Inside a training room on the floating island that served as the headquarters of Schicksal.
"Two thousand nine hundred ninety... two thousand nine hundred ninety-one... three thousand."
Silently counting in her head, the golden-haired girl gave a powerful lift of the barbell, returning it to its rack with a heavy, resonant clang. Only then did she release a long breath.
With that, her warm-up was complete. It was time to begin the real training.
Stretching her limbs to awaken her muscles, she thought to herself calmly.
Beep!
The phone she had set aside began to ring.
A new mission?
Wiping the sweat from her forehead and hands with a towel, the girl picked up the phone and accepted the call.
Flick.
The screen lit up. A white-haired woman wearing an amber-colored eyepatch appeared, bowing slightly as she spoke with polite respect.
"Good morning, Lady Durandal. I hope I'm not interrupting."
"I just finished my warm-up," Durandal replied, shaking her head before asking, "Amber, is something wrong?"
She was an A-rank Valkyrie of the combat forces. The woman on the screen was the Archbishop's personal secretary. The two rarely interacted outside of work, and their only connection was through Valkyrie duties.
"We just received intel. A major Honkai outbreak has occurred in Sicily. His Eminence has ordered you to deploy with the Immortal Blades," Amber reported directly. "The aerial battleship is ready at Dock Three. Departure is scheduled in ten minutes."
"Understood."
Durandal nodded.
Sicily wasn't far from the floating island. It could practically be considered Schicksal's front yard.
A Honkai disaster erupting so close to home was, frankly, an embarrassment to Schicksal.
Of course, Durandal didn't care about saving face. She only wanted to resolve the crisis quickly.
With the mission relayed, the call ended. The blonde girl threw on her coat and strode quickly out of the training room.
There was still some distance to Dock Three. Ten minutes would be tight.
Beep!
A hand slammed down on a ringing phone, silencing it. A tousled white head of hair, messy as a bird's nest, popped out from under the blanket.
After staring blankly for ten full seconds, her brain finally booted up. Kiana glanced at the bright red warning symbol flashing on her phone screen and yawned deeply.
"Another Honkai incident, huh…"
Unlike the models sold in stores, her phone came equipped with a built-in Honkai detector. It could sense Honkai energy reactions within a certain radius.
Now fully alert, Kiana finished her morning routine in three minutes, brushing her teeth, fixing her hair, the works, then grabbed a baseball bat and dashed out of her rental apartment.
Today, the city of Raymonlet would be under the protection of Kiana Kaslana!
Under the soft morning light, the white-haired girl vanished into the maze of buildings.
Within the long-abandoned Raymonlet Castle...
Hiding in the corner of an upper terrace, Raven watched the massive herd of Honkai beasts rampaging below. She glanced at the now-condensed sphere of white light in the sky and couldn't help grumbling inwardly about a certain utterly unreliable boy.
He was just here to retrieve a relic, was it really necessary to stir up this much chaos?
Causing trouble right on Schicksal's doorstep? What did he think they were, blind and deaf?
Any more delay, and the Valkyrie forces would arrive!
Once surrounded by Schicksal's troops, not even she could guarantee their escape. Those Valkyries packed serious firepower.
Sure, she had confidence in handling any A-rank Valkyrie one-on-one. But they probably wouldn't fight fair—wouldn't be surprised if they dragged in ship-mounted cannons just to blast her away.
And if it came to that, getting out alive would be a miracle.
Did that guy have any sense of urgency?
Watching the eastern sky begin to brighten, Raven grew increasingly anxious.
Within the Stigmata Space, Shin followed Olivia out of the castle study and stepped directly onto a nearby shoreline.
Raymonlet Castle had been built on a seaside cliff.
As the scene shifted, the once-clear skies were replaced by a thick, roiling cloud cover.
The wind howled. Waves surged and crashed. The tranquil blue sea darkened instantly, as though vast amounts of ink had been poured into it.
Seeing this, Shin realized this was the site from the legend where the Knight of Raymonlet had calmed the raging sea with a single strike.
Watching such a myth unfold before his eyes piqued his interest. It felt like a free, high-budget movie screening.
And he was genuinely curious about Olivia's true strength.
Just how far had she developed her Stigmata?
He glanced at the eager golden-haired girl beside him and waited quietly in anticipation.
Soon, the black clouds sank lower, threatening to crush the entire world beneath their weight. Rain poured in torrents, while the waves rose higher than a hundred meters, crashing down with an overwhelming, destructive force.
Shin raised a thin energy shield to block the rain and spray, unable to help marveling at nature's fury.
In his original world, waves of twenty to thirty meters were already monstrous. Anything beyond that usually involved tectonic shifts or undersea earthquakes.
But here, a mere storm had conjured waves over a hundred meters high.
Clearly, the Honkai made many things unnatural.
Yes, this storm wasn't a natural disaster, it was a large-scale Honkai event, even if no Honkai beasts had appeared yet.
Honkai beasts and deadwalkers were just the most common manifestations, but not the only ones.
In truth, any disaster involving supernatural elements could be classified as a Honkai event.
Take the two world wars in this world, for example. The Honkai had played a role behind the scenes in both.
The Honkai energy levels in those war criminals' bodies had far exceeded lethal limits. They could be considered another form of deadwalker.
And in terms of sheer destructive power, high-ranking individuals infected by the Honkai were often far more terrifying than your average deadwalker.
So what would Olivia do in the face of this unusual Honkai disaster?
Curious, Shin turned to the knight beside him.
"Isn't this cheating?"
He offered the comment in good faith.
Amid the storm, the girl stood unbothered by the rain. Not a single hair was out of place, as if the elements belonged to a different reality.
Clearly, this defied all scientific explanation.
"Oh, come on. I'm already dead, and this whole place is made of my memories," she said with a carefree wave of her hand.
Shin: "…"
He didn't even bother arguing anymore.
There was no winning against an ancient ghost who still insisted on acting cute.
History, after all, was just a polished narrative.
Shin could already guess how glorified and distorted this upcoming "demonstration" would be.
Olivia stepped forward, walking naturally atop the sea as though it were solid ground. Even the wildest waves seemed to submit meekly before her.
Shin silently watched.
With a wave of her hand, a silvery metallic ring materialized from the void, hovering behind her like a divine halo.
This was Little Moon, no, more accurately, the Moonlight Throne: Imaginary-Inlaid Pulse Annihilation Generator.
It looked... pretty compact.
Shin made a mental note.
Depending on efficiency and scale, Moonlight Thrones could vary in size.
The version developed by Anti-Entropy in the future was a ship-mounted weapon. The one made by the Flame-Chasers in the Previous Era was satellite-grade, clearly more powerful.
This particular Moonlight Throne also seemed to operate quite differently.
A bright silver glow burst from the ring, accompanied by a sharp, humming vibration.
It had begun to activate.
As the glow intensified, the ring began to shimmer, its form flickering like it no longer belonged to this world.
It was already attempting to breach into the Imaginary Space, launching a counterattack against the Honkai from another dimension.
In the next moment, a new gust of wind—unlike the previous storm—began to stir.
Wind?
Dropping the shield and letting the rain fall freely, Shin extended his palm to feel the strange new current in the air.
A second storm was rapidly forming.
That newborn tempest quickly grew stronger, merging with the original like two dragons locked in fierce combat.
Like fighting fire with fire in a forest blaze, the two intertwining storms collided and canceled each other out, weakening the once-apocalyptic disaster at a visible pace.
Clouds clashed, winds roared, rain lashed in all directions. Olivia's figure above the sea shimmered faintly, touched by illusion.
But don't misunderstand. She wasn't being exhausted by the battle.
Everything here was a memory, and manifesting memories took energy.
In other words, Olivia had focused too much of her strength on perfecting the visual spectacle, leaving less power for rendering herself.
To put it simply, her internal CPU was overheating from showing off.
Showy old ghost.
Shin smirked and continued watching her carefully crafted blockbuster scene.
Regardless of the embellishment, the display was undeniably magnificent. Easily five stars.
Before long, the winds died down.
The skies cleared, the breeze grew gentle, and the ocean returned to its serene blue.
"Well? I was amazing, wasn't I?"
She suddenly appeared beside Shin, grinning proudly.
"Please don't make me say something I don't believe."
Shin responded with a calm smile.
As expected, history was a lie. No one could calm the seas with a single sword.
What he saw was someone exploiting a relic's powers.
She hadn't even drawn her blade once.
Honestly, he doubted she could even use a sword.
"How rude! Edward and the others always say I'm amazing."
With a snap of her fingers, shadows appeared atop the castle walls—people cheering for her heroic feat in saving Sicily. One noble-looking young man, smiling gently, stood out with striking clarity.
"..." Shin hesitated, then said, "In later generations, people said you dispersed the storm with a single strike."
"Mhm. Edward said it sounds cooler that way," she nodded. Then added, "Oh right, I think Edward was some sort of historian."
So he was the culprit behind the legend.
"You two are really something."
At this point, what else could Shin say?
"Thanks for the compliment," she said brightly, her body growing more translucent.
The power she had used to preserve her consciousness was running out.
"Olivia Raymonlet... You really are amazing."
As the surrounding space turned to drifting light, Shin looked at the girl and spoke with quiet sincerity.
It was common knowledge that energy could neither be created nor destroyed.
The Moonlight Throne was merely a converter, transforming Honkai energy from the Imaginary Space into light and heat in the real world.
And the one wielding that light and heat, turning them into storms to fight back the disaster—was Olivia herself.
A knight from a thousand years ago. A true genius.
"Of course I am. Edward's told me a million times," she said with a gentle smile in response to his praise.
Shin: "…"
Was she really throwing romantic fluff at him in her final moments?
"Farewell, boy from the future." She stepped forward and ruffled Shin's hair. "Edward said we need to preserve some power, in case someone evil tries to take Little Moon."
"But personally, I think it'll be much more useful in your hands."
She could sense that the boy bore no malice in his heart.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have humored her theatrics. And she wouldn't have gone through all that just to show him a memory.
The power she left behind here wasn't only for storytelling.
"It will," Shin answered quietly, not flinching from her parting gesture.
With those words, the boundless memory space faded into silence.
Only the boy and the quietly hovering metal ring remained.
The golden-haired girl was gone.
*********
Hey everyone! I'll be dropping an extra 1 chapter once we hit 200, 400 power stones! If you're enjoying the story, don't forget to spend some power stones. I'd really appreciate the support. Thanks a bunch!