With a steady, measured tread, Su Yu and Rita Rossweisse descended the observation deck stairs side by side, coming to stand before the two assembled formations.
Dead silence fell over the arena.
Every eye locked onto the two of them.
Rita wasn't wearing her signature maid uniform today—instead, she was dressed in a sharply tailored, dark Schicksal officer's uniform.
She stopped, her wine-red eyes sweeping quietly over the surviving soldiers before her—bodies covered in wounds, some still bleeding.
Then, without warning, the S-rank Valkyrie who had always looked down on them, who'd tormented them as casually as one might crush ants, snapped her heels together.
A crisp click rang out.
Rita raised her right hand, sheathed in a black lace glove, and offered these mortal-bodied soldiers a salute so flawless it could have come from a manual.
"As your Chief Instructor, I offer my highest respect to the resolve you showed in that battle—the will to fight to the death without retreat."
The sudden salute left every veteran on the field stunned.
Men who'd moments ago been seething with fury at being treated as lab rats found their throats stuffed with cotton, unable to make a sound.
Because they could feel it—the respect from this woman, who normally tortured people with the elegance of someone sipping afternoon tea, held not a trace of pretense. It was pure.
Salute complete, Rita lowered her hand, her expression settling back into its usual cold composure.
"As I said before, now is the time to answer your questions."
Rita gestured behind her at the charred Titan frame.
"The monster you just fought with everything you had, the one you were prepared to die to bring down—its name is the [Battle-Car Class Honkai Beast]."
"And this is the enemy you will face five months from now, when the true apocalypse descends upon this world."
The words had barely left her mouth when the captain of Squad Three, in the survivors' formation, shot up his hand and called out in a hoarse voice:
"Instructor, permission to speak! Are you saying there are more of those monsters out there—monsters as terrifying as the one we just fought?!"
Rita looked at him, the corner of her mouth curving into an elegant, chilling smile.
"As a matter of fact," she said, her tone as flat as if she were reporting the weather, "what you just faced wasn't a real Honkai Beast at all. It was nothing more than a mock-up—an Anti-Entropy Titan mech frame, fitted with Schicksal's specialized armor plating and disguised with optical camouflage."
The revelation sent a wave of shock through the arena.
Everyone sucked in a sharp breath.
"The real Battle-Car Class Honkai Beast is far larger than that thing."
Rita's voice poured over them like ice water.
"And a real Honkai Beast has no reason, no capacity for pain. There's nothing in its mind but the purest urge to destroy and annihilate everything."
Rita paused, her gaze sharpening.
"I imagine quite a few of you noticed something during the fight—that this so-called Honkai Beast paused, unnaturally, several times over the course of the battle."
In the ranks, Sin Mal and several of the squad leaders felt their pupils contract.
Of course they remembered.
Whether it was when Sin Mal moved in for the close-range demolition, or when Susannah Manatt set up her sniper rifle, the beast had frozen up as if it had glitched, opening a fatal window that gave them room to breathe and strike back.
"That's right. It was deliberately holding back."
Rita punctured, without mercy, the last shred of wishful thinking left in their hearts.
"That was the operators behind the scenes going easy on you. Without that, with your reaction speed, there's no way you'd have lived long enough to set up that heavy weapon—let alone pull off a close-range counterattack."
A suffocating silence fell over the entire arena.
Chills ran down the veterans' spines, cold sweat soaking straight through their fatigues.
They knew, with total certainty, that Rita was right.
If that thing had been a real beast, charging at them with everything it had and no restraint whatsoever, all two hundred and fifty of them would likely have been slaughtered within the first three minutes.
"Exactly as you're imagining now—this was nothing more than a test whose intensity we controlled with great precision."
Rita began to pace slowly along the front of the formation.
"A single weakened mock Honkai Beast was enough to shatter you—elites who call yourselves the best in the world—and leave more than half of you dead or wounded."
"I know. Many of you probably still feel it isn't fair."
"You'll tell yourselves the arena was too small, that you didn't have enough heavy weapons. That if this had been open ground, with stronger fire support, with armored units backing you up, maybe you wouldn't have been reduced to such a sorry state."
Rita stopped and spun around abruptly, cold fire seeming to flicker in her wine-red eyes.
"Then what if I told you... that the Honkai Beast which nearly wiped out every last one of you just now is nothing more than a scout the will of the Honkai sends ahead of the true apocalypse?"
The words landed like a hammer blow on every soldier's heart.
"What if I told you that when the apocalypse truly arrives, Battle-Car Class Honkai Beasts like that one won't come one or two at a time, but in packs of dozens, even hundreds?"
"And alongside them, Zombies and lower-tier Honkai Beasts—weaker, but numbering in the thousands, tens of thousands, sweeping across the land like a plague of locusts?"
With every word Rita spoke, the soldiers' faces grew a shade paler.
"The reality will very likely be far worse than the worst picture any of you can imagine right now. And—"
Rita left the thought unfinished, turning instead to give a small nod to Su Yu, who had been standing silently beside her.
Su Yu stepped forward, reading her cue without a word.
He said nothing. He simply walked to the scattered fragments of polymer composite armor on the ground—the same armor that hadn't taken so much as a scratch from armor-piercing rounds.
Slowly, he raised his right hand.
The dark crimson sphere—the Divine Key, Star of Eden—materialized silently in his palm.
A low hum vibrated through the air.
It came with the teeth-aching sound of space itself warping.
A dark, terrifying gravitational field swallowed the pile of unbreakable armor shards in an instant.
Crack, crack, crack, crack—
Under the stunned, unblinking gaze of every soldier there,
the shell that hadn't cracked even under high-explosive charges crumbled to pieces beneath the pure gravity crush, disintegrating as easily as a fragile cookie.
In just two seconds, the Star of Eden reduced those indestructible fragments to fine powder, leaving nothing visible to the naked eye.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Su Yu dismissed the Star of Eden, turned to face the soldiers—now stunned into numbness—and added quietly:
"And what if I told you—"
"this world is very likely going to face an invasion by humanoid monsters wielding power beyond imagination—monsters countless times stronger than your instructor, or even me."
Watching the horror dawn in the soldiers' eyes, Su Yu glanced down at the Star of Eden in his hand.
"The truth is, what I just used isn't even its complete form. At my current level, even releasing a genuine pseudo black hole would push me to my limit."
"But do you know something?"
Su Yu lifted his head, his gaze deep enough to seem like it pierced through time and space itself.
"A weapon like this, called a Divine Key—even unleashed at full power, capable of wiping out an entire city—its destructive force amounts to nothing more than a casual, offhand strike from one of those humanoid monsters called Herrschers."
"In worlds that Honkai has already destroyed, there was a Herrscher of Earth who commanded gravity itself..."
Su Yu's voice echoed through the empty arena, carrying a crushing weight of despair.
"He did nothing more than stand on the ground—and with gravity alone, sank an entire continent."
Absurd.
That was the first word that came to every soldier's mind.
Sink a continent with gravity?
It sounded like some brainless plot device out of a cheap science fiction novel.
But then they looked at the pile of special armor, ground to dust before their eyes—looked at the transcendent power radiating from Su Yu and Rita, power no ordinary human could possibly wield.
And they were forced to admit, with grim resignation, that the Supreme Commander and Chief Instructor standing before them had no reason at all to invent such a lie just to frighten them.
In the ranks, an older veteran's voice began to shake, beyond his control.
"That means... five months from now, the enemy we'll face could be one capable of sinking a whole continent? Monsters that number in the tens of thousands and simply won't die?"
He looked around at his comrades, all wearing the same expressions of despair, and finally turned his pleading gaze up toward Su Yu and Rita on the platform.
"Supreme Commander... we're just... just ordinary flesh and blood. Do we actually stand a chance of winning?"
Panic spread through the ranks like ink dropped into water, spreading wild and fast.
Survivors who'd fought to the death without retreat and the eliminated alike now turned, as one, to look at Su Yu.
Like drowning men, they desperately hoped for even a shred of comfort or reassurance from the mouth of this man—a man who seemed to possess power beyond mortal limits, seemed capable of anything.
Su Yu stood there, facing two hundred and fifty pairs of eyes, all of them hungry for hope.
"Now that the final examination is over, starting today, it's time some hard truths were laid bare before you—exactly as they are."
Su Yu drew a slow breath. His face stayed calm, but the answer he gave dropped every soldier's stomach into an icy pit.
"The answer is... I don't know."
The confession made everyone present suck in a sharp breath.
Even beings as powerful as Su Yu and as cold as Rita—these two who seemed almost like gods—had no confidence at all in the coming apocalypse?!
Then what were the rest of them, mere grunts with guns, in this war—not even worth calling cannon fodder?
Was there even any point in resisting?
Just as despair threatened to crush this newly forged unit entirely,
a flicker of golden light passed quietly through Su Yu's eyes.
The Tarot passive skill he'd gained from Theresa—[Saint's Radiance (Fake)]—
he drove it to its absolute limit in that instant.
A strange, soothing warmth—one that seemed to slip past every defense straight into the soul—rippled outward from Su Yu across the entire arena.
Soldiers who moments ago had been ready to give up in despair suddenly felt a warmth settle over their hearts. Miraculously, the suffocating panic began to ease.
Unable to stop themselves, they lifted their heads, hanging on every word Su Yu was about to say.
"Comrades."
Su Yu's voice rang out clear and forceful, each word landing like a hammer strike on their souls under the blessing of [Saint's Radiance].
"I can't make you any false promises."
"I can't guarantee you'll walk off the battlefield alive when the apocalypse comes. I can't guarantee that this beautiful world of ours won't, in the end, be ground to dust beneath the Honkai's iron heel."
Su Yu raised his right foot and slammed it down onto the bullet-riddled alloy ground, the impact echoing with a dull, heavy boom.
"But! There's one thing I do know!"
His gaze burned like fire as it swept across every powder-blackened face before him.
"When that inescapable apocalypse arrives five months from now—whether the enemy comes in swarms of Honkai Beasts, or as a Herrscher capable of sinking continents—"
"I, and your Instructor Rita, will stand at the very front, ahead of everyone else! We will not retreat a single step. We will fight to the death until the last drop of blood has drained from our bodies!"
Su Yu's voice echoed through the hall, carrying a tragic, unshakable resolve that struck deep into every heart.
"An elder I deeply respect once said something to me."
"He said a man, over the course of his life, must protect three things at any cost."
"The family held in his arms."
"The comrades who matter to him."
"And... the ground beneath his feet."
Su Yu thrust his hand upward toward the ventilation fans above the arena, as if his finger could pierce straight through the earth to the bustling world beyond.
"We have nowhere left to run! Because behind us are the lights of ten thousand homes—your aging parents, your children just learning to speak, everyone you love and hold dear!"
"Run, and you will die—die like a dog, dragging every ounce of shame and regret with you into the grave!"
"But face death head-on, take up arms, and throw everything you have at those monsters—and we might just carve out a sliver of a chance, even from the depths of despair!"
Su Yu stepped forward, arms spread wide, as though he meant to embrace the storm bearing down on them.
Under the influence of [Saint's Radiance], his magnetic voice struck like a spark, igniting the deepest embers in every heart at once.
"Tell me, soldiers!"
"Will you surrender to the coming apocalypse, weeping in some despairing corner while you wait for death to claim you?!"
"Or will you place your lives in my hands, and burn with me into a wildfire that sweeps this land, blazing without restraint until the very last moment of your lives?!"
Su Yu's roar echoed through the arena, lingering long in the air.
A brief silence followed.
No one needed to organize what came next.
"Screw those goddamn monsters! I'm not waiting around to die! Somebody tell my ma I ain't no coward!!"
A blood-streaked northerner bellowed at the top of his lungs, the cry tearing straight from his gut.
"Stick your neck out and it's a blade—duck your head and it's still a blade! Either way I'm dead, so if I'm going to die, I'll die like a damn hero!!"
"So what if it's a Honkai Beast?! So what if it's a Herrscher?! I've got a gun in my hand and grenades in my pack! Let them come if they've got the guts! Kill one and I've broken even, kill two and I'm ahead!!"
"I'll follow the Supreme Commander to my death!! Fight! Fight! Fight!!!"
A deafening war cry erupted through the underground space like a tidal wave.
The roar of two hundred and fifty hot-blooded men nearly tore the ceiling off.
In their bloodshot eyes, not a trace of fear remained—only the raw, undiluted courage to bare a bayonet even in the face of a god.
In the panoramic control room,
watching the soldiers below, their souls seemingly set ablaze, gripped entirely by fanatical battle-fervor,
the white-haired Shenzhou elder standing behind the one-way glass found his withered fingers trembling, faintly and beyond his control.
He drew a deep breath, took off his reading glasses, and wiped the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes with the hem of his coat.
"Mr. Yang... I finally understand."
The elder turned to look at Welt beside him, his voice thick with deep emotion and awe.
"I finally understand why young Su Yu named this brutal plan the [Starfire Furnace]."
The elder turned his gaze back down to the young man standing at the very front of the formation, and quietly recited the timeless saying:
"Because... a single spark can set the whole prairie ablaze."
Back in the arena,
facing the soldiers below, morale burning once again at its absolute peak,
Su Yu drew a breath and slowly lowered his hands, signaling for quiet.
Just as everyone assumed the Supreme Commander would seize the momentum and announce an even harsher training regimen,
Su Yu dropped a bombshell no one saw coming.
"Starting today, I'm giving all of you a five-day leave—your last one."
The words landed.
Everyone who'd just been burning with the will to fight monsters to the death went completely still.
The captain of Squad Two even wondered if he'd misheard, turning blankly to the comrade beside him.
Leave? Now, of all times—now that they knew the apocalypse was coming, now that every second should be split in two just to train harder—leave?!
"These five days are entirely your own."
Su Yu's tone softened.
"Aside from the top-level confidentiality order—you must not reveal a single secret of the Starfire Crucible Project—no one will restrict where you go or what you do for these five days."
"You can take off these mud-soaked training uniforms. Go back to your old units, go see the comrades you once lived and died alongside."
"Buy a plane ticket, go home to see your parents, now white-haired, and hold your children close. Or take the ones you love and go see this beautiful world, properly, for once."
"I don't need an answer from you now, riding on nothing but a rush of blood and passion."
Su Yu looked at them, his eyes clear and steady.
"No instructor will come to disturb you during these five days. You'll have all the time you need to weigh this, to think it through."
"If, five days from now, you choose to move forward, what awaits you will be training ten times more brutal and inhuman than these past three weeks, followed by an apocalyptic blood-soaked battle with almost no hope of victory in sight."
"And if you choose to walk away, I promise you—no one will call you a coward."
"At the very least, you'll carry this secret with you and get five last months of peace, time to spend properly with your families and friends."
"Five days from now, at eight in the morning, I'll send a summons through each of your encrypted terminals, along with new coordinates for assembly."
Su Yu's words laid the weaknesses of human nature bare on the scale, raw and unflinching.
Moving forward meant a crueler hell and a fate that could end at any moment beneath a monster's claws.
Stepping back meant that though the apocalypse would still come for them eventually, they could at least have five carefree months, warm and close with their families.
Leaving the choice entirely in each person's own hands was, in its way, far crueler than simply ordering them to die.
Su Yu paused, then turned his gaze to the other formation—the trainees eliminated earlier in the test.
"As for those of you eliminated earlier—I can offer you the same opportunity."
Su Yu's voice turned a shade colder.
"If you choose to stay, you won't be fielded as front-line combat strength. Instead, you'll join as logistical support for the Starfire Corps, as special-training sparring partners, or even as maintenance and test personnel for dangerous mechs."
"Your contribution will most likely never be remembered by the world. Your names probably won't even appear on any future memorial to heroes."
"But you'll still face the same inhuman, hellish suffering as the front-line combatants."
With everything laid out,
Su Yu took a step back, standing shoulder to shoulder with Rita.
He raised his right hand and struck it hard against his chest.
"From this moment on, you're free, soldiers."
"Five days from now, I'll be waiting for you at the new assembly point."
Su Yu's voice fell silent, the final note in the empty arena.
"That's all. Dismissed!"
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