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"What the hell is this?"
Sakura utilized her incredible reaction speed to twist her body once more. The sharp sound of air being sliced whistled past her ear. Her toe slammed against the window ledge, using the momentum to vault herself outside.
However, the air offered too many openings. Even though her blade allowed her to shift her trajectory mid-flight, the spear was simply too fast.
Puchi—
An unavoidable piercing wound appeared in her abdomen. Intense pain instantly flooded her entire body.
Why me? The thought flashed through her mind but didn't linger. She had offended plenty of people in her life; her past sins were far too numerous to sort through in such a short time.
To the main street.
That was her second thought. If she reached a crowded area, she might have a chance to survive.
Her Frozen Naraka, which hadn't been upgraded yet, easily sliced through her sleeve. As she sprinted, she used the fabric to tie a crude, tight tourniquet around her waist, attempting to slow the blood loss.
She could no longer afford to hide her movements. As she leaped over a high fence, she was forced to press her body flat against the iron bars, narrowly evading another silent strike.
"Wha—"
Looking out from the heights, there wasn't a single living soul on the street. Lazy Honkai Beasts perched atop the ruins, and the faint, dying groans of victims only added to the deathly silence.
A Herrscher...
Qiang!
A cluster of crystal arrows wedged themselves beside her. The Honkai energy was dense, disrupting the local balance. This pure energy caused the stability of the Spears of Subspace to waver, forcing them to manifest physically early enough for Sakura to parry them with her blade.
"Are you okay, Sakura?"
Elysia twirled an arrow between her fingers. Beside her stood a few survivors she had picked up along the way, though their physical conditions looked anything but optimistic.
Elysia...
Sakura endured the pain and hurried closer. Her gaze was involuntarily drawn to the arrows—they were manifesting out of thin air without a bow. Elysia wasn't even bothering to hide her anomalies anymore.
"Wasn't the new Herrscher born in Siberia?" Sakura gasped, quickly tending to her wound.
"Likely seeking revenge," Elysia replied in a low voice. In her vision, the surroundings were riddled with spatial rifts. Between the attacks from the Imaginary Space and the constant surveillance, she was finding it difficult to do much while protecting these "dead weight" survivors.
"Revenge?"
Sakura opened her mouth to speak, but the priority was treating her injury.
Actually, it wasn't revenge. Kaito just wanted to gain two more levels.
Snap!
With a crisp snap of his fingers, the noisy surroundings seemed to hit a pause button. Gale-force winds raged as a suffocating pressure descended. The Demon Dragon stayed in the distance; Benares didn't understand why Kaito had told it to stay back and play support.
"Look at that. We meet again."
Kaito rested his face lazily on his hand. He wasn't planning on killing the boss here... he felt he couldn't. You play a rogue-like for the thrill, not to spend ages chipping away at a massive health bar.
Elysia's pupils shrank at his words. This bizarre dream was spiraling further out of comprehension.
"Your revenge has involved too many innocent people, Herrscher." Elysia took a deep breath, attempting to negotiate. She wasn't without means to deal with a Herrscher, but she had too many people to protect right now.
Blah, blah, blah. What is she saying? A boss of this level usually doesn't have much voiced dialogue. Kaito figured there were only a few classic lines reserved for the clear or game-over screens.
"I'll take a little interest first."
Kaito pondered the game's source code. Several Spears of Subspace emerged from blatant ripples in the air. In the distance, the Demon Dragon acted as the harbinger of ruin, its "Dragon King: Alternate Dimension" attack ready to fire.
Elysia didn't understand what the Herrscher was up to. This move wouldn't work on her, not even with a dragon.
"Sakura, on your way here, did you see any other survi—"
The words cut off abruptly. Her previously invincible defensive methods suddenly failed. A Spear of Subspace passed through her body, but it didn't manifest to pierce her.
Her superhuman constitution allowed her to witness it in slow motion—the bloom of a blinding, crimson blood flower.
Sakura's body slumped. While the boss was busy blocking Benares's energy cannon, Kaito used a phase-shift to blink behind her, amidst Elysia's murderous gaze.
With a mocking air, he scooped up the two attribute cards the boss was guaranteed to drop. Before he could even check what they were, he flicked back to his original position.
"I lied before. If I double the output of this move, even you can't stop it."
"The real and the fake... I knew you could stop it if you went all out. After all, even that masked guy could break through. But..." Kaito shrugged, his tone playful. "It's obvious. You got careless."
This was an inevitable trend in gaming history. In old games, a boss always hit with full force every time. But in the new era, once emotional algorithms were added, these "skipping" tactics became possible. If the boss in front of him didn't have a Phase 2, that hit would have taken one of her lives.
[Please choose attribute upgrade]
Elemental Shield 3 → 4
Vitality 0 → 1
Attack Power 0 → 1
Elemental Shield.
[Please choose attribute upgrade]
Elemental Shield 4 → 5
Vitality 0 → 1
Attack Power 0 → 1
Elemental Shield.
[Elemental Shield 5]: Shield capacity increased to 75% HW. Grants "Unstoppable" status while the shield is active.
Although the upgrade just increased the shield's capacity for now, the added "Unstoppable" attribute made it worth the investment. As long as the status lingered for a few seconds after the shield broke, it was a win.
Across from him, Elysia slowly sank to her knees, tightly cradling Sakura's cooling body. Her long pink hair fell forward, completely masking her face and expression.
"Oh, by the way," Kaito added in a tone that was calmly cruel. "She could have dodged it. Her reaction speed is actually ridiculous. But unfortunately, after seeing you... she seems to have gotten careless too."
Kaito couldn't quite figure out why a character who was just "fast" was considered a boss-tier card. But since it was an open world, maybe she held some special status. Who knew? He was too lazy to read the in-game lore books; he wasn't writing a fanfic.
"Gonna make a move?" he asked the silent girl.
No answer came. Instead, the sky itself seemed to fall. Domes of energy crashed down from high above, grinding the already shattered surroundings into absolute nothingness.
Following several phase-shifts, Kaito realized that the ground in a several-hundred-meter radius around the boss had been forcibly smashed down by several hundred meters. Only the "high platform" where the boss stood remained.
If this wasn't the final boss, it was definitely the second or third to last.
"Why aren't you chasing me?" he called out from a relatively safe distance, his voice carrying over the roar of destruction. "You two had dialogue; you must know each other."
The world completely changed colors. It was no longer radiant; the girl's prayers and fantasies had been stripped away, leaving only the purest, most direct, and unmasked desire for annihilation.
Tsk. Kaito stood in the distance, quietly watching the center of that absolute destruction—a sight that looked like a "Melancholic Palm" attack fueled by total despair and rage.
"You really won't chase me out of there? Then it looks like I..."
Kaito slowly lifted his head, a brilliant smile on his face.
"I've figured out your source code."
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