Honkai Impact: My Power Grows When Valkyries Fall For Me — Chapter 76

Chapter 76: A Matter of Control

“Lucian, Bronya will remember this grudge…”

After being forced to delete every last video, Bronya glowered at Lucian, her voice laced with a chilling promise.

A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Lucian’s lips. Looking at Bronya’s teeth-gritting expression, he felt a wave of deep satisfaction wash over him.

“Go ahead and remember it,” he replied, his tone light. “It’s not like you’re short on grudges to hold against me, anyway. What’s one more to the collection?”

Bronya stared at him, her small fists clenching so tightly her knuckles turned white. A moment later, she released them with a sigh of powerlessness.

She truly was helpless against him now. But once she became the Herrscher of Reason, once she rewrote the bio-chip in her head…

Just you wait, Lucian, she thought, a dangerous glint in her eyes. I’ll drain you of every last drop.

Just then, the door to the Security Room was slammed open with a resounding crash.

Kiana burst in like a small, white-and-blue cannonball, followed closely by Mei, who wore a gentle smile that was almost unnervingly serene.

“Lucian!”

She covered the distance between them in a few quick strides, planting herself in front of him. Her azure eyes were filled with a peculiar resentment as she announced stiffly, “Mei and I are done talking!”

Lucian’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

He glanced at Kiana’s face, which was practically screaming, ‘Ask me what we talked about,’ then shifted his gaze to Mei, who was still standing by the door, her smile unwavering.

“…What did you talk about?” Lucian asked, playing his part in the charade.

A blush immediately crept up Kiana’s face, but she quickly puffed out her chest, trying to project an air of confidence.

“Hmph! I’m not telling you!”

Lucian was speechless. ‘…Then why did you make me ask?’

Mei let out a soft chuckle, covering her mouth as she gracefully walked over to stand beside Kiana. Her gaze swept between Lucian and Bronya, and a flicker of understanding lit up her violet eyes.

“It seems something happened here, too?”

Bronya floated to the side, her expression a perfect mask of indifference. “Nothing at all.”

She paused, her gray eyes flicking toward Lucian. “It’s just that a certain villainous individual exploited the trust Bronya placed in him to bully her.”

Lucian’s mouth twitched. ‘You were the one threatening me with those videos! How have you already twisted this to make yourself the victim?’

His internal complaint went unheard as Kiana’s attention was immediately captured. She looked suspiciously from Lucian to Bronya.

“Lucian, did you bully Bronya?” Kiana demanded, placing her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

“No.”

“Yes.”

Lucian and Bronya spoke at the exact same time, their answers in perfect opposition.

Kiana’s eyes narrowed further, her gaze darting between the two of them like a spectator at a tennis match.

“So, did you or did you not?”

Lucian took a deep breath, deciding that the truth, or at least a version of it, was his only way out. “Bronya took some… things she shouldn’t have. I just had her delete them.”

“Things she shouldn’t have taken?” Kiana blinked, her suspicion only deepening.

Lucian opened his mouth, then closed it, realizing he had no idea how to explain this without setting off a bomb.

Tell her Bronya had filmed the intimate moments between him and Mei last night? Kiana would detonate on the spot.

Tell her Bronya was using those videos to blackmail him? Kiana would still detonate, and she’d probably drag Bronya into the explosion with her.

He glanced at Bronya, who met his gaze with a blank expression, though he could see a clear hint of schadenfreude dancing in her eyes.

He looked at Mei; she still wore that gentle, placid smile, but her eyes were sparkling with the undisguised amusement of someone enjoying a good show.

Finally, his gaze landed back on Kiana, who was still waiting for his answer, hands planted firmly on her hips.

Lucian felt a cold dread creep over him. He might not survive the day.

“They were just some… rather private photos,” he managed to say.

“Private photos?”

Kiana blinked, stunned for two seconds. Then, a furious blush erupted across her face, spreading from her cheeks all the way to the delicate tips of her ears. She looked at Lucian, then at Bronya, and finally, her gaze landed on Mei with a look of dawning, horrified realization.

“You… you guys…” she stammered, unable to form a complete sentence.

Lucian’s heart sank. Seeing Kiana’s reaction, he knew she’d guessed. Or at least, she’d guessed something.

Her face as red as a ripe apple, Kiana stuttered for a moment longer before suddenly whirling around and pointing an accusing finger at Bronya.

“Bronya! How could you secretly take photos of that kind of thing!”

Bronya turned her head away, her expression still impassive. “The Bronya was merely recording factual data.”

“What factual data?! That’s… that’s…” Kiana couldn’t finish, stealing a furtive glance at Lucian before quickly looking away again, her face burning.

Mei sighed softly and stepped forward, her presence immediately calming the chaotic energy in the room. “Alright, since they’ve been deleted, let’s leave it at that.”

Her gentle voice was like a cool spring breeze, yet for some reason, it sent a distinct chill down Lucian’s spine.

“However…”

Mei turned to Lucian, her smile as gentle as ever, but her eyes held a different, more piercing light.

“Lucian,” she purred, “I didn’t know you had that kind of fetish.”

“???”

That particular storm was, for the moment, weathered. A few days later, Lucian found himself alone in the St. Freya Training Room.

Unlike his usual sessions, he wasn’t practicing his reaction time today. Instead, he stood in the center of the wide, open area, testing the very limits of his abilities.

The training room was silent, save for the faint, almost sub-audible hum of energy flowing through the facility’s systems.

Lucian stood motionless in the center of the room, the complex golden patterns in his right eye flickering with a soft light. At his silent command, countless motes of Honkai Energy surged from the void, coalescing around him into hundreds of tiny, purple crystals.

The crystals floated in the air like a miniature galaxy, their light dimming and brightening in sync with his steady breathing.

The next second, they began to drift together, vibrating with an increasingly high-pitched hum. The energy within them climbed exponentially, reaching a critical point in an instant.

Suddenly, the crystals began to fuse, a frantic, chaotic dance of matter and energy. The low hum sharpened into a piercing shriek, and the very air in the training room began to warp and ripple under the strain.

He was manually triggering a Honkai Energy Fission Reaction. This wasn’t the uncontrolled, catastrophic outburst that had marked Mei’s awakening as a Herrscher, but a completely controlled, contained fission.

It was an application of his power he had only recently begun to master.

The principle was simple: compress a massive amount of Honkai Energy until its density surpassed the critical point, then trigger a chain reaction, resulting in a targeted explosion.

A slight shockwave pulsed from his palm. The air distorted violently for a split second before the effect collapsed, the space returning to normal. The fission reaction had ended the moment Lucian ceased supplying it with energy.

“The power is sufficient, but the control still isn’t fine enough…” Lucian whispered to himself, examining the slowly dissipating energy residue in his palm.

If he had allowed that strike to detonate fully, it would have been more than enough to level the entire training facility.

This was the new direction he had been exploring recently: not just the brute-force application of Honkai Energy, but absolute “control.”

Control over the energy density. Control over the reaction rate. Control over the blast radius.

To make it detonate on command. To prevent it from detonating when all physics screamed it should. And to confine the resulting explosion to the exact coordinates he willed it to, and nowhere else.

It was far easier said than done.

He had attempted this maneuver several times before, but this was the first time he had truly succeeded. All previous attempts had fizzled out in failure.

And yet, despite his success, Lucian didn’t feel particularly happy. He stood there, staring at his hands, his expression complex.

“So it’s true…” he murmured.

“After establishing a connection with Mei… my power has increased by a full three times.”

The feeling was obvious, impossible to ignore. It was like a man who could once only bench press a hundred kilograms suddenly finding he could effortlessly lift three hundred.

This wasn’t a gradual, linear increase; it was an exponential leap in power, a fundamental shift in his capabilities.

And the turning point for it all, the single event that had triggered this change, was that night he had established a true, deep connection with Mei.