Honkai Double Traverse, Taking Cyrene to Honkai Impact 3rd

A seam suddenly appeared in the middle of the wall before them.

Then the two sides slid apart—

A vast hollow, so enormous it made one wonder if an entire city had been hollowed out, appeared before their eyes.

Raiden Ryoma turned around and spread his right hand.

"—Go ahead and show us what you can do."

Countless openings appeared in the empty floor. Instruments of all kinds, whose names no one could identify, rose out of the ground and precisely arranged themselves into several distinct areas.

A square detached itself from the wall on the left.

It spun in midair, revealing a screen on its back. Three emoticons resembling human faces appeared.

"—Instrument installation complete."

The cold mechanical voice echoed through the vast room.

The tests could begin.

With Raiden Ryoma's gesture, a simple signal appeared in everyone's minds.

"I've kept most of Schicksal's test data for D- to A-rank Valkyries, as well as a very small amount for S-rank Valkyries. I copied all the information I could access, for a total of 3,740 files." Raiden Ryoma turned and stepped aside. "Please follow the instructions and perform the corresponding actions."

Naturally, Jiang Cheng went first.

Of the many tests and instruments, the most basic measured punching power, grip strength, overall force output, running speed, reaction speed, observational ability, and endurance.

He walked forward and stood in the designated area. Following the AI's instructions, he began a comprehensive physical assessment, working through the tests one by one.

"—Thud!"

He threw a punch.

The impact caused by nothing but the force of the punch and its initial speed seemed to surpass the sound barrier.

Even the slightest release of his aura sent it surging outward. The purely physical force of the attack alone was enough to make Raiden Ryoma, standing dozens of meters away, stumble for an instant.

He hurriedly adjusted his stance and barely managed to steady himself, then brushed his windblown hair back into place.

The moment he looked up, his pupils contracted sharply.

"—!"

The instrument had been torn apart completely.

The test wall was designed to withstand a direct hit from a Honkai fusion missile and temperatures of tens of millions of degrees without leaving so much as a dent. Now, it bore a clear mark.

It wasn't simply a fist-shaped dent. It had been punched clean through.

It had split outward from the middle.

Like a brick cleaved in two, the two halves of the main structure fell to either side under the pull of gravity. Fragments of metal, violently broken by the force, rolled across the floor as the shock wave scattered them everywhere.

"..."

Silence.

Raiden Ryoma opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Even after repeating this several times, he couldn't hide the shock in his eyes.

"...A little underwhelming."

Jiang Cheng shook his fist and remarked casually.

"—Are you kidding me?!"

At that moment, Raiden Ryoma's voice broke through the reserve expected of someone from the Far East.

The finger he pointed at the wreckage was trembling.

"That's ███ Steel! One layer has more defensive power than hollowing out an entire mountain!"

"Why would you think that the strongest S-rank Valkyries, who can fight Herrschers once they're equipped with a full set of gear, couldn't destroy a mountain?"

Jiang Cheng replied without batting an eye, his tone as matter-of-fact as if he were pointing at the sky and saying the weather was nice.

"You should've checked the map yesterday and seen that wasteland where I fought the clone soldiers and the Titan Legion under Cocolia's command. Aside from the ground I smashed and the mountains I tore apart, the area had been forcibly flattened dozens of meters down. That was simply the result of Raiden Mei standing there after becoming a Herrscher."

"She didn't need to use her authority or attack. She didn't need to have any conscious malice or desire to destroy. The thunder surrounding her alone already surpassed every natural disaster in human history."

His voice was as calm as if he were reading from an instruction manual, but that very lack of emotion made his words seem...

—Impossible to dispute.

"Only superhumans like that can take on an entire civilization by themselves. Even the crudest use of their power can easily destroy a city with one blow and affect the weather across hundreds of thousands of kilometers."

"..."

Raiden Ryoma fell silent.

After a while, he gave a slight nod.

He'd once thought that making Plasma Kagehide would allow him to kill Mei after she fell to becoming a Herrscher. He probably had never realized just how laughable that idea was.

"Let's move on to the next test." His voice carried a strange calm, as if he'd given up trying to think. "There's a target made of ███ Steel 1,337 kilometers ahead. Can you see it?"

Jiang Cheng nodded.

"Then I'll make it move freely within a three-kilometer radius at three times the speed of sound. Can you still keep track of it?"

Jiang Cheng nodded again.

"I'll keep shrinking the range. Let's say the distance is increased a thousandfold. If you can hit it, try attacking."

Jiang Cheng held up three fingers.

A golden mark on his left arm briefly dimmed—then the familiar golden radiance appeared on its own.

He grasped a wisp of burning golden flame.

His left hand closed—

The great golden bow appeared out of nowhere once more.

The burning flame turned into an arrow. He stepped forward, pinched the blazing arrow between three fingers, and set it against the bowstring.

The muscles in Jiang Cheng's arms tensed as he fixed his gaze on the target, which looked as clear as if it were right in front of him.

Then—

—He fired.

"Boom—boom—boom!"

Three sonic booms burst out in an instant, as if tearing the heavens and earth apart, each loud enough to rupture human eardrums.

And that was nowhere near the limit of its speed. It was merely the limit of what human hearing could detect.

There was no way to hear a fourth boom.

Because the arrow had already arrived.

—A strike capable of leveling heaven and earth!

"—!!!"

The target on the screen vanished.

The three kilometers of wall behind it vanished as well.

All that remained was a smooth, semicircular crater, deep enough to bury a skyscraper.

The ground along its path had been torn open by a massive fissure. The floor, made of some unknown steel, was as fragile as shoddily made glass.

The attack hadn't even needed to make direct contact. The slightest brush from its shock wave had left behind a horrifying chasm.

"..."

For the third time, Raiden Ryoma's mouth fell open.

This time, he didn't close it again.

He was neither a woman nor the bearer of a natural Stigmata, and he'd spent all this time honing his swordsmanship. He'd probably never truly taken part in a high-level battle or witnessed the terror of a natural disaster firsthand.

Yet a man like that had dared to confidently claim he could fight his way into Schicksal and kill Otto.

Raiden Ryoma recalled what Jiang Cheng had said earlier. The calm, matter-of-fact look in his eyes suddenly seemed entirely reasonable.

Raiden Ryoma silently pushed his dislocated jaw back into place.

There was no point using the instruments here to measure anything else. Another attack like that could tear the entire building apart and bury everyone beneath it.

"How many times can you use an attack like that?" he asked, trying as hard as he could to regain his composure.

"Unlimited," Jiang Cheng answered.

"If I'm not mistaken, one of the golden marks on your left hand dimmed just now."

Raiden Ryoma took his glasses out of his pocket, allowing him to see more clearly the golden markings hidden beneath the black fabric, still conspicuous and seemingly burning every second.

"They're linked to my anger." Jiang Cheng rolled up his left sleeve to show the markings on his skin, like seething molten gold and boiling lava. "As long as I'm angry enough, they'll keep appearing. My output is also linked to my anger. What you just saw was just my ordinary state."

"...So that wasn't even you unleashing your power? Just an ordinary attack? And your combat endurance doesn't come from external energy, but from your emotions?"

Raiden Ryoma's voice had warped. It came out as a shrill, nearly voiceless scream.

"That's right." Jiang Cheng nodded.

One of the elements of the Path of Destruction was anger. If the Hunt had granted him the ability to see his targets and never miss, then Destruction was what gave him the reason to burn his enemies to ashes.

He'd only taken three steps along the Path of the Hunt, but his strides on the Path of Destruction would be much farther. Back in Aedes Elysiae, he'd thought of destroying the world more than once, terrified he'd be found out. Before transmigrating, he'd also wished the world would end while he was browsing the internet.

It was only because he'd always been too weak that Cyrene had managed to soothe him every time. She was the only one who could make him forget about Laigushi.

Especially after yesterday's nightmare, he felt that his destructive power had increased by at least a quarter.

Raiden Ryoma was already too exhausted to comment.

He waved a hand to signal Jiang Cheng to stop the tests, then looked at Raiden Mei. Her expression was so gentle that it made his heart ache. For some reason, it also made him want to clench his fists.

"Mei, it's your turn."

"...Okay."

If this had happened yesterday, she might have looked dazed and asked, even though she already knew the answer, "Me?"

But now, Raiden Mei simply stepped forward without hesitation. With each crisp step of her high heels, her long hair, tied into a ponytail, came loose a little more.

"—Wait!"

Jiang Cheng hurriedly raised a hand to stop her.

While everyone looked on in confusion, he turned to Raiden Ryoma, who stood at the front.

"Uncle Ryoma, is your resistance to Honkai Energy strong enough?"

"—!"

Raiden Mei realized the mistake she'd nearly made. Her ponytail, which had been floating gently despite the lack of wind, immediately settled. Her dark purple hair rested quietly on her shoulders.

"..."

Raiden Ryoma really wanted to say that he could at least approach his own daughter.

He'd even dared to develop Plasma Kagehide as a weapon to fight Herrschers, secretly deciding that if Raiden Mei became an uncontrollable Herrscher, he would end her life with his own hands.

—No.

After witnessing just how terrifying the strongest people in this world were, he knew that everything he'd created was as insignificant as a blade of grass.

He'd already discarded those presumptuous ideas.

So...

"I can't do it. I'll leave the rest to you."

PS:

As for the plan targeting Kiana later on, Otto only knew a little and understood even less. He had no idea why Herrschers retained their humanity, yet went ahead and carried out this kind of experiment on his own.