BOOM—!
As bronze scales pierced the indigo surface, the air itself seemed to tear. The giant creature's spine rose from the lake like a moving mountain range, kicking up a monstrous curtain of water that fell like a downpour, quickly shrouding the valley in a pervasive mist.
The creature's neck was covered in rivet-like horny protrusions, each scale as hard as the steel plate of an armored vehicle. Its irises glowed a radioactive fluorescent green. When it stood tall, the part of its body exposed above the water was already equivalent to a twelve-story building!
If that were all, it might have been manageable. A carbon-based lifeform, no matter how large, would eventually fall to the roar of modern weaponry.
The problem was that the moment it appeared, an indescribable psychic wave spread out in all directions. The resulting infrasound created a strange harmonic resonance, completely disabling the Water Dragon's Chant's ability to control liquids.
It was an obvious Honkai beast!
Only the Honkai could explain why such a monster existed here!
"That's it! That's it! That's the one!"
Dr. Zhou's deeply lined face was flushed with a morbid red, and a state of excitement that surpassed his physical limits caused his withered body to erupt with terrifying strength.
He staggered forward, his legs mechanically wading into the murky lake water that soaked his trousers. The old man's bloodshot eyes were locked onto the hazy shadow in the depths of the mist, like a lost believer who had finally glimpsed the faint light of a shrine.
"Watch out!"
"Let go of me! Let go of me! Gah!"
Siegfried, with his quick reflexes, tackled him to the ground. A single karate chop to the neck knocked the struggling man unconscious, and he dragged him back to the shore, preventing Dr. Zhou from becoming another lost soul in the turbulent waters.
The monster in the lake was clearly uninterested in the bystanders on the shore. Its eyes, over two meters in diameter, contracted into vertical slits. The air sacs at its cervical vertebrae inflated and deflated with its movements, emitting a low-frequency shockwave that sounded like a mix of chime bells and a steam engine.
"Kas... lana!"
"KASLANA!!!"
A vortex of negative pressure swirled with its furious will. The maelstrom of rage tore a giant maw in the center of the lake. The sediment and turbid water from the lakebed twisted into three ferocious, pitch-black serpents that shot into the sky, their target clearly the gym car flying through the air!
Or rather, Kiana Kaslana in the passenger seat!
'Not good!' Siegfried thought, alarmed.
His Embalming Technique was extremely potent at masking his presence. As long as he didn't act, even experts of a higher level couldn't see through it.
But because of this, the lake monster had focused its attention entirely on Kiana, completely ignoring him, the former head of the Kaslana family!
"Does this thing have a grudge against your family?"
According to the official Schicksal guidebooks, a hundred-meter-class lesser Honkai beast already required an A-rank Valkyrie to defeat.
In other words, although it was unknown how such a colossal creature could hide in Kanas Lake and evade multiple official searches, if this was all it was, it was still within Fuli's ability to handle.
"Don't let your guard down, cou-cousin!" Fu Hua warned, still holding the hot pot. "Standard A-rank Valkyries can handle hundred-meter-class Honkai beasts because the ones with special abilities have already been classified separately. This one is clearly not simple!"
"You're right, cousin!" Fuli, controlling the Traceless Sword to fend off the sludge serpents, shouted back.
"I don't think so! Right, Bronya!"
To be honest, Kiana thought Fu Hua's words were very reasonable.
However, the moment she saw the boy's earnest expression of "whatever my cousin says is right!" she felt like she had spontaneously learned Jeanne d'Arc Alter's Noble Phantasm.
Haaah! I'm so pissed!
"Project Bunny, Mimic Core Energy Cannon!"
Bronya was also a little dissatisfied with her cheap big brother's obedient attitude, though not to the same extent as Kiana.
Emotionally, she stood with her companions; rationally, she stood with Fu Hua. So, faced with Kiana's challenge, she simply launched an attack on the lake monster.
When facing an unknown enemy, the first step was always to test the waters.
This time, she and Kiana would do the testing. If something went wrong, Fuli and Fu Hua, as the general reserves, would naturally pick up the slack.
Of course, it was more likely that the general reserves wouldn't move at all.
"It's just a hundred-meter-class Honkai beast."
The girls exchanged a look and smirked, simultaneously opening their doors and leaping out.
"Pledge of Twilight!"
Pledge of Twilight summoned a mimic Judah's Pledge of a customizable size for defense.
Two crosses, carrying immense gravitational potential energy, descended from the sky, slamming the lake monster's head into the water like a giant guillotine, creating a vast vacuum.
"Project Bunny, fire!"
A high-temperature plasma sphere, accelerated by a railgun to twice the speed of sound, followed. Several shots first destroyed the sludge serpents entangled with the Traceless Sword, their power undiminished as they all slammed into the behemoth, which was pinned by the crusader's cross.
"ROAR—!"
The monster's painful roar was deafening, but one could detect a hint of confusion in it.
"Confused? Confused is right!"
Kiana descended from the sky, swinging her Milky Way Bat, now imbued with the Sword of the Flaming Monarch, to press the attack. She had long since realized that the mist released by the enemy not only obscured vision but also blocked detection methods like consciousness, sound waves, electromagnetic waves, and satellites.
Unfortunately for it, her Tango: Fei Lian, upgraded with the Power of the Void to build its detection circuits on the level of spatial ripples, was never within that scope!
"I am the torch, burning for the eternal crimson!"
A cone of white-hot flame, infused with an ultra-powerful spatial shockwave, smashed mercilessly towards the monster's head, which was the size of a small locomotive, only to be blocked by a thirty-meter-diameter high-pressure vortex water blade.
The shockwave from their clash hit the soft mud, but the resulting filth couldn't get near the girl's pure white hair.
"Project Bunny, charging high-energy condensed particle cannon!"
A faint, childish voice came from within the dense fog, and a chilling sensation crawled up Kiana's back.
"Hey! Don't you miss!" she shouted, summoning the circular spatial rift of the Ring of Truth's Revolution to further restrain the enemy's torso.
Bronya didn't reply. The fog could block her bio-radar.
However, with the aid of "All-Seeing Marvel," she had already fed all the information from her surroundings—the flowers, the trees, the sky, the breeze, the earth—into her brain and constructed a big data model of the entire battlefield.
Kiana obviously knew this, otherwise her legs wouldn't have been rooted to the spot, doing her best to create a one-hit-kill opportunity for Bronya.
But knowing was one thing; running her mouth was another.
'Hmph, I'll deal with that idiot later,' Bronya thought, raising her delicate little hand. "Charging complete. High-energy condensed particle cannon—fire!"
The hexagonal cannon barrel in front of the girl lit up, and a milky-white spear of light pierced the fog, blasting straight into the giant's back.
The gray-black back was instantly cut open by the intense heat. The scales melted into liquid under the strong light, and its vertebrae exploded one by one. The shockwave from within sent a blood mist dozens of meters high!
"AWOOO—!!!"
The bronze beast threw its head back, its hundred-meter body thrashing wildly in the lake, kicking up waves mixed with chunks of internal organs that crashed onto the shore at subsonic speeds.
The light in its pupils flickered, and finally, with a dull thud of its spine snapping, it slowly sank into the lake like a collapsing mountain, leaving only the ionized water glowing an eerie blue.
The near-instant kill effect stunned even Bronya, who had fired the shot. A moment later, she realized that Honkai beasts derived from flora and fauna were naturally less durable than silicon-based pure Honkai beasts.
The high-energy condensed particle cannon, which could cripple a hundred-meter-class lesser Honkai beast in one shot, would naturally have this effect on a carbon-based creature like the lake monster.
"Don't forget my help in pinning it down! This is what you call a righteous Hyperion gank!"
Kiana, her bat slung over her shoulder, bounced back to the shore, her pure and beautiful face turning towards the lake.
Crimson water was spreading over the mountain-like remains of the giant, ripples forming on the surface like an unnamed monster swallowing a sunken ancient ship.
"So, is the mission complete?" she scratched her head, uncertain. "We accidentally killed the mission target. Grandpa Zhou won't give us a hard time, will he?"
"If you only killed one, it should be fine." Fu Hua, who had landed beside the girl, put away the hot pot and assumed the starting stance of the Inch Force Fist.
"Do you remember?" Fuli, who had also reached the shore, slowly drew Sparrow's Song.
He said softly, "Dr. Zhou said the lake monsters were never solitary individuals."
"They are a 'colony'."
In the fog that blotted out the sun, one mountain-sized behemoth after another loomed.
At this point, no one bothered to question how such a small lake could support these monsters.
The youths held their breath, staring at the illogical sight as if witnessing a myth fall to earth.
Bronya said in a low voice, "Onii-chan, numbers."
"Thirty, fifty, and still increasing." Fuli, who had deployed Frozen River Reflecting the Moon long ago, continuously read the data from the 3D map in his mind. "Their sizes are comparable to the one you just killed, but a few of them have exceptionally powerful auras."
Exceptionally powerful auras = above A-rank.
In other words, Emperor-class.
Bronya shook her head in near disbelief. Such a massive colony, approaching the strength of a medium-sized organization, was just openly hiding in a 5A-level scenic spot with an annual tourist flow of two million people. The shock was no less than if, at the end of World War II, the Führer had suddenly ordered his men to eliminate a driver, and when asked which driver, the answer was:
Konstantin Rokossovsky!
"What is this? We finally beat the boss, only to find out it was the weakest mass-produced grunt?!"
Kiana also grew tense, and her description was no exaggeration.
Bronya's delicate brows furrowed. "Onii-chan, is there a way?"
"If they're only A-rank, it's not a problem."
Fuli raised his longsword. On the auspicious knot at the end of the hilt, a fragment of the Lance of the Finality swayed back and forth.
With this thing alone, enemies of the same level were like clay chickens and pottery dogs in his eyes.
But an Emperor-class was a different story. These lake monsters could use their Honkai energy to neutralize the Power of Immutability contained in the fragment. At that point, Fuli, with his exceptional A-rank strength, could hold off one Emperor-class, but if the others swarmed them, it would be a one-sided slaughter.
"Should we retreat?" Fu Hua asked.
It wasn't that the girl was playing weak. Each version had its god, and Phoenix was nerfed every version. Her current normal combat power was only slightly stronger than an A-rank.
At full power, she could reach the level of a fully unleashed Murata Himeko for a very short time, and that was only thanks to her five thousand years of accumulated martial arts expertise.
"Only if the enemy lets us," Bronya bit her lip. Her gaze suddenly caught a flash of gold in the chest of the dead lake monster.
SWISH! SWISH!
Before the girl could get a closer look, two pillars of flame shot from the distance, piercing into the towering, scaly ranks in the mist like swords.
If the beam from the high-energy condensed particle cannon was a high-powered flashlight, then these two pillars of flame were lasers.
They sliced through the two lake monsters they hit like a hot knife through butter. The severed upper halves struggled in the water for a moment before falling silent.
Fuli's expression turned grim, his blade wreathed in ideal fluid. "There's no escape. Prepare for battle!"
He didn't know who was hiding in the shadows, but that person had undoubtedly provoked the enemy's wrath.
Now, they would be the ones to suffer.
Should I use the 'Hug-a-Girl Kill'?
He hesitated, his gaze sweeping past Bronya, lingering on Kiana for a moment, and finally settling on Fu Hua, who "possessed the legacy of Celestial Master Phoenix."
I've already used the Love Potion. I wonder if my cousin's affection level is high enough.
...
"I knew it. Wherever our little host goes, trouble follows."
Watching the unremarkable mission take a sudden turn, Dr. MEI, observing from the moon, sighed and rubbed her forehead.
Someone from the Previous Era was often like this too. Who was it? Oh, right, that troublemaker Elysia.
Prometheus was more curious about Fuli's reaction.
So much for being a cousin-con. Why isn't he thinking of relying on his cousin at all?
"Humans are complicated," Dr. MEI explained. "I've been reading books from the Current Era in my spare time, and I found one passage about faith quite interesting."
"'Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.' The extended meaning is that believers should trust in God's path and guidance, not the external power He can give you."
In other words, people should not have faith in a god's invincible power, but in the god themself.
As a materialist, Prometheus's first instinct was to retort, Who would work for you if you don't give them power?
But she quickly realized this was not the time for debate, but to apply it to Fu Hua and Fuli's relationship.
"I see," the little AI understood.
Despite Fuli constantly shouting "Cousin Hua is the best!" and "My cousin can f— a fan! Ten of them!", in reality, he knew better than anyone that Fu Hua's combat power at this point in time was worrying.
Even so, his respect and admiration for her remained, and would never diminish simply because of factors like power—
—"You shall love your Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."
No matter what Fu Hua became, she was still the Cousin Hua who had appeared in his moment of despair and given him a new life and new possibilities.
Nothing else mattered.
"Well said. Then, it's Hua's turn to go god-mode and save our little host."
Dr. MEI clapped her hands, preparing to contact Fu Hua and have her use Fenghuang Down's First Rated Power to temporarily reshape the Heart of Taixu Sword and, for the first time in fourteen years, unleash Taixu Sword God to sweep the field.
As for what side effects this would have on Hua, Dr. MEI didn't care.
She had emphasized countless times that her primary objective was to ensure the survival of Fuli, the "anchor sent back from the past by the Herrscher of the Finality."
Everything else could take a backseat.
"That won't be necessary."
Prometheus raised a hand to stop her. "MEI, as a copy of Dr. Mei, you have witnessed the glory of Judgment of Shamash's release countless times in her memories. But because of that, you have overlooked the fact that the Key of Destruction has other rated powers."
The First Rated Power of Judgment of Shamash, also known as Flame Dragon's Roar or Thunderfire Roar, transformed the twin pistols into cannon mode, firing a beam that combined warning, tracking, and instant kill capabilities, making it a top-tier weapon with both single-target and area-of-effect attack modes.
Dr. MEI was thoughtful. "So you mean, the flames that just killed the two lake monsters..."
"Yes," Prometheus said sagely. "The wielder of the Current Era's Judgment of Shamash, the man named Siegfried Kaslana, is hiding near our host."
Given his relationship with Kiana, he would never let Fuli and the others come to harm.
Dr. MEI, relieved, shrugged. "Then I'm curious about the relationship between these monsters and the Kaslana family. To think that even the former head of the Kaslana family would come here."
"I believe that what our host and the others encounter next will answer that question for us."
"True."
The beauty nodded and continued to observe the unfolding events on Earth.
...