Honkai Impact 3: Noah's Ark

18:《Soldier》

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《Monday, 11:24 PM》

"Four," the naked man muttered.

His voice was rough and parched, louder than it should be with a kind of audible pain from having not breathed in so long. He wobbled forwards, as if unaware of the shattered glass before him. Compared to Noah, his hair was longer and white. His body looked both deprived and at the peak of health, both glowing with vitality but at the same time left only with the bare minimum mass. Noah tensed as the man pointed his bloody eyes towards him.

"Ah," he suddenly said. "It's the messenger, sent to replace us." He suddenly stopped shaking, rising to his full height a good head above Noah.

"What an insult," he continued. "You're too weak."

In this moment, Noah realized that whatever he was dealing with now also wasn't human. Likely another pseudo-herrscher. The boy raised his sword, arms bulging with strength as he sent the beheading strike.

The tables turned in an instant and he could only react on instinct. The sword which was arcing horizontally to cut his opponent, was forced into a block halfway, and with a resounding clang, Noah felt the weight of a continent on his arms. The next he felt a log slam into his ribs, flinging him back as if he was an ant flicked off a table.

Breath and blood escaped his mouth when he slammed against the wall, then the boy dropped to the ground and nearly broke a leg: the height in which he was flung was unexpected.

"What a waste of an excellent sword."

Noah looked up through broken ribs. The thing that woke up had his sword and was holding it gingerly against the emergency lights. The boy frantically checked his palms for his trusted partner, finding nothing. He looked back to see his opponent open its other hand.

What appeared was a glowing silhouette of a sword. The light disappeared when the man wrapped his fist around it, and Noah realized that his opponent had created an exact copy of his own sword. N-001—if that was really its name—turned to look at him with malice. Noah had an unfamiliar feeling he had already seen once before. With alarm bells ringing inside his head and the blood beginning to pump into his legs, he only had a single thought:

Run!

His legs took off even faster than he'd thought. He didn't even make a second glance at his beloved weapon—the sense of impending doom he'd felt far outmatched what lingering sentiments remained on an object he didn't even have a name for.

But just as he thought that, the hair on the back of his neck stood and he ducked. There was a sharp pain on his temple, followed by something wet coming into his eye. Hand covering the new wound, he looked up to see his sword sticking out on the floor in front of him. He looked back just in time to see O1 fashioning a new sword to replace the one he threw. It was the fake one.

"Fight, weakling!"

Noah turned and left the sword there—it faded into light as soon as he stepped past anyway. Unexpectedly, there weren't any new projectiles coming after him as he traced the path of broken doors. Then he had an idea.

Time to use what Éclair gave me, he thought.

He tapped the base of both his wrists together, activating the CAS-II Namikos gloves. The drills on his fists began to glow. The boy took a stance, and, remembering his sparring with Fu Hua, felt his energy gather into his arm and release into the gloves.