"Clang!"
The four directions of the universe—the wind howled fiercely, and figures intersected.
Crimson pistils bloomed beneath the extinguished giant. On the twisted, knotted tree rings, the long-skirted girl danced, lifting the hem of her dress as if on an endless mirror-like surface.
Countless silences drew their last breath here.
Countless laughter ended here.
The pale horizon was ignited. The arms of the metal constructs were twisted into colorful knots. The pitch-black mist became translucent under the clear, yellow light. Beams of light pierced the curtain of darkness, striking the girl's graceful figure.
The man in the iron shell piloted the giant beast forward. The dragon-like black mist bit off the fractured arm of the mecha.
The girl smiled and rose, the faint light illuminating her pale face.
…
The doctor bit his cracked lips, stepping through the collapsed city. The scorched red sky lit up behind him.
He paused before a fiercely burning broken wall, the red liquid dripping from his injured arm evaporating in the heat.
"Waaah…"
That faint sobbing marked a white flower in his blood-red vision. He grabbed a broken support beam and braced it against the wall.
His dry throat was filled with the taste of rust, he wasn't sure if it was sweat on his nose or blood on his tongue.
"Rumble~"
A cracking boom descended from the edge of his vision. The gigantic, evil filth that covered the sky mocked the powerless doctor with its blood-forged, single eye.
The approaching giant shadow made the doctor stop his futile efforts with his aching muscles.
Should he flee?
"Waaah…"
No.
He stepped forward, propping up the support, a roar that seemed to pierce his body echoing.
"Rumble."
Enveloped by the giant shadow, beads of blood seeped from the doctor's flushed neck.
…
"Bang!"
The fatal bullet dissolved into nothing in the thick mist. The flower-like girl and the dancing-dress girl clashed in close combat. Flashing cold light sliced through hair, leaving a vivid blood-red mark on the fair skin.
The pink-haired girl arched back to avoid the sharp claw. The fierce wind pressure split the building behind her in two. When she tried to counterattack, she was bound by thorns and pinned to the ground.
The girl raised her giant claw flat, tilted her head with a sweet smile, and the black mist turned into sharp swords, stabbing rapidly towards her.
"Snap!"
The thorns were severed. The pink-haired girl was grabbed by her bloody arm by the white-haired man and soared into the sky. She was caught and avoided the immediate follow-up attack.
The mist thickened, and the girl grew weaker. She looked out and saw the city shrouded in black mist rapidly dissolving, piles of sand collapsing.
"Tap, tap, tap…"
A bullet pierced her vulnerable thigh, yet she smiled as if oblivious, stepping back onto the ground. The tree rings writhed into waves, rolling up the man who had fired the shot.
…
"Quickly check the blood bank for a matching blood type!"
The gray-haired female doctor pushed away a wailing zombie corpse and stepped on its neck, breaking it. The male doctor wheeled the patient with fading life into the operating room. The red light outside the operating room flickered a few times.
The man put on his gloves, the trembling of his fingers subsiding beneath the inner tremor of his heart.
The woman found the blood bag, hung it on the stand, and the approaching low growls made her grab a chair, smashing it against the wall, taking a leg out, and walking out the door to jam it shut.
The man was indifferent to the woman's actions throughout. He was merely recalling the surgery he had performed countless times in his mind.
Finally, he picked up the scalpel, completely ignoring the sounds of the woman fighting the zombies outside the door.
The blade pierced the purplish flesh.
…
"Cough, cough…"
He spat blood into his helmet. The warning that flashed up was immediately suppressed by the AI. His numb nerves could no longer control the mecha, and his fading consciousness maintained its last sliver of clarity.
"Tzing!"
A sharp object cut through the air, nearing his face. A long blade was thrust in just in time, piercing the arm clad in the claw.
The man grabbed the hilt of the transparent blade. The rough coldness instantly froze and killed the girl's entire arm. She withdrew suddenly, and the arm detached from her shoulder.
The woman who had thrown the blade drew her remaining knife and joined the fight. She was as swift as a cunning rabbit, like scattered crimson cherry blossoms blown by a gale, leaving no trace on the retina. She leaped up, grabbed the immobilized man, and avoided the immediate ensuing attack.
Like the wrath of a death god, the black mist enveloped the man-made giant beast, staining it with rust and scattering it across the ground.
The woman landed behind the girl and flicked her wrist, cutting through the transparent dance dress, scattering a Coelogyne flaccida (blood-red flower) across her back. The man likewise stabbed the girl's body with his sword, the blade emerging from her chest.
But before the two could act again, the woman's face drastically changed. A terrifying aura exploded from the girl's body.
The sound of a device activating roared through the sky. The white-haired man grabbed their collars with one hand, soared up, caught the man who had been pushed away by the wave of the tree sea, and finally let the pink-haired girl grab his feet. The group huddled together, fleeing toward the distance.
The black light of annihilation poured out fiercely from the smiling, peaceful girl's body.
One hundred meters, two hundred meters, one kilometer…
Until more than half of the city was enveloped within it.
Not even light could illuminate the inside.
Only death and silence existed within that ink-spreading black sphere.
…
"Bang!"
The one-armed man calmly removed the empty magazine, clamped it under the short stump of his arm, took out a spare magazine, slammed it in, gripped the gun one-handed, and cocked it with his mouth.
The red-haired woman also used her weakened arm to smash the greatsword onto a zombie in a nearly flailing manner, blocking the doorway behind the one-armed man, climbing step-by-step up the piled-up building.
The corpse storage room was close at hand. The one-armed man emptied the magazine at the zombie blocking the entrance, quickly stepped inside, and saw the corpse of the smiling man.
The concentration of Honkai Energy was so thick that the other corpses had undergone reanimation to become zombies , yet this one corpse remained there quietly, as if waiting for something, with its smile unchanged.
"I apologize for the wait."
The one-armed man found an instrument from the damaged cabinet and approached the corpse.
The red-haired woman stood alone, her sword a barrier in the doorway, rooted there like a blood-stained rose.
…
"Aaaahhhh!"
The doctor strained every bone in his body until they made a grating, sour sound. It was as if an endless supply of power rushed into his body from the air, allowing him to inch-by-inch pry open the wall that had been completely still.
"Waaah… waaah…"
Blood spurted from his ruptured wounds. In his vision, smeared red with blood, he saw the half-grown child crying with a strained throat. Surprise flashed through his eyes.
The pale, foreign object reached behind him. He pushed the wall with all his might, knocking it down, and quickly rushed forward to hug the child.
He drew his pistol and fired at the colossal monster, striking the creature's impenetrable shell with the tiny resistance of a human.
The pistol clicked, empty. The doctor shielded the child to his chest and turned to run.
Where to?
He didn't know, but he had to get this child out of this hell.
The cry of an infant, strong and unwavering, echoed through this world pervaded by death.
…
The black sphere lasted for ten minutes. All matter and life within it were dissolved.
The white-haired man placed his companions on the broken building of the Fifth Branch, gazing at that silent space.
When the black sphere vanished, the fighting Titans and Honkai creatures, the human-built structures, and the broken giant tree had all become a world as if a hundred years later—decayed and withered.
In this exhausted world, a sea of gardenia-white flowers bloomed in every empty space, quietly singing in the wind under the high, bright sunlight…