"Su Yu."
Fenghuang's voice came through the Spiritual Link, carrying a gravity unlike anything he'd heard from her before.
"Kevin's strength is beyond imagination — nowhere near anything you can currently handle. Judging by that last strike, he forced open the Rift's entrance point, one that should have stayed sealed until the core was destroyed."
Fenghuang's voice paused for a beat.
"That strike just now came from the strongest Destruction-type Divine Key of the previous civilization — the terrifying power of the Judgment of Shamash."
"Under that blow, the World Barrier grew even thinner. If he swings the Judgment of Shamash again, there's no telling what might happen next."
Su Yu clenched his teeth.
He knew — if Kevin's blade truly came down, this already-fragile barrier would never hold.
Worse still, Raiden Mei was on the other side.
In her current, spent state, if Kevin wanted her dead, it would be barely harder than crushing a bug.
"We have no way back," Su Yu answered swiftly in his mind. "If I retreat now, he'll swing the Judgment of Shamash again for certain. Once the barrier between the two worlds breaks, Honkai's invasion will arrive early."
Arc City, with its scant defenses, would be wiped out in an instant beneath Honkai's advance — not even bones left behind.
Just then —
the System's red text exploded across his retina.
[Warning: World Barrier structural delamination countdown initiated.]
[Host, don't be naive enough to think that because Project STIGMA hasn't yet been carried out in Arc City, Honkai's invasion won't happen. The appearance of the Spatial Rift is itself proof that Honkai has already set its sights on this world.]
[Kevin Kaslana's strike did indeed damage the World Barrier, but the Barrier was already thinning with each new Spatial Rift regardless. If he unleashes the full power of Might of An-Utu here without restraint... you already know the outcome, don't you?]
Then a golden quest frame popped up.
[High-Risk Quest Issued: An Actor's Self-Cultivation]
[Quest Objective: Use words to delay Kevin Kaslana's intent to attack, protecting the World Barrier and Raiden Mei.]
[Failure Penalty: The World Barrier shattered by the Judgment of Shamash — everyone dies together.]
[Quest Reward: Tiered settlement based on Host's performance.]
Su Yu stared at the quest frame and inwardly grumbled to Fenghuang.
"Squad Monitor, you always said if you can't win, run — preserve your own life. I didn't expect that so soon I'd end up somewhere I can neither win nor run."
He fixed his eyes on the burning greatsword in Kevin's hand.
"Given the situation, it seems all that's left is to work on his mind."
Fenghuang froze for a moment, her spectral form flickering.
"Are you going to play along with Kevin's words and claim you really are Su?"
Fenghuang immediately shot the idea down.
"I'll grant that your mental capabilities right now are genuinely formidable, but compared to the real Su, they still fall well short. And given how well Kevin knows Su, this plan is riddled with holes."
"Squad Monitor." Su Yu took a deep breath, forcing down the restless surge of blood and qi within him. "Don't forget — I'm not only Kevin's old friend. I'm Su's old friend too."
"But —"
"Yes." Su Yu cut off Fenghuang's objection. "The two worlds' versions of Kevin have lived different lives, true, and can't simply be treated as one and the same. But they share plenty in common. For instance — once they've made up their mind about something, they're as stubborn as mules."
A flicker of gambler's madness crossed Su Yu's eyes.
"That's a Kaslana family trait."
Fenghuang fell silent a moment before asking, "So what you mean is —?"
"I won't admit I'm Su." Su Yu's right hand slowly tightened around the hilt of his alloy sword. "But I won't deny it either. I'll give him a reason he can't help but believe I am."
Su Yu's consciousness sank to the deepest corner of his mind.
The story text and character settings he'd read in his past life, playing the game, surfaced with perfect clarity in that instant, as though he were flipping through an archive.
Details about Kevin Kaslana, and a string of everyday trivia from Su's high school and college years, rose slowly to the surface of his memory.
He grasped, with precision, the pattern of how the two of them had once interacted.
For this cold Lord of the World Serpent, those carefree, endlessly precious days at Senba Academy were the softest, most guarded scar in his heart.
Su Yu looked at Kevin.
He had no way back.
Even across the World Barrier, that terrifying power still felt like it could scorch the soul.
He met Kevin's pair of temperature-less blue eyes head-on.
In that instant, Su Yu activated a mental simulation of the third-stage Genetic Lock — with a body still only at the second stage, even with sufficient mental reserves, this would cost him more than he could imagine.
He didn't have much time left.
Nor did this body have much left to give.
He didn't simulate any combat technique. Instead, he forced his breathing rhythm, his heartbeat, even the tiniest twitch of his facial muscles, into the shape of that deep, composed Awakened One he remembered — "Su."
It couldn't perfectly match the original, but the core essence remained.
Even among isotopes, there were plenty of shared traits.
He spoke.
His tone was unhurried, carrying a composure bred into the bone, along with just the right measure of weary resignation.
"Drawing the Judgment of Shamash isn't exactly the proper way to say hello."
Su Yu looked at Kevin's stern face.
"You shouldn't have dragged an innocent into this, Kevin."
Standing across the barrier, Kevin's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around Might of An-Utu.
He grew certain once more.
The way this man spoke — that unhurried, deliberate manner, and that composure before the Judgment of Shamash, without even his heartbeat visibly quickening.
This truly was Su's way of carrying himself.
But Kevin didn't lower his guard just yet.
"In this age, there is no one who is unrelated."
Kevin slowly lowered his sword tip, the burning blade angled toward the ground. He stared at Su Yu.
"Especially since she is the Third Herrscher."
Kevin's voice echoed through the empty warehouse.
"Now — will you give me an explanation?"
Su Yu watched Kevin's blade dip, and felt the half-snapped string in his chest loosen, just a little.
He smiled.
That smile carried the familiarity of old friends reunited, along with a touch of wistfulness at recalling the past.
"Still as impatient as ever, I see."
Su Yu planted his alloy sword casually into the ground.
"That reminds me of those days at Senba Academy. Whatever you did, you always threw yourself in headlong, always had to be first."
He looked into Kevin's eyes and let slip a detail only the two of them would know.
"I still remember you rappelling down the drainpipe just to beat everyone else to the cafeteria line."
The corner of Su Yu's mouth curled up further.
"If I recall, you made the campus forum's trending topics the very next day, didn't you? The title was... 'The Prince Who Fell From the Sky to Grab Dinner'?"
Across the barrier, Kevin's ice-blue eyes — frozen, it seemed, for ten thousand years — trembled faintly the instant he heard those words.
Senba Academy.
The drainpipe rappel.
The cafeteria.
Those were trivial, insignificant things that had happened fifty thousand years ago, back when the people named MEI, named Su, named Elysia, were still alive.
But after the long wear of the ages, those trivial things had become the clearest, deepest grooves carved into his memory.
The ice in Kevin's eyes melted away at one small corner.
"Interesting."
His voice remained low, but the suffocating killing intent had receded by more than half.
"Old friends meeting again, reminiscing about the past — that's a necessary ritual indeed. It's been fifteen hundred years since we last spoke like this."
Su Yu didn't stop. He kept following the thread of memory.
"Or would you rather start with how you used to practice free throws on the basketball court?"
A teasing note crept into Su Yu's tone.
"Who would've guessed the basketball team's star, the school's golden boy, started out as someone who couldn't sink a single shot?"
Kevin looked at Su Yu, and for once that perpetually blank face carried a trace of self-deprecating amusement. "Heh."
He let out the faintest sound of laughter.
"You know I was never a natural talent."
"But you were still the strongest among us."
Su Yu let his smile fade, his tone turning solemn.
Kevin paused.
His gaze drifted past Su Yu, up toward the void overhead, shrouded in dark violet mist.
"...But that changes nothing about the final ruin of our civilization."
As he spoke those words, the temperature of the surrounding air seemed to drop by several degrees.
Kevin turned his gaze back to Su Yu.
"Su."
The name, spoken again from Kevin's mouth, now carried a note of certainty.
"You're stalling for time. Aren't you?"
Kevin's eyes sharpened.
"I don't believe my presence here was part of your plan. Otherwise, given your methods, there's no way I could have reached you this easily."
Fenghuang's anxious voice exploded in Su Yu's mind.
"This is bad. From that exchange, Kevin's already nearly convinced you're the Su he knew from early in the previous civilization. But you still need to be careful — don't let any cracks show!"
Fenghuang's voice suddenly turned frantic.
"Su Yu! What's wrong with you? Your mental strength is draining at a terrifying rate, you—"
Su Yu clenched his teeth and answered from deep within.
"I'm running a mental simulation of Su right now. For someone like me, who hasn't broken through to the third stage, this kind of full, inside-out simulation costs far too much."
Su Yu felt as if his brain had been shoved into a high-speed spin dryer, sharp pain jabbing at his nerves like needles.
"I can hold on one more minute, at most."
Su Yu told himself.
"In this minute, I have to find a way to make Kevin fully lower Might of An-Utu..."
Su Yu decided — rather than force himself to keep holding on only to be seen through, he'd lean into the ruse and let it lead him.
Without any warning —
Su Yu's face turned deathly pale in an instant, as if every drop of blood had drained from his body.
His body tilted uncontrollably, listing to one side.
Fenghuang's spectral form rushed forward to catch him, but her hand only passed through Su Yu's body.
In Kevin's eyes.
The aura and traits belonging to his old friend "Su," which he'd found so intensely familiar in this young man, were rapidly disintegrating, vanishing.
Like a holographic projection losing its power supply.
This put Kevin on guard.
"Su."
Kevin took half a step forward.
"What exactly is your plan?"
A note of probing entered his voice.
"This isn't your true body. Are you remotely controlling this person with your power, or... is this merely one of your avatars?"
Su Yu steadied his body.
He panted heavily, his face ashen.
Then, slowly, he lifted his head and gave Kevin a wan, bleak smile. "Kevin."
Su Yu's voice grew weak.
"Do you still remember... the Sands of Time Project?"
Kevin's eyes froze instantly.
"Observing the rise and fall, the birth and destruction, of bubble worlds from a high vantage point," Su Yu said between gasps, "searching for a way to defeat Honkai. That's exactly what you've always believed I've been doing."
Su Yu glanced at Might of An-Utu in Kevin's hand.
"The Herrscher of the Void, and this so-called parallel world." Su Yu's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Isn't it true you believe this is my handiwork?"
Su Yu ran with Kevin's own assumption, claiming ownership of every coincidence he couldn't otherwise explain, without hesitation.
"You guessed right, Kevin. Exactly as you thought — this world, and that Herrscher... are indeed one piece of my plan to defeat Honkai."
He paused, letting the weight of that statement settle into Kevin's heart.
Then he threw out the core lie.
"And if you want to meet the real me... I'm afraid you no longer have the chance."
Kevin froze. "What do you mean?"
The trick to a good lie is to mix truth and falsehood — and best of all, leave no way to verify it.
Su Yu took a deep breath.
"The truth is, my legacy has already been passed down, in your world, to a successor."
Su Yu knew that Durandal had likely already received Su's legacy by now.
This gap in knowledge was the perfect shield.
"And I myself... have entered a world that can no longer be observed."
Su Yu closed his eyes, hiding the emotion in them.
"As an Awakened One, I'm currently locked in a game of Go against an extraordinarily powerful being. We're both trapped in a match with no concept of time."
He opened his eyes and looked at Kevin.
"What stands before you now is nothing but a lingering obsession left behind by 'Su.'"
Su Yu's voice grew hollow, ethereal.
"If it's easier for you with the word 'avatar,' that works too."
He glanced at Fenghuang, still holding him up, then back at Kevin.
"But I want you to remember this. Su Yu is Su Yu. In the end, he isn't the Su you knew."
A note of protectiveness crept into Su Yu's voice.
"He has his own life, his own experiences, his own things he longs for. And I... merely borrowed his identity."
Su Yu sighed.
"Looking for an obsession that could save both worlds. Nothing more."
Kevin's greatsword sank silently.
The flame on the blade's edge extinguished completely, leaving only dark red embers.
He fell into a long silence.
In that silence, he processed everything Su Yu had just thrown at him.
The legacy, passed down.
The match against an unknown being.
An avatar, born of a lingering obsession alone.
It all held together perfectly within Kevin's end-times survival logic.
He understood, better than anyone, the price every person had to pay on the road against Honkai.
He lifted his head.
His gaze passed over the weakened Su Yu, landing on the crimson silhouette that had stood silent the whole time.
"Hua."
Kevin spoke the name.
"Kevin." Fenghuang answered softly.
"..." Kevin paused for two seconds. "I need you to give me an explanation."
In Kevin's understanding, Fu Hua was someone who never lied.
Her integrity and rigid honesty were carved into her bones.
But what he didn't know was —
after walking through this world utterly devoid of Honkai energy, after all the worldly trials she'd endured, Fenghuang still hadn't learned to lie.
But she had learned how to "downplay the crucial while dwelling on the trivial."
Fenghuang sighed.
"Kevin. Both I and Su have poured too many unnecessary expectations onto this child."
Fenghuang looked at Su Yu's pale profile, her voice carrying undisguised tenderness.
"His life... has been thrown into upheaval, one might say, because of me. Because of Su." Fenghuang raised her eyes to Kevin. "Because of you."
Fenghuang wasn't lying.
She had simply, deliberately, omitted one crucial qualifier from that sentence — "Su Yu's world's Su," "Su Yu's world's Kevin."
So every word of it, taken literally, was true.
And Kevin had no way to doubt it.
"Let me cut to the conclusion, Kevin."
Fenghuang's tone turned cold and hard.
"If you want another world trampled beneath Honkai's iron hooves right now."
She pointed at Might of An-Utu in his hand.
"If you want this place burned to ash before your very eyes, then by all means, swing the Judgment of Shamash again."
Fenghuang stepped forward, placing herself between Kevin and Su Yu.
"But if you do — Eden, Griseo, Aponia, Kalpas, Kosma—"
Fenghuang recited the names of the Thirteen Flame-Chasers, one after another.
Each name landed on Kevin's heart like a hammer blow.
At last —
Fenghuang spoke the one name that made Kevin's eyes shudder violently.
"Even Mei."
Fenghuang watched Kevin's pupils contract sharply.
"They will all be destroyed by Honkai."
Kevin Kaslana understood completely now.
"You're telling me that this so-called parallel world," his voice had turned horrifically hoarse, "holds the comrades I once knew."
Kevin's breathing faltered for a moment.
"Even, including Mei."
"That's exactly right." Fenghuang answered without a shred of hesitation.
Kevin's gaze swept back and forth between Fenghuang and Su Yu.
At last, he lowered his head.
"You know."
Kevin's voice carried a despairing kind of loneliness.
"To me, true comrades exist only among those of that vanished civilization — those who have already turned to dust and yellow sand."
"And yet your killing intent has vanished completely, Kevin." Fenghuang looked at him. "I'd never presume to say I understand you, but Elysia once said —"
A trace of bitter amusement touched the corner of Fenghuang's mouth.
"You've actually never changed at all."
Kevin faced Hua before him.
He lowered Might of An-Utu silently to his side.
The ice in his eyes, unmelted for ten thousand years, seemed to gain a faint trace of something one might call helplessness.
"Hua."
Kevin looked at her, his tone flat.
"You've changed."
"Have I?"
"Mm." Kevin nodded. "I suppose that's what people call... humanity."
He looked deeply at Fenghuang.
"I never expected that one day, you too would learn such cunning tricks of speech."
Kevin paused.
"But... change means you're integrating into this era. It means you can still keep moving forward."
He withdrew his gaze.
"So... that's fine, then."
Kevin took a deep breath, turning his attention back to Su Yu.
"Speak, then, Su... or should I say, Su Yu."
Kevin's tone returned to that rational coldness.
"Enough reminiscing without purpose. This space's energy readings are growing chaotic. It'll collapse soon."
He tapped the ground with his sword hilt.
"This so-called 'plan' of yours — how exactly do you intend to carry it out? I'll judge for myself whether it can possibly replace Project STIGMA."
The oppressive weight in Kevin's eyes descended once more.
"But if I still conclude that this plan of yours cannot surpass Project STIGMA, cannot defeat Honkai—"
"Then—"
"Whether you're friend or foe will be a choice left to you."
Su Yu leaned against a piece of wreckage.
He knew the hardest gate had already been passed.
Kevin had logically, fully accepted his patchwork "avatar" theory.
He took a deep breath, forcing his voice to sound less weak.
"You know me — I've always been someone who plans thoroughly."
Su Yu looked at Kevin.
"But under these circumstances, in this crumbling space, I can't offer you more detailed proof."
Su Yu held up three fingers.
"Three days."
He gave the deadline he'd already calculated in his mind.
"Give me three days. Three days from now, my 'envoy' will naturally come and prove to you a way to defeat Honkai and cross Finality — one beyond Project STIGMA."
"Three days." Kevin repeated.
That timeframe was unreasonably short.
"But how can you guarantee that in three days, you'll actually come?"
"I can't guarantee it."
Su Yu looked into Kevin's eyes.
In this moment, he no longer needed any mental simulation. The sigh that escaped him came straight from the heart.
"But Kevin, you and I both know, deep down, that Project STIGMA is the worst possible plan."
Su Yu's tone was filled with the weariness of one who had witnessed countless sacrifices.
"And I... I don't want to see you walk down that road."
Kevin Kaslana fell into a long silence.
Over fifty thousand long years, his heart had grown as hard and cold as ice, but that didn't mean the human heart within him had stopped beating.
Facing Su's forlorn words.
Kevin closed his eyes.
How could he not know?
That the reason Su had crossed countless bubble worlds, searching desperately for a way to surpass Project STIGMA, wasn't only to save the people of this era —
but also to keep him, Kevin Kaslana, from bearing that sin alone, walking a road abandoned by everyone he'd ever loved.
Kevin opened his eyes. "Fine."
He agreed.
"Anything else?"
Su Yu turned his head, looking at Raiden Mei, who stood on the other side of the transparent barrier, gripping her katana tensely, having said nothing this whole time.
"That girl."
Su Yu pointed at Mei.
"I want you to guarantee she won't be harmed."
Kevin followed Su Yu's finger.
"I won't lay a hand on her." Kevin answered crisply.
"And another thing." Su Yu pressed further. "As for Arc City's Project STIGMA — using Honkai-energy bombs to filter the population — that's nothing but a pointless massacre."
"I know."
Kevin watched Su Yu.
"But I also need a guarantee — some assurance that you will come."
Kevin rested Might of An-Utu on his shoulder.
"I won't stop Jackal's plan."
He gave his bottom line.
"If you truly have a plan that can surpass Project STIGMA, show it to me in three days, and stop her yourself."
Kevin turned away.
"Don't blame me, Su. You should know — we don't have much time left."
Su Yu gritted his teeth. "Fine," he forced himself to answer. "I agree."
Kevin nodded coldly.
Just as this Lord of the World Serpent was about to turn and walk into the depths of the ruins —
Su Yu suddenly spoke, calling out to stop him.
"Instant noodles."
Kevin's footsteps halted.
"What?"
He didn't turn around.
"This world," Su Yu said, looking at Kevin's lonely back, "also has really good instant noodles."
The air fell silent for two seconds.
Su Yu continued, "I'll have her bring you some."
Another long silence.
Then —
"You should know that for a Fusion Warrior, eating isn't a necessity."
Kevin's voice drifted back.
He paused.
"I'll look forward to it. Instant noodles, from another world."
Kevin tilted his head slightly, sweeping an indifferent glance over Raiden Mei, who still stood in her wary stance.
"Third Herrscher."
Kevin's tone carried no ripple of emotion.
"I won't interfere in whatever's between you, Jackal, and Raven."
"Your life, your death, your fate — those are yours alone to decide."
With those words said —
Kevin Kaslana's silhouette turned into a streak of blue light, vanishing into the depths of the ruins.
He withdrew from this collapsing space.
And the instant Kevin's presence completely vanished —
it was as if every bone had been pulled from Su Yu's body.
He finally couldn't hold on any longer, and collapsed, nearly boneless, onto the ground covered in purple crystalline dust.
The severe drain on his mental strength made his vision flicker black in waves.
His brain felt as if it were being sawed back and forth, that primal agony from the depths of his soul forcing a muffled groan out of him.
"Su Yu!"
After Kevin left, Mei rushed immediately to the now-faint transparent barrier.
She pressed both hands against the barrier, staring anxiously at Su Yu, collapsed on the ground.
"Are you all right? Just now, you—"
"Listen to me."
Su Yu's hand pressed against the barrier too.
Through that invisible wall, his palm and Mei's hand overlapped.
He bit down hard on his lips, cracked from dehydration.
The sweet, coppery taste of blood stung his nerves, forcing him to hold onto the last thread of consciousness.
He looked at the young woman's eyes, brimming with worry, before him.
"Mei, listen to me."
Su Yu's voice was hoarse, like a man dying of thirst.
"Kiana will come back."
"She will definitely come back."
"In three days."
Every word Su Yu spoke cost him tremendous effort.
"Until then... you have to make sure you stay safe. If you can, tell the others aboard the Hyperion about this."
Su Yu coughed violently from the extreme pain.
Warm liquid dripped from his nose, splattering onto the ground with soft pats.
His nosebleed flowed uncontrollably.
"You could even... drag Otto into this along with you."
"You — stop talking!"
Mei watched the blood trailing down Su Yu's chin.
"Squad Monitor!" Mei called out anxiously to Fenghuang. "What exactly is going on here? Why is he like this?"
Facing this stranger who, despite never having met her before, had saved the person most important to her.
Facing this man who, with only a few words moments ago, had spared her from the suffocating threat of that terrifyingly powerful Kaslana.
Mei had already come to see him as someone she could entrust her life to.
Now, seeing him in such agony, on the very brink of death, Mei felt a sharp, wrenching pain in her chest.
She didn't know exactly what had passed between this man and Kiana.
Nor did she know what heavy past he carried on his shoulders.
But at least, in this moment —
he had protected that other world in his own way, and had protected her, here and now, as well.
"Mei."
Fenghuang's illusory voice carried a sorrow she could barely hide.
"That part of the conversation just now, between him and Kevin — the part about him being Su — that was a lie we fabricated."
Fenghuang tried to reach out to support Su Yu, only to find her fingertips passing straight through his body without resistance.
She was nothing more now than a thought-projection that could scatter at any moment — unable to do anything at all.
"To avoid being exposed in front of a being like Kevin, Su Yu had no choice but to use an ability that costs an enormous toll — one that is now destroying his mind."
Fenghuang turned toward Mei.
"Please remember the agreement Su Yu and Kevin just made. Once you get out of here, take care of yourself."
Su Yu wiped his face carelessly with the back of a blood-stained hand.
He gave Mei, on the other side of the barrier, a strained smile.
"I'm fine."
Su Yu forced the words out through gritted teeth.
"See you in three days."
Raiden Mei clenched the fists hanging at her sides.
That long-familiar sense of helplessness, in the face of absolute power, surged over her heart once again like a tide.
She knew clearly.
Saving Kiana, tormented by a Herrscher's consciousness, was never going to be as simple as saying it out loud.
And the pressure and danger this man had to bear, facing a monster like Kevin, was terrifying beyond words.
Yet he still wore that weak, exhausted smile — to comfort her, of all people, in return.
Ha. Mei laughed bitterly to herself.
This man.
Why was he, just like Kiana, a fool who only ever thought of others?
They'd only just met, for the first time.
Why go this far?
"I understand."
Mei forcefully wiped away the moisture gathering at the corner of her eye.
"I'll take care of myself."
She looked down at Su Yu on the ground.
"And I'll wait. For Kiana's return."
"Good."
Su Yu nodded with great difficulty.
He lifted his right hand, heavy as if filled with lead.
The System's countdown on his retina had turned into a blood-red warning.
He pulled out, from the System's storage compartment, the hand cannon Tesla had custom-built for him — "Neutron Star."
Su Yu poured every last remaining scrap of Star of Eden's gravity energy into the barrel, in a frenzy.
The muzzle lit up with a piercing, pale blue glow.
He no longer even had the strength left to aim properly. He simply pointed the muzzle, by feel alone, toward the faintly visible Honkai energy core deep within the fog.
"BANG!!!"
The specially-made, high-explosive armor-piercing round, accelerated by the gravity field, instantly shattered the core.
As the core burst apart —
the entire space containing the abandoned warehouse began to shudder like an earthquake.
Massive slabs of metal plating on the ceiling began to fall.
That single shot, like a pump draining a well, drained the last scrap of energy from Su Yu's body.
His vision was swallowed by great swaths of black.
He collapsed completely onto the ground, without even the strength left to move a single finger.
"Su — Su Yu—"
Fenghuang's anxious voice grew fragmented in his mind.
Due to the disintegrating collapse of the Spatial Rift's structure —
the Spiritual Link between Fenghuang and Su Yu was growing impossibly weak, static filling the entire channel.
"Run — run—"
Mei, who was about to turn and sprint for the exit, spun back around abruptly.
She saw Su Yu lying motionless on the ground.
"Squad Monitor?!"
Mei's eyes went wide, and she screamed in horror.
Fenghuang pressed her lips tight, her spectral form flickering violently in the tremors.
"I'm sorry, I... I can't touch his body."
Fenghuang's voice even carried a note of despairing sobs.
"Right now, I'm nothing but a projection of thought that could scatter at any moment!"
"Then what do we do?!"
Mei stared at Su Yu, lying lifeless on the ground, her eyes reddening in desperation.
The Spatial Rift was collapsing far faster than she'd imagined.
The void overhead was being torn apart, everything around them crumbling into dust.
If this continued, he would be left behind in this void space, reduced to nothing at all —
"I'm fine!"
Su Yu's hoarse voice suddenly rang out.
Somehow, he forced himself up, hands braced against the ground, wobbling as he pulled himself back to his feet, little by little.
"Get out of here now!" Su Yu shouted at Mei. "If you die here..."
Mei watched that unsteady silhouette, teetering within the collapsing space.
"That idiot Kiana would be heartbroken!"
Mei bit down hard on her own lip, drawing a thread of blood.
"I'll be waiting for you and Kiana."
She turned, sprinting toward the exit belonging to her own world.
"You'd better stay alive, Su Yu!"
With a deafening roar, Mei's figure plunged into a wall of white light and vanished.
"Cough, cough... cough..."
Su Yu knelt on the ground, coughing violently.
Each cough brought up mouthfuls of blood.
"Damn it, I really overdid it this time..."
Fenghuang's voice in his mind had grown almost too faint to hear.
"Su Yu." Fenghuang's voice was full of regret and self-blame. "Given your body's current state... there's no way you'll reach the exit in time."
The ground all around was collapsing in great swaths, falling into an endless Abyss.
"Damn it."
Fenghuang let out an anguished cry.
"Why — why am I so powerless right now!"
"Why can't I do anything at all!"
"No, Squad Monitor."
Su Yu wiped a hand haphazardly across his face, smearing blood.
He tilted his head back, looking up at the sky, collapsing in a frenzy.
"We still have a way. We still have one last option."
He forced his hand up, fingertips brushing against the tarot card he'd kept hidden deep in his consciousness this whole time.
[Death].
"I'm going to pour everything I have left — every scrap of strength keeping my vital signs stable — into a Spatial Jump."
Su Yu's voice had faded to barely a whisper.
He no longer had the strength to speak louder.
"I can't guarantee where I'll end up."
He looked at Fenghuang's fading, ever-thinning spectral form, twisting his mouth into an ugly smile.
"I might lose consciousness completely the moment the jump happens."
"So, please, Squad Monitor."
Su Yu drew one final breath.
"Once you're out there... you have to find me."
The tarot card representing ending and rebirth burst into a dazzling light.
As the forced Spatial Jump activated —
Su Yu's body let out a muffled cry of pain under the powerful distorting force generated by the spatial rift.
Then —
his entire body turned into a streak of light, forcibly torn into an unknown spatial passage.
Facing the intense tremors of the spatial transfer, Su Yu completely lost consciousness, his mind sinking entirely into darkness.
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