What does a person think about before dying?
Like most questions in this world, no one can provide the answer. To know, one must first experience it themselves...
But death, can a person experience it twice in a lifeti? Heh, no wonder no one can give an answer...
Kallen took a deep breath. Her lungs felt slightly numb, quickly followed by a numbness in her limbs. It seed this was how people reacted when nervous.
She tilted her head slightly, her gaze falling on the nun’s hand resting on the chanism.
"Hoo..."
With a long exhale, her mind gradually emptied. It turned out that the idea of recalling one’s entire life before death was false.
This mont was exactly the sa as every mont that had passed before, no different at all.
The only difference was that brief images finally flickered in her mind—
In the next mont, the nun’s hand would press the chanism. Almost simultaneously, the wooden planks beneath her feet would drop open downwards. Her entire body would hang suspended in the air. Her body would twitch stiffly like a landed fish until, after three to five minutes, her neck snapped, or she suffocated.
Thinking this, she took another deep breath.
Fear? Regret?
Of course, they existed. But faced with established facts, further fear, further regret, served no purpose.
The presiding nun beside her raised her hand high, the signal to prepare for execution. Correspondingly, Kallen closed her eyes in despair.
How would people react seeing her, the daughter of the Kaslana family, hanged? Probably just with excited screams, as if watching a gladiator being executed in the Colosseum, even if that gladiator had stepped onto the sands for their sake.
Bang—
But the next mont, she wasn’t hoisted up as expected. The crowd’s screams did erupt, but only after a dull thud of sothing heavy hitting the ground.
Kallen opened her eyes blankly. The nuns beside her were running backward. The human wall ford by the knights buckled and swayed, many torches knocked to the ground.
The crowd surged desperately towards the cathedral, as if sothing terrifying was behind them.
Boom!
Before she could figure out what was happening, a violent explosion erupted from a distant street. As buildings collapsed, flas shot skyward, and as if preditated, the fire rapidly engulfed everything visible.
And by the light of the towering flas, Kallen finally saw clearly what had landed earlier—a Honkai Beast easily ten feet tall. And further down the streets, heavy shadows were rushing towards this location.
"Damn it!"
Kallen no longer had ti to ponder why so many Honkai Beasts had appeared inside Kolosten. But she hadn’t seen any Valkyries near the execution ground from the start. It wasn’t hard to understand; Schicksal simply feared so of her forr subordinates might take risks.
But the consequence was that facing the ten-foot-tall large Honkai Beast, the ordinary knights were powerless. Seeing even more Honkai Beasts rushing towards them, these knights, usually only responsible for garrisoning Kolosten and having never seen real battle, simply dropped their weapons and torches, scrambling to flee in the opposite direction of the Honkai Beasts.
Once the human wall of knights collapsed, the defenseless crowd naturally surged towards the cathedral behind the gallows. No one paid any attention to Kallen, the one who was supposed to be executed.
But talk of escape—how could humans possibly outrun Honkai Beasts and spreading flas?
Half the city’s citizens were cramd into this small square. Only a small fraction at the very front could possibly escape.
Crack—
Kallen bit down lightly. She had clearly drunk the herbal soup earlier, her body limp and weak, yet now, she sohow squeezed out so strength from nowhere.
Bang!
The thick wooden cangue shattered against her knee. Ignoring the pain, Kallen quickly tore off the rope around her neck, then, empty-handed, resolutely charged into the inferno.
"Such a huge commotion! Even if the Valkyries aren’t nearby, they should arrive within minutes. The most important thing now is to deal with this big guy!"
Kallen’s mind raced, quickly making the most accurate assessnt. But she seed to have forgotten that her current body might be weaker than a girl her age.
She charged straight towards the tall figure, but the scattering crowd beca a wall blocking her path. In the past, a single leap would have taken her to a nearby rooftop, but now she could only struggle within the sea of people. A slight misstep, and she could be swallowed by the crowd concerned only with fleeing for their lives.
By the ti she finally pushed through the crowd, the large Honkai Beast was gone from sight. Only the sounds of Valkyries battling the Honkai Beast swarm echoed from the streets further away.
"Hm?"
Kallen lowered her head, thinking for a mont. Instead of rushing to rendezvous with the Valkyrie squad, she turned her head, searching the surroundings for traces of the large Honkai Beast.
The Valkyries were still so distance away, but the cathedral behind her was close. Most of the panicked citizens had fled there, and further back lay various Schicksal facilities. No one had ever imagined so many Honkai Beasts infiltrating Kolosten, let alone a giant ten-foot one. After all, in her many years of combat experience, Kallen had only encountered sothing of this size once before!
There was absolutely no stable defensive line behind her. The few Valkyries who should have been on duty were also absent. Perhaps this was a case of being too clever for one’s own good.
But it didn’t matter. The lack of a defensive line wasn’t critical. Perhaps soone else, in this situation, would seize the opportunity to flee, escaping as far as possible. But she was Kallen. She was Kallen Kaslana, Captain of the Valkyrie Squad, at least she used to be.
Therefore, where she stood, that was Schicksal’s last line of defense.
Even though she had now regained her senses and understood that with her current strength, she might be completely unable to defeat that big guy, she had to at least buy so insignificant amount of ti for others. If she could alert Eleanor and the others, or lure it towards the Valkyries’ position, that would be even better.
Anyway, she was already prepared to die here. Just consider it living a few extra minutes.
Pat—
Just as she was thinking this, a soft sound suddenly ca from the ruins to her left. Kallen whipped her head around, staring into the shadows cast by the crumbling walls. The dazzling flas around made it even harder to see what was in the darkness, but judging by the size, it clearly wasn’t the Honkai Beast from before.
Taking two quick steps towards the source of the sound, she finally caught a barely perceptible sob amidst the crackling roar of the flas.
"Soone’s still here!"
Kallen hesitated no longer, charging straight into the ruins. The surrounding flas grew fiercer, the spaces between the ruins no longer completely dark. Kallen finally saw a figure curled up in a corner. She rushed forward two steps and saw it was a child, perhaps ten years old.
"How are you? Are you okay?"
The child wiped away tears while crying out in despair:
"Big Sister..."
Kallen’s pupils trembled, not because of anything else, but simply because the child before her looked strikingly like Otto in his youth—long golden hair, green eyes. For a fleeting mont, she thought she had traveled through ti, back to that sumr ten years ago.
That year, she and Otto were about the sa age as this child. They had excitedly run out of Kolosten to play happily in the outskirts of Vienna, only to encounter several Honkai Beasts at dusk.
At that ti, although she had already undergone five or six years of warrior training, she was still too young and carried no weapons. Despite bragging to Otto that she could protect him, when truly faced with several adult-sized Assault-class Honkai Beasts, she could only pull Otto along in a frantic escape until they ran into a dead end.
If not for her father, neither of them would be alive today, wouldn’t have had so many stories, those happy tis, but perhaps they wouldn’t have had to bear today’s heavy sorrow either.
"Big Sister!"
She snapped back to reality. The child before her was clutching her skirt hem with one hand, pointing behind her with the other.
Thump—
Her heart constricted sharply. Kallen quickly spun around. The large Honkai Beast she had been searching for just monts ago stood right behind her. The dim, uncertain firelight burned half its body fiery red, accentuating the deeper blackness of the other half.
It seed to be just passing by, its body turned to one side, only slowly turning its head towards Kallen upon hearing the noise.
"Gurgle—"
Was it the Honkai Beast’s subconscious growl, or the sound of Kallen swallowing hard in extre tension? There was no need to dwell on it. The next mont, the Honkai Beast had already charged before Kallen, raising its sharp claws high and slamming them down viciously.
Instinctively, Kallen reached one hand towards her waist, the other towards her chest—Kaslana Gun Kata and Judah’s Oath, these were the trump cards she thought of first in a crisis.
But unfortunately, she wasn’t carrying a gun, let alone Judah. Watching the Honkai Beast’s claws get closer and closer, dodging sideways wasn’t impossible, but that would an exposing the child behind her to the Honkai Beast’s attack.
There was no other way. Kallen directly raised both hands above her head, barely managing to block the Honkai Beast’s descending claws, even though she realized her mistake almost simultaneously—
Clearly, in close combat, using both hands to block an opponent’s attack was a cardinal sin among cardinal sins.
But there was no other way. The claw was as large as a door; just blocking this blow with her ordinary human body was already extrely taxing.
Well then, death was only natural, right?
Kallen lowered her head, watching despairingly as the tip of the Honkai Beast’s other claw drew nearer and nearer to her abdon.
"This ti... is this truly the end of my life?"
Perhaps her earlier conclusion was a bit hasty. Watching the claw touch her abdon, the thick Valkyrie uniform already slightly indented downwards—just a little more, a little further forward, and the claw would pierce her abdon.
But ti seed to truly stretch out at this final mont, long enough for her to savor her entire life.
Yet she didn’t, because she saw a flicker of firelight.
It was a tiny flicker flying from the side, so small that perhaps describing it as a spark was more appropriate, utterly inconspicuous amidst the eclipse and the raging fire.
But for Kallen, it was an incredibly familiar flicker of firelight.
She was truly too familiar, too familiar with this flicker.
Her nose stung, her vision instantly blurring. Dimly, she only saw the spark hit the Honkai Beast. The massive body turned to ash in an instant. She quickly retreated two steps, narrowly avoiding being engulfed by the flas.
Then, a tall figure stood before her, right on the embers of the Honkai Beast’s corpse.
He was completely covered by a black robe. Kallen’s vision was blurred; naturally, she couldn’t see his features clearly.
But the silver-white cropped hair on his head and the weapon he held said everything.
"Dad..."
Kallen murmured softly, her thoughts instantly flashing back to that dusk when she recklessly dragged Otto into the dead end. Just as the adult-sized Honkai Beasts blocked the only way out, it was a flicker of fire appearing from nowhere, it was this Kaslana blocking her path... Perhaps this was just her dying hallucination, or perhaps she had already entered the world of the dead, and this Kaslana holding the Judgnt of Shamash before her was her father coming to fetch her...
"Hm? What did you say?"
A low voice pulled her from her trance. She snapped back to reality. That wasn’t Francis Kaslana’s voice. And the continuously crackling flas and choking smoke around her constantly reminded her that this was still the world she knew.
She quickly wiped her tears. When her vision cleared again, she found the man before her wasn’t unfamiliar. Of course, she wasn’t surprised by this either—it was the Kaslana she had t once on the Kipchak Steppe.
"Are you alright?"
He asked with concern, yet deliberately maintained a stiff tone. It had to be said, most Kaslanas were this awkward.
"I... I’m fine."
Kallen shook her head. She hadn’t had ti to speak with the man before her yet, instead turning back first to check on the child.
Thankfully, just fainted from fright.
She turned back again, staring into the man’s azure eyes, identical to her own, and asked dazedly:
"You... You are..."
"Just call Kevin. The rest isn’t important. Soone asked to save you, that’s all."
"Save ..."
Kallen pressed her lips together. The first figure that flashed through her mind was Otto. But she quickly dismissed this possibility. Firstly, Otto probably didn’t know this person, nor had they interacted. If he had asked Michael, that would be more likely...
"Alright, co with . Before the eclipse ends, I’ll send you out of the city first. Don’t worry about the child behind you; the Valkyries have already established a stable defensive line and will sweep through here soon. It wouldn’t be good if they found you then."
Kallen scanned her surroundings, still sowhat hesitant.
She had initially sought death, but just as she told Michael, seeking death was both a form of resistance and a form of frailty. She wasn’t brave; she didn’t have the courage to endure a lengthy period, using the rest of her life to wage a more arduous struggle. She thought she could exit the stage in this seemingly brave, seemingly heroic way, but she hadn’t expected the turning point to co so quickly. She couldn’t even die if she wanted to.
Besides, having touched the edge of death twice in quick succession, the instinctive human desire for survival surged up again. Asking her to die now was clearly impossible.
She laughed self-deprecatingly, then looked up. If not for the faint ring of light overhead, one would truly think it was night.
Kevin seed to misunderstand her intention and added:
"Even if you don’t trust , you should trust your comrades, right? But if they see you, it might cause so trouble. At worst, there’s still Phoenix."
"Immortal Phoenix is here too?"
"Mm."
Kevin nodded almost imperceptibly. The sound from his throat seed like both an ordinary response and a cold snort.
She still wanted to say sothing, felt like there was sothing else she needed to say, but after holding it in for a long ti, she only looked up again at the ring of light overhead, then let out a aningless long sigh:
"Man, how long has this eclipse lasted..."
Before she could finish, she saw Kevin’s pupils shrink abruptly to a small point. He spun around rapidly, raised his hand, and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Wind traversed through stopped ti. The gunshot still echoed endlessly in the narrow street. A beam of fire, even hotter than before, had already shot out, accurately hitting the center of the brow of the person behind them.
But the newcor’s steps didn’t stop there. He continued forward two steps, stopping just three feet away from Kevin.
His gaze swept lightly over the hesitant Kallen, finally settling on Kevin’s face.
Then, a smile of inscrutable aning appeared on his previously unchanging expression. Then, just like countless encounters fifty thousand years ago, he greeted him:
"Yo! Long ti no see, Kevin."
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