Honkai Impact 3rd: Yumeji Satsuki's lies

Although I was filled with anxiety and worry, I still chose to activate the skill.

Just in case, I decided to use the skill I was most familiar with first. And then, suppressing the restlessness in my heart, I blurted out the skill name.

"Boost"

And that was when the switch that would lead me straight to hell was turned on.

—!!

The moment I activated the skill, my body immediately betrayed me.

A shock coursed through my nerves as if I had been struck by lightning right in the heart without a second to prepare. My skin felt like it was being pricked by thousands of needles at the same time, my limbs were twitching crazily without my control, and my mind was—

—!!

It wasn't overload, it was overindulgence.

Data, information, concepts—all of it poured into my brain without any filters. There was no more Fine-tuning System, no more limiting mechanism. It poured down like a raging waterfall, as if someone was forcefully stuffing the entire world into my skull.

"Fuck... damn—!"

I almost threw up on the spot.

All my senses were stretched to their limits. Images overlapped, sounds were broken, numbers ran wildly before my eyes, and a series of spatial models restructured themselves and collapsed. It felt like I was being torn apart, as if my very existence was being warped because I couldn't keep up with the speed of the data pouring in.

My heart was pounding, and cold sweat was pouring out. My body was shaking as if I was free-falling from a height of 10,000 meters, but worse, my brain was being forced to process everything at a hundred times its normal speed.

—Impossible.

—I can't adapt immediately!

Half of my consciousness was crushed. Eyes wide open, gaze blank, vision blurred by the shockwaves screaming in my head. I could see, could feel myself floating in an endless ocean of data—if I let go, I would be swallowed up immediately.

But I couldn't!

If I had the strength to groan, I had to use it to tame!

"—You have to hold on, Yumeji Satsuki!"

My will screamed, pulling my soul back to reality. I clenched my teeth so hard that blood seemed to spill out, my eyes rolled back and forth, forcing my body to adapt. This was what I had chosen, the power I had to hold onto!

If even I was swallowed up by my own power—what was the point of opening the skill limit?

Focus. I had to focus. That was the only thing a weakling like me could do right now.

Even though a million needles were piercing my nerves, even though my body was being crushed under a tsunami of data, I still had to think.

There was no more "just turn it on and use it." This skill had lost all support. There was no more Coordination System, no more filters to help me process it rationally. It was just a mess of raw, tangled, tangled information that looked like the mess a kindergartener would make by scribbling on countless different sheets of paper and then throwing them around the room without any arrangement—and it was my job to decipher it.

"Fuck…!"

The data poured into my brain like a tsunami, throwing all the knowledge I had at my disposal into chaos. It wasn't just the numbers. It was images, three-dimensional patterns, multicolored lights, mathematical symbols, coded languages, fragments that kept weaving together out of control.

It was like I was thrown into the middle of an ocean with no compass. No way out. No shore. Just me and this storm of data.

—Decode!

I grabbed a small part of the chaotic flow—a geometric symbol, like an ancient rune. If I could start from the smallest thing, maybe I could slowly rebuild the whole picture.

But—wrong!

As soon as I shaped it, the data flow changed. The image gradually became distorted, the structure deformed. I blinked, and it was no longer what it was. A geometric shape had become a series of overlapping symbols, which then transformed into a spatial pattern I had never seen before.

Not good.

Nothing here is static. Everything is changing every second!

If I can't keep up with its speed, I'll never understand this skill.

—Try again!

This time, I tried to separate a small part from the chaotic chain to analyze it piece by piece.

Wrong.

—Try again!

I tried a different method, holding the data in my visual memory. But just when I thought I had grasped it—it changed again.

Wrong again.

Time passed like a knife cutting into my mind. I didn't know how many times I failed. Five times? Ten times? No. Dozens of times.

Each time I failed, the exhaustion ate away at my mind a little more.

My heartbeat was erratic. A splitting headache came over me, making me stagger. My eyes glanced at the status panel that was opened, in just 20 seconds, my Spirit was already depleting at a rapid rate, with this continuous decrease, I could somewhat guess what it was that I had been consuming when using skills until now. Right now, my body was in an alarming state, as my muscles started to contract uncontrollably and my heartbeat and breathing became unstable—

But if I give up now, all my efforts will be for nothing!

Once again, I tried—

—No way.

Impossible!

My brain had reached its limit. The pain squeezed my chest. My muscles were exhausted to the extreme, causing my legs to no longer have the strength to support my body and I collapsed to the ground in a kneeling position.

Cold sweat poured down my face. My eyes were rolling and my vision was blurry. My limbs were shaking like a dying fish. And then—

—Blood gushed out of my nose.

And then I completely collapsed, I collapsed on all fours and my vision turned red.

Splash___

The sound I heard was the sound of blood dripping onto the hard ground, but even that started to sound like the chirping of insects. After that....

My consciousness gradually faded. My body was out of control, even though I had deactivated the skill, the impact it brought was slowly dragging my mind down to the bottom. This was the end of this unplanned experiment.....

—But just before I completely collapsed, a cold voice rang out in my ears.

"Yumeji. Your condition… is not good."

A strong arm grabbed me and stopped me from collapsing.

With a red, painful gaze, I looked up and the person standing there, was Bronya.