"Daylight Riding Far? Durandal!?"
Silver Wing was completely stunned.
Caelus's knowledge of the second part of Honkai Impact 3rd was shallow at best — he'd caught a few clips of Durandal in this form scrolling through a certain pink-themed app before his transmigration. It was the image set for Durandal when she logged into the Mars system — configured by 'Vill-V', the universe-hacking system operator who was as warmly adorable and sweet as a good little sister, just like Sparkle.
"System, do you have character cards from the second game too?"
[But of course! This Honkai game system contains every character from the entire main Honkai series, plus collaboration characters too~! Dear customer!]
The System's voice rang out, accompanied by the clanging and clattering of its cartoon hammers and saws. The silver-haired girl's brow arched.
Whatever. Not worth the headache.
"This is quite the unexpected surprise."
The small golden-haired girl balled her fair little fist, half-crouched, and drove it straight into the ground with explosive force. Concrete and stone tiles shattered on contact, her fist sinking into the earth as rubble flew in every direction.
"It's a child's body — but this strength... as expected of Honkai World's innately sacred super-goose." She clicked her tongue approvingly.
This wasn't the raw strength that should belong to Durandal's childhood stage. Rather, it was Durandal's physical constitution from after she had grown up — from when she logged into the Mars quantum computer — scaled down by a certain degree of suppression.
As a result, she had fallen below the Celestial Origin realm, unable to fully unleash her true power.
The small golden-haired girl shook the rubble dust from her knuckles and looked down at her fist. "The Kaslana and Schariac powers are both in a partially locked state."
Both Stigmata within her — the dual lineage of Kaslana and Schariac — had been suppressed.
But she still retained the stats of an S-rank Valkyrie!
"That's enough."
Relying on Caelus's consciousness alone to pilot this body, there was no way to draw out its full potential — but she could always call in a stand-in!
Wait.
Speaking of stand-ins.
"System, if I activate auto-battle right now, which point in time will the stand-in consciousness be pulled from?"
[One moment, let me check where the access pointer is pointing... it should be a timeline running parallel to another universe.]
In short: it would be the future Durandal — the one Old Yang knew aboard the Express.
"Is that so."
The small golden-haired girl narrowed her eyes.
She pulled down her orange goggles, and Daylight — wearing her little cyan-white combat boots — felt the power thrumming inside the body. Hand in hand with the contemplative Silver Wing, the two girls walked toward the direction of the [Schicksal] New Zealand Branch.
Over in the Star Rail universe, it was currently night. All of Caelus's female bodies were in a sleeping and resting state, so the control slots were available.
With the future Durandal's battle experience, forged through hundreds of grueling fights — even wielding a suppressed child's body — dealing with herself at this particular point in the timeline, before she had even unlocked a single Stigma... it should be manageable.
She could hold this in reserve as a trump card for a critical moment. Though, if she actually played that card, explaining the situation afterward was going to be a real headache.
Durandal's personality was straightforward, a little single-minded — no question about that. But over the past decade, who could say she hadn't grown?
More critically: Qibao and the Durandal being summoned over were on the same timeline. Judging from the plot of A Post-Honkai Odyssey that Silver Wing could recall, at that point in time Qibao had been out of contact with Earth for a while.
In deep slumber, most likely.
But given what Qibao had been through — what if, after she returned, she woke up and contacted her sister? What if, comparing notes on their respective cross-world travels, she detected something anomalous?
Better to prepare a watertight alibi in advance than deal with the fallout later.
A qualified Masked Fool — a veteran actress and director in one — had to know how to tighten the plot holes in their own screenplay. Let me think...
!
A flash of inspiration blazed through the girl's mind.
Got it!
On the Star Rail side, she could toss the blame onto the Stellaron and Qibao — and the same trick worked just as well on the Honkai World side! Blame Qibao here too!
After all, if an out-of-control Finality Authority could send Qibao's consciousness leaping across parallel worlds, then it was perfectly reasonable for it to also send Durandal's consciousness back through time to the past, wasn't it?
Granted, the Herrscher of Finality herself might not be capable of temporal travel within the same worldline — but in the intel Silver Wing already had, the Finality Authority's most heavily-weighted effect was one for which there was simply no second option. The most important piece of evidence: the other side's Finality Authority had already demonstrated it.
"As expected of me!"
Daylight and Silver Wing planted their hands on their hips simultaneously and nodded with identical pride, voices in perfect unison.
Now that's how you pass the buck!
No time to waste. Act on it.
Daylight and Silver Wing tilted their heads in mirrored symmetry — the small golden-haired girl leaning left, the small silver-haired girl leaning right — their gazes sweeping a full 360 degrees of their surroundings.
They picked a particularly clean, well-lit corner. Silver Wing summoned Project Bunny to tidy up the ground.
Daylight sat down on a folded piece of cardboard, leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and arranged herself into the pose of someone pretending to have fainted. In the quiet of her mind, she whispered the words —
Auto-battle, activate!
In an instant, a wave rippled outward from deep within the portion of Daylight's consciousness — following some invisible connection, exploiting the BUG to pierce straight through the lowest stratum of reality and reach the other side of the worldline.
The worldline Silver Wing and Daylight currently inhabited was the canonical, intrinsic world of the Honkai Impact 3rd story. The Old Yang aboard the Express likewise came from this intrinsic world.
The reason Caelus's changes to the past had not affected the future was this: from the moment Caelus's consciousness was first reflected back into this timeline, the worldline had entered a unique state.
Simply put, it was like Schrödinger's unfortunate cat — suspended in a superposition of alive and dead.
The history of this world existed in a superposition state: simultaneously the original, unaltered history and the history rewritten by Silver Wing — yet unambiguously a single world, merely bearing two faces at once.
Locking on target: in a sunlit courtyard drenched with birdsong and the scent of flowers during a lazy afternoon — stretched out in a sun lounger enjoying a long-overdue rest on a rare day off — a platinum-blonde beauty, whose strands of white-dyed hair at her temples had slowly overtaken her gold until the whole became pure white with the passage of time.
Holding a cup of red tea poured by her maid, the future Durandal took a quiet sip, a faint smile gracing her lips.
In that same instant, her body stiffened without warning. An overwhelming sensation — at once thunderous and as weightless as falling snow — swallowed her whole, too brief for the future Durandal to have any time to react.
The world went dark. Then the light returned.
"Bianca, wake up — Bianca, what's wrong?"
Silver Wing's small hand pressed against Daylight's bare, smooth, youthful shoulder and gave her a gentle shake.
Slowly opening her eyes, the small golden-haired girl's expression was dazed and distant — and then she was utterly engulfed by confusion.
She stared blankly at the silver-haired girl, and murmured almost involuntarily:
"Again...? ...Bronya?"
Even though the young Bronya and the grown-up Bronya were almost unrecognizable from each other, Durandal had long since become close friends with her little sister's dearest companions — Mei, Bronya, Seele, and the rest — and could recognize her without effort.
Her little sister had a photo from her St. Freya days propped up on the desk in her room — and young Bronya was in it.
"You — how did you suddenly become a child?!"
The disorientation was not severe — just a one-second blackout followed by blank confusion. Now that she was alert again, Durandal shot to her feet and exclaimed in astonishment.
"Bianca, what are you talking about? That's my line — you're the one who's become a child."
Silver Wing launched into her performance, expression shifting from puzzled bewilderment into a look of grave concern. "Did something go wrong during the descent?"
"I... a child?"
Durandal blinked and looked down, rapidly assessing her hands, feet, and height — and only now, belatedly, noticed that something was wrong with her body.
"Wait! This armor — this appearance... isn't this the form I had when I entered the Mars world a few years ago?!"
As if a thought had struck her, Durandal snapped her head up and called out: "Vita! Is this your doing?! Vita! Get out here!"
Silver Wing maintained her expression of confusion, but inwardly something clicked.
Right — there was also Vita, that little gremlin extraordinaire.
If she remembered correctly, Sparkle had given Vita a Persona Mask, making her a fellow member of the Masked Fool troupe. Helping a senior colleague carry some blame? Absolutely fine!
A few years ago... so by the time Old Yang arrived in the Star Rail universe, the story of the second game had indeed already concluded, had it?
"Vita? Why are you suddenly calling for her?"
Silver Wing feigned ignorance and placed a hand on the other girl's shoulder with concern. "Bianca, are you alright? Can you continue the mission?"
"I'm fine... Hm? Mission? What mission?" Durandal's expression shifted into something caught between confusion and suspicion.
"Extracting Wendy from the [Schicksal] Oceania Branch and finding a way to prevent the Fourth Eruption from occurring?"
The silver-haired girl's matter-of-fact tone left Durandal completely dumbstruck where she stood.
The [Schicksal] Oceania Branch?
Hadn't that been disbanded by their big Aunt long ago, its assets sold off?
The Fourth Eruption?
Wendy?
Durandal sensed a reality that made her heart seize with dread. She blurted out urgently: "What year is it right now?"
Silver Wing first put on a look of theatrical surprise, then gave her answer:
"August 17th, 2014. Your descent coordinates are correct — what's wrong?"
"2014..."
Durandal's pupils dilated in an instant.
She had traveled through time?
How was something like this even possible?
And... descent?
The way that was phrased made it sound as though she had crossed over of her own volition. What on earth had happened?
As a seasoned veteran Valkyrie, even when confronted with something this absurd and outlandish, Durandal was able to collect herself in moments and begin thinking calmly.
Just as Durandal was about to ask the young Bronya before her to explain the situation in detail, she suddenly found she couldn't open her mouth. No — it was as though she had lost control of her entire body.
"Bronya, it seems a certain accident has occurred."
[!]
Durandal's heart lurched. Her body was speaking on its own — no, it was a different consciousness.
"What accident?" the silver-haired girl asked, tension sharpening her voice.
"During the descent, my body was interfered with by an unknown force resembling the Authority of Finality. My body has made contact with the consciousness of a parallel-world isotope — another Durandal's consciousness appears to have entered my body."
Daylight said this in a voice that carried a slight, childlike softness.
[The Authority of Finality? A parallel-world isotope? Another Durandal?]
Latching onto several key words, the sheer volume of information sent Durandal's mind into overdrive, rapidly arranging and linking it all into a coherent logical chain.
[...Is this a parallel world?]
[I cannot say for certain — whether this counts as a parallel world from your perspective.]
A voice identical to her own younger self rang out within Durandal's mind.
Of course Daylight knew. But was she going to say so?
[But from my perspective, yes, it qualifies as one. Hello, other Bianca. I am Bianca Durandal Aglovale.]
Silence. Deliberation. Then Durandal responded with composed calm:
[Hello. Could you describe the situation in more detail?]
[Of course. It goes like this...]
The words cut off abruptly. Durandal jerked her head up to find herself facing a familiar courtyard bathed in brilliant afternoon sunlight.
She was back.
In the street alley, Silver Wing and Daylight both exhaled with relief at the same moment.
"The prologue ends here for now. That should be enough for the time being."
There was another important reason to stop: someone was coming.
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