Humans are in chaos, despicable outsiders.

"So why should I listen to you?!"

The white fluffy ball glared at the woman who had stopped in her tracks because of its questioning; it seemed the woman wouldn't budge an inch unless she gave a reasonable explanation.

"Because this place—buries your mother's life, buries your father's past, and hides your birth..."

Having given his answer, the hermit ignored the girl behind him and strode forward.

"What—! Hey! Wait for me, explain yourself to me!"

Kiana heard news about her mother and father and excitedly chased after the woman who had already gone far away.

She wanted to find answers to the past, she wanted to retrieve her memories, but the truth—is often cruel and unsatisfactory.

"Hoo, hoo—hey, do you know the story of your stinky dad and mom? Tell me now!"

"This guy was clearly walking, so why did it take me forever to catch up with him?!" The girl, panting, caught up with the hermit and eagerly asked the woman the question.

"Ask me? Child, why don't you go and see for yourself—"

Kiana looked up following the hermit's gaze and saw a towering tower standing at the very center of the base in the distance, amidst the snow-covered plains.

"This is Siberia at midnight on February 1, 2000, and before us lies what was once Schicksal's most important Honkai laboratory—the Babylon Laboratory."

"And that tower also has an ironic name—the Tower of Babel."

"The birthplace of the Second Collapse... Let's go, don't you want to know what happened inside that tower...?"

The hermit quickened his pace again, heading towards the tower, and Kiana had no choice but to keep up with Omega's pace.

"Hey! Can't you slow down a bit! Wait for me!!!"

The girl strode after the hermit, but the woman, hearing this, finally slowed her pace, letting the white fluffy creature on her back trot to catch up.

"Whoosh—you're really fast...wait, why don't I see any guards or researchers in this base?"

The two stood at the entrance to the Babylonian Experiment, but Kiana couldn't see a single guard or staff member; the entire base was as silent as a dead city.

"Because they're all dead, what's the problem?"

The door was pulled open, and a researcher in a white robe collapsed in front of him. The hermit turned to the side; the man's body lay stiffly on the ground, his face still contorted with pain and terror, his body still supple, not yet in a state of rigidity. It still felt slightly warm to the touch.

The hermit pulled a card from his body, then stepped over the researcher's remains and headed towards the freight elevator of the Tower of Babel.

"Miss Hermit...you mean...they're all dead?"

Kiana stared incredulously at the man's corpse before her. The lingering fear and pain on his face when he was killed made Kiana feel physically uncomfortable.

"At midnight on February 1, 2000, in the Destiny Babylon Laboratory in Siberia, a research team of 322 people, along with an A-rank Valkyrie squad stationed in the laboratory—"

"All wiped out. The remains of most members are missing. And the lucky guy at your feet didn't even have a complete body. His internal organs were pulled out."

"That red patch on the snow is it."

"Ugh—" Kiana finally vomited.

Chapter Sixty-Six: They Don't Deserve Your Pity

The hermit silently watched as the girl in front of him made a vomiting motion, but couldn't vomit anything, and shook his head.

"Stop gagging here... In the end, this is just a dream, you can't vomit anything up."

The girl rubbed her upper body forcefully, suppressing the discomfort in her stomach, and called out to the hermit:

"Who is it?! Why would she use such cruel methods to torture these ordinary people and Valkyries?!"

The girl's deep blue eyes were filled with rage; she was furious at the deaths of the people, furious at the cruelty they had suffered...

The hermit merely curled his lip in boredom, offering the girl's unexpected answer to her sympathy and anger—

"Perhaps only that Valkyrie squad deserves your sympathy... but that's all."

"And for most of the remaining 322 researchers, this is their just deserts—they deserve to die."

Kiana clenched her fists at the hermit's ruthless assessment, seemingly ready to rush up and punch her at any moment.

“You are angry and dissatisfied—indeed, most people can accept that people die every second of every day for various reasons, but people often cannot accept that someone dies in front of them... simply because they have witnessed the death.”

"That's not surprising... so you're angry at what I said... because I didn't show the slightest mercy to most of them."

"...Keep moving forward, child, I will make you understand."

The hermit opened the elevator doors leading to the Tower of Babel, and Kiana silently followed her inside. The doors closed, and the elevator began to ascend, giving the girl a slight feeling of weightlessness.

"The Babylon Laboratory, located on the snowy plains of Siberia, was Schicksal's second largest Honkai energy research facility. Inside the Tower of Babylon was the world's third largest Honkai energy reactor at the time."

In the elevator, the hermit explained the structure and history of the laboratory to the silent girl.

"The tower was divided into 50 floors. The bottom 20 floors were for the energy zone where the reactor was located, while the other 30 floors housed three very important research departments of the company at that time."

"The lowest level of the energy department is mainly responsible for the basic theoretical research on Honkai energy and providing support for the development of other projects. Although the researchers in this department cannot be called evil, their hands are more or less stained with blood, so they are not clean."

"The weapons department, based on the theories proposed by the energy department, converts Honkai energy for use in combat. The [Throne of Gods] weapon you saw in the Destiny Armory was developed with the assistance of this department."

"And at the very top of the tower... the artificial stigma technology used by this generation of Valkyries originated from them."

"Amazing, truly magnificent, isn't it? Artificial Stigmata have provided powerful support and protection for countless Valkyries fighting on the Honkai battlefield—"

"The Advanced Systems Department, the department with the most personnel and the largest proportion of researchers in the Babel Tower Laboratory, mainly studies the technology of combining Honkai energy with the human body... that is, human experimentation."

"Oh, don't have any expectations of their morality, child."

"The participants in those experiments were at most 16-year-old children...and—"

"And...and what?!" Kiana looked at the hermit beside her.

"The children who participated in the experiment... all of them ultimately died on the testing table from the excessive injection of Honkai energy—no one survived."

"And their lives ultimately turned into lines of cold data, becoming bargaining chips for researchers to demand more funding and resources, and becoming what they call honor and reputation."

"To become—the capital they boast about."

"Now, do you still feel sorry for them?"

"—They will surely fall into the abyss, to the deepest depths—their name will be spurned by all people."

"Their wickedness drew the gaze of the highest gods, causing this rebellious tower to crumble... leaving all beings on earth to cry out helplessly in the catastrophe—"

...The elevator doors opened, and two men fled in panic right in front of them.

The hurried footsteps faded into the distance, leaving only panicked words.

"Run faster! That monster is catching up!!!"

At the corner they had just run around, a pure white figure emerged. It was the shape of a little girl, her entire body composed of white light, emitting a strange, joyful laugh, like a demon from a horror movie.

"whee--!"

She followed the two researchers like a captive spirit, ignoring the two people in the elevator.

"Who is she?" Kiana looked at her commentator.

"Her?... She is the gaze cast by the gods, the bitter fruit of their own making, one of the few survivors of the human experiments at the Tower of Babel, a victim and perpetrator of the Second Collapse..."

"The Second Herrscher, Sirin".

"Sirin...this name feels so familiar..."

Kiana pondered the familiar name in her mind, but couldn't recall anything; something seemed to be preventing her from remembering.

"Let's keep watching..."

The hermit interrupted the girl's futile thoughts and led her forward. At this moment, the hurried footsteps of the two researchers could no longer be heard in the corridor; only the eerie laughter remained, followed by a human scream.

"No...don't go, save me!!"

"My legs! I can't feel my legs!"

The researcher's cries echoed throughout the passage. Kiana, hearing someone calling for help, instinctively tried to rush over, but was immediately grabbed by the Hermit.

"What do you want to do?" A puzzled look came from behind the black V-shaped mask under the hood.

"We should go save him!"

The white fluffy ball struggled fiercely, trying to break free from the hermit's restraints.

"...This is something that happened in history; we were just bystanders. What are you thinking...?"

The tone beneath the mask revealed confusion.

"I don't care! My damn old man told me that the Kaslana family would never stand by and watch someone die!"

The girl struggled more and more fiercely, and the hermit had no choice but to loosen his restraints on her.

"You can't save him..."

Ignoring their pleas, the girl lunged at the white little girl doll and the researcher. The white fluffy figure passed right through them and slammed into the wall, causing her to cry out in pain.

"I've already said... everything here is just a bubble, an illusion... merely history from the past..."

The hermit who followed behind looked at the girl covering her head and shook his head helplessly.

"You were able to access the researcher's body and even retrieve the key card from his body, weren't you?!"

Kiana pointed at the woman in front of her and recounted what she had just seen and done.

"That's a special interaction that only works to fit your cognitive logic... Normally, you're like this now."

"You bumped into something... In reality, you'd probably fall off the bed right now..."

The hermit shook his head as he looked at the girl before him, and his body began to gradually disappear.

"Wait, where are you going?!"

"You woke yourself up with your movements just now... and it's almost dawn, remember to get up and go to class, little girl, we'll see you again next time—"

The illusion shattered, and Kiana was thrown out of the dream world.

Chapter Sixty-Seven: She is not you

"Whoa—" Kiana shivered as she woke up from the floor and looked at the ceiling of her room. Just as the hermit in her dream had said, she had fallen off her bed, and because of her bad sleeping posture all night, every part of her body was now sore.

The torment of her dreams all night left her feeling drowsy and sleepy... and then, coincidentally, the school's wake-up bell rang.

"...Kiana, wake up!"