In the fluorescent-lit, deathly pale space beneath the CBD of Arc City, the dead silence was broken by Welt's heavy, ragged breathing.
The glow of the phone screen slowly dimmed. The video finished playing, the image freezing on that highly tech-styled logo of Honkai Impact 3rd.
Welt jammed the phone into the pocket of his sweater and turned, striding toward the elevator.
His steps were fast, his boots clanging sharply against the metal grating of the floor, carrying an almost reckless, unhesitating resolve.
He was going to find this person called Su Yu.
Immediately.
Right now.
That studio was in the Arc City Tower. He only needed to take the elevator up, hail a cab, and in fifteen minutes he could be there.
He would get the whole story straight. He would confirm whether or not this was actually real.
But he only made it ten steps.
Less than five meters from that high-speed elevator that led straight to the surface, Welt's steps came to an abrupt halt.
It was as if he had slammed into an invisible wall, his shoulders slumping slightly.
He stood rooted in place, teeth biting down hard on his lower lip.
Reason—that thing which had been like a tightening curse upon his head for the past ten years—at this most critical moment, coldly and mercilessly clamped around his throat.
He knew many people in this world.
Raiden Ryoma was the president of a certain corporation, and at the same time a scholar.
Cocolia was the director of an orphanage—but this time not some villain, rather a true mother running herself ragged for the children of that orphanage.
Even he himself, in the eyes of the outside world, was nothing more than a boss who made animations.
This was a world brimming with "Counterparts," a peaceful world with no Honkai, where the laws of physics functioned normally.
What if... what if this Honkai Impact 3rd were merely some sort of inconceivable coincidence?
What if this producer called Su Yu had only happened to glimpse the tip of the iceberg of that world in a dream, and then turned it into a game to make money?
What was he supposed to do then?
The elevator's red ascending button was right there before his eyes, yet Welt did not reach out his hand.
He lifted his head, his gaze passing over his own shoulder to look behind him.
That twenty-meter-tall Wotan stood like a black-and-red iron tower, silently looming among the enormous load-bearing supports.
Its chest cavity was still empty.
Without an energy source, it was just a lump of metal that wouldn't even break even if sold by the ton as scrap.
The sound of Tesla and Einstein's footsteps as they left seemed to still echo through this empty underground.
Ten years.
He had wasted a full ten years of these two geniuses' prime on that ethereal, intangible nightmare.
If he now took a PV that "might just be a game" to them and told them, "Look, there are others in the world who know about Honkai—let's come back and keep filling this bottomless pit"...
How could he open his mouth to say it?
They were human too.
They had the right to their own lives—to compete for a Nobel Prize, to enjoy the applause of the world—and not to spend themselves dry down in this sunless underground, keeping company with a possible "madman."
Welt closed his eyes.
The exhaustion, the criticism, the self-doubt accumulated over these ten years, like a great mountain, pressed down viciously on his spine.
He felt an unprecedented weariness of body and soul.
"Bzzt—bzzt—"
The phone in his pocket let out a muffled vibration.
Welt opened his eyes and, somewhat sluggishly, drew out the phone.
On the screen flashed a string of unfamiliar digits with no contact name.
The number of people who knew his private number could be counted on one hand.
He pressed the answer key and raised the phone to his ear.
"Welt Yang."
From the other end of the line came a woman's voice—languid, husky, yet carrying an inexplicably dangerous air.
That voice was like a brilliantly colored venomous snake, flicking its tongue as it slid across one's eardrum.
Welt's brow instantly knit tight.
He recognized this voice.
Mobius.
That biologist whom the entire academic world regarded as a freak, a madwoman—someone everyone kept at a respectful distance from, yet could not help but acknowledge as a genius.
A few years ago, when Welt was searching for collaborators for Wotan, he had once tried to make contact with her.
Most scientists simply treated him like a lunatic and drove him out, but Mobius did not.
At the time she had been sitting behind that desk piled high with anatomical diagrams, twirling a scalpel in her hand, her green eyes fixed on Welt, smiling like a devil watching a little white lab mouse.
"Mr. Yang, your story is fascinating. But science demands evidence. If, in this world, those things that exceed all current laws of physics and the common sense of biology truly were to appear..."
She pointed the scalpel at Welt's chest.
"Then I will take part in your project."
That had been the only answer she gave him at the time.
And now, she had actually called him on her own initiative.
"Dr. Mobius?" Welt's voice was still somewhat hoarse. "You're looking for me..."
"Do you still remember our agreement?"
Mobius cut him off without ceremony, her tone urgent, her speech extremely rapid, the background full of the beeping alarms of instruments and the crisp clatter of keys being struck.
"Now, come to my laboratory."
She paused for half a second, then put weight into her words.
"Immediately. Right now."
"Beep—beep—"
The call was cut off.
Welt gripped the phone, listening to the dial tone within, his whole body frozen stiff in place.
Mobius's laboratory was not in the city center, but beneath a research institute of extremely high security clearance somewhere in Arc City's Old District.
She never received guests lightly, much less summoned someone over in this almost commanding tone.
Welt turned his head and once again glanced at that still utterly lifeless Wotan.
His heart began to pound uncontrollably.
He did not know what exactly that woman called a madwoman wanted him to see, but after ten years of despair, he had a powerful intuition.
He might be about to witness something capable of overturning the common sense of this entire world.
Fifteen kilometers away, in Arc City's Old District, on the fourth basement level of the Past World Paradise Comprehensive Research Institute.
The air here was thick with the pungent mixed smell of formalin and disinfectant.
Eerie green fluorescent light strips wound along the edges of the walls, slicing the entire space into block after block of cold geometric shapes.
Mobius stood outside the sterile isolation chamber in the center of the laboratory.
She wore a white lab coat stained with an unidentified green liquid, her seaweed-like long green hair carelessly tied behind her head with a rubber band.
She wore no goggles; those green eyes, their pupils taking on a bizarre serpentine shape, were fixed dead on the interior of the isolation chamber.
In the center of the isolation chamber, a set of white armor floated suspended.
That was the "research material" Su Yu had left here as collateral payment when he borrowed Nuwa earlier.
To the people of this world, it was nothing more than an extremely finely crafted Cosplay prop, or a motion-capture suit used for filming a movie.
But Mobius did not think so.
She pressed both hands against the reinforced glass of the isolation chamber, the veins on the backs of her hands bulging from excessive force.
Her chest heaved violently, her breathing heavy, as if she had just finished running a marathon.
Just ten minutes ago, she had completed the final spectral analysis of this armor's core energy circuitry.
The data charts on the computer screen were still leaping madly, those rows upon rows of red error alarms flashing frantically, indicating that this thing's material, its mode of energy conduction, and some crystalline substance embedded within it, all exceeded humanity's existing periodic table of elements.
This was absolutely not a product of this era.
This was not even a product of this world.
Mobius slowly pressed her forehead against the cold reinforced glass.
She felt a long-lost fervor, one that sent shudders through her whole body, burning in her blood.
That man whom she had originally treated as nothing but an after-dinner joke—Welt Yang.
Those mad ravings of his about the world being devoured by purple monsters, about those Valkyries who possessed the power of gods.
Mobius closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath; that pungent disinfectant smell, at this moment, made her feel incomparably lucid.
Those were all real.
Concealed within Su Yu was a secret capable of crossing the barrier between worlds.
And the apocalyptic catastrophe Welt had described, the one named "Honkai," was by no means the delusional fit of some science fiction novelist.
It was the sword of Damocles hanging over everyone's heads.
She abruptly opened her eyes, turned, and walked to the operating console, snatching up that internal direct line.
Without the slightest hesitation, she dialed that number.
Su Yu's number.
The phone rang twice before it was picked up.
"Come to my laboratory."
Mobius offered no pleasantries. She stared at that set of White Comet armor floating quietly in the isolation chamber, her voice low, yet carrying an excitement she could hardly conceal.
She paused, then spat out that word long sealed away in the depths of her files.
"This concerns... Honkai."
At that same moment.
Arc City Tower, in the game director's office on the top floor.
Su Yu stood before the wide floor-to-ceiling window, still gripping that phone that had just been hung up.
The dial tone from the receiver had already been cut off by the System's default, the screen's glow gradually dimming, reflected in his pupils, slightly dilated from shock.
Honkai.
Mobius had said Honkai.
This word, in this peaceful world, for an ordinary doctor of biology, was something that should not exist.
What's more, given Mobius's personality—indifferent to absolutely everything except her own experimental subjects—there was no way she would ever pay attention to a little-known game that had only just released a PV.
So how did she know?
Su Yu's heart pounded violently within his chest.
The only explanation was that set of "White Comet" armor wreckage belonging to Kiana, which he had temporarily left as collateral in her laboratory earlier in exchange for borrowing Nuwa as an assistant.
Just what had that woman analyzed out of it?
It was right at this moment.
[Ding!]
A crisp System notification chime burst open inside Su Yu's mind.
Accompanying it, that System panel which always loved to use eye-catching large red letters and exaggerated pop-up phrasing draped itself directly across his retina.
[Congratulations, Host! The gears of fate have begun to turn! A key plot node has been detected as triggered!]
[Side Mission Unlocked: An Ally Beyond Expectation, Yet Within Reason]
[Mission Description: Proceed to the fourth basement level of the Past World Paradise Comprehensive Research Institute to receive an ally you never expected, yet who is entirely within reason. He has lain deeply buried in this peaceful world for several whole decades. He has exhausted everything he has, enduring countless doubts and loneliness, all to wait for your arrival—to wait for the one who can prove he is not a madman.]
[Mission Reward: Unlock two brand-new Tarot Card bond slots! Step right up, don't miss out—this is a peerless chance to turn a single pull into double SSRs!]
Su Yu looked at this string of brazen red text before his eyes.
Although the System's tone was still like that of a sidewalk charlatan applying phone screen protectors and telling fortunes on the side, Su Yu read, from within that description, a hint of weight that sent shudders through him.
Buried deeply for decades.
Exhausting everything.
In this world, who fit that description? Who had been waiting all this time for the word "Honkai" to appear?
He did not know, but as long as he went to Mobius's place, everything would have an answer.
Su Yu drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled the stale air from his lungs, forcing himself to calm his breathing.
He stuffed the phone back into his pocket and turned around.
At the other end of the office.
On the wide leather sofa, Sirin sat cross-legged.
She held in her hands a new phone Su Yu had just bought—what? You ask where the old one went? Ad space for rent.
On the phone screen, some content unsuitable for children was playing.
Even across a distance of several meters, Su Yu could faintly hear, leaking from the earphones, those sorts of awkward sounds.
And this Herrscher of the Void was staring at the screen with utter seriousness.
On that exquisite face there was no trace of any erotic color whatsoever; instead it was as if she were studying some profound tactical map, her brows knitting slightly, occasionally even swiping a finger across the screen, as if taking some sort of notes.
"Sirin."
Su Yu walked up to the sofa and rapped on the glass tea table beside it.
"What? Human?"
Sirin did not immediately set down the phone. She merely lifted her eyelids slightly, those golden eyes glittering with a playful light.
She pulled one earphone out, her gaze sweeping back and forth between Su Yu and that enormous rosewood desk.
"Want to let me try out, here in your office, the taming techniques I just learned?"
She set the phone on the tea table and leaned her body slightly forward.
"I just saw someone in the comments section say that performing this kind of ritual in different locations helps boost the taming progress and the so-called bonuses."
Sirin lifted her chin, the corners of her mouth curving into a proud arc.
"It seems this place really is very much to your liking. No wonder that woman called Eden wanted to tame you under this very desk."
As she spoke, she had already reached out, grabbing the heel of her own left foot, as if she were about to peel off that pair of white shoes any second now, ready to put it into practice.
A layer of cold sweat instantly broke out on Su Yu's forehead.
What the hell is this comments section?! Just what kind of messed-up instructional videos have you been watching?! And who told you I wanted to experience taming techniques here?!
If not for the urgency of the current situation, Su Yu really would have wanted to chuck that phone right out the window.
He gave a dry cough, forcibly expelling those absurd images from his mind, stood his body bolt upright, and said gravely, "Stop fooling around. Something big has happened."
Sirin's hand, in the middle of removing her shoe, froze in midair.
"It's a matter concerning the Honkai world." Su Yu stared into her eyes and said, word by word, "Right now, we must immediately make a trip to Mobius's laboratory."
Hearing those words "Honkai world," the expression on Sirin's face—which had still carried a few shades of mockery and lofty superiority—instantly froze.
She slowly slipped her foot back into her shoe.
She rose from the sofa and casually tossed that still-lit phone onto the tea table.
The "thirst for knowledge" that had been glittering in those golden eyes just moments before now wholly receded, leaving only the cold sharpness belonging to one of the higher order.
For a Herrscher whose mind held nothing but revenge, there was nothing more important than returning to that world.
If there was, then it was finding a way back immediately, right now.
"Let's go."
She said only that one word. Without any excess prattle, and without lingering any further on that ridiculous "submission ritual." She turned and walked toward the office door, her stride so fast it stirred up a faint breeze.
Su Yu watched her crisp, decisive retreating figure, and at last let out a sigh of relief in his heart.
Thank goodness—in the mind of this little ancestor, the prioritizing of what was urgent and what was not was still normal after all.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 30 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉