Chapter VI: The Principal's Conclusion

Both sides pressed their fists against each other's faces without any courtesy.

Anqi's tears immediately came out.

Don't cry! Hit her!

But it hurts so much QAQ... No one has ever hit me in the face since I was a child...

What use is crying and sniffling? A man sheds blood, not tears!

But I'm just a broad...

Anqi cursed those selves who were hiding in the Theater, watching the excitement without minding it being too big, but she still took a strong, deep breath and overcame the fear of pain.

"You're dead! I'm going to beat you until you cry your eyes out!"

"Hmph! When this young lady started fighting, you didn't even know where you were drinking milk! Fighting with me, do you have that kind of strength?"

After the customary round of tough talk, the two engaged in close-quarters combat, kicking and punching each other.

Normally, when little girls fight, it's nothing more than slapping faces, pulling hair, and the like, which isn't really much to look at—though of course, that doesn't rule out people having a preference for this kind of scene.

As for two little superhumans, of course, it was far beyond that level.

They were truly trading blows flesh-to-flesh, each hit carrying the sound of tearing wind, seizing every opportunity to greet the other's body or even pretty face. Every successful hit made the other spew out bloody froth, accompanied by the wailing and explosive shattering of the crane's steel reinforcement fragments.

Just as the scene was getting uglier and uglier, atop a tall building not far away, a bespectacled girl with flowing gray hair sighed.

"Student Kiana... absolutely no improvement. What you learned in class didn't come into play at all."

Class monitor, please give her another chance! Kiana has always been working hard, she'll definitely be able to do it!

"Student Raiden Mei, I have always maintained that this kind of specialized bonus-point assignment is unreasonable. The exams at St. Freya Academy should be much more rigorous and objective. Also, the official communication channel is not for you to use like this."

Ugh, well... anyway, please look after her a bit! Please, Kiana has failed her grades several times in a row, if this goes on she really might be held back a year!

Fu Hua took off her earplugs, ending this meaningless communication.

Anyway, a certain white-haired dumpling who should have been using this channel to complete her mission was already fighting like crazy with the mission target on the crane, so she probably wouldn't think of contacting Fu Hua for reinforcements.

Half an hour later, on the wobbling, dilapidated crane.

Anqi and Kiana each grabbed a guardrail, separated by a few paces, panting as they stared at each other.

Kiana was battered and bruised as she said, "Give up! I won't lose to you!"

Anqi was equally battered and bruised, and after wiping away her bloody nose, she silently raised her middle finger.

"Wah! 야!"

Kiana instantly flew into a rage and charged over again.

Anqi, who had already been driven to genuine fury, was no less relentless; she swung her arms and clenched her fists as she walked toward Kiana.

"Crack... crack..."

"Boom!"

Just as the two were about to brawl again, the steel crane, which had been battered back and forth several times, finally could no longer hold out and snapped, plunging down amid a loud crash.

"No way..."

Kiana plummeted downward. The sudden weightlessness caused her heart to panic, making her miss the opportunity to step on falling debris and jump back onto the tower crane. She could only let herself plunge toward the ground sixty or seventy meters away.

She might actually die from this, right?

Kiana closed her eyes, helpless and terrified.

One second, two seconds, three seconds.

Having not felt the sensation of falling, Kiana opened her eyes and looked up, only to see a slender little hand tightly grasping her wrist.

It was Anqi, who at that moment was holding onto a rough piece of steel reinforcement hanging down from the crane with one hand, the fresh blood ground from her skin dripping downward bit by bit, while her other hand gripped Kiana's wrist.

Kiana's body swayed slightly due to the whistling wind in the air, and she blankly asked:

"Why?"

Anqi rolled her eyes and did not answer.

First, as long as one was a player, unless they were born out of their minds, who could bear to actually hurt the super-duper mega-frickin' cute bug?

Second, if Kiana really got into trouble here, then Anqi would truly be hunted down by a bunch of madmen afterward.

Lastly, don't forget that the Queen of the Void was still around. If that guy popped up while Kiana was falling, there was no telling if she might track Anqi from the scene right into the Theater of Domination—even if the Queen of the Void ignored these pitiful little things, the appearance of the Herrscher of the Void would mean an escalation of the incident, and St. Freya, or even Otto, would look toward this place earnestly, and then it would really be GG.

Anyway, a beating was fine—after all, everyone was a girl, and Anqi had no reason to yield. But watching Kiana get into trouble was absolutely out of the question, neither emotionally nor rationally.

Anqi hung suspended in midair, observed her surroundings for a moment, and finally took aim at the rooftop of a construction building that wasn't too far away.

"Heave-ho!"

Anqi swung her arm, causing Kiana's body to sway along with it in the air. After rocking back and forth a few times to build up enough momentum and potential energy, Anqi hurled the screaming Kiana toward the rooftop.

"Wahhh!"

Kiana screamed as she slammed onto the concrete rooftop with a "thud," rolling a few times before clutching her waist and pulling herself up while sucking in sharp breaths.

She shook her dizzy head, looked up, and opened her eyes to look at the crane up high, but Anqi's figure was already gone.

"...What is her deal? Doing that kind of thing and then saving me, are you a good person or a bad person?"

Kiana muttered, feeling utterly bewildered for a moment as she stood disheveled on the rooftop, not knowing where she should head next.

Anqi quickly reached the ground along the crane's cable, and taking advantage of Kiana's inability to catch up for the moment, she limped into an alleyway. After randomly circling around a few times, Anqi decided to flee to a more distant location.

Returning from the Theater of Domination to the real world required coordinates, and there were only two kinds of coordinates: first, a clone residing in reality; and second, the location where the other clones last left the real world.

In other words, if those 29 Anqis in the Theater of Domination wanted to return to the real world, they would either appear beside the Anqi outside or appear in the living room at home.

Therefore, she couldn't let anyone draw attention to home.

So, run!

Anyway, given a Herrscher's constitution, it wasn't hard to survive anywhere. The farther she ran, the better, and she must absolutely avoid entering the sights of Schicksal, Anti-Entropy, or World Serpent.

Our weak, pitiful Thousand-Person Ruler just wanted to live a good life!

Nourished by Honkai Energy, Anqi's body gradually recovered a great deal, at least enough not to affect normal movement.

She walked through a long alleyway, and the light of a streetlamp shone in ahead.

Going out from here would get her close to the suburbs. As long as she got out of the city and burrowed into an uninhabited wild mountain forest, no one could easily find her. Then she could sit down, rest, and carefully consider the matters ahead.

A smile appeared on Anqi's face.

Until she saw, outside the alley, the bespectacled girl whose gray ponytail and blue uniform fluttered in the wind, yet whose slender body stood immovable as a mountain.

Crap!

Afterward, Anqi caught a whiff of a fragrance that suspectedly resembled roses, and abruptly lost consciousness.

Chapter VI: The Principal's Conclusion

"Class monitor, you're back... ugh, don't look at me with that kind of gaze! I know I messed up again this time, wuwu~~"

Kiana covered her battered, bruised, cat-like face and embarrassedly squatted down.

The urge to lecture sternly that Fu Hua originally felt slowly dissipated amidst Kiana's ashamed and embarrassed reaction. She supported the unconscious Anqi with one hand while handing over a vibrant red rose with the other.

"Eh? Class monitor, why do you still have a rose?"

"On the way, an unknown female passerby gave it to me."

Fu Hua recalled the pink, delicate little girl she had encountered earlier, who had blushed as she handed the rose to her. Fu Hua had originally wanted to kindly refuse, but who would have known that the other person would shove the rose into her hands, cover her face, and run off, even letting out an excited shriek as if she had accomplished something incredible?

What on earth are modern girls thinking about? I, the Immortal Crimson Heron, truly don't understand.

Fu Hua sighed silently.

Kiana took the rose, sniffed it, and her complexion flushed slightly. As she stood up, she twisted and turned coyly, saying:

"Should I say as expected of the class monitor? Never mind being a popular 'big sister' at school, you're just as popular with women outside of St. Freya Academy. But I already have someone in my heart, class monitor, you can't conquer me, heh!"

Kiana spoke thus, yet holding the rose, she involuntarily swayed her body and broke into a foolish, infatuated smile.

That's why I'm saying, I, the Immortal, really don't understand what young girls today are thinking about.

Supporting Anqi, Fu Hua used her headset to call for the aircraft.

Soon, roaring gales descended from the sky as a black armed helicopter slowly approached the ground.

Kiana guarded that rose with both hands, turned her head to look at the unconscious Anqi, and asked amid the fluttering silver hair:

"Class monitor, how is she?"

"The mission is to control her and bring her back, so I didn't strike heavily—she's just unconscious. Also, student Kiana, your performance in this bonus question is—zero points."

"Eh?! I don't want this kind of thing!?"

Amid the roaring descent of the helicopter, Kiana raised her head and let out a shrill wail.

"Immortal! Holy crap! My Immortal ahhhhh!"

"We aren't Hammurabi, don't start making codes here!"

"What to do, what to do? The me outside lost connection!"

"Calm down, the connection of the Authority is still there. Looks like she's just unconscious and not dead yet."

The Anqis expressed their panic with varying reactions, and after quite a while, they each calmed down and gathered together to discuss the current situation.

"Come to think of it, the first person to contact us was a St. Freya freshman like Kiana, rather than a professional Valkyrie squad. That means the problem might not be that serious."

"At the very least, nobody should have thought of us as Herrscher yet."

"Then, there's actually still a chance."

After all, the Third Herrscher had only appeared half a year ago. Normally, no one would think a new Herrscher would appear so quickly.

The 29 Anqis stayed in the plaza of the Theater of Domination, sitting in a circle and desperately racking their little brains to guess their upcoming encounter.

"The me outside should be taken to St. Freya Academy, and then, it'll likely be physical exams and blood tests and that sort of thing..."

"But the Herrscher Core wouldn't be that easy to discover, right?"

The Anqis frowned one after another, feeling somewhat uneasy, but they had already panicked past the point of losing their heads, so they weren't frantic yet.

"We can't be too optimistic, but don't imagine the worst either."

"First of all, we are using human bodies, not puppet bodies."

"Second, the Herrscher Core isn't a distinct physical entity like a kidney stone, but a more abstract energy system. Routine inspection methods shouldn't be able to spot it."

The Anqis spoke one after another.

The Thousand-Person Ruler was weak. For a single individual, the Honkai energy within her body fell far short of the scale of other Herrscher. This was actually advantageous for concealing her identity; if it was just an ordinary level of physical examination, the conclusion was very likely to be something like, "Honkai adaptability is exceptionally outstanding, a good candidate for a Valkyrie."

"Otto shouldn't be paying attention to us right now, right?"

One Anqi uneasily voiced the Anqis' greatest concern.

An ordinary physical exam might be muddled through, but if the person watching the exam was that Otto—who had long since studied the power of Herrscher countless times—then the conclusion would be a different story.

"We'll judge based on what we encounter after waking up."

"If we see elite Valkyries from Schicksal Headquarters like Rita or Durandal, or if there's any mortal danger, we'll just jump back to the Theater."

"If it's just ordinary confinement or recruitment by St. Freya, it means the situation isn't that bad yet. We can endure and bide our time temporarily to see how things play out."

"Agreed. Might as well say we can only do this for now anyway."

The Anqis were filled with worry, but given that the external Anqi was unconscious and completely in the dark about the outside world right now, they didn't even dare to return to the living room at home. Since there was nothing they could do, they could only wait.

St. Freya Academy, the dignified principal's office.

Theresa, in a state brimming with dignity, flipped through the documents on her desk. After reading them through from start to end, she furrowed her slender brows and sighed.