Setting aside the matter of stats for the moment, Fuli quickly checked the three skills he had randomly gained access to.
Generally speaking, the simplest way to deal with Aschour would be to get Soulium Animara, an ultimate skill that could instantly kill a large area within its domain.
As a proper Valkyrie raised in the Schicksal system, Rita had hundreds of skills. Fuli wasn't Kiana, the super-lucky empress who could pull a non-rate-up gold from a single gacha pull. Besides, he only had three chances.
The first skill was quickly revealed—Glacial Armor (B), where Honkai energy automatically condenses into an invisible shield on the body's surface to enhance defense, and can also be actively consumed to heal injuries.
A lower-tier skill than Sunfire Armor. It wasn't completely useless, but it was certainly of no use in the current situation.
The second one was pretty good—White Moon's Afterimage (A), a footwork that combined dance and sword techniques, with movements like an elf dancing gracefully under the moonlight in a ritual to the moon goddess.
Amidst the dance steps, one could unleash a storm of slashes and perform rapid movements akin to short-distance teleports. Not only could one entangle and evade enemy counterattacks in the flickering dance, but one could also create multiple phantoms to form a pincer attack.
Previously, Rita had relied on this ability to weave through Aschour's relentless attacks, and it was also her specialty as an assassin.
Well then, only the third one was left.
"Meow~" A high-pitched meow suddenly came from above Fuli's head.
He reached up and stroked the adorable little Pardo-cat, concentrating his mind on sensing the last skill.
Reality-Distorting Field: Soulium Animara!
"Here it comes!" A wild smile appeared on the boy's clean and handsome face.
Aschour was already puzzled by his rapidly rising aura. Seeing this, he frowned unhappily. "What's with you? Why are you so jumpy?"
"It's nothing," Fuli said in an almost arrogant tone. "Weren't you complaining that I was running around and wouldn't face you head-on? Now, I'll give you that chance!"
Glacial Armor appeared on his body's surface, and along with the translucent, crystal-blue substance transformed from the Shadow Weaver Sword, it completely enveloped him and the silent maid in his arms, weaving a divine and airtight magnificent shell.
In the reflection spreading on the river, the ice-blue long horns hung down like a frozen aurora, and fine crystal dust scattered from their tips, each particle refracting nebulae and stardust.
The jade tassels on both sides of the crown moved without wind, and the twelve ice prisms that made up the pendants knocked against each other, producing a clear and cold sound like an ancient bell, as if recording the scale of time for the universe.
The reason for this was that the activation of "Slay Her in Your Arms" required contact between both parties. To avoid any accidents during the battle that might separate the two and ruin everything, Fuli simply bound himself and Rita together.
As for the subtle discomfort from their bodies being pressed so tightly together?
It was just a little poking, right?
He believed Rita-jiejie could understand!
Then, inside the shell, Fuli whispered, "Reality-Distorting Field, deploy—"
The surrounding space became turbulent, and the world was silently eroded like Xuan paper dipped in ink.
Reality was stripped away, and all things faded into nothingness. In its place, a cold, crescent new moon hung in the sky, like a mirror hanging from the heavens, its surface covered with cracked patterns, flowing with a silver-blue, elegant, and faint light.
Reality-Distorting Field, Soulium Animara, deployment complete?
No, not yet.
"Don't even think about it!" Aschour was arrogant, but he wasn't stupid.
The Lance of the Finality fragment that replaced his heart gave him extremely powerful space-time perception, and a certain connection with Elizabeth had also informed him of Soulium Animara's instant-kill mechanism.
Realizing that the world was about to be replaced by Fuli's home field, he immediately stomped on the surface of the Thames.
Tens of thousands of water droplets turned into eternally unstoppable strong interaction force cannonballs, and along with Aschour himself, they rushed towards the two a hundred meters away at a super-divine speed invisible to the naked eye.
"First slash," Fuli said in a low voice.
Rita's scythe, which had been suspended in mid-air, was grabbed by a fourth person, different from the three present, and swooped down.
It was a phantom created by Fuli combining the characteristics of White Moon's Afterimage and the Shadow Weaver Sword.
"Setsuna Blade: Suffering Yaksha!"
No viscosity, incompressible, no heat conduction, absolute sharpness and smoothness—in theory, it could destroy any object or structure in reality.
The scythe, surrounded by this ideal fluid, intertwined with the projectiles. One-third of the projectiles were canceled out by the interaction between the two.
"Second slash," Fuli said again.
A second phantom holding a sharp longsword emerged from the water, piercing into the battlefield from an incredibly tricky angle.
"Setsuna Blade: Forgotten River's Guardian!"
A dark sun appeared in the center. The small black hole, called the Form of Nothingness, created a huge gravitational field. The corona of the lightless sun drawn by the longsword swallowed up all the remaining projectiles, crushing even the debris into complete nothingness.
This was the Form of Devouring that Fuli had comprehended after imprinting the Stigma of Rock. However, to say it was comprehended was an understatement. He had already studied it under Kallen's daily guidance back at the Hyperion, and learning it now was just a matter of course.
And at this moment, Aschour was already less than ten meters in front of him.
Unlike the air blades and stone and water bullets, whose authority effects were greatly reduced after leaving his body and could be neutralized by Honkai energy or disrupted by powerful skills, he himself was peerless in both attack and defense.
Once he threw this punch, Fuli himself, protected by the Sunfire Armor, wouldn't get a GG, but Rita in his arms would definitely turn into Rita-paste.
So—
"Three slashes, more than enough!"
The woven Shadow Weaver ice shell was shattered by a single punch, but there was no one inside.
Aschour looked around and finally saw the figure holding the beauty in his arms, looking down from the steel frame of the London Tower Bridge.
Fuli lowered his crimson eyes. The lights above his head were like starlight, and the shattered gold reflected from the glass curtain wall of The Shard shimmered in the flowing rain.
"Just playing little tricks!" The youth, looking up, gritted his teeth. He couldn't help but feel a sense of glee when he noticed that the new moon had disappeared.
"You're not much better for stopping me from deploying Soulium Animara," Fuli retorted, then quickly smiled freely. "Forget it, there's no point talking to a dead man."
"Dead man? You mean yourself!"
The deployment of the Reality-Distorting Field was completely interrupted. Without the instant-kill mechanism, Fuli had no way of harming Aschour.
This battle was his victory!
"Is that so?" Fuli's leisurely voice came from the top of the bridge. The shattered Shadow Weaver shell had unknowingly turned into a dark phantom.
It held Jueyu and, under its master's will, moved from stillness, slashing at the contemptuous Aschour with an iaijutsu strike.
—Instantaneous Slash: Endless Asura, a divine-speed drawing slash achieved by distorting the space-time around the sword in a way similar to a warp drive, capable of beheading an enemy in an instant.
Even though Endless Asura was the Void Form of Instantaneous Slash, corresponding to the Herrscher of the Void, it was absolutely impossible for it to harm Aschour, who held the unchanging authority of the Finality and had stopped his own time.
Therefore, the youth didn't even bother to defend, letting the longsword slash at his neck.
The next second, the world spun.
"...Huh?" The head in mid-air let out a surprised sound. It tried its best to move its eyes to look at the headless figure standing on the Thames.
"I said, three slashes, more than enough."
Fuli, having flash-stepped to the river's surface, with a thought, the large hand transformed from the Shadow Weaver Sword pierced through the chest of the corpse before him.
The faintly glowing lance fragment was easily taken out and immediately put away by the boy.
Aschour's head was still spinning in mid-air. The HTR-type modification potion he had taken made his vitality particularly strong, and he could linger for a while even after being beheaded.
He asked in confusion, "What did you do?"
"Heresy," Fuli said concisely.
—The Power of Heresy, an advanced application of the Human Immortal Path that he had demonstrated to the people of the Hyperion and St. Freya during his battle with Durandal (Volume 2, Chapter 19).
It temporarily plundered others' abilities for his own use until they were exhausted. Durandal had commented that it allowed one to have a certain chance of winning no matter what kind of enemy one faced.
"You... plundered my ability, and then covered your blade with it... to use against me?" Aschour said in disbelief. "When... did you collect it?"
"All along," Fuli replied.
As the holder of the lance fragment, Aschour's authority was a complete whole. Fuli had no opportunity to use the Human Immortal Path to "take a bite."
But the faint authority wrapped around the stones, steel coils, and telephone poles that had been thrown at him—the boy had been diligently collecting them.
Otherwise, why hadn't he fought back even once from the beginning to the end? He could have blocked many of the attacks with Instantaneous Slash and not have to flee in such a sorry state.
Good steel must be used on the cutting edge.
Aschour muttered to himself, "Deploying the Reality-Distorting Field, the previous tension and arrogance, were all just bait to provoke me and get me to approach you."
Fuli had no need to deceive a dead man. "You could have chosen not to take it, and then died to the large-scale annihilation of Soulium Animara."
"So, no matter what, I couldn't have won this time...?"
"I have never lost a battle between those of the same level," Fuli said. "After my stats reached the critical level, you were already dead for sure."
Stats were very important. They were the necessary foundation for all combat.
Of course, it wasn't to say that he had no chance of winning in his A-rank state, but to endure hardship when there was none was to be a fool. To not use "Slay Her in Your Arms" and instead risk his life to fight a stronger opponent with a weaker one—that would be having shit for brains.
"..."
Aschour said no more. With a rather comical "plop," his head fell into the Thames, which was dyed a bluish-purple by the neon lights.
With a thought, Fuli had the Shadow Weaver Sword transform into a large hand and collected his body and head.
The effect of the Third Reich's HTR-type modification potion was superb. When he brought it back to Mei, he'd see if she could reverse-engineer the potion.
It's just—well, okay.
He looked at the gray sky and shed two tears. He could already see the Hyperion's budget, which he had barely gotten his hands on, rapidly dwindling.
He really had to find a way to open up more sources of income. When he got back, he'd have to flip through the criminal code again!
But before that.
Feeling the two large lumps wrapped around his arm, the boy felt a little guilty for some reason. "That was an emergency just now. The fight's over, so we should go our separate ways?"
"I refuse." The maid smiled sweetly. Not only did she not let go, but she hugged him even tighter.
Even after learning that the young Fuli who had saved her along with Ragnar had not died as recorded in the Schicksal database, Rita had still not visited the Hyperion even once in the three months since the Third Honkai Eruption.
The official explanation was that she was jealous that Fuli, despite having his memory blurred, could remember his promise to Kiana, but had completely forgotten about her and Ragnar.
But with a little thought, one could deduce that such a reason was extremely unreliable.
Everyone knew what state the young Fuli was in back then. To blame him for forgetting her over such a small matter—was Rita Rossweisse such a vicious woman?
Obviously not.
The real reason the young woman didn't go to the Hyperion was actually very simple.
There was no need, that's all.
After all, not everyone could remember their childhood.
In the eyes of any normally grown-up person, Fuli and Bianka were the real anomalies.
Childhood promises, who hadn't joked with their neighborhood playmates or kindergarten classmates about things like "I'll marry you when we grow up!" or "I'll be your bride when we grow up!"?
When they really grew up, people would just smile when they recalled the past. How many would actually take these things seriously?
Those who did would be called crazy, right? Just like Fuli when he "reunited" with K-423!
It could only be said that Fuli and Bianka's promise was too dreamlike, which was also related to the environment they grew up in.
The former had only this one last straw to cling to after being sent back to Shenzhou. The latter had not only lost all her memories before the age of nine, but the environment she grew up in was also exceptionally clean and pure.
Rita was different. Her complex experiences had given her personality a background color called "reality," which made her not overly attached to certain things and people from the past. For example, even though she knew K-423 was the one who killed Ragnar, she could still treat her calmly.
It could only be said that when Rita first became a Valkyrie, she did want to find Fuli. But after learning of the "death notice" fabricated by Otto (Volume 2, Chapter 45), the young woman had gradually let go of this budding, vague feeling.
In summary, even though Rita had known for a long time that Fuli was at the Hyperion, she still had no intention of going.
The relationships between this group of people were a tangled mess. Wasn't it better to eat melon seeds and watch the show from the shore? Why get involved in this muddy water?
A dignified S-rank Valkyrie fighting with a bunch of little girls who hadn't even grown all their hair yet over a man? Heh, she disdained to do so!
That's what Rita thought, and that's what she did.
The Master said by the river, "Thus it passes, not ceasing day or night."
Following the teachings of the philosopher Confucius, she would just patiently sit by the river and wait for the corpses to float by.
Until this trip to the City of Fog, until she met the boy again.
Until she was held in his arms, until she drank the elixir passed between their lips.
First, to clarify something: as long as a critical-level or higher Valkyrie didn't want it to, a C-rank potion like the Love Potion would have no effect on them.
Honkai energy and artificial Stigmata already gave Valkyries extremely strong drug resistance, and the "Schicksal Valkyrie Training Manual" modified by the Taixuan Sword Mind Art even had special chapters on detoxification and healing.
Even so, Rita still allowed the effects of the Love Potion to take hold in her body.
The moment she held the boy who had once shouted, "Don't be afraid, big sister. If it's really bad, just hug me and you won't be scared anymore!" in her arms again, feeling the strong sense of security that she had longed for for seven years.
The young woman finally realized that the boy's influence on her was much deeper than she had imagined.
Why did she like children? Why did she love Lord Theresa and the young Lady Durandal so much?
Because their body types and the sense of security they brought were similar to the young Fuli's. She was just subconsciously looking for his shadow in them.
Why did she develop a constitution that allowed her to be awake for a whole day with only four hours of sleep?
Because after being attacked by a Honkai Beast, she couldn't rest easy. Only when she held him did she feel an unparalleled sense of security, instead of being unable to sleep in fear and having to pretend that she wasn't afraid.
So that's how it was, so that's how it was.
The disdain she had deliberately put on was instantly crushed. The young woman opened her magnificent eyes and looked gently at the boy who was much taller than before.
Fuli, who was feeling awkward from her gaze, wanted to lower his head and say nothing, but this trick didn't work on Rita.
The emotion flowing in her foxy phoenix eyes was more deadly than any words in the world. Just by quietly looking at him, even without eye contact, this gaze that was enough to draw silk could weave a sticky web of love, easily trapping the prey that had nowhere to run.
...