For a long time, Otto had no idea that an organization called World Serpent even existed. As a result, in the comics Fog Capital Holiday and Legacy Chapter, one of his bodies was beaten beyond repair before he could fully upload his memories.
Siegfried, my friend, your daughter is beyond saving
The sun sank below the horizon, and the clouds blazed red.
Raiden Ryoma stood at the far edge of the street, watching the silhouettes of four people in the distance gradually blur from view.
Jiang Cheng hadn't said anything, but he'd already made himself perfectly clear.
A father who couldn't even protect his daughter had no right to make demands.
He turned around without hesitation.
Several black cars had silently pulled up behind him. Their doors opened, and several men in black suits stepped out. The moment they saw him, they bowed at a perfect ninety-degree angle.
"—My lord!"
Even though the Raiden Family had once changed its name, they had lived on this land for centuries. That long history had given them plenty of loyal retainers. They might not have been able to stand against Cocolia, but they were certainly capable of discovering his return at once and helping him make a comeback.
Raiden Ryoma assigned tasks one by one, telling them to contact his former subordinates and brush off the questions Theresa had sent him.
The image of a down-and-out middle-aged man and a jokester vanished without a trace, replaced by a ruthless man of action.
"—And one more thing!"
Kiana's voice came from the distance.
Her lively voice, as if it carried not a single shred of intelligence, instantly dispelled the solemn atmosphere.
"Jiang Cheng, you still owe me a piggyback ride... No, two! When are you going to pay up? I carried you twice, after all."
"Now?"
"Now?! Wait, wait, wait, I'm not ready yet—hey!!! You can't use something like this here!"
When Jiang Cheng scooped Kiana into his arms, there was no telling what expression she wore. All anyone could see was her fair skin turning crimson in the sunset.
"Cheng-kun, Kiana meant for you to put it down."
"Hey, in Japanese, 'it' makes it sound like I'm an animal! Mei-senpai, how could you..."
"—You heard wrong!"
Raiden Ryoma silently pretended he hadn't heard a thing and continued assigning tasks with a stern expression.
Siegfried, my friend.
Your daughter is beyond saving, too.
But I'm not going to apologize to you. If you hadn't left without a single word, Kiana wouldn't care so much about trust and promises. And she wouldn't be so eager to help Mei...
Without her running back and forth between you two, how could Mei have let someone into her heart?
Mei wasn't some frivolous woman!
Thump, thump, thump—
When they actually arrived at the Raiden Family estate, Jiang Cheng didn't even realize they were there.
It wasn't that he was absentminded. The place before him was simply too vast. It couldn't be called a house or even a mansion; it was a classical Japanese manor clearly meant for hundreds, even thousands, of people to live in together. As far as the eye could see, even the shortest distance from one end to the other spanned more than ten thousand meters.
It lacked the grandeur and prestige of a traditional European estate, but it was the very pinnacle of understated luxury.
The Japanese-style eaves were designed so beautifully that one could almost imagine the lovely blossoms of water blooming across the ponds when it rained.
Even Chiba Academy, which they'd visited earlier and which had made Cyrene's eyes light up—a massive complex of interconnected teaching buildings—couldn't begin to compare.
"Th-That's huge!" Kiana's mouth fell open.
"Kiana, don't you call yourself a young lady?" Raiden Mei narrowed her eyes slightly.
"Shut up! You're so annoying." Kiana bristled like a kitten whose tail had been stepped on. She abruptly folded her arms across her chest and turned her little head sharply to one side, perfectly recreating the textbook tsundere defensive pose.
Unfortunately, even the most dedicated tsundere couldn't deny that a sudden outburst of emotion meant someone had hit a sore spot.
—Even Cyrene's attention hadn't been diverted.
There were plenty of things she could have brought up, such as the fact that Kiana seemed to have been abandoned by her father.
But Raiden Mei wasn't cruel enough to stoop to that.
She merely put on an act, touching her soft lower lip as she casually remarked, seemingly without a care.
"So... 'young lady' is just a verbal tic for you, then? How strange."
"Kiana is a young lady."
Jiang Cheng's voice cut in between them.
Mei's casual pose instantly fell apart. Her gaze fixed on him, and the slender fingers she had pressed to her lips unconsciously applied a little more pressure.
But before Kiana could give him a grateful look, he immediately added, "Though she doesn't entirely count as one. Anyway, she's somewhere between the two."
"...What kind of answer is that?" This time, Raiden Mei was genuinely intrigued.
"Kiana's surname, Kaslana, has been passed down since the dawn of human history. Their ancestor was named Adam."
"—Adam?"
Raiden Mei tilted her head and widened her eyes without meaning to.
"Adam... Who's that?"
At first, Kiana looked just as baffled as Raiden Mei. But then, the girl who'd spent her childhood caught in the double spiral of fighting and wandering, and had never gone to school, cluelessly scratched the back of her head.
"???"
Raiden Mei stared at him in shock—
Especially after Kiana cluelessly scratched the back of her head, the look in Mei's eyes made it seem as though she was wondering whether Kiana was even a normal person with an acceptable level of intelligence.
Cyrene, who didn't belong to this world and could hardly be called anything but a newcomer, also had no idea. But after looking at Jiang Cheng's expression and realizing this was supposed to be common knowledge, she took a few small steps toward him and cautiously tugged at his sleeve.
"Adam was a figure from the religious epic, the Bible. He was the first human created by God," he patiently explained. "But you should be able to understand this, too—Adam wasn't merely a fictional figure in mythology. He really did live."
Raiden Mei nodded. After spending a day on the run and half a day getting beaten up, she wasn't going to act surprised about anything anymore. At this point, even if he told her there was someone in the world who'd lived for hundreds or thousands of years, she'd believe him.
"Thousands of years ago, as religion flourished, the Kaslanas were one of Schicksal's three great families. People of that era called them the Knight Family. They were far older than the Apocalypse Family, whose members served as bishops, and the Schariac Family, whose members served as saintesses. Times have changed, but Schicksal has never fallen from power. It remains the largest hidden organization in the world, and the Kaslana Family is still one of its three great families."
"The classic answer for the world's greatest power is the Papacy." Raiden Mei nodded calmly, even a little bored.
"—!"
She suddenly widened her eyes and looked at Kiana, who was nodding enthusiastically with a silly expression—
"Kiana is a young lady, and she isn't a young lady—"
"Could it be—?"
"Could it be?"
Kiana's eyes widened, too. A glimmer of anticipation shone in her blue eyes, though she couldn't have said what she was looking forward to.
"Could it be?"
Cyrene, who had no idea what was going on, saw that everyone there except A-Cheng looked shocked. So she went along with the crowd and widened her eyes, too.
Her clear green eyes were full of innocent curiosity, as if she had no clue what was happening but still wanted to join in.
"Kiana is the classic heroine from a hot-blooded manga who gets won over by the male lead—the only kindhearted saintess in an evil church that's been rotting away for a thousand years!"
Raiden Mei delivered the most classic trope from chuunibyou fantasies and wish-fulfillment manga and novels, one word at a time.
"Where the heck did you get that from? The evil church and its saintess were things from ages ago!"
"Huh?"
Raiden Mei tilted her head in a daze.
Her mysterious air vanished in an instant, replaced by an expression almost identical to Kiana's, who was also tilting her head in confusion.
"Isn't that the kind of story that's been popular these past few years? Like the Soldier King stories over in Shenzhou."
"Huh?"
Jiang Cheng seemed to catch their confusion and made the same face. The three of them stared at one another—
Three people, six eyes, facing each other in the twilight. The scene was downright ridiculous.
Something like that... Oh.
He understood in an instant.
Before he'd crossed over, those stories had already been hopelessly clichéd and ancient. But Honkai Impact 3rd's world was a realistic one, and it seemed to be only 2014.
...So that was it.
At a time when otherworldly transmigration stories hadn't yet been run into the ground, they were already starting to become formulaic and repetitive.
"I got that wrong," he admitted frankly. "But don't read too much into it, Kiana. You aren't a saintess—though in your story, you really are a very, very, very important friend."
"Me?"
"Her?"
Raiden Mei and Kiana pointed at each other and wore equally disgusted expressions.
Their lovely faces seemed to say, "How could that be?" Neither their blue nor their deep-violet eyes held anything but contempt.
"Tsk." ×2
They both turned their heads away.
When they realized they'd made the same sound, they both turned their heads back in opposite directions—
Their eyes locked, and faint sparks seemed to crackle between them. The air grew so hot that it almost smelled of something burning.
"Stop copying me?!" ×2
Jiang Cheng watched helplessly and slapped a hand to his forehead.
Then, just as the bickering threatened to get out of hand, he clapped his hands lightly, drawing their attention—
"You don't need to worry about what happens in the future. There's no longer any predetermined future. Just like Kiana said—the future you saw has already been changed."
"—!"
Kiana clenched her teeth.
A blush, like the rosy glow of the sunset piercing through the clouds, suddenly spread across her fair cheeks.
She casually shook her head, letting her long hair fall loose to hide the tempting pink.
It had felt so cool when she'd said it to Jiang Cheng before, and when she'd said it to Raiden Mei. So why did it feel so strange when someone else said it now?
"The past is set. The future is only a possibility," Jiang Cheng said, looking them straight in the eye. "And now, we've truly changed it."
"I won't blindly believe in prophecies. The future I saw was only one possibility. I'll treat it as a tool for gathering information more efficiently and share that information with you. We'll pool our ideas, figure out how best to use it, and establish an intelligence advantage. But let me be a little selfish and keep some of it to myself. Some things might not be suitable to tell you too early. At the very least, I should prepare the groundwork first."
"I get it, I get it."
Kiana, the one who needed to know the truth most of all, was instead patting her chest and nodding to show she understood.
Jiang Cheng had the feeling that ever since they'd drawn turtles on each other's faces, the girl had let down a lot of her guard. She no longer seemed as aloof as she'd occasionally appeared at first.
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