If not for this whole business, he'd have nearly forgotten about that genuine Valkyrie armor.
It was the armor Kiana had been wearing when she crossed over — though after the brutal fighting she'd been through, it was badly damaged.
The joint components on the right arm were completely shot. Three energy conduits in the chest plate had snapped clean through. The thrusters in the leg sections were dead on arrival.
But the core module covering the torso was still intact. Those visible micro-circuit boards, the nano-scale material weaving techniques, the fragments of energy circuitry embedded inside the armor's lining —
Every last bit of it was technology that didn't belong to this world. Pure, uncut black-market future-tech from that other world.
If he just dropped this thing in front of Mobius...
Su Yu could practically picture the look on the green-haired woman's face — that feverish, hungry gleam, like a researcher spotting a pristine lab rat.
"Hey."
Su Yu snapped his fingers.
This wasn't junk. This was a VIP backstage pass straight into Mobius Laboratory!
But it was Kiana's stuff, when all was said and done. Better ask her first.
Su Yu glanced toward his bedroom — he'd told Kiana earlier that he was going to push hard and get a chunk of work done tonight, and not wanting to disturb her, he'd sent her off to sleep in his room.
She was probably fast asleep by now.
He'd bring it up tomorrow morning, then.
"Sharpen the axe before chopping wood — can't exactly walk in empty-handed and expect to walk out with the prize."
Su Yu fixed his eyes on the dense wall of documents on his screen and stretched until his spine cracked.
The System had dropped a mission: make a PV that would "shake the world." That meant pre-production couldn't afford to be sloppy.
Shot lists, music briefs, visual style guides... these things were the foundation. A shaky foundation, and it didn't matter how high you built — the whole structure would be a condemned building waiting to collapse.
So Su Yu sat down, and he didn't get up for the rest of the night.
When the first sliver of dawn light sliced through the gap in the curtains like a golden blade falling across the keyboard, Su Yu finally pressed the last Enter key.
Save. Close. Shut the laptop.
Smooth as flowing water.
He had two spectacular dark circles under his eyes and felt like his soul was about ready to float right out of his body — but his mind was buzzing with a sharp, electric energy.
Su Yu caught a few hours of sleep and woke up at noon.
He told Kiana about the new time-savings feature first, watching her bounce up excitedly and start ticking off on her fingers how many days she'd need to save up before she could go wild for a full day out.
While she was still riding that high, Su Yu brought up the White Comet armor.
"You want to give my clothes... away?"
Kiana stared, completely blank-faced, at the White Comet armor Su Yu had dug out of the storage box.
The white plating still carried the faint smell of Arc City's smoke. Deep gouges scarred the surface — a record of battles she had once fought.
"Not give. Lend."
Su Yu corrected her, with the polished air of a sharp antique dealer pitching a family heirloom.
"Just lending it to Dr. Mobius for a few days of research. In exchange, she loans us one of her best people to work on the PV. It's called resource swapping — you following me?"
Kiana's brow creased slightly.
"Mobius..."
She turned the name over in her mouth, something unnameable threading through her tone.
"Isn't she the woman who's been... keeping you?"
"Pfft — who told you that?!" Su Yu's eyes went wide. "What do you mean 'keeping'?! That's research funding! Legitimate compensation for services rendered! How does it sound like that when it comes out of your mouth?!"
Kiana curled her lip and muttered, "Griseo told me... and you said it yourself. That fancy car you drove to the amusement park last time — she gave you that too."
"That was borrowed! I borrowed it!" Su Yu felt his reputation for innocence suffering an unprecedented crisis.
Kiana said nothing.
She looked at the White Comet armor, then looked back at Su Yu's face — dark circles and all, still somehow a little annoyingly handsome.
She'd never met the woman called Mobius, but just from the name and Su Yu's descriptions, she sounded like someone formidable — rich, powerful, and razor-sharp.
And this idiot, Su Yu... had been working for someone like that for so long.
Even driven her car. Even spent her money...
A sour feeling rose up in Kiana's chest — like an unripe lemon being squeezed to a pulp right in the middle of her heart.
"Hmph."
Kiana's cheeks puffed out, like a very irritated hamster.
"So... if we lend her this, does that mean you're even?"
She pointed at the White Comet armor, a stubborn glint in her eyes.
"What I mean is... if this thing is really that impressive, and we lend it to her for research — would that cancel out all that 'sponsorship' she's given you? So you wouldn't owe her anything after this?"
Su Yu blinked.
He looked at Kiana — that awkward, stiff, yet dead-serious expression on her face — and suddenly understood.
Was this kid spinning some weird logic in her head? That whole "let me buy my idiot's freedom" kind of braincell configuration?
Su Yu swallowed a laugh, rubbed his chin, and put on his most thoughtful face.
"Hmm... well now."
"The tech packed into this armor is seriously impressive. Forget just canceling a favor — if anything, we might end up with her owing us a big one instead."
Su Yu held up one finger and gave it a slow wag.
"Then it won't be me working for her anymore — we'll be her creditors. How's that for a deal?"
Kiana's eyes lit up instantly.
Creditors.
That word had a very satisfying ring to it.
If that was how it worked... it meant Su Yu wouldn't have to answer to that woman anymore, and nobody could say anything about anyone being "kept" ever again.
"Deal!"
Kiana gave a firm nod, flinging her hand out with the grand magnanimity of someone scattering their fortune for a worthy cause.
"Lend it to her! Lend it to her hard!"
"Let her study it to her heart's content! And then—" Kiana balled her small fist, a smug little curve pulling at the corner of her mouth, "—make her pay back everything she owes you. Principal and interest!"
Watching the girl's feisty, fired-up expression, Su Yu quietly lit a memorial candle for Mobius in his heart.
Snakey, oh Snakey — I bet you never dreamed in your wildest nightmares that the otherworldly tech you've been dreaming about would be hand-delivered as someone's 'buy-back fee.'
Still...
Su Yu looked at Kiana.
This feeling of being looked after by his own "cat" — it wasn't half bad.
Storyboard scripts and production plans take time, after all.
This time, Su Yu didn't pull an all-nighter. He went to bed early, conserving his strength.
The next morning, at 10:03 a.m., Su Yu headed out.
Kiana remembered the exact time — she'd been watching the clock on the entryway wall.
His black backpack was stuffed full: one half jammed with his laptop and the printed storyboard scripts, the other half holding the White Comet armor fragments wrapped in three layers of anti-static cloth.
The zipper hadn't been pulled all the way shut, leaving a little arc of white visible.
"I'll probably be back this afternoon."
Su Yu was changing his shoes in the entryway, one foot already inside a sneaker, the other still with its laces untied.
"There's cut fruit in the fridge. Grab some if you get hungry at lunch. Don't touch the stove — you burned a dish towel last time."
"The dish towel spontaneously combusted."
"Dish towels don't spontaneously combust."
"How do you know they don't? You're not a dish towel."
Su Yu's hands paused mid-shoelace. He looked up at her.
Kiana was leaning against the doorframe between the living room and the entryway, wearing that old washed-out grey T-shirt of his.
It was so big the collar had slipped down to her collarbone.
She had her arms crossed, expression outwardly calm — but her ahoge was leaning left.
Leaning left meant she was holding something back.
"You're not coming with me?"
He asked it casually, like it was a throwaway line — but he already knew the answer.
Kiana shook her head.
No explanation.
Su Yu didn't push.
For Kiana, laboratories were suffocating places.
The white fluorescent lighting, the cold metal surfaces, the antiseptic smell, the unidentified objects floating in petri dishes, the figures in white lab coats moving back and forth through sterile environments.
Those things would make her think of images she shouldn't think about.
"Alright, I'm off."
"Mm."
He opened the door, stepped through — then turned back.
"Chongchong's cat food is on the second shelf of the cabinet."
"I know."
"Don't forget to change her water."
"I know——"
"And——"
"Are you going or not?!"
Su Yu laughed, and pulled the door shut.
The lock clicked into place. Footsteps traced their way down the corridor and faded into the distance.
No sound from Fenghuang's place next door. She was probably still in bed.
The apartment fell quiet.
Chongchong crawled out from under the sofa, shook her ears, and padded slowly over to Kiana's feet, bumping her head against Kiana's ankle.
Kiana crouched down, scooped the cat up, and held her against her chest.
Chongchong's body was warm, her throat vibrating with a steady, rumbling purr.
Kiana stood in the entryway, holding the cat, listening to the last traces of footsteps disappear around the corner.
Then she turned and walked back to the living room, sank into the sofa, and pulled out her phone.
The lock screen wallpaper was a candid shot Griseo had taken at the amusement park.
Su Yu was in it, expression screwed up in the middle of being flung around by the roller coaster. Beside him, Kiana wore a perfectly blank face, ahoge standing straight up.
Griseo had said the photo had "interesting colors" and absolutely insisted she set it as her wallpaper.
The face in it was ridiculous — but looking at it made her feel inexplicably cheerful, for some reason she couldn't name.
Kiana leaned against the big Homu plush propped on the sofa — it was a prize Griseo had won at the [Miss Pink Elf ♪] trivia event at Homu Game Center, and had given to Kiana.
Kiana wanted to take it back to her own world someday, as a gift for a certain small person.
But it really was a comfortable thing to lean on — fluffy and warm.
Her thumb slid across the screen and opened her messages.
At the very top of the list was one unread notification. The timestamp read last night at 11:43 p.m.
[Carole: Kiana-sis! Did you download that APP yet?? I'm telling you it's SO useful!!!]
[Carole: It has real-time updated commissions — catching thieves, handling disputes, finding lost cats, all kinds of stuff]
[Carole: You get a reward bonus for completing them!! That wanted criminal you helped catch last time netted you 100,000, right?! Big ones like that are rare, but small ones add up to a solid amount too!]
[Carole: Plus doing vigilante missions earns you points, and once you get enough points you can level up your clearance to take on higher-tier commissions!!]
[Carole: Download it download it download it!! (/>W
Kiana stared at the string of messages, her thumb hovering over the screen for two seconds.
The 100,000 was real, but it hadn't come through yet — apparently there was paperwork to process. The earliest it could arrive was next week.
The APP Carole was talking about was called [Arc City Vigilante].
The icon was a blue-and-white shield. Download count: 800,000.
Rating: 4.2 stars. The pinned review read: "Finally don't have to wait in the 110 queue anymore."
She opened the APP to a registration page. Kiana logged in with her ID Card number.
The system automatically pulled up her vigilante registration, and a line of green text jumped up at the top of the screen:
[Welcome back, Vigilante Kiana Kaslana. Current Rank: B-rank.]
B-rank.
Seeing that rank gave Kiana a slightly strange feeling — after all, in that other world, her Valkyrie rank was also B-rank.
But a rank was just a number; it didn't reflect real ability. After all, Kiana Kaslana was the hands-on, combat-first type.
Being a little weaker on theory was perfectly normal.
She poked around the APP a bit more and found it genuinely well made.
The home screen was a live map of Arc City, scattered with light markers of various sizes.
Red for crime alerts, orange for wanted bounties, blue for civil commissions, grey for completed tasks.
Kiana stared at the map, her gaze jumping between several red dots.
Chongchong jumped down from her arms and squatted on the coffee table, tilting her head to watch her.
Kiana didn't look at the cat.
She was looking at a number in the top-right corner of the screen.
Account balance: 0.
Su Yu had been working hard for her sake.
Kiana had known that from day one.
From that cup of hot milk in the convenience store, to breakfast appearing on the table every morning without fail, to the System missions, the motion-capture base, the game project, the storyboard scripts —
And then last night: she'd woken up in the middle of the night to find the laptop screen still glowing in the living room, Su Yu slumped over the keyboard, fast asleep.
He'd been up all night writing the PV proposal.
For her.
So that more people could "see" her. So she could stand somewhere steadier in this world.
Kiana wasn't oblivious to any of this.
She just didn't know what she could do about it.
In that other world, she could do a lot.
Fight Honkai Beasts. Save people. Stand in front of everyone and take the hit.
Her two fists were her best tools; the Kaslana bloodline had given her the instinct to fight, and Valkyrie training had taught her how to turn that instinct into the power to protect others.
But in this world —
No Honkai Beasts. No Herrschers. No city needing her to drop from the sky and save it.
Her power had become a surplus thing here.
Like a blade with no sheath — leave it anywhere and it cuts someone.
Until that moment in the back alley of the old district, when Carole had nearly been shot by a gunman.
She'd rushed out.
Flung a packet of instant noodle seasoning into the guy's face, put him down with three punches and two kicks, and hadn't cracked a single egg in the shopping bag the entire time.
Lewis had scolded her afterward for being too reckless — but Kiana had thought about it for a long time on the walk home.
Turns out, in this world, her strength had a place to go after all. Beyond just being Su Yu's motion-capture actress, there was somewhere else this power could be used.
Not saving the world — just catching a thief.
Not fighting a Herrscher — just helping the neighbor granny find her runaway cat.
And the key thing was: doing these things paid.
Money — that concept was something Kiana had only truly come to understand in the past two months.
In that other world, Valkyries didn't need to earn their own money. Schicksal covered food, housing, and gear.
And though it felt a little odd to say it herself — Kaslana didn't exactly have money problems either.
But here, she'd seen Su Yu frown at the accounts in the dead of night. She'd seen him comparing two brands of soy sauce at the supermarket to find the one that was thirty cents cheaper. She'd seen him get chased around for twenty minutes by Lin Zhaoyu over the cost overruns on the motion-capture base renovation.
Su Yu never brought up money with her.
But money was real, grinding pressure — and she'd been living in this world for more than two months. She understood that better than anyone.
Kiana's thumb scrolled through the commission list.
[C-rank Commission: XX Road convenience store hit by repeated late-night thefts. Owner offering 5,000 yuan for the culprit's capture.]
[C-rank Commission: Suspicious individuals spotted near the old district scrapyard, suspected illegal gambling den, tip-off reward 3,000 yuan.]
[B-rank Commission (B-rank clearance required): Wanted Criminal #4471, suspected of multiple home break-ins, bounty 80,000 yuan.]
Eighty thousand.
Kiana's gaze lingered on that number for a beat.
Then she backed out of the commission list and opened short videos.
Not to scroll aimlessly.
She was looking for something.
A video she'd stumbled across last week, one she'd rewatched five times.
Found it.
The cover showed a boy — early twenties, sitting at a computer desk, holding a square box in both hands.
The box had a green eye icon printed on it, and a line of English letters she couldn't quite read written below.
The moment the boy opened the box, his hands started to shake.
He turned the graphics card over and over in his hands, eyes going red. His mouth kept trembling. Finally he buried his face in his palms.
Somewhere off-camera, a girl's voice laughed and said: "What's wrong with you, it's just a graphics card."
The boy said something muffled, then started crying and threw his arms around the girl, calling out something like "I love you."
The comment section erupted.
The pinned comment read: "Humanity's three greatest joys — acing the imperial exams, the wedding night, and when your girlfriend buys you a graphics card."
When Kiana had first watched this video, the look on her face had probably been exactly like Cheng Lingshuang hearing that the dojo cafeteria was serving extra food today — bewildered, with a thread of genuine curiosity.
A graphics card.
Kiana opened the shopping app and searched the model number mentioned in the video.
The moment the search results popped up, Kiana's pupils registered an 8.0 on the Richter scale.
"Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands..."
Fifteen thousand?!
Kiana sucked in a sharp breath, and nearly dropped her phone directly onto her face.
Is this thing made of gold?!
This one little circuit board slab costs fifteen thousand?!
That's how many boxes of instant noodles? How many limited-edition Homu figurines?!
In the old days, fifteen thousand Shenzhou yuan wouldn't have meant much — but the problem was her wallet right now was cleaner than her face.
"A single coin can fell a great hero" — Kiana finally understood why that line showed up so often in the novels she'd been reading.
But...
In Kiana's mind, there floated the image of Su Yu's back as he pulled another late night. There was his look of careful calculation as he pinched every penny for the dojo's equipment. And that face of his — obviously exhausted, and yet always smiling at her, saying "it's fine."
If...
If I could get him one of these...
Would he be like that boy in the video — so happy he'd jump up? So moved he'd actually cry?
She found herself picturing Su Yu clutching a graphics card, sobbing his heart out, crying and yelling "Kiana, you're too good to me," or maybe something like "if you don't reject me I'd like to take you as my benefactor," or maybe even "my darling I love you to death" —
Ahem.
That last one didn't count — it was from the video, the boy in the video said that, Su Yu would... never say something like that, right.
"Pfft."
Kiana couldn't hold it back and laughed out loud. But at the same time, a faint blush crept up her cheeks.
"Hmph. As if this princess would give someone something this expensive. Dream on."
Her mouth said that. But her fingers had already, quite honestly, switched back to the Vigilante APP.
Looking at those commissions. Looking at those bounties, one by one.
Kiana's expression changed.
That sharp, hunter's focus — the look of a predator that had found its prey.
"I may not understand any code, and I don't know anything about PVs..."
"But when it comes to physical persuasion, this princess is a certified professional!"
This was Kiana Kaslana's battle.
Not to save the world. Not to fight back against the Honkai.
Just to buy that idiot who had taken her in — a graphics card that would make him smile so hard he cried.
At this moment, in this peaceful, ordinary world —
She had finally found the new main quest of her life.
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