Honkai: Star Rail: I Can Fix This Gender-Bent World — Chapter 61

Chapter 61: Seele’s Grand Entrance

The figure was indeed Seele—or rather, Chen’s version of her.

The scene rewinds a few minutes.

“I choose you!”

After Chen made his solemn declaration, a faint light began to emanate from his body. The silhouette belonging to Stelle wavered and began to change.

Long, deep blue hair cascaded down his back as a new outfit materialized—a sleek, form-fitting dress that shifted in a gradient from midnight blue to a lighter azure. A pair of cold, purple eyes opened, yet they held a spark of playful mischief that belonged entirely to Chen.

Transformation complete—Seele.

He gave his wrists a light, experimental flex, feeling the explosive power coiled within this new form. A deep sense of lightness settled over him, as if he could dissolve into the shadows at a moment’s notice.

‘Excellent,’ he thought.

He moved directly to the window. The old, rusted latch gave way with a simple, effortless flick of his finger. Outside, the hotel’s back alley lay deserted under the dim glow of the Underworld. A cool night wind drifted past, brushing through his long blue hair. The power of the Path of The Hunt, the very essence of Seele, connected and circulated within him.

“Well then…” Chen whispered, a flash of pure excitement crossing his eyes. “Time to disappear among the sea of butterflies! Illusions of the past!”

The next moment, his figure blurred into motion!

He became a stream of light, enveloped by a magnificent swarm of ethereal butterflies, traversing the urban canyon with impossible speed and agility. With every flash of movement, a gorgeous trail of deep blue butterfly phantoms lingered briefly in the air before dissipating.

He was using Seele’s Ultimate, ‘Butterfly Flurry,’ as a high-speed, three-dimensional maneuvering skill for long-distance travel, and he felt absolutely no guilt about it.

“Whoa!”

The sheer thrill of the high-speed flight forced a low cry from his lips as the wind whistled past his ears. The scenery of the alleyways below stretched into blurred, indistinct lines, receding rapidly behind him.

“This is way more exciting than any roller coaster! It’s just…”

He glanced back at the unavoidable, shimmering trail he was leaving in his wake—a cascade of deep blue butterfly shadows that was as conspicuous as a moving neon sign in the dimly lit Underworld.

“…it’s just a little too flashy! It’s like setting off a string of fireworks!”

Meanwhile, in a simple dwelling tucked beside an alleyway far below, the old miner Geli was finally drifting into a light, fitful sleep on his hard plank bed, his body’s internal clock finally winning out.

Suddenly, he was jolted awake by a brilliant blue-violet flash from outside his window, so intense it burned right through his eyelids.

“Ugh…!”

He clutched his eyes, groaning in pain as spots danced in his vision. It took a long moment for the searing impression to fade. Furious, he yanked aside the tattered cloth that served as a curtain and stuck his head out into the night.

All he saw was a shadow trailing a magnificent tail of light as it vanished around a distant corner at an absurd speed. Faint, unextinguished sparks of light still seemed to hang in the air where it had passed.

“Which godforsaken bastard is setting off flashbangs in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?!” Geli roared, his beard trembling with rage, his voice echoing in the direction the shadow had disappeared. “Are you trying to kill me?! I have to go down to the mines tomorrow, you asshole!”

His curses reverberated through the otherwise silent alley.

From a nearby house, a window creaked open and a woman’s drowsy complaint drifted out. “Uncle Geli… what’s all the noise? Did you dream of monsters again?”

“It’s not a monster! It’s some immoral jerk setting off flares! I’m practically blind!” Geli pulled his head back inside, still muttering indignantly. “Kids these days… what kind of nonsense are they up to…”

From his vantage point high above, Chen naturally heard the faint roars from below.

“Oops, sorry, Uncle… I’ll be careful next time, I’ll definitely be careful next time!” he offered a silent, insincere apology in his heart. His speed, however, didn’t decrease in the slightest. ‘I’m in a hurry, you’ll have to understand!”This is so fun! This ultimate is amazing!’ he thought, marveling again at the lightning-fast speed and the mobility that almost completely ignored the terrain.’It’s just that the continuous energy drain is a bit higher than I expected… I need to use it sparingly.’

The deep blue butterfly torrent came to a sudden halt in a particularly open and secluded corner, a graveyard of rusted metal skeletons and discarded mechanical parts. Chen’s figure coalesced from the light, landing with one knee slightly bent in a textbook superhero pose.

He coolly tossed his long blue hair back, then… looked around with a blank expression.

Before him was a maze of metal ruins, with giant, corroded gears half-buried in the dirt. The Geomarrow lamplight was exceptionally sparse here, casting large, heavy shadows that seemed to swallow the light.

“…”

Chen was silent for three seconds, then scratched his head.

“Well, as expected, the mini-map from the game can’t be trusted. This place is more winding than a labyrinth!”

He tried to recall the path to Svarog’s core area from the original game, but his memory only held vague, fragmented images of iconic scenes. In this real, three-dimensional environment, they didn’t match up at all.

“I can’t just rely on blind luck, can I?” he muttered.

His gaze fell upon the mountainous pile of discarded parts. There were gears of various models, broken mechanical arms, and control boards with their messy cables exposed like entrails. And among them, countless metal blocks of unrecognizable purpose… Staring at these parts, a thought crackled to life in his mind like a spark jumping a gap.

‘Wait a second… that Herta woman can craft such powerful puppets from a pile of random materials…’His eyes grew brighter and brighter as he stared at the scrap metal as if it were a mountain of treasure.’Couldn’t I make one, too?’The more he considered it, the more feasible it seemed.’Besides… I don’t need to build a complete puppet; that’s way too complicated. I just need… a little thing that can point the way!’

He rubbed his hands together, a grin spreading across his face.

“I’m sure there must be usable sensor chips, power cores, and stuff like that in this pile of scrap! It doesn’t matter if they’re broken, just watch my ‘Hand of God’ work its magic!”

With that, he took a deep breath and concentrated.

A faint light rose around him again. His long blue hair retracted, and his figure shifted and adjusted. A moment later, a brown-haired girl in a familiar short coat made her grand appearance.

“Herta, arriving on the scene!” Chen announced in a low shout, then plunged headfirst into the small mountain of trash.

There was no blueprint. There was no plan. There was only pure, unadulterated intuition.

Rusted gears? No problem, use them anyway.

Broken circuits? No problem, just heat them up and stick them back together.

A core board that looked like an ancient detector? He gave it a good slap; if the light still flickered on, it was good enough to use.

He picked up a palm-sized, relatively intact robot head casing from a bygone era and pried it open. He stuffed the crudely repaired sensor chip inside. He found a discarded small motor and tinkered with its output. He tore off a segment of flexible wiring that looked mostly intact and used it to connect the parts.

Finally, he dug out a miniature Geomarrow energy core from a pile of junk. It was dim and lusterless, but after wiping it on his sleeve, he hesitated for only a moment before following his gut and embedding it into the back of the robot’s head. Then, he channeled a trickle of energy from his Herta-form’s body to give it a jump-start.

The entire process was smooth and fluid, possessing a sort of savage elegance. It looked nothing like precision manufacturing and everything like a child instinctively piecing together a toy that just felt right. The parts seemed to come to life in his hands, automatically finding their most suitable positions.

“Done… probably?”

Chen held up the thing he had cobbled together from discarded parts and looked at it. It had a round head, topped with half a small gear as a quirky decoration. Below, it was connected to an abstract structure of several miniature motors and rods that could barely be called limbs.

Overall, it looked like the unholy union of a crooked metal spider and a chibi robot, exuding a certain wasteland-punk comicality and an overwhelming sense of fragility.

He placed it on the ground and took a step back, feeling a pang of uncertainty.

“Ahem, so… startup protocol? Energy pathway connection? Consciousness… uh, navigation logic loading?” he muttered, trying to channel the kind of technical jargon Herta might use.

Buzz…

The little thing shuddered violently. The half-gear on its head began to spin idly with a clattering noise. Its few legs kicked randomly a few times, and the entire contraption looked as if it was about to fall apart.

Just as Chen thought he had failed…

In the two spots on the little thing’s head that should have been optical lenses—which were now two different models of small light bulbs—a faint blue light suddenly flickered to life.

Although it flickered weakly, like a loose connection in an old lamp, it was definitely lit.

The little robot steadied itself. It clumsily turned its head, its bulb-eyes scanning the surroundings while emitting a faint electrical hum.

“It worked?!”

Chen’s eyes widened in pleasant surprise. Even though his successful creation looked like it could disintegrate at any moment, it could actually move! And hopefully, point the way!

“Hahaha! As expected of me! A genius’s intuition!” he declared, unable to resist striking a triumphant pose with his hands on his hips for a couple of seconds, completely forgetting whose ability that intuition actually came from.