Honkai: Star Rail: I Can Fix This Gender-Bent World — Chapter 74

Chapter 74: Geo-Map

Meanwhile, deep within the Mechanical Settlement, amidst a tangled web of complex pipes and abandoned mine tunnels, a small robot stirred.

Geo-Map, a crooked little automaton pieced together from scrap metal, used its flickering lightbulb eyes to vacantly scan the completely unfamiliar surroundings.

Last night, after Chen had forgotten it and left, it had tried to execute its final navigation command: return to the Creator’s side. But because it had lost the signal source, its navigation chip could only emit a series of futile, incorrect directional prompts the moment it left the territory of the mechanical tribe.

“Creator’s direction lost.”

“Environment scan failed.”

“Energy remaining below 15%.”

“Recommended mode: Low-power standby.”

Its intermittent electronic voice echoed in the empty tunnel, unheard by anyone.

It didn’t know where its Creator had gone, nor did it know where it should go. It could only rely on vague memories to grope its way back along the path it had come. When a gear jammed, it would tap its own body with a rusted connecting rod. When a circuit suffered a poor connection, it would clumsily press down on the interface with its forelimbs.

Stumbling with every rotation of its wheels, it drifted further and further off course.

After an unknown amount of time spent searching, it pushed aside a pile of loose gravel and rusted metal mesh, rolling into an unusually wide passage that did not look naturally formed. The walls on both sides were made of regular alloy plates, and though they were covered in a thick layer of dust, one could still make out the exquisite craftsmanship beneath.

Geo-Map’s lightbulb eyes flickered a few times as it increased its scanning sensitivity. At the far end of the passage, it saw an extremely massive, sealed blast door.

The gate was caked in dust, but the complex mechanical structures and a faint IPC emblem were vaguely visible at the edges—a symbol long forgotten by the people of Belobog.

It stumbled its way to the front of the gate. The door didn’t seem to be completely locked; years of neglect had left a gap at the bottom just barely large enough for a small creature like itself to squeeze through.

It stuffed its flat, sheet-metal body into the gap. Wriggling and squeezing with immense difficulty, its parts let out an overburdened creak before it finally tumbled out onto the other side.

It had entered an underground void so massive it defied imagination, its scale far exceeding that of Rivet Town above. The ceiling hung high in the darkness, supported by countless thick alloy skeletons.

And in this vast, cavernous space, rows upon rows of dense, orderly… robots were lined up.

They stood in absolute silence, a phalanx of soldiers awaiting inspection, their ranks stretching all the way to the edge of the darkness. These robots were of a uniform model, taller and heavier than any Automated Sentry currently in service in Belobog, with even more rigid armor lines. Though covered in centuries of dust, the top-tier craftsmanship of a bygone era was still evident.

At the very front of the formation, near the cave wall, stood several even more massive shadows. They were super-heavy combat platforms, like mobile fortresses, flanked by several giant mechs that towered over ten meters tall. Their head sensors were dim and lightless, but their colossal frames alone radiated a chilling sense of pressure.

Geo-Map’s lightbulb eyes widened to their brightest setting. Its sensors frantically received data, its processing core heating up from the sheer information overload.

“Large-scale unknown military-grade mechanical units detected.”

“Quantity estimation error. Retrying.”

“Energy level reaction exceeds perception limit.”

“Threat assessment: Extreme danger! Extreme danger!”

It instinctively wanted to curl into a ball and hide back in the gap it had entered through. But its gaze was drawn to a raised command platform in the center of the cavern.

Geo-Map’s simple processing core, pieced together from scrap parts, began to run at high speed. Its simple logic unit couldn’t comprehend the true meaning behind ‘extreme danger,’ nor could it estimate the consequences should this forest of steel before it awaken.

It only had one highest-priority basic protocol instruction echoing frantically in its circuits: Find the Creator. Return to the Creator’s side.

The navigation chip had failed, the environment was unknown, and its energy was nearly depleted. All conventional paths were cut off.

But… its lightbulb eyes stared at the complex control interfaces on the command platform. Then it looked at the massive robot army stretching into the darkness. A simple and crude logical path, derived from its core instruction to return by any means necessary, suddenly sparked to life within its primitive thought circuits.

‘I can’t find the way. I’m too weak. I can’t go far, and I can’t transmit a signal. But they… they are so many, so powerful. If they can move… if they can help me search…’

Geo-Map’s thoughts locked onto the only thing in this entire place that might be able to help.

“Target decided: Seek assistance units.”

“Assistance units locked: Unknown large-scale mechanical cluster.”

“Action plan: Access control terminal, issue assistance request.”

It no longer hesitated, nor did it have room for fear. Dragging a somewhat deformed leg, it limped toward the raised command platform. Along the way, it rolled over accumulated dust, leaving a single crooked track on the floor. Compared to the silent iron giants surrounding it, it was as insignificant as a grain of dust.

Finally, it climbed onto the platform. The console in the center was coated in grime, but the outlines of interfaces, buttons, and screens were still clear. Geo-Map tilted its head, which was topped with half a gear, and scanned the console with its lightbulb eyes.

It didn’t have the right tools. It didn’t have a knowledge base for cracking protocols. It was just a navigator pieced together from junk.

But it had one trait that Chen had unintentionally endowed it with during its creation: Protect Creator > Self-Preservation.

It raised a forelimb made of micro-motors and connecting rods and fiddled with a gap on the side of its round head that looked like a mere decoration. With a click, a small iron plate popped open, revealing a rusted interior and a miniature data transmission cable with a few exposed wire ends. It was likely a part salvaged from some antique communicator—tattered and extremely unreliable.

Geo-Map adjusted its crooked body, aiming at a circular port on the console that looked the smallest and seemingly simplest.

“Connection attempt beginning.”

“Adaptation mode: Forced identification and basic protocol call.”

It had no encryption keys or authentication methods, only the most primitive handshake request to establish a communication link, and a brain-dump of obsession-filled data packets about “finding the Creator.”

Pshhh—

With a small spark and a tooth-aching grinding sound, it forcefully shoved the tattered probe into the port. A few exposed wire ends instantly crackled from the poor contact. Geo-Map’s entire body trembled violently from the feedback of the overloaded current. The gear on its head spun wildly, and the light from its bulb-eyes flickered rapidly, as if it would fall apart or burn out the next second.

“Warning! Non-standard interface! Abnormal voltage!”

“Data stream impacting core.”

But it didn’t withdraw.

In the dizzying overload, its simple logic stubbornly persisted, sending its message to the other end of the port. To this ancient system that had slept for hundreds of years, it sent the simplest, most direct, and most obstinate request imaginable.

Find… Creator… coordinates… lost… help me… find… activate… help me… find…

It had no sophisticated hacking techniques; it was just using the clumsiest method possible. It was sending a help signal like a child’s cry to a system that might completely fail to understand it, or had long since gone silent.

For a long moment, there was only silence. Nothing happened.

Geo-Map’s energy indicator grew dimmer and dimmer. The light from its bulb-eyes was about to go out, and its core temperature was soaring.

Just a moment before its core might have burned out from the reckless forced connection…

Hummm…

Suddenly, the entire massive underground space, that seemingly eternal dead silence, was broken by a low hum that seemed to come from the very depths of the planet’s core.

Then, as if disturbed from the deepest sleep by this tiny but persistent call, something stirred. In the depths of the steel forest, among the row of robot soldiers closest to the command platform, their long-extinguished sensors simultaneously lit up with two almost imperceptible… red lights.

Like sleeping giant beasts, roused in a boundless dream, they opened their eyes for the first time in centuries.

Amidst its own nearly depleted energy, Geo-Map’s lightbulb eyes difficultly but incomparably firmly flashed one last piece of information:

“Final destination decided.”

“Navigation beginning.”

“Creator.”

“I’m coming to find you.”

Then, its lightbulb went completely dark. Its tattered body, still connected to the port, stopped trembling. It slumped over the console, looking like a literal pile of scrap metal.

But the ancient system it had so forcefully knocked upon had answered.

That quietly lit red light, and the low hum of a reboot beginning to echo through the entire space, all seemed to portend that something, because of a lost little robot’s simplest and most reckless plea for help, had been accidentally… activated.

Beneath Rivet Town, an arsenal that had slept for seven hundred years, for the first time, responded to a voice from the outside world.