"..." Himeko knelt on the seabed with her head down, still not having come to her senses... She never thought she would be saved by an ordinary person...
"How ironic..." Himeko murmured. A Valkyrie, who was supposed to protect ordinary humans, was saved from a Honkai Beast by an ordinary person... It was like a cat catching a mouse, only to be killed by the mouse.
"Major Himeko, please pull yourself together. This wasn't actually your fault..." Fu Hua took a step closer and said softly. This incident happened too suddenly; no one expected such a large Honkai Beast to appear so abruptly... Even Bronya didn't detect it in time.
"I'm fine!!" Himeko suddenly stood up and shouted. She tilted her head and looked up... It was a kaleidoscope of light, the sunlight shimmering on the sea's surface... Her eye sockets, which had turned red from weakness, slowly returned to normal.
"Let's depart immediately. It'll be troublesome if we attract more Honkai Beasts later..." Himeko took a deep breath for a few dozen seconds and said calmly.
"As for the sacrificed Muyue Rendong..." Himeko's gaze was as sharp as a hawk's. She looked at the still somewhat dazed Li Xuan and said, "After the mission is over, I will personally find that Honkai Beast and kill it with my own hands!"
"So... let's set off now." Himeko said, her voice tinged with fatigue.
"..." Li Xuan tightened his grip on the longsword in his hand and followed without a word. He felt a chill in his limbs. Once again... the [Honkai] had shown him its cruelty, bare and raw.
"Major Himeko..." Li Xuan suddenly spoke to Murata Himeko, who was walking at the very front. "If possible, I'd also like to go kill that Honkai Beast!" This could be considered the last thing I can do for Muyue, right?
"..." Himeko turned her head to look at Li Xuan and was silent for a moment before saying, "...Alright."
Due to Muyue's accident, Himeko's group maintained their silence along the way. Even Kiana didn't speak in this atmosphere, her throat feeling as if it were filled with lead, not knowing what to say... They followed the direction of the Honkai energy detector and arrived before that massive seafloor crevice...
The silent seafloor crevice was even darker than the seabed... Only after Bronya threw out a few illumination spheres did they manage to see clearly...
On the steep rock walls were layers upon layers of rock, and the first thing that entered everyone's sight was a huge cave entrance on the seafloor fissure, a full five meters wide...
"The Honkai energy concentration has already risen to C-level. According to Bronya's calculations..." Bronya, holding an underwater computer tablet, no longer conserved her energy after the recent incident. She scanned the vicinity for existing Honkai sources while performing rapid calculations...
"The probability of this being Jiuyou is thirty-four point two percent..."
The cave entrance before Li Xuan was pitch black, so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, making it impossible to see what was inside... It was as if a peerless beast had opened its massive maw, waiting for its prey to be unable to resist its curiosity and rush to its own death...
"Let's go..."
The war between the [Honkai] and humanity, carried by vengeance, ending in death... a seemingly endless struggle that will only stop when one side falls...
........
Meanwhile, on the calm sea surface, a big yellow duck slowly approached the 'Schicksal' ship.
A figure nimbly climbed from inside the big yellow duck to its head. In the sunlight, one could see it was a short-haired girl. Her legs, clad in special black material long socks, stood on the duck's head. She slightly bent her body, her form like a leopard gathering power to pounce...
The next moment, she forcefully stomped on the duck's head, pushing part of it into the water... Using that rebound force, the girl leaped towards the ship's deck, which was a full five meters above her...
Her petite body formed a perfect parabola in the air as she began to fall towards the deck...
"All units, fire! Don't let her get close!!" Second Lieutenant Mu Jin shouted, firing her pistol at Xing. Ma'er without reservation...
The other team members immediately opened fire on the figure in mid-air... bullets rained down on the figure as if they were free...
"...Haha." Xing. Ma'er revealed a ferocious smile, her longsword 'Shizhen' swinging fiercely... The high-speed swing created afterimages. Before the bullets could get close to her, they were sliced in half by the black blade...
"This person..." Second Lieutenant Mu Jin's eyes widened in disbelief. "She actually cut bullets with a sword!"
"All of you, go to hell! Schicksal trash!!" Xing. Ma'er, about to land, showed a pathological smile. Her longsword swung fiercely at the stunned Second Lieutenant Mu Jin, the blade falling like a meteor...
"Clang!~" A crisp sound echoed throughout the area... Xing. Ma'er's near-certain hit was blocked head-on by a tachi emitting a yellow glow... It was the tachi Theresa had temporarily given to Yae Sakura, 'Miao Dao: Denkō'.
"Schicksal trash, who are you?!" Xing. Ma'er looked at the person right in front of her. Her longsword felt like it had hit a wall...
"I'm not trash." The pink-haired girl tilted her head and said seriously, "I like to eat onigiri..."
"..."
........
Meanwhile... thousands of meters away from the seafloor crevice, a massive Honkai Beast was moving rapidly...
Suddenly, it stopped abruptly as if frozen in place, its body beginning to twitch and convulse...
The next moment.
"Poof!!" The shark-shaped Honkai Beast's massive body suddenly exploded in the seawater. Purple blood, milky-white flesh, gray exoskeleton, and some internal organs shimmering with purple light splattered everywhere...
"Hmph... what a disgusting trip." A figure emerged from the exploded Honkai Beast's body, muttering to himself.
"Disappear..." he said softly. A black sphere appeared in his outstretched left hand... A massive suction force surged from that small black sphere.
The purple blood, organs, flesh, and bones were directly sucked into the black sphere and vanished strangely... Even the seawater disappeared without a trace upon touching the small sphere... The seawater began to form a vortex due to this suction...
"Alright, no more playing..." the young man said, bored. The black ball in his hand vanished as if by magic... All the blood and flesh in the seawater were gone, leaving only a massive, ferocious Honkai Beast skeleton slowly sinking to the seabed.
"Black holes are so hard to control...." he said, as if to himself, his body slowly beginning to float towards the sea surface...
"Ha~ Time to go back." The young man yawned as if sleepy, revealing the face beneath his slightly long bangs... a face that was incredibly familiar to Li Xuan and Himeko...
Muyue Rendong...
(End of this chapter)