Go Die
Awkward.
Extremely awkward.
Just moments before, Raiden Mei still worried that Lin Yu, a fencing layman, would be accidentally hurt by her.
Precisely because of this worry, she did not go all out, nor did she bring out a hundred percent of her strength to spar with Lin Yu.
Yet after a single move, Raiden Mei realized she seemed to have overthought things.
Lin Yu's posture at that moment still looked full of openings.
However, the strike just now had indeed directly knocked the weapon out of Raiden Mei's hand.
Only after her weapon was batted away did Mei feel a wave of pain come from both hands.
Yet this was merely the force transmitted through the weapon.
Fundamentally, when Lin Yu's strike knocked the weapon from Mei's hand, it did not harm her actual body.
If one deduced even further, although Lin Yu was a fencing outsider, his control over force and precision of attack far surpassed Raiden Mei's.
Connecting this with the morning's display, where Lin Yu stacked those malicious classmates together like sandbags, she finally woke up entirely.
I was just thinking about going easy on Lin Yu... Am I an idiot?
He is an outsider to fencing, true.
But in terms of comprehensive strength, I have no way to compare with him at all.
"As expected, it turned out like this."
After batting away Mei's bamboo sword, Lin Yu did not press the attack, but instead gazed at Mei and said slowly.
"Even after your father was imprisoned, you still haven't realized where your current problem lies."
"I..."
Mei, who had wanted to defend herself, instantly chose to shut her mouth as she met Lin Yu's pupils, which were colder than before.
"As a swordsman, you can be gentle in everyday life, but during combat, you must keep the sword in your heart sharp."
"Yet right now, I can clearly feel that the sword in your heart has grown dull, and is even on the verge of breaking."
"As a swordsman, if you cannot keep the sword in your heart in its sharpest state at all times, then when you encounter enemies, you will fail to make the necessary resolutions in time."
"Combat is something where the openings revealed in a mere flash are sometimes enough to change the battle's outcome. If you don't even understand these things, then with all your empty technique, you will sooner or later die at the hands of others."
"But..."
Hearing this series of words from Lin Yu, Raiden Mei's expression turned somewhat peculiar.
"Student Lin Yu, although what you're saying is indeed correct, but... Changkong City is still relatively safe under normal circumstances, right."
"Things like slash-and-stab violence don't happen often around here."
After uttering these words, Mei, who was chilled by Lin Yu's freezing gaze, instantly felt regret.
Oh no, did I say something wrong again?
His gaze feels somehow even scarier than before.
"Ha... As expected, you still haven't realized the severity of the matter."
Having spoken these words, Lin Yu gazed at Mei without speaking immediately.
To Mei, Lin Yu was disappointed in her, hoping she would guess and voice the correct answer herself.
Yet the actual situation was...
Ah, why is this guy so hard to fool right now?
What she said makes a lot of sense, let me think, I'll put it this way instead.
"Never mind, I'll just spell it out."
"Although your father, Raiden Ryoma, has fallen, he served as the president of ME Company for so many years, so he's bound to have some loyal confidants."
"Those who brought your father down now will certainly make a move against you in the future, and once they have a hold over you, your father's loyal confidants won't dare to act rashly despite wishing to make trouble, solely because of your safety."
Watching Raiden Mei's sudden realization, Lin Yu's tone grew a fraction deeper at that moment.
"The crowd that could frame your father naturally won't have any bottom line when striking against you either, and you might even face mortal danger once they do."
At this moment, Mei suddenly sensed a massive transformation in the aura around Lin Yu.
If Lin Yu's previous vibe felt merely cold, then right now, a hint of something that ought not to belong to a high schooler had mingled into that chill.
Killing intent.
A trace of killing intent had faintly emerged from Lin Yu.
Moreover, this killing intent was not merely radiating outward, but aimed directly at Raiden Mei.
"If you intend to maintain this casual attitude, then rather than letting someone else kill you in a future battle, I might as well..."
!!!
Executing an emergency evasion toward the ground, Mei dodged Lin Yu's sudden strike.
"Send you off to die without pain myself."
Student Lin Yu... He's serious!
Scrambling to pick up the bamboo sword from the ground, Raiden Mei dared not harbor any further carelessness as she watched Lin Yu's strike shatter the floorboards directly.
And watching the girl tense her body, Lin Yu knew his objective had been achieved.
Making Raiden Mei's willpower sturdier was one of the most crucial goals of his target.
To put it bluntly, the stronger Raiden Mei's primary personality willpower was, the lower the probability of the Herrscher Persona awakening.
And the lower the probability of the Herrscher Persona awakening, the higher the probability that he and the other unfortunate souls in Changkong City would survive.
The Third Honkai Outbreak was bound to happen.
Yet if Raiden Mei could be made to awaken in a desolate place, at least the millions of people in Changkong City could be spared from disaster.
Of course, this future was something Lin Yu could only imagine.
Unable to protect even himself right now, he could only use methods of his own devising to delay the outbreak of the Honkai and assist Mei in suppressing the persona that might awaken at any moment.
While using this method to force Mei's inner self to become resilient, Lin Yu, utilizing Mirror Mind, could also learn a few moves of Hokushin Itto-ryu from Mei through this battle.
It was true that he possessed the skill Intermediate Weapon Proficiency, but having a skill did not mean his skill proficiency started out very high.
In fact, during his battle with Bronya, he could sense that while he possessed the skill, his proficiency was practically nonexistent.
It was fine for bullying rookies, but when facing powerhouses among ordinary people like Bronya and Mei, his skill fell short.
To put it plainly, without Mirror Mind, if Lin Yu had simply used the skill Intermediate Weapon Proficiency to spar with Mei, he likely would have been easily beaten black and blue all over his head by Mei.
Precisely because of this, even picking up a star or half of a move could only benefit Lin Yu right now, with zero drawbacks.
Finally, the speech where Lin Yu reprimanded Raiden Mei sounded quite logical, but in reality, only he knew the truth.
He hadn't spoken those words solely to Raiden Mei.
He had spoken them to himself at the same time.
In combat, someone who could not keep the sword in their heart sharp and failed to make resolutions in time was utterly unworthy of being called a warrior.
And such a person would sooner or later ruin themselves and those around them due to their own immaturity.
Taking the opportunity to make Raiden Mei strong, Lin Yu was also admonishing himself through this incident.
As for that killing intent on his body—it was naturally fumed up.
Without whipping up some killing intent, Raiden Mei would likely have assumed Lin Yu only wanted to play house with her.
Only, looking at Raiden Mei's character profile template now, Lin Yu felt he didn't quite understand.
Ever since he radiated killing intent, he watched Mei's favorability toward him drop by ten points with a snap.
Yet mere seconds after that drop, Mei's favorability toward him directly surged by twenty points in a flash, leaping straight to 80 points.
Seeing the system mark a "can be lewded" right behind the 80 favorability, Lin Yu always felt something was wrong somewhere.
Um, Student Mei, even though I was faking it, I was beating you up while preparing to pretend to kill you just now, you know.
How is your favorability toward me still jumping at a time like this? Do you really not think there's something wrong with this????
The Number You Have Dialed Is Powered Off
Changkong City. Raiden Mei's residence.
Outside Raiden Mei's residence, Kiana, who had pressed the doorbell several times and waited for a long time, ultimately failed to wait for Raiden Mei to return home.
Looking at her malfunctioning mobile phone in hand, Kiana's heart was filled with unease at this moment.
As Raiden Mei's good friend, Kiana knew very well that because her father had entered prison, the current Mei was ostracized by others.
And precisely because Mei had no friends other than her, Mei rarely engaged in the everyday activities typical of Far Eastern high school girls.
Neither her surrounding interpersonal relationships nor the funds in Mei's hands supported her in overconsuming on entertainment.
As for staying out all night...
Kiana felt that Mei herself could never do such a thing.
Her old man going to prison wouldn't hinder the changes in the upbringing she had received.
As a quiet Young Miss, how could she possibly not come home this late?
Combining this with the events Kiana had encountered today, Kiana always felt an ominous premonition welling up inside her.
The feeling of someone tailing her was fine; in the end, she proved with facts that her punchable old man hadn't come, and it was actually her concerned Senior preparing to drag her back to school.
Yet these subsequent matters were rather incorrect.
On the street, Kiana had spotted a blonde woman she had never seen before, and her mind was instantly captivated by her.
As a result, by the time she gave chase, she found the other party's speed far exceeded hers, easily shaking her off.
With the pursuit yielding nothing, Kiana, who had originally prepared to contact Raiden Mei, discovered to her shock that her mobile phone had suddenly malfunctioned.
At first, the network just fluctuated between good and bad, but before long, she couldn't even make outgoing calls.
Heading to a mobile phone shop, Kiana—who wanted to have the clerk check what was wrong with her phone—discovered that everyone else's phones were malfunctioning as well.
Kiana was not an ignorant ordinary girl.
When she was still young, she had hunted Honkai Beasts in the snowfields alongside her father Siegfried.
Well-versed in the Honkai phenomenon, she looked at this abnormal Changkong City and knew something was amiss with this place.
"Ngh, old man said that before defecting from Schicksal, he learned from the database that prior to the outbreak of an ultra-large-scale Honkai, the places about to erupt should exhibit some abnormal phenomena."
"That means...!"
Kiana, who had originally intended to just head back like that, suddenly felt the situation was terribly wrong.
Even though she skipped school, slept in class, and hadn't even mastered the family's Gun-Kata properly... Bah bah bah no, wait, these were things this miss already knew how to do, requiring zero wasted time, and absolutely did not count as this miss trying to slack off!
Regardless of anything, I am a warrior of the Kaslana clan.
And protecting those plagued by the Honkai has always been the mission of our Kaslana clan.
Now that a large-scale Honkai was about to erupt, if the people in this city remained completely oblivious to these matters, wouldn't they all die here?
Thinking carefully, was there anything this miss could do right now—oh, right.
Leaving Mei's apartment, Kiana instinctively took out her mobile phone.
And then Kiana, who had just remembered her phone was unusable earlier, suddenly discovered—the signal was back?!
Before you continue