"You didn't stop MSA-079? Hmph, no matter. I already anticipated this; that man couldn't bring himself to do it." A man tugged at the tie restricting him. He stood before the Stargate, commanding the others who had already taken control of the area. "Set the activation coordinates to MSA-079's location."
"Activate it? Now?" One of the people with wings on their back gave him an inscrutable look.
"Yes, now," the man replied impatiently.
These people weren't entirely his subordinates. Many were former followers of the Chairman, continuing to operate in the shadows as remnants after his death. Ato had contacted them through Chiaki and successfully reached a cooperation agreement.
The man needed to monopolize the KY Project's results alone—the other high-ranking officials were his enemies. The Chairman's remnants needed to break Fire Moth's erroneous system and sanction the high command. That was why the two parties could hit it off.
However, the man had not told the remnants his true purpose; he simply stated that he also wanted to punish the other high-ranking officials.
"Ato is your subordinate, isn't he?"
"He isn't..."
"Oh my, hello everyone! I see some familiar faces and some new ones." At that moment, a pink-haired girl strolled in as if she were entering her own home. She waved to the man and the other person he was talking to. "Isn't this Mr. Skye? As a high-ranking official, why are you near the Tenth Branch and the Stargate? Did you run out of snacks at home and come out to forage? Or perhaps small snacks no longer satisfy your appetite?"
"CM-002... how did you get in?" The man narrowed his eyes like he was facing a great enemy, staring at the smiling girl.
"I have a name, you know~ I much prefer people to call me by my name rather than a serial number. After all, if a girl has a pretty name, she'll want more people to know it." Elysia tilted her head, then looked at the other person with feigned confusion. "And this one—if I recall correctly, it's Sigma, right? You disappeared after the Chairman died. Have you been lost all these years?"
The atmosphere in the management room grew heavy with Elysia arrival. Even though she was lively and cute, shining like a crystal... it only made people feel that they could see their own ugly reflections in that crystal.
"Oh! I remember now!"
Elysia clapped her hands and smiled like a blooming flower—
"Sigma, you were the Chairman's subordinate, right? Back then, when the Chairman betrayed Fire Moth, you were involved in the Great Purge and the riot at headquarters. So, Mr. Skye, what do you and this former Fire Moth member and traitor intend to do near such an important Stargate? Or should I ask... what have you already done?"
Elysia pointed to several people behind the Stargate control console and the Stargate, which had clearly already been activated.
She smiled beautifully. There were probably few girls in the world with beauty comparable to hers who could smile so naturally and gently. But because of this, they found this girl—who became a MANTIS only after Kevin—to be incredibly terrifying.
Like a vibrant, blooming flower; the pollen was full of toxins.
The man's palms were sweaty; he couldn't allow himself to show weakness. "Sigma, kill her."
One of the terms of their cooperation was that the man would provide MANTIS technology to Sigma. Even if the Chairman had opposed the MANTIS project originally, Fire Moth now possessed MANTIS capable of rivaling Honkai Beasts and even Herrschers; opposing them without that power was unrealistic.
And Sigma himself was the first volunteer to undergo the Project Soldier surgery.
Elysia looked curiously at Sigma, who showed obvious signs of mutation. "Are we going to fight?"
Sigma took a deep breath, then spat out an unexpected word: "No."
"What did you say!" The man looked at Sigma in shock and rage. He hadn't expected Sigma to turn on him at this moment. "Don't you want to—"
"Don't misunderstand."
Slap.
The man's vision went dark. He found his feet dangling in the air, his neck gripped by a massive force that made it impossible to breathe. Sigma's eyes flashed with a cold light like a wild beast; the scent of blood and killing intent radiated from him.
"What did you promise? And what are you doing? MSA-079's coordinates are in the city. You want me to open the rift in the middle of a city? You kept saying Sviotok-51 was an accident. Looking at it now, it clearly wasn't, was it?"
After speaking, Sigma tossed the man toward Elysia, staring coldly at the man who was clutching his throat and coughing.
Senility and weakness only amplified the man's ugliness.
Sigma and his remnants originally opposed the inclinations and plans of the Fire Moth high command. To them, attacking Fire Moth and attacking ordinary people were two completely different concepts.
Moreover, he had already sensed the man's true goal and felt used. Now, it was simply exposed.
"I'll leave him to you." Sigma dropped these words to the smiling, silent Elysia, then raised his hand and waved.
His subordinates immediately subdued the man's subordinates in the control room, disarming and binding them all. The entire process took less than half a minute.
Elysia watched them complete this with high efficiency before Sigma led them past her. "Hmm? Leaving just like that?"
"What needed to be done is finished. You still have things to do, don't you? I wouldn't mind fighting right now, but neither your goal nor mine should be the total destruction of Fire Moth." Sigma was already worlds apart from the man at the ball. He had been brash, impulsive, and irritable then; now, time had washed that away, leaving only exhaustion. "I just didn't expect MSA-079 to live so long. I thought he was dead."
Elysia curled her lips. "His name is Lin."
"...I know, Elysia."
Right then, at that moment—a point in time no one expected.
An alarm, absent for two years, sounded. It was sharp and piercing, as if celebrating this chaotic party.
"Kevin, a Herrscher reaction has appeared in Atra. It's suspected that the activation of the Stargate allowed a massive amount of Honkai energy from the Sea of Quanta to enter the Proper World, leading to the birth of the Ninth Herrscher."
Mei's voice was uncharacteristically urgent, causing Kevin hand holding the sword to tremble slightly. He cleaved through a beam of light fired at him and took two steps back, staring through a gap in the outer wall where the alarm flashed. A deep purple long-winged monster, like something out of a myth that could blot out the sky, appeared. What he could see was just the tip of the iceberg.
This grim colossus from the Sea of Quanta was roughly the same size as the Fire Moth headquarters' aerial base.
"I understand. Have Su head over to support immediately. I'll go as soon as I finish off this Honkai Beast."
He inhaled the metallic taste of blood from his own ruptured alveoli, mixed with the stench of scorched air.