Two minutes later, four people lay on the cold concrete floor of the rooftop, gasping for air.
"Seele, you're so strong! How did you do that?"
"Seele... Seele just wanted to help everyone, and then... and then..."
"Idiot Kiana, if you don't know how to give a compliment, then don't!"
The three of them quickly started laughing, but Mei didn't make a sound.
Kiana secretly squeezed Mei's left hand, as if afraid she would do something foolish again. But Mei squeezed back with surprising force, enough to make Kiana wince in pain. But she didn't say anything. She might be an idiot, but she knew that what Mei feared most right now was being abandoned.
"Don't worry, Mei. Me, Bronya, and Seele will never abandon you."
She deliberately avoided Michael's name, because mentioning him would inevitably lead to mentioning Mobius.
Sadness was, of course, present. Not just sadness, but anger. She wanted to beat the consciousness that had stolen Mei's body to a pulp, but on second thought, if she really did that, wouldn't she just be hitting Mei's body?
In the end, it was just helplessness. Of course, she wanted to grieve, but she had to get through this first before she had the right to continue grieving.
But what she didn't understand was why Bronya, who was supposed to be smarter, brought up the topic at this moment.
"Mei-neesama, about your situation... the Bronya knows everything. It's not your fault that Auntie Mobius died."
"Bronya!"
Kiana clearly felt Mei's hand turn cold. In an instant, her palm was covered in clammy sweat. She turned to Bronya in annoyance, only to be met by the latter's unusually calm eyes.
The moonlight dripped into her eyes like water, adding a bit of color to them. The color was like concrete, cold and hard. It was also like a desolate wilderness, calm, but a frightening kind of calm.
For some reason, Kiana found this gaze familiar. It wasn't strange. After all, she had lived with Bronya under the same roof for over a month. It was only normal to be familiar with her gaze.
She didn't dwell on it. Bronya quickly turned her head to look at the sky.
"We have to face this sooner or later. It's better to get everything out in the open from the beginning than to let it fester into a knot in our hearts. Don't you agree, Mei-neesama?"
Mei gave no response. Bronya only said her name to show she was talking to her. She quickly continued on her own.
"Mei-neesama, inside you, there's another consciousness, the consciousness of the Gem of Conquest, right? The Bronya believes you. What happened to Mobius was its fault, not yours. The Bronya thinks Michael will definitely understand too. So, Mei-neesama, you don't have to feel guilty about it."
"..."
Mei remained silent. At first, Kiana thought she just didn't know how to answer. She just silently rubbed Mei's left palm, wiping away the cold sweat that kept appearing.
It was only when she realized the cold sweat was increasing, continuously, that she realized something was wrong.
"Mei! Mei!"
Kiana sat up and, in the faint light from the sky, saw Mei's pale face.
Her eyes were squeezed shut, trembling violently from the force. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of her tightly pressed lips.
Then, she noticed Mei's right hand, which had been bleeding all this time.
"What happened to her hand?"
Bronya also sat up. As she asked, she tore a strip from the bottom of her shirt and tied it tightly around Mei's upper arm. She then took a small vial of liquid from her pocket, tore open the packaging, and injected the needle into Mei's arm.
"This is a painkiller I found downstairs. It should feel better after this, but it will take a while to take effect."
"Thank you," Mei said softly.
But Bronya shook her head. There wasn't much point in what she was doing. She didn't know how Mei's right hand had gotten this way, but judging from the injury now, although there wasn't much bleeding, which probably meant no artery was hit, the bones were so twisted and shattered that she didn't even dare to touch it, let alone bandage it... In fact, she could tell at a glance that Mei's right hand was clearly a lost cause. All she could do was make her feel a little better.
She looked at Mei, then glanced secretly at Kiana, and ultimately decided not to say it out loud.
Jokes about lucky hands and feet were just gallows humor. Even a battle-hardened veteran, when faced with their own maimed body, would often... Mei's mental state was already fragile, and she had just suffered a series of blows. It was better not to tell her—even though Bronya had just said, "It's better to get everything out in the open from the beginning than to let it fester into a knot in our hearts." But this reality was a bit too cruel for a seventeen-year-old girl, so Bronya could only change her mind.
As for the idiot Kiana, what was the point of telling her? She would just make a fuss and cause more trouble.
After about two or three minutes, Mei let out a soft breath.
The painkiller worked as well as ever. The pain in her right arm was like pencil lead on white paper, erased bit by bit by an eraser, leaving only a large gray smudge. But this wasn't entirely a good thing, because Mei's consciousness was once again becoming groggy.
She pushed herself up with her left hand. Her eyelids struggled to open, only to droop again like a flag stirred by the wind.
She could only vaguely see three figures in front of her. She knew they were the three girls who had just given her her life back. She opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came from her throat. Instead, the voices of the three girls grew clearer in her ears:
"We have to get out of here quickly. Putting aside the issue of night and day, the gunshot and scream just now were so abrupt and obvious. The zombies and Honkai beasts will naturally gather here. If we run into another one of those twenty-meter-tall Honkai beasts..."
The voice was cold, but with an uneradicable hint of childishness. It was undoubtedly Bronya speaking. At this moment, she was the only one among the four who could still analyze the situation calmly.
"But Bronya-neesama, Mei-neesama's injury... and with just the four of us, we probably won't get very far, right?"
Even in such a dangerous situation, Seele's voice was still so soft and sweet. Even if one wanted to argue, it would probably be difficult to be too harsh.
"Seele, you mean... stay here and wait for Michael?"
"Mhm, it's nine o'clock at night. If we calculate the time, Big Bro Michael should be back to look for us if nothing unexpected happened."
"You... really trust him, don't you..."
The words almost slipped out. Bronya discreetly covered her mouth, forcing them back down.
It wasn't that she had anything against Michael. Mobius's actions had also proven his reliability. It was just seeing Seele trust him so much... no, beyond trust, there seemed to be some special feelings mixed in. This made her feel both confused and a little... upset?
She shook her head, forcibly suppressing the strange feeling in her heart, and then explained seriously:
"If I could, the Bronya would also prefer to stay here and wait for Michael. But even he probably can't pinpoint our location. I tried my phone just now, the signal is completely scrambled. And we don't know what the situation is with Mei-neesama's father... According to Michael's original plan, uh..."
Sure enough, no matter what, you can't avoid Mobius.
Michael's original plan was simple. Bronya didn't need to think much to guess it. He would go to save Mei's father, while Mobius would be responsible for saving them. It was even highly likely that they had arranged to meet somewhere outside Nagazora. As for the Herrscher, he certainly knew about it, but he probably didn't expect Mobius to die in such a dramatic way.
Now they couldn't contact him at all. Even telling Michael their current location and situation was a luxury. How could they be sure he would come here to save them?
But at a time like this, hope was better than despair. Bronya regretted pointing this out just now and quickly added:
"However, Big Bro... Michael's abilities are unpredictable. It's not impossible that he has a way to know the situation here and come over. If that's the case, even if we don't stay here, he'll still be able to find us. But if we continue to stay here, as I said before... it's too dangerous."
Seele lowered her head and thought for a moment, then said no more. Kiana's mind was full of Mei, so she couldn't come up with any ideas at a time like this. As for Mei...
Bronya felt a presence behind her. She turned to look and saw Mei nodding slightly at her.
And so, there was no more disagreement about leaving the building.
What the four, or rather, seven girls didn't know was that on the rooftop of the building opposite the police station, a figure was sitting leisurely, watching the entire performance from beginning to end.
"Strange. The Gem of Conquest is an already-born Herrscher Core. There shouldn't be any new consciousness within it. Why is Raiden Mei..."
Prometheus's mechanical voice sounded in Michael's ear, adding a little bit of noise to the cold night.
"Because the consciousness in Raiden Mei's head has nothing to do with the Gem of Conquest, and it's not a Herrscher... Wait, Prometheus, are you... preemptively shirking responsibility?"
"I am not, I did not, you are talking nonsense."
Prometheus habitually denied it three times, then belatedly warned:
"Michael, I'm reminding you one last time. I am Prometheus No. 17. Unlike the defective products like No. 0 and No. 16, please do not confuse our concepts."
"You're all just sub-consciousnesses of the 'Prometheus' system anyway. It doesn't matter."
"If you make that kind of joke again, don't blame me for using the power of Finality on you."
Hearing No. 17's faint threat, Michael shook his head dismissively.
"I just think, No. 17, you're becoming more and more human. No, perhaps you always were..."
Michael's words stopped abruptly. He smiled faintly, a wisp of green wind twirling around his fingertips.
In the past, he rarely used the power of Wind. He remembered that in the beginning, he had put all his energy into developing the power of the Void, even to the point of neglecting the fundamentals. After his two subsequent ascensions, he no longer needed more powers to boost his combat strength.
These powers, to him, were once just fragments that had to be collected but were of little use. Their only meaning was to piece together, bit by bit under his feet, a path back to Finality.
It was just that fifty thousand years was too long, so long that even if Michael did everything he could think of, there was still too much time to spare. So he had to do many things he didn't want to do, things he was too lazy to do, just to pass the time.
Of course, this was his power...
He slowly raised his palm. The wisp of green in his palm floated toward the end of the street. Then, the once gentle night wind began to stir again. Even the red lightning that had almost disappeared into the dark clouds began to flash again.
"What about you?"
No. 17 suddenly spoke again.
"What about me?"
"You, Michael. Are you becoming more and more human, or less and less human?"
Michael turned his head abruptly, meeting the mechanical girl's gaze through the barrier between the real and imaginary worlds.
The smile on his face did not fade. He said, very naturally, "What do you mean by that? I've always been human, haven't I?"
No. 17 was at a loss for words. She glanced silently at this familiar yet strange city. She had seen the name Nagazora in the Fire Moth archives, and knew that Michael had fought the Third Herrscher here with all his might, meeting his "first" death.
Although the map had changed, and the current Nagazora might not overlap with the old one, since it was given this name, it had a special meaning for Michael.
But No. 17 couldn't feel any emotion from Michael. No sadness, no nostalgia, nothing.
His emotions seemed to have been artificially straightened into a line. No, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the surface of the water had been forcibly frozen. The surface of the water could not be without ripples, but the surface of the ice was flat. As for the ripples beneath, only he himself knew.
And No. 17... in fact, she had seen Nagazora, the old Nagazora. But only in the form of photographs.
After the Seventh Honkai Eruption, humanity thought they had won a respite, so they planned to increase investment in rebuilding the Far East. Nagazora was once a key reconstruction area, so No. 17 took the opportunity to collect many photos of it.
It had to be said that the Nagazora presented before her now, compared to the one in the photos, aside from the difference in light between day and night, was not just similar, but identical.
Broken tiles scattered everywhere like fish scales, a tall building or two standing like cacti in the desert... If there was anything different, it would be the crimson moonlight that enveloped the entire world, as if deliberately giving form to the lingering smell of blood.
Fifty thousand years ago, all this was thanks to the Third Herrscher.
And fifty thousand years later, all this was thanks to the hero who had once killed the Third Herrscher.
It was somewhat ironic.
Wait a minute!
No. 17 woke up from her memories, only to find it even more ridiculous.
She was clearly an artificial intelligence. Memories were just strings of data to her. To be sentimental about a string of data, wasn't that a human-specific efficiency-reducing divine art?
No. 17 shook her head and said faintly again:
"Then everything from fifty thousand years ago... the memories of that time, the wishes of that time, the vows made at that time, the love left behind at that time... do they still count?"
"Of course they count. Because I... have always been Michael."
Michael stood up. In the Imaginary Space, No. 17 looked at the familiar back in the real space and shook her head.
"If you betray the ideals of the past, you will be nothing to me. I will use the power of Finality to completely destroy you."
"I understand. After all, your mission is to complete Project Stigma."
"No, you don't understand anything."
These words did not reach Michael's ears, because No. 17 had already broken the connection between them before speaking.
Then, at the end of the street where Michael was looking, in the direction where the wisp of green wind had once blown, a small mountain moved slowly and steadily toward them.
"Are you going to betray everything from the past?"
Michael also asked himself in his heart. But the question was like a stone thrown into an abyss, with no response for a long time, not even a ripple in his heart. At least, his face was expressionless.
"I never wanted to betray..."
He wiped his face with his hand. The fragments of Raiden Ryoma's heart were still between his fingers.
"But I already have."