Honkai Star Rail: My Path Changes Every Day! — Chapter 202

Chapter 202: I Am a Magical Cat

To the casual observer, this was just an ordinary black cat.

It possessed no trace of power from any Path. Was it sentient? The universe was vast and endlessly bizarre; under the right circumstances, even the smallest speck of cosmic dust could hold a conversation, so a slightly intelligent feline was hardly cause for alarm.

Rekka, however, was currently trapped in a deeply awkward predicament.

The synesthesia beacon implanted in his brain was completely unresponsive, a direct consequence of his daily shift aligning him with Terminus, the Aeon of Finality. Yet, he couldn’t even tap into Terminus’s divine authority. It was a purely negative debuff, stripping him of his usual cosmic cheats and leaving him as nothing more than a fluffy quadruped.

After tossing a few credits on the table to pay for his tea, Huaiyan stood up and strolled away from the roadside stall. The elderly general wandered at a leisurely pace, occasionally pausing to inspect the assorted trinkets displayed by local merchants. The black cat trailed behind him with unhurried grace, maintaining a precise distance of three steps—never creeping too close, never falling behind.

Whenever Huaiyan stopped, the cat stopped. It would crouch obediently at the old man’s feet, wrapping its dark tail neatly around its front paws, the very picture of perfect feline manners.

‘What a rare little fellow,’Huaiyan mused, casting an amused glance downward.’I almost want to take it back to the Zhuming and raise it.’

But before the thought could fully form, Rekka turned and trotted away into the bustling crowds.

A bit of a pity, the old man thought, shaking his head as he continued his walk.

Tucked away in a quiet, shadowed alleyway, Rekka stared up at a familiar face. From his current vantage point near the ground, she looked absolutely towering.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk…” Silver Wolf blew a bubble with her chewing gum, letting it pop loudly. “Who do we have here? Why is the great trailblazing anomaly slumming it like a stray cat on the street?”

Rekka flattened his ears and let out a sharp, warning hiss.

“Oh? You’re even hissing at me now?” Silver Wolf crouched down, an amused smirk playing on her lips, and unceremoniously poked Rekka right in the center of his forehead.

Rekka’s feline brain short-circuited.

He only knew the instinctual mechanic of hissing; the mental files detailing what a cat was supposed to do after the warning phase were completely missing from his current hardware.

Silver Wolf watched the dazed black cat stare blankly at nothing. She poked his forehead twice more, then smoothly pulled out her smartphone and aimed the camera lens right at his face. “Hey. Look up. Look at the lens.”

The black cat stubbornly turned his head away, utterly refusing to cooperate with the impromptu photoshoot.

Unfazed, Silver Wolf reached out, pinched his furry cheeks, and forcefully squished his face back toward the camera. She pressed the shutter.

Click.

“Tell me,” she drawled, reviewing the image on her screen. “If I drop this photo into your Astral Express public chat, do you think they’ll recognize it’s you?”

Provoked, the black cat suddenly launched himself forward. His two front paws swiped aggressively through the air, aiming straight for Silver Wolf’s wrist.

She simply lifted her arm a few inches. Rekka missed completely, his tiny claws swiping uselessly at empty air before gravity dragged him back down to the pavement in a humiliating heap.

“Heh heh heh.” Silver Wolf giggled, thoroughly entertained. “Alright, alright, calm down. I actually came out here specifically to find you. Are you touched?”

Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed the black cat by the scruff of his neck, hoisting him into the air.

“Come on. I’ll take you somewhere fun to hang out.”

Initially, Rekka had been more than a little apprehensive about crashing at the Stellaron Hunters’ temporary safehouse. After all, Blade’s mental state rarely screamed stable and welcoming host. But as it turned out, Rekka had severely overthought the situation. In the quiet mundanity of daily life, the terrifying swordsman acted more like a chronically exhausted, worrying old father.

Rekka sprawled comfortably on the plush living room sofa, lazily lifting a hind leg to scratch behind his ear while watching Silver Wolf mash buttons on her gaming console.

Blade walked past, casting a brief, flat glance at the black furball occupying the cushions. “That isn’t Elio.”

“Right. It’s Rekka,” Silver Wolf replied, her eyes glued to the screen, her thumbs flying across the controller without missing a beat.

Blade didn’t press the issue. “We’ll eat in a bit,” he announced, his deep voice carrying a domestic exhaustion that completely contrasted his murderous reputation.

“Eat what?” a cheerful voice chimed in.

Rekka froze mid-scratch. He slowly turned his head to see Firefly sitting nearby, carefully polishing the edge of a blade. She looked up, offering a bright, entirely too innocent smile.

“Silver Wolf, I’ve heard cat meat tastes pretty good.”

Rekka instantly arched his back, puffing out his fur to double his size, and activated his most ferocious, beast-like hissing stance.

Firefly was absolutely doing this on purpose. She was trying to scare him out of pure, unadulterated jealousy. Recently, Stelle had completely stopped mentioning Rekka in every single conversation. This sudden shift had made Firefly incredibly happy; nowadays, out of ten sentences Stelle spoke, there might not even be a single passing reference to the chaotic anomaly.

To Firefly, this was a massive victory.

However, if the Stellaron Hunter ever found out that Stelle’s sudden silence was actually the result of Rekka specifically requesting her to keep his name out of her mouth to avoid drawing unwanted attention, one could only wonder if Firefly’s armor would spontaneously overheat from the sheer indignation.

“You heard wrong,” Silver Wolf corrected lazily, executing a flawless combo on her screen. “Cat meat is incredibly sour. It tastes terrible.”

‘Right, exactly,’ Rekka thought, nodding his furry head in vigorous agreement.

Firefly set her weapon aside, walked over to the sofa, and suddenly grabbed both of Rekka’s front paws. She leaned in close, her sweet smile failing to mask the intense warning in her eyes. “Don’t have any improper thoughts about Stelle, okay?”

Forced to make direct eye contact with his interrogator, Rekka let out a series of low, protesting growls from the back of his throat. But right now, he was just an ordinary kitty. Aside from acting cute and hissing defensively, he had absolutely zero capacity for physical resistance.

Wriggling free from Firefly’s iron grip, the black cat bounded across the room and planted himself directly in front of Blade.

What followed was an elaborate, frantic game of feline charades. Rekka meowed, pawed at the air, pointed at Blade’s head, and spun in circles. Miraculously, after a few minutes of this absurd display, the stoic swordsman actually managed to decipher the cat’s demands.

A long, heavy silence descended over the room. Blade stared at the cat. The cat stared back.

With a heavy sigh that spoke volumes of his resignation to the universe’s nonsense, Blade reached up, snipped a small lock of his own dark hair, and handed it over.

“What exactly are you going to do with my hair?” Blade asked, his tone perfectly flat.

Rekka paused and looked up. He wanted to explain his brilliant, chaotic master plan, but the clump of hair currently stuffed in his mouth made articulation impossible. Instead, he just tilted his head and let out a muffled, noncommittal “Mmh” from deep within his throat.

Blade closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “…Forget it. I don’t want to know.”

Mission accomplished, Rekka flicked his tail triumphantly and trotted over to Silver Wolf, dropping the stolen prize onto her lap.

“What is this?” she asked, pausing her game.

‘Meow meow meow meow.’ Rekka tapped the hair, then tapped a small rubber band sitting on the coffee table.

Even while trapped on the ominous Path of Finality, Rekka’s dedication to causing highly entertaining chaos remained absolutely absolute.

Silver Wolf stared at him in disbelief. “You seriously went and harassed Blade into giving you a lock of his hair… just so I could help you tie it up?”

Truly, he had fully embraced the mindset of a cat.

Shaking her head in amusement, Silver Wolf picked up the dark strands. She folded the long lock of hair in half, wrapped the tiny pink rubber band tightly around the middle, and held it up by one end. The dark cluster dangled freely in the air. She casually swung it back and forth in front of Rekka’s nose.

“Here you go. Your own exclusive, custom-made cat teaser. Crafted from the legendary Blade’s hair.”

‘It is not a cat teaser,’ Rekka grumbled internally, swatting the dangling object away.

He could hardly wait to see the look on Huaiyan’s face when the old general got a good look at this specific lock of hair.

Rekka meowed sharply at Silver Wolf, then extended a single paw, laboriously swiping across the holographic keyboard of her terminal to type out his intentions. It was annoying, but honestly, it was still vastly easier than that time he had transformed into a literal bug while stuck on the Path of Propagation.

Back on the Luofu, Huaiyan was still enjoying his leisurely stroll through the vibrant streets of Aurum Alley. The old man walked at a relaxed, unhurried pace, occasionally stopping to admire the complex trinkets displayed on merchant stalls or to exchange pleasantries with the passing Cloud Knight patrols.

High above the bustling street, a small shadow moved along the rooftops. The black cat leaped gracefully from the curved eaves, landing silently on the stone pavement directly in front of Huaiyan. Clamped firmly in its jaws was a small, neatly tied cluster of dark hair.

“Oh? It’s you again,” Huaiyan noted, a warm smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

Rekka tilted his head, playing the part of the innocent, cooperative pet perfectly. Internally, he was practically vibrating with chaotic glee. He wanted to laugh out loud just anticipating the sheer absurdity of what was about to unfold.

Seeing the black cat acting so obediently, Huaiyan naturally shifted his gaze downward, his eyes landing on the peculiar offering the creature had brought him.

The moment the old general’s calloused finger brushed against that lock of dark hair, his entire demeanor shifted. His movements came to a sudden, absolute halt. It wasn’t because the tiny pink rubber band holding the bundle together looked childish or out of place. It was because the lingering, unmistakable aura radiating from those strands was something Huaiyan knew intimately well.

A razor-sharp, dangerous glint flashed through Huaiyan’s previously cloudy eyes. The leisurely, grandfatherly aura of a man simply enjoying the blooming and falling of flowers vanished in an instant, replaced by the suffocating pressure of a veteran warrior.

Unbothered by the sudden shift in atmospheric tension, Rekka calmly dropped the hair onto the stone slab, sat back on his haunches, and began slowly, methodically licking his front paw.

Huaiyan’s mind raced. ‘This is definitely not an ordinary cat.’

“Is it you?” Huaiyan demanded, his voice dropping to a low, commanding register as he stared directly into the feline’s striking golden eyes.

The black cat simply stared back, blinking slowly.

Was this a test? A hidden message? Or simply a brazen provocation from the shadows?

The entire misunderstanding stemmed from a severe lack of communication. Jing Yuan had completely failed to properly explain the anomaly’s true nature to his fellow general. He hadn’t mentioned that Rekka’s core personality was that of an unhinged fun-seeker who actively went out of his way to turn every mundane situation into a theatrical spectacle. This glaring omission had led to a massive, hilarious deviation in Huaiyan’s perception of the situation.

Rekka casually wagged his tail, thoroughly enjoying the dramatic tension. He just wanted to be a magical cat causing a little harmless psychological warfare.

To add the final punchline to his joke, Rekka puffed out his chest, proudly showing off the small, custom-engraved golden tag Silver Wolf had attached to his collar.

The front of the tag read: [Wishing Cat].

He shifted slightly, letting the tag flip over to reveal the back: [Magical Cat].

Huaiyan stared at the collar, temporarily stunned into silence. He dug through his classified intelligence reports. He did know of a highly dangerous individual who was rumored to occasionally appear in the form of a black cat.

“Are you…” Huaiyan breathed, his muscles tensing for a potential confrontation. “…Elio?”

The Slave to Destiny. The elusive leader of the Stellaron Hunters, a terrifying figure walking upon the Path of Finality. The official bounty requirements explicitly demanded that Elio be captured alive, without inflicting any damage to his cognitive abilities.

Rekka raised his head, locking his piercing golden cat eyes onto the legendary general. His dark tail swished slowly, rhythmically behind him, exuding an aura of deep, unknowable mystery.

Then, very deliberately, Rekka shook his head.

He wasn’t Elio.