper. But in the darkness opposite her, a pair of emerald eyes snapped open at her words. The brief moment of eye contact sent a shiver down her spine, from the nape of her neck all the way to her lower back.
Fortunately, the sharpness in those eyes lasted only an instant. She quickly looked away, rubbing her eyes as if trying to soften her gaze.
"I'll go check the surroundings and plan a new route. Waking them up is on you."
Mobius flicked her long hair, gently lifting Mei's head from her lap. She then lifted her entire upper body and slowly laid her flat on the ground.
She said no more to Bronya, simply pushed herself up to her feet and quietly walked out onto the balcony.
The resting spot she had found was on the second floor. It wasn't so high as to hinder their escape, nor was it so low that they would be spotted by the zombies and Honkai beasts roaming the streets.
There was no need to worry about the building collapsing either. Everything above the third floor was just half a wall. Judging by the break, it had likely been clipped by a passing Honkai beast and finally gave way.
Of course, how the building collapsed wasn't important.
Mobius's chest rose quickly as she drew a deep breath of the damp, cold air. It was tinged with a metallic tang that could have been from the earth or from blood. Like her eyes, which flickered in and out of sight in the darkness, no one could say for certain what she was thinking. At least, the four girls wouldn't understand.
The Third Honkai Eruption. Night. The combination of these two keywords sent a tremor through Mobius's heart, even though she was someone who never liked to dwell on the past.
How could she ever forget that night? It was on that very day that she was reborn, in every sense of the word.
How could she possibly forget such an important time?
"What a pity... what a true pity..."
The object of her pity was not herself. There was nothing about her worth pitying, nor anything worth regretting.
Naturally, she wasn't pitying someone from the past either. Among those people, some needed no pity from her, and others she couldn't be bothered to pity.
What she pitied was that entire era.
No...
Her fist slammed down on the balcony railing. The tiles on its surface had long since vanished, and her fist hit the rough concrete directly. The flicker of pain was just right.
She didn't just pity. She resented, she envied.
She envied these girls for being born in an era like this. She resented her own era for being one with no hope...
But soon, those thoughts dissipated as well.
"Mobius, we're ready to go."
Bronya called softly from behind her.
"Alright."
She responded faintly and turned to walk back inside.
"Is the route planned? How are we getting out of Nagazora?"
The moment they met, Bronya asked directly.
"No rush. We have a long road ahead. The priority is to find some weapons for self-defense."
"Weapons?"
"Mhm. I can't protect you all the time, everywhere. There will be times when I'm careless, so it's better if you have some weapons."
"Makes sense."
Bronya looked down at her pistol. It was the only high-powered weapon among them. Although "high-powered" was a bit of an overstatement against a Honkai beast, it offered some measure of self-protection. Unfortunately, it was the only one, and the ammunition would only last for one or two fights.
"But where can we find weapons? The Bronya thinks it would be better to use what's at hand rather than search for them."
Bronya broke off two pieces of rebar from a fractured wall. Seele took one. When Bronya offered the other to Mei, she squinted her purple eyes for a good few seconds before slowly taking it. Well, at least now no one could say they were unarmed.
"Good idea, but unfortunately, do you really think this stuff is useful?"
"I... The Bronya believes that for an ordinary person's physical strength, any weapon they can carry won't make much of a difference against a Honkai beast."
"There's still some difference. Large Honkai beasts are rare. The enemies you'll be facing most will be zombies and smaller Honkai beasts. In the hands of an untrained person, a gun is still more intimidating than a piece of rebar, wouldn't you say?"
"But letting someone untrained use a gun, especially a handgun... Wait! You're saying you can get guns?"
Seeing the look of surprise in Bronya's eyes, Mobius knew she understood.
Guns in Mei's and Seele's hands would probably be useless, but in her and that idiot Kiana's hands, they would be useful! Besides, having something was better than having nothing.
But... why was Mobius so keen on arming them?
Her earlier reason... that no matter how strong she was, she couldn't guarantee she wouldn't miss something...
How should she put it? The reason wasn't without merit; in fact, it was perfectly logical and reasonable. So reasonable that Bronya couldn't find any grounds for rebuttal. If it were anyone else, even Michael, saying this, she might have believed them. This wasn't to say that Michael was any more trustworthy than Mobius in Bronya's eyes. It was just Mobius... especially after all that nonsense she had spouted earlier, Bronya couldn't shake the feeling that she was playing some kind of grand game...
Especially her last sentence—"You'll know what it means soon enough."
Bronya didn't know what it meant, and she couldn't guess. But just from the literal meaning, it was hard to ignore the time prefix "soon."
To put it plainly, Bronya felt that Mobius was about to give everyone a "surprise" in the near future.
With this as her starting point, any action Mobius took seemed to have a hidden meaning to Bronya.
"Let's go. Don't just stand there. There's a police station two streets away. We'll go there to replenish our weapons and ammunition."
Bronya blinked. Although she felt something was amiss, she had no reason to refuse.
---||---
BANG—
Things went much smoother than expected. There was no need for reconnaissance, and certainly no need for a battle plan. All Bronya, Seele, Mei, and Kiana had to do was follow closely behind Mobius and watch as tiny, hair-thin green arcs of lightning danced out from her, zapping the zombies still in their police uniforms aside before they could even react.
Victory came so easily. Although Mobius cleared the entire police station of zombies and Honkai beasts to be safe, the time spent on cleanup was still less than the time it took to find the armory. This only made Bronya more suspicious.
When Mobius had said, "I can't protect you all the time," she had thought it was perfectly normal. Now it seemed she had underestimated Mobius. With her current strength, getting them out of Nagazora would probably be a piece of cake. There was no such thing as being unable to look after them.
So why was she going through all this extra trouble?
"Bronya, what are you daydreaming about?" Kiana asked, turning her head as she picked out a pistol.
She held up two handguns, one a square, angular automatic pistol, the other a clunky-looking old-fashioned revolver.
Bronya just glanced over and knew that the idiot's indecisiveness was acting up again.
"The automatic pistol in your left hand is a Beretta 92. What year was it... ah, I think it was the autumn of 1981. The Far East police had a firefight with some radical activists in Yamanashi Prefecture. A six-shot old-fashioned revolver against five AK-47s. The result was predictable. Three unlucky policemen were turned into Swiss cheese on the spot. The next year, the Far East police updated their equipment and introduced this thing. But they had too many old revolvers in stock, so it looks like they still haven't fully switched over."
"Heh, I didn't think someone born in Siberia would know so much about the Far East."
Mobius hadn't picked a weapon. With her overwhelming power, she didn't need one. She was just silently guarding the door for them, not rushing them, until she overheard Bronya and Kiana's conversation and couldn't resist a sarcastic comment.
However, Bronya just thought she was being childish and ignored her, continuing to educate Kiana.
"This gun has a magazine capacity of fifteen rounds, but it weighs nearly a kilogram empty, twice as much as the old revolver. The advantage is that it has more firepower and is more sustainable. You choose."
She herself still needed to find Tokarev ammunition. It was highly unlikely she'd find any here. She might have to switch to a Beretta in the end.
She was a little surprised that when Kiana used the Tokarev earlier...
Kiana listened to her and weighed the two guns in her hands. There was no need to hesitate. The old revolver was lighter, but it clearly wasn't suitable for the Kaslana family's Gun Kata. As for the weight...
A one-kilogram gun was a significant burden even for an adult male. Even with two hands, it required rigorous training to maintain stability, not to mention that the Kaslana family's Gun Kata required one-handed use, which was theoretically even more difficult.
But Kiana wasn't an adult male, so this problem didn't apply to her.
She slung the two guns over her body. She couldn't bear to throw away her baseball bat, so she put it in a long gun case and carried it on her back.
"Mei, I'm ready!"
She jumped up and down a couple of times to make sure all her gear was secure, then ran over to Mei, who was standing indecisively in front of a whole wall of weapons.
"Mei, don't you know what weapon to choose?"
Although girls usually weren't interested in guns, they would still feel some excitement when faced with new things. What's more, these things were what would protect them in the coming operations. Even the most placid person should feel some excitement, right?
Take Seele, for example. After a brief hesitation, this usually quiet girl had picked up a long-barreled shotgun. In comparison, Mei's reaction was far too... sluggish? Or calm?
Hearing Kiana's voice, Mei spun around, lowered her head slightly, and the purple in her pupils flashed for an instant.
"I don't need... uh, I don't know what to choose."
Mei's voice was a little low. Kiana tilted her head, bit her lip, and suddenly stepped forward to hug Mei.
"Hey... you... what are you doing!"
Mei's voice became sharp again. There were still three other people here, after all. She was about to push Kiana away, but her body resisted the action on its own, so the resistance was meaningless.
"Hee hee!" Kiana giggled in Mei's ear.
"It's okay if Mei doesn't have a weapon. With me here, no one will be able to hurt Mei!"
"Kiana..."
"Ahem!", "Ahem, ahem!", "Ahem, ahem, ahem!"
The coughs from the other three were, one might say, quite in sync.
Bronya wanted nothing more than to smack Kiana on the head with her pistol grip. But when she followed the sound and looked at Seele, she saw that the latter's expression was extremely strange—her right hand was gripping the shotgun, as if trying to hide the weapon that was so at odds with her personality behind her back, but the fingers of her left hand were dancing rapidly, two cylindrical bullets juggling between them.
Even stranger was her face. She was smiling, but while the right half of her face wore a familiar smile, the left corner of her mouth was pursed in visible disdain. Her right eye was fixed on Kiana, but her left eye was glancing at Mobius. It was incredibly bizarre.
"Seele, are you okay?"
Bronya's brow furrowed, and her eyes widened slightly. When Seele heard her voice, the corner of her left mouth quickly turned up into a smile, and the bullets were clenched tightly in her palm. The change was so fast and natural that Bronya thought she had just imagined it.
And because her attention was focused on Seele, she momentarily overlooked the person with the strangest expression of all—
The corner of Mobius's mouth twitched twice, as if she wanted to laugh along with everyone else. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't. She just couldn't laugh. Instead, her nose began to sting, and a hot current rushed to her brain.
Why? Why can the people of this era still maintain such a naive and childish side in the face of the Honkai? Why did they, fifty thousand years ago, never have, and never even dare to dream of, this kind of innocence?
"Hah... cough, cough!"
Noticing her voice was trembling, Mobius quickly coughed a couple more times to force her emotions to stabilize. Of course, this wasn't difficult.
"If I remember correctly, Mei was taught swordsmanship by her father since she was a child, and has long since received the menkyo kaiden of the Hokushin Itto-ryu, right?"
"Huh? Yes."
Mei was stunned for a moment. She took the opportunity to escape Kiana's suffocating embrace, then nodded sullenly.
"Then it seems this is more suitable for you."
Mobius, as if by magic, produced a wakizashi from behind her back.
"This is..."
"Ah, I just found it in the police chief's office. It looks like a personal collection."
Mobius took two steps forward and handed the sword to Mei.
Mei's thumb gently pressed against the tsuba, and the blade slid from the sheath. It was clear that this was an old sword passed down through the chief's family. The koshirae had a dull copper luster, and the off-white sharkskin had yellowed with age. The gaps between the grains were filled with black stains, whether from blood or sweat, it was impossible to tell. The handle wrapping, however, did not look like it had been held recently.
A sword like this? Could it be used to kill?
Undoubtedly, as long as it was a sword, it could be used to kill, even if its original purpose was merely for display.
Mei drew the sword from its sheath inch by inch. The fluorescent lights reflected a dazzling cold light off the blade, concealing the purple in her pupils.
Looking up, Mobius was squinting, smiling as she reached out to her, as if to stroke her head. But if that was all, why were tiny arcs of electricity flashing at her fingertips?
"Haha... hahaha..."
"Mei" gave a dry laugh at the hand, then without hesitation, drove the tip of the sword into Mobius's heart.
Translator's Note: The author has hidden an easter egg. The hint is that it comes from the same book as the previous easter egg, "The wind swept across the Bohemian plains."