Chapter 3: Without Mercy or Remorse

The aroma of freshly baked kinako bread was, in Yatogami Tohka's mind, the only balm capable of healing a wound of the soul. Or in this case, of the stomach that growled like an enraged lion.

"Shido! You can't leave now!" Tohka exclaimed, waving an arm with a desperation that would have seemed tragic... if it weren't for the fact that the girl in question was holding a crumpled paper bag as if it contained the corpse of a loved one or a cherished pet. "The supply has run out! We must prioritize filling the kitchen shelves with Kinako bread, right now!"

Itsuka Shido, cold sweat trickling down his neck, placed a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder. He knew every second counted. 

The spacequake alarms were no joke, and Kotori's voice in his ear just a minute ago had been unusually sharp and urgent. This was serious; he couldn't waste any more time.

Something had to occur to him....

"I promise, Tohka. If you let me go now, I'll bring back ten... no, twenty kinako buns from the bakery at the station!" Shido forced a hopeful smile after having this idea, adding at the end, "...The ones with extra sugar."

Tohka's eyes sparkled like amethysts in the sunlight. The offer was too tempting.

"Twenty? With extra sugar?" He paused dramatically before nodding with a warrior-like solemnity that was completely out of place. "Alright, Shido. Go. Help whoever you need to if necessary, but don't you dare fall before you've kept your promise!"

Shido didn't wait for a second chance to escape...that is, to go where he needed to go. He ran out of the house, turning the corner into the alley that served as his usual teleportation point. In the blink of an eye, reality distorted. 

The city air was replaced by the electrical hum of the Fraxinus's bridge.

When he materialized, Shido wasn't greeted with Kannazuki's usual teasing. The atmosphere was stifling, thick with a tension you could cut with a knife.

"You're late, Shido," Kotori said without taking her eyes off the main screen. Her black ribbons were perfectly knotted, and her lollipop moved from side to side with mechanical speed.

Shido stared at the monitors and gasped. In the center of the screen, a figure dressed in crimson danced amidst a whirlwind of fire and steel. She was a woman of unreal beauty, whose clothing… Shido felt his cheeks heat up.

"This Spirit..." Shido thought, trying unsuccessfully to look away. The design of her hanfu was so daring that it made the Yamai sisters' astral dresses look modest in comparison. 

The fabric opened at impossible angles, revealing snow-white skin and long legs that moved with supernatural agility. "She only loses to Kaguya and Yuzuru by a very small margin in terms of... eroticism."

—Shido—Kotori's voice cracked like a whip—, if you've finished analyzing her outfit with your teenage hormones, you could pay attention to the fact that that woman is humiliating the AST.

Shido tensed up.

—Humiliating? Where is Captain Kusakabe?

"Ryōko is out of duty due to illness," Murasame Reine informed, appearing beside Shido with her usual dark circles under her eyes. "Tobiichi Origami has taken command. But even under his leadership, this isn't a battle. It's a play where they're the clowns and the Spirit is the true star."

On screen, Li Wei —under the influence of her avatar, the Crimson Lotus Empress— unfurled her obsidian fan.

For Li Wei, what was happening was a lucid nightmare. His gamer instincts, now etched into his very being, recognized patterns that shouldn't exist in the real world. 

Just like in the stories of beings transported to other worlds that he had read, where the game mechanics are translated according to the laws of those worlds, Li Wei noticed that his abilities manifested with terrifying force.

He felt no weight of fatigue, only the flow of the [Passive Strengthening of Physical Essence] coursing through his muscles, giving him a supernatural strength that he felt could destroy concrete without leaving any damage to his seemingly delicate skin. 

And then there was [Imperial Grace], a passive ability that in the game served to intimidate NPCs, but here made the AST mages visibly tremble at their mere presence.

"That's enough!" roared the Empress's voice, its authoritative tone echoing through the ship's sensors. "Your insolence in persisting in harassing this Empress ends here!"

Li Wei closed the fan, and a red aura, thick as wine, began to seep from his body. He decided, almost instinctively, to use a skill he thought might stop this unnecessary conflict, and his fingers were already tracing the necessary mudra.

—[Rain of Blood Lotuses] —he whispered.

From the sky, thousands of petals of red light suddenly appeared and descended gently. They seemed harmless, almost poetic. However, the moment a petal touched a mage's Territory, it passed through it as if it were paper.

Li Wei watched this phenomenon with anticipation.

In the game, this ability "paralyzed" the enemy for an hour. It was a crowd control ability that would work very well against enemies that don't even seem to reach mid-level opponents like this.

But she didn't expect what would happen next...

From the Fraxinus, Shido watched in horror as the AST girls fell from the sky like birds with broken wings. Those who hadn't activated their defenses in time simply stopped breathing. Their hearts stopped abruptly, their blood solidifying in their veins.

"It's over..." Kotori murmured, her face paling. "He's killed almost all of them."

Tobiichi Origami, her CR unit badly damaged and her face smeared with soot, clenched her teeth until her gums bled. She looked at her fallen comrades, the deathly silence that now reigned in the street, and then at the woman in red.

"Retreat!" The order came from AST central command. Origami didn't want to leave. Her hatred for the Spirits boiled in her chest, but her systems were on high alert. With one last icy glance, heavy with a promise of vengeance, she and the few survivors propelled themselves away from the crater.

"That...that...I didn't see it coming, but..."

Li Wei, at the center of the disaster, lowered his fan. Inside, the university student expected to vomit. He expected to feel the weight of the lives he had just taken. 

But he felt nothing. The Empress's coldness was like a layer of ice over his conscience.

"Why don't I care?" Li Wei thought, looking at the scattered corpses. "Is it because of the body? Is it because this is the body of the Empress who annihilated legions of enemy cultivators without batting an eye? This is...horrible."

On the Fraxinus, Reine began flipping through data slides at breakneck speed.

"Complete preliminary analysis," Reine said. "Code name: Empress. Her Reiyoku is... unusual. She isn't trying to impose her will on space-time to create an earthquake like the other Spirits. She... moves it. As if the world around her were an extension of her limbs. It's a high level of efficiency with her power."

"And their compatibility?" Shido asked in a trembling voice, unable to tear his gaze away from the aftermath of the battle.

"According to the analysis...it suggests less than 0.3%," Reine replied curtly. "The emotional fluctuations are undetectable for some reason, but based on her behavior, we can deduce that she has a contempt for everything that isn't her...she sees the world through the eyes of a monarch above all others."

"Damn it!" Kannazuki exclaimed from her seat, her eyes gleaming. "An Empress then! Of course! That disdainful look she gives to inferior beings is simply... delicious! I'd love for her to crush me with those thirsty heels...!"

¡FIVE!

Kotori's heel struck Kannazuki's shin directly, ignoring that this only made that pest moan with pleasure.

"Shut up, you pathetic masochist," the Commander growled at the writhing creature, before turning to Shido. "Listen, Shido. The energy levels it's emitting are attracting everyone. DEM Industries will soon be sending their own toys, and if Westcott gets his hands on someone who can wipe out squads of mages by waving a fan and showering you with flowers, we're finished."

"But Kotori, she... she just killed those people without hesitation," Shido said, clenching his fists.

"That's precisely why you have to go," Kotori said, softening her tone slightly. "If she's a monster, we need to know. If she's a victim of her own powers, we have to save her. Transport ready! Go before she leaves!"

Shido sighed for the third time that day. His body trembled, but duty called him.

—Understood. Wish me luck.

♦♦♦♦

As the beam of light from the teleportation finished fading on the Fraxinus bridge, leaving a trail of energy particles in the place where Shido had been, the "Crimson Lotus Empress" remained motionless on the surface of Tengu City.

Li Wei's mind was filled with complicated feelings. He had just landed in an unfamiliar world, just like his character, and soon after, he was already killing people without hesitation, even if it had been an accident.

"I need to know where I am," Li Wei thought, struggling to regain control of her own vocal cords. "If this is real... I need information. I can't just go around shooting lotus flowers at everything that moves."

Her hands moved with a precision that was not her own. The Hónglián Fēngshàn fan closed with a sharp click.

"Even in death, you will serve the Crown," declared his voice, laden with a mystical resonance that made the air vibrate.

She activated one of her darkest and most expensive abilities in the game: [Jade Empress's Handmaidens].

In the lore of Legend of the Jade Heavens, this ability allowed the Empress to claim the souls of the fallen and transform them into spectral servants. Essentially, it turned defeated female mobs into something akin to pseudo-pets or mercenary NPCs under her control.

Extracting information from those things wasn't possible, but Li Wei hoped it would be different.

Oh, it will be, however...the initial effect was, without a doubt, creepy. 

From the shadows of the sorceresses' corpses, filaments of crimson energy began to sprout. 

"EH....is this how Momonga felt when he saw his spells turning corpses into monsters?" Li Wei thought, more with curiosity than horror at the following scene.

The bodies, severely damaged by the fall and blood paralysis, did not rise like zombies, but were consumed by cocoons of red light.

Seconds later, the buds burst into petals. Where soldiers in shattered technological armor had once stood, ethereal figures now appeared. 

They were beautiful women, dressed in uniforms of maids of the Chinese imperial court, with white silk robes and translucent veils that covered their faces. 

They had no free will; they were extensions of Li Wei's power, retaining memories of their past lives but filtered through absolute loyalty.

"What the hell is that?!" Mikimoto shouted on the Fraxinus, slamming his console. "The mages' life signs have disappeared, but they're being replaced by Spirit-like energy signatures, albeit of lesser intensity!"

"Is it some kind of necromantic ability?" Reine whispered, her eyes fixed on the screen. "It's turning the dead into something like...quasi-spirits..."

Li Wei closed his eyes, receiving a barrage of information from his new "servants." Names like "AST," "Spacequakes," "Ratatoskr," and "Spirits" flooded his mind.

"So...I'm on Date A Live?" she thought with a mixture of fascination and pure terror. "And I'm the target. I'm the disaster everyone wants to hunt..."

A tingling sensation ran down the back of her neck. Her spiritual senses, amplified by the [Passive Strengthening of Physical Essence], detected a disturbance in space-time a few meters behind her. 

Someone had just appeared there.

Instinctively, Li Wei didn't turn around. He vanished in a crimson flash and reappeared directly in front of the disturbance.

Itsuka Shido stumbled upon landing, feeling the typical dizziness of teleportation. 

When he managed to stabilize himself and opened his eyes, the air escaped from his lungs.

Facing him, less than half a meter away, was the Empress.