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ArabicHonkai: Star Rail: I Can Fix This Gender-Bent World — Chapter 52
Chapter 52: Conflict
The echo of the gunshot still vibrated in the stale air.
In the deathly silent tavern, every gaze was fixed on the figure who had burst in so unexpectedly—Lord Bronya, Commander of the Silvermane Guards.
And in that suffocating silence, a shadow moved faster than any eye could follow.
Almost at the exact moment Bronya’s gaze began to sweep across the room, Seele’s form flickered, vanishing from his position beside the wooden crate. The next instant, he reappeared, planting himself squarely between the Commander and the crowd of startled, uncertain men who were still reeling from the gunshot’s deafening report.
His movement was so swift it left little more than a phantom afterimage burned onto the retinas of those who witnessed it.
When he came to a stop, he was no longer empty-handed. A uniquely shaped scythe, gleaming with a dull, dark luster, was held firmly in his grip.
The wickedly sharp tip of the blade was not aimed at his own agitated companions.
Instead, it was pointed fearlessly, directly at Bronya, who stood framed in the doorway.
“What do you want, lapdog of the Overworld?” Seele’s voice was a shard of ice, colder even than it had been during his impassioned speech just moments before.
Facing a deadly weapon aimed at his vitals, Bronya’s expression remained unnervingly calm. He lowered the hand holding the silver flintlock pistol, but did not put it away, merely letting the muzzle point obliquely toward the floorboards. His gaze shifted from Seele’s white-knuckled grip on the scythe to the sharp, angry lines of his face, before finally meeting his defiant eyes.
“I was merely intervening,” Bronya stated, his voice level and detached, a stark contrast to the fiery hostility simmering within the tavern. “Or is it your custom to allow agitated companions to rough up a visitor who appears to have simply wandered in by mistake?”
“Intervening? With a Silvermane Guard’s bullet?” Seele scoffed, the sound sharp and contemptuous. He tilted the tip of his scythe upward. “What a noble way to intervene. As for roughing someone up…”
He glanced over his shoulder at his ragged companions, whose eyes were once again beginning to burn with fury.
“We Moles have our own rules. It’s not for you to judge. But you, the great Commander of the Silvermane Guards, gracing our Underworld rat hole just to fire a single shot? Or perhaps…” Seele’s gaze sharpened, as if trying to dissect Bronya’s placid exterior. “Did you come specifically to hear what we ants are shouting about? To listen to my speech?”
A slight furrow appeared on Bronya’s brow, but his tone remained steady. “Seditious remarks require caution, no matter where they are spoken. Aren’t you afraid of being arrested?”
“Arrested?” Seele laughed, a short, bitter bark of a sound, as if he’d just heard the most absurd joke in the world. The fire in his eyes only burned brighter. “Have any of you Overworld big shots ever bothered to come down here? Has a single one of you truly opened your eyes to see what is happening on this forgotten, frozen land? No! You just sit in your warm offices, staring at cold numbers on reports, and then you issue some meaningless orders!”
He took a small, deliberate step forward. Though a considerable distance still separated them, the pressure in the room increased dramatically.
“You, Commander Bronya. I know who you are. But have you ever seen children freeze to death because they couldn’t find a single piece of trash to burn for warmth? Have you ever smelled the stench of a wound festering and rotting because there’s no medicine? Do you even know what color despair is?”
“You don’t know a thing!” Seele’s voice dropped, the final words spat out with a softness that carried a thousand pounds of contempt. “You’re just… a mouthpiece.”
Bronya’s fingers tightened around the grip of his flintlock. Seele’s words had pierced his heart with the force of a physical blow. The suffering hidden by sanitized reports, the reforms he had tried to push but that had been strangled by systemic inertia—it was all standing materialized before him now, in the form of this furious young man and his desperate followers.
His silence stretched longer this time. The fingers gripping the gun tightened, then loosened.
“You are right.”
Bronya’s voice was still steady, but it now carried a new, somber gravity.
“The Overworld has indeed… ignored the plight of the Underworld for too long. Those frozen children, those incurable wounds, that forgotten despair… These are not just numbers on a report. They are realities I should have known long ago, realities I have failed to completely change.”
He performed a solemn, formal bow from the waist, his voice earnest.
“I apologize to you all. For the negligence of the Overworld, and for this long-overdue acknowledgment.”
Seele was stunned into silence. The scythe in his hands trembled, just slightly. The fury in his eyes seemed to have been doused by a splash of impossibly cold water, its intensity faltering. The surrounding crowd, too, fell into a brief, astonished hush, the muttered insults dying on their lips.
But then Bronya straightened up, his gaze quickly becoming resolute once more.
“However, an apology does not mean I condone unrest. Law and order apply to both the Overworld and the Underworld. Your remarks are enough to incite turmoil, and for that, I must intervene.”
“Ha! The right to intervene?” Seele snapped back to his senses, the fire in his eyes reigniting, now fiercer than before. An apology was cheap, change was a distant dream, and the Commander before him was, in the end, a pillar of the very system that was crushing them.
His scythe traced a small, threatening arc in the air.
“Then you’ll have to see if everyone else agrees!”
As if his words were a signal, the frozen atmosphere in the tavern shattered, igniting once more. The men who had been cowed by the gunshot, now emboldened by Seele’s unyielding defiance, began to press forward again. Their faces were masks of shared hatred, all directed at the lone guardsman.
More people rose to their feet. Though they held no weapons, their silent, collective glare and the sound of their heavy, angry breathing was a force in itself. With Seele as their anchor, they subtly formed a closing circle, trapping Bronya.
“Keep him here!”
“Overworld lapdog, stop putting on airs!”
“Seele, what’s the plan?”
The crowd’s emotions surged, the lead of their rage now pointed clearly and unmistakably at the Commander who had dared to enter their domain alone. The air was taut like a fully drawn bowstring, needing only the faintest spark to detonate into open violence.
Bronya stood alone, silhouetted by the light from the doorway. He faced dozens of hostile eyes and one gleaming scythe. The hem of his greatcoat billowed as if caught in a phantom wind, yet his posture remained ramrod straight.
He stopped looking at the agitated populace. His gaze drifted past Seele’s shoulder for a fraction of a second, seeming to fall once again upon Chen, who remained in the corner. The glance was so brief its meaning was impossible to discern.
Then, his focus snapped back to Seele.
“It seems you have chosen the most unwise path.”
He slowly raised the lowered flintlock. This time, the muzzle was not aimed at the floor. It was raised to a ready position, the threat unmistakable even if it wasn’t pointed at any one person.
“Put down your weapon. Cease your incitement. And come with me for questioning.”
His voice cut through the noise, cold and final.
“This is your last chance.”
A murderous chill pervaded the tavern.