Thirty-five minutes later.
Anti-Entropy's underground laboratory, strategic command center.
The room was already packed.
Siegfried, in his slightly faded leather jacket, was speaking to Cecilia in a low voice.
Cecilia's face, which had been rather pale, had visibly relaxed once she saw Su Yu return safely.
Kiana sat on a tall stool, cradling a freshly made cup of instant noodles, blowing on it to cool it down.
Rita stood quietly off to the side.
The broken scythe had already been carried off by Tesla for study.
Rita was using a hot towel to wipe the gunpowder residue off Su Yu's sleeve.
Tesla, meanwhile, was typing code furiously at several massive screens, muttering a string of research jargon nobody else could follow.
In the corner, Bronie's holographic projection was yawning.
When Sakura walked into the room, thick with both sci-fi atmosphere and tension, the mild chatter died instantly.
Every pair of eyes landed on the girl with long pink hair, sitting stiffly upright with a solemn expression.
Sakura, in turn, was studying everyone else.
Then.
Her gaze locked onto the man sitting beside Siegfried.
A shock of white hair, a face cold enough to have just come out of a freezer, and in his hands — of all things — a file folder stamped "Administrative Department."
Kevin.
The corner of Sakura's mouth twitched.
In that other world, she was the Office Slave going bald over KPIs day after day.
And Kevin was her aloof roommate at the Golden Courtyard, who seemed interested in nothing except instant noodles.
"I should have guessed," Sakura sighed.
She rubbed her temples, a little helplessly, and the tension finally drained from her shoulders.
"With Su Yu involved, of course a silent brick like you couldn't escape this either, Kevin."
Kevin turned his head, expressionless, and shot Su Yu a glance.
"Actually," Kevin said.
His voice carried no inflection at all, yet it dripped with resentment.
"This guy kept even me completely in the dark. If he hadn't nearly gotten himself killed last time, I probably wouldn't have found out he'd built this whole underground demon den until a Honkai Beast tore our shared apartment apart."
The instant those words left his mouth, the razor-edge tension in the command center evaporated completely.
From across the room, Tesla snorted. "That's Su Yu for you — born to be a heartless boss!"
Sakura looked at this group, currently roasting each other and looking nothing like "world saviors."
It occurred to her, suddenly, that compared to that cold, rigid family of hers, this absurd little workplace... wasn't so bad after all.
"All right, enough chatter," Su Yu said, rapping his knuckles on the table.
The group, still gathered together griping about their "demon den" working conditions, snapped their attention back to him in perfect unison.
Kevin quietly tucked his still-unopened limited-edition instant noodles behind his arm. Siegfried pulled back the hand that had been reaching for a cigarette in his pocket. Only Kiana still sat clutching her noodle cup, a little bead of hot oil balanced on the tip of her nose, staring blankly at the head of the table.
Su Yu looked at this group of people who, in this world, would be called gods or grandmasters, and couldn't help but sigh.
"I know everyone's been running nonstop today and is exhausted. But some things need to be said now, while they're still fresh, or it'll be too late later."
He swiped a hand across the control panel in front of him, and a massive holographic display unfolded in the center of the room.
It showed the online player count curves for Honkai Impact 3rd across various platforms.
"Point one — we've confirmed a pretty screwed-up pattern."
Su Yu shrugged, his eyes scanning the screen.
"Every time Honkai Impact 3rd releases a new version and the players' Emotion Points hit their peak, this world's barrier shows a synchronized frequency tremor."
"To put it simply — the more they cry and curse, the faster the rifts drill open."
At that, Su Yu pointed at his own nose and gave the screen a helpless smile.
"So picture this: right now, this crowd of players is huddled behind their phone screens, crying and cursing 'that old bastard Su Yu' on the forums — while this old bastard is out there in the rifts fighting monsters that nearly kill him, all for their sake."
"And I just think... being a good guy is really, really hard."
In the corner, Bronie blew a pink bubble of gum until it popped with a snap.
"You could consider posting a photo of your injuries on the official feed tomorrow, along with a donation link. Maybe this crowd will cry and curse you while maxing out your servers with top-ups."
Su Yu rolled his eyes and ignored the hacker girl's teasing.
"Point two — the core issue. The rift's threat level is rising."
He flipped away from the traffic curve and pulled up a video clip instead.
It was footage from a camera mounted atop a Genome Reaper's head, cleaned up in post by Ai Hyperion's noise reduction — clear enough now to make out the skin creases on a Zombie's arm.
"Last time it was just an Ice-Fire Honkai Emperor. But this time..."
The holographic image shifted.
It showed the interior of the rift at the top of the mountain pass road.
From Su Yu and Welt's point of view, the world took on a nauseating shade of purple.
The sky seemed to churn as if constantly retching. Every building was reproduced at a 1:1 scale, yet looked like half-melted candles.
And within those warped shadows, a group of strange, unsettling creatures had appeared.
Some looked like translucent jellyfish floating in midair, their long tentacles sweeping through the air without stirring any breeze at all — instead sending out ripples like folds in space itself.
Others were eerie mirror-images of Honkai Beasts — enormous in size, yet moving without a single sound.
"Quantum monsters," Su Yu said.
As soon as the words left his mouth, the mood in the conference room noticeably sank.
The footage shifted into slow motion.
A compressed round, fired from the Neutron Star hand cannon Su Yu was wielding, accelerated under gravity and slammed into the core of a jellyfish-like monster.
But the instant it hit, the round seemed to pass through some thick, viscous syrup.
Its speed dropped sharply, and the impact force — more than enough to shatter steel plate — was somehow shaved away the moment it touched the monster's body.
On screen, the creature only wobbled slightly. It gave its tentacle a casual flick, carving a bottomless gash into the concrete floor.
"Physical attack immunity," Tesla said, her eyes locked onto the fluctuating waveforms.
"Not just physical immunity," Su Yu added, drawing the White Dwarf dagger from the small of his back.
In the recording, only after activating high-frequency vibration did the blade manage to score a real wound on that purple shell — and even then, it only cut into the surface layer.
"These monsters exist in a peculiar quantum state. Unless our attack frequency resonates with theirs, to them our bullets and bricks are basically the same as air."
Welt sat in his chair, fingers laced together beneath his chin.
"My gravitational suppression met similar resistance. Cranking up the output can still crush them, but these things are just foot soldiers, at best. If something from deeper in the Sea of Quanta comes crawling out..."
Sakura sat in her seat, back ramrod straight.
Her right hand rested unconsciously on her knee.
Beneath what was supposedly a game company, they were discussing how to fight off invaders from a higher dimension.
That absurd sense of reality left her more light-headed than breaking a speed record on the mountain pass road ever had.
"But there is some good news," Su Yu said, raising his voice slightly to pull everyone's attention back.
On the screen, a golden pattern lit up around Su Yu's body.
His hand closed into a loose grip in midair, then swept out sharply.
Crack.
A rift tore open out of nowhere, right in the midst of the quantum monsters.
No explosion. No roar.
The creatures that had been immune to physical impact shattered into silent, weightless particles the instant they touched the spatial slash — like a pencil sketch wiped away by an eraser.
"Authority of Space," Su Yu said, retracting his hand and gesturing to the room with a small bow.
"The Sea of Quanta is bizarre, sure, but at the end of the day it's still built on spatial dimensions. The Herrscher of the Void's power has a natural dominance over it. Which means..."
He looked over at Kiana, who was gnawing on half a strand of noodle.
"Kiana and I are currently the only two people who can deliver a truly devastating blow to this kind of monster."
Kiana swallowed her noodles. She was a little flushed with everyone staring at her, but she still puffed out her chest.
"Sounds impressive and all, but using Herrscher Authority is exhausting! So Su Yu, remember to buy me double the strawberry daifuku tomorrow to make up for it!"
The tension, wound almost tight enough to crack, was completely deflated by that one word: daifuku.
Su Yu let out a helpless laugh, then gestured for Kiana and Rita to step forward.
"All right, enough about me. Time for you two to show the good doctors what you did in the industrial district."
"Kiana, Rita, you're up."
Kiana went "Ah?", clearly still pretending she hadn't heard.
Tesla, without even looking up, said, "Don't play dead."
Kiana had no choice but to stand up. She shot Su Yu a glare first, as if to say, more overtime for me, huh. But once she actually walked up front and stood beside the display, her reluctance faded.
Rita followed her up.
She quite naturally took over the explanation.
"Before we entered the factory building, the Genome Reaper hound scouted ahead of us," Rita said, tapping the robotic hound on the display. "This has two advantages. First, it can identify corners and blind spots in advance. Second, if there's a trap ahead, it won't be a person who triggers it first."
She spoke slowly, with clear logic — even Sakura followed her without trouble.
Kiana picked up next.
"Rita and I positioned ourselves front and back, not for style points," Kiana said, pointing at the moment on screen where she raised her gun to fire. "When there are lots of small fry, I handle picking off anything charging our faces from range, and she cleans up whatever slips through my blind spots. That way we don't end up both rushing forward at once and leaving our backs completely exposed."
Bronie whistled from the corner.
"Even a Paramecium knows not to charge in blindly. What a surprise."
Kiana turned to snap back, but seeing everyone watching, she swallowed the "you want a fight?" and let out a loud huff instead.
Rita tilted her head slightly, as if suppressing a laugh.
The combat footage kept playing.
Their advance wasn't especially fast, but almost every movement had purpose.
The robotic hound scouting ahead, Kiana suppressing with precision fire, Rita covering the blind spots — occasionally the two of them would cross paths briefly, without even a pause, their movements as smooth as if they'd rehearsed it a hundred times.
Siegfried couldn't help clicking his tongue. "These Valkyries really aren't all talk."
Soon, the footage cut to the bubble space.
Raven appeared.
Rita alone was pulled inside.
What followed changed nearly every expression in the room.
The Rita on screen seemed like a different person entirely.
Her speed was absurd. Her reactions were absurd.
Most absurd of all — when Raven released her poison mist, Rita, using nothing but the wind kicked up by a bare-handed scythe swing, tore the mist apart on the spot.
Bronie stared at the projection, her gum nearly falling out of her mouth.
"Boss," she said, looking up at Su Yu. "If Rita had been at this level back at the abandoned building, I think you and the Paramecium would've been flat on the ground already — skip the whole rescue procedure entirely."
Kiana was immediately displeased.
"Hey, what do you mean, Paramecium?"
Rita, hearing this, only tilted her head slightly, as if reluctantly accepting a compliment.
"This is all the power Lord Su Yu granted me," she said, laying a hand gently over her chest. "It's true the process was rough, but the results speak for themselves."
The room went quiet for a beat.
Bronie whistled first.
Siegfried's eyebrows lifted.
Eden sat in her seat, slowly turning her coffee cup in a circle.
Even Kiana's movements paused.
She'd still been flipping through her own combat log, but at that line, her nose twitched involuntarily.
She thought back to the perfume scent she'd smelled on Su Yu earlier, then looked up at Rita's composed face, then over at Su Yu, who was suddenly very interested in rubbing his nose — and her expression twisted into something like she'd just bitten into a sandwich stuffed with bitter melon.
Rita, though, acted as if nothing had happened, and smoothly continued.
"After that, the bubble space collapsed, and Raven and I had a brief exchange."
As the footage played on, Raven's mask fell off.
The moment that face was revealed, Bronie shot straight up out of her chair.
"No way!"
Her holographic projection wobbled from the sudden movement.
"Isn't that my old hag's face?"
The command center livened up considerably.
Su Yu sat with his arms crossed at the head of the table, looking at her with a half-smile.
"In that world, Cioara is Raven, a lieutenant of the World Serpent. So — how does it feel, seeing that face?"
Bronie sat back down, her expression a real spectacle.
She wrinkled her nose as if she'd genuinely just bitten into a rotten persimmon.
"I know the whole Counterpart thing is bizarre," she said, leaning back in her chair and rolling her eyes. "But I never expected the person wearing my old hag's face would turn out to be this much of a headache."
The footage continued.
When Rita voluntarily stood her ground and signaled Raven to fire the Seven Thunders of Judgment, someone in the room finally couldn't hold it in.
But before anyone could speak, the scene had already moved to the next moment.
The Seven Thunders of Judgment fired.
Lightning tore through the air.
Rita raised her hand, swung her scythe, and redirected the bolt's trajectory.
Watching that sequence play out on video was hair-raisingly absurd.
"I'll be honest," Kiana said, leaning against the edge of the screen with a shrug. "Watching it live from outside, I thought it was way over the top too. Anyway, Rita's definitely way stronger now than she used to be."
Rita stood beside her, her expression perfectly ordinary.
"With the help of the power of the Stigmata and the armor," she said, watching herself on screen, "if I fought Lady Durandal again now, I think... it might come out even."
Kiana whipped her head around.
"You mean Durandal, Schicksal's strongest S-rank Valkyrie?" She looked genuinely stunned. "You used to be her vice-captain. Come to think of it, you've never really talked about her before."
Rita turned her head toward her.
"If Lady Kiana is truly interested, I can tell you the whole story later," she said, pausing briefly. "But for now, let's continue the briefing."
Tesla suddenly caught up, slapping the table as she stood, glaring at Rita.
"Oh, so that's it, Rita! I was over here thinking you'd actually run into some monster my weapon couldn't cut through! Turns out you were using the scythe I made to block a strike from a Divine Key head-on?!"
She spun around and glared at Kiana too.
"And you! You were helping her play dumb just now!"
Kiana said, perfectly straight-faced, "How is that playing dumb? The bullets from the Seven Thunders of Judgment really are hard to withstand. Everything I said was true."
Tesla pointed at her, and after a long moment finally managed to squeeze out, "You little brat — you've clearly picked up bad habits from that heartless capitalist Su Yu!"
Su Yu, who was drinking water off to the side, nearly choked at that. "I'm standing right here, minding my own business, and I still catch stray fire?"
Soon enough, the recording reached its final segment.
Rita had held a total advantage, but in the end, let Raven go.
The command center went silent instantly.
This time, no one made a joke.
Su Yu didn't rush to speak. He simply sat at the head of the table and raised his eyes to look at Rita.
Was it really okay?
After all, anyone could see that Rita had had every reason to kill Raven.
Rita met Su Yu's gaze.
She didn't explain, didn't say anything more — she simply gave a small nod, a faint smile at the corner of her lips.
— Don't worry. That was a decision I made myself.
Su Yu looked at her, paused for half a second, then nodded as well.
By the time the entire recording finished playing, the room stayed silent for two seconds before someone finally let out a low breath.
Tesla looked up and tapped the table with her pen.
"All right, archive the footage for now. I'll handle the quantum monster analysis with mophead. High-frequency resonance thresholds, spatial Authority response patterns, local barrier collapse — all of that needs to be remodeled and added into the holographic simulation chamber."
Einstein nodded.
"Also, the Genome Reaper hound's scouting protocol can be made standard procedure. Based on tonight alone, it's extremely practical."
After that, Tesla and Einstein took turns adding a few more notes about Anti-Entropy's recent research directions. Sakura sat quietly the whole time, listening without a word.
The meeting entered its final stretch ten minutes later.
Su Yu walked back to the head of the table.
"That's about it for tonight," he said, looking around the room. "We'll pick apart the footage further and nail down the details later — Cecilia and Siegfried, that part's on you. What we've learned tonight could save a lot of lives."
"Leave it to me! Once we've squeezed every drop out of this footage, it'll be a real eye-opener for those trainees still cutting their teeth! With me and Cecilia — the spy power couple — on the job, breaking down combat footage is a piece of cake!"
Siegfried gave a hearty chuckle.
After that line, remarkably, nobody in the room called the old man out for showing off again.
Everyone's eyes, turning back to the screen, carried a little more focus than before.
After all, those weren't scenes from some simulation drill or a polished promotional video.
They were places that many of the people in this room would sooner or later have to walk into themselves.
The conference room's automatic door slid shut behind them.
Voices still murmured inside, muffled through the door.
Tesla's voice was easiest to pick out, and even from a distance you could hear her say, "Cut that section out separately for me."
Su Yu leaned against the corridor wall, a can of iced coffee that had just dropped from the vending machine in his hand.
Don't bother asking why there's a vending machine in a lab, either — it's just one of Mobius's little touches. Her exact words: funding's hard to get approved these days, scientists have to hustle up their own money, don't you know how expensive science is?
Sakura stood across from him.
She didn't speak right away.
There'd been too much packed into that meeting.
Rifts, monsters, the Sea of Quanta, another world, an apocalypse coming in a little over three months, and that whole group at the table arguing while discussing how to save the world.
It was an absurd amount of information.
The corridor lighting was a little too white, catching in Sakura's hair, making the pale pink look even paler.
Su Yu held out the coffee.
"It's cold. Should help you clear your head."
Sakura glanced at him, took it. Her fingers brushed the cool metal of the can, and the chill pushed back some of the buzzing in her head.
She didn't drink it, just held it.
"So," Sakura finally spoke.
"You're saying the apocalypse is a little over three months away?"
"Yeah."
"Kiana's from another world?"
"Yeah."
"Rita too?"
"Right."
"Those monsters on the screen just now — there'll be more of them coming?"
"Pretty much a sure thing."
Sakura lowered her head, looking at the can in her hand, thumb brushing lightly against the edge of the tab.
She'd seen plenty of absurd things before.
Underworld family purges, deals between politicians, gun barrels and blades, cars racing at insane speeds, tire tracks near mountain-road cliffs that almost went over the edge, even bodies that could never be brought into the light.
But compared to "the world is about to end," none of that seemed to amount to much anymore.
"Well, this really is..."
She paused, and didn't finish the sentence.
Su Yu watched her and didn't push.
The corridor was long, and at the far end, the window looked out on a simulated night skyline projected for the underground base — deep blue, with even the distant building lights rendered convincingly.
After a while, Sakura popped the tab open.
Click.
She tilted her head back and took a sip, wincing slightly at the cold.
"About that apocalypse — how confident are you?"
Su Yu looked her in the eye. "Honestly? I don't know either."
The corridor went quiet for two seconds.
Sakura nodded.
It wasn't a satisfying answer, but at least it was an honest one.
Compared to all the people who spoke in guarantees, Su Yu's "I don't know either" felt oddly more believable.
"I see."
She lowered the can from her lips, her gaze settling on the still-closed conference room door in the distance.
"Then right now, I actually still have another option."
Su Yu didn't reply, just waited for her to go on.
"Instead of joining you all, I could also just quit my job."
"For however much time is left, forget about everything else and just stay with Rin."
"Walk her to school, pick her up after, take her to that cake shop she's always wanted to try on weekends. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll even get to spend one more New Year with her."
She spoke slowly.
No dramatics, no emphasis, as if she were simply reading out an ordinary schedule.
But precisely because of that, it was harder to interrupt.
Su Yu nodded. "Fair enough."
Sakura looked at him. "You're not going to try to talk me out of it?"
"Why would I?" Su Yu said, cracking open his own can and taking a sip. "Saving the world sounds cool, but in reality it's exhausting, filthy work, and it's likely to get you killed. You've got a sister to look after. That's perfectly reasonable."
"Aren't you short on people?"
"We are," Su Yu said. "Desperately short. But short-staffed or not, I can't exactly deprive someone of the right to be with their family just because I need the manpower."
Sakura studied him for a moment.
"You're a strange one sometimes."
"Takes one to know one," Su Yu shot back quickly. "The way you were carrying yourself in that meeting room earlier — you didn't exactly look like someone who'd go home quietly and cook dinner either."
Sakura didn't argue. She just finished off the rest of her coffee, the empty can giving a small crumple sound in her grip.
"The choice is entirely yours," Su Yu said, looking at her. "If you don't join now, that's fine. All you need to do is keep what you saw tonight a secret. Whenever you change your mind — that's your call."
He pulled out his phone and tapped at it for a moment.
A second later, Sakura's phone buzzed in her pocket.
It was a text message.
No extra words — just a string of numbers, plus one short line.
"Call me when you've made up your mind. You already know my number, but save it anyway, so you're not stuck searching for me in the middle of the night."
Sakura nodded.
To make it easier for school, Rin rented a small room near campus. Sakura often visited her there, and sometimes Rin came to the Golden Courtyard instead.
At this hour, Rin had probably already finished her shower and was sitting under a lamp in loose pajamas, studying late into the night.
She was working hard toward good grades, hoping to get into a good university, so she could find a good job later on — that way, she'd said, her sister wouldn't have to work so hard anymore.
She'd originally promised to head home tonight, and since things had wrapped up earlier than expected, she might as well go now.
After all, now that she knew the apocalypse was coming, she needed to cherish every single minute with her family even more.
"Oh, right," Sakura said suddenly, as if remembering something. "Do Elysia and the others know about all this?"
"No."
"Figured as much."
Sakura shrugged. That team-building, party-loving whirlwind of a girl — if she'd known the truth of all this, the one sitting here chatting with Su Yu right now wouldn't be him, but that endlessly energetic Miss Pink Elf instead.
"I'll keep your secret."
Sakura nodded at Su Yu and started off down the corridor.
Her silhouette stretched long under the lights, her back ramrod straight, like a blade ready to be drawn at any moment.
Su Yu watched her go, his shoulders relaxing a little — there was still plenty of work waiting for him.
He was just about to head back into the meeting room when he heard footsteps in the corridor — Sakura had turned back around.
Su Yu stopped. "What's wrong? Did you change your mind?"
Sakura's expression turned strange. "How do I get out of here? Did you people design this lab to be a maze on purpose?"
Su Yu: "..."
"Hey, you were walking so confidently, I figured you actually knew the way."
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