A long night has ended.
It was true.
However, it was relative to the most dangerous being within the City of Justice.
Psshk-!
Psshk-!
Zoom-!
A blur blitzed through an entire street in one go. With a single jump, Aleph landed straight to where a templar-class beast was present. The momentum of more than fifty meters high jump left no room for it to react.
Psshk-!
The greatswords' broad blade fell from its head. It was immediately severed in half.
{Result: Within the one hundred meter radius, there are a total of twenty-seven templar-class, eighty-nine chariot-class, two hundred and fifty seraph class…}
Great Sage gave out a detailed report. Aleph read it as he sprinted past another block. Silver flashes occurred near his location—an indicator how much his [Seven Swords] were used. As long as it does not exceed two seconds, Aleph could 'recall' them into the space in his hand. It turned into his only means of launching long-ranged attacks. Coupled with his Ratio Technique, their hard silicon shells weren't a problem.
This time, the Nitro Crystal in his hand was replaced with Durandal, the unbreakable sword. He still couldn't use it properly, though it doesn't prevent him from utilizing its sheer durability.
{Result: There is one reading belonging to a human.}
The girl's cold voice made Aleph reroute his path. When he saw that following the road was quite slow, he simply slammed through buildings.
Bam-!
Bam-!
Bam-!
A human-shaped hole was left in each place he went through. Silver lights flashed all around him, representing all six blades piercing through honkai beasts and undeads.
By the time he arrived, he saw whom the vital signal belonged to.
It was a young girl. A piece of rebar pierced through her abdomen. She was inside a collapsed building all this time.
'Was it twenty kilometers..? Thirty percent of the city was lost…'
The aftermath of their fight flashed in his mind. The center of a major honkai eruption ensured there weren't many survivors left. All humans within that vicinity would immediately turn into an undead due to the honkai sickness. It was the same with Aleph's case before. It only took half a minute to turn thirty to forty percent of an urban city into a city of the dead.
That was the main reason why Aleph didn't have any trouble containing the herrscher. There weren't any humans alive around them to begin with. Interrupting her 'power' that turns more than ten thousand square kilometers—the entire city—into iceland was the only thing he had to do for damage control.
"Alright. You must be lucid now. I will be introducing myself…"
While Aleph entertained the half-alive girl, he cleanly cut the excess part of the rebar through his ratio technique. Blood kept spilling out from her wound.
Then, he did the exact opposite of what most responders would do—pull her body out from the protrusion.
Psshk-!
The moment he did so, her bleeding status turned for the worse.
"You won't die here. Remember this."
Fizzle-!
An imaginary sound appeared as the nature of his cursed energy was altered. The extreme negatives clashed, forming a kind of positive cursed energy. It immediately supplemented the girl's entire body, letting the bloody wound close on its own.
This time, Aleph did not leave the half deliberately. Great Sage was running in the background to check the girl's status.
It took two minutes before it ended.
Unlike before, the girl was truly sleeping.
'She… She looks like Kira..?'
For a moment, Aleph doesn't know whether he was being played by fate. The girl looked like one of the Valkyries he knew… in the Current Era, that is.
'If she joins Fire MOTH thinking it's an idol club or something…'
With a sigh, he lifted her on his shoulders.
Unlike before, he only jumped from one rooftop to another. The killing through his [Seven Swords] remained.
'I really need a long-ranged attack…'
Aleph's thoughts briefly went to the dozen or so notifications from [Achievement Hunter]. It was, by far, the biggest amount of achievements he got under thirty minutes.
Even now, it was still counting.
Coupled with the things he learned—the RCT trick to heal mental exhaustion from Elemental Sight to the soul-seizing Black Flash—it was a bumper harvest.
It didn't take long for Aleph to make half a round on the most affected area. He took more than fifteen minutes hopping from one rooftop to another, killing all the undeads and honkai beasts he found.
'Dropping the greatsword works… as long as you do it in the right position.'
His funny thoughts ended there.
Chuff-!
Chuff-!
Chuff-!
The sound of helicopter rotors came from above him. He saw his metal suit along with Anna wrapped in a space blanket. It was quite a far cry from his treatment with the girl on his shoulders. Though, he did operate the reversed curse technique in intervals to make sure the girl was fine. She was, after all, the sole survivor within the 'severe'-rated danger zone of a major honkai eruption.
"Lo and behold! From tens of thousands of meters away, I am driving this big guy!"
"...The budget cut was a necessary character development." Aleph gave an expression of seeing a good thing for once. "You won't crash it, will you?"
"Of course not! You know, I finished flight school in less than two months!"
Others might think she was joking, but Aleph took her seriously. Vill-V wasn't decorated as one of the best prodigies in the Previous Era—even slightly better than Mobius—for nothing.
Given her attention was placed into the right things, she could make a miracle.
"Eh? There's a survivor? The readings here are no joke. It's… hm… one thousand seven hundred. honkai watts."
"That's why miracles exist."
Although it was partly due to his skill that he discovered her, the girl's extremely high honkai resistance couldn't be factored out.
Soon, the mini aircraft carrier hovered above the rooftop. Aleph took one jump to land inside. He looked at Anna's body and saw that she was "silver white".
'Her soul's back to normal…'
It started after he learned the soul-seizing Black Flash. His Elemental Sight captured a brand new 'thing'. It was similar to when he learned how to properly use it for the first time.
If willed by him, he would be able to see metallic lights. Both the girl and the current Anna were in the silver white state. Aleph also saw bits of murky purple staining Anna's silver white light. With his attack, this purple bits gradually gathered at one point as the spread stopped. Its connection with Anna was nearly lost, only remaining due to the Herrscher Core inside her.
"Sigh…"
In the end, he made a choice.
"I swept through half of the severe area. You can return the satellite feed to normal."
"Alright. Director Mei also asked me to do so now. The nearest transfer ships should arrive here in five more minutes."
Looking at the ruined city below him, the image of war overlapped in his sight once again.