Did I Fight Kal'tsit? Seriously?

Angelina moved over to the window, trying to find the trail left by the signal flare. But with the glaring warning signal in the sky, the chaos already present at the station became even more obvious. For the moment, she had no idea where that Catastrophe messenger was.

"Help people first, Angie!" Provence called from behind her. "I'm checking the geological logs. That messenger may have left behind leyline data. We need to know where the Catastrophe will break out. Can you find where that messenger is first?!"

"Got it!" Angie turned and met Saria's gaze... Well, she couldn't tell what Saria's attitude was beneath that helmet, but the Vouivre clearly nodded at her as well.

The staff in her hand began to operate. Angelina lunged out through the window, her coat fluttering in the wind. After an initial instant of descent, she shot skyward in the blink of an eye.

At least for now, the sky was her domain.

Meanwhile, Saria and Provence were far more seasoned than the little fox. The moment the signal flare went up, they began searching the transfer room for any usable clues.

The first thing Provence looked for was a portion of the records sealed away in the archives.

Catastrophe messengers had to leave regional records at the transfer room. That way, when later Catastrophe messengers arrived at this station, they could find documents and files recording Catastrophes and regional data for analysis. Geological reports and detailed Catastrophe records were likewise stored in the room.

The laboratory was beside the archives, where messengers analyzed geological materials.

The moment she pushed open the wooden archive door with her tail, blue light from the detection system swept across Provence's pupils before slowly opening a path for her.

Inside the archive room, eight double-layered metal filing cabinets lined the walls. Every drawer had a brass label slot embedded on its front. Faded ink on the outer labels read [Terra Calendar 1093–1097, Southwestern Quadrant Geological Activity Monitoring], and the edges bore dried blue residue that appeared to be some kind of Originium crystal suppressant.

Provence tried opening the cabinets marked [1097] one by one. It took considerable effort to barely pry one open, only for her to find it packed full of file folders, nearly jammed shut.

When she removed those file folders, she found the inside of the cabinet was almost equally chaotic, as though someone had forcibly ransacked it. Shredded documents and envelopes were scattered everywhere, carpeting the floor.

It even looked as though someone had tidied it up afterward. Otherwise, there had been no need to put those folders back inside.

Combined with what the commander had said earlier, certain questions now seemed to have answers.

But Provence wasn't overly affected. She simply removed the upper layer and reached deep into the cabinet—

Considering the potential effects of power outages, paper-preserved documents had gradually become more popular, especially after the sudden "Black Bee" Catastrophe in Ticarondo last year. But in most cases, Columbia's messengers stored large amounts of information electronically.

When her hand finally touched the button at the very back, a lattice storage rack rose automatically, and the crystal strip sealed in a hexagonal recess fell into her hand.

According to the operating guide on the inside of the cabinet door, these black prisms were meant to be inserted into the differential engine in the adjacent laboratory for reading. The date painted onto the crystal strip in white showed that the latest data update had stopped—thirteen days ago.

Provence didn't pause. Using the force of her tail, she sprang off the floor and turned toward the laboratory.

She rushed to the door, grabbed the handle, and twisted it hard.

Click. Click.

It wouldn't open from this side.

"Damn..." Only then did Provence remember that they hadn't entered through official channels, so naturally, they didn't have a key.

She turned to Saria. "The door's locked. We need to find the key—"

Boom!

Before she could finish, Saria's fist smashed into the door.

Her Enamel-coated arm punched straight through the mechanical lock. The entire door warped under the impact, and the alarm system was destroyed along with the lock before it could even sound.

"I found some clues over here." As Saria spoke, she rammed her shoulder into the tottering doorframe. Her gaze swept swiftly across every corner of the laboratory. "The Catastrophe messenger here likely ran into trouble. We need to catch up to Operator Angelina as soon as possible."

"Trouble?" Provence stepped over the threshold after her. "Was he silenced?"

Saria shook her head lightly. After handing Provence the man's identification documents, she immediately began studying the surroundings. "I'm not sure. I checked the rooms here just now, and there are severe signs of ransacking. Personal belongings were ripped apart, and there are large amounts of dried blood in the room that were never cleaned up. I don't know why the criminal chose not to deal with the scene first—"

At that instant, her pupils contracted sharply, and her body reacted before her mind did.

"Get down."

She barked the order, her voice exploding almost beside Provence's ear. Without hesitation, she grabbed the other woman by the collar and yanked her violently to the ground.

Before Provence could react, a powerful force tightened around her neck, throwing her backward. Her brain had yet to understand what was happening when her back hit the cold tiles. Then a violent current of air swept past her head, accompanied by a piercing whistle. Something exploded with a bang where they had just been standing.

By the time she slowly climbed back up, Saria was already on her feet, staring fixedly toward a corner of the room.

White light spread from her palm, enveloping the corner and neutralizing both the initial impact and the source of infection.

"An Originium bomb." Saria turned to explain to the silent Provence. "We were lucky. They likely intended to trigger it with a delay once someone fully entered the room, maximizing the blast coverage. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to protect the laboratory's contents."

But Provence only nodded blankly. The first thing she had thought of when the explosion went off had been the crystal strip in her hand, not her own life.

—but she soon had no room left to consider what this situation meant.

Once they shifted their attention away from the sudden explosion and toward the room itself, they realized that what they had been looking for was already right there.

In the sixty-square-meter space, the geological analysis bench alone occupied a third of the room. A microscope fitted with an Originium dust filter was secured to the tabletop, and a glass slide still sat beneath its objective lens.

Half an unerased waveform graph remained on the blackboard. The resonance peak marked in red chalk had already broken through the warning line, while white chalk beside it read [10 km southeast? Level Five.]

"This looks like the seismic source the previous Catastrophe messenger estimated." Saria lightly placed a hand against the blackboard and studied the data. "Can we infer when the Catastrophe will occur?"

"It'll take time, but judging roughly by the cycle above, it'll most likely happen sometime today. The soil temperature already shows the Catastrophe is close. Thankfully, we can still determine which direction to evacuate people."

Provence slowly walked over to the blackboard and looked down. A notebook lay open on the floor, resting quietly atop a magnetic-shielded safe in the corner.

The safe's surface bore signs of having been forcibly damaged, but it was now completely empty.

She cautiously approached. The latest page contained notes from thirteen days ago.

She picked up the notebook and briefly flipped through its final entries:

[This is a record from Catastrophe messenger Caleb.]

[Over the past three days, I've been gathering information about the climate west of the Gaspar Wasteland, trying to find traces of a Catastrophe... Strangely, every observable weather phenomenon has been normal lately, yet the soil temperature has remained wrong.]

[Using the instruments, I also detected abnormal leyline fluctuations. (Red note above: Rejected by Commander Roy during transfer console handover.) I sent these clues to Ticarondo, hoping my colleagues could find some new leads for me. Maybe it means there's a paper in this? I don't know.]

[The station has been strange lately. The soldiers who used to greet me seem to have been transferred to the rear, and a new group with more advanced equipment has arrived. I suppose that's good for them. That's how the wilderness is—there's no money to be made here, and there isn't even basic bathing or entertainment... Forget that. I hope whoever comes after me won't care about my notes. Catastrophe messengers ought to have conviction. Enjoyment is too distant for us.]

[Seriously, I hope this isn't anything major. I'm going to ask the commander here about the details in a moment.]

(From this point onward, several pages of the diary had been torn out, leaving only the final few lines.)

[I really wish I had a diary of my own, so I wouldn't have to tear pages out of an official notebook.]

[If a later messenger, or one of my friends, is reading this notebook, leave this place. The commander here wants to conceal the Catastrophe information. They want everyone else to be buried alongside this outpost. I should've known the moment all my belongings were taken during the inspection. They're looking for me now. Maybe I should fight for my life.]

[I went to fight for my life.]

[Friend, leave quickly. Don't lose your life. The Catastrophe only gave us thirteen days to breathe.]

[This place can't be saved anymore.]

The ink had bled into a large stain there, as if someone had pressed the bottom of a wet coffee cup directly onto the page.

When she turned another page, a photograph slipped out.

Provence's fingertips hovered above the dark brown stain on its surface.

In the image, even a dustproof visor couldn't hide the Perro boy's grin stretching from ear to ear. His left arm tightly held a wide-eyed Feline girl, while the V sign formed by his right hand had shoved the camera half an inch crooked. The tips of the girl's ears were red. Her chin rested against the riveted shoulder armor jutting from the boy's shoulder, while her eyelashes formed two arcs of golden light beneath the glaring wasteland sun, reflecting in her violet eyes.

At least in this photograph, their eyes were always fixed on the future.

Pegasus lightly released the wrist gripping the heat-dissipation valve at the back of the powered armor. The military armor he had nearly crushed into scrap immediately became a bird with broken wings, tracing an arc as it plunged straight toward the plaza below.

Perhaps the powered armor's suspension system responded to the situation. On the third second of its fall, the thrusters erupted in chaotic blue flames. Like a comet streaking across the sky, it flew straight toward a distant billboard. The left leg's armor plate tore free under the pressure, scraping across the station sign and slicing straight through the display behind it, which showed an arms company advertisement.

The dull boom of impact made the soldiers below hesitate for half a beat. They saw the powered armor's back cushioning layer crumple like a crushed aluminum can.

The Rusthammer member walked slowly through the smoke rising around him toward the commander who had fallen from the sky.

No one dared attack him with crossbows anymore. In fact, even the soldiers who remained didn't know why they were still there.

Right... That was right. A Catastrophe was coming. The Catastrophe messenger had fired a signal flare. All they had to do was follow that messenger's guidance and evacuate. There was no need to stay here and keep fighting this Rusthammer bastard.

With that thought, the first person lowered his powered crossbow.

Then came the second. Then the third.

The soldiers who had still held their ground could no longer resist the panic in their hearts. They knew perfectly well that against someone who could destroy the main watchtower with his bare hands and defeat Columbia's strongest powered armor, they would die in less than three seconds—so the signal in the sky became their only way out.

They didn't even spare a thought for Angelina, flying overhead and using her Originium Arts to help them escape, even though they had received orders to capture her not long ago.

It was the purest struggle for survival.

Only after most of the soldiers had fled did Gerald walk over to the powered armor and remove its suspension system by hand. He admittedly didn't understand that part of it, but that didn't mean he couldn't ask Saria about it later.

"Cough... Cough, cough."

A muffled cough resonated through the metal cavity inside the powered armor. Every tremor forced fresh beads of blood from the deformed cockpit. Although Gerald had layered wind around him on impact to avoid directly damaging the armor too badly, the direct collision had still inflicted serious internal injuries on the commander.

For his death to truly arrive, all it would take was anyone giving his head a single blow.

And just as death never spared its claws—a soldier-shaped figure slowly emerged from the gap left by the retreating troops and walked straight toward them.

Behind the mask, violet pupils gleamed with hatred beneath the crimson sky.

"I see." The commander could only lie with his head tilted to one side as he watched the grim reaper coming to kill him step by step. He breathed slowly, understanding dawning on him. He even had enough composure to smile. "I thought it was something else. So it's that Catastrophe messenger's friend... Good. Good thing you aren't from Raythean Industries or Blacksteel."

He barely shifted his neck, wanting to see what the person who had personally defeated him looked like. "Were you hired by that person too? My luck is terrible."

"Maybe not."

Gerald sighed softly and stepped in front of the advancing soldier.

The [soldier] slowly raised her head and looked at the person standing in her path.

"You're going to stop me?"

Unlike the mysterious, rambling manner she had shown before Angelina and the others, this [soldier] now radiated a savage bloodlust from head to toe. Her disguise and concealment had long been forgotten. Right now, she was more like a monster that had lost its mind.

"Though I can feel your urge to tear someone to pieces, I hope you can make it quick. Don't let anyone interrupt you."

Gerald took out a dagger he had picked up from the ground and tried to hand it to the suddenly flustered [soldier]. "Want this? It's better than a crossbow bolt, at least. I've tried it."

The [soldier] stared at this unexpected scene. After a moment of silence, she nodded and accepted the dagger from Gerald.

He could smell the aura of revenge clinging to this [soldier].

But honestly, he didn't care who was right or wrong, or whether revenge itself was blind. He didn't care whether she killed him, turned him into a human stick, or skinned him alive. The reason he did this was simple.

This woman didn't have much time left to live. There was no need to let anyone else interrupt her revenge, expose the truth, and make him remember things he had seen countless times and was destined to forget.

Listening to a stranger's tragic story would only sour his mood.

But clearly, someone else didn't think so.

"Hurry! Get to the exits and evacuate! The Catastrophe is about to hit!" Angelina, who had no idea how many trips she had flown back and forth, desperately using her Originium Arts to guide people and carry things, finally returned to the center of the station. She stared blankly at the scene before her. "Wait—you're the one who fired the signal flare?! That soldier!"

Ha.

The wind carried the footsteps of two more people to his ears.

The tension between his hooded brows eased a little as he watched the little fox girl descend from the sky and stand between the three of them.

The good news was that there would always be children willing to listen to stories that might be sad, or painful.

Flowers Blooming Within the Story

"Anyway, you two, please evacuate first! The Catastrophe is about to hit!"

Angelina knew her words sounded somewhat abrupt—one could even say they were painfully tactless—but what could she do? Like those Liberi friends who had been kept in the dark, she had no idea what had happened from beginning to end.

All she could do was try her best to do what she was best at.

The instant she finished speaking, she felt three gazes fall squarely on her—eyes carrying different emotions, yet all filled with pressure. Her entire body stiffened at once, as though frozen in place.

...Angelina was certain of one thing now.

Today would be the hardest day of her life so far.

The sight of the girl frozen stiff with fear struck Gerald as even more novel.

This Vulpo girl had found Provence and gathered the data from her monitoring ring; then, to warn people about the Catastrophe, she had sprinted across the wasteland for a full half hour; then she had accidentally entered the station, escaped from it, encountered Saria and himself; and finally, she had arrived at the station and taken on part of a Catastrophe messenger's duty, guiding others during evacuation.

Even though she had no idea what had happened the entire time.

She had simply kept running, kept moving forward, as if everyone else knew exactly what they needed to do while she alone was being passively swept along.

A sense of responsibility guided her like a thread. Even though the job of a messenger had never required her to go this far, Angelina did it without complaint.

The kindness deep in her heart could not be changed by hardship. Even in the face of wind and rain, she could force her way through the downpour and carve out her own path. She would suffer setbacks and hardships. Her future was destined not to be smooth, but her journey would surely shine as brilliantly as glass beneath the sun.

At least, that was what Gerald thought—he was becoming more and more interested in Rhodes Island.

"Good luck, miss." He sealed a trace of wind beside Angelina and was the first to withdraw. "I'll leave this to you. Be careful."

Before acting, he had deliberately left a trace of wind on Saria so he could track her location at any time. The buildings in the station were not far apart, and he had heard their earlier conversation clearly. He had already digested all the important information.