Otto elegantly adjusted his cuffs, as if he were about to attend a grand banquet.
His emerald-green eyes swept over everyone present—finally, his gaze seemed to penetrate the walls, looking toward the direction where Fu Hua and Yun Mengxi were.
He knew that at their next "meeting," the vast majority of them would not remember the conversation and plans of this moment.
But the "information anchors" and "logical presets" left by him and Joachim would be like seeds buried in the soil, absorbing all the experiences and data of the past loops in the next cycle, breaking through the earth to grow into a towering tree that would obscure the sky and sun.
That was enough.
Joachim's voice and Otto's voice sounded almost simultaneously—one carrying the calmness supported by data, the other holding an elegant and unhurried confidence.
Two voices that countless people once thought could never be on the same frequency now strangely merged into a reassuring certainty—
"Then," Joachim nodded slightly.
The corners of Otto's mouth hooked into a perfect arc. Facing the crowd, and facing the impending endgame that would decide everything, he bade the most concise and powerful farewell and blessing.
"See you in the next loop."
As the voice fell, the waves of space-time wrapped around everything gently yet irresistibly.
"Or... never again."
This time, in the fading scenery, there was no confusion, no despair.
There was only the tension of an arrow on the string and the high-spirited confidence that everything was ready, waiting only for the east wind.
The seeds had been planted, the chessboard set, the actors in place.
The next loop would be the final stage, and all of them would become the ones holding the pen to overturn the script and end the cycle.
Behold, the colossal millstone of time. That magnificent creation, formless and shapeless yet capable of crushing all destinies, once again emitted its deep roar, like a sigh from the stellar abyss.
Everything in the present was reduced to the past in the cracks, and the future turned ceaselessly into the now at the millstone's intake.
Sapphire City today was ruins, blood, screams, and the creeping madness.
And all of this faded, dissolved, and turned into iridescent dust of memory under this irresistible mighty force.
This was not erasure, but a poignant symphony with the universe as the zither and causality as the strings.
Broken buildings reassembled like building blocks; splashed blood returned to wounds against gravity; extinguished eyes rekindled with fear, and then the fear itself faded, turning into the ignorant calm of the moment before the disaster.
The past three days... or perhaps thirty days? Three hundred days?
Time had lost its meaning of measurement here. Every scar it carved, every choice, every shout, was gently yet cruelly smoothed over by this tide of regression, collected into the eternal bag named "Un-happened."
Look at that steel Valkyrie, Kallen Kaslana, clad in black, purple, and green armor. The terrifying dents and cracks on her body were closing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Broken bones knit themselves together, bruised flesh restored to smoothness, and even her brows, locked tight from severe pain and exhaustion, slowly unfurled, as if she had fallen into a deep dream about battle and protection.
The wreckage of Arahato dissolved into nothingness, while the warrior's soul regained its wholeness in the cleansing of time.
Look again at the dancer in the shadows, Natasha Cioara. She had been like a candle in the wind, dying under the dual erosion of Honkai energy and despair.
At this moment, the purple-black patterns crawling over her skin, symbolizing destruction and rebirth, were peeling off flake by flake like dead skin, revealing the pale but revitalized base color beneath.
In the vortex of nothingness, her eyelashes trembled slightly, as if she were about to wake from a long and painful hibernation. Her brother's collapsing embrace and scalding tears also turned into a warm and blurry background, sinking into the deepest part of the sea of memory.
The commander was silent.
Murata Himeko stood quietly before the fading command scene, the glimmer of virtual data streams lingering on her gauntlets.
She witnessed the activation of the plan at the final moment, bearing the moral weight of utilizing the bond of closest kin. At this moment, everything returned to zero again.
She did not sigh, nor did she feel unwilling; she merely fused that steel-like silence into her straight spine.
Reincarnation can erase memories, but it cannot erase the invisible etchings left on the soul after being tempered again and again.
That decisiveness, that resolve to bear sin to end the tragedy, had been branded deep into the commander's spiritual marrow.
And at the beginning and end of all storms, the guardian martial artist, Fu Hua, was feeling the clearest connection tremor.
Yun Mengxi's final gentle and resolute "Goodbye" did not dissipate into the void but turned into a weak yet incredibly tough thread of obsession, penetrating the barrier of time, gently tied to her heart.
She "heard" it.
She heard the unspoken expectation, saw the path of redemption bordering on sacrifice that the girl chose for herself, for her brother, and for all the sufferers at the edge of collapse.
The Master of Taixuan, the guardian of the current era, did not passively endure in this flood of reset. Instead, with a posture akin to Zen meditation, she made a silent promise, heavy as a mountain, toward the source of that thread—
This body, this sword, will slash through the thorns for the future you yearn for... a future where no one needs to pave the way with their life.
Thus, in this epic scroll of flowing backward, despair was not the theme, nor was destruction the final chapter.
The fading of scars was to bear a sharper mission;
The slumber of memory was to be awakened by a fiercer will at the appropriate node;
The repetition of the loop was not the curse of Sisyphus, but a bowstring accumulating power, pulled tighter each time, just to shoot that arrow—gathering all resolve, sacrifice, and expectation—at the weakest point of the iron wall of the cycle.
When the ripples of space-time finally subsided, when all things returned to that morning where the sunlight was still bright and the disaster was yet nameless, Sapphire City would breathe again.
However, something was already different.
Invisible seeds were buried deep under the soil of fate; emotional bonds crossed the barriers of reincarnation; the blade of determination was sharpened repeatedly in time.
The curtain of the final loop, amidst the lingering sound of the epic, slowly opened.
Then, time stagnated, and then moved forward again—
Himeko opened her eyes on the bed.
Her eyelids felt glued together by old adhesive, as if opening them was a betrayal of exhaustion.
And the first thing perceived was the smell.
The slight fishiness of dust mixed with the lingering faint sour rot of cheap wooden furniture, and the cloying aftertaste left by overnight tea drying at the bottom of a mug.
The nasal cavity woke up first, reporting the mediocrity and concreteness of this world.
Her vision finally broke free from restraints, crashing into the familiar ceiling.
Everything was terribly still, and palpably familiar.
Every speck of dust floating in the pillar of light, every worn mark on the edge of the furniture, the position where the second hand of the wall clock that never kept accurate time had stopped—all were shouting silently.
You are back.
Back to the starting point.
This safe, narrow, destitute starting point.