The crisp sound echoed by her ear, soft and lingering.
They even put cushions under their feet. Were these two chuuni?
She furrowed her brows.
She watched the two chuuni cross the grove and walk through the crowd approaching from the front—
Wait—!
Her eyes abruptly widened.
Her amethyst eyes stared in disbelief at the two people ahead, whose bodies were already halfway through several classmates.
Were... were they magic props?
Or a projector?
"Hey, how dare you show your face in front of me again? Looking for a beating?"
"You disgusting bitch, Raiden Mei."
Clear insults came from beside her.
The light returned to Raiden Mei's eyes. The classmates she'd assumed were projections were now standing three steps away, their chins held high as arrogantly as ever.
—It was real.
Their voices and attitudes, even the paper balls they'd thrown and the arcs they'd traced through the air—
She'd instinctively caught one in her hand.
She turned her palm over and opened it, looking at the crumpled paper.
—That was real, too.
Unable to make sense of such an unreal phenomenon, the fallen young lady immediately hurried after them.
They weren't walking very fast—at least, the boy wasn't. In an instant, she stepped in front of them and blocked their way.
"What... do you mean?"
Just as expected, a simple projection and some Memoria were enough to arouse anyone's curiosity.
"I'm just showing you the truth about the world."
He spread his hands openly. He didn't seem the least bit displeased at being stopped.
"You should be able to feel that you're different from the people around you. Everyone looks human. This seems like an ordinary, mundane world, but in reality, many unusual beings are hidden beneath the Surface World."
"..."
Anyone hearing this would probably think the person in front of them was a chuuni.
But Raiden Mei pressed her lips together.
Yes.
She couldn't deny that.
Her father's standing was so high that even the prime minister had to bow and scrape before him. He held sway over the entire city like a feudal lord. His wealth seemed endless. And—
The technology that would occasionally reveal itself, clearly far beyond the capabilities of this era.
And the swordsmanship passed down through her family for generations.
Raiden Mei still remembered the day she received her master's certificate, when she cut through an iron pillar with a single slash.
It was solid steel, one hundred percent pure. Even those Olympic champions on TV couldn't do something like that.
She'd been young then, and had spent some time obsessed with manga. She'd thought she'd inherited some special bloodline or had something evil sealed inside her—that was why she possessed strength beyond human limits. Later, under her father's strict supervision, she'd cast aside those thoughts and focused on her studies, becoming a young lady worthy of the Raiden Family.
But—
After everything that happened...
"So..." Her voice trembled slightly. "Was my father... imprisoned because of something in the Inner World?"
Jiang Cheng clearly saw her eyes suddenly light up, as if they'd absorbed the lightning in the heavens.
"No."
He spoke calmly.
"He really did commit financial fraud."
"Bzzzt—!!!"
Lightning flashed and crackled.
It was the abstract energy of matter, spilling from the girl's body as tangible bolts of electricity.
After being filled with hope, she'd been plunged into the abyss.
Even her nearly numb body felt that shock anew.
—Despair.
Unlike everyone else, who could do nothing but rage helplessly, the despair within this girl found an outlet in the form of lightning. Along with that energy, something else appeared just as abruptly—
—Honkai Energy Erosion.
Purple patterns sprouted from the tip of her little finger, spreading wildly like spring shoots after rain.
In an instant, most of his left hand was swallowed up.
The patterns kept climbing.
His wrist. His forearm. They were about to reach his elbow.
The pain lasted only an instant—the nerves burned away the moment they touched the Honkai Energy—but waves of pain signals, one after another, surged forth, almost merging into an endless sea.
"—!"
His heart thundered in his chest, each beat so heavy it seemed about to shatter his ribs, making his eardrums ring.
For a moment, Jiang Cheng even felt grateful.
Grateful that he'd just let go of the girl's hand.
Otherwise, pain of this intensity would have made him grab at anything within reach, regardless of who it belonged to or whether they wanted him to.
He gritted his teeth, barely enduring it until the nerves burned through completely. Then he lost some sensation in his left hand.
For some reason—
At the edge of his vision, a glazed light began to ripple.
"I won't tolerate this!"
5. Your Father Really Did Commit Financial Fraud
This wasn't an incantation meant to conceal traces.
It was something else—something he could instinctively sense as sharp and keen, a blade whose outline glimmered in the haze.
Jiang Cheng realized that Cyrene, who'd been standing quietly beside him, had stepped forward at some point. The shadow beneath her bangs happened to hide every expression on her face.
—As calm as the sea.
—Uneasy.
He could feel deep down that something was wrong with Cyrene, but he couldn't tell what it was.
"So... you were trying to hurt me, too?"
Raiden Mei's voice was dark and sharp, like a haunting that clung to the bones. It was as if someone were scraping their fingernails hard across a pane of glass, producing a shrill sound that sent chills down the spine.
—As lightning appeared around her.
"Ah... I knew it... How..."
"How could anyone be different..."
Before Jiang Cheng could add anything, red had already begun to stain the girl's eyes.
Her amethyst eyes, as bright as thunder in a clear sky, were now seeping with a genuine, bloodthirsty scarlet.
"—But financial fraud is nothing to worry about!"
His voice cut through the lingering lightning. "If anything, for a tycoon of your father's stature, the money he embezzled wouldn't even count as a flaw in his character."
The lightning subsided like clouds dispersing.
Raiden Mei stood frozen in place, like a robot with its power supply unplugged, staring blankly at him.
—What... had he said?
"Your sense of morality is far too strong. The true elite of this world... skin people alive and eat children."
His voice had lost its earlier steadiness.
The aftershocks of the pain still rippled through his nerve endings, like foam left on the beach after the tide receded, nibbling away at his consciousness, one small mouthful at a time.
It made his words halting, but also gave each one a certain undeniable conviction.
"They make a small opening on a private island that leads directly to the sea. After killing people like shrimp, they throw the heads through the opening into the sea and eat the bodies."
"Or they recreate the myth of the Virgin Mary's birth—gang-rape little girls, then torture them to death and eat them."
"They play with young boys and girls, then eat them... Red Shoes. A group of people take knives and hunt down girls who try to escape, kill them, then peel off their skin... and make it into red shoes..."
"After starving children to death... they say they're more tender that way... Christmas trees... little lambs... clay-pot rice and sliced pork offal."
The girl's eyelashes trembled.
"I can tell you hundreds of cases like these. That's the kind of thing the real elites get up to."
After confirming that the Honkai Energy swirling around them had settled down, Jiang Cheng stopped deliberately bringing up lurid topics to hold her attention.
"Your father included. Technically, he committed financial fraud, but it had absolutely nothing to do with why he ended up in prison. Even if he'd embezzled ten or a hundred times more, it wouldn't have affected him in the slightest."
"The real issue—"
"Is that an opponent of his in the Inner World, a woman named Cocolia, wants to take ME Corp, that gigantic money-printing machine."
Jiang Cheng delivered the whole long explanation in one breath, but by now, Raiden Mei's attention wasn't on her father anymore.
"What you said... about what the elites get up to?"
"A-Cheng, are those things... true?"
Even Cyrene's eyes had widened. Her fingertips, still glowing with a trace of glazed light, twisted restlessly against her chest.
"They do exist, and not in ancient times—in the modern world, right now. But none of that has anything to do with us. Your father, Raiden Ryoma, has never done anything like that."
Jiang Cheng changed the subject without hesitation.
"The important thing now is—"
"You."
Raiden Mei obediently pointed a finger at herself, her slender neck instinctively leaning back.
"Me?"
"Yes."
Jiang Cheng nodded without hesitation.
"Raiden Mei, you possess countless opportunities and a power strong enough to overturn society as it is and penetrate deep into the Inner World. But that power comes with danger."
"Like in the novels and manga you used to read—there are many people from different factions who have set their sights on you because of this power. Most of them mean you harm."
"And the one closest to you, the one best able to control you, and the source of the bullying you're suffering now—"
"Is Cocolia, the woman who sent your father, Raiden Ryoma, to prison and seized ME Corp."
In truth, his change of subject hadn't worked at all. She was still fixated on those depraved things he'd mentioned earlier.
Before you continue