Honkai: Star Rail: I Can Fix This Gender-Bent World — Chapter 75

Chapter 75: Mechanical Rebellion

Inside the Mechanical Settlement, the atmosphere was heavy enough to crush stone.

Svarog’s synthesized voice had just faded, but the ancient records displayed on the holographic projection lingered, shattering the last vestiges of hope in Young Master Bronya’s heart.

The Eternal Freeze, the Fragmentum Rift… the root of all of Belobog’s suffering truly originated from the Stellaron buried deep beneath their feet.

And his father, Supreme Guardian Cocolia Rand, not only knew all of this… but perhaps… had been secretly trying to control or even harness this apocalyptic power instead of resolving it?

Those vague commands he’d received. The deliberate neglect of the suffering in the Underworld, and those increasingly paranoid interpretations of the Path of Preservation…

“Father… he… knew all along?” Bronya’s voice was a dry rasp. The color had completely drained from his handsome face, leaving behind only the stark white of shock and the creeping shadow of self-doubt.

The protection he had always believed in, the cause he had fought and bled for… was its very foundation built upon such a colossal deception? Upon a faith so horribly distorted?

If so, what did his years of persistence even mean? What was his responsibility, if not a fool’s errand?

Seele crossed her arms, a cold, knowing smirk playing on her lips. Her expression screamed, ‘I told you so.’

Dan Heng remained impassive, his sharp eyes committing every piece of key information to memory, his mind already analyzing the strategic implications.

March 7th, however, looked on with open concern, his gaze flitting between the pale, shaken Bronya and the silent Trailblazer.

The Trailblazer, for her part, was still clutching her baseball bat. The complex political truth seemed to fly right over her head; her instincts simply told her to shuffle a little closer to Chen.

Chen, meanwhile, was giving an award-winning performance as an equally shocked girl with amnesia, but behind his wide, innocent eyes, his mind was a whirlwind of calculations.

‘Okay, the information has been delivered, and Young Master Bronya’s conviction is officially cracked,’he thought.’Next step is to guide them to the Stellaron’s location. At the same time, I need to be on guard for Mr. Cocolia’s inevitable intervention… I should probably say something to ease the tension. And maybe give Bronya one last little push while I’m at it?’

He was carefully deliberating his phrasing, brewing up a bit of perfectly timed, Bronya-style comfort when—

RUMBLE!

Without the slightest warning, the entire underground settlement was seized by a violent, devastating tremor. It was a deep, gut-wrenching convulsion that seemed to erupt from the very bowels of the planet. The sturdy alloy walls groaned and shrieked, protesting under the unbearable strain.

“What’s going on?!” Dan Heng reacted instantly, planting his feet to steady himself as his gaze swept the surroundings.

“An earthquake? No! The geological structure of the Underworld is exceptionally stable!” Seele was already in a state of high alert, her hand shooting out to steady Clara, who had nearly been thrown from her feet.

The violent lurch forced Bronya back to reality. He stumbled, catching his balance, and his commander’s instincts immediately took over. This was no ordinary tremor. Its range was immense, its intensity staggering.

At almost the exact same moment, high above in the Overworld, within the hallowed halls of Qlipoth Fort, Mr. Cocolia was at his desk. He shot up from his seat as the tremors hit, a look of sharp suspicion and alarm flashing across his handsome, majestic face.

Dust rained down from the palace’s ornate beams and pillars. Documents slid from the polished surface of his desk and scattered across the floor.

“A quake?” he muttered, his hand already slamming the button on his communicator. “Gepard! Report the situation immediately! All Silvermane Guards are to enter a state of high alert! I want the source of this vibration and the full extent of its impact, now!”

A flicker of deep unease crossed his heart. Bronya was missing… could an anomaly of this scale be related to the Stellaron? And to those outsiders?

The violent shaking lasted for a full ten seconds before slowly subsiding, but a low hum from the aftershocks still vibrated through the air, like the low growl of a restless earth.

The communicator chimed to life, but it wasn’t Gepard’s steady, reassuring voice that came through. Instead, it was the frantic cry of a Silvermane Guard signalman, his voice choked with uncontrollable panic.

“Supreme Guardian! This—this is bad! Something huge has happened!”

“The western industrial zone, at the old mine shaft exit… a horde of robots just emerged! They aren’t our Automated Sentries! We’ve never seen these models before; they’re taller, and so much more… dangerous! They—they’re dismantling everything they see, seizing every machine! As soon as our patrol sentries get close, their signals are jammed. Some are even being controlled by them!”

“There are too many! They just keep crawling out from underground! The defense line… the defense line is about to break!”

A mechanical rebellion?

Cocolia’s pupils contracted. A robot army of unknown origin? Emerging from underground? Hijacking their own machines? This was far, far worse than any trouble he had anticipated.

“Order all Silvermane Guards to abandon secondary peripheral defense lines and fall back to the core urban area and the Everwinter Monument!” Cocolia snapped out orders, his voice a pillar of calm in the chaos, but his tightly clenched fists betrayed the shock coursing through him. “Activate all city defense weaponry! focus on protecting the citizens as they evacuate to the shelters!”

As he spoke, his worry for his son grew exponentially.

Bronya, where in the world are you right now?

Meanwhile, in the Underworld, on the outskirts of Boulder Town and in the tunnels closer to Rivet Town, a similar chaos was spreading at an even more terrifying rate.

Wildfire patrol members watched in horror as robots that had never before set foot in these areas surged like a metallic tide from long-abandoned sites—even from mine shafts and maintenance wells that were thought to have collapsed decades ago.

They were silent and brutally efficient. Whenever they encountered an obstacle—be it discarded mechanical wreckage, the crude barricades erected by Wildfire, or even the Automaton Sentries that tried to resist—they would either violently dismantle it or swiftly suppress and assimilate it into their ranks.

Even more terrifying, these invading robots seemed to carry some powerful signal override, an intrusion protocol that spread like a virus. Old, forgotten robots that provided basic lighting or transport for the Underworld would suddenly flicker. The stable, Geomarrow-blue light in their optical sensors would die, replaced by an ominous, dark red. Then, with a stiff, unnatural jerk, they would turn and join the ranks of the destroyers.

“Damn it! What the hell are these things?!”

“Where did they come from?!”

“Quick, notify the boss! Notify Seele!”

“Hold the line! Don’t let them get near the residential areas!”

Cries of alarm, furious roars, the shriek of tearing metal, and the crackle of energy weapons instantly shattered the fragile peace the Underworld had fought so hard to maintain.

Back in the core of the Mechanical Settlement, inside the main hall, Svarog was being inundated with a chaotic stream of data from peripheral sensors and the few automated units still under her control.

“Large-scale unknown mechanical unit intrusion signal detected,” she announced, her vocalizer processing the data in real-time. “Signal characteristics… possess partial matches to deep archived files in the database. Intrusion units possess high-intensity signal jamming and protocol overwriting capabilities. Threat level: Extremely high. Multiple network nodes in the Underworld have already lost connection.”

She turned to Bronya and the others, whose expressions had all changed drastically, and her speech quickened.

“Emergency situation. An unknown mechanical army is emerging from the deep underground, attacking both the Overworld and the Underworld simultaneously. Their objective is unknown, but their destructive and assimilative capabilities are extremely strong. Recommendation: Take immediate countermeasures.”

Bronya’s face was ashen. The devastating impact of his father’s deception and the truth of the Stellaron had not yet begun to settle. Yet now, a more urgent crisis, one capable of overturning all of Belobog, had suddenly erupted from a direction no one could have ever anticipated.

“We have to stop them immediately! We have to find out where they came from!” Bronya gritted his teeth, the ingrained sense of responsibility as a commander instantly overriding his inner turmoil. He looked directly at Svarog. “Madam Svarog, can your settlement…”