Nearby, Anna hung her head guiltily. Her ears drooped as if she felt she had done something wrong, and she kept stealing glances at Li Wu's blood-soaked left shoulder.
His school uniform was drenched in a patch of dark red blood.
"That's not important. It's not something you need to know," Li Wu said, deflecting the question.
Five hundred years ago?
Li Wu keenly caught onto this specific point in time.
Five hundred years ago was the European Middle Ages—the time period in the manga when Otto and Kallen seized power over Schicksal.
But how could the Middle Ages possibly have such a perfect painkiller? Back then, they couldn't even handle the Black Death. It took Otto and a group of people years of human experimentation just to find a cure for that. Where did they get the tech points to develop an ultimate painkiller too?
Li Wu wasn't a top student, but he knew the natural law that demand dictates production.
What the Middle Ages needed wasn't painkillers; it was food to fill stomachs and weapons to fight Honkai Beasts.
Enhancement drugs would have been far more useful than painkillers.
After all, what good is not feeling pain if you're already dead?
Hearing Arga talk about the painkiller, Anna hesitated for a moment before interrupting Li Wu's train of thought. "Schicksal's pain medication evolved a long time ago. It's now in the form of portable pills. Taking just one can block pain receptors for a very long time, but they aren't sold to the public. Valkyries receive a certain allotment every month, but Schicksal regulations strictly prohibit any Valkyrie from gifting or reselling their painkillers."
Anna paused and lowered her head, recalling the propaganda videos Schicksal forced every Valkyrie to watch.
"There was a case before. A B-Rank Valkyrie gave her painkiller to her grandmother, who had a terminal illness and was tormented by pain every day. She was discovered the very next day. She was stripped of all her Valkyrie benefits and forced to spend the next several decades repaying Schicksal's investment in her. It wasn't much... just twenty million euros."
How much?!
Twenty million EUROS?!
Arga's eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open unconsciously. He looked like a fish that had suddenly been tossed onto dry land.
The abacus in his brain started clacking furiously.
How many billions is that in Far East currency? How much in Shenzhou currency? If I piled up all the money I've seen in this life, my next life, and the life after that, would it even cover a fraction of that?
Even those anime where people play death games for bounty money wouldn't dare write a number like that! And you're telling me this is just the 'training cost' for one Valkyrie?! Are you sure they didn't accidentally add a few extra zeros?!
A normal family—not even a single person, but an entire family—might not earn that much in a lifetime.
Li Wu also wore an expression of astonishment. If what Anna said was true, it would explain... why the Schicksal Valkyries in reality were so much stronger than their game counterparts.
Judging by her display of power, Anna, an A-Rank Valkyrie, was fast approaching the strength of a quasi-S-Rank Valkyrie like Rita from the game.
Anna saw the doubt in their eyes and dismissed the possibility that the data was exaggerated. Her tone was flat; she had seen these figures countless times.
"That number is actually considered conservative. From the age of twelve, a Valkyrie's teachers, resources, medication, battlesuits, weapons... every single aspect is world-class. For Valkyries ranked A or above, the invested resources are exponentially higher. Once you receive these resources, you must continuously get stronger without a moment's rest, and then contribute back to Schicksal."
"For example, by strictly following the rules and completing assigned missions."
Arga swallowed hard. He weakly raised his one remaining hand, like an obedient student asking a teacher a question in class. "I know Schicksal is super strict internally. I want to ask, what happens if you take the resources but don't do the missions? Or what if, like me on this trip, you just slack off all the time?"
Slacking off. It was an incredibly normal operation in any workplace.
From small startups to Fortune 500 companies.
Slacking off was standard procedure.
As the old saying goes: The money you get for working hard is just your salary. The money you get while slacking off is what you actually EARN!
Salary is the fruit of labor; slacking off is the crystallization of wisdom!
But in the next second, Anna poured a bucket of cold water over the slacker-loving Arga.
"You will be marginalized."
Arga blinked, a huge grin spreading across his face. "Marginalized? Then... doesn't that make it even easier to slack off? At worst, I just make a little less money. Looks like I should go to Thailand for a sex-change operation and become a Valkyrie for fun."
"It's not that simple."
Anna picked up her water cup and gently swirled it. She stared quietly as her reflection in the water gradually twisted and distorted in the vortex, eventually blurring completely.
Her mood became as complex as her reflection in the water.
"When you're caught in a vortex, if you don't swim outward with all your might, you'll be trapped inside forever, slowly dragged into the depths, and then left to die..."
"If you fail to provide a timely return on Schicksal's investment in you, at first, they will only slightly reduce your resource allocation without placing too many restrictions on you."
"But if you still show no drive to improve under those circumstances, the resource cuts will become severe. Eventually, you will lose all of Schicksal's resource support entirely. At that point, wanting to get stronger becomes a joke. You won't be able to advance in rank for a long time, and you'll score abysmally in the annual Valkyrie assessments. Over time, the family backing you will begin to give you the cold shoulder. Without exception."
A strange light flashed in Anna's eyes—one that shouldn't belong to a Valkyrie.
Was it relief? Was it sorrow? She couldn't say for sure.
"When every other family member competing on the same stage surpasses you, you become the laughingstock of the family. During the New Year, when everyone is exchanging greetings and checking in on each other, you can only hide in the corner and force a smile. Even if you work up the courage to speak to your peers, they'll just give you dirty looks. And the elders see all of this."
She softly added the final sentence: "And they tacitly approve."
Hearing this, Arga couldn't sit still. "Is that really what a 'great noble family' is like? There's no love at all! Who needs a cold, heartless family like that?!"
To this, Anna only offered a bitter smile. "That is the tradition. The atmosphere has been like this for a very long time. The elders in the family have to watch Schicksal's mood, and we younger generations have to watch the elders' mood. It sounds 'twisted,' but to those of us who are used to it, it's the most normal thing in the world. The entire system operates this way. One person cannot change it. Even entertaining the thought of changing it is superfluous."
"I don't really know if the world you live in is like this, but I imagine it's probably not that different. Even in normal society, there must be... suffocating situations like this, right?"
With that, Anna tilted her head back and downed the cold water in her cup in one gulp.
She was right.
Li Wu agreed with Anna's perspective. Humans were ultimately social animals. They needed the approval of the people they cared about, to be gently accepted by the small circle that mattered to them. A person living entirely alone in this world would eventually become abnormal, ultimately marching toward death in isolation.
Even if your parents withstood the pressure and continued to love you, when you became the negative example of "worthless" and a "waste of resources" in the mouths of other elders, your parents would also be forced onto the target of gossip and rumors.
Not to mention...
Li Wu's mind drifted back to the previous loop. Anna had held the umbrella for him, telling him that "little story" in a low voice—
When she was about to be torn apart by Honkai Beasts, her parents—who were always meticulous and strictly followed every single one of Schicksal's rules—chose to stand down. They remained at the family estate and never once sent a request to Schicksal to rescue their daughter.
In the end, the one who broke the rules, charged into the battlefield, and dragged her out of a pile of corpses was the "aunt" who was called an "outsider."
Surely, the "tacitly approving elders" Anna had just mentioned... included her own parents.
The orange light of the room fell upon Anna's slightly trembling eyelashes. Her gaze shifted from Li Wu to Raiden Mei, a rare hint of hesitation surfacing in her pink eyes.
Anna spoke to Raiden Mei, her pronunciation clear and deliberate, enunciating every word:
"Herrscher of Thunder, you truly found a reliable companion. The wound on Li Wu's left shoulder was made to use me, but also to save you. Valkyries cannot ignore a civilian in mortal danger. To force me to get him home quickly, he pointed a gun directly at his own shoulder and pulled the trigger."
"Using his own life as a threat... In all the years since I became a Valkyrie at twelve, this is the first time I've ever seen it. I can't believe someone was actually stupid enough to shoot themselves at point-blank range. Does he think he's Superman?"
Anna's tone carried a hint of envy, mixed with a trace of mockery, before her gaze fell back onto Li Wu's blood-drenched left hand.
"Li Wu, you should be thankful that this Anti-Entropy cyborg friend of yours still has some conscience left, otherwise your left arm would be useless. But even with Anti-Entropy's special medicine, returning it to a state where you can stably hold a gun is almost impossi—"
"..."
Anna's voice abruptly cut off. She pursed her lips, seemingly hesitating whether to say what came next.
After hesitating for a long time, she turned her head to look Li Wu straight in the eye, her voice dropping to a whisper: "There's a small shop in the underground streets of Nagazora City. As for what it's called or exactly where it is, I won't say. You have your own intelligence network anyway, don't you? Three nights from now, you'll be able to buy Holy Blood there. It's very expensive, but with ME Corp's black card, buying a small vial won't be difficult. It will only be sold for half a month. If you fail to buy it within that time frame, that's your problem. Don't come looking for me. I won't help you, and I can't help you."
Hearing this, Arga couldn't sit still. He raised a hand and pointed at himself, his voice trembling as he asked, "Um... is this something I'm allowed to hear?"
"What do you think?"
"I didn't hear a thing! Please rest assured, Lady Anna!" Arga's back instantly straightened, and his eyes became incredibly pure and innocent.
Then, Arga turned his head and whispered to Li Wu, "The blood of the Kaslana and Schariac families has been refined over hundreds of years. It defies many laws of medical science. It can directly double your physical constitution and completely cure the vast majority of physical injuries... There isn't much difference between the two families' blood, so it's generally all referred to as 'Holy Blood.'"
Anna placed her cup back on the table, stood up, and walked toward the door, ignoring Arga's little actions.
Or perhaps, she needed Arga to explain the effects of the Kaslana bloodline in her stead.
While she could easily justify killing the cyborgs because they had trespassed into a civilian home with intent to murder, the secret of the Kaslana and Schariac bloodlines was absolutely something she could not speak of herself.