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 lifetime? 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 seemed this was how people reacted when nervous.
She tilted her head slightly, her gaze falling on the nun's hand resting on the mechanism.
"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 moment was exactly the same as every moment that had passed before, no different at all.
The only difference was that brief images finally flickered in her mind—
In the next moment, the nun's hand would press the mechanism. 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 moment, she wasn't hoisted up as expected. The crowd's screams did erupt, but only after a dull thud of something heavy hitting the ground.
Kallen opened her eyes blankly. The nuns beside her were running backward. The human wall formed by the knights buckled and swayed, many torches knocked to the ground.
The crowd surged desperately towards the cathedral, as if something terrifying was behind them.
Boom!
Before she could figure out what was happening, a violent explosion erupted from a distant street. As buildings collapsed, flames shot skyward, and as if premeditated, the fire rapidly engulfed everything visible.
And by the light of the towering flames, 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 time 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 some of her former 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 flames?
Half the city's citizens were crammed 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 somehow squeezed out some 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 assessment. But she seemed 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 became 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 time 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 moment. 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 some 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 something 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 someone 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 some insignificant amount of time 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 came from the ruins to her left. Kallen whipped her head around, staring into the shadows cast by the crumbling walls. The dazzling flames 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 flames.
"Someone's still here!"
Kallen hesitated no longer, charging straight into the ruins. The surrounding flames 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 moment, she thought she had traveled through time, back to that summer ten years ago.
That year, she and Otto were about the same 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 time, 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 times, 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 moments ago stood right behind her. The dim, uncertain firelight burned half its body fiery red, accentuating the deeper blackness of the other half.
It seemed 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 extreme tension? There was no need to dwell on it. The next moment, 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 mean 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 extremely 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 abdomen.
"This time... is this truly the end of my life?"
Perhaps her earlier conclusion was a bit hasty. Watching the claw touch her abdomen, the thick Valkyrie uniform already slightly indented downwards—just a little more, a little further forward, and the claw would pierce her abdomen.
But time seemed to truly stretch out at this final moment, 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 flames.
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 Judgment 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 flames 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 met 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 time 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 me Kevin. The rest isn't important. Someone asked me to save you, that's all."
"Save me..."
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, come with me. 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 somewhat 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 come 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 seemed to misunderstand her intention and added:
"Even if you don't trust me, you should trust your comrades, right? But if they see you, it might cause some trouble. At worst, there's still Phoenix."
"Immortal Phoenix is here too?"
"Mm."
Kevin nodded almost imperceptibly. The sound from his throat seemed like both an ordinary response and a cold snort.
She still wanted to say something, felt like there was something else she needed to say, but after holding it in for a long time, she only looked up again at the ring of light overhead, then let out a meaningless 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 time. 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 newcomer'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 meaning appeared on his previously unchanging expression. Then, just like countless encounters fifty thousand years ago, he greeted him:
"Yo! Long time no see, Kevin."