Inside the abandoned factory, dim purple firelight cast mottled shadows on both sides of the transparent barrier.
Raiden Mei stared fixedly at the man emerging from the thick smoke and rubble.
He looked young, dressed in lightweight tactical gear, the ballistic plates scored with scratches of every depth.
Patches of bruising and a few thin gashes marked his exposed skin — the marks left by brutal close-quarters combat.
Yet his steps as he walked toward her were perfectly steady, his breathing not the slightest bit ragged.
Mei's right hand stayed clamped on her katana's hilt, thumb braced against the blade.
The Striker Fulminata armor hummed at a low frequency in the gloom.
Her gaze settled on the man's eyes.
A pair of pure black pupils.
The instant their eyes met, Mei's breath caught.
Something invisible seemed to seize her heart in a crushing grip.
The sharp reek of ozone around her, the nauseating pulse of Honkai energy radiation, even the aching exhaustion in her body — all of it faded away in that moment.
Her body leaned forward half an inch, entirely against her will.
An absurd yet overwhelming instinct shot through her nerves like an electric current.
This man.
This stranger, who had simply appeared out of nowhere inside a Spatial Rift where no living person should exist.
He carried Kiana's scent.
A familiarity so strong that even across an entire world, its mere proximity set every cell in her body resonating.
He'd seen Kiana somewhere.
He definitely knew where that idiot was.
Mei's throat went dry.
She opened her mouth, her jaw clenched tight with tension, the name on the tip of her tongue lodged in her throat. "You—"
On the other side of the wall, the man had stopped as well.
He seemed to sense her agitation and raised a hand, about to say something.
Just then.
A violent surge of energy erupted without warning from the darkest, densest patch of black fog deep within the factory.
No warning at all.
This wasn't the pressure that came with an ordinary Honkai Beast's arrival — it was a tsunami of energy, almost solid enough to touch.
Su Yu and Mei turned toward it in almost the same instant.
The black fog tore apart, split by two utterly different forces.
On the left, the air temperature plunged to freezing. A thick layer of frost instantly crusted over the floating scraps of metal debris.
A colossal beast sheathed head to tail in pale blue ice-crystal carapace stepped slowly out, each footfall etching a spreading frost sigil into the ground.
On the right, a wave of heat swept through. The scorching air warped and shimmered; the rubble on the ground began glowing red and melting.
A beast marbled with dark red lava veins let out a deafening roar, flames blazing along the bone spikes on its back.
One of ice, one of fire.
Two Honkai Emperors.
The instant they appeared, Su Yu's pupils contracted sharply.
In his line of sight, he could clearly see it — that eerie red thread of concentrated Honkai energy he'd only ever seen linking blood-bonded creatures, now stretching between the two beasts' energy cores.
Worse still, the two Honkai Emperors hadn't appeared on the same side.
The Lava Emperor had manifested on Mei's half of the factory.
And the Ice Emperor had its eyes fixed squarely on Su Yu.
"Listen to me! Raiden Mei!"
Su Yu's voice cut through the roar of the energy eruption, carrying across the invisible barrier.
Mei's head snapped back around.
She didn't have time to wonder how he knew her name.
"I know you have plenty of questions," Su Yu said, already drawing his ultra-hard alloy sword, its tip angled toward the ground. "But right now we have to work together. These two monsters are linked by blood-bond — we have to kill them at the exact same moment. Otherwise they'll keep absorbing each other's energy and resurrecting endlessly!"
Mei looked into Su Yu's eyes.
Those black pupils held no trace of panic — only cold, precise calculation of the battle.
That familiar scent belonging to Kiana still lingered around him.
She drew the katana from her waist.
Purple lightning instantly coiled around the blade.
"What do we do?" She didn't waste breath on unnecessary questions.
"Just fight the way you always do." Su Yu gripped the sword hilt with both hands as the valve of his second-stage Genetic Lock swung fully open, his muscle fibers surging into frantic action. "I'll match your rhythm with everything I've got!"
She had no idea what cards the man across the wall was holding, but in this situation, she had no other choice.
Mei drew a deep breath of the scorched air. Her knees bent slightly, her center of gravity dropping.
Hokushin Itto-ryu — opening stance.
The next instant, she became a blinding bolt of purple lightning, streaking straight toward the Lava Emperor as it spewed molten rock.
Just as she launched herself, her gaze swept past the transparent barrier.
Her motion faltered, imperceptibly, for half a beat.
On the other side of the barrier, the man called Su Yu had moved too.
Sword gripped in both hands, feet crossing in a practiced rhythm, he charged at the Ice Emperor.
Mei's eyes went wide.
How was this possible.
The way that man charged — the angle of his lowered stance, the arc his arm swung the blade through—
It was all Hokushin Itto-ryu.
A swordsmanship belonging entirely to the Raiden family, one only a handful of core successors were even qualified to touch.
She'd never seen this man before. His name couldn't possibly appear anywhere in the family archives.
So why.
Why did the rhythm of his breathing, the timing of every footfall, even that one-hundredth-of-a-second pause before releasing a strike, match hers exactly.
Setting aside the differences in force angle from their height and build, the sword strike he'd just thrown might as well have been cast from the same mold as hers. At least ninety percent identical.
Like a rough but precise mirror.
The Ice Emperor's massive ice claw slammed down toward his head, stirring up a bone-chilling wind.
Su Yu pivoted hard on the balls of his feet, his body slipping through the gap in the claw's swing at a razor-thin angle.
The alloy sword in his hand carved into the seam of the monster's abdominal armor as he moved.
"Don't tell me — it was during the motion-capture sessions where you played Mei…"
Fenghuang's voice rang out in his mind, carrying a rare note of astonishment.
"Yeah," Su Yu answered silently.
The blade cut through the ice, letting out a grating screech that set teeth on edge.
Though Su Yu's body remained locked at the second stage of the Genetic Lock, his mental strength had already surged ahead, brushing against the third stage — one final step away.
This was the first flicker of the third-stage Genetic Lock's terrifying potential.
His mental strength, running at extreme intensity, let his brain function like a supercomputer, flawlessly replaying into the current battle every motion he'd rehearsed countless times as a motion-capture actor with the System's assistance.
He couldn't reproduce it with perfect, hundred-percent fidelity, but the precision was already enough to keep pace with Mei's rhythm.
The Lava Emperor's massive tail-hammer swept in, trailing molten lava.
Mei wrenched her body around in midair, her katana becoming a bolt of thunder as it struck precisely at the tail-hammer's joint.
But the creature's strength was too great.
The recoil sent her spinning off balance in midair.
The Lava Emperor's cavernous jaws yawned open, a densely compressed fireball about to erupt from within.
"Down."
Su Yu's voice carried through the barrier.
It was as if a slab of steel had slammed down from both above and below at once.
The Ice Emperor before him lagged visibly for an instant, its frost breath cut off mid-release.
Raiden Mei somehow managed an impossible hovering pivot in midair, her katana slicing clean through the weakest point of the creature's neck armor.
She understood, then, what kind of power Su Yu wielded.
Gravity manipulation.
The Star of Eden?
Too many questions churned in her mind.
But right now, the raging Honkai energy wouldn't allow her even half a second's distraction.
The battle entered its most brutal, close-quarters phase.
Su Yu wove and darted through a ground blanketed in frost.
The absolute physical control granted by his second-stage Genetic Lock let him dodge the lethal freezing beams, again and again.
Every swing of his sword timed itself precisely with the rhythm of Mei's breathing across the wall.
The two of them moved like a pair of swordsmen sharing a single mind, dancing a duet of death across the Honkai-ravaged wreckage, separated by an invisible wall.
"I've found the core!"
Mei's voice had gone hoarse.
"Strike together!"
Without a moment's hesitation.
Mei pushed the last of her armor's charge to its absolute limit. Her katana erupted with blinding purple light as her whole body became a bolt of falling lightning, plunging from above.
On the other side, Su Yu's blade was wrapped entirely in a gravity field.
He wrung the last drop of kinetic energy from his body and drove his entire form into the Ice Emperor's chest.
Two deafening cracks rang out, overlapping into one.
The lava and ice cores shattered in the same instant.
The colossal beasts collapsed with a thunderous crash, dissolving into a sky full of scattering purple motes.
Mei drove her katana hard into the ground and sank to one knee.
She gasped in great heaving breaths, sweat dripping down her cheeks and vanishing the instant it touched the scorched concrete.
Her body had hit its absolute limit.
On this side of the wall.
Su Yu leaned against a broken steel beam, the alloy sword clattering from his hand to the ground.
He released the second-stage Genetic Lock.
Overwhelming exhaustion and violent dizziness crashed over him like a tidal wave.
Broad patches of black swam across his vision, his stomach churning.
This Rift's difficulty far exceeded the last one.
If he hadn't happened to run into Mei, facing this pair of twin Honkai Emperors alone, he probably wouldn't have had even a thirty percent chance of winning.
He pulled a high-grade recovery serum from the first-aid kit at his waist and jabbed it into his thigh without hesitation.
The chilled fluid spread through his bloodstream, just barely suppressing the urge to retch.
"You okay?"
Su Yu straightened up.
He walked to the transparent barrier still separating them.
Across from him, Mei immediately got to her feet.
Even with the hand gripping her sword trembling slightly, she held her body rigidly straight, her eyes fixed on Su Yu with open wariness.
Su Yu obligingly raised both hands, palms open and facing outward.
"Easy, Miss Mei." He spoke slowly, keeping his voice as calm as he could. "This barrier is keeping us apart. Right now we can only talk through it."
He lowered his left hand, curled it into a fist, and knocked once against the air in front of him.
Ripples — faint, half-transparent — actually spread out across what should have been an unbreakable barrier.
The dull thud of the knock echoed through the empty factory.
That single motion made Su Yu freeze.
"Something's wrong, Su Yu." Fenghuang's voice carried obvious alarm.
"Last time, in the Rift — the one with Raven," Fenghuang reminded him. "Even a combined attack from you, Kiana, and Raven together couldn't produce any visible change in that barrier. Not even a ripple."
Su Yu watched the ripples in front of him slowly settle.
His expression darkened.
"The barrier's grown thinner," he replied silently to Fenghuang. "If an energy attack is strong enough, this wall might get punched straight through."
But for now, that discovery would have to stay buried.
Mei watched Su Yu's movements, and once she confirmed he genuinely couldn't cross over, the hand gripping her sword eased slightly.
She dragged her exhausted body forward, step by step, until she stood before the barrier.
Less than half a meter apart, their eyes met again at level height.
"Who are you, really."
Mei's voice was soft, but every word landed with weight.
"Why do you know my name. Why is it that you—"
She didn't finish the thought.
Su Yu lowered his hands.
"My name is Su Yu."
He looked at the girl before him — battered all over, yet her eyes still burned with a stubbornness that ached to look at.
"I'm a friend of Kiana Kaslana's."
The moment those words left his mouth—
—something ignited in Mei's eyes, like a sudden flame catching.
All her exhaustion, her wariness, her guard — the instant she heard that name, it all scattered under a surge of overwhelming emotion.
"Kiana…"
Her lips trembled faintly. "Kiana — is she all right? Where is she? Is she in danger?" The questions spilled out one after another.
But a few seconds later, she bit down hard on her lower lip.
Her eyes, which had begun to glisten, sharpened again.
Reason wrenched her back from the edge of emotional collapse.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
"How am I supposed to trust you."
Mei's voice hardened again.
Until she saw Kiana with her own eyes, anyone using that name to fish for information was extremely dangerous.
Su Yu stood there without speaking.
In his mind, he called out that name.
"Squad Monitor, this one's on you."
"With enough Honkai energy available, I can just about manage it," Fenghuang replied evenly.
The next instant.
A faint flicker of firelight kindled at Su Yu's side.
The light grew brighter, gradually outlining a slender human silhouette.
A familiar fiery-red qipao, that signature string of tassels hanging at the waist.
Fenghuang.
She simply stood there quietly beside Su Yu.
Mei's eyes went wide, wider than they'd ever gone.
Her eyes, narrowed by wariness only moments ago, were now flooded with sheer shock.
"Squad Monitor?"
Her katana clattered to the ground.
"It's you?"
The moment she made out that familiar face, the tension in Mei's shoulders collapsed completely.
If it was the Squad Monitor.
If it was the one who'd fallen under Otto's gun at Schicksal Headquarters, covering everyone else's retreat.
If it was the one who'd left behind a single feather, guiding Teacher Himeko to the Vermilion Knight.
Then there could be no mistake.
All her guard and suspicion melted away in that instant.
But another, heavier emotion followed close behind.
Mei's gaze dropped slightly, without her meaning it to, her hands clenching at her sides.
"Squad Monitor."
Her voice carried a suffocating weight.
"Teacher Himeko, she—"
Fenghuang looked at the girl before her.
A flicker of deep guilt passed through those eyes that had weathered countless years.
"I know, Mei."
Fenghuang's voice echoed through the empty factory.
"But please, don't give up hope."
Fenghuang lifted her head slightly.
"There's still a chance Himeko is alive."
Mei's head snapped up, disbelief written across her face.
"Are you just trying to comfort me, Squad Monitor?"
She stepped forward, pressing her palm against the cold, transparent barrier.
"If she fell into a crack in Imaginary Space, we wouldn't even know where to begin looking…"
"No, Mei."
Fenghuang cut her off.
"You know me," Fenghuang said, her tone carrying that same familiar stubbornness and precision. "I've never been one for comforting words. I only state facts."
That assurance, with its faintly old-fashioned ring—
—left Mei stunned.
Then she drew a heavy breath of the murky factory air.
She nodded firmly.
"I understand."
Mei's eyes rimmed with faint red, but her voice was strangely steady.
"If it's your word, then I'll believe it. I'll keep waiting for the day Teacher Himeko comes home."
Fenghuang murmured quietly in Su Yu's mind:
"Mei really is such a gentle child."
"Even after everything I did, she's still… willing to trust me."
Fenghuang set aside those stray emotions and turned back to face Mei.
"Mei, I know what you care about most right now is Kiana's whereabouts."
Fenghuang raised a hand, gesturing toward Su Yu standing beside her.
"I can tell you this with full confidence — Kiana is safe and unharmed."
"And the one who pulled her out of a hopeless situation was this man, Su Yu."
"If it hadn't been for him, Kiana would probably already have…"
Fenghuang didn't finish that sentence.
But Mei understood completely.
The stone that had weighed on her heart for months, nearly suffocating her, finally shattered in that moment.
She no longer needed to comb through rubble, no longer needed to wake in the middle of the night to stare at an empty room.
Just knowing that idiot was still alive and safe—
—was enough.
A single tear slid from the corner of Mei's eye.
Then a second.
Even the strongest of Valkyries couldn't hold up that cold mask any longer, not in this moment.
She wiped roughly at her eyes with a dust-streaked hand.
Then.
She stepped back half a pace.
Under Su Yu's somewhat startled gaze, Raiden Mei bowed to him, deep and unhesitating.
Without the slightest hesitation.
"Mr. Su Yu."
Her voice caught slightly, but every word came out clear.
"Thank you for saving Kiana."
"She really matters to me."
Su Yu looked at the girl bowed before him.
He didn't offer any of the usual platitudes, things like "it was the least I could do."
He simply nodded.
Once Mei had straightened back up and settled her emotions a little—
"Miss Mei," Su Yu said, "now that the weight's off your chest, let's move on to some real information exchange."
Mei's cheeks flushed, unnaturally.
It was the first time she'd ever broken down like that in front of a strange man.
But she quickly composed herself, picked up the katana from the ground, and sheathed it.
"I'm listening."
Su Yu found a spot at the edge of the wrecked control console. He didn't sit — just leaned against the rusted sheet metal.
He began to speak.
He skipped over the absurd details about the System and game development, and deliberately downplayed the months of PTSD Kiana had suffered.
He chose only the most critical information.
"This world was never meant to have Honkai," Su Yu said, looking Mei in the eye. "But in five months, a full-scale Honkai invasion is going to descend on it."
Mei's pupils contracted.
"The source of the Honkai," Su Yu went on, "is Arc City — from your world."
"The World Serpent carried out Project STIGMA's experiments here. They planted a Honkai energy bomb."
"And the time flow of these events doesn't match up between our two sides."
Su Yu's expression turned deadly serious.
"On our side, we still have five months to prepare."
"But on your side, I'm afraid there's less than two days left."
Mei's fingers tightened hard around her scabbard.
"Project STIGMA."
The words left her mouth carrying a bone-deep chill.
"I saw just the tip of that plan in some classified files we intercepted from the World Serpent. It's nothing less than experimenting on an entire city's worth of lives."
She lifted her head and quickly laid out her own side of the situation.
"After Rita Rossweisse was taken by some unknown force in this city, I linked up with the Immortal Blades and took temporary command of them."
Mei drew a deep breath.
"I settled the squad in a safe house. I came under the overpass to chase down a lead on where Kiana had last vanished — that's how I got pulled into this Rift."
Her thoughts began to sharpen.
"Since the Immortal Blades are out of contact now, Schicksal Headquarters won't just sit on their hands — reinforcements should arrive soon."
"No matter how different our factions' stances are, none of those Valkyries would stand by and let something as blatant as Project STIGMA's mass slaughter go unanswered."
Mei laid out her assessment.
"My plan is to first pin down exactly where the World Serpent is carrying out Project STIGMA. Once Schicksal's reinforcements arrive and we link up, we move to disarm the bomb."
Su Yu, leaning against the sheet metal, nodded.
From his memory of playing the game in his original world, the bomb's location was well established.
"Focus your search on the tallest tower in the city center."
Su Yu didn't offer an absolutely certain answer.
The people who'd transmigrated into this story had already thrown the original plot into chaos — there was no guarantee the World Serpent wouldn't change its plans at the last minute.
"It's just a strong probability. To spread Honkai energy radiation across the entirety of Arc City, the bomb would need enough elevation."
Mei filed the crucial detail away silently.
"One more thing," Su Yu added. "Rita Rossweisse — she's fine. She's on my side of the worlds right now."
At that news, Mei let out a long breath.
"Then Alvitr and the others can finally rest easy."
The furrow between Mei's brows eased slightly.
"The vice-captain being safe — that's about the best news our squad could hope for, given how low morale has been."
The critical exchange of intelligence was complete.
The atmosphere eased somewhat.
Mei looked at Su Yu, still leaning where he stood.
The curiosity she'd suppressed while urgently exchanging critical intel now surged back up, impossible to contain.
"Su Yu."
She took a step forward.
Closer to the transparent barrier.
"What exactly is between you and Kiana—"
She wanted to ask why he carried such an overwhelming trace of Kiana's presence.
That feeling as if the two of them had spent every day and night together, their very lives intertwined.
But her words were cut off, abruptly.
Without any warning.
Deep within the factory on the other side of the barrier, a terrifying presence erupted without warning — the kind that made a soul itself tremble.
It was a heat of pure destruction.
Every trace of moisture on the surrounding scrap metal evaporated instantly. The air warped violently under the extreme heat, until it felt as if the entire space were melting.
A voice, low and cold yet carrying an endless echo, tore through the silence of the factory. "Heavenly Fire—"
"—unsheathed!!"
In that instant, the sky turned a blood-soaked red from edge to edge.
A blaze like a solar prominence erupting from the surface of a star tore through everything in its path, ripping the entire roof off the eastern half of the factory in an instant.
"Watch out!"
Su Yu shouted at Mei.
That power hadn't even been aimed at them — this was merely the aftershock.
Just the aftershock.
In that instant, Mei channeled every last drop of electromagnetic energy in her body, raising a thick purple barrier in front of her.
But the moment that wave of heat swept across the transparent barrier—
—a coppery, sweetish taste rose in the back of Mei's throat.
She let out a muffled grunt, blood spraying from her mouth, her body hurled back three or four meters.
Her shield was crazed over with spiderweb cracks.
And on this side of the barrier—
Fenghuang's usually calm phantom form rippled violently.
Her voice carried an emotion Su Yu had never heard from her before — something that could only be called terror.
"Su Yu!!"
He didn't need Fenghuang's warning.
Su Yu felt every drop of blood in his body freeze in place.
The danger-honed instincts of his second-stage Genetic Lock screamed the highest-level death warning straight into his brain.
Every cell in his body was screaming at him to run.
That presence.
A power that could strip away every will to resist, even through a spatial barrier, even from a distance, with just a single glimpse.
He knew it far too well.
And yet it was utterly alien to him.
The blaze that had filled the sky slowly drew back.
At the center of the wreckage, now fused into glass by the heat—
—stood a man with short silver-white hair and a black coat, slowly lowering the blazing greatsword in his hand.
—[Might of An-Utu].
The World Serpent Lord.
The strongest Fusion Warrior.
Kevin Kaslana.
The instant his feet touched ground, those ice-blue eyes cut through the burning smoke without hesitation, locking dead onto Su Yu's position.
That gaze was cold enough to freeze time itself.
His eyes lingered for a moment on the faintly blurred fiery-red phantom beside Su Yu.
Then his gaze shifted back to Su Yu. Raven's report surfaced in his mind: this man wielded the power of the Star of Eden, and had also mastered a method for controlling a Herrscher's power — evidence of a world beyond this world. And now, decisive proof stood right there beside him: among the forerunners, a comrade who shared Su's allegiance — Hua — at his very side.
He lifted the massive [Might of An-Utu] greatsword with one hand, its burning tip leveled at Su Yu's chest.
The Rift's barrier had proven far thicker than he'd expected — thick enough that he'd actually needed the Judgment of Shamash just to force his way into this space. If this hadn't already been a weak point, even unsheathing Heavenly Fire might not have broken through the barrier.
The corner of his mouth curved upward, an expression with no warmth in it at all. But anyone who knew Kevin well would recognize this wasn't a challenge — it was, for the first time in longer than he could remember, something genuinely resembling joy.
"Heh."
The voice carried clearly through the World Barrier, now melted down to a paper-thin membrane, straight into Su Yu's ears.
"It's been a while, old friend."
"Not even going to say hello?"
"Su?"
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