Night had crept in at some point.
So the villa was lit by indoor lights—bright enough that it almost felt brighter than daytime.
And the second floor of that villa was downright noisy.
There were strange, shrill screeches. There were abnormal explosions. There was the crackle of arcing electricity. There were sounds like beams firing, and the chatter of autocannons.
Put simply, it was like someone was playing a sci-fi blockbuster inside the house—like the battlefield audio of humans locked in a brutal fight against an army of monsters.
"Haa…"
After watching the edited, cut-together video she'd finished one more time, Saori's emotions still surged just as hard.
This third re-edit, though, wasn't focused mainly on the protagonist's point of view anymore.
It was more like a god's-eye perspective centered on him—but with a camera that could stretch outward. Once Black Cat pulled the view farther back, she could capture more of the surrounding combat, then snip out those moments.
Otherwise, if the god's-eye view stayed locked on "277" alone, with him always centered on screen, it would get monotonous fast. Swapping to other scenes made the scale and carnage of the battlefield feel bigger—more real.
Hm?
Her phone was vibrating again. Saori picked it up—and froze.
It was a message from her older sister, the one who'd once claimed she was getting married and running off overseas.
Not just one message, either. Tons of texts. And a whole pile of missed calls. Saori had ignored them because she'd been completely absorbed in making the fan edit.
At first, Saori had actually believed it—thought her sister had really married someone she liked. But the more she thought about it, the less it added up.
Her sister had never introduced a boyfriend. If she actually had one, there was no way she wouldn't have said something.
The truth was simpler: her sister had used that excuse to dodge their parents' marriage pressure, then slipped out of the country.
Now her sister was blowing up her phone… which meant she was asking Saori for help.
Her sister was frighteningly smart. If Saori got her to handle the business side of this video, it would explode even harder—and they'd be able to withstand the vultures circling for profit.
Of course, Saori didn't plan on telling her sister anything about Black Cat. Her sister was curious, sure, but if Saori refused to talk, she wouldn't force it.
She'd just nag them like crazy to "update," that was all.
Saori had already brought up asking her sister for help with Black Cat, and Black Cat had agreed.
Saori opened the newest message.
The contents made her blink in shock: her sister said she'd be back tomorrow.
Huh?
Just one video… and it was enough to lure back the sister who'd abandoned her little sister for so long?
Fine, then. Time to upload the third short video.
Once it finished uploading, Saori watched the live viewer count climb fast, and the comments start flooding in.
So she turned off the on-screen bullet comments—otherwise the entire image would be drowned in flying text.
"Black Cat… what is it?"
Black Cat had opened her eyes. The way her brows knit made Saori tense.
Don't tell me the livestream went offline.
Which would mean—
"It's Asuna's side. Something went wrong."
Kuroneko (Gokou Ruri) explained the situation.
If Asuna hadn't warned them, then when Black Cat noticed a strange dial had appeared beside the "Cross-World Invitation" button, she might've twisted it out of curiosity.
But Asuna had accidentally touched it first, and now the time difference between worlds had become wildly skewed.
It might be that one day passing on their side meant one year passing on Asuna's.
Asuna sent a message to them. They'd see it and reply in what felt like minutes—but on Asuna's side, it might take days before she even received their response.
So when that dial was adjusted to "1," did that mean everything would resync after one day?
Or was it a continuous acceleration?
Black Cat leaned toward the first interpretation: it should return to normal after a day.
If it were continuous, then after a few months here, Asuna would already be dead of old age over there.
Besides, according to Asuna, the dial was slowly winding back on its own—like a spring slowly rewinding.
A month had passed on her side, and the dial had turned back by about one-twelfth of a full rotation.
So Black Cat downloaded the newest segment—jumping straight to the streamer's current live timestamp—and when she saw the updated footage…
He was wearing power armor now.
He looked safer, at least. Which was why Black Cat immediately snapped her attention back to reality.
"Saori!"
She called Saori over to watch the newly downloaded half-hour together. Black Cat hadn't peeked ahead in the stream—she honestly didn't know what was in it, and she wanted to face it with Saori.
She only went online now and then to confirm the stream was still running and he was still alive. Then she'd focus on real life and help Saori with editing and uploads.
It was another gut-twisting slaughter scene—and the unit was down to barely over a hundred people.
Now there was no retreat. They'd pushed too deep into the enemy's position, and bugs swarmed them from every direction.
"Exterminatus?"
"Not a word you ever want to hear…"
Just from the dialogue alone—talk of possibly abandoning the planet—it was obvious this was a terrifying kind of order.
Saori and Black Cat exchanged a look. They both seemed to reach the same conclusion.
They were going to destroy the planet.
If they were going to abandon it, there was no way they'd just hand it over. The answer was obvious: mutual destruction.
If they couldn't hold it, then they'd wipe the planet clean and drag the enemy down with it.
Even worse, there might not be any rescue—no "evacuate survivors, then destroy the world."
Just immediate martyrdom.
A whole planet dying… how many people would be buried with it?
The thought made Saori's scalp prickle.
Then a shot appeared—and both of them felt a chill crawl up their spines.
It was the steel city where he'd been earlier, the place that had been smashed by a fortress impact.
Now it truly looked like hell.
Correction: it was hell—not as a metaphor, but as a literal noun.
A rift had opened there, unmistakably leading into an infernal realm. Demons poured through in a mass invasion that made your skin crawl.
Corpses that hadn't been burned to ash—bodies still mostly intact—were crawling up out of magma-like ground.
Some mutated into things that felt straight out of cosmic horror. Others took on more traditional devil forms.
Hell's army was devouring this world.
With the situation that much worse, the likelihood that "Exterminatus" meant planetary destruction only climbed higher.
But then the plot hit the real point.
This Adeptus Astartes unit's mission… was to deliver something?
And he was the recipient?
The name he gave, too—it sounded weirdly familiar.
"Ah—Lance Plaine. Isn't that basically a mash-up of Rance, the protagonist from the Rance game series, and Sill Plain, the heroine?"
Saori blurted it out as realization hit.
"Uh…"
Black Cat looked stunned too—like she'd been trying to place it for a while.
So yeah. This guy definitely knew the series, and he'd picked a ridiculous stitched-together name on purpose.
Then both of them tensed, because they were about to open the shipment.
What were they even delivering?
When a safe-like case finally opened, something flew out first—nearly making both of them jump.
It was a skull.
It looked mechanically modified.
A moment later, they realized it was basically a drone—just designed to look horrifying.
But the skull shell itself felt disturbingly real—like it was made from an actual skull.
It also carried a recorded message for the recipient, and it could project a hologram to introduce the delivered product.
And the product was—
A suit of power armor.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]