The clouds were like iron sheets crumpled by a giant, hanging low over the Pacific.
A salty mist, thick with unborn rain, clung to the air. A greyish-blue gash split the horizon where sea met sky, like a forgotten wound from the dawn of creation.
Inside Massive Electric Corp, physically isolated from the world outside, Mei's expression was grim.
If you were to say Theresa was completely ignorant of Kiana's identity as a clone, the girl would never believe it.
Otherwise, when Kiana inexplicably went berserk the day after her birthday party, that woman wouldn't have shown up with an expression that said, "Everything is going according to plan," acting as the ballast to seal the Herrscher of the Void.
That's why Mei was so furious. Why wasn't something this important mentioned sooner? Why wait until so much time had passed—
No! If she hadn't realized the gene sequencing was wrong and taken the initiative, that white-haired old crone who acted like a kid wouldn't have had the slightest intention of confessing!
Thinking this, the girl, already seething with nameless rage, felt smoke practically coming out of her ears.
If not for the noble upbringing that told her swearing was wrong, she would have been pointing at Theresa's face and unleashing a torrent of expletives right now.
And on the other end of the video feed, at St. Freya, the other party involved didn't even realize what was happening at first.
It wasn't until the key tags—genes, DNA, Kiana, artificial human—reached her ears that she shed her previous lazy-child posture, tossed aside her Homu plushie, and slowly sat up straight on the bed.
BZZZT—
The terrifying aura of an S-rank Valkyrie exploded forth in an instant. The quantum communication feed, spanning the entire Pacific Ocean, suddenly distorted.
Even knowing the person on the other side couldn't physically harm her, Mei still felt as if she were being stared down by some megafauna from the Carboniferous period.
"ROAR—!"
The small red dragon dozing on Mei's wrist snapped its eyes open, letting out a deafening roar.
Its miniature body swelled massively in an instant. The scales that had been shattered by Durandal rapidly reassembled in the void, bursting with a blinding stream of crimson particles that stirred the tides. In the imaginary quantum realm connected to the Superstring Dimension, it manifested as a draconic aurora spanning tens of kilometers.
Her sharp gaze swept over the rampaging Judgment-class Honkai Beast on the other side of the screen. Theresa snorted coldly. "This Principal knew that thing wasn't dead."
She had previously felt that Shesha's death was too perfunctory; now, this was the first time they were truly laying their cards on the table.
"KU! RI! KA! RA!"
Sounding somewhat like a little girl just learning to speak, or perhaps a certain pink-haired cat-bunny from version 3.1 of a certain game who occasionally spits out two words, the new name its master had given it—Kurikara—was uttered word by word from the crimson dragon-serpent's mouth.
Kurikara (Krkāla), another manifestation of the mythical Fudo Myo-o (Acalanātha), symbolizes the Buddha's wisdom and power to destroy ignorance.
Its form is unique: "The great dragon Kurikara swallows a sword, its four feet wrapped around it." It is a black dragon coiled around a sword, sometimes in the act of swallowing it, standing on a rock pedestal, with flames surrounding the sword.
Considering its all-black form when it manifested as Shesha in the past, such a name was rather appropriate.
As for symbolizing wisdom and destroying ignorance... as the old saying goes, you name a child after what they're missing.
"Hmph!"
On any other day, seeing this scene, Theresa would have laughed out loud at Cocolia's clownish behavior.
To have driven the Creation Engine to slay the Raiden Herrscher's companion Honkai Beast in front of the world's satellites, only for it to have escaped into the deep sea without her knowledge.
If Kurikara's existence were ever to be exposed, the prestige of the leader of Anti-Entropy's reformist faction would be thrown on the ground and stomped on.
But now, equally worried about the K423 matter, Theresa had no time to fantasize about her old rival's defeat.
"Raiden Mei, you blame me for not explaining the relationship between K423 and the real Kiana to you sooner, leading to this current stalemate where you're stuck."
She said, "I can understand your feelings. Some things are indeed much easier to handle if they're clarified from the beginning."
A deep sorrow filled the girl's eyes. "But what if I told you, it's precisely because I chose not to reveal the whole truth back then that you all are able to play house so peacefully now?"
"How could that be—"
"Raiden Mei!"
Barbarically interrupting the girl, Theresa took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and spoke in a tone that seemed to be ending everything. "The real Kiana, the little one who made a promise with Fuli, my most, most beloved and adorable little niece!"
"—died seven years ago!"
"What?!"
The shocking truth made Mei subconsciously take a half-step back, her face turning exceptionally pale.
Kurikara, not knowing why this was happening, thought the person on the other end had done something and opened its mouth, about to gather lightning and fire.
"I don't think you're incapable of connecting these dots."
Ignoring the little red dragon baring its fangs on the other side of the screen, Theresa said coldly, "To have developed Hyperion to its current state in just three months, your intelligence is more than sufficient to deduce my reasons for concealing the truth."
She shook her head. "It's only because Fuli and... K423 are involved that your clever brain subconsciously ignored this possibility."
"Because you also understand what kind of impact it would have on the current Hyperion, on those two, if the theory that 'the real Kiana is dead' were to become true."
The mildest outcome would be Fuli and K423 going their separate ways.
And that was only the mildest.
Theresa continued, "Of course, you might also be a bad girl, merely wanting to use my words to confirm your own suspicions, then deliberately pretend to be grief-stricken to tell that Fuli brat."
"That way you could appear before his heartbroken self as a white-moonlight savior, pull him into your arms, whisper sweet nothings to comfort him, your bond deepening until he could never leave you, and then logically become husband and wife. At that point, no woman in the world could compete with you."
"How could I do something like that!"
Mei bit her lip resentfully.
If the other party involved were someone else, say, if Kiana were replaced with Durandal, then Mei would have immediately done as Theresa suggested. She would have taken the boy completely into her possession with the posture of a victor, looking down from on high as that blonde became the loser dog.
But not Kiana.
She was the one exception.
They were best friends, companions, family. Mei could never, ever harm the white-haired girl who had pulled her out of endless darkness and stood by her side without hesitation when she was at odds with the world, just for her own happiness.
She couldn't be that selfish. There was more to the world than just romantic love.
The bitter taste of rust spread through Mei's mouth. Blood dripped from her clenched fist.
It was proof that her nails had unconsciously pierced her palm in her inner turmoil.
"Wait, Principal!"
Like a drowning person desperately grabbing for the last straw, Mei, jolted awake by the stinging pain in her palm, quickly spoke up. "I want to confirm one more thing. Where did you learn that the real Kiana is dead?"
As long as that Kiana isn't dead, as long as she isn't dead, then there's still room to turn things around!
Unexpectedly, upon hearing the girl mention this, the sorrow in Theresa's eyes nearly overflowed.
She closed her eyes and sighed up at the sky. "From... a grown man who was crying his eyes out."
Siegfried Kaslana. Hero of the Second Honkai Eruption, wielder of the Judgment of Shamash, former patriarch of the Kaslana family, a powerful S-rank knight.
It was this man who didn't cry when he betrayed the Kaslana creed and left Welt Yang alone on the moon to hold back the Second Herrscher. He didn't cry when he was in agony from the gene-activating serum.
He didn't cry when the love of his life was sacrificed to a Honkai energy fission bomb. He didn't cry as he gritted his teeth and moved forward alone in Schicksal after the war.
Only that one time—when his precious daughter fell from thousands of meters in the sky, and he didn't even have a chance to turn back while being pursued by combat troops—did this man cry like a child.
Mei's rational thinking immediately caught the problem. "So you mean, neither you nor that Mr. Siegfried personally witnessed what happened to the real Kiana?"
"Don't push it, Raiden Mei!"
Theresa's eyes snapped open as she roared in fury!
"She was just a seven-year-old child! Falling a few hundred meters onto water is no different from hitting concrete, let alone from a few thousand meters!"
The word Schicksal used to describe Kiana afterward was "retrieved." Who uses a word like "retrieved" to describe a living person?!
"Besides, it would have been a blessing if she had died cleanly."
Theresa was nearly choking back sobs. "I'm most afraid, most afraid that my niece still had one breath left when she hit the ground."
"Can you imagine it? In a freezing mountain valley, a girl with only one breath left, lying there in pieces!"
"Snow accumulating in her caved-in abdomen, her broken ribs piercing her skin, her small, frozen, purplish lips constantly murmuring, 'Dad, it hurts so much, save Kiana...', 'Kiana's so cold, Auntie's bitter melon juice, I'll never complain again...', 'I want Mom...'"
"...while using her last strength to lift her broken little hand toward the sky, until her eyes completely lost all light!"
"That was the niece Cecilia left me, the one I cherished so much I was afraid she'd melt in my hands, my most, most adorable niece!!!"
By the end, Theresa fell to her knees, hugging her arms, her roars turning into choked sobs.
And Mei—
In her eyes, it was as if two scenes were playing out, one on the left and one on the right.
In the icy abyss reflected in her left eye, Mei saw the seven-year-old Kiana embedded in the Siberian ice like a shattered porcelain doll.
Every floating piece of ice reflected a different expression—smiling while asking for candy, practicing her gunnery seriously, blowing out candles at her birthday party, being with her dad, mom, and aunt, and making a pinky promise.
In the airport terminal appearing in her right eye, little Fuli, with a large bag of antidepressants in his pocket, sat by the window. He clutched a faded paper crane, his knuckles pressed against the window where the white mist from his breath vaguely formed the shape of a 'K'.
The blizzard of Siberia howled in her left ear; she heard a crisp sound from the white-haired girl's chest, like a seashell shattering.
The roar of a Boeing 747 taking off echoed in her right ear; the black-haired boy, driven back to Shenzhou by Schicksal, his memories wiped, still held onto his promise, murmuring at the ticket gate, "I will never forget!"
One had held onto a vague hope until now; the other had died an early death long ago.
"...It's too tragic."
Mei murmured to herself.
"It's really... too tragic..."
No matter which one.
Both of them.
...
A whimpering wind blew continuously from the exhaust vent. A few deformed soda cans clinked softly in a puddle at St. Freya.
Rust-colored moonlight pierced through the glass curtain wall, weaving a web of light spots on the cracked marble floor.
After a long silence—
"In... in the end, it's all your fault, Raiden Mei."
Having just calmed down from her grief, Theresa's voice still held a slight sob. "If the Third Honkai Eruption hadn't come so suddenly, this Principal would have told you everything at our first meeting. Whether you struggled with it later or not wouldn't have been my problem! And I wouldn't have been yelled at by you for no reason!"
The Third Honkai Eruption lasted less than ten minutes in total.
Landing → arguing with Cocolia → Herrscher's descent → charging forward one after another → slaying the heavens with one sword, all in one go. There was simply no opportunity to reveal the truth, as it would have too easily affected the battle.
Afterward, through their interactions, Theresa had already realized the situation between Fuli and K423.
Once you have such a burden in your heart, some things can no longer be said so easily.
Moreover, there was still another personality hidden within K423. If overstimulated, she might completely snap. In Theresa's heavily injured state after the Third Honkai Eruption, she couldn't have dealt with another Herrscher of the Void.
For both emotional and logical reasons, the matter could only be suppressed at that time.
Understanding this, Mei said guiltily, "I'm sorry, Principal. I misunderstood you."
"Hmph."
The girl crossed her arms and turned her small head away unhappily.
Her pure white pigtails, tied in a death-flag hairstyle, swung back and forth, looking incredibly cute with her pouting expression.
But speaking of which, neither Mei nor Theresa knew this:
If they had told Fuli this cruel truth, what awaited them would have been far more than just a Herrscher's descent.
In the girls' eyes, the danger in this incident was Kiana, the vessel of the Void Herrscher, from start to finish.
Fuli's side, at most, was just an emotional problem; he himself could not pose any substantial threat.
This wasn't because Mei and Theresa had a narrow view, but because they couldn't account for one variable—that Fuli was a reincarnator.
His devotion to the counterfeit K423 was far greater than Mei and the others imagined.
At the end of the previous loop, Fuli could have killed Kiana and lived on by himself.
He thought he had reached the Limit-class level before his death because he had no idea what the numbers were like above S-rank. He simply assumed that after A-rank came Limit-class, so his breakthrough must have made him Limit-class.
However, in his heart of hearts, before reaching the Theater of Domination, the Herrscher of Domination had been trying to turn him into its companion Honkai Beast.
Midway, it integrated him as a Domination individual. At the end of the battle, all other Domination individuals were eliminated. That entire portion of the Herrscher of Domination's power naturally converged on Fuli, the only one present.
Besides that, Fuli himself possessed the Nine Rotations of the Peerless and the Brahma Beast within him.
Even if it was just a barely completed juvenile version, with the enhancements of Sequence Herrscher-ization and Companion Honkai Beast-ization, how hard would it have been for this trinity of him to kill a Herrscher of Flamescion who had no will to resist?
He didn't.
The boy traded his life for K423's.
Even though he had repeatedly told Prometheus, "I'm over the emotional stuff," and "To succeed, you have to abandon romance-brain," when it came to a critical moment, these things he often said would be immediately thrown to the back of his mind.
That bitch Domination threatened Kiana?
Kill!
I myself threaten Kiana?
Kill too!
This was no longer love, but something much deeper.
The reason Virtual Otto entrusted Kallen to Fuli, the reason the real Otto unconsciously called Fuli "brother," was because they realized they were fundamentally the same type of person.
If Theresa had been loose-lipped from the start and revealed everything about K423...
Hot take: At 8 years old, Fuli had a Honkai energy adaptability of 6500 HW. His talent was enough for him to steadily reach the power of the Finality within 6-8 years of officially stepping onto the Honkai side.
Even hotter take: This was just with normal training. Through methods like Herrscher-ization and Honkai-zation, this process could be greatly accelerated.
"So, we just keep hiding it?"
Mei sighed, a rare feeling of a headache coming on.
With her abilities, combined with the Previous Era's knowledge base from the Stigmata of Thunder and Fuli's ever-present cosmic powers, there were almost no problems in the world she couldn't solve given time.
But when it came to interpersonal relationships, especially involving her boyfriend and her best friend, it was a headache big enough for three heads.
"Putting Fuli's side aside, now that the Void Herrscher's personality is sealed, we can find a chance to give Kiana a heads-up first."
There's an Arabian proverb: Don't show your true skills casually, or people will know you have no skills.
Theresa had hidden it out of consideration for the Herrscher, after all, the destruction of the Second Honkai Eruption was still fresh in her mind.
Who would have thought the Queen would be so pathetic? Since she was locked up in a little black room, a little follow-up wasn't out of the question.
Mei understood, but her beautiful brows soon furrowed again. "Can Kiana accept it?"
"Don't underestimate your friend."
Theresa shook her head. "With things as they are now, it's impossible for her to have no suspicions about her own origins."
The fact that she hasn't brought it up directly is likely because she doesn't want to shatter this home that has finally stabilized.
Kiana-cat doesn't want to wander anymore. Kiana-cat wants to be with everyone on the Hyperion.
This was the girl's small, heart-achingly ordinary wish.
For this, she would even pretend to be the Kiana who made a promise with Fuli, indirectly asking about their past, letting her heart be torn by one wound after another from the boy's happy smile.
She was a substitute, and she was prepared to be one for life.
"And yet, nobody was to blame..."
Mei, having disconnected the call, patted the small head of Kurikara, which had turned back into a bracelet, her heart filled with mixed feelings.
...