It's Happening, It's Happening-I'm Going All Out with Kevin / Yanwei: Wait, Did I Get the Cat's Script?

Highmore, who had taken the brunt of the attacks, had long since collapsed against Xia Ling, playing dead.

Still, the two of them had been rewarded for their efforts. At the very least, Flame Willow had not expended too much Honkai Energy and could enter the eighteenth floor in relatively good condition.

"So, people really shouldn't throw around flags." Xia Ling pointed at Flame Willow. "Look at you. Earlier, you were all, 'Don't worry, we'll win.' Well then, here's the ultimate weapon Vill-V carefully prepared for you. Go on."

Flame Willow looked on the verge of tears. "How was I supposed to know the system would be this unreliable? Can you blame me?"

"Anyway, once you clear the seventeenth floor, our trial counts as passed." Xia Ling wore an indifferent expression. "Just do your best. Same as before."

"If you can clear it, clear it. Worst case, you revive after the countdown. Your actual body is still outside anyway, so you don't need to worry about being corpse-camped."

"Anyway, just go wild."

After saying that, Xia Ling and Highmore both vanished into thin air.

Before Flame Willow could even catch her breath, the space of the seventeenth floor began to tremble violently. The scenery around her seemed to shatter as layer after layer collapsed.

At the same time, an unmarked portal appeared before Flame Willow.

"Alright, alright. So I don't get a choice but to go in, huh?"

After grumbling, Flame Willow hurriedly slipped into the portal.

The next moment.

"Gah... it's so hot. Where is this?"

Flame Willow looked around in confusion and discovered that she seemed to be standing amid a sea of flames.

Flame Willow herself used fire. High temperatures were nothing unusual to her, but an environment hot enough for even her to feel it...

She could not help thinking of a very unpleasant possibility, and her eyes widened at once.

"Wait, no way... Don't tell me this is..."

Looking at the raging flames on this floor, burning, devouring, and destroying everything in their path, Flame Willow's heart sank halfway into an abyss.

"Hm? Where did this little thing come from... Get out here!"

A surge of violent flames swept toward Flame Willow, illuminating her utterly lifeless expression.

"Vill-V, you little sweetheart! You threw me into Chijie's house, didn't you?!"

It Exploded, It Exploded—She Exploded with Chijie

"Uh... Brother Chijie, hello, I'm from World Serp—"

"Your name is unimportant." Chijie's gaze swept over her body, especially the tail swaying behind her, before he settled on a form of address. "Little lizard."

"L-Little lizard?" Flame Willow's mouth twitched as she looked at the tail unconsciously flicking behind her. "That's clearly a dragon tail, okay?!"

"None of that matters!"

As if he had sensed something from Flame Willow, Chijie's emotions suddenly surged. "Don't lie to me. I can tell that you are different from the others who came here for trials."

"Listen, little lizard. I don't care how you got in here, and I don't care what your purpose is."

"Because I have no interest in learning about someone who is about to die. Whatever you want, survive my flames first!"

"Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

Accompanied by Chijie's signature mad laughter, a figure wreathed in flames rapidly grew in Flame Willow's vision.

"So fast!" Flame Willow's pupils shrank as she instinctively raised her weapon before herself.

The next second, a fist wrapped in flames smashed heavily into Flame Willow's staff. The immense force sent her flying backward, blasting her more than ten meters away.

"Cough... cough, cough..."

Golden flames automatically ignited across Flame Willow's body, healing the hidden injuries left by that strike.

"Ugh, what monstrous strength..." Seeing Chijie charge at her again, Flame Willow steadied her breathing and hastily dodged aside.

At the same time, Flame Willow promptly cast Activation on herself. The surging and activation of Honkai Energy within her body barely gave her some ability to contend against him.

Then, with blazing crimson flames erupting from her weapon and both arms, Flame Willow charged toward Chijie's fist.

Even if I can't match Chijie in strength or abilities, with Activation's recovery speed boosting me, I should be able to hold on for a while.

With that thought, Flame Willow drew back her spear and swept it sideways, trying to knock Chijie's attack aside.

However, she soon discovered that she had been very, very wrong.

Rather than directly clashing with the spear blade as she had expected, Chijie instantly lowered his body and slid beneath Flame Willow's weapon.

As he closed in, Chijie grabbed the spear Flame Willow had tried to pull back, then ignored the flames burning along its shaft and viciously yanked it inward.

Caught completely off guard by that sequence, Flame Willow did not have time to release her spear before inertia dragged her toward Chijie.

Watching Flame Willow practically throw herself into his arms, Chijie curled his lips in disdain. His right arm flexed and thrust forward, delivering a solid hook straight into Flame Willow's chest.

With a dull crack of ribs breaking, Flame Willow was sent flying once more.

"She's done for." In the preparation room, Highmore and Xia Ling reached the same conclusion almost at once.

"The gap in strength is far too great, both in raw power and combat experience."

"We thought Chijie would choose to trade blows head-on when he had such an overwhelming advantage... but we were wrong. Chijie was still a warrior. No matter the circumstances, maximizing lethal efficiency was always his first priority."

"Is that all? Too weak!"

"With strength like that, you can't even give me a chance to vent my anger!"

"Tch..." Feeling her injuries steadily repairing themselves within her body, Flame Willow wiped the blood she had coughed up from the corner of her mouth.

"At this recovery rate, even if Chijie isn't serious, I might not last five minutes... What a terrifying gap."

Forcing her scattered focus back together, Flame Willow simply gave up on counterattacking and concentrated her Honkai Energy on defense and recovery.

But she had forgotten one thing. This "cowardly" style of fighting might allow her to endure for a while, but it would clearly ignite Chijie's fury even faster.

"You have all that potential, and you use it to become a punching bag?"

"Then come!"

"Struggle on the verge of death one more time for me!"

Amid Chijie's roar, the flames and Honkai Energy pouring from his body rose to another level as he relentlessly battered Flame Willow.

"Let me see what that flame of yours can protect!"

"With strength this weak, you can't even protect yourself!"

"Damn it..." As she endured Chijie's relentless attacks, even a clay figure had its limits, let alone Flame Willow, who was being beaten while Chijie taunted her.

Finally, under Chijie's unceasing assault and the effect of a certain commandment quietly taking hold, Flame Willow's eyes gradually filled with rage as well.

"What can I protect? I've held on until now to protect everything I see!"

"You want to see my strength? Then open your eyes and watch!"

Using the momentum from the blow, Flame Willow retreated some distance. Then, she drew all the golden flames around her body back in.

Without Activation healing her and suppressing the pain, the protests erupting from every part of her body nearly made her knees buckle. Yet as the golden flames withdrew, blazing crimson flames tinged faintly with black suddenly erupted around her.

Flames at this output level normally would never appear on Flame Willow's body. Once they did, it meant she intended to... risk her life.

Under the intense stimulation of Activation, every cell in her body desperately squeezed itself dry, releasing its final reserves of energy in a self-destructive manner.

At the same time, inside Flame Willow's pocket, an invisible short spear began to emit a faint glow. Accompanied by an almost eerie force, the King's Set temporarily fixed Flame Willow's condition at the boundary between explosion and exhaustion.

Wielding nearly inexhaustible energy, Flame Willow recklessly poured flames toward Chijie.

Her idea was simple. Since she could not compete in combat experience, she might as well discard all technique and launch the purest possible energy assault.

"Ha ha ha ha ha! Now that's more like it, little lizard!"

Bathed in Flame Willow's flames, Chijie laughed wildly, paying no attention to the wounds being scorched across his body.

"Congratulations. You finally proved, by giving everything you had, that you are worth killing!"

"But this is not a battle. It is a hunt!"

"Give it everything you have. Start running!"

Chijie, already in a half-collapsed state, unleashed equally terrifying energy. It easily pierced through the trial ground's barriers and spread throughout Elysian Realm.

"Who said I'm running?! One minute. I'll make you take back that contempt!"

Completely "ignited" by her own abilities, Flame Willow's eyes had turned the color of flames. She activated all three output modes of her skills and showed Chijie her resolve in her strongest state.

While the two of them were still immersed in the thrill of battle, Elysia, rushing toward the battlefield from the other side, was already frantic with worry.

Feeling wave after wave of Honkai Energy fluctuations that made her heart pound, Elysia clearly realized that Chijie had definitely started taking this seriously.

After observing Flame Willow for so long, she knew Flame Willow's strength better than anyone. She was only slightly above what they called an S-rank Valkyrie, perhaps not even as strong as a Herrscher.

Against Chijie... Elysia did not dare think any further.

Though she knew Flame Willow was essentially only one of Xia Ling's clones, she also knew that if a clone with this degree of synchronization were destroyed, the damage Xia Ling suffered would be no less severe than a fatal wound. What was more, she had clearly had a chance to prevent things from reaching this point.

If I hadn't hesitated just then... Elysia's eyes brimmed with regret as she followed close behind Vill-V, praying without stop.

Flame Willow: So I Had the Cat's Script All Along?

"Ha ha ha ha! This is the killing intent! This, right here and now!"

Several dozen seconds had already passed. It was clear that Chijie was very satisfied with the potential Flame Willow had unleashed in desperate circumstances.

"Take revenge on me—let me break sharpness against sharper steel, let me... slaughter everything!"

Visibly, Chijie's entire body was transforming toward a collapsed state. The exposed skin on his body now resembled flowing magma, radiating a terrifying heat.

Under Chijie's renewed eruption of flames, Flame Willow's counterattack, which had just begun to show signs of pushing back, was forcibly suppressed again. Unlike before, if she did not use the Collapse Paradigm or the Cipher Plate, Flame Willow no longer had any hidden strength left as a backup.

Of course, Flame Willow had no intention of using either of those things. Those unexpected killing moves might indeed make Chijie suffer badly, but doing so would be meaningless.

After Flame Willow used the King's New Gun, perhaps because the King's Set's battle continuation had cleared away some of her negative conditions, she suddenly noticed that her earlier emotional fluctuations had been somewhat abnormal.

Without question, that was the commandment's effect.

But Flame Willow more or less understood Aponia's intentions now. If her opponent was Chijie, then rhetoric and schemes truly were meaningless. Casting everything aside, showing her true heart and fighting him with all her strength was the best approach.

Still, Aponia had said she could see Flame Willow's imminent future. That meant she should know Flame Willow could revive, right?

And yet she had still used her commandment to guide Flame Willow into going all out under these circumstances. Tsk, tsk. It seemed poor Brother Chijie might have trouble sleeping tonight.

At that moment, Flame Willow did not yet know that in the future Aponia had seen, Chijie would not be the only one unable to sleep.

"Come. Throw yourself into the blazing flames with me, and let me see..."

"Who will be... burned away first!"

Yet Flame Willow, surrounded by countless Calamity flames and with her room to survive being squeezed ever smaller, suddenly felt weakness wash over her entire body.

It's time...

The crimson flames still stubbornly resisting around Flame Willow vanished in an instant like a receding tide, even faster than Chijie's Calamity flames advanced.

And the abrupt end of the King's New Gun completely drained Flame Willow's strength. Her body went limp, and she nearly collapsed.

Even Chijie had not been prepared for this sudden change. Had his control and tempering of his own body not far exceeded that of ordinary people, allowing him to rein himself in at once, the spreading flames might have reduced Flame Willow directly to ash.

Chijie slowly approached Flame Willow. Looking at her, utterly drained and only barely standing by using her spear as support, he shook his head.

"Heh. So this is all you amount to."

"I'll give you one last chance. Leave your last wor—"

"Hm?"

Chijie realized something was wrong.

After all, he had never intended to kill Flame Willow. Setting aside the fact that someone had appeared before him without him noticing at all, which was already strange enough.

Along the way, Flame Willow had met quite a few Flame-Chasers. Chijie could naturally sense the traces of different Flame-Chasers she carried.

When he was not serving as the examiner for the final trial, Chijie had been unwilling to strike too heavily. As for when he was the examiner... then all he could say was that the trial-taker had lacked self-awareness.

Chijie had originally planned to give this little thing who ran around everywhere a small lesson. He had not expected her to unleash potential impressive enough to make even him take notice. And during their fight, she had proven that she possessed the will to match it.

Honestly, up to this point, he rather appreciated Flame Willow.

But upon approaching her, Chijie discovered that Flame Willow's aura had declined to its lowest point. He could tell she was young, yet an eerie sense of a lamp running dry clung to her body. Even describing it as a lamp running dry was being far too optimistic.