As Xu Yanwu battled the Six-Armed Giant, and as Yae Sakura and Kallen remained at Yae Shrine.
Kiana and the others stood atop a small hill near Yae Village, watching the battle unfolding where Tenshu-kaku had once stood.
They had seen similar scenes before...
But back then, it had been a battle between Xu Yanwu and Chi You.
At that time, Xu Yanwu had merely been fighting an opponent of immense size.
But now, two nearly identical people were fighting each other.
Unlike his earlier battle against a Honkai Beast like Chi You, this battle... had been brought about by their own conflicting ideals.
No matter how little Kiana and the others knew about Xu Yanwu's distant past, no matter how hard it was for them to understand the Xu Yanwu of that time.
The voices carrying over from the battlefield had already proven many things.
One was the Xu Yanwu they knew from St. Freya—the one who liked to slack off, joke around, and stay by their side.
The other... was a Xu Yanwu who had changed so much that they were almost afraid of him.
He was no longer gentle, no longer cared about anyone else's feelings, and was obsessively fixated to a pathological degree.
Yet within that pathological obsession, they could feel sorrow, despair within that sorrow, and something like one final struggle... a self-destructive death throe.
Even if the Six-Armed Giant looked like a twisted monster.
"So Xu Yanwu used to become like this... but he doesn't anymore..."
Watching the Six-Armed Giant, Himeko murmured to herself, "Then what did Xu Yanwu go through before becoming like this? What turned him into what he is now?"
Himeko thought about it, but she could not come up with an answer.
Everyone's past was different, and even knowing it