On the other side of the spatial barrier, the battle had already been raging for some time.
Durandal stared at that transparent membrane, the one that cleanly divided the two worlds.
She could see the scene on the other side with perfect clarity.
The man in white armor and Rita were weaving through the ruins, but no sound carried across.
It was like watching a movie with the volume muted.
Durandal's brow furrowed slightly.
She noticed the man occasionally shouting something toward the ruins, but the barrier swallowed every trace of sound.
She tightened her grip on Black Abyss White Flower.
The armor's micro-engines let out a brief roar as she stepped forward, her lance trailing a visible spiral of air as it drove straight into the hazy blue wall.
The lance's tip met the barrier.
No explosion.
No sparks.
No deafening clang of metal on metal.
That terrifying kinetic force, powerful enough to punch through dozens of layers of armor plating, simply vanished — as though it had dripped into a bottomless black sea.
The lance's point sank into the pale blue glow, and the force behind it was swallowed silently, completely, without resistance.
Durandal yanked the lance back at once.
The weapon was unharmed, but the surface of the barrier didn't show so much as a ripple.
She realized this wasn't a barrier that could be simply broken through.
All she could do was watch.
On the other side, the battle raged on.
Su Yu swung his greatsword to block; Rita spun her scythe, reaping through the enemy.
The two of them were entirely focused on clearing the tide of beasts before them, and neither so much as glanced at the transparent wall.
She stood there, taking in their every movement.
To the two of them, what lay beyond that wall was nothing but endless thunder and a black, rain-drenched sky.
At that very moment—
Su Yu stood at the edge of a floating slab of debris, subtly shifting his weight as it swayed beneath him.
Rainwater hissed and evaporated off the surface of his armor from the heat it radiated.
The barrier's presence meant he had no idea that, less than ten meters away, stood Schicksal's strongest Valkyrie.
He reversed his blade and pinned a Chariot-class Honkai Beast that had tried to ambush him from behind, then used the recoil to steady himself.
What was pouring out of the crack this time was unusual.
There were none of the sluggish, low-tier Zombies on the ground.
Everything closing in around them now had a hardened shell and a massive frame.
The heavy fists of Chariot-class Honkai Beast slammed into the ground again and again, shattering what remained of the floor.
Templar-class Honkai Beasts raised their great shields like a row of moving walls, steadily compressing the space the two fighters had to dodge in.
None of them held anything back.
Every attack came with a pure, unrestrained urge to destroy — no regard for their own defense, forcing themselves onto Rita's scythe just to tear off a piece of flesh.
It was a suicidal charge that spared no cost.
But to Su Yu and Rita, these Honkai Beasts were now no more troublesome than speed bumps.
Even a Honkai Emperor now took, at most, a bit of extra effort — nothing more.
The amplification granted by the Key of Blankness far outstripped what Su Yu had gained from breaking through to the second-stage Genetic Lock.
After all, the Genetic Lock was essentially a numerical boost applied to a blank slate — nerve reflexes, physical strength, recovery speed — all still within the bounds of a mortal body.
The power gained from the Genetic Lock alone was extremely limited. Without the abilities granted by the Tarot cards, or the various tech and equipment support from Anti-Entropy, a 'blank slate' Su Yu would have had to think twice before facing a Honkai Emperor.
Even in the novels Su Yu had read in his past life, the Genetic Lock system was almost always paired with some other special ability or bloodline power.
To use an imperfect comparison: the gap between someone with a special power and someone without is the same as the gap between Captain America with his shield and Captain America without one.
The Key of Blankness was clearly Su Yu's 'shield.'
This suit of armor, born from the world's most cutting-edge technology and the hands of humanity's finest scientific minds, meshed perfectly with Su Yu's current power system.
The Genetic Lock provided the physical baseline needed to wear the armor. The Tarot sequence brought a diverse array of abilities. Even the compatible weapon itself was a memory-metal that could shift its form to suit his fighting style.
The boost this gave to Su Yu's combat power was immense.
Even without fusing with a Tarot card, the peak output he could unleash now already far exceeded the limit of a second-stage Genetic Lock.
Before, when facing a Honkai Emperor, Su Yu had needed to be tactical, doing everything he could to avoid taking a direct hit. But now—
The greatsword came down, and the once-invincible Honkai Emperor was split cleanly in two mid-struggle, the cut as smooth as a mirror.
For the first time, Su Yu truly understood what it meant for a stat-monster to feel like they had 'skill.'
"Beautiful strike!"
Fenghuang's admiring voice rang out in Su Yu's mind.
"This armor's compatibility with you is extremely high. By Schicksal's official rating standards, you now possess at least the strength of a near-S-rank Valkyrie.
And once you fuse with your Tarot cards' power, you can match an S-rank Valkyrie for a short burst of time."
Near-S-rank, huh...
Su Yu's expression didn't change when he heard the rating.
He trusted Fenghuang's judgment completely, of course — after all, Fenghuang herself was one of the ceiling-tier figures of the Honkai world.
He didn't feel pleased about growing stronger. If anything, he only realized how far he still had left to go.
Even S-rank Valkyries never earned a real seat at the table in the story of Honkai — by the later chapters, when humanity faced off against Project STIGMA, even Durandal, with her fully awakened Kaslana Stigmata power on a separate rating scale entirely, was little more than a supporting role.
That wasn't to say S-rank Valkyries were weak, of course.
One of the key benchmarks for becoming an S-rank Valkyrie was whether one could solo an Emperor-class Honkai Beast.
The appearance of an Emperor-class Honkai Beast meant the paralysis of an entire city-level administrative district. Left unchecked, it could raze a modern metropolis in a matter of hours.
Calling them mobile disasters would be an understatement — they might as well be described as "walking Honkai-powered nuclear warheads."
Conventional tank cannons and cruise missiles were nearly useless against them; this tier of Honkai Beast was fundamentally different from lower-tier ones.
Not only were they far stronger, they could even evolve further, growing stronger still.
Ganesha, for instance, could charge enemies at high speed by rolling and could fire powerful beams of Honkai energy.
Its subspecies Parvati was covered in a pale-blue ice shell and could manipulate extreme cold, flash-freezing the surrounding environment and forming icicles to impale its enemies.
Then there was Assaka, a massive twin-bodied humanoid Honkai Beast, usually appearing as a single giant left or right hand, capable of merging into a whole.
It had a hardened carapace and monstrous strength, representing pure physical dominance.
Later on, mutated variants called the Son of Darkness and Son of Dawn had even appeared.
As humanity's technology evolved, so too did the Honkai — and the monsters born from it grew stronger in turn.
Even Ganesha, a creature players jokingly called 'the overworked mascot' in the game, was a city-level disaster in the actual Honkai world.
In terms of overall strategic threat, an Emperor-class Honkai Beast was equivalent to an entire carrier strike group; the resources needed to handle just one could push a mid-sized nation's finances into deficit.
And an S-rank Valkyrie was expected to be able to solo that level of disaster alone.
Even Teacher Rita, who was constantly the butt of jokes, was formidable enough to wipe out a city-level disaster single-handedly.
That was the absurdity of the Honkai world — where combat power could swing wildly from one extreme to another.
As the Honkai Emperor fell, Su Yu let out a breath.
There were no living Honkai Beasts left in his field of view.
The last one had its chest split open by a single stroke of Rita's scythe and was now dissolving into scattering purple motes of light.
Rain washed over the dust-covered ruins, slowly wiping away the traces of battle.
"The area is secure, Master Su Yu," Rita's voice came through the comms. "No new fluctuations for now."
Su Yu nodded, but didn't move right away.
He stood in place, extending his mental power outward — invisible tendrils spreading across the ruins, passing through rubble and metal debris, probing every corner that might be hiding a Honkai Beast.
Nothing.
But his awareness couldn't reach past the spatial barrier.
He'd tried a few times; his mental power just bounced off the barrier, as if blocked by some soft membrane.
But an unmistakable instinct told Su Yu something lay beyond it — he just couldn't tell what.
"Destroy the core, then pull back," he said, withdrawing his mental power and turning to Rita. "Let's finish this quickly."
Rita nodded.
Just as the two of them were about to move toward the crack's core, a low tremor rose from deep beneath the ruins under their feet.
The tremor started faint, then quickly grew, rubble bouncing across the ground with a scattering of clinks.
Su Yu stopped in his tracks.
"What was that?"
The moment the words left his mouth, the sky overhead suddenly went dark.
A massive iron bird dove down out of the clouds.
Its wingspan blotted out the sun; its feathers were made of dark gray metal plates, each one gleaming coldly in the rain.
Its dark red eyes locked onto the targets on the ground, and it let out a shrill screech — a sound wave rippled visibly through the air, pushing the falling rain outward on all sides.
Su Yu's armor scan system finished gathering data in that instant.
[Warning: upper-tier Emperor-class Honkai energy signature detected]
[Threat level: High]
[Codename auto-archived: 'Anzu.']
Every beat of the massive bird's wings kicked up a gale strong enough to knock a person off their feet.
The pressure forced Su Yu to wedge both feet hard into the grooves of the ground.
The giant shadow blotted out the sky.
"So this is how it's going to be."
The appearance of the iron bird didn't surprise Su Yu.
The energy level of the crack had been climbing steadily, and this time it had appeared directly atop Arc City Tower, as though by deliberate design.
Now an Emperor-class Honkai Beast had shown up too — the level of Honkai had escalated once again.
But thinking it over, Su Yu found it made sense.
The rate at which their side's combat power had been climbing would have terrified anyone who heard the numbers.
Herrschers and Valkyries who couldn't tap into Honkai energy had, once given a clean supply of Imaginary energy, already returned to their own peak strength.
Both Rita and Kiana now possessed strength that would guarantee an S-rank Valkyrie rating at minimum — even stronger than before. A Honkai Emperor was no more than a speed bump to them now.
As for himself, in just a few short months, he'd grown to the point where, at full output, he could match an S-rank Valkyrie.
Honkai and civilization existed as counterweights to each other — the stronger civilization grew, the stronger Honkai grew in turn. Clearly, that principle applied to this targeted world as well.
Rubble was swept up into the wind, spinning in the air.
Su Yu crouched behind a fallen stone pillar and signaled to Rita.
If this had happened earlier, Su Yu might have been itching to test his skills against this Emperor-class beast.
But for him now, recklessly fighting a Honkai Beast to the death wasn't a smart choice.
It wasn't just about staying alert for whatever other danger might crop up afterward. It was because—
The crimson quest [Destined Death] flashed before Su Yu's eyes, and the System's old warning echoed in his mind.
That battle in the abandoned building, when he'd broken through in a desperate fight to protect Sirin, had left irreparable damage to his genetic chain.
If he came a few more times too close to death, he might end up meeting his end well before that date ever arrived.
Su Yu's gaze locked onto a seam in the armor plating just below Anzu's neck.
Streams of deep blue data converged at high speed in his vision.
The Eye of Deconstruction finished dismantling the beast's internal energy circuitry in an instant.
"Its joints are the weak points — the second armor plate below the neck and the base of its hind limbs have the thinnest defenses."
Rita raised the scythe in her hand, blood from the earlier fight still clinging to its edge.
The blood was slowly congealing, but instead of sliding off the blade the way normal blood would, it clung to the metal surface as if alive.
"Your weapon carries a wound-suppression effect. You handle the main damage — I'll draw its aggro. Let's finish it off at the smallest possible cost. There's no telling what else might be waiting for us after this."
Su Yu quickly gave the order.
"Understood."
Su Yu got to his feet, and Fenghuang linked him through to Kiana.
"Kiana, can you hear me?"
"Barely... there's heavy interference on your end."
"An Emperor-class Honkai Beast has appeared," Su Yu said quickly. "I need you to teleport in Rita's Argent Knight: Artemis and Skadi Ondurgud. Can you manage it?"
"Ha, who do you think you're talking to? Give me a minute — no, thirty seconds is plenty!"
In the sky, Anzu had already begun its second dive.
Those dark red eyes locked onto the target below, its iron wings slicing through the air with a shrill screech.
Su Yu didn't wait for it to land.
When the giant bird was still dozens of meters from the ground, he suddenly surged forward — twin bright tails of flame burst from the thrusters at the back of the Key of Blankness, and he arced through the air, driving straight toward Anzu.
Just before impact, he abruptly changed direction.
The Herrscher of the Void's Authority flickered to life within him for a brief moment.
His body flickered in mid-air, and he appeared instantly above Anzu's flank, then planted a foot on the side of the giant bird's neck and used the recoil to launch himself away.
"Hey, you overgrown chicken!" he flipped through the air and shouted toward the giant bird. "Over here — look this way!"
Anzu's screech grew even shriller.
It turned its head, its dark red eyes reflecting Su Yu's retreating figure.
A storm began to gather.
Anzu spread its wings to their full extent and beat them down hard.
A gale surged out from beneath its feathers, forming a visible wave of air pressure.
The debris that had been floating in the air shattered instantly under the force.
Su Yu adjusted his stance mid-storm, the gravity control of the Star of Eden forming a thin shield around him, deflecting the flying debris.
He landed on the edge of a large piece of wreckage and fired a Neutron Star hand cannon shot toward Anzu.
The round struck Anzu's chest plate and burst into a shower of sparks.
It didn't punch through, but it was enough to draw the giant bird's attention.
Anzu was finally furious.
It ignored Rita in the distance entirely, turning its full attention toward the white figure hopping between the ruins.
Its iron wings snapped shut, then flung open with force, hurling its massive body straight at Su Yu.
Wind roared like thunder.
Su Yu turned and ran.
On the other side of the spatial barrier, Durandal's expression finally shifted.
She watched the white figure weaving through the ruins, that massive, iron-winged bird chasing after him with wings wide enough to blot out the sky.
Through the barrier, she could tell with perfect clarity that the giant bird's energy level had reached the absolute upper tier of Emperor-class.
Its alloy feathers were thicker than the armor plating of some high-grade assault cruisers.
Every strike from Anzu kicked up a gale, sweeping rubble into the air and forming storms of debris both large and small.
Su Yu leapt and slid between the wreckage, using the terrain and building debris to keep his distance, occasionally turning to fire off another shot, making sure the bird never lost track of him and turned toward Rita instead.
Rita really was an S-rank Valkyrie.
But she leaned more toward intelligence gathering, assassination, and covert operations.
A frontal assault against a heavily defense-specialized giant like this wasn't her strong suit.
Besides, the armor Rita currently wore wasn't the Argent Knight: Artemis that an S-rank Valkyrie was supposed to be equipped with.
Without her Valkyrie armor, a Valkyrie was like a tiger with its teeth pulled.
Of course, that rule didn't apply to Durandal.
She knew well that without a proper weapon and the right equipment, Rita facing this Emperor-class Honkai Beast alone wouldn't be easy.
Right at that moment—
Durandal saw a tear rip open in space.
Two metal, rectangular cargo containers shot out of the rift, disassembling themselves in mid-air.
The [Argent Knight: Artemis] armor — considered Schicksal's crowning S-rank armament achievement — and its dedicated weapon, the frigid [Skadi Ondurgud], dropped steadily through the rain right in front of Rita.
Frost mist spread outward instantly.
"Bright Knight: Excelsis."
Durandal wasn't unfamiliar with this armor — it belonged to the same god-slaying armor series as her own Bright Knight: Excelsis.
But what stunned Durandal was that the power that had completed that instantaneous teleportation was, without a doubt, the ability of the Herrscher of the Void.
"Kevin said the answer I'm looking for is here."
Durandal's brow furrowed slightly.
It seemed the man hadn't lied. A World Barrier that could block any attack, a pristine white suit of armor with no record in Schicksal's archives...
And Rita, who by all rights should have vanished.
As well as these Emperor-class Honkai Beasts being born from the cracks.
"Rita, what exactly have you been through these past few days?"
In that brief span of time,
Rita finished donning the [Argent Knight: Artemis].
Deep blue and pure white armored skirts fluttered violently in the cold wind.
Behind her, a tall, translucent humanoid figure built entirely from extreme-cold energy — the [Silver Moon] — manifested with a roar, radiating a frigid chill cold enough to freeze blood.
"Awaken, master of frost!"
Centered on Rita, the moisture within a radius of dozens of meters froze instantly.
The ground was blanketed in thick frost, and raindrops falling from the sky turned into fine icicles mid-air.
Anzu sensed the new threat behind it.
It abandoned its pursuit of Su Yu and whipped around, dark red eyes locking onto the spreading pool of cold in the distance.
"Your opponent is me!"
The Authority of the Herrscher of the Void released in that moment, and Su Yu's voice rang out directly above Anzu's massive head.
The armor's thrusters were pushed to their absolute limit, the overloaded power of the second-stage Genetic Lock surging through his muscles, and the Star of Eden's gravity control temporarily multiplied his effective weight several times over.
Layered under multiple amplifications, Su Yu's right leg drove home with staggering force, striking directly into Anzu's face.
A massive, dull impact drowned out the rolling thunder overhead.
Anzu's giant body sank hard, then plummeted straight down like a kite with a cut string, slamming into the frost-covered ruins below.
The impact carved out a huge crater in the ice.
The moment Anzu's massive body hit the ground, the water still running off its wings froze instantly under the pressure of the extreme cold zone, forming a heavy crystalline cage that sealed its movement completely.
It flapped its wings a few times, but the ice had jammed its joints — its iron wings couldn't fully open.
Rita didn't let the opportunity slip.
She skated across the ice at top speed.
The [Skadi Ondurgud] in her hand traced a crescent-moon arc of silvery blue light.
Anzu turned its head, trying to bite at her with its massive beak.
Rita sidestepped, gliding low across the ice at a shallow angle, and her Skadi Ondurgud carved a line straight into the joint gap at Anzu's neck.
The blade cut through the metal armor, and kept going until it sliced all the way through.
A line of blood burst from the base of Anzu's right wing.
The purple fluid, mixed with Honkai energy, evaporated with an acrid smell the moment it hit the air.
The giant iron bird let out a pained screech, its massive head thrashing as it tried to shake Rita off.
But Rita had already moved out of range.
She retreated several steps, steadying herself just outside Anzu's attack radius.
Purple blood clung to the edge of Skadi Ondurgud, the droplets freezing instantly in the cold, then cracking and flaking off the blade.
"First strike."
Her voice was calm, without a ripple in it.
On the other side of the one-way barrier, Durandal's eyes widened slightly.
Even accounting for the matched weapon, the muscular force behind that single strike from Rita had already far surpassed her original test data.
Then, through the drifting frost mist, Durandal caught a glimpse of the bare skin of Rita's back, exposed outside her armor.
There, a circle of complex markings glowing faintly red flickered in and out of visibility.
That wasn't one of the mass-produced, regularly maintained artificial Stigmata from Schicksal's labs.
That kind of luster, that sense of complete fusion with the wearer's flesh...
That was a genuine, original Stigmata.
Durandal's breath caught. It had been less than thirty-six hours since Rita went missing.
Yet in that short span, not only had he — she — returned without a scratch, but Rita had somehow grown even stronger than before, with the artificial Stigmata on her back replaced by an original one.
What exactly had happened to her vice-captain during that brief disappearance?
The battle continued.
Having lost its right wing and its balance, the once-proud giant bird could only screech impotently on the ice.
Su Yu picked up the pressure again.
He reappeared at Anzu's flank, landing a precise Neutron Star hand cannon shot on the joint of its left leg, knocking it off balance again just as it tried to reset its stance.
"Over here — we're not done yet."
He stood at the edge of a freshly collapsed piece of wreckage, making a taunting come-hither gesture toward Anzu.
The rest of the fight had no real suspense left.
The wingless Anzu had become nothing more than a flailing bird stuck on the ground.
Its methods of attack grew limited — a tail whip, a bite, and occasionally an unstable beam of Honkai energy from its open beak.
But those beams began to decay before they'd traveled twenty meters through the rain, burning off their energy early in the damp air, so that by the time they reached Rita they were nothing more than harmless flickers of light.
Rita wasn't in any hurry to finish things.
She kept a steady rhythm, landing a wound on Anzu every ten-odd seconds before retreating back to a safe distance.
The cold kept building at each wound, turning the surrounding metal armor brittle, then shattering it with the next strike.
Anzu's body was visibly losing its balance now.
The layer of ice building up on the ground kept its claws from finding purchase, every movement leaving a long skid mark across the ice.
This city-level disaster, pinned down by the two of them working together, could do nothing but vent its impotent fury.
Durandal also noticed that the Honkai Beast's famously fast regeneration seemed to be completely neutralized under Rita's scythe.
Had Rita's scythe been infused with some special material that could suppress the beast's regeneration? Or was it the power granted by the unfamiliar Stigmata on her back?
The battle ended faster than expected.
As the final strike sheared through the energy core in its neck—
The Emperor-class Honkai Beast codenamed 'Anzu' let out one last unwilling, drawn-out cry, and its massive body collapsed in a heap, dissolving into a shower of light particles.
The dust settled.
Once Su Yu confirmed there were no new enemies anywhere nearby, he finally let his guard down and dropped straight to a seat on the ground.
The Key of Blankness's armor power had dipped below the safe threshold. He released the lock on his faceplate, revealing a face drenched in sweat.
He rested for a good while before his breathing evened out.
"Honestly, given how much of your hidden power you're carrying now, you could probably have handled that giant beast alone, with proper management."
"But the way you handled it this time was good. Knowing how to lean on a teammate's strengths to win at minimal physical cost."
There was, in that composed voice, a faint trace of approval that was hard to catch.
"Remember how this feels."
"Compared to the old you, who used to charge in headlong trying to force a fight to the death, you're starting to find your footing as a leader worth following."
"Only by preserving yourself can you stand at the end to save more people."
Su Yu acknowledged Fenghuang, then looked up toward Rita, who was still standing watch.
The Honkai energy detector read steady levels. It looked like the crisis was fully over.
"Well done, Rita."
Su Yu waved her over, and a familiar smile spread across his face — one Rita knew well.
"How was my footwork as bait? That big iron chicken flailed around for a while and didn't even graze the hem of my clothes."
Rita walked over slowly, her long scythe held in one hand.
The cold mist around her was gradually receding.
At his words, she stopped, and dropped to one knee in front of Su Yu.
"Master Su Yu." she began. "That strike just now — if you'd made the call half a second earlier, that monster's tail wouldn't have grazed your armor."
Su Yu had just steadied his breathing, and looked up at that.
"Er..."
"Of course, given that you were maintaining both the Herrscher of the Void's Authority and gravity control simultaneously, some margin of operational error is understandable."
Su Yu raised both hands in surrender. "Point taken, instructor."
Watching him play the fool, the stern line at the corner of Rita's mouth seemed to soften.
Then she added, "Though — that judgment call just now... was excellent."
"Especially the moment when Anzu was about to turn — you appeared above it right as its attention was split. The timing, the read on its focus — all handled very well. Our training in the holographic simulation pod wasn't wasted."
Su Yu nodded. "We've certainly run enough drills together in the sim pod."
The simulation pod he meant was a fully immersive combat training chamber, built with Welt's memories, Anti-Entropy's core technology, and the advanced engine provided by Ai — all working together.
In those virtual battlefields, Su Yu, Rita, and Kiana had formed a three-person squad countless times, drilling and refining their coordination over and over.
Combat experience they never could have accumulated in a peaceful world was being crammed into these days at a furious pace.
"A simulation is still just a simulation," Rita said, brushing wet hair away from her cheek. "There are too many variables in a real battlefield, and the pressure is different. Plenty of Valkyries who look flawless in the pod fall apart the moment they're actually deployed. It happens all the time."
Su Yu nodded — he understood that much.
In simulated combat, he could ignore death and draw lessons from failure. But in reality, one wrong step meant a fall into an abyss with no bottom.
"So how did this fight feel to you?"
Rita was quiet for a moment before speaking. "If it had been the old me, facing an Emperor-class like that, cutting off its wing would have taken a lot more effort."
She'd only said half of it, but the meaning was clear enough — the Stigmata Su Yu had given her had improved her strength qualitatively.
Su Yu grinned and shrugged. "Well, if that had been the hit I took back in the abandoned building instead of you, no matter how strong my regeneration was, I'd have ended up cut clean in half."
Rita's expression froze for an instant.
She remembered that day, of course.
It had been the closest thing to a fatal mistake in her entire career as a maid.
Because of a misjudgment, she had nearly killed her own savior.
That guilt still weighed on her heart to this day, never truly faded.
Watching Su Yu bring up that near-fatal mistake like it was nothing to joke about, Rita felt a subtle wave of irritation rise inside her.
She leaned in slowly, closing the distance to Su Yu.
Their faces were now so close she could see her own reflection in his eyes.
Unlike her usual easy, playful smile, there was a rare seriousness in her gaze now.
"Master Su Yu."
Her eyelashes trembled.
"Please... value your life a little more. It's worth far more than you seem to think."
That single line carried far more meaning than the words alone.
It was concern, it was a warning, and it was also, in some more private and unspoken way, a kind of promise.
"Master Su Yu, please value your life a little more. It's worth far more than you seem to think."
Su Yu blinked. "I was just saying that offhand—"
Looking at her disobedient master, Rita narrowed her eyes.
Without any warning at all,
she leaned in, right as Su Yu had no time to react, and bit down hard on his nose.
"Ow!"
Caught completely off guard, Su Yu clapped both hands over his nose and yelped.
"Miss Rita, were you born in the year of the dog or something?"
Rita straightened back up, regaining her usual composure, though her smile carried an unmistakable air of satisfaction.
"As your maid, correcting my master's flawed sense of self-preservation is part of my duties — and for the record, I don't mind the title 'loyal hound' one bit."
"You didn't have to bite me for it though!"
"If the lesson isn't painful enough, it won't stick with you, will it?" Rita tilted her head, as if she'd just remembered something, and added softly, "So — did that little moment just now make your heart race?"
Su Yu held his nose, his cheek twitching slightly. "I don't know about my heart, but I do know my nose feels like it's about to fall off."
And in that awkward moment that somehow carried the flavor of a bickering married couple, not far away, Durandal's jaw very nearly dropped straight into a puddle of water.
That distance, that angle, just now.
From where Durandal stood, it had looked exactly like Rita suddenly, without warning, leaning in beside Su Yu and pressing her lips to his cheek without hesitation — even 'biting' him there.
As a warrior raised on rigorous etiquette from childhood, who had spent her entire life living by the code of chivalry, she felt a wave of embarrassment.
She was a meticulous person, someone who treated discipline as a guiding principle of life itself.
She wouldn't even drink an unnecessary sip of water during a mission.
So when she saw her own vice-captain display this kind of feminine, intimate behavior in the middle of an operation, what she felt wasn't just shock — it was something closer to her entire worldview cracking apart.
This made no sense.
This wasn't the Rita she knew.
Durandal had always known Rita was gentle with her.
She'd always categorized their bond as a "comradeship that transcended life and death," full of shared memories.
Her own life was, in a sense, a life lived alongside Rita's — Rita had been there for the entirety of Durandal's career as a Valkyrie.
No matter where she went, it always felt like Rita would be standing right behind her, wearing that same elegant, composed smile.
But that scene just now kept replaying over and over in Durandal's mind.
She had never once imagined Rita kissing someone like that.
That posture had been far too soft.
It was nothing like the Rita she remembered — "assassin, vice-captain, housekeeper."
So it turned out that, in front of a man she'd never met, Rita could smile gently, tease playfully, and do things carrying real personal affection.
Even something with the color of what could only be called "love."
Durandal took an unconscious half-step back.
She wasn't even sure why she was retreating.
Maybe it was because the scene felt too private — so private that, as a close friend, failing to look away instantly felt like a violation of that bond.
She looked at Rita's eyes, ones that always carried a hint of amusement.
In that moment, they shone with something — a tenderness bordering on vulnerability — that only ever seemed to appear when Rita looked at that man.
And in the heart of Schicksal's strongest S-rank Valkyrie, the captain of the Immortal Blades, an indescribable, sour ache rose without warning.
"So Rita's already come this far, huh."
Durandal had no idea that Su Yu and Rita were currently in a parallel world entirely — as far as she was concerned, Rita had only been missing for a day or two.
Could a day or two really change a person this drastically? That clearly didn't add up.
So, as things stood in Durandal's eyes, there was only one possible explanation.
This relationship must have already begun, long before, without her ever knowing.
Those nights she'd spent on shift back at Schicksal Headquarters, those rest periods she'd assumed Rita spent repairing weapons or organizing gear, those "personal arrangements" she'd never questioned — had they all belonged to that man?
So it turned out the friend she'd always believed to be her closest, most understood confidante had, without her knowledge, already developed feelings this deep.
A sense of unfamiliarity welled up inside her.
But that unfamiliarity wasn't a cold distance — it was a kind of frustration surging up from deep within.
She realized that as a teammate, she'd been completely unaware of this yearning Rita had buried so deep in her heart.
Durandal leaned forward, pressing herself almost fully against the barrier.
Watching Rita's face show that entirely different kind of tenderness — one she never showed when she was with Durandal.
An inexplicable ache rose in Durandal's chest.
On this side of the spatial barrier, Su Yu finally got to his feet, rubbing his nose.
The red mark on the tip wasn't going to fade anytime soon.
He glanced over at Rita, who was checking her armor's wear, and let out a sigh.
"I'll go check on the state of the barrier."
He walked toward the translucent wall.
This spatial structure was extremely unstable here.
He needed to confirm the barrier's strength, and whether there were any other hidden exits.
He raised his right hand.
The Authority of the Herrscher of the Void gathered in his palm.
A pale golden spatial energy began radiating outward, attempting to parse the barrier's structure.
That barrier, which had only ever let light pass through in one direction, shifted subtly in that instant.
What had been a one-way observation barrier became, in that single moment, two-way.
In that instant—
Su Yu's hand touched the surface of the barrier.
The position lined up, precisely, exactly with Durandal's chest.
Su Yu's motion froze.
He looked up.
Through the barrier, now growing transparent, his eyes met Durandal's.
Durandal froze too.
She had just been doing her best to avoid meeting his gaze, and now she was staring directly at that man through the barrier.
And the position of that hand made her mind go completely blank.
The two of them locked eyes across the ruins.
Even the thunder in the air seemed to fall silent.
It wasn't until several seconds later—
That Rita noticed something was off and hurried over.
When she saw the figure on the other side of the barrier, her pupils shrank slightly.
That familiar face was, in that moment, filled with an expression of shock and bewilderment.
And her own master, the one who'd just had his nose bitten moments ago, now had his hand pressed exactly against that lady's chest.
"Lady... Durandal?"
The rain kept falling in a fine drizzle, splashing small ripples across the puddles that had gathered over the ruins.
The three of them, separated by that transparent barrier, fell into a long, unspoken silence.
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