The pool of black powder, finer than flour, lay quietly on the metal countertop.
In this vast space a hundred meters underground, the air was so stagnant it seemed on the verge of freezing into ice crystals.
The harsh glare of the searchlights fell upon the faces of Tesla and Einstein, illuminating with perfect clarity the profound—almost horrified—stupor lurking in the depths of their eyes.
Several long minutes passed.
For these two scientists who stood at the very pinnacle of this planet's intellect, those few minutes saw their minds undergoing a catastrophic reconstruction on par with a supernova explosion.
Instinctively, they wanted to resist this utterly absurd claim.
That young man who looked like a harmless college student had, with a casual wave of his hand, produced a miniature black hole—something even a large particle accelerator might not be able to create?
It made the entire edifice of physics they had spent decades building look like nothing more than a drafty thatched hut.
And yet, that pool of special steel powder, its material form completely erased, sat right there before their eyes.
There were also those lab reports Mobius had just tossed in front of them—the analytical data on every bodily function of Su Yu.
The evidence was as solid as a mountain.
Tesla's throat bobbed as she swallowed.
She turned her head, and in those eyes there was no longer the usual fire and irritability, replaced instead by an extremely complex sense of dislocation.
She looked toward the man standing in the shadows—the man whose hair had already turned largely white, yet whose spine remained ramrod straight.
"So..." Tesla's voice was somewhat unsteady, "everything you've been harping on about for the past ten years—it's all true? About the Honkai, about the Herrschers... none of it was your delusion, but a real disaster that exists in another world and could descend upon us at any moment?"
Einstein withdrew her gaze from that heap of powder. She had recovered from the aftershock of her worldview collapsing even earlier than Tesla.
"Dr. Tesla."
Einstein's tone was as steady as ever, save for a barely perceptible tremor at the tail end of her words.
"Joachim, I'm afraid, was not lying. Apart from the Honkai he speaks of, no known law of physics can explain the power Mr. Su Yu just demonstrated."
Einstein turned instead to stare at Mobius, who had been leaning against the doorframe the entire time.
"What's more, the data report on that armor wreckage Dr. Mobius displayed earlier—the one called 'White Comet'... that kind of energy conduction circuit and material composition represents a generational technological gap. It is absolutely a creation from another world."
Tesla took half a step back, her back pressing against the cold metal scaffolding.
"Hold on, let me calm down first—"
She drew in great, deep breaths, her chest heaving violently.
At that very moment, a somewhat abrupt phone ringtone came from the pocket of her trench coat.
Tesla fished out her phone. On the screen flashed a discreet transoceanic number from somewhere in the Mu Continent.
It was a call from the world's most elite research team—the very "future" they had been due to depart for in just a few minutes.
Every gaze in the hangar converged upon her.
Tesla stared hard at that number for two full seconds, then pressed the answer button.
"Hello."
From the other end came fluent foreign speech laced with a certain air of superiority, seemingly urging them to come downstairs as soon as possible.
"I'm not coming."
Tesla said only those four words.
The other end froze, apparently having never expected to be refused so bluntly, then immediately launched into a long string of promises and pleas, throwing out all sorts of exaggerated research funding figures.
Tesla turned her head and glanced at Einstein standing beside her.
Einstein didn't even lift her eyelids, merely giving an almost imperceptible nod.
"Ein's not coming either," Tesla tossed into the receiver. "That's all. Goodbye."
Without the slightest hesitation, she hung up cleanly and stuffed the phone back into her pocket.
Having done all this, Tesla drew in a deep breath and expelled every trace of stale air from her lungs. She straightened up and walked over to stand before Welt.
Ten years of time had carved an exceptionally deep chasm between them.
Welt had always been treated as a madman who had lost himself to obsession, while she and Einstein were the sacrificial offerings who had wasted their prime years accompanying this madman.
But now, this chasm had been utterly filled in.
Tesla lowered her head, her red twin ponytails draping down over her chest.
She bowed toward Welt—solidly, deeply.
"Joachim... I'm sorry."
Her voice was somewhat muffled.
"For these ten years, I truly regarded everything you said as some kind of pathological delusion. I even cursed you as an idiot behind your back countless times. But now the truth is laid out right before my eyes."
Tesla straightened, her eyes reddened, but she stubbornly held back and refused to let the tears fall.
"It was my vision that was too narrow. I apologize to you."
Einstein also took a step forward.
"Joachim, I too should apologize to you."
Welt looked at these two comrades who had stood by his side for ten years.
He extended his hand, his fingers pausing in midair, but in the end they still fell back down.
"What are you two doing?" Welt's voice had turned rough. He abruptly shoved the glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "For these ten years, when everyone else treated me like a lunatic, only the two of you stood against the ridicule of the entire world and walked with me all the way to this day."
He let out a bitter laugh, his gaze drifting toward Su Yu not far away.
"In fact, even I was about to give up. If Su Yu hadn't appeared today, if it weren't for that PV... I might have given up too."
"But—are you really sure it's okay?" Welt looked at Tesla. "That's the Mu Continent's top research team. That has always been your dream."
"Huh?"
Tesla, who had been feeling somewhat sentimental just a moment ago, immediately raised her eyebrows the instant she heard this.
Without the slightest courtesy, she landed a punch on Welt's shoulder.
"At a time like this, what nonsense are you still spouting?"
Tesla's eyes went wide, her voice rising.
"If a Honkai that can grind half a city into dust at the drop of a hat really does invade this world, then what the hell good would it do us to run off to some team that can't even build a decent suit of armor?! When disaster strikes and everyone turns to ash together, what point is there in any research?!"
She spun around, her burning gaze fixed on Su Yu—more precisely, fixed on Su Yu's hand and that pile of powder.
"Besides, the door to a new world is right before our eyes. Valkyrie armor from another dimension, a Divine Key fragment capable of manipulating gravity..." Tesla licked her slightly dry lips. "What could possibly make the blood of scholars like us boil more than these things?"
Einstein's expression hadn't changed much from beginning to end, but her faintly trembling hand betrayed that her heart was anything but calm. She picked up the thread.
"Exactly. In the face of unknown truth, fleeing is hardly the way of a scholar."
Welt looked at the two of them, his throat bobbing.
"So..."
"So what 'so'!" Tesla slapped Welt on the back with a backhanded swing. "I've already made the apology I needed to make, so enough with the sentimental drivel! Didn't you say we were going to hold a top-level meeting? Get on with it! Mobius has been standing over there watching the show for ages now—don't keep her waiting!"
Five minutes later.
The twenty-meter-tall body of the Wotan mecha cast a vast shadow.
At the edge of that shadow, beside a metal long table hastily thrown together for component testing, this world's first top-secret combat conference targeting the "Honkai" officially raised its curtain.
The overhead searchlights threw every person's profile into sharp relief.
Su Yu stood at the head of the long table, several hand-drawn charts spread out before him.
Welt stood at his side, the two of them speaking in turns, laying bare before everyone—bloody and raw—that disaster called "Honkai" and the nuclear-blast-level devastation it might unleash when it descended.
No pleasantries, no idle talk.
"Regarding the intruders that spatiotemporal disorder might bring, we still can't determine whether they'll be Honkai Beasts or Herrschers." Su Yu's fingers tapped against the metal tabletop, producing a crisp sound. "We must prepare according to the worst-case scenario."
He raised his first finger.
"First is game development. With the official release of Honkai Impact 3rd, the cultivation system will open up accordingly. Kiana will be our absolute mainstay when we face the impact of the Honkai head-on in the future."
Sitting on a supply crate in the corner, Sirin had been idly picking at her shoelaces. Hearing this, she raised her head.
An indistinct emotion flashed through those golden pupils. She didn't retort, merely gave a light snort, crossed her right leg over her left, and shifted into a more comfortable position.
Su Yu raised his second finger.
"Second is the expansion of the bond network on my end. By raising the community level, I'll gain more armament authorizations." He casually flexed his wrist. "Like that thing that could warp gravity just now. When firepower runs short, I'll have to step up and take the number-two position."
"So, if any of you have troubles, or anything weighing on your mind, you can come to me." Su Yu smiled. "Feel free to treat me as your psychological counselor."
"BOSS, doesn't that count as making the female characters of a galgame come and route themselves onto you?" Bronie quipped.
"Then wouldn't that make me a true galgame master?" Su Yu shot back.
"Routing beautiful girls all over the place to save the world? BOSS, I can already foresee that you're destined to become a top-tier scumbag."
Eden, seated on the left side of the long table, held a freshly brewed cup of black tea in her hands.
She let her gaze linger on his profile.
The steam misted over the tear mole at the corner of her eye. She slowly took a sip of the black tea, the corner of her mouth curving into an elegant arc.
It was a very intriguing expression—yet also a very restrained one.
"The third task."
Su Yu looked toward Welt at his side, then let his gaze fall upon that massive, unfinished mecha.
"Mr. Welt's Wotan Project must be restarted immediately. Ordinary gunpowder weapons are utterly useless against Honkai Beasts at Battle-Car Class or above. We need this kind of giant physical weapon to control large-scale battlefields."
In fact, the very instant Su Yu made contact with Wotan, the System had already extended a new community task—"Get Moving, Wotan!"
[System Notice: Ding! Detected a giant dust-collecting figurine, "Wotan." Triggering the important community task "Get Moving, Wotan!"]
[This System is no black-hearted capitalist who hands out tasks without any feed. Host, please use the "Hephaestus Forge" blueprint from the previous reward to solve Wotan's hair-tearing energy deadlock.]
[Task rewards will be issued according to Wotan's stage of completion. Friendly reminder: lying in the prize pool are all sorts of research crystallizations from those mad scientists of Anti-Entropy in the Honkai world—such as... a sky full of Titan mecha swarms? Surprised? Shocked?]
This mood-killing light screen was still flickering in Su Yu's field of vision. After glancing at it, he couldn't be bothered to keep bickering with the System.
"Stop for a second."
Tesla suddenly slammed the table and rose from her chair.
Her red twin ponytails bounced behind her head with the large, sweeping motion.
"Since we've all laid our cards on the table now, I won't beat around the bush either."
Tesla glared at Su Yu.
"If those Battle-Car Class Honkai Beasts you speak of are routinely a dozen meters tall, and if those Herrschers can even tank nuclear warheads, then Wotan's strategic position in this war is indeed irreplaceable. Ordinary firearms fired at those monsters would be like scratching an itch."
"But right now, it's just an oversized steel toy—a heap of scrap iron that can't move at all!"
Einstein sat to one side, her fingers sliding across a tablet, her eyes fixed on the screen the whole time, her tone as calm as ever.
"Dr. Tesla is right. Wotan's frame, drive shafts, and fire-control system have all long been completed."
"But the biggest problem at present is that we lack a heart powerful enough. If we can't solve the problem of an instantaneous energy output as high as several million kilowatts, then all our firepower concepts are nothing but paper talk."
Eden set down the teacup in her hand, the porcelain colliding with the metal tabletop to produce a crisp sound.
"I'll take full charge of the funding gap—if this world truly gets burned to ashes, then the assets under my name would be nothing more than a pile of meaningless numbers. Whatever equipment needs to be purchased, just send the bill directly to the Golden Courtyard."
"I already said this isn't a matter of money at all!"
Tesla irritably clawed at her own hair, feeling that communicating with these laypeople was extraordinarily exhausting.
"This is a bottleneck of fundamental physical law! Even if you bought every generator in the entire world, there'd be no way to stuff them all into Wotan's chest cavity!"
"Even if you drained all the electricity from Arc City, it'd only be enough to keep this thing active for thirty seconds! What can you do in thirty seconds?!"
"And to pilot this thing, you'd also need a qualified compatible pilot, otherwise you'd be drained dry in an instant by this steel monster—why am I even bringing this up? We can't even solve the energy problem, so what's the point of talking about compatible pilots?"
Those thirty seconds were like an invisible mountain, pressing down mercilessly on the head of the Wotan Project.
This was also why, when the Mu Continent extended its olive branch, they had so despairingly wanted to give up.
To possess the blueprint for building a giant, yet be unable to find a heart that could make the giant beat.
That was what was truly most despairing.
Su Yu didn't refute Tesla's agitation.
He merely listened quietly, while still not forgetting to snark a few times inwardly.
Oh.
Wotan.
Apostle (Honkai Beast) invasion.
And a compatible pilot?
So tell me—isn't the head of Anti-Entropy Entertainment secretly someone else, someone named, say, Raiden Ryoma? And then the pilot just happens to be Kiana Kaslana, and then a girl named Raiden Mei is suddenly summoned by Raiden Ryoma to pilot Wotan—
And then another girl named Asuka comes leaping out from another dimension.
And then? And then—
This is clearly the ultimate super-remixed crossover storyline of Honkai Impact 3rd and "EVA", isn't it?
This Wotan of yours is a real Wotan, right? Don't tell me the shell is actually fitted with a restraint device, and the moment the power runs out it starts frantically biting angels, and when its emotions flare up it directly triggers an Impact, turning everyone into cheerful orange juice together, right?
Haha, that'd be invincible.
Although his inner monologue was full of snark, Su Yu's movements didn't stop for even a moment.
He tilted his head and made a gesture toward that azure holographic projection hovering in midair.
"Hack Bunny, project that thing's data onto the big screen."
"Roger, BOSS, data transferred."
Bronie blew a pink bubble, her fingers flying across the virtual keyboard.
Accompanied by a faint hum of electric current, an extremely complex three-dimensional mechanical structural diagram, glowing with a deep blue light, unfolded directly above the long table.
Beside it were densely packed rows of constantly refreshing energy conversion formulas.
This was the trump card rewarded by the System—controllable nuclear fusion technology, the "Hephaestus Forge."
Tesla's gaze swept casually across that blueprint, but in the very next second, her eyes seemed to be glued fast by powerful adhesive, unable to shift away by even a hair's breadth.
She even forgot to breathe, throwing her entire body toward the edge of the holographic projection, her two hands gesturing through the air amid those blue data streams.
"This... this kind of internal-circulation confinement array..." Tesla's voice trembled terribly. She whipped her head around toward Einstein. "Ein, look at this thermal efficiency conversion ratio!"
Einstein finally set down the tablet in her hand. She stood up, and for the first time, an exceptionally obvious shock was reflected in her eyes.
"Unbelievable... this set of blueprints actually bypasses the decay point of the critical reaction." She murmured softly. "If we build according to this model, the deadlock in energy supply would be completely broken through."
"Broken through—that's putting it lightly!"
Tesla's voice suddenly shot up. From the extreme excitement, even her eyes had turned bloodshot.
"As long as we build this thing and stuff it inside, Wotan won't just twitch a couple of times—it'll be able to sprint across the battlefield at full power for at least half an hour! It could even mount a heavy particle beam cannon!"
Just as these two top scientists fell into a fever of excitement, Mobius, who had scarcely spoken this whole time, slowly rose from her chair.
She didn't go look at that enormous Wotan design diagram. Instead, treading in her high heels, she walked slowly to beneath the holographic projection, those green serpentine pupils staring with great interest at the "Hephaestus Forge" above.
"I say, since you can solve the energy problem of a big fellow dozens of meters tall..."
Mobius turned her head, her gaze fixing straight upon Su Yu.
"Then, all you'd have to do is miniaturize the core technology of this forge and stuff it into a smaller vessel."
A trace of undisguisable excitement crept into her voice.
"That tattered set of Valkyrie armor you brought over earlier... couldn't it also be reactivated using this—or even have that damned Honkai-energy drive circuit completely replaced?"
As Mobius's words fell, a brief silence descended over the laboratory.
Even Su Yu was stunned on the spot.
When he'd seen this System reward, he'd only been thinking that it could finally solve Wotan's deadlock—he'd utterly lacked the divergent thinking of that band of top-tier mad scientists.
Use this miniaturized nuclear fusion forge to serve as the energy core for that Valkyrie armor which, lacking Honkai-energy drive, was no better than scrap iron?
It meant that, in this world without Honkai energy, Kiana truly might be able to don that armament once again, and step onto the battlefield anew in a stance surpassing the limits of humanity.
Sirin, who had been sitting on the crate, stiffened almost imperceptibly.
She stared at that blue blueprint in midair, her golden eyes flickering with an exceptionally complex light.
Within it was a yearning for power, and also a sense of absurdity that this band of humans could actually achieve such a thing.
At the far end of the long table, Welt stood quietly.
His gaze swept across Tesla and Einstein, who were heatedly discussing energy formulas, then slid over Mobius, who was staring at the armor proposal, and finally settled upon Su Yu.
The overhead searchlight seemed a touch too glaring.
Ten years of sunless darkness.
Ten years of solitary isolation.
Those doubts that had once pressed down on him until he couldn't breathe, that loneliness that had tormented him in the depths of night until he couldn't sleep.
In all those countless days and nights spent keeping watch alone in the dark underground, he had never once imagined that one day this Wotan—originally doomed to become scrap iron—could truly wait for the day its heart would be lit.
Amid these vivid, power-filled voices of discussion, the exhaustion and sorrow in his heart melted away completely, like thin snow bathed in the light of the rising sun.
He lowered his head, pretending to be straightening his cuffs.
But his reddened eyes and the uncontrollable ache in the tip of his nose betrayed the state of his heart at this moment.
Ten years.
In this world where he had not a single kin to turn to, he was, at last, no longer that madman keeping watch alone over the apocalypse in the darkness.
At last, he had comrades to whom he could entrust his back.
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