Crack—
She swung her blade, thin and translucent as ice, stirring up gusts of snow as she froze the seawater and formed a sheet of ice sturdy enough to stand on.
She cut down the Honkai Beast that burst through the ice, letting its remaining body fall onto the frozen surface. The pink-eared girl habitually flicked her blade before sheathing it.
"Quick, pack everything up! It's about to sink!"
Behind her, countless Moth to Fire personnel worked busily across the ice, salvaging as much remaining data and wreckage as possible.
The shattering and sinking of Mu Continent had dealt humanity a devastating blow. Industrial capacity could perhaps be rebuilt elsewhere, but the original research results were far harder to recover. Too much data had sunk into the sea, while even more had been swallowed and torn apart by that "Black Sun." People could only barely piece together what had once existed from the fragments that remained.
From then on, all of human society had been shrouded in gloom... but even so, they had to keep moving, doing everything they could to stop things from getting worse.
But all of that felt somewhat distant to Sakura. It was not something she needed to think about.
"..."
Sakura gazed at the frozen sea, listening to the distant waves for a long time without saying a word.
The long ears atop her head tried several times to droop with her mood, only for her to force them upright again out of habit. Her pink hair swayed gently in the cold wind, carrying a faint floral fragrance.
She gripped the blade at her waist tightly, taking several steps as though she wanted to leave, to search the sea for that familiar presence. Yet in the end, she did not go. The hand gripping her