The faint sound of a needle tip piercing skin was amplified infinitely in the dead-silent room.
Crimson blood flowed along the transparent tube, swiftly filling three entire large vials.
Mobius didn't so much as glance at Sirin. She casually pulled out the blood-draw needle, the motion without the slightest pause or gentleness.
She stuffed the vials of blood into a strangely shaped centrifuge beside her.
The machine began spinning at high speed, emitting a low droning hum.
Right after, she wheeled over a neural reflex testing apparatus connected to dozens of electrode patches, and without a word pressed those icy patches onto Su Yu's chest, temples, and the joints of his limbs.
Five minutes later.
"Beep— beep beep—"
The data printer began frantically spitting out long report sheets.
Mobius stood before the display screen. Those green serpentine pupils, already somewhat neurotic from lack of sleep, dilated bit by bit in that moment.
"This... how is this possible?"
Mobius's voice was terrifyingly hoarse.
She snatched up the printed reports, almost pressing her face against the paper.
Muscle fiber density, skeletal compressive strength, and the electrical signal conduction speed of the neural synapses....
Every single data point struck like a heavy hammer, slamming hard against the bottom line of Mobius's cognition as a top-tier biologist.
This was not a human body at all!
If the peak data of an ordinary adult male were set as the baseline value of "1," then the creature named "Su Yu" lying on the dissection table right now had every metric reaching the terrifying level of "4" or even "5"!
His muscle fibers seemed woven from some unknown, ultra-tough material, and his bone density rivaled the most advanced aerospace alloys.
This was practically one of those genetically modified super soldiers from sci-fi movies.
Mobius abruptly spun around, her breathing more rapid than ever before.
Her chest heaved violently, as if to drain all the air in the room dry.
The look in her eyes as she gazed at Su Yu had changed completely.
No longer the gaze for a collaborator with a bit of exploitable value, nor the gaze for an ordinary lab rat.
It was a greedy, fanatical look—like that of the most fervent collector who had finally found the legendary lost Holy Grail.
To this science maniac who had spent her whole life pursuing the possibilities of human evolution, Su Yu's current body was a flawless, ultimate treasure bestowed by the heavens!
And this was only Su Yu.
If it were that Kiana, who had originally come bearing armor of unknown energy, then just what earth-shattering codes lay hidden within her blood?
"Su Yu!"
Mobius practically lunged onto the dissection table, her long green hair dancing wildly behind her like seaweed.
She demanded in a hoarse, quavering voice, a manic light flickering in the depths of her eyes.
"What exactly is hidden inside your body?! What on earth did you do?"
Su Yu sat up unhurriedly. He tore off the electrode patches used for the testing and tossed them aside.
Though his face was somewhat pale, he still raised his hands and, in no hurry at all, buttoned up his shirt one button at a time.
"This is a trade secret, Doctor."
Su Yu turned his head, meeting Mobius's gaze that seemed about to swallow him whole, and arched an eyebrow.
"Besides, it seems you don't have the time right now to dissect my body's structure. Counting the time, your other distinguished guest should have arrived by now, no?"
The words had barely fallen.
Sirin suddenly strode over to the dissection table.
She practically shoved aside the Mobius who had been standing there, leaning half her body forward.
She stared at Su Yu's face, which looked somewhat haggard from the blood draw and the series of high-intensity neural tests.
"Human."
Sirin's voice dropped very low. That title, which should have been brimming with arrogance, now carried an undisguised tension.
"Does it... hurt a lot?"
Su Yu was stunned for a moment and was about to crack a joke to brush it off.
But before he could make a sound, Sirin, as though scalded by fire, abruptly turned her head away, leaving the back of her head facing Su Yu.
The iconic ahoge atop her head swayed twice from her violent motion.
"Don't get the wrong idea! Don't flatter yourself!"
Sirin's voice suddenly shot up an octave, her tone hurried and aggressive, words bursting out like a string of firecrackers.
"If something happens to you and you die in this madwoman's laboratory, my grand cause of revenge goes completely down the drain! I'm only worried about my plans—who has the spare time to care whether you live or die!"
Looking at this Queen, arms crossed over her chest, chin tilted sky-high, all but carving the word "tsundere" onto her forehead, Su Yu helplessly rubbed his brows.
He summoned the System's interface in his mind.
Sure enough, in the corner of the main panel.
That progress bar named [Tame the Queen], after that awkward, stiff interrogation just now, had quietly jumped up another full five percent.
What was this?
Su Yu gave a bitter laugh in his heart.
This really was an unintended success—willow planted carelessly yet grown into shade. Originally he had only reluctantly agreed to be this "lab rat" in order to exchange intelligence with Mobius, yet it had actually become a shortcut for indirectly farming favorability and pushing forward the taming progress?
At that very moment.
From the laboratory's heavy airtight door came the muffled sound of a mechanical lock unlatching.
"Click— hiss—"
Accompanied by the sound of high-pressure gas venting, the metal door slowly slid open to both sides.
Outside the door, Klein, the assistant who was always expressionless, stood respectfully to one side, yielding the passage in.
At the end of the passage stood a man.
A grayish-brown long pullover trench coat.
A scarf washed somewhat pale.
Behind a pair of black-framed glasses were eyes that held the sediment of years and a steadfast resolve.
He stood there quietly, his gaze sweeping across this laboratory packed with all sorts of high-precision instruments, finally fixing on Su Yu and Sirin.
The air of the entire room, in that instant, seemed to be completely drained away.
Su Yu's back abruptly straightened.
And Sirin, who had still been sulking, went rigid as though struck by lightning.
Those golden pupils, which a moment ago still carried a trace of flustered anger, the instant they made out who had come, violently contracted to the size of needle tips.
"Welt Yang?"
Welt Yang froze solidly on the spot.
The airtight door slowly closed behind him, sealing off the smell of disinfectant from outside the laboratory.
His gaze swept rapidly across the entire wide and cold room.
First it landed on the young man wearing an open shirt, his face still somewhat pale.
Su Yu, the producer of Honkai Impact 3rd.
In this peaceful world, this face was completely unfamiliar to him; in the fragments of his memory, there had never been a trace of this person.
However, when he lifted his gaze slightly, his eyes sweeping past Su Yu's shoulder and falling to what lay behind.
Time, in that moment, had its flow drained away.
That girl, wearing a white jacket a size too large, her white long hair draped somewhat disheveled over her shoulders, came crashing into Welt's field of vision just like that.
"Kiana?"
"You... are you Kiana Kaslana?"
The very instant that name reverberated through the air.
Su Yu's pupils sharply contracted for a spell.
That System chattering away in his mind had not lied.
The man before him in the long trench coat and black-framed glasses was the unexpected ally the System spoke of—the one who had "buried himself for decades, all just to wait for this moment."
Welt's breathing fell into complete disarray.
Ten years.
A full ten years.
In those long years of being regarded as a madman, he had finally, for the first time, seen a person from that world in this world numbed by peace.
He instinctively took a step, wanting to approach that familiar figure.
Wanting to confirm it was not an illusion, wanting to tell her that there was still someone here who remembered those battles, who remembered those sacrifices.
But before his second step could land.
"Don't call me by that name."
Sirin leaned half her body out from behind Su Yu.
Her pale cheeks, which had been somewhat sickly, were now covered with undisguised disgust and wariness.
"Stay away from me, human."
Welt's foot froze in midair, then stomped heavily back to where it had been.
He looked somewhat bewildered at this girl before him who had suddenly turned hostile.
In his understanding, Kiana was a girl who would grin foolishly even when riddled with wounds, who could sacrifice everything of herself to protect her companions.
That hero who had ultimately defeated Kevin and become the God of Finality—why would she look at him with such eyes?
"I'm Welt Yang." He pushed up his glasses, trying to find a reasonable explanation. "Kiana... you, you don't remember me?"
Sirin's brows knit tightly together.
Those golden pupils of hers were burning like wildfire, seized by disgust and brutality.
Welt Yang.
How could she possibly not remember.
The inheritor of the second-generation Herrscher of Reason, that leader of Anti-Entropy.
That fellow who, on the battlefield of the Second Eruption, had tried again and again to stop her, sickening her with that nauseating righteousness of "for the sake of humanity."
Even having switched to another world, even though this body was now so weak it couldn't even tear open a single rift in space.
Yet that hostility carved into the depths of her soul instinctively erupted in an instant.
The temperature of the air seemed to plummet sharply.
Welt's voice, which had still been trying to explain, suddenly cut off abruptly like a radio whose cord had been severed.
Those eyes of his, hidden for years behind the lenses, suddenly went wide.
As a veteran who had been through countless life-and-death struggles, in that instant a needle-prick sixth sense made every hair on his body stand on end.
That was not Kiana.
Kiana would never look at a person with such eyes—as though looking at a heap of trash about to be crushed.
Those iconic golden pupils, burning with pure malice.
And that killing intent, as though born to tower above all living things.
On those distant, brutal snowfields of Siberia, on the Moon, he had crossed blades with this opponent several times.
"No..."
The Second Eruption.
The wasteland of Siberia where snow filled the sky.
That judge who floated in midair, countless Subspace Lances suspended behind her, regarding humanity as mere insects.
Welt's blood, which had been slightly warm from agitation, in that instant dropped completely to freezing point.
His feet, which had just been trying to move forward, retreated half an inch backward beyond his control.
"You're not Kiana Kaslana—you're the... Herrscher of the Void, Sirin?!"
The atmosphere of the entire laboratory plunged below freezing in an instant.
That sword-drawn, bow-bent gravity weighed down on everyone's hearts like an invisible mountain.
Now that her identity had been seen through, Sirin simply tore away even that last bit of disguise.
She glared fixedly at Welt, the ahoge atop her head bristling slightly from her extreme vigilance.
Welt's breathing, after a brief stall, became unusually heavy.
His right shoulder dipped slightly, and the right hand hidden in his pocket silently reached toward the spot behind his waist.
There, a pistol for self-defense was concealed.
When facing the judge who had once pushed human civilization to the brink of destruction, any negotiation or hesitation was fatal.
His index finger had already settled against the trigger guard. The moment the white-haired girl opposite him raised a hand, or the surrounding space showed any sign of distortion, he would pull the trigger without the slightest hesitation.
Even though he had already lost the Authority of the Herrscher of Reason, as the former First Herrscher, if even he fled, then who would protect humanity and this world?
Swords drawn, bows bent.
The fuse was lit; the powder keg was about to detonate.
"Bang!"
Mobius slapped a palm down on the stainless steel workbench.
She pulled herself out of those mesmerizing data on the screen and coldly swept her gaze over the two locked in confrontation.
"If you want to fight, get out and fight."
"This superconducting microscope is worth sixty million US dollars, and that centrifuge beside it I smuggled in from the Mu Continent with great difficulty."
"Do you take my laboratory for one of those boring street-brawl venues of yours?"
Mobius sneered.
"Whoever dares damage a single test tube in here, I'll slice open their skull and soak it in formalin to make a specimen."
This blunt threat, even carrying a few notes of pettiness and absolute egoism, was like a basin of cold water mixed with ice cubes, dousing the powder keg about to explode right over their heads.
That destined showdown belonging to grand narrative was forcibly snapped apart by these real-world "compensation clauses."
A flash of offended rage shot through Sirin's golden pupils, but her taut muscles undeniably relaxed somewhat.
She really did not have the capital to flip the table here right now.
And Welt's right hand, about to draw, also paused at his waist.
He glanced at Mobius's face, written all over with "you bunch of paupers can't afford to pay," then shifted his gaze back onto Sirin.
That gun, in the end, was not drawn.
In this very gap.
Su Yu took a step forward.
"Mr. Welt."
Su Yu's voice was very steady, without the slightest panic, carrying a heaviness incongruous with his age.
"I know there are many doubts in your mind right now."
"As it happens, I also have many things I need to confirm with you."
He looked straight into the eyes behind Old Yang's lenses.
"Let's sit down first and have a good talk—after all..."
Su Yu paused for a moment.
"After all, all these years you've wanted to figure out exactly what happened to you—haven't you?"
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