Honkai Impact 3rd: My Days as a Captain in Schicksal

Behind the ceiling... is Theresa, searching for Keng Hu!

"Haoyougen!!"

His right fist, clad in a white boxing glove, shattered the ceiling as easily as tearing a sheet of paper, and flew towards Theresa with unstoppable force.

But Keng Huo's pupils suddenly contracted.

Theresa was looking into his eyes with a smile, as if... she had known all along that he would appear at this moment!

Keng Huo felt as if his right fist had hit a ball of cotton, struggling to break through, with half of his strength being neutralized by this invisible and intangible shield.

She raised one hand and gently placed it on Keng Huo's right fist, as if stroking the head of a naughty child.

The sound of an air explosion, like a missile exploding, rang out where the two men's fists and palms met. After a moment of extreme silence, a wave of air, like a tsunami, rolled out and exploded around the two men!

On the second floor of the entire medical center, a small area centered around the two individuals collapsed with a deafening roar! In the distance, glass and various medical instruments were also twisted, broken, and shattered by the churning airflow!

"What's going on... Did she suddenly become stronger? Or... was she hiding her strength all along?" Only a fleeting thought flashed through Keng Huo's mind before he felt a tremendous force, accompanied by pain, attacking all parts of his body at once. Keng Huo, who had poured all his strength into this punch, had no power to resist and was dragged to the second floor by Theresa and slammed hard to the ground.

“Come on, you’re so weak.” Theresa straddled Keng Huo’s chest, pressing her hands against his face. “But you seem to be a very interesting thing…”

"So...become my puppet...so that I can still have some toys to amuse myself in the years to come..." Theresa's red-glowing eyes met Keng Huo's pupils, and Keng Huo seemed to see endless contempt and chaos in the other's eyes.

The world in Keng Huo's eyes suddenly distorted, centered on Theresa's eyes, as if a vortex was swallowing everything in it.

……

"Where...is this?" When Keng Huo came to his senses, he found himself in a vast snowfield, a snowfield he knew all too well.

It was here that he lost his entire life.

It was here that he vowed to take revenge on fate.

Right here...

"Brother... save me..."

"..." Keng Huo remained silent, but his tightly clenched fists revealed the turmoil in his heart.

"Hey, look what I've found!" A faint voice seemed to come from all directions, "I think I've discovered something incredible..."

“***…” Keng Huo squeezed out three asterisks through his teeth, his face gradually contorting. Just by staring at his face, an ordinary person could feel the fear of facing a demon.

"Look, how familiar this place is... It was here that you lost the most important person to you..." A dark shadow emerged from the snow beneath Keng Huo's feet, fluttering around him. "Destiny, what a disgusting word... You swore here to rescue your sister from Destiny, didn't you? Fighting alone against an organization that could control half the world, alas, what a poignant and tragic story..."

Keng Huo's fists made a cracking sound.

"But what about you now? You're working like a slave for Destiny, cleaning up after that short nun everywhere, and you don't dare say a word even when you sense something's wrong with your sister..."

The dark shape stirred restlessly, as if one could see from its surface that it was sighing and groaning.

"You're unwilling, aren't you? Resentful, aren't you? Anxious, aren't you? But there's nothing you can do, hahaha! All you can do is chat and joke with those scumbags with a smile on your face, kneeling on the ground begging them to give you some false information about your sister being safe..."

"It's all because of your weakness...it's all because of your fear...you're afraid of the enemy's overwhelming power, you know that if you turn against them, you'll be immediately plunged into the deepest hell..." Two red lights flickered within the black mist, "It's all because of your weakness, it's all because of your cowardice, that you've ended up in the tragedy of being a slave to your enemy..."

"Submit to me... I can grant you supreme power... enabling you to take revenge, to dare to hate, and to make all those who took everything from you... and forced you to make choices you didn't want to make... vanish!"

"Surrender to me... and I will grant you... everything you have ever dreamed of... You will no longer fear, you will no longer be weak, you will... win everything!"

"..."

"Are you moved...? Then accept me... Open your heart and let me..."

"Do you know that thousands of years ago, a wise man once said..." Keng Huo, who had been silent and ignoring the black mist swirling around him, suddenly spoke, interrupting the other's monologue.

"Human greatness...lies in the noble posture one displays in the face of fear." A chilling killing intent gleamed in his sharp eyes. "When faced with fear, people fall into two categories..."

"One type will cower in a corner, covering their head with their hands, thinking that this will allow them to escape the terrifying pursuit..."

“But there’s another kind of person…” A flame seemed to burn in Keng Huo’s eyes, “They will throw everything they can get their hands on at fear, and smash a folding stool into its head until fear stops breathing, stops beating, and stops moving altogether, only then will they feel at ease!!”

"Because of courage...it is precisely because humans possess courage that fear is utterly ineffective!"

"The greatness of humanity lies in the greatness of courage! The hymn of humanity is a hymn to courage!"

"You ask me if I hate it? You ask me if I'm afraid of it?!"

"I hate it to death! I'm terrified!"

"That's why I'm going to smash your dog head into a pulp, you bastard!!"

Flames as intense as the sun suddenly erupted from Keng Huo's body, instantly burning away a large patch of snow beneath his feet.

"Do you think this is some kind of chuunibyou anime?!" Keng Huo roared, and visible ripples suddenly appeared around him. "This is a fight to the death! You think this will make me surrender without a fight? Make me let you go? Bullshit! My will will not be manipulated by anyone else!"

"I am who I am! My name is Keng Huo! I am the avenger who swore to completely annihilate the Honkai! I am the master of my own destiny!"

"In reality, I can't do anything to you! But you've actually walked right into my trap and entered my will..."

"You're... courting death!!"

———————————————————————————————————

"Holy crap... I'm never showing off again... Are pseudo-Herrschers really this strong...?"

Before his confused consciousness faded into darkness, this was his last thought.

The Herrscher's will is unimaginably powerful. That black shadow, as if all the negative emotions in the world had been gathered together, is as unshakable as a mountain. Even though Keng Huo has the home advantage here, he cannot compete with it. A normal confrontation would be described as a crushing defeat.

When that enormous hand pressed down on him, Keng Huo knew he was doomed.

The difference in quality and quantity in will is one aspect, but on the other hand, Keng Huo was indeed shaken and doubted by the words of the collapsing will.

Although Keng Huo knew that those words were meant to sway him, every single one of them was the truth, powerful, irrefutable, and undeniably real.

But the reason he no longer fought against fate to the bitter end as before was not because of his own fear, but because of something else... something more positive than fear.

"You damned dwarf... It's all your fault for bringing me to this godforsaken place..." Feeling himself sinking endlessly into the abyss of his consciousness, Keng Huo covered his eyes with his left hand, and two lines of tears streamed down his face uncontrollably. "You're always dragging me down... How can I bear to leave these children in this academy..."

In this clash of wills, the biggest rift in his heart came from the second period of life he had after being saved by Theresa, which could be called living.

In this academy, his heart, which had been frozen by Elisa's disappearance, began to thaw again.

"The children here... are so wonderful..."

"When they talk to you, their eyes will be fixed on you without blinking, and they'll be listening with surprise and admiration..."

"They greet you happily when they see you, as if meeting you is such an important thing..."

"They cautiously inquired about my birthday, and on the day I casually made up, they made me a weirdly spicy cake..."

"It's ridiculous...they..."

"She's cute too..."

"They trained so hard...even though they were burdened with hatred, they never lost their true selves..."

"Their will was so pure, like crystal, that you could see right through it..."

"They want to protect others, they want to alleviate suffering, they have their own dreams, and they are working hard for their dreams every moment..."

"They...they deserve...they deserve...happy smiles, the company of family and friends, tender love and care...because...because they...deserve such rewards..."

"Such wonderful children...how could I bear to..."

"How could I bear to drag them into the war that should have been mine because of my own selfish desires..."

In that confrontation, Keng Huo witnessed a grand illusion.

In that illusion, because he tried every means to find out Elisa's whereabouts, he angered the higher-ups of Destiny, who ordered the Far East Branch to execute Keng Huo on charges of espionage.

Theresa and the students of the academy unanimously chose to stand on the side of Keng Huo.

Then war broke out.

How could a small Far East branch condemned for treason possibly stand against the entire Mandate of Heaven?

Battleships, cannons, Valkyries—one by one they appeared at St. Freya Academy. The flashes of gunfire and the glint of blades on the Valkyries' swords reaped the lives of the children one after another.

But Keng Huo, knowing it was all an illusion, remained aloof and observed from the sidelines.

However, this psychological crack was still keenly detected by the destructive will that was adept at manipulating people's hearts.

When the broadcast on the Destiny's warship announced that all the surviving trainees would receive a pardon if they could kill Keng Huo, all the children turned their guns on Keng Huo without exception.

They resented it.

She resented him for always watching coldly from the sidelines.

He resented that even when the academy was destroyed, he didn't shed a single tear.

He harbored resentment... Even when their headmistress shielded him from a fatal attack with her body, he remained unmoved.

Keng Huo's mental defenses wavered slightly at that moment. The illusion before him was too real. Even though he knew it was all fake, if he continued to investigate like this, would everything in the illusion also come to pass on to St. Freya Academy in reality?

In the blink of an eye, his body was pierced. When he awoke from the illusion, he saw the massive hand of the Will of Collapse pressing down like a mountain.

At this moment, Keng Huo could no longer feel the passage of time. In his sea of ​​consciousness, all meaning in space and time ceased to exist. He could only vaguely perceive the concept of "falling," but he was unable to understand or explain it in any way.

That's true. Death is the only thing that humans cannot understand, because when it happens, human consciousness has already dissipated.

Suddenly, Keng Huo had the illusion that someone was wiping away his tears from beside the hand covering his eyes.

His whole body stiffened for a moment, and he felt as if he had stopped falling and was lying on the ground with something very elastic under his head.

Keng Huo removed his hand from his eyes, revealing his palm covered in tears.

The person who had been carefully wiping away his tears seemed to be startled. Her soft hand suddenly withdrew, and her long, narrow pink fox ears twitched. Her eyes showed the expression of a frightened rabbit.

But Keng Huo's reaction was even more intense.

"Holy crap...you're that psychopathic killer!"

But as soon as he said it, he realized something was wrong.

When he first encountered Yae Sakura in reality, as a sorcerer who was extremely sensitive to emotions and feelings, he could immediately sense the chaos in her. The mixture of good and evil in her emotions, and the bloodlust that flashed in her eyes from time to time but was immediately suppressed, made him almost instantly conclude that she must be a psychopathic killer.

But the Yae Sakura standing before me right now...

He exuded a reassuring aura, completely different from before. This was due to the Taoist's special ability to understand people's hearts, making it difficult for him to make a mistake.