Half an hour later, the core conference room of Anti-Entropy's underground laboratory.
The shadowless lamps overhead lit the oval metal table bright as noon.
The air circulation system gave off a low, steady hum. A few cups of black coffee sat on the tabletop, their steam long gone.
Kiana was usually glued to Su Yu's side, either fighting over snacks or complaining that meetings were boring.
Today she had walked most of the way around the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down to Cecilia's right, as far from the head seat as she could get.
Her hands were pressed against her knees, stiff and tense.
Her gaze was fixed on the miniature holographic projection slowly rotating in the center of the table, leaving everyone else only half of her pale profile.
No matter who was speaking, her eyes never strayed half an inch toward one particular direction.
Cecilia had clearly noticed something was off with her daughter.
She turned her head slightly, nudged Kiana's cold glass of water aside, and set down a cup of hot milk in its place.
On the projection, a pale blue energy dome covered the miniature Arc City, and the progress bar beside it sat steadily at "80%."
"The base-layer force field structure of the Skyward Shield is fully laid. The remaining twenty percent is final node grid integration and stability testing."
Tesla slapped an electronic report onto the table and tapped the red warning-line zone.
"With funding this generous, there's nothing to complain about in the construction crew's progress."
Rita stood at the far end of the table with a record book in hand, and picked up where Tesla left off.
"The mech pilots' enhancement is on schedule," Rita said, her pace unhurried. "All two hundred and fifty test subjects have passed the improved first-stage Genetic Lock enhancement. Their neural reflex thresholds and muscle load capacity have reached the minimum standard for piloting a mech. Synchronization training in the simulation pods is also progressing steadily."
"They should be ready to form squads and enter live-fire drills in the near future."
She closed the record book and swept her gaze around the room.
"However, no matter how realistic the simulation pods are, they lack the pressure of the shadow of death. No algorithm can fully reproduce the variables of a real battlefield."
"How long will the psychological defenses of recruits who have only ever fought inside data hold up when they face blood and real flesh being torn apart? That is an unknown."
"Then the next time a Spatial Rift opens, why not just drag them out there and let them see some blood?" Tesla cut in, frowning. "If they never fight a few real battles, they'll stay hothouse flowers forever."
Rita sighed softly.
"I share Dr. Tesla's view, but the current intensity isn't suitable for training recruits," Rita said. "In the Spatial Rift we monitored the night before last, the lowest-tier Zombies had vanished entirely. The vanguard starts at Chariots, and the energy level of that Emperor-class Honkai Beast was no weaker than Anzu, whom Sir Su Yu and I fought."
"If this growth curve doesn't level off, then on the day of the decisive battle, these fresh recruits who have only just learned to walk may have to face a defensive line suppressed at Judgment-class level."
Silence held the conference room for a few seconds.
If an Emperor-class Honkai Beast was a city-level disaster, then a Judgment-class Honkai Beast was undoubtedly a continent-level catastrophe.
"With our current combat strength, is there any way to fight a Judgment-class Honkai Beast?"
"There is, but it won't be easy," Welt said frankly. "A Judgment-class Honkai Beast is a natural calamity in itself, and they come with all sorts of troublesome traits. Take Chiyou, for example. It is like a moving continent. To kill it for good, you must pinpoint where its heart lies and strike there."
"Looking purely at top-end combat power, we aren't without a chance of winning even against a Judgment-class Honkai Beast. If Su Yu and Rita work together, they have a fair chance of killing one. The difficulty is—"
Su Yu took over from Welt.
"The difficulty is how long the defensive line we've built can last before we kill the Judgment-class Honkai Beast."
Su Yu looked around at everyone.
"Kiana has mastered the power of the Herrscher of the Void, but she most likely won't be able to take part in the defense of our own world. She has to go to the Honkai world and dismantle that Honkai energy bomb."
Which meant that if a powerful Honkai Beast broke through at Arc City's defensive line, Kiana would be unable to lend support.
"And if Kiana fails to defuse the Honkai energy bomb over there, the chain reaction from its detonation will destroy our Arc City at the same time."
Tesla's brow furrowed. "So if Kiana doesn't stop the Honkai energy bomb, even if we hold Arc City, we're done for in the end?"
"And if our defensive line collapses before Kiana defuses the bomb," Su Yu said bluntly, "then the truth about the Honkai invasion will be made public. This world might not be destroyed by Honkai erosion right away, but once people know Honkai exists, humanity will inevitably fall into doomsday panic, and the world situation will descend into chaos."
"By then, our crucial source of emotion points will be cut off. After all, with the world ending, who's going to play games? Especially a game that shares its name with the catastrophe itself."
Su Yu's words made everyone present feel their hearts sink. No one could bear a consequence like that.
"In other words, in the Defense of Arc City, three parties will carry enormous pressure. Kiana, who returns to the Honkai world to stop the bomb. Rita and I, who go to fight the invading Honkai high-end forces. And the rest of us, the mech corps that makes up Arc City's defensive line."
"If any one of the three fails, what awaits us is a total collapse of the line."
Welt pushed up his glasses.
"We still don't have enough hands. No—rather than a shortage of hands, it's that our combat strength has a gap in the middle." He laid out his analysis calmly. "With our current distribution of strength, only Su Yu, Rita, and Kiana can stand against Emperor-class forces and above head-on."
"I am fairly confident I could defeat an Emperor-class Honkai Beast too, but with the strength I've recovered so far, I would very likely be unable to move after beating one."
"Put simply, if the invaders include a Judgment-class Honkai Beast and multiple Emperor-class Honkai Beasts, the remaining line must hold off at least one Emperor-class Honkai Beast while fighting off huge numbers of Knight-class Honkai Beasts, Chariots, and Chariot-class Honkai Beasts at the same time—"
"Multiple Emperor-class Honkai Beasts? Tch, what the hell is going on here!"
Tesla pinched the bridge of her nose in irritation and turned her gaze to Su Yu at the head seat.
"Do you have any leads? Why is the intensity of Honkai energy erosion shooting up like it's strapped to a rocket?"
It wasn't the man at the head seat who answered, but Welt, who sat nearby slowly rubbing the metal handle of his cane.
"There could be many explanations."
Welt's voice sounded heavy.
He watched the virtual city sand table hanging in midair, the cold blue light reflected in his lenses.
"In the old days, when I sailed the sea of stars aboard that train and stopped at platforms as the Nameless, I heard of a few desperate planets very much like the Honkai world."
Welt's fingers tapped twice on the cane's handle without his noticing.
"The civilizations in those places were even more wretched. Even after they paid every price to defeat the calamity made manifest, the [Nihility] coiling in the sky above that planet would in the end swallow every fruit of victory, and their lives along with it."
"The survivors left in that world spent their whole lives fighting that Nihility."
His gaze dropped back to the table.
"Thinking about it now, perhaps that is another possibility of the Honkai world at some fork in its path, and a manifestation of the unreasoning essence of calamity itself."
Silence spread over the round table again.
A soft laugh came from the head seat.
"They say know yourself and know your enemy, and you'll win a hundred battles. But if you really trace things back to their root, a lot of them are just books with no first page."
Su Yu's voice broke the silence.
"If we're looking for reasons, there are plenty."
"For instance, maybe this world of ours is just a story somebody else is writing. The nasty enemies we keep meeting and these absurd energy levels could all be arrangements some higher narrator tossed off on a whim."
The moment he said it, the air in the room seemed to freeze for the briefest instant.
Kiana's shoulders visibly twitched, and her lowered eyes darted away even more.
"But what does it matter?" Su Yu looked at the people around the table. "In the eyes of those so-called higher beings, we may be just a chunk of data, a string of code. But to us, this world and every person standing in it is our whole living reality. That's reason enough to fight to the very end."
Tesla froze, then slapped her thigh hard.
"Exactly! No need to think about all that nonsense. Whether it's Honkai or some damn code, if it dares come, we beat it right back! This genius has a point, doesn't she?"
"Dr. Tesla is quite right," Su Yu replied.
Mei cleared her throat and pushed a structural diagram onto the central projection above the table.
"Based on Kevin's test assistance over this period and the combat feedback data collected from the prototype, the standard-issue battle armor has completed final testing."
"Its performance ceiling is nowhere near as brutal as the prototype's, but its advantage is extremely high stability."
"These suits will be distributed to the mech pilots. If a Titan is destroyed, the exoskeleton support and Honkai energy resistance of the armor will still guarantee their basic survival and infantry combat ability."
Mei split the blueprint into several blank modules.
"The base model is settled, but for our high-end fighters we need specialized, custom-built armor."
"Welt, Kevin, Susannah Manatt, and Sin Mal will each need a unique energy circuit design for their personal suits."
She paused and looked at Su Yu.
"Since you don't have to go to the simulation pod to get beaten up today, stay afterward and help us brainstorm. Mr. Welt is right. We have to raise the team's overall combat strength as fast as we can. At the very least, we have to make sure that in the worst-case scenario they can hold out until you or Rita defeat the enemy's top fighters and come back."
"No problem."
Mobius lounged against the wide backrest of her chair, twirling a test tube of glowing green liquid.
"My lab has cooked up something new too." She drew out the last word. "All our medical supplies have been upgraded across the board, and the internal circulation absorption rate of the anti-fatigue and stamina recovery potions is way up. The side effect is that the amount of hair you lose has roughly tripled..."
She saw the faces around the table shift slightly and snorted.
"What are you afraid of? I improved the hair-growth tonic while I was at it. I guarantee you'll grow it back faster than you lose it."
"Dr. Mobius's money-making scheme of pouring from her left hand into her right is truly invincible. That boomerang lands perfectly every time."
Su Yu sighed in admiration.
Mobius rolled her eyes, her slit serpent pupils full of the contempt one reserves for fools.
"The lab's equipment and supplies burn money by the second. Without funds, how would I run those life-threatening tests?"
Beside her, Eden lifted her teacup and took a small sip of black tea.
"Speaking of funds, here is miHoYo Studio's settled financial report for last month."
Eden projected the data from her terminal. Enormous figures, enough to make an ordinary person dizzy, scrolled past.
"Part of the report's profit has already been rolled into Honkai Impact 3rd's version development and marketing, as planned. The rest of the liquid capital has all gone into laying the hardware for Honkai: Ordinal Scale."
"Very soon, top-grade holographic projection base stations will be covertly deployed in the underground pipelines of every transit hub and major commercial district in Arc City."
"With a single command, the whole city can become the most frenzied Ordinal Scale arena at any moment."
She switched the projection to a photo of a modern waterfront building.
"Also, the relocation of miHoYo Studio's new headquarters has been fully settled," Eden said with a smile. "I bought an entire commercial tower in Soukai City. We can move in the moment we arrive."
No one in the room objected to the decision.
The immeasurable emotional value that Honkai Impact 3rd brought in was the only lifeblood keeping the entire doomsday defense running.
They had to move it to the safest heartland.
Once those Spatial Rifts crossed Arc City's defensive line, no one could guarantee that some unnameable calamity wouldn't suddenly burst out in the rear.
The core of miHoYo had to be moved out.
And Ordinal Scale, the training ground for screening fighters, would stay behind in this fortress destined to become scorched earth, together with the Skyward Shield and everyone in the city, providing data support for the coming "Empty City Plan."
The holographic sand table turned quietly in the air.
The pale blue light curtain of the Skyward Shield covered countless towering buildings.
Over at the secondary screen, Tesla was jabbing her finger as she and Mei discussed the placement matrix for the automated defense cannons inside the city's streets and alleys.
The date hung clearly at the very top of the screen.
December 3rd.
Countdown: 68 days.
More than a hundred days had passed since that glaring 180-day ultimatum, a stumbling road all the way.
This hastily patched-together, fragile line of defense was being armed with steel and iron at an astonishing pace.
Time was draining away in this underground bunker like water.
The calamity lurking on the far side of the sky would soon tear through the clouds.
No one knew whether the ending that awaited them past this timeline would be a land of ruins.
Everyone was working on the task in front of them.
Buried deep underground, they were only trying to spend every last ounce of strength before the final countdown hit zero, so that they would leave no regrets behind.
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