Where Was That Supposed Third Honkai?!!

With such a powerful background, when his wife went into labor back then, he naturally did everything possible to provide her with the best medical care.

In other words, Mei had been born at Anti-Entropy headquarters.

Under the laws there, babies born on its soil automatically received that country's citizenship.

"So I was simply curious about your level of swordsmanship, Fu Li. Do you need a Menkyo Kaiden master proficient in Hokushin Itto-ryu to teach you hand in hand?" The girl smiled sweetly. "As for where and how you learned these sword techniques, I am interested, but I will not deliberately pry."

"In other words?"

"You misunderstood~"

Fu Li let out a sigh of relief.

Someone else, however, wanted him to choke to death.

"A! Li!"

As everyone knew, LOVE stood for level of violence, an index used to measure a person's ability to hurt others.

For example, Kiana, whose jealousy had exploded, now wanted to have a proper little LOVE session with Fu Li, thereby avoiding the tragic fate of having her wife—or husband?—NTR'd away by him.

"What, you still want to fight?"

Having settled things with Mei, Fu Li had no intention of indulging her. He gripped Crescent Moon and assumed a stance, then reconsidered and sheathed it again.

It was not because he was giving up halfway. He had thought of something interesting and could use Kiana to test this new move.

Grrr...

At that tense, sword-drawn moment, two and a half hours later, a strange sound once again came from Kiana's empty stomach.

The two exchanged a calm look.

"A Li~~~"

Fu Li put away the iaijutsu stance identical to the one he had used with Miko Ling for Immeasurable Evil. Hugging his arms with a look of revulsion, he said, "...No, could you not change your expression that fast? Can you at least give me time to mentally prepare?"

"I don't wanna!" Kiana said in a coquettish voice.

"Go find Mei—forget it."

He shook his head before he even finished speaking.

Ever since Raiden Ryoma had gone in for further education and become prison-system talent, the assets of the Raiden estate had either been used to pay debts or confiscated by the state.

Mei herself was currently living in the girls' dormitory. Where would she get the money to satisfy Kiana, this bottomless pit?

"Let's celebrate Mei joining the team. I'll treat you both to something nice." He raised his hands in surrender. "After we eat, we'll set off and leave Changkong City."

"Actually, we could prepare ingredients and go to Kiana's place." Mei earnestly offered a suggestion. "I've been learning to cook lately. Leave the cooking to me."

"I am looking forward to your cooking, but let's skip it this time."

Fu Li was deeply regretful. In his previous life, he had sampled Mei's cooking too. It had been far more than merely pleasing in color, aroma, and flavor.

For a long time, he had teasingly called her the Cooking Wife.

Unfortunately, once the other Mei—Sinner's Elegy—joined World Serpent, everything changed.

Come to think of it, it was rather amusing. Back then, Fu Li had assumed World Serpent had done something unforgivably outrageous to Mei and caused her personality to change drastically. In a fit of rage, he not only kicked down all thirty-seven of their outposts in the Middle East, but even went up against the legend of the mercenary world—Kojima Bomb Crow.

Fortunately, Mei herself arrived at the crucial moment, thunder splitting the skies over Changkong, preventing Fu Li, who had only just exceeded A-rank at the time, from getting utterly crushed.

Oh, that "utterly crushed" was merely Ms. Siora's one-sided post-battle account.

The odds of victory between them had always been thirty-seventy: Fu Li thirty, Raven seventy.

Many people knew that Schicksal possessed three active S-rank Valkyries, each one a strategic-level deterrent.

Among those three, however, only Rita Rossweisse had barely entered the S-rank category by relying on the performance of the fourth-generation Godslayer armor, "Azure Knight: Moon of Oath."

Raven's circumstances were similar. Her S-rank evaluation relied entirely on the powerful boost provided by the Third Divine Key, "Judgment of Thunder: Seven Thunders of Purgation."

Normally, she could at most reach Critical. Fu Li, who had exceeded A-rank at the time, was not incapable of challenging her.

The thirty-seventy odds had been after he was already covered in injuries from tearing through World Serpent's outposts. Otherwise, forty-sixty or even fifty-fifty would not have been impossible. After all, he was publicly acknowledged as undefeated among those of the same rank.

Thinking of this, Fu Li glanced at Mei's lovely lotus-like legs wrapped in over-the-knee stockings.

When Mei had treated him afterward, that was precisely what he had rested his head on. She had even been wearing white stockings that accentuated the shape of her legs even more.

A certain someone's immediate evaluation had been that they were too hard and bony, not as comfortable as a pillow.

Then his injuries got worse again.

This time, from electric shock damage.

He only had himself to blame.

"Mei: I'll Be Saionji Sekai!"

While Fu Li sank into thought, the other two did not pause time for his sake.

"Huh? We're leaving straight away?" Kiana tapped her toes, looking rather unwilling. "Then can I at least go home and change clothes first?"

At the same time, she gave Fu Li a look as though he were insane, seemingly saying, Are you kidding me? How dare you let Mei cook?

Fun fact: Mei had gradually learned to cook after her family's bankruptcy, and she was still enthusiastically studying it.

During that time, Kiana served as her guinea pig every few days. She could deceive her brain with "love is the best seasoning," but her taste buds and digestive system did not care about that.

In his previous life, Fu Li had not had the opportunity to become her test subject early on. By the middle period, he had directly encountered the Cooking Wife Immortal whose culinary skills had reached perfection. That was why he had developed such a reality-distorting stereotype.

Completely unaware of this, the person in question said, "Go back to change clothes? As long as your little pig belly can hold out."

Mei, meanwhile, was curious about Kiana's outfit. Only now did she realize the clothes on her friend were all Fu Li's.

The girl thoughtfully chose not to ask.

As someone who had arrived later, Mei had always understood that whether it was herself or Kiana, their distancing themselves from Fu Li had only been because they did not want to drag him into an inhuman world.

Ordinary people were simply too powerless there. Leaving other things aside, just Kiana squeezing her legs together earlier had nearly given Fu Li a concussion when he was not using Demonic Blade · Unknown Fire.

If they really got together, who knew whether, during some intimate moment, one careless move might leave one of them mourning the other.

For example, getting carried away and snapping someone's waist by sitting on them, turning them into a 2.5-strip Fran-da.

Things were different now. Since Fu Li had become one of them, there was naturally no need for the deliberately cold masks of the past to keep existing.

Mei believed that as Fu Li and Kiana continued interacting, Kiana would eventually shake off that unhealthy yuri mindset and develop normal views on men and women.

But the problem now was...

Her beautiful eyes reflected the sight of "Fu Li holding one hand against Kiana's gleaming white forehead, keeping the clawing girl from touching him." Miss Mei let out a small sigh.

The problem now was that Fu Li seemed completely uninterested in Kiana.

Over the three months since her father's arrest, Mei had also gradually sharpened her ability to read people through the bullying she suffered at school.

She was certain that if Kiana had been the one questioning Fu Li about secretly learning her family's inherited Kaslana Gun Kata, he would not even bother lying. He would just say, Yeah, I learned it. So what?

But when Mei asked, the boy's heart, which had just relaxed, instantly tensed again. There had even been a touch of panic and forced composure in his voice.

As a woman, Mei secretly delighted in the helplessness outstanding boys felt when facing her.

But as a friend, she could not help worrying about Kiana.

Should she help her?

A gentle breeze brushed past Mei's loose temple hair. The cool-tempered beauty watched the pair who would draw swords at each other if they were not careful, a soft smile like mountain streams on her face.

"Huh?!"

"Stop fighting already!"

"Don't get cocky! If this young lady hadn't held back and not shot you, how could a mere A Li possibly gain the upper hand?!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our Lady Kiana is just soooo amazing! How about we try a different kind of binding next time? Shadow Blade can do more than just Rose Armor Binding."

"Why are you so skilled at tying people up?! How many times have you tied someone in Rose Armor Binding?!"

"Thirteen times. Compared to some rotten eggs who like playing with enemies using threads, I prefer interrogations where the blade cuts into flesh. That feels much better."

"Eek! Pervert!"

In the apartment building hallway, Kiana kicked Fu Li in the shin, then turned and proudly strode into B201 while pulling Mei along.

Fu Li followed behind at a leisurely pace.

Kiana turned back and glared at him fiercely. "What? Planning to peep while this young lady changes clothes?"

Fu Li answered without hesitation, "Actually, following Kuang Heng's example, I dug a hole in the wall our homes share. I've already seen everything I should and shouldn't have seen perfectly clearly."

That was half true and half false. Digging the hole was false; seeing Kiana naked was true.

Not only had he seen her, he had even touched her all over in his previous life.

Covered in blood, too. It had not triggered any XP system at all.

"I don't care! You are not allowed in!"

Kiana merely took that as more dirty talk, just like his earlier remark about cutting people. She pushed Fu Li, who had one foot inside the room, back out and slammed the door shut with a bang!

When she turned around, she could not help asking in surprise, "Mei, what are you doing?"

Mei, who was pressed against the wall searching everywhere for holes, gave an embarrassed smile. "N-Nothing..."

She had visited Kiana's home quite often.

What if she had also been...

"Wait, Mei, you don't actually believe A Li's nonsense, do you?"

Kiana looked utterly speechless.

With one hand on her hip, she said confidently, "A Li isn't the kind of person who peeps on others. I can vouch for him on that."

Mei quietly asked, "Kiana trusts Fu Li a lot. Did you go through something together?"

"Go through something together? I guess you could say that."

Kiana ran over to the wardrobe in the corner and searched for clothes that would be convenient to move in as she spoke. "My stupid dad once told me not to judge someone by what they say, but by what they do."

"A Li came to the Far East on the same ship as me, but he enrolled more than half a month later. Mei, do you know why?"

"I think... he got into a fight with someone?"

Mei was not entirely sure. At the time, she had been caught between the internal troubles of ME Inc.'s collapse and the bullying she faced, leaving her severely lacking in awareness of outside news.

"Mm." Kiana nodded as she took out a pair of shorts and stockings. "He got into a fight with people from outside the school and nearly got deported back to Shenzhou."

"Why?"

Fu Li's fixation on Kiana was obvious to everyone. If he had risked deportation to fight someone, there had to be an important reason.

"What reason could there be?" Kiana gave a mocking laugh, but her tone was inexplicably gentle. "Afterward, I ran over angrily and asked him if he could stop causing me trouble. He actually gave me this serious answer: 'When we were little, we promised that knights—Kaslanas—couldn't stand by and watch innocent people die!'"

"I don't remember any of that at all, and I've always thought he had the wrong person." The white-haired girl sat on the bed and took off the shoes and socks belonging to Fu Li from her thighs. "Afterward, I looked into the whole thing. Basically, that girl named Asakura Miyuki had been bullied at school for a long time but lacked the courage to resist, so those bastards got worse and worse. That day, they even planned to drag her into an alley and do... do that disgusting thing to her!"

Kiana gritted her teeth. "Luckily, at the crucial moment, that idiot A Li heard her cries for help from deep in the alley, picked up a steel bar off the ground, and charged in!"

"There Is No Place for You in This Home Anymore!"

As she listened to Kiana's account, Mei's initially lively gaze gradually dimmed.

Having suffered bullying herself, Miss Raiden glanced toward Fu Li outside the door and softly asked, "What happened afterward?"

"Afterward? Those thugs who lost face wanted to cause trouble for A Li, so I took care of the whole lot of them. And that girl, Asakura Miyuki, seemed to display considerable talent during psychological treatment and has now joined St. Freya Valkyrie Academy in the Far East."

Kiana smiled. "Clean and tidy."

"That is wonderful." Mei unconsciously smiled as well. "Does Fu Li know about this?"

"No." Kiana shook her head. "That dummy only provided all the punching except the aftercare in this incident. Her psychological treatment happened because her family was wealthy, and this young lady handled the retaliation from those punks. In the end, he never even learned why that girl had been dragged into the alley."

That was how saving a beauty as a hero worked. Fu Li only needed to charge in and save her. Kiana and the others had much more to consider.