Honkai Star Rail: Saving the World with a Mobile Game — Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Targeted by the Stellaron Hunters!You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.

As the most chronically online, top-tier hacker among the Stellaron Hunters, Silver Wolf spent an ungodly amount of time surfing the interstellar web across a multitude of burner accounts.

Naturally, the recently viral Astral Express fan game couldn’t escape her radar.

Silver Wolf downloaded it on a whim. She hadn’t expected much, but the actual gameplay gave her a genuine jolt of surprise. Although the combat difficulty wasn’t exactly punishing, the character roster was truly fascinating.

“Hmm… turning all sorts of real people into gacha units? Bold move,” she muttered, popping a bubblegum bubble. “They even threw Blade into the rate-up pool. I’d pay good credits to see the look on his face if he found out.”

She tilted her head, squinting at the screen. “But is this current banner character missing a few pieces? Let me see…”

Silver Wolf gripped a holographic tablet in each hand and confidently slid her signature sunglasses down the bridge of her nose. After fiddling with the interface for a moment, her fingers—moving so fast they blurred into afterimages—suddenly froze.

She grimaced, a sharp sound of annoyance clicking against her teeth. “Tsk…”

“Strange. Why is this game’s firewall so ridiculously thick? I can’t even slice through the outer layer.”

She had fully intended to rip the source code and compile a cracked client. Silver Wolf held unbeaten records in countless triple-A titles across the galaxy; she could tell at a glance that the combat loop for the characters in Ash’s Honkai: Star Rail felt slightly hollow.

And she was right. Aglaea simply wasn’t a complete package yet. After all, Ash had only pushed out the Version 3.0 framework, completely skipping the foundational roster—no Sunday, no dedicated sub-DPS units, no premium supports, and no healers.

Annoyed by the mechanical gaps, Silver Wolf had tried to pry open the backend to peek at the upcoming beta content, and maybe teach this arrogant developer a little lesson in cybersecurity.

But apparently, she had hit a brick wall.

Silver Wolf sighed dramatically and flopped backward onto the sofa. “Seriously, kid? You rip off the Stellaron Hunters’ likenesses for your little project, but you won’t let an actual Stellaron Hunter poke around the code?”

“You’d better pray I don’t catch your IP address.”

“But speaking of which…” Lying on her stomach, she hoisted the tablet above her head, pulling up Ash’s developer account. “Amphoreus, and this promotional video… just what is going on here?”

Click. Clack.

The sharp, rhythmic sound of high heels striking the floorboards echoed from the corridor behind her.

“What’s wrong, Silver Wolf?”

She rolled over and sat up.

Standing just a few paces away was a woman wrapped in an aura of mature, effortless elegance. Kafka wore her signature dark coat draped over a crisp white blouse, dark leggings fading into purple-tinted stockings, and her sunglasses pushed up into her violet hair.

A faint, enigmatic smile curved her magnificent crimson lips.

“Oh. It’s just you, Kafka.”

Silver Wolf dusted off her jacket, stood up, and casually tossed the tablet over. “Here. Take a look at this.”

Kafka caught the device gracefully, her eyes scanning the glowing screen as Silver Wolf gave the rundown.

“A new Astral Express fan game dropped recently, and it’s blowing up the charts. The core gameplay loop is basically roleplaying the Nameless on their Trailblaze, and the roster is packed with faces we know.”

“The weird part? The current destination for this Trailblaze is… Amphoreus.”

“Oh, and check out that banner. Doesn’t the splash art look a little familiar?”

Before officially entering Amphoreus, Ash had dropped a series of promotional trailers, which, unfortunately for him, heavily featured the Stellaron Hunters. Even more coincidentally, Blade’s banner had gone live today.

“Amphoreus? Now that is genuinely interesting,” Kafka murmured, her voice a smooth, velvety purr.

“If memory serves, we are currently preparing to make our own trip to Amphoreus, aren’t we?” Silver Wolf spread her hands, offering a knowing look.

Both of them knew exactly what the other was implying. The coincidence was entirely too sharp.

“Let me hit you with the real horror story,” Silver Wolf continued, her tone flattening into deadpan seriousness. “Did you watch that PV all the way through? That’s Firefly.”

Silver Wolf’s expression remained largely unchanged as she spoke. On the surface, the statement sounded perfectly mundane.

But the implications were staggering.and support the real translator.Read at elysianreads.com This is a stolen translation. You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.

How could a random indie game developer possibly know about Firefly’s existence?!

Hearing that name, Kafka’s finger stalled mid-swipe against the glass screen.

Exactly. While Ash and the Stellaron Hunters knew the truth, the rest of the universe believed Firefly could only operate within the cold steel of a mecha due to her Entropy Loss Syndrome. In other words, she had never presented her true face to the public; almost everyone who had ever seen the girl behind the armor was already dead.

Even the Interstellar Peace Corporation’s highest-tier wanted posters only listed Sam, never Firefly!

Yet, this game not only plastered Firefly’s name across the screen but perfectly replicated her physical appearance in the promotional animation. An ordinary player would just see a cute new character, but the Stellaron Hunters would never mistake one of their own.

“Silver Wolf, I must admit, that little joke of yours actually gave me a fright,” Kafka said, offering a helpless, elegant shrug.

“I’m not joking, Kafka.”

“I actually wanted to ask you—what exactly does Elio’s ‘Script’ have to say about this?”

Kafka tilted her head. “?”

The Stellaron Hunters operated strictly according to Destiny’s Slave. Within the Script, deviations simply did not exist. Or rather, any potential deviations were ruthlessly pruned away by their own hands before they could take root.

So, for a sudden, prophetic video game to drop out of nowhere with hair-raising accuracy… it didn’t immediately send Silver Wolf into a panic. She assumed it was still operating within the controllable margins of Elio’s foresight.

After a brief silence, Kafka walked past the hacker, her gaze drifting out the floor-to-ceiling window toward the vast, glittering expanse of the starry sky.

“The prelude to the war of the gods is about to unfold,” Kafka said softly, her tone measured and unhurried. “In this particular scene, we are merely spectators. Fortunately, the Astral Express has moved in the most correct direction among the various possibilities.”

“But now, something strange has been added?”

Silver Wolf frowned, snatching her tablet back. “‘Something strange has been added.’ Are you telling me Elio’s Script actually made a mistake?”

“Elio’s Script never makes mistakes,” Kafka replied, her voice so placid she might as well have been discussing the weather. “Unless… it simply did not provide a prophecy for this.”

The Script was infallible. However, it was entirely possible for it to omit certain variables—like this game. Just as a gentleman does not lie, but may choose to remain silent.

Silver Wolf felt like she was running in circles. “So what does that mean for us? You seem awfully calm about a massive data leak.”

“Hmm… I simply don’t believe this little interlude poses much of a threat, even if the other party seems to know things they shouldn’t.”

Truthfully, the existence of the game was terrifying. The second Silver Wolf saw Firefly’s face, she had run hundreds of cross-references through her mental database, trying to profile the developer. Unfortunately, she came up empty.

But regardless of the anomaly, as long as Elio’s Script remained intact, the universe wouldn’t veer off its destined tracks. Kafka’s attitude made the reality clear: the Script didn’t record every grain of sand. It only charted the major currents of fate. If this game wasn’t penned in the Script, it meant Elio either withheld the prophecy, or the developer was simply too insignificant to alter the grand design.

It wasn’t the first time they had encountered a blind spot. Kafka clearly leaned toward the latter theory.

“The universe is vast and full of strange things. People who know Sam’s true identity might actually exist out there,” Kafka mused. “But I don’t believe a little bit of mystery-mongering can impact the Script.”

Still, acknowledging the anomaly was one thing; letting someone broadcast Firefly’s identity to the cosmos was another.

“However, to dream of gaining use over the Stellaron Hunters, or to deliberately provoke us…” Kafka turned away from the window, a gentle, incredibly dangerous smile blooming across her lips. “Outside the boundaries of the Script, I think we are free to do a little something. Like making him pay the price for his actions~”

As mere audience members to the Amphoreus stage, the Hunters weren’t slated to participate in the upcoming event. But if this game developer wasn’t in the Script either, their response would depend entirely on their current mood.

Conveniently, Kafka wanted to test a hypothesis of her own.

“I think I get it,” Silver Wolf said, a predatory smirk matching Kafka’s. “Leave the digital footprint to me. Since it’s on the internet, nothing is perfectly airtight. I’ll drop the conventional hacks, use some alternative methods, and track this guy’s coordinates down.”

“And when the time comes to knock on his door, I’ll leave the heavy lifting to you and Sam.”

Kafka nodded, her gaze darkening with quiet anticipation.

Her words trailed off into the silence of the room.

Immediately after, from the shadows of the corridor behind them, came the heavy, rhythmic thud of steel footsteps treading against the floorboards…You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.