Those were her glory days, basking in the fame and satisfaction of being both a phantom thief and a saintess.
Meanwhile, Li Mo toiled day and night in his laboratory, working around the clock.
To deliver a satisfactory answer to Schicksal's Castle Alliance and the Apocalypse family as soon as possible, Li Mo worked year-round. When exhaustion took him, he would rest in the small room adjoining the lab, only to wake up and resume his research.
Did he have talent? Undoubtedly. But was he a genius? Not likely.
Hailed as a genius inventor, he had only gotten this far by relying on the Void Archives, a knowledge database so powerful it was practically a cheat code. Lacking the innate ability of a genius, he could only compensate with the effort of a mortal.
Now, he was utterly alone, with no one to tie him down.
He was free to do things society would never accept—extreme things. Things like human experimentation.
A year later, Li Mo developed a drug that could effectively cure patients of the Black Death. He submitted it to Nicholas, who in turn presented it to the Castle Alliance.
The Castle Alliance distributed the medicine in its own name, making no mention of Li Mo.
Know your place and be grateful, they said, for the Castle Alliance has fought the demon Satan and pulled the sick from the depths of hell.
Know your place and worship, they said, respect and admire the members of the Castle Alliance, and obey their every command.
Know your place and sacrifice, they said, do not dwell on personal gain or loss, but work tirelessly for the sake of our grand dream and righteous cause.
They said…
They said…
They said…
"The sinner, Otto Apocalypse, for the crimes of stealing the Schicksal secret, the black box, leading to the spread of the Black Death; for insulting the nobility; for attempting to assassinate the Schicksal Overseer and the head of the Apocalypse family; and for plundering the nobles' private property—their slaves—and spiriting them out of Europe…"
"Today, under the just judgment of the Schicksal, he shall be sentenced to death by extreme torture!"
On that bleak day, human compassion was in short supply.
In the center of the square, a crude, towering wooden platform had been erected. It stood there in stark isolation, as if built for this day's unfortunate soul.
On the platform, Li Mo was bound tightly by thick iron chains.
His clothes were ragged, his face a mess of dirt and dried blood, and his eyes were hollow. His long, golden hair was disheveled, hiding much of his face but failing to conceal a resilience and loneliness that did not belong to this era.
Covered in wounds, Li Mo hung his head. After enduring countless tortures in the dungeon, he no longer had the strength to resist.
For the man he was now, death was the kindest release.
But… he couldn't accept death just yet.
Because…
With great effort, Li Mo raised his head, his blurry vision scanning the crowd.
The sky seemed perpetually shrouded in a thin haze. Sunlight filtered weakly through the sparse clouds, casting a listless glow over the jam-packed market square.
The crowd was massive, yet Li Mo's eyes were drawn to a distant street, where a flash of white was desperately rushing toward him.
With a heavy drumroll, the execution began. A member of the Schicksal Castle Alliance stepped forward and began to read the indictment, a document filled with prejudice and lies. Every word was a blade stabbing at Li Mo's heart.
Fortunately, Li Mo didn't care. When it came to the hypocritical Castle Alliance, his heart had long turned to ash.
The crowd's reactions were varied. Some looked on with disgust, believing Li Mo got what he deserved. Others whispered among themselves, questioning the fairness and severity of such a trial.
Yet, no matter the clamor from the outside world, Li Mo maintained a strange calm, as if none of it had anything to do with him.
The final verdict was read. A sharp, silver sword pierced his throat.
Then his limbs, his heart…
But the Li Mo on the stage was already lifeless, his eyes cloudy and vacant.
Kallen, who had raced to the scene, arrived only to see Li Mo's body, riddled with wounds and devoid of life.
"Ah… ahh…"
Kallen was nearly speechless, frozen in place.
Time flowed on silently. As most of the crowd dispersed, Kallen remained, unmoving.
At that moment, she could no longer understand Li Mo.
He was dead, and with him, the warm, beautiful memories of their past. From now on, she would walk this path alone, with no chance to ever understand him again.
The dead are gone, but their memory lingers.
Angry shouts echoed in her ears. People praised the grace of Schicksal's Castle Alliance for saving them from the despair of the Black Death.
But Kallen knew the truth. Curing the Black Death had been Li Mo's research project all along. Now, his name was nowhere to be found. Schicksal had stolen his achievements.
Finally, Kallen saw the children she had known from the slums, now grown.
They walked up to Li Mo's corpse, picked up small stones, and hurled them at his body with hearts full of resentment.
"It's all your fault! My parents died of the Black Death! Why did you have to steal Schicksal's black box?!"
"You should have died long ago! If you were never born, no one would have had to die!"
The Castle Alliance had blamed the spread of the Black Death on Li Mo, turning countless people who didn't know the truth against him.
They had intentionally left his body on display. Firstly, it was a show of force against the Kaslanas—if one of their two strongest could be executed so publicly, what chance did the rest of them have?
Secondly, it gave the populace an outlet for their anger, temporarily easing the tension between them and the Castle Alliance.
Kallen, standing in the crowd, saw it all.
"Heh heh…"
"The righteous phantom thief."
"The world-saving saintess."
Kallen let out a cold laugh she never had before, her voice like ice from a frozen cavern.
How ironic…
So this was what she had been protecting all these years. These people.
She had been willing to fight for justice for the common folk, to fight to the death.
But when someone like her needed justice, when he needed a fair trial, they all bowed their heads, pretending not to see, as if that would grant them a clear conscience.
Yes, people feared death. She understood that…
But did that mean his death, and hers, were to be expected? Something to be ignored as if it never happened?
Why?
Why?!
"This world has never been beautiful. I… will overturn it," Kallen vowed, grinding her teeth.
She walked to the platform and swiftly took Li Mo's body. The Castle Alliance members, realizing what was happening, immediately gave chase, but they had no hope of catching Kallen, an S-rank Valkyrie.
The entire city was put on lockdown, and the Valkyrie forces were deployed to capture her.
Following her memory, Kallen reached a section of the city wall where the defenses were weakest. There, she encountered members of the Castle Alliance and her former subordinates.
"Hurry, tell the others! The sinner Kallen has appeared! Tell them to get here now! We'll hold her off!"
"Hold me off? With you lot?"
Kallen's expression was grim. She advanced step by step, completely ignoring the weapons in their hands.
One of the Valkyries spoke first. "Captain, you still have a chance if you turn back now. If you just admit your mistake, the Castle Alliance won't be too harsh on you!"
Hearing this, Kallen snorted in contempt. "And become a dog for the Castle Alliance? Like you are now? Think about it. Why does the Castle Alliance command you? The Valkyrie forces weren't created for anything other than protecting people from the Honkai. Of course, right now, I no longer see the point in protecting fools."
A Castle Alliance official waved his hand dismissively, his face twisted in a sneer. "Enough talk! Stall her until the other Valkyries arrive to contain her! How dare a sinner presume to criticize the Castle Alliance's decisions!"
"You, you, and you! All of you, get up there and stop her! Today, she absolutely cannot—"
Before he could finish, Kallen appeared behind him. In the next second, a visible gash opened on his neck, blood pouring from the wound.
"Noisy," Kallen said flatly. The official collapsed to the ground.
The act stunned her former subordinates, who instinctively took two steps back.
"Cap… Captain…"
The Valkyries stared at Kallen in fear. This captain, who was always smiling, always cheerful, kind, and good-natured… had just killed someone?!
How could that be?
How could Kallen Kaslana kill someone?
Impossible, it was impossible…
Even when her own life was threatened, she would never kill!
"I don't want to kill anyone," Kallen said. "But if you insist on standing in my way, I won't hold back. If you truly have the resolve to die for the Castle Alliance, then I will grant you that wish."
With that, Kallen took a step forward. The Valkyries retreated two steps, no longer blocking her path.
Seeing this, Kallen didn't linger. She walked right out through the city gate.
In the days that followed, Li Mo's body was placed in a coffin, which she carried on her back as she hid among the crowds.
Kallen came to see that everything in the world was just a construct of interests and desires. People pretended to care for one another, but in reality, they all harbored their own selfish motives.
Saving the world was meaningless, impossible, absurd, and laughable.
She finally understood what Azure Empyrea had meant all those years ago.
Saving the world is no easy task. Sometimes, you can't even save a single person.
As time passed, Kallen's mind slowly reached its breaking point.
Everyone needs at least one reason to live. If you believe everything is hopeless and meaningless, the only end is self-destruction.
At the end of her rope, she saw an image of her younger self—the one full of ambition and confidence, the one who had proclaimed she would save the world with Li Mo and bring happiness to the people.
A tragic smile spread across her face.
She suddenly remembered something Li Mo had once told her.
Kallen opened the coffin. Inside, his body was perfectly preserved, showing no signs of decay.
"I promise you, I will live on… forever and ever…"
As the words left her lips, many people in Vienna froze as if someone had pressed a pause button, then slowly returned to their senses.
A strange paradigm was etched into her being. Kallen killed herself, becoming an Impostor.
The moment she became an Impostor, its rules and abilities became second nature to her, like an instinct.
To fundamentally change this ugly world, Kallen returned to her youth in the Middle Ages.
There, she slept soundly next to Otto, searching for traces of Francis.
She was Kallen, Kallen Kaslana, simple-hearted and fiercely loyal… It was only natural that she, worried for her father's safety, would ask her best friend, Otto Apocalypse, to help her find him.
Yes, she was doing what Kallen Kaslana would do. She was Kallen Kaslana.
The next day, a thick black fog descended, so dense she couldn't see her own hand in front of her face. Otto, who had been beside her, seemed to have vanished. She was led by a stranger into a strange village.
Although his touch, the size of his body, and the way he moved told her he wasn't Otto, Kallen felt a familiarity that only Otto could give her.
And yet, he said he hadn't seen Otto…
I see… It's only natural to get scared and run away in a primeval forest, she thought.
In any case, I'll follow this person's orders for now. Once I'm safe, I'll go home.
That was what Kallen decided.
One evening at dusk, Kallen sat in a shrine, chewing on a rice ball Yae Sakura had made, marveling at how delicious it was.
Suddenly, her body stood up on its own, growing and morphing in an indescribable way.
She was transported to the Previous Era, and there, she regained her memories.
The Previous Era. Though she didn't understand why there was another version of herself there, it didn't matter. She had finally recovered her consciousness and her memories. She could now change this ugly world.
Searching through all the memories in her mind, she realized the Previous Era was the furthest back in time she could reach.
After comparing her memories, Kallen finally confirmed it: Li Mo was the original Otto.
"You know, at first, I wanted to invite you to… 'save' this world with me. Just like… we planned back then," Kallen said to the dying young Li Mo.
But the Akazome Sakura, which had chosen him as its master, sent a tremor of fear through her heart. Her intuition told her she could not touch this blade, much less possess or change it.
Her painstakingly crafted plan could very well be shattered by the Li Mo who wielded the Akazome Sakura.
And so, he had to die.
There was another reason. Her ability to travel to the Previous Era was likely connected to Li Mo himself. Only by killing him could she change the tragic future. Otherwise, everything would repeat itself.
Therefore, Kallen swore to use everything she had to bury Li Mo and end this tragedy.
The years flew by. Fifty thousand years passed in a flash.
Some things may have changed, but others were fated to remain the same.
The choices they both made had inadvertently set the future on its course.
After the Impostor Li Mo died, he would be randomly reborn into anyone who had agreed to his request.
But this process was interfered with by a "wish."
The Impostor paradigm would prioritize a candidate whose soul was closest to the original.
And Li Mo had made a vow to himself and agreed to it…
At the moment of his death on the platform, pierced through the heart by a Schicksal priest, he was reborn in the second timeline… as Otto Apocalypse.
Otto Apocalypse, the third son of Nicholas Apocalypse and Sabina Schariac.
The youngest son of the Apocalypse family, he had no right of succession. Frail since childhood, he was ridiculed in an era that prized martial strength.
His family's indifference gave him the freedom to grow up as he pleased. Though he wasn't expected to achieve much by his clan, he still possessed a certain degree of power and influence.
He later chose to use that power to access his father's study, where he learned about the "Honkai"—a subject considered taboo by the Schicksal of that time.
As he delved deeper into his research on the Honkai, he grew emotionally detached. Though he maintained the facade of a slightly arrogant, elegant nobleman, his values gradually deviated from common sense…
Yet despite his pride and arrogance, he still had a soft spot in his heart—
Kallen Kaslana.
"My plane… my airplane…"
"Wow! It flew so high just now!!"
A young girl appeared suddenly atop the wall, in a way no one could have imagined, a bright smile on her face as she looked down at him.