Honkai: Fire Moth Herrschers

"Knock knock knock," "Open up, we're here to in..."

Before Michael could finish his sentence, the laboratory door opened layer by layer, and dark green light and shadows seeped out like water overflowing from a cup.

Walking into the interior of the laboratory, Mobius was facing away from them, holding a document in her hand, drawing and marking it.

And on the chair in front of her, a pale-faced soldier was tied up, muttering something in a low voice.

"What do you want with me?" Her green hair was casually tied behind her head, and her tone was somewhat impatient.

"Doctor, we need to collect your badge," Elysia said in a low voice.

"Collect my badge? So suddenly... why?"

It was clearly just a simple question, but the temperature in the room visibly dropped.

"And... is it necessary to wear gas masks to come to my laboratory?"

"Well... because the badge distribution system has been modified, this batch of numbered badges needs to be recycled and processed. The future badges will all be unnumbered versions. As for... the gas masks... safety first, Doctor."

"Tch..."

Mobius finally turned around, sizing up the two strangers in front of her.

Perhaps out of some intuition, or perhaps because the request to collect the badges was so strange, Mobius felt that there was something wrong with these two people.

But in the end, she didn't notice anything suspicious.

"Okay, I understand."

She didn't ask further, perhaps because it wasn't necessary, or perhaps she felt that saying another word to these two people was a waste of time and a waste of life.

She quickly walked to the test bench, pulled open one drawer after another, and countless penalty notices scattered around the lab as she searched.

Michael even took the time to count them, hmm... a full nineteen.

Finally, in the corner of the bottom drawer, she found the badge with the number "1" engraved on the back and handed it to Michael.

"Take it!"

She tossed it casually, hitting Michael's sleeve. Michael quickly caught the badge, then imperceptibly looked down at his watch. Two and a half minutes had passed since the alarm sounded—there were only five minutes to assemble.

So he answered before Elysia could:

"Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Mobius. The new badge will be delivered to your laboratory within a week."

Then the two were about to leave in a hurry.

"Wait."

"Don't think I don't know anything."

Michael rubbed his palms together, his heart pounding. He didn't know where Mobius had seen through their disguise. For a moment, it seemed like there was no better option than to run.

"Doctor, I don't quite understand what you mean?" He stalled, ready to carry Elysia and run at any moment.

"I know you all want to hide things from me, even making all kinds of excuses to keep me in the lab and not let me go out... but to understand something, you don't necessarily have to see it with your own eyes."

"?" Michael slowly typed out a question mark, and then his heart sank back into his stomach—it seemed that what she was about to say next had nothing to do with the two of them.

"The Honkai... what's the situation now?"

"Oh, Doctor, so that's what you wanted to ask." Michael could feel that Elysia was also relieved.

"Well... how should I put it, the situation is indeed not very optimistic."

"But, this is only temporary..."

"Where are Michael and Elysia?" Himeko asked with a frown.

Everyone had assembled fully armed. There were only twenty soldiers in Squad Five. They didn't even need to do roll call. She glanced over and saw that only the two new recruits were missing.

But the soldiers who were asked were also confused.

Those two new recruits, whose physical fitness could be described as heaven-defying, were really not easy to approach.

The girl named Elysia seemed to be everywhere, always chattering and meddling, but when you really wanted to find her, no one could say where she was.

And the boy named Michael was even more peculiar, hardly speaking to anyone other than Elysia, constantly holding all kinds of books, so his presence was so low that no one could say where he was either.

Himeko looked at her watch.

There were only twenty... nineteen seconds left until the five-minute assembly time was over.

Eighteen...

Seventeen...

Sixteen...

"Hmm?"

It seemed like something flashed before her eyes. Himeko looked up and saw that the two new recruits were already standing in the formation, fully armed.

"Move out immediately!"

The heavy gate had already opened, and the transport helicopter flew straight toward the vast snowfield.

"I'll only emphasize this once. Our mission is not to fight the monster named Herrscher, but to enter the underground base of Irkutsk and protect the Honkai energy storage tanks there. The specific location has been sent to your battle maps. Any questions?"

"No, ma'am!"

Just at this moment, the pilot's voice came from the radio.

"The transport helicopter will arrive at the battlefield in two minutes. Squad Five, please prepare..."

"Boom!"

The flames of the explosion raged inside the cabin, followed by the cold and howling wind, and the sense of weightlessness brought by the tumbling.

Before Michael could figure out what was going on, he was pulled out by the air pressure.

"Ellie!"

In a panic, she grabbed his hand, but was pulled out with him.

Their hands were tightly interlocked. Taking advantage of the tumbling, Michael only saw a dozen small black dots being thrown out of the transport helicopter's ruptured belly.

Many members of Squad Five reacted the moment they were thrown out of the cabin, and they pulled their emergency parachutes.

But the height of hundreds of meters was not enough for the parachutes to complete their deceleration. Only a few of these people would survive thanks to their excellent physique and the protection of their exoskeletons.

As for Michael, his abilities could have allowed him to try to save them, but...

Four or five seconds passed in the blink of an eye. He suddenly pulled Elysia into his arms, and a moment before landing, an air mattress suddenly appeared on the ground, catching the two of them.

"Bang!"

The air mattress was directly shattered into energy fragments, scattering in the air. The waist-deep snow was thrown tens of meters into the air, revealing the black, hard frozen soil on the ground.

Even though both of them had physical qualities far beyond ordinary people, the impact of the landing made them feel like the bones in their bodies were about to shatter into pieces. The exoskeletons directly shattered and failed, their heads buzzed, and their vision was constantly tumbling and spinning, as if they had spun around thousands of times on the spot.

Especially Michael, who had endured the impact of both himself and Elysia, could only cough while clutching his chest.

When the two of them climbed out of the snow pit in a disheveled state, they saw a barefoot, purple-haired girl standing in front of them.

"Oh."

"What a coincidence. To meet you here. Traitor."

She clearly had a human face and spoke human language, but her voice was flat and dead, without a trace of emotion.

Elysia wanted to say something, but Michael shielded her behind him. His eyes instantly turned blood red, and his pupils turned into the shape of gears.

A blue shield quickly formed in front of him, and not far away, the Second Herrscher casually opened a black hole, and a missile flew out, directly blasting Michael and Elysia away.

Confirming that there were no other soldiers present, Michael directly constructed two railguns in mid-air, firing at the Second Herrscher.

"Where are you aiming?"

The Second Herrscher was expressionless.

She walked barefoot on the snow-covered ground, letting her purple hair flutter, without even using her powers to change the trajectory of the railgun shells.

Without a doubt, the two shells flew past her head and exploded in the snowfield not far away.

"Elysia."

"Hmm?"

"Run!"

Seeing that the First Herrscher, who had turned his back on the Honkai, had chosen to flee, the Second Herrscher tilted her head.

She really didn't expect to meet the First Herrscher here. He seemed to have joined the human camp...

But he was too weak.

Wait!

The Second Herrscher turned her head. The explosion had kicked up a sky full of ice and snow, and they crashed down like a tsunami, as if to engulf her.

"That's it?"

She tore open space, and in the next instant, she had appeared on another hilltop.

"Oh, hello!"

"What."

The Second Herrscher turned her head again. This time, what was reflected in her eyes, besides that annoying pink color, was only an inverted gunstock.

"Bang," the gunstock shattered, and the Second Herrscher was knocked away like a baseball.

And where she landed, unsurprisingly, the annoying First Herrscher had already set up a railgun.

His gear-like pupils locked onto the target.

In the laboratory illuminated by green lights, Mobius looked at the miniature screen in front of her, which was playing the images transmitted by a micro-camera attached to someone's sleeve, and couldn't help but add a voiceover.

"Fire!"

"Hehe, I didn't expect this. I just wanted to use this to understand the situation outside, but I actually discovered such an interesting thing..."

Her eyes flickered, reflecting the green light.

It was the gaze of a serpent.

But the next moment, the image on the camera spun around and landed on a red snowfield.