Turing

"Yes."

After Prometheus responded, all the door indicators in Area A-3 turned red. Isolation walls descended from above, blocking the Honkai Beasts' path.

"Roar—"

Seeing their way blocked, the Honkai Beasts angrily searched for prey they could see—the two small humans.

Then, every Honkai Beast charged at the unarmed Lin and Ritter.

"You... really are insane."

"I'm not insane." Lin set Ritter down and let him lean against the wall behind him. He stepped forward and stood in front of him. "Neither are you. Humans are all like this."

"..."

Ritter stared fixedly at the back of the boy, who was about the same age as his daughter. His hand dropped limply.

"You're still here, Herrscher? What a surprise."

"Oh? Was I supposed to be driven out?"

Of all the Heroes Mei least wanted to encounter, Chrono undoubtedly ranked first: the worst temper, the foulest attitude, and... the most terrible language.

The white-haired, masked man sat atop the conference table, arms folded as he stared at her like an evil ghost.

Mei truly wondered whether some customs in the Previous Civilization differed from those of the present. Perhaps conference tables were not actually for placing things or holding meetings, but some sort of chair. In her memory, Mobius and Chrono often used this table as a bed or a seat. Mobius even lay sprawled right across it.

Hopefully, it was merely to show off their excessively distinctive personalities.

"Hahahaha... driven out? You probably don't have the ability to leave before you're killed." Chrono laughed wantonly and looked up with interest. "Still, I am curious why Lin didn't deal with you directly over there."

Mei calmly provoked him. "Then it seems he had no way to deal with me."

The Imaginary Tree was ultimately just a device that carried memories. Mei could not truly die here.

But exceptions had occurred before. In several of those cases, the credit belonged to the irritable white-haired man before her.

"Oh? So you fought him?" Chrono sneered. "Against a defective product? Hahahaha..."

"Hmph. Chrono, you're so confident in your own strength, yet you actually think so highly of Lin?"

Lin's special status was vividly reflected among the Heroes who had appeared. He was not one of the Thirteen Heroes, yet he was intimately connected to them: Kevin and Hua's friendship; Elysia and Mobius's subtle feelings; Su and Eden's respect; Sakura's inexplicable guilt... Even Chrono displayed an emotion toward Lin, an ordinary person who was not a Flame-Chaser, that resembled how he felt toward Kevin.

Along with the "core" Mei had seen in the Imaginary Tree—the "Lin" wielding the Black Abyss White Flower and capable of using abilities similar to those of the Herrscher of Reason—she grew even more curious about Lin's identity and past. She had begun to suspect that the secret of the Imaginary Tree might be connected to him.

"You don't need to provoke me, Herrscher. I know better than you what kind of strength Lin possesses." Chrono snorted coldly. "If his Hypervariable Surgery had succeeded, even Kevin might not have been his match... No, even if it merely failed, that might have been better."

Mei had already learned from Elysia that Lin's Hypervariable Surgery had failed. But why did Chrono say failure would have been better? And that tone... Could it be that it had not merely failed back then?

"What happened then?"

"Are you a fly? Buzzing around everywhere all day, then grabbing whoever you find and starting in with your questions?"

"...You were the one who started talking to me."

Chrono sneered. "Yeah. So now I'm annoyed. Can you get lost?"

"What if I say no?" Fine arcs of lightning began flickering at the tips of Mei's hair.

"Then Lin won't get the chance. I'll deal with you first!"

Their auras collided, poised to erupt at any moment. Scorching heat and lightning burst through the cramped space.

"Chrono."

Lin had somehow appeared behind Chrono. He coolly spoke his name, making Chrono pause.

Of course, this was Chrono. "Oh? Lin? Aren't you usually busy tinkering with all that data in the Imaginary Tree that's completely useless now?"

"That is exactly why I came."

Lin walked over to Mei and held out his hand.

"Where's the data from last time?"

"...Here."

As Mei handed over the data, she observed Chrono's reaction from the corner of her eye.

How should she put it? Although Chrono's tone did not yield to Lin's, he had no complaint whatsoever about Lin's actions. He did not even grunt. It gave Mei the strange impression of a rowdy child being subdued the instant his mother called him by his full name.

Sure enough, it was a truly subtle relationship.

Lin weighed the data in his hand, then opened it and briefly read through the portions Sakura had translated. He nodded. "Fine. Ask whatever you want."

"Your Hypervariable Surgery. What happened?"

"You don't need to know."

"Didn't you tell me to ask whatever I wanted?"

"I never said I would answer whatever you asked."

"..."

After thinking for a while, Mei asked again, "What happened between you and Sakura?"

That question made Chrono look over as well.

"...Poisoned Cocoon."

"What?"

"That is all I can say. Ask Sakura about the rest."

Mei watched as Lin left with the documents. Only then did she realize something.

Had she just been tricked out of her information for nothing?

Turing

He had no weapon. He had not worn armor in order to infiltrate. His body had not fully recovered.

Across from him were twelve special Honkai Beasts. There were no records on them. Every one of them was on the same level as the Heavy Crusher Lin had encountered before. Though there were no enormous Honkai Beasts among them, winning... was nearly impossible.

"Lin, what do we do?"

This was the first time Prometheus had directly asked Lin for a concrete plan. No matter how her intelligence, far ahead of its era, calculated it, his only outcome was death.

They could not even send a message outside now. The path of retreat had been sealed by Lin himself, and he could not possibly abandon the others in The Deepest Place and flee alone.

A dead end.

Prometheus's own data could be saved and backed up, so the chance of her being destroyed was very low. Yet when she calculated that Lin was destined to die, she did not know why she had asked that question.

The moment she saw that Lin's fate in her graphical calculations was to be reduced to nothing but a corpse, she forcibly shut them down.

"Can the door still be opened?" Lin kept as much distance as possible between himself and Ritter, lest an attack by the Honkai Beasts catch him in the crossfire. Once he saw that all the Honkai Beasts had moved away from the door, he asked Prometheus.

"There is a sixty-second lockout period after forced closure."

Sixty seconds.

Before Lin could figure out a way out, two azure Charge-type Honkai Beasts suddenly accelerated. Spinning as they surged through the air, they became two streaks of light and launched a surprise attack.

He could not meet them head-on.

A human body could never contend with a Honkai Beast's flesh. It was like how Lin's neural reactions might allow him to see a bullet's trajectory, but that did not mean he could dodge it while it was in flight. Avoiding bullets ultimately depended on judging the gun and the person firing it.

Lin sidestepped. That small motion let him avoid the two azure drills. He turned and kicked one of the Honkai Beasts in its torso after it stopped spinning.

Smack!

Charge-type Honkai Beasts had the lightest bodies and least weight of their kind. Lin effortlessly sent it flying with his kick. One remained. Before he could strike again, a bright-red Knight-class Honkai Beast attacked from behind. Flames burned at its lance's tip, scattering the shadow of death across the reflection of its helmet.

There was no time to think. Lin reached out, grabbed the remaining Charge-type Honkai Beast by its wing, and leapt up. Then he hurled the Honkai Beast straight into the Knight-class Honkai Beast's lance. Its core was pierced through.

"Gah—"

Lin landed behind the Knight-class Honkai Beast's centaur-like body. At that moment, Prometheus issued an urgent warning—

"Miniaturized Honkai Beast approaching."

Miniaturized?

A sudden pain pierced Lin's side. Blood sprayed from his waist as he fell from the Honkai Beast. Following the data on his helmet, he found the culprit: a Honkai Beast the size of a fly was licking his blood before charging at him again.

An ultra-miniature Charge-type?

The Knight-class Honkai Beast turned around, raised its forehooves, and prepared to trample Lin's body.

Lin pushed off with both hands, dodging the Knight-class Honkai Beast's stomp, then reached out to meet the miniature Charge-type Honkai Beast.

Boom!

Ritter felt the entire ground shake. He clenched his lips and crawled toward the main console, then pressed the emergency contact button.

There was no response at all.

Logically, alarms should have sounded throughout The Deepest Place the moment containment failed, and guards should have been dispatched to suppress it. Even if they could not stop the first wave of attacks, they could at least prevent the number of victims from increasing.

But now, no alarm had sounded. Even the emergency contact had failed. Area A-3 had become an isolated island.

Ritter felt his heart freeze into a tiny shard of ice. A chill froze him from the inside out.

From the moment he agreed to Lin's request, he had been treated as a discarded piece. And from beginning to end, he had never noticed the surveillance device on him.

His clothes? Something he ate? None of that mattered anymore. What mattered was that the person who had once ordered him to attack the Fifth Branch had now, just like Ritter back then, pressed the button to kill their own comrades.

"So this is... retribution? Hahaha..." He collapsed helplessly to the ground, staring at the ceiling as he laughed bleakly. "Sure enough, this world is fair."

At the end of his short life, Ritter did not think of his seriously ill daughter. Instead, he thought of what he had seen while infiltrating the Fifth Branch.

Within that orderly, mechanical Fire Moth branch, a little white-haired girl treated the place like an ordinary playground, running, playing, and frolicking through it.

She did not understand what the liquid in those raised transparent containers meant, nor did she understand what kind of experiments the researchers walking back and forth were conducting for humanity.

But her childish innocence touched everyone. Those people who put their lives in danger for humanity stopped their busy hands and played with her.

"The birth of children is the world's greatest kindness."

That was the most sentimental thing the most rational people could say.

And after seeing that scene, Ritter stood before that door of destruction with his head lowered, far too distant from that dazzling light.

In the end, he had casually pressed the button and let the photograph of a family of three disappear in the flames.

To end up like this was truly... no surprise at all.

A Knight-class Honkai Beast came before him. Its crimson eyes radiated mercilessness as it raised its knight lance high.

Ritter maintained his self-abandoning smile, intending to calmly face the death of his worthless life.

But when that cold gleaming lance tip came down, he still broke.

He did not want to die.

"I can't even face death with dignity in the end."

Ritter raised his arms before his face, his features twisted by fear. The only composed thing he could do was shout and mock his own weakness.

Shing—

"You're thinking too much. This is not retribution. It is an arrangement made by someone behind a screen."

A drop of blood fell onto Ritter's cheek.

Lin grabbed Ritter by the back of his collar with one hand. His other shoulder, slashed open while saving Ritter, bled freely. Gasping for breath, he sprinted toward the door. During the time Ritter had been waiting to die, Lin had killed another three Honkai Beasts. The rest could not be dealt with barehanded.

There were nine seconds left until the door opened. Lin truly seemed fated to cross paths with countdowns. Nearly every time he found himself in danger, a countdown tied to his life hung above his head.

"You created a father who lost his wife and daughter, and a daughter who lost her parents. Cough..."

Lin coughed up blood. The high Honkai Energy environment rapidly worsened his condition. He spoke weakly to Ritter behind him.

"Could you have stopped the destruction at that time? Did you feel any compassion? Did you ever consider another possibility?"

"And now, the person hiding behind that screen is doing the same thing you did. So tell me: is that person what you call retribution?"

"Lastly... if you cannot die heroically, then live first. Then go and accept your true 'retribution.'"

Ritter stared blankly at the blood pouring from Lin. He spoke those unbelievable words in an even tone.

The door slowly opened before them. Lin rushed outside, but two tentacles suddenly emerged from behind him and wrapped around his heels.