Elysia quickly got to the point. "Mei, didn't you say you couldn't remember what the first Schicksal Commander you killed looked like?"
She smiled freely.
"But Lin remembers."
"..."
"Whether they were Schicksal Commanders or Herrschers, Lin remembers every life that once lived vividly in this world and that he killed."
After casually dropping those words, Elysia stepped back beside the door. She did not make her usual playful gesture of invitation this time. Instead, she stood solemnly at the side of the door, like...
The officiant at a grand funeral.
Mei took a deep breath as she stared at her, then stepped through the door.
"Drip."
After passing through the door, a raindrop landed on her cheek.
"It always rains here."
"This is where his comrades, his enemies, and everything he had are buried."
"This is his heart."
Desolate.
As far as Mei could see, there was only a dense graveyard stretching endlessly to the horizon.
It was filled with grave markers of all sizes. Every one bore a name or a photograph. Just as Elysia had said, some belonged to humans, while others belonged to Schicksal Commanders.
There was only one exception.
While Mei was overwhelmed by this world made of gravestones, Elysia stopped before a small, inconspicuous grave marker in the farthest corner, her eyes filled with sorrow.
When Mei saw the gravestone, a puzzled expression appeared on her face. "That gravestone is..."
At first glance, it was no different from the others. It was even the smallest and most weathered one Mei had seen. It could easily be overlooked without close inspection, but when Mei saw the place where a name should have been engraved, she froze.
There was no name on it, nor was there a photograph.
After her sorrow passed, Elysia looked at the gravestone again, seemingly remembering something, and revealed a tranquil smile.
"This is Lin's gravestone."
That was what she said.
The ground trembled amid terrifying roars. A hill was chasing an ant. Every strike from its grotesque arms brought down a building, scattering bricks, tiles, and dust, while the ant narrowly evaded every fatal blow, dodging nimbly as it searched for an angle to counterattack.
The Chariot-class Honkai Beast leaped high into the air. Its scarlet eye replaced the bright moon, becoming a bloody Blood Moon. Lin ran along a wall, kicked off it, and made a small midair change of direction to evade the landing blow, which was no less devastating than a meteor impact. The shockwave sent him flying.
Lin rolled several times across the ground before stopping. His sunglasses and mask had long since vanished. Blood ran from the abrasions on his face in glaring crimson streams. His emotionless black eyes stared at the Honkai Beast as it rose again, while his legs felt somewhat numb.
It sounded good when said aloud, but the fact that Lin was in poor condition could not be denied. The aftereffects of replacing his leg still hampered his movements, his injured head affected his thinking and reactions, and his dagger could not pierce the Honkai Beast's shell. All he could do was lure it away from Hun and Hua.
And most critically, Lin did not know how much longer he could endure in this concentration of Honkai Energy.
The equipment he usually wore was not merely meant to improve his combat ability. It also slowed Honkai Energy erosion. Otherwise, with Lin's laughably low Honkai Energy resistance, he would have become a "cyberpsychotic" who needed more than a dozen suppressants injected into his shoulders every day.
This time, Lin was not wearing any protective equipment. If he stayed in this environment too long, Honkai Energy would quickly erode him. He could not drag this out.
His equipment, time, and physical condition were all utterly terrible. Heaven, earth, and man were against him.
Did he have a chance of winning?
Lin continuously assessed the gap between them. A giant beast and a human—how could a human win?
To kill a Honkai Beast, he had to destroy the Honkai Energy core inside its body, something like a heart. He knew where the Chariot-class Honkai Beast's core was, but with the weapon in his hand, he could not reach it at all.
As he thought, the Chariot-class Honkai Beast swung its right arm once more. Lin simply sidestepped, then gripped his dagger with both hands and viciously plunged it into an area of skin not covered by shell.
Pale pink blood splashed out, yet the Honkai Beast seemed unable to feel pain as it raised its arm again and smashed it toward him.
Bang!
Just as Lin tried to dodge, the discordant sensation in his body struck, causing his movement to stall for an instant.
That delay, less than half a second long, nearly cost him his life.
A crisp sound of bones shattering rang out as the Honkai Beast clipped Lin's left shoulder. His entire body spun through the air, and his whole left shoulder twisted into a grotesque shape.
He only barely stopped after crashing into a wall. Lin slumped against it, blood seeping from his mouth and nose.
He coldly glanced at his useless left hand, forced himself to stand, and stared at the Chariot-class Honkai Beast as it howled triumphantly after hitting its target.
Do not stop thinking. Humans could defeat animals stronger than themselves precisely because humans could think.
Once they gave up thinking, humans too would head toward death.
The smell of gasoline slipped into his nostrils amid the familiar stench of blood.
Lin suddenly turned his head and spotted a gas station not far away. The smell was coming from an uncovered fuel tank on a car.
He glanced at the Honkai Beast, then broke into a run toward the gas station.
Dangerous, but worth trying.
Humanity's Bitter Victory
Lin leaped high into the air, braced himself on the roof of a car with one hand, spun in midair as gracefully as a stuntman, drew his dagger, and beheaded the Schicksal Commander wandering beside the vehicle with a single slash.
The body and head hit the ground at the same time.
Lin swiftly pulled open the car door and slipped inside, directly stabbing the knife into the passenger seat. He pressed the ignition button, shifted gears one-handed, and took the wheel. With the engine roaring, the car shot forward like an arrow released from its bow after a brief start.
Realizing that its prey intended to escape, the Chariot-class Honkai Beast furiously smashed the ground. The tremor, like a small earthquake at close range, traveled through the earth into Lin's hands. Its body arched like a fully drawn bow, the sign that it was about to pounce.
Many people misunderstood the speed of Honkai Beasts. They believed that huge bodies, heavy shells, and distorted structures could not support rapid movement. In reality, aside from certain Honkai Beasts specialized in a particular aspect, most could reach speeds of sixty to one hundred kilometers per hour. Knight-class Honkai Beasts could even reach the terrifying speed of nearly three hundred kilometers per hour while charging.
The most misunderstood were Temple-class Honkai Beasts and Chariot-class Honkai Beasts. Temple-class Honkai Beasts moved by levitation, so their heavy armor did not slow them down at all. Chariot-class Honkai Beasts could use their strength for explosive leaps and charges, then rely on the inertia from their weight to rampage ahead. Once one caught you on open ground, escape was basically impossible.
The Chariot-class Honkai Beast turned its Honkai Energy and muscular strength into thrust. Its mountain-sized body carved deep trenches into the ground before launching into the air and pouncing toward Lin's vehicle.
A crushing hammer of bulging muscle was about to flatten the car into an iron pancake when Lin accelerated once more, using a feint to make the attack miss.
The resulting pressure wave made the car's front wheels drift and even lift off the ground for a short while, but Lin steadily controlled the vehicle without being affected in the slightest.
He had even driven a Titan. What was a mere car?
Through the rearview mirror, Lin saw the Chariot-class Honkai Beast make that crushing motion once more. Calmly eyeing the raised ridge in the road ahead, he slammed the accelerator all the way down!
Screech!
The friction between the tires and asphalt filled the air with a burning stench, but Lin's sense of smell had already gone numb. He focused solely on the road ahead, making the entire car "fly." At a height level with the Honkai Beast's body, the vehicle's internal frame creaked in agony as it neared its limit.
"Roaaar—"
The Honkai Beast came at him again, carrying a crushing pressure wave. Seeing the car unable to evade in midair this time, it pounced the instant its front wheels rose, determined to crush it completely to pieces.
Bang!
Creak—
Its arms slammed down, flattening the driver's and passenger's seats into a sheet of iron as liquid burst out and splattered everywhere.
"Roaaar—"
It cheered in midair, celebrating the death of another human.
But it did not see that there was no human "blood" among those splashing liquids.
Nor did it see the gas station ahead of where it would land.
Still in midair, Lin felt as if time had almost stopped.
He had escaped just before the attack arrived. Brushing past death like that pushed the speed of his thoughts beyond their limits.
After taking the impact, his five senses briefly failed. All he could see was darkness. He could not hear, smell, or feel anything. It was like being in a silent space, just like...
The time he used the Phase Transfer Device.
Even pain had become a luxury.
He closed his eyes.
"..."
Was this as far as humanity could go? Without external help, even a sufficiently heavy impact could throw one's senses into chaos.
"----"
No!
"Click."
Lin, suspended in midair with vacant eyes, instantly drew his already loaded gun.
He could see nothing, hear nothing, and had no sense of touch. Yet at that moment, relying only on memory and calculations, he carried out the action he had planned.
Without aiming, but without the slightest hesitation, he pointed at the remaining half of the car in the Honkai Beast's hand and pulled the trigger.
The shot hit the fuel tank perfectly.
Boom—
The explosion's flames swallowed the Honkai Beast, then triggered a chain of explosions at the gas station. Towering fire lit up the night sky, windows in the surrounding buildings shattered one after another, and the horrifying blasts shook the entire city.
Even Hun, who was pulling Hua upward through a building, shuddered at the shocking explosion.
"That explosion..." Hua was clearly thinking of Lin. Distraught, she looked worriedly out the window.
"..." Hun gritted her teeth. Watching the Schicksal Commanders stir after being drawn by the explosions, she crouched low and shouted, "Hide yourself. Don't worry about that yet."
Hua looked at the hideous walking corpses and hesitated. "I'll help you..."
"No!"
Hua was a civilian, and Hun had to protect her. Hua could barely even stand right now. If something happened to her, how would Hun explain it to Lin?
That was right, Lin would definitely be fine. He was the man who had killed an Emperor-class Honkai Beast during the first battle of the Second Honkai War. It was only an evolved Chariot-class Honkai Beast. Even without equipment, Lin would definitely be able to deal with it.
She tried to convince herself, but she could not stop thinking about Lin's uncoordinated body and the head injury he had suffered to protect her. She thought of the mother and son, and her dagger trembled.
Fear.
She did not know whether she feared that Lin would never return, or feared the increasing number of Schicksal Commanders.
But—
Hun's other hand gripped her trembling arm.
Lin's ever-calm voice echoed in her ears.
"We carry their lives on our backs..."
At that moment, her gaze became sharp, and her body stopped trembling.
Because she was afraid, she would... fight.
She shielded Hua behind her, gun in her right hand and blade in her left, calmly watching every Schicksal Commander.
Kill them.
Save them.
That was what her heart said.
The shockwave slammed Lin into the second-floor wall of a building, then sent him crashing heavily to the ground.
"Urgh—"
His five senses returned.
Lin immediately vomited a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs, staining the floor red.
He lay weakly on the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a piece of metal embedded in his thigh. The explosion's shockwave had caused it, and blood poured from his body as if it cost nothing.
After only briefly assessing his wounds, Lin fixed his eyes on the blazing inferno.
Had he won?
No. From experience...