"Mei-senpai! Look over there! It's Bronya and Seele!" Kiana said, looking towards the end of the dark corridor where two familiar figures could be vaguely seen by the sea... It was Bronya and Seele.
Although Li Xuan didn't know how Kiana and Mei were reminiscing about Seele... midway through his fight, Mei and the others had actually led him right through what was clearly a wall, and miraculously passed through it... into a dark corridor.
"Bronya, we're here to help!" Mei shouted at the figure. As they got closer... Mei and Kiana could already see the deep blue scythe held against Bronya's neck...
"Kiana!" Mei looked at Kiana beside her, her meaning couldn't be clearer...
"Got it! Mei-senpai! Leave it to me!" Kiana, whose intelligence was usually below average, seemed to have transformed into a different person at this moment. She raised her 'Guardian of the Moon God' pistol and aimed it at Seele...
"Bang!" A crisp gunshot rang out. Although Kiana's academic scores were a mess, she once again demonstrated her slowly maturing Gun Kata... A bullet glowing with white light spiraled towards Seele...
"Clang!!" The bullet accurately hit the deep blue scythe. The scythe, which Seele had swung down with a mix of hesitation and decisiveness, was struck directly by the bullet, interrupting a blow that would have been fatal to Bronya...
"I was so close... You annoying pests!" Seele's expression changed. She was the second personality derived from the first... Although she had temporarily suppressed the first personality, her previous actions had already caused the first personality to resist...
".....Uh, what just happened?!" Li Xuan looked at everyone with a confused expression. Kiana and Mei had been running side-by-side in the corridor, completely blocking his view, so he still hadn't figured out what was going on.
"I won't let you hurt Bronya again..." Mei hurriedly pulled Bronya into a hug and said loudly, watching Seele, who had taken a few steps back, with caution.
"Sister Mei, I'm fine..." Bronya said softly, her gaze still fixed on the girl standing not far away...
"...." Am I being ignored?... Li Xuan stood to the side, feeling like no one had noticed him... It was a bit awkward...
"Hmph! We finally escaped that weird festival, now you'll get a taste of our strength!" Kiana threatened, raising her gun and aiming it at Seele.
"Hehehehahaha~" Seele laughed mockingly as if she had heard something funny. She said softly, "...Don't be in such a hurry... Cinderella's magic has worn off. After midnight comes the long night, let's get along well..."
"Big brother, big sisters~" Seele curtsied with her deep blue dress and smiled elegantly. Her figure became somewhat illusory again...
"Good luck, everyone..." The words had barely been spoken when the ground shook as if in an earthquake... The entire world began to crumble with a "rumble," and black cracks appeared in the sky like torn paper. The ground began to break apart and turn to nothingness...
"Not good... this space is collapsing!? Mei! Bronya... ahem, and Kiana... Everyone, hold hands! So we don't get separated..." Li Xuan shouted to Kiana and the others as he watched the world slowly turn to chaos...
Suddenly, a violent tremor came from an unknown location. The group, who had just joined hands, felt a wave of dizziness... and then everything went black...
...................
Meanwhile... a small airship slowly came to a stop on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia... The wind from its landing kicked up the golden sand on the beach, which sparkled with a faint golden light under the sun...
"Professors, I'll be counting on you to set up the communication lines!" The first to emerge from the hatch, a certain white-haired loli, said loudly to the group of young and old men and women behind her.
"Principal Theresa... we'll do our best..." a woman in a white lab coat, dressed as a researcher, said with a sigh. Establishing communications across space wasn't something that could be done with just a few words... it even involved gravitational waves...
"Mhm... just do your best," Theresa said helplessly, feeling inexplicably nervous and uneasy...
"As you wish..." the researcher said softly, then turned to direct her team of scientists to unload various Honkai-measuring instruments and other equipment from the transport bay and begin calibrating and assembling them...
"Why do I have a bad feeling about this..." Theresa frowned as she looked at the azure sky over the sea. She had been feeling uneasy since this morning, as if something was about to happen...
"Could it be that Kiana and the others are in some kind of trouble?!..." Under the sun, the golden 'Apocalypse' emblem of Schicksal on Theresa's black and white nun's habit shimmered faintly... She looked out at the vast, boundless sea with a worried expression...
However... what Theresa didn't know was that... in the sky far from Russia... a fierce battle had just come to an end...
The milky-white energy shield on the Schicksal transport ship vanished under the fully charged main cannons of several Anti-Entropy warships...
This transport ship was doomed to defeat... After all, it was a transport ship, not a combat vessel... let alone facing an attack from several warships at once...
"Prepare to board..." the rather refined-looking man said softly, looking at the 'Schicksal transport ship' now within reach. "Go and retrieve that thing..."
"Mhm, kill them all..." the middle-aged man said nonchalantly.
(End of Chapter)