“How could she just end it!
I wanted to watch more—I was this close to having a reason not to go to class.
Waaah.”
Kiana stared at the place where the screen had been, lower lip jutting, expression fully tragic.
Her excuse to skip afternoon classes—the most detested general studies block—had evaporated with the broadcast.
But never mind that simple-brained Tuna who hadn’t even started evolving yet.
Meanwhile, in the Previous Era, Elysia watched the end of the stream with those softly shimmering pink eyes.
Barely an hour—and yet she’d collected an extraordinary amount of information.
She needed to share it with someone.
“Which little cutie to tell~?”
She tilted her pretty face, thinking, and one image surfaced immediately: a certain green-haired doctor who was never particularly known for her way with words.
Her eyes lit up.
She was on her feet in an instant, already heading for Mobius’s laboratory—already quietly anticipating the look of disbelief on that face.
She was rather looking forward to it.
In a corner of Arc City, Raven watched the stream end without much visible reaction.
Her only real thought about the broadcast was whether it could somehow be converted into money.
She thought about her savings account and sighed heavily.
“When am I ever going to afford that island.”
Then something shifted.
She reached into her coat and withdrew an envelope—sealed with a serpent’s mark—and listened to the sound of children laughing somewhere nearby.
Something settled behind her eyes.
A decision crystallized.
….
Our protagonist, meanwhile, was genuinely reluctant to close the stream at all.
She’d have loved to push through Chapter 1 of the main story—the content had so many standout moments ahead, and if her theory about the viewers was correct, streaming those scenes was going to be something else.
But the System wouldn’t allow it.
Definitely run by some capricious cat.
She checked the time, tossed her phone aside, stretched out across the bed, and lay there not moving.
〖System〗 First stream concluded.
Calculating rewards.
〖System〗 Congratulations—3,000 Crystals received.
Xiyue’s eyes snapped open.
She yawned, then pulled up the reward gacha interface—similar layout to the Supply draws.
She studied her Crystal count and debated.
Ten-pull, or single?
The question didn’t occupy her long.
As a devout practitioner of single-pull discipline, she made her choice.
One flash of gold.
“A golden legend—!”
〖System〗 Congratulations!
You’ve received the five-star Stigma: ‘Ji Lin.’
Stigmata?
Stigmata mattered—both in gameplay and in the story.
Mechanically, the difference between a three-star and a five-star exclusive set on the same Valkyrie was enormous.
Narratively, Stigmata were tied to Honkai Energy: they granted bearers the ability to master and collect that energy, allowing them to become warriors capable of rivaling even a Herrscher.
Natural Stigmata occurring in a human was roughly a one-in-a-million chance.
That alone told you how precious they were.
Among Schicksal’s Valkyries, only the three great families carried natural Stigmata.
Every other Valkyrie used artificial ones—and the discovery of artificial Stigmata owed everything to a certain devoted champion of pure love.
That story could wait.
The point was: this golden lifeline had arrived at exactly the right moment.
Staying at the academy was safe enough on its own—but her assignment was to follow Kiana everywhere and report every single move back to Otto.
She hadn’t thought through what that meant when she’d accepted.
Now that she did, it was clearly a trap.
She was going to need real combat capability.
With Ji Lin’s Stigma, Ji Xuanyuan’s Stigmata were secured.
A wave of heat surged up her back—and then power began to flood through her in a steady, continuous tide.
For one bright moment she felt as though she could utterly stomp Tuna into the ground, before the thought dissolved on contact with reality.
Kiana’s constitution was something else entirely; a freshly Stigmatized newcomer wasn’t in that league.
It didn’t matter.
Avoiding direct combat as much as possible—that was the plan.
A thought surfaced.
She addressed the System carefully.
“System—are these viewers people from the Honkai world?”
〖System〗 The System cannot answer.
Host must discover this independently.
The non-answer was answer enough.
Xiyue narrowed her eyes.
Ten to one.
The usernames were beginning to resolve into something coherent.
No Exams Thanks—almost certainly Kiana, because across the entire Honkai world, only Kiana Kaslana hated exams with quite that fundamental intensity.
Wants to Buy an Island, with that particular island obsession—had to be Raven, Lady Raven herself.
And Miss Pink Elf♪?
As a devoted follower of the Church of Elysia, she really should have seen that one coming.
My goddess—Elysia!
Thinking of Elysia’s knowing question in the stream chat, Xiyue felt her lips curve without meaning to.
That was so perfectly something Elysia would do.
She shook herself out of it, feeling oddly energized—and something else, quieter: a faint, hopeful weight.
They all know what’s coming.
Could that change anything?
Could the tragedies be avoided?
Can’t wait for the next stream.
She buried her face in the pillow, lost pleasantly in the thought—
The alarm went off.
Xiyue grabbed her phone.
1:45 PM.
“Damn—I’m going to be late!”
She launched off the bed in one motion, stripped her pajamas, yanked open the wardrobe, and threw on her St.
Freya teaching uniform.
Fifteen seconds from prone to dressed.
A ponytail went in, textbooks and exam papers got grabbed, a bread roll got clenched between her teeth, and then she was sprinting.
With the Stigma’s enhancement her legs carried her to the classroom building’s entrance with five minutes to spare.
She slowed to a dignified walk.
“Xiyue-sensei—a moment?”
A familiar voice behind her—that distinctive, commanding onee-san tone.
She turned.
Scarlet eyes.
Red hair.
Murata Himeko.
Xiyue’s greeting came out without thinking.
“Himeko-senpai—what’s up?”
Himeko fell into step beside her with practiced ease, slinging an arm around Xiyue’s shoulders.
“Xiyue—any chance I could take tomorrow’s class?
The Valkyrie mock exam’s in a few days, and I want to get them through some drills.”
“No problem at all, Himeko-senpai.” Xiyue tilted her head to look at her.
“I’ll get through today’s test review and then I’m free.
Your class, tomorrow.”
Himeko’s grip tightened; she let out a bright, easy laugh.
“You’re a lifesaver, Xiyue.
I owe you a drink—tomorrow, all right?”
Xiyue and Himeko had graduated from the same university in the original body’s timeline—after which the original had gone into desk work at Schicksal headquarters, and when Xiyue arrived, Otto had slotted her into St.
Freya as an informant.
She’d met Himeko on her first day, discovered they were senpai and kouhai from university, and found herself assigned to the same class.
A handful of real conversations and an ongoing pattern of Himeko borrowing her lesson time had naturally, without either of them particularly trying, produced a comfortable closeness between them.
St.
Freya wasn’t an ordinary academy.
Built to train Valkyries, it didn’t run on the standard educational model—here, practical combat training held the position that literature and composition held everywhere else.
Which meant Xiyue’s classes were, structurally, the school’s least important.
She’d become the perpetually-ill teacher who could never quite make it to her own lessons.
This suited her perfectly.
She wasn’t collecting one salary from this arrangement—she was collecting two.
Three, technically, counting the part-time desk work she’d also picked up at the Hyperion.
All things considered: quite satisfied.
Himeko’s gaze had dropped to the exam papers tucked under Xiyue’s arm.
“How’d your class do on the general studies exam?”
Xiyue’s mind went immediately to a certain paramecium who had tried to dodge her class on multiple prior occasions.
She let her eyes crinkle with a carefully calibrated expression of concern.
“Most of them did well enough.
It’s just—Kiana Kaslana turned in a blank paper.” She paused.
“And from what I can tell, she’s missed the last several classes without any real explanation either.”
“I’m starting to think Kiana might need some tutoring.
What do you think, Himeko-senpai?”
Her voice reached Himeko.
And Himeko’s expression shifted.
Blank paper.
Skipping class.
Kiana, she thought, with quiet restraint.
You’ve really gone and done it.
A silence stretched between them.
Then, evenly:
“I understand, Xiyue.”
“I’ll have a talk with Kiana this afternoon.”
When she said it, the warmth had left her voice entirely.
Meanwhile, Kiana—dragged bodily to the classroom by Mei—had barely gotten her head down on the desk before she felt an inexplicable chill crawl up her spine.
She lifted her head, looked around.
No teacher yet.
She shrugged it off, dropped her head back to the desk, and was asleep within seconds, completely and blissfully unbothered.
“General studies?” she muttered into the wood.
“Not even a dog would sit through this.”