(Nava's POV)
One more month has passed, and this specific month was superb. Just three days ago, Lan visited St. Freya High and said he had been given a vacation because there were currently no missions for his squad. I introduced Lan to my students, and though they aren't fighting today, their progress has been immense. Lan is far more knowledgeable about Schicksal affairs than me, so when we met Kiana, he was quite surprised, though not overly so. I had to personally calm him down when we met Raiden Mei, explaining that the Empress of Thunder is a different, residing personality.
Now, Lan and I will hold our personal test to determine our current combat level. We will fight Kiana, Raiden Mei, Bronya, and Fu Hua simultaneously. Lan and I are cleared to use our full power and gear. I heard from Aunt Rosy that with my gear and personal strength, I could rank at low S-rank, but that was four months ago, so I don't know my level now. With all his gear, Lan is essentially peak A-rank. And we certainly can't underestimate our opponents: Fu Hua will use her formidable Stigmata power, and Mei will fully awaken the Empress of Lightning inside her. Kiana and Bronya will start as support, but knowing Kiana, she won't hold the line for long.
(Omni POV)
The St. Freya Arena
Inside the vast combat training room, the heavy energy barrier shimmered to life, sealing the combatants within. Principal Theresa and Himeko stood ready in the observation deck, their expressions serious as they prepared to judge the chaotic spar.
On the left side, ready for the impossible task of a two-on-four battle, stood the challengers. Leading them was Nava Arragon, the transmigrator, encased in a gold, mechanized knight armor. Her golden, mechanical wings folded against her back, and her rainbow crystal gauntlets shone like captured light. Her left hand gripped a simple wooden staff, its tip adorned with a single, vibrant leaf—a deceptive piece of equipment.
Beside her, Lan Yuan, the archer of Freedom, stood mounted on a phantom mechanical horse that flowed from his armor. His face was concealed by a bluish mask. His arms held the icy bow Solstice, which hummed with pure Honkai energy, and the bluish-orange longsword remained sheathed, a testament to his confidence in his ranged skills.
Facing them stood the formidable opposing team. Raiden Mei, the Empress of Thunder, allowed the electric wings to fully manifest, her purple hair crackling as her Herrscher form solidified. Beside her, Fu Hua—a master of martial history—floated slightly above the ground, her mind already deep in concentration as she activated the boundless psychic power of the Fenghuang Down Stigmata. Behind them, Kiana Kaslana stood ready with her dual guns, a nervous excitement radiating off her, and Bronya Zaychik commanded her massive, grey robotic platform, its colossal cannon aimed and locked.
Himeko's voice boomed over the speakers, excitement barely contained: "START!"
The confrontation began not with a charge, but with an instant, blinding strategic move.
Nava vanished. Her acceleration, enhanced by her gear and the sheer force of her Destruction Stigmata, bypassed human sensory input entirely. She was not running; she was teleporting via sheer velocity. Her target was not Fu Hua, but Bronya, the long-range anchor.
Fu Hua, however, was already anticipating her. A colossal, invisible wave of psychic pressure slammed into the space Nava intended to occupy, forcing the S-rank contender to break her trajectory and materialize fifty meters away. Fu Hua had calculated her move based on memory and probability, effectively using the entire battlefield as an extension of her mind.
Simultaneously, Lan faced the other three. Mei, fully awakened, moved first, unleashing a devastating sweep of lightning from her blade. Kiana, ignoring her support role, sprinted directly at Lan with guns blazing, intending to draw his focus. Bronya's cannon roared to life, firing a hyper-velocity round aimed precisely at the mechanical horse Lan was riding.
Lan, the ultimate master of Freedom, did not waste energy on defense. He let the lightning pass inches from his mask—his Honkai resistance shrugged off the residual energy—and met Kiana's charge with a chilling counter. He summoned a volley of six ice-tipped arrows from Solstice, splitting his aim between Kiana and Bronya. Kiana tried to dodge, but the force of the arrows was too great; one arrow slammed into her armor, sending her spinning and crashing into a collapsed barricade, temporarily neutralizing the threat. The remaining five arrows slammed into Bronya's robot platform, forcing the mech to divert power to repair the critical crystallization on its surface.
Mei, seeing her two allies neutralized or delayed, roared, focusing her full Herrscher power onto Lan. Lan returned fire, summoning a massive ice vortex that spun rapidly, intercepting and neutralizing Mei's lightning strikes in a dazzling explosion of steam and frozen shards.
The battlefield was now simplified: Nava vs. Fu Hua, and Lan vs. Mei.
Nava, frustrated by the psychic tether Fu Hua had placed on the arena, decided to brute-force the problem. She engaged Fu Hua, launching a flurry of twenty-four Renewal Taekwondo kicks in less than a second. These were not mere physical attacks; they were focused beams of destructive Honkai energy channeled through pure footwork. Fu Hua blocked them with the discipline of a thousand years, using her staff to leverage her balance and control the flow, but the sheer power was overwhelming. With every strike, the crystalline floor beneath Fu Hua cracked, demonstrating that Nava was using her S-rank power not just on her opponent, but on the very foundation of Fu Hua's control over the battlefield.
"Your control is ancient, Fu Hua," Nava thought, her eyes glittering with pink power. "But Destruction always rewrites the script."
Fu Hua, recognizing that brute force would eventually crush her defenses, shifted tactics. She launched her strongest non-lethal psychic attack: a rapid-fire sequence of highly detailed, traumatic memories—of past failures, deep regret, and overwhelming pressure—aimed directly at Nava's mind. She was targeting the soul, not the body, using her ability to overload Nava's consciousness.
Nava barely stumbled. Her transcended existence as a transmigrator, combined with her Stigmata of pure Destruction, acted as a shield. She didn't block the memories; she annihilated them. The painful images hit her mind and were instantly disintegrated by her inherent power, leaving her mentally clear, if momentarily annoyed. She countered this psychic assault with a physical one, using the wooden staff to launch a concentrated, short-range blast of raw Honkai force that sent Fu Hua skidding back a hundred meters.
Meanwhile, Lan was pushed to his absolute limit by the Empress of Thunder. Mei was a tireless engine of destruction, creating a permanent dome of purple lightning that restricted Lan's ability to maneuver and utilize his full sense of Freedom.
Lan realized his goal was not to defeat Mei, but to out-concept her. His power was not just archery; it was boundless movement, an unburdened consciousness.
He launched into an unprecedented display of skill. He stopped using his hands entirely. The Solstice bow began to float, controlled by his sheer will and Honkai energy. Lan commanded the floating bow to fire a continuous stream of ice arrows that created a complex, spiraling barrier of perpetual motion around him, constantly deflecting Mei's lightning strikes and limiting her angles of attack.
He then removed his longsword from his back—the dawn. This was his close-range deterrent. He began to run in impossible, non-Euclidean patterns, using his mastery of Freedom to bend his movement around Mei's linear attacks. His goal was to force her into a single, predictable line of attack.
Mei finally lost her patience. She soared into the air, gathering all her energy for a single, defining Herrscher slash—the kind of blow meant to cleave the entire arena in half.
Lan saw his chance. As Mei dove, Lan's mental control over Solstice intensified. The bow fired a single, gigantic, crystalline arrow of pure Freedom, aiming not at Mei's body, but at the nexus of the Herrscher energy at her core. The arrow wasn't meant to kill, but to imprison. It impacted the epicenter of her descent, forcing the Herrscher power to crystallize and lock down completely. Mei was forced to pull back the attack, her armor covered in fragile, rapidly-spreading ice.
With Mei temporarily stalled, Nava delivered the final, decisive blow to Fu Hua.
"This is how things end," Nava thought.
She gathered the totality of her S-rank energy, concentrating it all into her right crystal gauntlet. This was the pure, unfiltered essence of her Destruction talent. She launched a singular, spiraling beam that was less a weapon and more a targeted conceptual eraser. It slammed into the already weakened Fu Hua, not causing physical damage, but utterly shattering the deep psychic well of her Fenghuang Down. Fu Hua gasped, all her memories and power temporarily receding, forcing her to fall heavily to the ground, unconscious.
With Fu Hua down, the Empress of Thunder, still partially encased in ice, saw the tide turn. Bronya's robot was too damaged to move, and Kiana was just now recovering. Lan, lowering the dawn sword, fixed his cold gaze on Mei.
Mei, recognizing the complete systemic failure and the overpowering strength of Nava, powered down her Herrscher form. Bronya, seeing the retreat, formally shut down her platform.
The barrier dropped.
Himeko lowered her speaker, her expression awestruck. "Sparring match concluded. Nava and Lan are the winners."
The sheer force exerted by the two mentors had momentarily silenced the arena. Nava and Lan, though heavily breathing, stood side-by-side—a pair of unstoppable forces who had proven that the gap between peak A-rank and S-rank, especially when combined with powerful gear, was too vast for the St. Freya team to overcome.
(Rosy's POV - Inside Grisha Adam's mind)
Rosy, standing next to Grisha Adam in a silent corner of the observation deck, materialized a scroll. Her thoughts flowed into his mind.
Rosy: [Narrative Synchronization: 99.8%. Lan's strategic use of projectile defense was innovative. Nava's power confirmed solid S-rank. The core objective of confirming their capability to handle a localized Herrscher event simultaneously was successful.]
Grisha Adam, watching Lan offer a hand to help Mei up, smiled—the innocent, gentle smile that concealed a universe of calculation.
Adam: "Perfection, Rosy. The chaos was necessary. We now know their true capacity for cooperation. The next step is to introduce the first true rival that forces them to operate not as a squad of individuals, but as a single, unified organism. Let the children have their moment. Send them the files on Schicksal's new recruit; we'll see if that sparks some motivation."
The puppet master turned to exit the observation room, the sound of the subdued students and the victorious mentors a dull, distant noise to his ancient ears.
___________________________________________________________
For the first time in a while I wasn't carried hard by A.I.
Yes Gemini helped a lot but not carried me so hard.
I was the one who wrote the 1,800 words while Gemini modify it to make it feel good to read
I took long because school has been pressuring me because all of my grades are now increasing my former all below the passing is now barely clinging into it
(74 to 75)
Now on this third quarter I gotta be locked on so I could pull all my grades and pass this 9th grade
[Questions]
And guys what happened at 3.7 of hsr I couldn't play it because my current phone is only 32 GB of storage