On the abandoned road of Nagazora City, a giant humanoid Honkai Beast stood quietly. The tip of the spear on its right limb was stained red with blood. Its towering figure was like a massive mountain, suffocating to behold…
The ruined houses on both sides of the road were a mess of shattered stones. In the middle of the road were three people: a boy in ancient-style clothing, unconscious; a black-haired girl holding a white-haired girl with a deep gash tearing across her back, her eyes filled with despair and emptiness…
"K-Kiana…" Raiden Mei's eyes widened as she looked at the girl who had protected her. She didn't dare to hold the girl in her arms tightly. Just a moment ago, everything was fine, how could it…
"Drip…" A crystalline tear traced a path down her blood-streaked, fair cheek and fell onto Kiana's shoulder. Raiden Mei pressed her left hand against the wound on Kiana's back, a wound so deep it nearly tore her body in two, but… she couldn't stop the gushing blood. The crimson blood flowed from the palm of her hand, and with it, the hope called 'life' was slowly draining away.
"Ahhh—————ah!" It was a heart-wrenching cry, a cry of hatred for her own weakness… Crystalline tears fell powerlessly to the ground amidst the cries.
"…" The massive humanoid Honkai Beast, like the grim reaper, raised the spear on its right limb again. As a 'god,' what did human resentment and pain matter to it? Just as a hunter doesn't care about the meaning of the desperate howls of his prey before it dies.
"BOOM——" The spear, several meters long, slammed down, kicking up dust and rubble, cutting through the air as it fell heavily…
"Bzz… bzzt… bzzt…" The blood-stained spear was blocked by a semi-circular electromagnetic shield. The positive and negative ions in the air were manipulated by the power of the [Honkai], or perhaps the power of a 'god.' They rubbed and collided, transforming into a powerful electromagnetic force.
"BZZT… BZZZZT!!!" With the circular electromagnetic shield as the center, a massive amount of electric current appeared out of thin air. The white lightning illuminated the silent sky…
The black-haired girl, Raiden Mei, slowly opened her eyes. The gentleness and kindness in her pupils had vanished, replaced by boundless arrogance and… destruction…
The tattered clothes at her waist revealed fair, jade-like skin… and… a mark that seemed to be made of blood… It was a Stigmata!
"Cough… cough…" The unconscious Li Xuan, thanks to his powerful physique, had managed to cling to life. However, it seemed his internal organs were damaged, as his coughs were tinged with the thick taste of blood.
Li Xuan opened his blood-stained eyes. In a daze, he seemed to see Raiden Mei's black hair fluttering before him, and the large amount of blood on her fair palm.
'Why is there so much blood on Mei's hand…' His mind, sluggish from blood loss, had no time to ponder this question.
Li Xuan reached out his left hand toward the silent Raiden Mei. His palm happened to touch the red mark on her waist—the Stigmata.
"…" The Raiden Mei in Li Xuan's vision turned to meet his gaze. Her amber eyes held slit pupils, like those of a wild beast.
"Get lost! You filth!" The Raiden Mei in his vision seemed to say in anger. With a wave of her hand, a bright flash of lightning shot past, exploding in front of Li Xuan. Li Xuan was sent flying as if hit by a truck, crashing heavily into a ruined house by the road. The house seemed unable to withstand the impact and collapsed with a deafening roar…
What happened… A question flashed through Li Xuan's mind before his consciousness once again sank into darkness.
Under the collapsed rubble, the left hand of the buried boy slowly began to change…
The Raiden Mei who had sent Li Xuan flying seemed completely unfazed, as if she had just swatted a mosquito… Her slit pupils were fixed on the massive humanoid Honkai Beast before her, her eyes filled with indifference.
Five clusters of crackling lightning floated behind Raiden Mei. The Honkai energy in the air, like a school of sharks that had smelled blood, swarmed toward the light clusters. It was then compressed by a powerful force, turning into high-concentration Honkai energy light fragments that began to assemble…
"Crack…" The light clusters behind her made a sound like shattering glass. Piece after piece of high-concentration Honkai energy was continuously compressed, forming five wings of shimmering lightning.
Raiden Mei, holding Kiana in one arm, floated in mid-air like a deity, looking down coldly at the humanoid Honkai Beast, another product of the Honkai. She was like a queen who controlled the lightning, aloof and proud.
A cluster of white, shimmering light suddenly appeared above the Honkai Beast's head. The surrounding Honkai energy was brutally sucked in, transforming into an even more dazzling lightning, which then became a sphere of lightning surrounded by countless electric arcs…
"Vanish, you filth!" the Queen of Thunder floating in the air commanded, a cold smile on her lips.
"BOOM-BZZZT!!!" The massive sphere of lightning instantly fell, engulfing the enormous Honkai Beast and showering the area with tens of thousands of volts of high-voltage electricity.
"BOOM!——" Then it exploded violently. A pillar of lightning, comparable to the golden pillar of light that appeared during Li Xuan's wishes, shot up into the sky, illuminating the night sky that had, at some point, descended…
"An extremely strong Honkai source reaction detected ahead!" Alarms blared throughout the Schicksal warship 'Hyperion', hovering over Nagazora City. The crew members abandoned their dinners and scurried back to their posts.
"Honkai source values are surging!" A long-haired girl in a standard military uniform said to the woman standing before her, whose crossed arms further accentuated her ample chest. "Major, there's still time to retreat."
"Cut the chatter, Yuudachi!" Murata Himeko said loudly, her brow furrowed. "Looks like skipping that cute boy's party today to participate in this experiment was the right call after all. I've hit the jackpot…"
"The word 'retreat' isn't in my dictionary," Murata Himeko said, a wild smile on her exquisite face.
"All hands, Condition 1 alert. Commence combat operations!" The order was relayed throughout the warship's communication system…
(End of Chapter)