The next day, at dawn.
The sky above Arc City hung heavy and gray, thick clouds pressing down so low that not a sliver of sunlight broke through.
A full eight hours had passed.
Still, there was no news of Su Yu anywhere within Arc City.
Bronie had mobilized every resource she could muster on the dark web, hacking into every surveillance camera in Arc City, including the military's own.
Eden had likewise called on her deeply entrenched financial power and connections throughout the city.
Lewis, meanwhile, had thrown up the highest-level lockdown around District 7 under the guise of a counter-terrorism drill, dispatching swarms of SWAT officers with search dogs to comb the area inch by inch.
Nothing.
There was nothing beneath the rubble.
No blood, no remains — not even a single scrap of fabric from Su Yu's clothes.
Anti-Entropy's underground laboratory.
The air in Conference Room One was as stifling as a sponge soaked through with water; every breath felt like an effort.
Overhead, the ventilation system hummed.
Bronie sat at the far end of the long table.
The ashtray in front of her was piled with colorful bubblegum wrappers, but today her mouth wasn't working on anything at all.
She just stared at the screen in front of her, scrolling through meaningless strings of code, her fingers not even resting on the keyboard.
Kiana sat beside the seat Su Yu usually occupied.
Her eyes were swollen red, and her once-smooth white hair hung in tangled disarray over her shoulders.
She sat with her hands folded on the table, dried blood still crusted under her fingernails from digging through the rubble the day before — she hadn't managed to wash it all off.
Kevin sat across from her, arms crossed over his chest, jaw tight. He hadn't spoken a single word since coming back at midnight, sitting there like an ice sculpture radiating cold.
Even Siegfried, who usually loved cracking bad jokes to lighten up meetings, just leaned back in his chair, staring blankly at the ceiling light, the stubble around his mouth looking scruffier and more downtrodden than usual.
Su Yu's disappearance was like ripping the core drive shaft straight out of a massive machine that had only just been assembled and was running at full speed.
Only now did everyone in the room truly realize something: this organization — which looked, on the surface, like a loose patchwork stitched together from several separate factions — had only managed to run so smoothly this far because of the perpetually lazy-looking young man holding everything together at its center.
His strength, his intelligence network, his coordination — all of it was an indispensable piece of the fight against the apocalypse coming in five months.
And now, he was gone.
It was, without question, a devastating blow to a defensive line that had only just begun to take shape.
"The studio."
Eden was the first to break the deathly silence.
She wore a sharply tailored business suit today, her makeup flawless without a single blemish.
But her eyes, which usually carried a trace of languid amusement, were now calm to the point of coldness.
"I told them Su Yu had gone out on a few days' field research. Elysia's been helping keep the staff calm — internally, we can hold it together for now."
"Three days from now is the day Wotan activates and the Starfire soldiers arrive to witness it and formally rejoin the ranks."
Rita stood behind Eden, holding her black work log.
Her posture was as impeccable as ever, but her voice was pitched half a tone lower than usual.
"I could issue the mobilization order to the soldiers through Lord Su Yu's channel," Rita said, closing the log. "But if he, as Supreme Commander, is absent on such an important day, the blow to morale would probably be..."
She didn't finish the sentence. No one needed her to.
"That giant idiot." Kiana's hands slowly clenched on the table.
"Not that long ago... he was a useless dead weight who could barely manage to kill a chicken." Her voice was hoarse, as if something were caught in her throat. "And yet..."
Kevin didn't look at her, only turned his head slightly aside.
He'd known Su Yu the longest of anyone here.
He knew better than anyone what kind of person Su Yu had originally been.
A textbook shut-in who'd rather lie down than sit, who'd throw money at a problem before he'd ever lift a finger.
But over these past months, he'd watched Su Yu change, bit by bit, with his own eyes.
He still complained constantly, still loved cracking pointless jokes — but whenever responsibility landed on his shoulders, even when that responsibility was the crushing weight of two worlds' apocalypses dropped on him without warning, he never once flinched, not even half a step.
"Over this past month, Lord Su Yu's average daily sleep hasn't exceeded four hours." Rita's voice rang out in the quiet conference room.
"During the day he handles all the tangled business of Honkai Impact 3rd, and haggles with Shenzhou's officials. At night he still comes to base for the high-intensity combat training regimen I designed for him. He always told me he was fine, that he could take on even more."
Rita raised her eyes.
"But..."
"But people aren't machines. Even the most precise machine wears down eventually, reaches its limit eventually."
Bronie swiveled her chair to face Rita.
"Are you saying that maybe it was this constant, redlining pace that made the Boss finally misjudge something, and that's why he couldn't get out?"
Bronie closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, then snapped them open.
"Ha..." She let out a dry, hollow laugh.
"That guy really is an out-and-out idiot, but he's not hopeless-idiot-level stupid." Bronie's words came fast now. "If even the Boss — who's got a life-saving trick like spatial folding-jumps — couldn't get out of that damned rift, there's only one explanation—"
Bronie planted both hands on the table and leaned forward.
"Either he ran into a situation he absolutely couldn't escape from. Or — if he'd chosen to run, it would have put us, and maybe this entire world, in some kind of instantly fatal danger."
When Bronie finished speaking, everyone in the room fell silent for a moment.
Welt sat at the head of the table, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a white-gloved finger.
"Bronie's reasoning does hold up." Welt's gaze swept across the room. "I don't think there's anyone or anything that could truly hold back a Herrscher of the Void dead-set on escaping — even an incomplete Authority, it's still one that manipulates the dimension of space itself."
At the words "Herrscher of the Void," the Gem of Conquest deep in Kiana's chest seemed to give a faint, answering tremor.
The presence she'd sensed the night before through the connection channel — Mei's presence — surfaced in her mind again.
"I think..." Kiana bit her lower lip.
"Maybe... maybe he was trying to protect Mei."
The name landed, and everyone in the room went still.
Kiana didn't pause. She repeated, word for word, what Fenghuang had told her through the Spiritual Link the night before, right up until the connection had cut out.
"Another world's Kevin — the World Serpent's Kevin Kaslana. And... my dear friend, Raiden Mei. They were both inside the Spatial Rift at the same time."
At that, Kevin's crossed arms fell to his sides.
"Another world's... me." He repeated the words, his usually blank face twisting into something deeply conflicted. "Could it be..."
"If it's Kevin, then it isn't strange at all." Welt let out a heavy sigh.
He pushed a paper report lying beside him into the middle of the table.
"Actually, Tesla just finished reading the residual spatial-collapse-rate data left behind by the abandoned recycling plant's Rift. I'll just give you the conclusion."
Welt looked around at everyone, his tone entirely flat.
"The barrier between the two worlds has been drastically weakened. Based on Tesla and Einstein's calculations, if it took some extremely powerful energy shock, the barrier may very well have already shattered ahead of schedule."
Welt tapped the report.
"And Kevin Kaslana — that world's Kevin — is the strongest Fusion Warrior from the previous civilization. A single full-power strike of his once forced even the Herrscher of Finality offline for a full twelve hours. If he'd set his mind on attacking the barrier itself, then—"
He didn't finish, but everyone felt a chill crawl up their spine.
The Honkai invasion would come early.
And Su Yu—
He'd probably calculated exactly that, and that was why he hadn't used the Herrscher of the Void's power to escape.
Besides—
Raiden Mei had still been there.
And there was no way Su Yu would ever abandon Raiden Mei to die.
Welt's gaze lingered on Siegfried and Kevin for a moment.
"Kevin's strength isn't on the same level as anyone in this current civilization."
Siegfried frowned, leaning forward.
"Even if you say that, we don't have any concrete sense of it." Siegfried scratched his chin. "Is there some more specific example you could compare it to?"
Welt thought for a moment.
"You remember the Divine Key, Star of Eden — the weapon Su Yu uses to create gravity fields."
Siegfried nodded.
"Star of Eden running at full power is equivalent to one attack from a Herrscher." Welt's voice stayed level. "And in that world, the Herrscher of Earth single-handedly sank the entire Mu Continent — that's power on a scale that can annihilate an entire landmass."
Welt paused for two seconds.
"If that Herrscher of Earth and that Kevin actually fought, what odds would you give?"
Siegfried blinked, his single-celled brain struggling to process the numbers behind a fight between gods.
"Thirty-seventy?" he offered, uncertain.
Welt gave a bitter laugh.
"It's ninety-ten."
The number Welt gave seemed to drop the temperature in the room by several degrees.
"In that single instant, Kevin could kill that Herrscher of Earth nine times over."
Welt watched everyone's shocked expressions and kept going.
"You might think that's a shocking exaggeration, but... forgive my bluntness."
Welt looked at Kiana.
"Even Kiana, Mei, and Bronya — even if all three of you regained your full Herrscher power at once, and threw in every S-rank Valkyrie Schicksal currently has, all together, none of you would stand a chance against him."
Siegfried's mouth fell open.
"That's..." He sank back into his chair.
Could the gap in strength really be this absurdly, senselessly vast?
"No wonder you said it's not even the same dimension of power..." Siegfried muttered.
But then something else occurred to him.
"But put another way, if even a Kevin that strong couldn't lead the previous civilization to defeat Honkai in the end, then that means—"
"Before Finality, all are ants." Welt finished the thought for him.
"I'm not quoting some line from a web novel. I'm stating the most basic — fact of all."
Welt's words landed like a bucket of ice water dumped over everyone's heads.
Even that Kevin — a monster who could one-shot a Herrscher — couldn't defeat the Herrscher of Finality.
And their own world, facing a full-scale Honkai invasion in five months, hadn't even finished building a single decent Titan mech — so what did they have to fight Honkai with?
The atmosphere had grown suffocating.
"There is a way to defeat Honkai." Welt spoke again, pulling everyone's attention back.
"But it requires several absolutely critical keys."
Welt looked at Kiana.
"And of them, Kiana, you're the single most indispensable piece. Not just because of the Herrscher of the Void's Authority — but because of your very existence."
Welt paused.
"In other words—"
"Kiana, if you were to give up right now, to decide none of it meant anything anymore—"
Welt's gaze turned sharp and severe.
"—then that would be the same as abandoning the fate of two worlds, and abandoning the last hope Su Yu left behind."
Kiana sat there, feeling lost.
"That..." her voice trembled. "Su Yu never told me... anything like that."
As far as she'd understood, she was just Su Yu's model — a walking liability who needed sheltering under his wing, who might spiral out of control at any moment.
She'd never known she was supposedly the so-called "most indispensable key" of all.
Welt sighed. "Because he thought the time wasn't right yet. Because he didn't want you carrying a burden heavy enough to crush a person before you had to. Because he... wanted to protect you."
Welt's words settled over the room.
Kiana clenched her fists tight.
Her nails dug back into the still-unhealed wounds on her palms, a sharp sting of pain.
That giant idiot, Su Yu.
How much more had he been hiding from her?
So that she could live in this world like an ordinary girl. So he could heal all the scars covering her body.
How much had he been shouldering alone, in secret — burdens heavy enough to make even Kevin feel it was hopeless?
Kiana didn't dare think any further.
She was afraid that if she followed the thought even a little further, she'd lose control again and break down crying right here.
That wasn't what Su Yu would want to see.
Welt drew a deep breath and rose to his feet, planting both hands on the table.
"We don't have time left to spare for grief, and we can't let his efforts go to waste—"
Welt lifted his head, looking up into the empty air.
"Ai-chan, can we begin the memory extraction now?"
A flicker of green pixel light bloomed, and a virtual figure with a cabbage-shaped hairstyle and a sailor uniform appeared above the conference table.
The super AI, Ai Hyperion.
"Anytime, Uncle Yang~" Ai Hyperion's voice still carried that same energetic, upbeat digital chirp.
Kiana looked at Welt, startled.
"Teacher Yang..." She wanted to speak up, to stop him.
She knew how dangerous the memory extraction plan was.
It was tantamount to making Welt relive a death inside his own mind.
Doing this with Su Yu gone — if it spiraled out of control, there wouldn't even be anyone who could forcibly sever the connection.
It was too dangerous.
But Welt didn't wait for her to finish.
"Anti-Entropy can't stop operating because of this. The plan absolutely cannot be delayed."
Welt looked at Kiana, his eyes fixed with unshakable resolve.
"For the sake of this world, and for the time Su Yu bought us with his life, we have to keep moving forward." "Besides—"
Welt looked at Kiana again.
"Since you're still safe and whole right now, since whatever System limitation binds the two of you hasn't made you vanish—"
Welt pushed up his glasses.
"—that proves Su Yu, the one bound to that System, is still alive."
Welt's words made Kiana's eyes suddenly light up.
"Until then, we can't give up on any shred of hope."
Kiana nodded firmly.
Yes.
She was still here.
She hadn't turned transparent. She hadn't disappeared.
That meant that on the other end of that invisible bond, Su Yu's vital signs still persisted.
She had no idea where the folding-jump had taken Su Yu, no idea what kind of desperate situation he was trapped in now, didn't even know whether he was still conscious.
But at least—
He was still alive.
As long as he was alive, she couldn't give up.
And even if he died, at least she'd have his company.
Dying together for love? Heh. That wouldn't be such a bad way to go, romantically speaking.
"I understand, Uncle Yang." Kiana rose to her feet.
She didn't wipe the dust from her face, didn't so much as glance at her palms, which were still seeping blood.
She drew a deep breath.
She sealed away every trace of weakness, confusion, and tears — along with all the despair from the rubble the night before — deep into the bottom of her heart, locking it down tight.
She swept her gaze across her companions in the room.
"We really don't have any more time to mourn the past."
Kiana's voice had lost its earlier hoarseness, carrying instead a calm compressed down to something hard and dense.
"What stands before us is the apocalypse itself — a deadline of less than a hundred and fifty days."
She stood ramrod straight.
"Since I came to this world, since this world gave me a second life—"
Kiana's eyes blazed bright — the same flame that only ever kindled in House Kaslana when facing certain doom.
"—then until the moment I burn myself out entirely for this world's sake, I will never stop moving forward."
She bowed low.
A deep bow to everyone in the room.
"For the people you all treasure. And for that idiot who's... absolutely going to come back."
Kiana raised her head.
"Please. Lend me your strength."
The room fell silent for two seconds.
"Heh." A dry snort came from the side.
Tesla sat back with her arms crossed, the corner of her mouth curling into a not-unpleasant smirk.
"Not bad." She looked at Kiana.
"You're finally starting to look like the hero from one of those action movies, Kiana."
Tesla was the first to stand, slapping a palm down on the table.
"Well said! Screw the moping! We don't have time to sit around here sniveling!"
She pointed at Kiana, then swung her finger to Rita behind her.
"Before the next Spatial Rift shows up! Kiana, Rita! I'll personally get your dedicated armor and cores ready! Every single spec on those blueprints, I'll turn into reality!"
Tesla flipped her red twin-tails and spun toward the door.
"And if I can't pull it off, the two of you can pour a pot of freshly boiled black tea straight in my face!"
She yanked the conference room door open.
"Bird's-nest hair! Let's go! Quit dawdling! There's still tens of thousands of data sets waiting to run in the lab!"
Einstein rose calmly, gave everyone a slight nod, and followed Tesla out of the room.
Mobius sat in her chair, twirling a glass stirring rod around inside her empty coffee cup a couple of times.
"That little lab rat isn't the type to die young." Mobius let out a cold laugh.
"Such a perfect test subject — there's no way he's allowed to just die in some nameless rift like that."
She stood, a dangerous glint flashing in her green eyes.
"Even if he's going to die, he can only die on my operating table."
Mobius smoothed down the hem of her lab coat.
"The mass-production plan for the Honkai-energy neutralizing serum is finalized. Before long, Arc City will hold a free citywide vaccination drive, under the guise of guarding against a new strain of flu."
She walked toward the door.
"If any of you need that potent hair-growth tonic, or that life-draining energy drink, over the coming days, come get it from my lab yourselves."
Before stepping out, she tossed one last line back without turning around.
"For that lab rat's sake, I'll grudgingly give you all a twenty percent discount."
With a click of the door lock, Mobius was gone too.
Kevin Kaslana rose to his feet.
He didn't look again at the report assessing the combat strength of that other world's "him."
He drew a deep breath.
"Let's go, Dad."
Kevin said to Siegfried.
Siegfried blinked, then rose to stand with him.
"I have to get stronger."
There was none of the earlier heaviness left in Kevin's voice.
The cold shell settled back over him, but this time, something burned beneath that ice that had never been there before.
Siegfried looked at his son.
He reached out and clapped Kevin's shoulder twice, hard.
"Not just you." Siegfried said. "Me too... all of us. We all have to get stronger."
Not just to face the apocalypse.
But also so that when that bastard came back, they'd be worthy of standing beside him.
Father and son walked out of the conference room, one after the other.
Eden rose as well.
"The studio, and the negotiations with Shenzhou's officials over production-capacity allocation — leave those to me."
She gave Kiana a small, smiling nod.
Without another wasted word, her heels clicking in steady steps, she left the enormous conference room of Anti-Entropy's underground lab.
That left only Welt, Kiana, and Bronie — the latter seated at the main console, preparing to assist Ai Hyperion with the memory-extraction procedure.
The ventilation system kept humming overhead.
"Teacher Yang..." Kiana looked at Old Yang.
In the end, she still hadn't told the others who'd just left about the memory-extraction procedure's extremely high fatality risk.
It would only add an unnecessary burden.
Welt took off his glasses, pulled a soft cloth from his pocket, and slowly wiped the lenses. He cleaned them with great care.
Then he put the glasses back on.
Behind the lenses, his eyes were calm as a still, unrippled lake.
"Let's begin." Welt looked at Kiana.
His tone was gentle, yet carried an unshakeable, undeniable force.
"Saving the world isn't a responsibility that falls only on you youngsters, Kiana."
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