It was afternoon in Siberia. Even in winter… a few rays of golden sunlight pierced through the thick clouds, sprinkling down on the frigid Siberian forest. The slightly dim woods seemed somewhat silent…
Li Xuan, who had watched the Gem of Serenity fragment melt into his body, took a full half-hour to feel slightly better after breaking out of that strange state…
His skin, which had become scorching hot due to his rapidly circulating blood and the activity of Honkai energy, finally began to cool down… The snowy ground beneath Li Xuan had turned into black earth again due to the heat constantly radiating from his body… The white snow had long since melted into water…
"Huh?! Am I okay?…" Li Xuan came back to his senses and felt his own body… Yep, in great shape! Even the small belly he had developed during his time as an otaku was gone, replaced by a standard V-line… Wait…
"Seele used the Gem of Serenity… and became all neurotic, and it was so painful for her to use it… How come I'm fine?" Li Xuan suddenly remembered the tragic scene when Seele merged with the Gem of Serenity… How come he didn't feel anything except seeing some messy things and his skin getting hot?
"Could it be because… the fragment is smaller?" Li Xuan guessed. After all, the difference between a whole gem and a fragment was quite significant… Of course, something related to the [Honkai] still made Li Xuan a little panicked. He checked his whole body again but didn't find any changes… except that he had become a lot stronger… and a bit hungrier, but other than that, he felt nothing.
"...Forget it, I should head back first…" Li Xuan thought for a while but couldn't come up with any clues. The fragment that had merged into his body just now didn't seem to have any side effects, so he decided not to think about it for the time being… The first priority now was to leave this godforsaken place.
"Whoosh~" Li Xuan picked up the Hazel Grouse in his hand and started to head back the way he came. The snowy ground of the Siberian forest was actually not easy to walk on… Every step would sink into a sizable hole… Li Xuan stumbled back out of the woods…
"Roar!~" Before he could get a clear view of the situation at the battleship, the first thing that reached his ears was a beast-like roar… It was a sound he was all too familiar with… the sound of a Honkai Beast!
"..." How could this be! How are there still Honkai Beasts!?… Both surprised and worried, Li Xuan raised his head and casually threw down the Hazel Grouse in his hand. As if venting, he slammed his left fist into a large tree beside him, and the Xuanyuan Sword appeared in his right hand again… He immediately rushed towards the direction the sound came from without stopping…
However, Li Xuan did not see that the bark of the tree he had punched suddenly and strangely turned withered and dry, as if it had died.
If a Honkai Beast managed to launch a sneak attack on Bronya, or even on the still-sleeping Mei and Kiana… Li Xuan dared not imagine the severity of the situation…
"Hah~" Li Xuan, who rushed out of the forest in one breath, leaped high and landed in the open space in front of the battleship… Just as he was about to take out the sneak-attacking Honkai Beast…
"Huh?!..." Li Xuan was stunned… What appeared before his eyes was not his injured companions and a ferocious Honkai Beast… but rather, the ground littered with the corpses of Honkai Beasts…
"B-Bronya?…" Li Xuan recognized the figure standing in the center of the field. No matter how many times he saw it… the Project Bunny 19C behind Bronya still gave him a sense of inexplicable shock… No man doesn't dream of having a Gundam…
"Oh, it's Li Xuan-kun…" Bronya turned around and looked at Li Xuan, saying with a deadpan expression. However, when Bronya saw Li Xuan's somewhat disheveled appearance, her gaze softened a bit…
"I don't know where these Honkai Beasts came from, but they actually wanted to attack Bronya…" Bronya looked at the corpses on the ground with disgust. She had a built-in Honkai energy detector on her… so she could easily detect the Honkai energy reactions of creatures like Honkai Beasts.
"So… Project Bunny helped Bronya take care of this trouble." Bronya reached out her small hand and affectionately patted the Project Bunny behind her, speaking softly… If one were to ignore the purplish-red liquid dripping from the spear-like weapon in Project Bunny's right hand… Li Xuan would have sincerely felt the warmth of this scene…
"Oh, right… Mei and Kiana also helped out a bit just now, but it seems they accidentally got some Honkai Beast blood on them… so they went back inside the battleship to change their clothes," Bronya added, although in her opinion, it didn't really matter whether they changed or not.
"Ahem… Then does Bronya know why these Honkai Beasts appeared here?" Li Xuan asked, puzzled.
"...I don't know." Bronya fell silent for a moment to think, then said seriously, "Bronya speculates that there should be a source of Honkai energy reaction nearby…"
"Beep beep!~" Before Bronya could finish, the pile of various instruments in front of them suddenly started beeping… It was an information receiver that Bronya had built herself… The principle wasn't very complicated, it just amplified the communicator's signal bit by bit…
"..." Bronya frowned. Logically, it should take some time for Principal Theresa to receive the signal… How did they get a response so quickly?
Bronya didn't dwell on it. She reached out to pick up the communicator, but before she could speak… a familiar voice came from it…
"Hello, hello! Are you all okay?!" It was a familiar voice, Principal Theresa's cute voice that was clearly childish yet forced to sound experienced.
"Principal Theresa… we're fine!" Li Xuan shouted excitedly. Hearing Theresa's voice again made him feel like bursting into tears of joy… He could finally go back to St. Freya High School… and have a nice meal.
"Phew~" Theresa seemed to let out a sigh of relief and continued, "Mm, it's good that you're fine~ We've arrived. We'll come pick you up right away."
"Huh?" Li Xuan was stunned for a moment. What did Principal Theresa mean by 'arrived'? He looked up at the sky… there was still nothing… except that the wind was a bit strong…
"Whoosh!~" Suddenly, the sound of a fierce wind arose, and a strong gust blew over Li Xuan and the others' heads… The howling cold wind blew against Li Xuan like sharp little knives, making him subconsciously raise a hand to shield his face. The hem of his 'Xuanyuan Festive Garb' also fluttered violently…
Li Xuan would never forget it for the rest of his life… In the sea of clouds, a battleship, like a 'whale' in the ocean, slowly deactivated its stealth and emerged from the clouds… It broke through the cloud layer, and the battleship named 'Hyperion' descended from the sky, enveloped in golden sunlight…
The withered grass, blown up by the wind, fluttered and flew far away… Behind Li Xuan, he heard Kiana's cheerful shouts…
...............…
What Li Xuan and the others didn't know was that a few hours after they escaped from the 'Anti-Entropy' battleship… Cocolia had straightforwardly contacted the 'Schicksal' commander, Theresa…
No one knew what they talked about… Principal Theresa, after accepting the 'deal,' obtained the address where Kiana and the others had been forced to land… the Siberian forest.
And so… Theresa piloted the 'Hyperion' to pick up the people she had sworn to protect…
And in the depths of the Siberian forest, a ferocious behemoth resembling a giant serpent quietly guarded a block of ice, falling into a deep sleep once more, just like its last ten-year slumber.
(End of this chapter)