From the scarred landscape of the ruins, you casually pulled a white bedsheet, wrapping the surprisingly clean fabric around your body like a makeshift toga.
During the ferocious battle against the Herrscher, your own clothes had been blasted to ash by her violent lightning.
With the fight over and your body exposed, you had simply found a place to sit and wait.
You had nothing on hand to properly handle the Herrscher’s remains, but you knew it wouldn’t be long before someone arrived.
As expected, a flash of pink and white appeared on the horizon.
Elysia came leaping gracefully across the jagged piles of debris, her movements light and effortless as she rushed toward your location.
Upon seeing you sitting amidst the wreckage, she was at your side in an instant.
Her hands fluttered over you, a frantic, clumsy search for injuries.
Only after confirming you were whole did she finally let out a shaky breath, pulling you into a tight, warm embrace.
“You really scared me to death,” she murmured into your shoulder, her voice trembling slightly.
“Don’t you ever do something so dangerous again.”
Held within that soft, fragrant embrace, a fleeting thought crossed your mind: this wasn’t a bad feeling at all.
The hero, fresh from the battlefield, receiving the embrace of a beautiful girl after securing victory.
It was a scene straight out of a storybook.
You were so lost in the moment that you failed to notice the faint, knowing smile that curled at the corner of Elysia’s mouth.
After the body of the Third Herrscher was properly handled and secured, you returned to the temporary base established by the Flame-Chasers.
In a quiet corner, you spotted Kevin, the indomitable warrior, leaning against a wall, fast asleep.
You decided not to wake the exhausted man.
Before you could even take another step, however, a figure burst from one of the command tents.
It was MEI.
She ran straight to you, her composure breaking as she threw her arms around you in a desperate hug.
You reached up and gently stroked her long, flowing black hair, your steady presence a silent comfort until her frantic emotions finally began to settle.
Once you had changed into a fresh set of clothes, you were dispatched to the main headquarters of the Flame-Chasers.
Just as you arrived at the entrance, you saw a man in a suit being roughly handcuffed and escorted onto a waiting helicopter.
You paid him no mind; his identity was of no concern to you.
A short while later, you learned from Mobius that the man being taken away was the very official who had issued the idiotic orders that led to the disaster.
A cold frustration settled in your gut.
Taking him away like this was a slap on the wrist, a protective measure disguised as punishment.
Had you known, you would have intercepted that helicopter yourself.
You would have made sure he was properly tortured first.
A dozen slaps to start, then perhaps lock him in a pen with a few boars and sows.
The thought was crude, but it matched the contempt you felt.
A week passed.
You and MEI remained at the Flame-Chasers’ facility, stationed in Mobius’s laboratory and assisting her with her various biological experiments.
During this time, one of Mobius’s assistants, a woman named Blanca, resigned from the lab.
She held a wedding shortly after, and you made sure to attend.
Then, on a day like any other, you were notified to report to the main conference room for a meeting.
You entered the room alongside the Flame-Chasers staff member who had summoned you.
The moment you stepped inside, every eye in the room locked onto you.
The air was thick with hostility.
This wasn’t a meeting, you realized.
Spotting an empty seat at the massive table, you walked straight to it, pulled it out with a dismissive scrape, and dropped into it.
Your gaze swept across the assembly.
Men and women of various nationalities and appearances sat stiffly, with the flags of their respective nations placed neatly before them.
Before you could even open your mouth to speak, one of them, a man with sharp Western features, slammed his hands on the table and shot to his feet.
“Why didn’t you notify them about the Honkai outbreak?!” he bellowed, his voice ringing with self-righteous fury.
A muscle in your jaw twitched.
In one fluid, explosive motion, you launched yourself from your chair, landing silently on the polished surface of the conference table.
You took two long strides across it and drove your foot directly into the man’s shouting face.
The sickening crunch silenced the room.
Everyone stared, utterly stunned.
They had never imagined such a thing could happen in this sanctum of political power.
But you weren’t satisfied.
As the man tumbled backward from the force of the blow, you followed him to the floor.
You began to stomp on him, your voice a low, furious snarl.
“I haven’t even fucking questioned you yet!
How the fuck do you have the nerve to question me?!”
Each word was punctuated by a heavy stomp.
“I told you the Honkai Energy concentration in that area was abnormal!
I told you to send people, to handle it, to evacuate the locals!”
“And what was your response?
You said my words were bullshit!
That they didn’t matter!
And what did the local government say?
They said they wanted to protect their goddamn performance metrics!
They didn’t want to cause ‘excessive panic’!”
“Now that it’s all gone to hell, you want to shift the blame onto me?
What am I to you, your father or your mother?
If I didn’t want to help, why would I have bothered finding a way to release the Breathing Technique to the public in the first place?”
Your voice rose, filled with cold contempt.
“You expect me to take the fall for you, to be dragged out and shot just so you can feel comfortable?
So my life isn’t a life, then?”
You kicked him again, your gaze sweeping over the other shocked faces.
“An organization meant to save people from disaster will inevitably be dragged down into the mud by vermin like you.”
Hearing this, several other officials in Western-style suits bristled, feeling the sting of your accusation.
“Fuck you!” one of them shrieked, his composure shattering.
“Guards!
Guards, arrest this madman immediately!”
At his call, a squad of armed guards burst into the room, their rifles immediately leveling at you.
In this life, and all the ones before, there was nothing you hated more than having a gun pointed at your head.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, you were in front of the nearest guard.
Your hand closed around his weapon.
With a sharp twist, you snapped the rifle in two.
Gripping the front half of the barrel, you brought it down with brutal force against the guard’s helmeted head.
Clang.
Clang.
Thud.
Clang.
In seconds, it was over.
All the soldiers were on the ground, their status unknown, their bodies twisted at unnatural angles.
Blood began to pool on the pristine floor, staining the expensive carpet a deep crimson.
The conference room had become a bloody purgatory.
Your gaze, cold and sharp as glass, instantly locked onto the few officials who had called for the guards.
Their eyes were wide with a terror so deep it stole the air from their lungs.
Their hearts hammered against their ribs in a frantic, panicked rhythm.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, they screamed internally.
Shouldn’t there have been an explanation?
A debate?
A chance for them to sit high above the fray, passing moral judgment and acting as lofty arbiters to maximize their own interests?
You didn’t care about their terrified expressions or their shattered expectations.
You bent down, picked up a blood-stained rifle piece from the floor, and walked over to them.
You pressed the jagged metal barrel against the temple of the man who had shouted first.
“Say one more fucking word,” you whispered, your voice dangerously calm.
“Did you even bother to find out who killed the Third Herrscher?
I’m the one who took it out.”
You leaned in closer, your voice dropping to a venomous hiss.
“You fucking dare play these political games with me?
You think because I’m young, I don’t know anything?
You sons of bitches.”
Then, you began.
You unleashed a blistering torrent of insults, a masterclass in profanity delivered in a half-dozen languages.
You centered the tirade on their mothers, using their ancestors for eighteen generations as the radius of your verbal assault, rebuking the men until their faces were flushed beet-red with a mixture of rage and humiliation.
When you were done, you offered them a chilling smile.
After all, you were the one holding the ‘truth’ now—the cold, hard truth aimed right at their heads, with blood from the firearm dripping, drop by drop, onto their expensive suits.
Even after the verbal lashing, you still felt unsatisfied.
You delivered another swift kick to each of their faces for good measure, followed by a few sharp stomps to their limbs, leaving them whimpering on the floor.
Across the room, the other delegates shuddered, a wave of cold relief washing over them.
They were immensely fortunate that they hadn’t participated in that initial, foolish confrontation.
Your gaze then shifted, sweeping past the terrified and the broken, until it landed on a certain Shenzhou official.
Throughout the entire explosion of violence, he had remained perfectly still, calmly sipping his tea as if watching a mildly interesting play.
As your eyes met his, the other party very calmly set down his teacup.
He looked at you, not with fear or condemnation, but with something akin to appreciation.
Then, he extended an invitation.
[Elysian’s Note:
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