A pitch-black storm swirled above the scorched earth.
The will condensed from pure malice had clearly been enraged to its limit by Su Yu's reckless words a moment ago.
Unable to crush this outsider with the fear of death, it turned its spearhead toward the girl standing behind Su Yu.
Amid the wind and snow, countless diamond-shaped ice mirrors rose up out of the ground.
The mirrors no longer reflected Su Yu's death—instead, they began frantically playing out another history, one that hadn't yet happened in this timeline.
In the images, a massive meteor trailing long plumes of smoke slammed into the snowfields of Siberia, and the city's buildings collapsed in a sea of fire.
Tens of thousands of people fled and screamed in despair, torn apart by Honkai Beasts or ground into pulp by purple energy.
High above that scene of doomsday, the Queen—clad in a lavish purple-black gown, her eyes cold as ice—looked down on the earth with utter indifference.
In one of the ice mirrors played, starkly, the scene from that dim consciousness space: the Herrscher of the Void driving a Subspace Lance clean through Su Yu's chest.
Blood sprayed out, staining the entire screen red.
The howling wind around them twisted into sharp mockery and accusation, boring straight into Sirin's ears.
"Take a good look! This is your future! You're nothing but a devil who nearly destroyed the entire world! Your hands are soaked in the blood of the innocent! Even this man, who threw away his own life for your sake—you very nearly killed him with your own hands!"
"What right do you have to stand behind him? What right do you have to beg for his salvation?! Do you think you're innocent? You're nothing but a fiend who deserves to be tormented in this hell for all eternity!"
Sirin's slight frame swayed violently.
Her eyes, which had only just begun to kindle a faint spark, lost all focus instantly before the overwhelming accusations and bloody images.
Her fingers loosened their grip on Su Yu's white lab coat, and she staggered back two steps before collapsing into the snow.
She stared at her own hands. They were thin, pale—but in those images, it was these very hands that had taken countless lives with ease, hands even stained with the blood of the man standing right in front of her.
If she ever broke free of this dream that imprisoned her and stepped into that so-called real future waiting outside—
she would become that irredeemable devil.
How could she possibly deserve this?
She didn't deserve to stand at his side. She didn't deserve anyone's salvation.
All she deserved was exactly what those "white lab coats" had always said—to be a test subject, rotting away in this lightless place.
Su Yu turned around.
He looked at the girl curled into a trembling ball, too afraid to even meet his eyes, and drove the Heaven's Fire Greatsword straight into the scorched earth.
He strode over and knelt before her on one knee.
Without a flicker of hesitation, his hand closed over Sirin's trembling shoulder, forcing her to look up, his gaze locking onto those eyes brimming with collapse and terror.
"Forget whatever future those images showed you."
Su Yu's voice wasn't drowned out by the wind and snow—it struck her ears with perfect clarity.
"Don't run from it. And don't stop here."
"No matter how rotten the future turns out to be, no matter how much senseless garbage you end up facing—"
"I'll face every bit of it with you."
"And another thing—take back all that idiotic talk about deserving or not deserving." He grinned, a smile that might've struck anyone else as downright unreasonable. "If I really didn't want this, why do you think I'm still standing here beside you right now?"
Sirin stared blankly at the man before her.
The bloodstains on his clothes hadn't faded, and there was still grime smudged at the corner of his mouth from the fight earlier.
But the eyes looking at her were clean, pure—without a trace of impurity in them.
The girl's heart, long stilled by fear, gave one fierce, sudden beat—for this man.
This man...
How could there be such a thoroughgoing idiot in this world?
He knew perfectly well she'd become a monster who killed without blinking. He knew she'd make a mess of everything. And yet he still, unreasonably, dragged her out of the mire.
And yet.
You're the one I love most.
You absolute idiot.
Sirin drew a deep breath.
The tears at the corners of her eyes never fell. She forced them back by sheer will.
In those purple eyes, the cowardice and fear were pushed out, bit by bit, replaced by a resolve to keep moving forward even if it meant carrying every sin on her back.
Overhead, the world's malice, seeing this tactic fail, began to roil violently.
The hero phantoms Su Yu had just cut to pieces began reforming within the ice mirrors, attempting to launch another wave of attacks.
But this time, before Su Yu could even raise his sword—
Sirin stood up.
She didn't cower behind him the way she had before.
The terrifying power belonging to the Herrscher of the Void fully awakened within her.
Blinding purple-gold light surged skyward. Countless Subspace Lances thrust their tips out from the void.
Sirin raised her hand, and the reforming phantoms were instantly run through and shredded by the Subspace Lances, leaving not even scraps behind.
She lifted her chin, facing the roiling, blood-red sky head-on—facing the malice that had once left her unable to breathe.
"If that's the future that belongs to me, then even with my hands stained in blood, even carrying the weight of sin—"
She looked out over this false sky and earth.
"I will still walk toward that future."
Sirin's gaze flicked briefly to Su Yu beside her.
"I still have things left unfinished. Promises I have to keep. And... someone waiting for me to come back."
"Even if I'm a devil, he'll accept all of me."
She reached out her right hand, her five fingers clenching hard around the empty air.
Space let out a groan of strain at her gesture.
"I'm... not afraid of you anymore."
"And I will never listen to your lies again."
"Get out of my way—don't you dare block our path!!"
At some point Su Yu had come to stand at her side, drawing the Greatsword he'd left planted in the ground.
The two of them stood shoulder to shoulder, flame and the purple light of Imaginary Space blending together across the snowfield.
Together, they struck one unrestrained blow that annihilated every last trace of malice.
Under that strike, the entire dream world let out one final, agonized howl.
The blood-red sky, the pale laboratory walls, the all-consuming blizzard—all of it crumbled inch by inch before that unstoppable force, until it scattered into ash and vanished completely, utterly spent.
And yet the dispersal of malice didn't grant the dream world a new lease on life.
Having lost the underlying logic that had sustained it, the entire world—built from "what-ifs" and fear—began an irreversible collapse.
History's trajectory carried its own formidable momentum.
Sirin lowered her head, watching her fingertips slowly turn transparent, motes of light drifting away from her hair and the spaces between her fingers.
She knew that the Herrscher of the Void's fall was the fate decreed by the Second Eruption. This world was reaching its end, and she was destined to vanish here along with it.
The space around them began to drip downward like melting wax.
Sirin turned to look at Su Yu.
Her Herrscher gown grew more and more transparent amid the dissolving void.
She rose onto her tiptoes, her hands coming to rest lightly on Su Yu's shoulders.
Sirin closed her eyes, and as the kiss landed, tears slid down her cheeks.
She smiled, utterly content, as if trying to etch this man's warmth into her soul forever.
Their lips parted.
She stepped back half a pace, looking at him, her purple eyes brimming with tenderness and longing:
"Su Yu, I'm about to disappear..."
"But getting to fall in love with you—that alone already makes me the happiest girl there is."
"You big liar... see you in the next life."
The gentle words had barely faded into the air before Su Yu, still caught in the sudden weight of this parting, fully came back to himself.
On his retina, an infuriatingly familiar pale-blue System panel popped up with a ding, shattering the mood without a shred of tact.
The text on the prompt box flickered past at breakneck speed.
[Ding! Bond Task "Next Life"—Complete.]
[Task Description: Next life—what a lovely phrase, isn't it? As if everything could be pinned on a next life, as if this life's failures, pain, and sorrow could be lightly papered over by those four words.]
[But you've never believed in a next life. You only believe in now.]
[So—it's time she wakes fully from this so-called "next life" dream. Go take back your Queen with your own hands.]
[Alright, you know this—being all serious isn't your foster father's style. Let me just say it plainly: doesn't this scene feel a little familiar to you?]
[Same as always—the girl you worked so hard to trick into this? There's no way your foster father is just going to stand by and let her walk off.]
[It's time she wakes fully from this so-called "next life" dream!]
[Before she vanishes from this dream for good, use the method you know best to leave your spiritual imprint on her—take back her soul with your own hands!]
[As for the method of extracting a soul—you haven't forgotten how to get intimate, have you? Heh heh~]
Su Yu stared at the text, blinking in bewilderment.
The world around him—built of snowflakes, rubble, and a frigid sky—was dissolving piece by piece, visibly, before his eyes.
Nice, there's even a nostalgia side-quest now?
In his head, he cursed the goddamn System for picking the worst possible moment.
Su Yu stepped forward and swept Sirin up into his arms in one smooth motion.
Her lavish Herrscher gown rustled softly against him.
Su Yu found a patch of snow still relatively flat, one that hadn't yet dissolved, and gently laid her down on it.
Against the white snow, Sirin's pale skin—visible even through the Herrscher gown—seemed almost dazzling.
Su Yu crouched down beside her. He reached out and stroked the soft purple hair on her head.
He looked into her eyes, still glistening with tears, a little dazed.
"Is this okay?"
Sirin tilted her head back to look up at him.
With a mind that had never matured past her teens, she had no idea what this man intended to do in a world on the verge of collapsing.
But she nodded obediently all the same.
As Su Yu leaned down, the world was swallowed whole, in that instant, by a blinding, midnight-sun white light.
"BOOM—!"
Kiana and Fenghuang, observing the dream from outside, felt the world collapsing as well.
A violent torrent of consciousness swept in like a storm—the spiritual tempest born of the dream world's final collapse.
"Not good—the dream's underlying framework is collapsing!"
Fenghuang's expression shifted.
She stepped forward at once, channeling Yu Ducheng's power through the void, forcibly carving out a small, dome-shaped sanctuary within the raging torrent, sheltering herself and Kiana inside it.
"Kiana, hold your mind steady! The turbulence from a collapsing dream can shred an observer's consciousness. We can't see anything right now—we just have to wait the storm out..."
Before Fenghuang even finished speaking, Kiana let out a muffled groan behind her.
"Mmm—!"
Kiana jolted as if struck by electricity, her legs giving out as she collapsed inside the spiritual barrier Fenghuang had raised.
In this small world Fenghuang had sealed off, there was nothing but pure darkness and the howling of the turbulence—no images at all.
And yet Kiana's eyes went wide, her pupils trembling violently.
She clamped a hand over her own lips, tears welling at the corners of her eyes.
Though her sight had been forcibly cut off, the resonance of touch and soul were magnified beyond measure in that instant.
K-423 had always been an extension of Sirin's soul and life.
And precisely because of that, within this space built of consciousness, she felt the feedback echoing from the very root of her soul.
A scorching, distinctly male warmth pressed against Kiana's lips, utterly unhindered.
Then came the chill of fingertips brushing her collarbone, trailing a shiver down her spine.
That touch—aggressive, yet gentle all at once—felt impossibly vivid in this sight-deprived darkness.
"Kiana? What's wrong with you?!"
Fenghuang turned to see Kiana curled up on the ground, trembling all over, and immediately extended a thread of spiritual power to sense what was happening.
The next instant, Fenghuang's expression turned grave:
"Such domineering spiritual power... It's Su Yu! He's deep in the dream, forcibly branding his spiritual power into the Herrscher Core, and not gently either!"
As an expert in the domain of consciousness, Fenghuang immediately arrived at a "reasonable" conclusion.
"Kiana, hold on! You and the Herrscher of the Void share the same root and source. Su Yu is forcibly extracting and branding her soul right now, and that soul-level tearing sensation is passing through the resonance straight into you, whole and undiluted!"
"Embrace the Origin, Guard the One! Don't resist that spiritual force! The pain of a soul operation like this is no small thing—grit your teeth and push through it!"
Listening to Fenghuang, the Immortal's deadly serious tone, as if they stood on the brink of some life-or-death crisis, Kiana, curled up on the ground, felt like she could die of shame and fury.
Pain?
Soul-tearing pain, her ass!
That pervert was clearly kissing her other self right now—and his hands weren't behaving themselves either!!
But there was no way in hell Kiana could ever explain that to the deadly serious Fenghuang.
And just then.
A flood of memories burst through the dam, surging violently along the shared soul-link, straight into Kiana's pure sea of consciousness!
It wasn't "tearing pain" at all—it was the long stretch of years Sirin had spent with Su Yu in that consciousness space, stabilizing her Herrscher state.
Memories of countless intimate moments, unfolding across days and nights Kiana had never known anything about!
"BOOM!"
Kiana's mind went utterly blank.
In the span of a few short seconds, she lived through, on a spiritual level, everything Sirin had ever experienced.
She "remembered" the rough pads of Su Yu's fingers brushing along the inside of her thigh, sending shiver after shiver through her.
She felt herself pinned beneath that man in the dim space, his hot breath and possessive, ragged panting right against her ear.
She even vividly relived how her other self, through round after breathless round of entanglement, had gone from proud resistance and struggle to total surrender—eyes red, crying, begging him not to stop...
A Paramecium who'd only ever read romance comics, with zero real experience in this department—how was she supposed to withstand memories recreated this perfectly, lived out in the first person?
She bit down hard on the back of her own hand, trying to choke off the strange sounds rising in her throat, biting until she drew a thin line of blood.
But she still couldn't stop the terrifying, tingling warmth surging up from the very depths of her soul.
Her body remained, physically, untouched and pure.
But her mind, her nerves, every inch of her soul, was sliding steadily toward that sinful abyss.
And waiting at the bottom of that abyss was Su Yu.
"Kiana! Why is your spiritual body running such an insane temperature?!"
Beside her, Fenghuang's face changed completely—the heat relayed back by her probing spiritual power was simply alarming.
"Hold on a little longer! No matter how much it hurts, don't lose consciousness!"
"Squad Monitor... I'm... not... mmh..."
In the dream's final second, as Su Yu's imprint settled completely into place, Kiana finally couldn't hold back any longer and let go of the hand she'd been biting.
She arched her slender neck and, in the absolute darkness, let out a moan so shameful even she herself could hardly stand to hear it.
Her gaze went completely hazy, her eyes glassy and shimmering, her legs clenching uncontrollably as she went utterly limp—like a puddle of spring water—against the true qi barrier Fenghuang had raised.
Kiana gasped for breath in great heaving gulps, her chest rising and falling wildly, her whole body flushed as red as a boiled shrimp.
Even her toes curled in shame, there in the dark.
Feeling Kiana's "violently surging" spiritual fluctuations finally begin to settle—
—and looking at Kiana, limp on the ground, her face flushed, her whole body drenched in sweat, with "painful" tear tracks still lingering at the corners of her eyes—
Fenghuang let out a long breath, her eyes full of sympathy and admiration.
"It's finally over... To endure a soul extraction that violent and still keep your consciousness intact. Kiana, with willpower like that, you'd rank among the elite warriors even of the pre-Honkai civilizations."
And right now, that "elite warrior" lay sprawled on the floor in a thoroughly undignified heap.
Her mind was still full of those lingering, indulgent sensations, and a love so intense it refused to fade.
Listening to Fenghuang's praise, all Kiana wanted was to claw a hole in the Anti-Entropy lab floor with her bare hands and bury herself in it forever.
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