At the entrance to Haiyuan City, a small group stood at an intersection, seemingly waiting for sothing.
"Is it really okay, Irene?" Theresa nudged Irene with her elbow. "Once Durandal shows up, Haiyuan City gets blown wide open. Are you sure that's fine?"
Irene turned to look at her and said with great earnestness, "Theresa, you don't actually think a battleship this massive has been sitting in Haiyuan City all this ti without Otto knowing, do you?"
"I trust you haven't overestimated Schicksal's intelligence capabilities to that degree."
Theresa fell silent at that. As a forr Schicksal mber — and forr Director of the Far East Branch — how could she not understand exactly what Schicksal's intelligence apparatus was capable of?
Put plainly: the Hyperion was Schicksal's own flagship. It had no stealth capability whatsoever. They'd sailed straight into a coastal city and parked themselves on the ocean floor. Schicksal would have to be absolutely blind not to notice.
Schicksal had simply been pretending not to see them. Of course, it was also possible they were wary of Irene — but as Irene said, they'd been exposed from the very beginning. One more Durandal hardly mattered.
"Cheer up." Irene ruffled Theresa's hair. "This is a proper reunion day, you know. Hard to co by."
As she said it, she reached over and physically pulled the corners of Theresa's mouth upward. "Co on — give us a smile."
The mont she did, Theresa swatted her hand away and rolled her eyes. "Who said you could touch my face? Show so respect for the great Principal, would you."
"Oh, co on, we're past all that between us." Irene laughed, and even as she said it, reached over again to pinch Theresa's cheek.
"Hmph!" This ti Theresa didn't swat her away. She just gazed upward at the layer of water overhead.
"And there's a surprise in store, too." Irene looked up at the water above them. "This might just be a real reunion, after all."
She tilted her head slightly in one direction — toward the cultivation chamber. Thankfully, the difficulty of preparing it hadn't been high, and Mobius's claim had proven true.
Irene pulled her gaze away and looked into the distance, quietly soothing Cecilia, who was growing increasingly stirred within her.
Durandal was tapping at the action terminal in her hand, searching every accessible record she could find on Siegfried — and on Cecilia as well.
At the sa ti, she was ntally piecing together, from her own fragnted mories, what it might look like to be around Siegfried. And her sister.
Durandal was nothing like the composed, deliberate person she'd been at the mont of departure. She was far from it.
The truth was, Durandal was absolutely terrified right now. She hadn't said it aloud, but she had always quietly envied Rita — Rita was one of the rare Valkyries in all of Schicksal who still had both parents alive.
She was also one of the few Valkyries who could actually request leave to visit them. You couldn't imagine how many people envied that.
Not envying the leave itself, of course — but envying the fact that Rita still had family worth visiting. The way Valkyries ca to exist, outside the two great families who reliably produced candidates with sufficient Honkai Resistance generation after generation, almost everyone else had to be found through routine selection.
And even that process was far from straightforward — before you even asked whether soone had adequate Honkai Resistance, you first had to ask whether they were willing.
You couldn't very well send soone with no will to fight into battle. And these were battles to defend civilization itself — even more reason you couldn't.
The result was that this pool of candidates was already small to begin with. The vast majority of those who truly beca Valkyries were survivors of Honkai outbreaks — people who had lived through a disaster firsthand.
Simply surviving already demonstrated a degree of Honkai Resistance. And once they were told why the disaster had struck them out of nowhere, the fury in their hearts was more than ready to find an outlet.
But naturally, this also ant that most Valkyries recruited this way had already lost their families to that sa outbreak.
Not everyone stumbled into a Honkai disaster while on a leisurely trip and erged with their loved ones intact. Such things happened — but like a protagonist blessed by fate, the archetypal Valkyrie who'd lost her parents to sudden catastrophe made up the overwhelming majority.
That had included Durandal, at least as far as she'd believed. Otto had never once explained it to her, and there had been no reason for him to.
Over the years, Durandal had watched Rita request leave to visit her parents many tis. After each one, she would find herself wondering — what kind of people would her own parents have been?
Back then, she'd reasoned that since Honkai had caused the disaster, and she'd lost her mory in that very disaster, her parents had most likely not survived — and with her mory gone, there was no way to search for them.
Add to that the constant stream of missions that ca with being a Valkyrie, and there was simply no ti. So it had remained nothing more than a passing thought.
But now, she couldn't afford for it to stay a passing thought. Kiana had already told her a great deal — including, but not limited to, the soul of Cecilia residing inside Irene.
Learning that her mother's soul was there, with Irene, had caused the pressure bearing down on Durandal to instantly double.
She at least had so impression of Siegfried, however faint. Vague as it was... well, it wasn't exactly a glowing one. But in her mories, Cecilia was nearly a complete blank.
So in short: Durandal was panicking. Absolutely, completely panicking.
"Should I have bought so kind of gift?" Durandal murmured, staring ahead.
Kiana, who had Siegfried on her back, heard her voice and turned around.
"What's wrong? We still have a bit of a walk." Kiana stopped, looking at Durandal. She'd considered teleporting, but the problem was that Haiyuan City really wasn't suited for it.
For one thing, the Eye of the Deep was right next door — the quantum energy radiating off the Sea of Quanta played havoc with teleportation accuracy, making it very easy to end up slightly off course. Easy enough to dump both of them straight into the ocean.
Not that either of them would have been hurt — a little splash was nothing. But the slly old man currently strapped to her back might not have had the reflexes to handle it.
The other reason was that she wanted to give her sister a little more ti. A chance to breathe. She could see how rattled Durandal was right now.
So the walk was as much for Durandal's sake as anything else — a chance to sort through her thoughts.
"I was just thinking — should I bring sothing? A small gift, maybe?" Durandal seed genuinely flustered. "It's just that I'm about to et Aun— ...Principal Theresa. And Cecili—..."
"A bit late to be thinking about that now." Kiana drifted over and took Durandal's hand. "Besides, Mama already knows about you, so just co as you are."
"And we're in the middle of the ocean — where exactly would you buy a gift? Plus we're almost there."
Kiana glanced around, then simply pulled Durandal along and took off flying. At the speed the two of them moved, it was only a mont before they ca to a halt above a patch of open sea. Kiana pointed downward.
"Here we are."
Durandal hovered in the air, staring at the surface of the water below — and then Kiana just hauled her straight down through it. They each wrapped themselves in a shell of Honkai energy and plunged rapidly toward the depths.
And then Durandal saw it: a brilliant, glittering city beneath the waves, and Irene standing at the intersection ahead, waving them down.
"Hey hey~" Irene waved cheerfully at the two of them as they descended, her eyes landing on Siegfried, slumped against Kiana's back.
"What happened?"
Kiana set Siegfried down and looked at Irene. "He said staying in there too long left his mind completely drained. He passed out the mont we got him out, and he hasn't woken up since."
"Is that so." Irene nodded, stepped forward, and let electricity crackle to life in her hands. "Stand back, stand back — let handle the ergency resuscitation."
She rubbed her palms together in front of her chest, building up a charge, and then pressed them directly against Siegfried's sternum. A jolt of electricity ripped straight through him.
As the light faded, Siegfried suddenly lurched upright, gasping several ragged breaths, and looked around in bewildernt. "Where... where am I?"
"Welco to Haiyuan City, Mr. Siegfried." Irene smiled at the newly awakened man. A depleted mind just needed a good shock of Active Polarization — simple enough.
"Miss Irene. And Theresa?" Siegfried looked between the two of them. "It's been a while."
"You're taking this very calmly, Mr. Siegfried." Irene gave him an amused look. "I'd imagine Kiana filled you in on quite a bit, didn't she?"
"She did." Siegfried nodded.
The world really had changed fast. Before, when it ca to fighting the Honkai's Herrschers, there had only been Welt, Miss Irene, and that young girl called Raiden i.
And now? He'd only been locked away for a few months — less than a year, surely — and sohow everyone had switched sides?
Though what he truly couldn't make peace with, above all else, was what had happened with his wife. That was Siegfried's deepest wound — a scar that never quite closed. He had watched Cecilia walk to her death, practically with his own eyes.
If he'd only been able to hold on a little longer in that mont, Cecilia would never have needed to protect him with the Abyss Flower. And maybe — just maybe — she wouldn't have died.
And yet Siegfried knew, even as the thought crossed his mind, that it was just a fantasy. He understood Cecilia's character. She would have still chosen to use the Holy Blood to save everyone around her who had been infected by Honkai energy.
In that case, all it would have ant was that Siegfried's pain would have cut even deeper.
And so, once Siegfried had thought it through — once he understood that no matter what, from the mont he had torn Sirin's Core from her body and triggered the massive surge of Honkai energy that followed, Cecilia's death had been sealed — that was when he had fallen into that long, hollow despair.
He'd lived half his life drifting, sure. But in the end he had thrown himself into the fight against the Honkai. As a mber of the Kaslana Family, Siegfried had quickly co to understand his purpose on the battlefield — to be a warrior, and a ntally unbreakable one at that.
They had all prepared themselves for the possibility of losing one another. Siegfried could have accepted it. He just needed a little ti.
But what truly broke him was the belief that he had killed Cecilia. That was what plunged him into despair — because he couldn't accept it.
Until he learned of Otto's plan. Until he learned what that bastard had been doing with his daughter. That was what pulled Siegfried back to his feet — gave him sothing to fight for again.
And then fate, with characteristic cruelty, had found his spine — barely straightened — and delivered another savage kick.
He had watched with his own eyes as his daughter fell from a plane, struck in the head by a panel of armor that had torn free from the fuselage, and vanished into the clouds below. And he had been able to do nothing but watch. He had gotten another person he loved killed — another person he was supposed to protect.
That sent him spiraling back down for an even longer stretch. Which explained the terrible way he'd treated K423 in that period afterward — the bare minimum of basic care, and nothing more.
The rest, of course, everyone already knew. K423's performance reignited a small ember in Siegfried — and out of rembrance, he gave her the na Kiana.
He had resolved that when the mont ca, he would spend his own life clearing a path for her. He had been prepared to do exactly that at the Battle of Schicksal — only to hear, before he could act, that it was already over.
He'd just picked up the Judgnt of Shamash again, only to set it back down. Then he heard that Kiana had gone missing, and prepared to take up the Judgnt of Shamash and go after her himself — but before long, the World Serpent had taken him captive.
They'd even pried the Judgnt of Shamash away from him. He'd been furious at first — who were these people, daring to take his weapon? — but when he learned that the one who'd taken it was his great-great-great-and-then-so ancestor, Siegfried found he had nothing to say about it.
Better in that ancestor's hands than sitting uselessly in his, he supposed. And so Siegfried had sunk back into his stupor.
Kevin, naturally, had no patience for seeing Siegfried like that. You carry my bloodline and you've let yourself fall this low? Disgraceful. Get into the Stigmata Space for so military training, now.
Without any will to push back, Siegfried had been unable to break out of the Stigmata Space on his own — and so he'd been kept there until now, right up until he saw that video. Only then had he pulled himself back together.
Real or not, there was still a sliver of hope — and Siegfried was going to throw himself at it with everything he had. Mustering the will was one thing, though. Actually getting out was another entirely.
Which was why it had dragged on until now.
Siegfried turned to look at Durandal and Kiana standing behind him. He let out a quiet breath. His daughters had both grown to surpass him. Well — that was just how it went. He really was getting old.
Durandal wrung her hands, looking at Theresa with visible awkwardness. "Um... Auntie..."
Theresa looked right back at Durandal with equal awkwardness. It was worth noting that Durandal had visited St. Freya Academy once before — and it had ended on sothing of a sour note.
The reason, as it happened, was that Durandal had found the educational philosophy at St. Freya entirely too lax.
"Honestly, you two are painful to watch." Irene observed the group and clapped her hands together. "Alright, follow — I've got a surprise to show you. I imagine Durandal already heard about it from Kiana?"
"Yes, I did." Durandal nodded and looked at Irene. "That Mama's soul is currently with you, Miss Irene — I already know about that."
Siegfried, who had been turning over in his head what to say, snapped his head up toward Irene the instant he heard Durandal's words.
"Wait — what do you an?"
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