“You’ve worked hard, Lady Durandal,” Rita said, stepping forward.
“It’s not over yet.”
However, Durandal didn’t let down her guard.
She had a bad hunch that things were about to get way more troublesome.
Beep-beep, beep-beep!
Suddenly, the alarm on Rita’s emergency communicator blared.
The moment Rita picked up, a deafening explosion echoed from the other side of the line.
“Lady Rita, the base you’re at is gonna turn into a warzone real quick!
Be careful!” the Overseer of Schicksal’s Central Europe Branch shouted frantically.
The branch chief looked completely covered in soot and grime, with the Schicksal base behind him violently shaking every few seconds.
Not far behind him, Schicksal personnel were frantically packing up their gear.
“A warzone?
What on earth is happening right now?!” Durandal immediately demanded.
“A full-blown free-for-all war has broken out across Europe!
Every nation has gone completely mad and is tearing into each other!” the branch chief yelled back hurriedly.
BOOM!
Another explosion rocked the other end of the line.
“Chief!
Bad news!
We—”
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Static…
Bzzt…
bzzt…
Following several more thunderous explosions, the signal went completely dead.
Rita, Durandal, and the others stood there in stunned silence.
“…A war?”
“And a global free-for-all at that, spanning across Europe and likely the entire world,” Rita replied with a heavy sigh.
She pulled up the latest global news feeds from the past few months.
It wasn’t just Europe.
Conflicts big and small had flared up all across the globe.
In the past, Rita had almost exclusively focused on Durandal’s duties and Honkai-related incidents, paying little mind to mundane geopolitical affairs.
But looking over the recent news, she realized with a jolt that the entire world had been sitting on a powder keg waiting to detonate for a long time.
What had suppressed these nations and maintained world peace was always Schicksal’s sheer martial might and futuristic technology—the nations had simply lacked any capability to rebel.
However, once Rita logged into Schicksal’s global comms network, she was horrified to find it flooded with reports of Valkyrie squads from various regional branches being ambushed and expelled.
World governments had used hyper-potent neurotoxin anesthetics to knock out many Schicksal Valkyries before deporting them outright.
The nations of the world had been gearing up for war months ago—re-conscripting soldiers, expanding military industrial complexes on a massive scale, and even issuing mobilization orders.
Yet, because none of these actions involved Honkai incidents, and because the nations had initially done nothing more than trade verbal barbs, Schicksal had dismissed it entirely.
[GERMANY DECLARES WAR ON POLAND]
[RUSSIA DECLARES WAR ON UKRAINE]
[FRANCE ISSUES ULTIMATUM DEMANDING THE ANNEXATION OF THE LOW COUNTRIES]
[SCOTTISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE BREAKS OUT IN THE UK]
[SECOND AMERICAN CIVIL WAR ERUPTS]
[SHENZHOU CALLS FOR ALL NATIONS TO EXERCISE RESTRAINT]
Declarations of war and ultimatums big and small flooded in all on the same day.
“Lord Durandal, the Overseer has ordered us to return to Schicksal Headquarters immediately.” Rita didn’t want Durandal or the Immortal Blades squad getting dragged into Europe’s chaos.
Besides, they were currently right on the border between Germany and Poland—the Central European Branch Chief wasn’t exaggerating when he said this place would become a battlefield.
“Captain, the transport ship is prepped and ready,” a Valkyrie from the Immortal Blades ran up and reported.
“What about the people here?” Durandal asked, glancing at the Schicksal personnel stationed at the base, her kind heart filled with concern.
“Lord Durandal, there is no need to worry…” the base manager chuckled easily.
The base was equipped with a fallout bunker spacious enough to house everyone comfortably for several months.
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh!
Suddenly, dozens of rockets rained down from the sky.
Durandal instantly rocketed into the air, intercepting the incoming artillery mid-flight.
However, the very next second, an even denser barrage of rockets and artillery shells rained down from afar like a storm.
Durandal looked into the distance.
Densely packed German troops were operating hundreds, if not thousands, of rocket launchers and artillery cannons, pouring down an insane volume of firepower.
It wasn’t just the German army—Polish forces were also wildly firing rockets and artillery.
Several low-altitude cruise missiles were heading straight for the base.
No matter how mild-mannered Durandal was, being targeted so aggressively ignited a surge of anger in her chest.
BOOM!
BOOM!
Explosive fireballs flashed across the sky again as a blue-and-white silhouette darted around the base perimeter, smashing apart the sky-blotting artillery fire.
Yet, as formidable as Durandal was, she couldn’t intercept every single projectile.
A few artillery shells hit inside the base.
While Rita and the Valkyries of the Immortal Blades were unharmed, the ordinary Schicksal staff were instantly knocked off their feet by the shockwaves.
Rita rushed forward, rescuing several trapped personnel.
“Rita!
Take everyone and go hide inside!” Durandal commanded, suppressing her anger.
“Understood!
Please be careful, Lord Durandal!” Rita answered immediately, though a subtle sense of unease filled her heart.
Still, she couldn’t fathom how regular human armies could pose any threat to Durandal.
After all, Durandal hadn’t even gone all-out yet!
Once Rita and the others retreated into the safety bunker, Durandal soared high into the sky.
She understood the situation in her heart.
As Schicksal’s strongest S-rank Valkyrie in history, she was bound to be targeted by anyone hostile to Schicksal.
The German and Polish troops were merely pawns sent to test her limits.
“You can’t stop me with just this!”
Durandal shattered the sound barrier with her physical body, charging straight toward the German artillery positions.
Seeing Durandal hurtling through the sky toward them, the German gunners began fleeing in absolute panic.
A few brave soldiers tried to shoot back with their rifles, but even high-potency neuro-anesthetics had zero effect on Durandal—she didn’t feel a thing. Read this novel at novelping dot com for the best experience.
In an instant, the artillery cannons and rocket launchers across the battery were completely obliterated by Durandal.
She spared the soldiers; killing them was pointless, as they were just ordinary humans following orders.
Durandal quickly located the German command center and seized the German general who was attempting to flee in his command vehicle.
“Who gave the order?!” she demanded sternly, grabbing the general by his collar.
“I-It was an order from the Führer!” the general stammered, shaking like a leaf.
However, Durandal’s intuition told her that while the general was speaking the truth, it was also a lie.
The command came from the newly appointed German Chancellor, but the one actually pulling the strings wasn’t him.
Durandal let go of him, her brows furrowed slightly.
She had always left complex political scheming to Rita or reported it straight to Otto.
It seemed finding the puppet master behind this global war wasn’t going to be easy.
“Hm?!”
Durandal suddenly sensed mortal danger.
By pure instinct, she hurled her lance toward the threat.
A German soldier holding an odd, bizarrely shaped weapon was pierced through the chest in the blink of an eye, killed like a frail ragdoll.
Before Durandal could retrieve her lance, several pale-blue spherical energy barriers materialized around her.
Out of nowhere, dozens of strange tanks—triggering intense alarm bells inside Durandal’s mind—appeared out of thin air and surrounded her.
“Oh no!” Durandal gasped in shock, preparing to launch into the sky.
However, blue beams emitted by those tanks struck her simultaneously.
To her horror, she found herself completely immobilized.
What was worse, she could feel her body literally being rejected and ejected from this reality!
“Overload all weapon energy output to maximum!!!”
All Durandal could hear before everything faded was a sweet, slightly youthful yet mature voice shouting a command, right before she was hurled straight out of this world.
Watching the fading light of the teleportation effect, a massive weight was lifted off Bronya’s heart.
These tanks were equipped with Chrono-weaponry synthesized by Bronya’s imagination—weapons capable of flinging targets straight out of this world!
If they couldn’t defeat Durandal head-on, they’d simply throw her out!
Without coordinates, Durandal would be stuck drifting in the Sea of Quanta forever!
Although Bronya didn’t know whether Durandal was still within the realm of the Imaginary Tree or floating in the Sea of Quanta, she didn’t care.
As long as Durandal was no longer in the way, that was all that mattered.
“Withdraw,” Bronya ordered calmly, disabling her holographic projection.
The bright blue spherical light shields flickered to life once more.
The tanks—now overloaded and on the verge of breakdown—vanished from the battlefield into thin air.
The surviving German soldiers witnessed the entire scene, but shortly after, the memory of it was wiped clean from their minds.
Not long after, Rita, having lost all contact with Durandal, rushed frantically to the spot where Durandal had disappeared.
Yet, beside a few corpses of German soldiers and Durandal’s lance resting on the ground, there was nothing.
“The Super Goose Girl is out of the picture.
Next up: total assault on Schicksal HQ.”
Watching Bronya’s Honkai energy pool surge to unprecedented levels, Ren quickly decided to launch the offensive on Schicksal Headquarters as soon as possible and take down Otto once and for all.
Of course, neither Bronya nor Gray Wind would show up in person.
He wanted Otto to witness firsthand what true technological supremacy looked like.