Honkai Star Rail: Summoning the Chrysos Heirs — Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Domain of Pitch BlackYou'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.

“No matter.”

The masked girl huffed, refusing to even spare a glance at the behemoth clinging to the glass. She turned sideways, tilting her chin up to strike a pose of absolute disdain. Beneath her mask, a scornful smirk curled at the corners of her lips.

“Merely a low-level kin crawling out of the abyss. I only need to flick a finger to crush it.”

Before the echo of her declaration faded, she jerked her right hand upward.

The shadows pooling quietly beneath her boots suddenly came alive. They writhed violently, bubbling like boiling asphalt and emitting a sickening, viscous squelch.

“Obey my will, Shadow Spikes!”

Accompanied by her theatrical shout, the darkness instantly solidified into several pitch-black blades. They tore through the air with a sharp whistle, aiming straight for the monster’s face.

The beast neither dodged nor flinched. Its bloodshot eyes held nothing but pure, unadulterated brutality. It simply raised a thick, corded arm, using its own flesh as a shield.

Thwack! Thwack!

The dull thud of blades biting into meat echoed through the night. The black spikes drove deep into the monster’s forearm, yet they halted abruptly, as if wedged into the crevices of solid granite. They could not penetrate a single inch further.

The beast unleashed a furious roar. Sweeping its free hand in a brutal arc, it swatted the shadow spikes aside like fragile glass, shattering them to pieces. Immediately after, it gripped the window frame with both massive hands and flexed.

The entire wall groaned under the strain. Using the recoil, the monster burst through the shattered window, its hulking frame hurtling toward the two girls below like a falling meteorite.

A gale of displaced air and glass shards rushed down, violently ruffling Cyrene’s hair. Yet, facing this overwhelming, crushing descent, the masked girl did not panic.

“Hold on.”

She grabbed Cyrene’s wrist with a backhand grip and took a light step backward. In a flash, her figure dissolved into the shadows beneath their feet, dragging Cyrene along with her.

In that instant, Cyrene felt the surrounding world mute itself.

All color was violently stripped away, replaced by an endless, suffocating thickness of pure dark. A sudden wave of weightlessness swallowed her whole, making her stomach drop as if she had plunged into the freezing depths of the ocean.

“Where is this?” Cyrene blinked, her diamond-shaped pupils scanning the strange void. Her tone carried the casual curiosity of a gamer exploring a newly unlocked map.

“This is my Domain of Pitch Black.” The girl’s voice echoed from all directions, dripping with an aria-like pride. “I can traverse the gaps of the present world freely within this realm. Mortal, follow my steps closely, or your soul shall be lost to this eternal nothingness.”

A second later, the darkness receded like a pulling tide.

The glaring, artificial yellow of streetlamps flooded Cyrene’s vision once more. She looked up, realizing she was now standing beside a fountain plaza. She glanced back toward their original position; the shattered window was easily over a hundred meters away.

‘Is this some kind of shadow-stepping skill? Handy.’ Cyrene mused inwardly. She calculated the timing. They had only been submerged in that void for about five seconds.

A deafening crash erupted in the distance, sending a thick cloud of dust billowing into the night sky. The monster had just slammed into the pavement. It whipped its ugly head around in confusion, clearly driven into a deeper frenzy by the sudden disappearance of its prey.

Then, the dust settled. Cyrene’s calm, unmasked gaze collided head-on with the beast’s bloodshot eyes.

“Roar!”

The monster locked onto her instantly. A guttural bellow tore from its throat as the thick muscles in its hind legs coiled tight, preparing for another lethal pounce.

“Hmph. Stupid beast, how dare you ignore my existence?!”

Seeing the monster fixate entirely on Cyrene, the masked girl felt her theatrical dignity had been severely challenged. She furrowed her brows and threw her arms wide. An icy, oppressive aura erupted from her slender frame as she chanted to the night sky.

“Repent in that endless, dark abyss! Shadow Cage, descend!”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.

The moment the command left her lips, the shadows beneath the monster’s feet violently surged upward. Countless pitch-black tentacles, resembling the writhing limbs of a deep-sea kraken, burst madly from the concrete. They lashed around the beast right as it prepared to leap, binding its limbs tight. The dark appendages quickly intertwined and hardened, weaving the massive body into an airtight, pitch-black cocoon in the blink of an eye.

Seeing her trap succeed, the girl snapped her fingers with immense satisfaction.

“As an Abomination, your very existence is an original sin. In the name of the Apostle of Condemnation, I sentence you to the punishment of piercing!”

Schlick! Schlick! Schlick!

Countless razor-sharp spikes erupted from the earth without a fraction of warning. They stabbed viciously into the black cocoon from every conceivable angle. The sickening sound of puncturing flesh rang out in rapid succession. The cocoon was instantly transformed into a grotesque iron maiden, and thick, dark green blood began to slowly drip down the obsidian spikes, pooling on the cracked pavement.

“What does it matter if you possess great strength? You are nothing but a beast with brute force.” Staring at the now-silent black mass, the girl crossed her arms proudly, tilting her chin even higher into the air. “This is the consequence of provoking the Apostle of Condemnation.”

While the chuunibyou girl was busy drowning in the joy of her own victory, Cyrene remained entirely unbothered by the theatrics. She did not let her guard down for a single second.

As a veteran gamer, she knew the absolute necessity of confirming a kill.

While the girl posed, Cyrene quietly summoned her system panel, her eyes flicking to the Anomaly Detector that only she could perceive. The radar was still pulsing with a glaring, hostile red light. That dot was positioned exactly a hundred meters away, dead center on the trapped beast.

‘Huh? The aggro marker is still active.’

Cyrene’s diamond-shaped pupils contracted slightly. Her gaze snapped back to the pierced black cocoon.

Under the flickering glow of the streetlamps, she keenly noticed something the arrogant girl had missed. The surface of the hardened shadow was covered in dense, microscopic web-lines of stress. Those cracks were nearly invisible under the cover of night, but they were spreading at a terrifying speed.

An extremely dangerous, volatile pressure was brewing deep inside that shell.

“Careful, it’s not dead yet!” Without a shred of hesitation, Cyrene turned her head to warn the posing girl.

A crisp, sickening crack interrupted her warning.

The very second Cyrene finished speaking, the seemingly indestructible shadow cocoon detonated with a thunderous bang. Jagged black fragments shrapneled through the air, revealing the monster’s heavily scarred, bleeding, yet terrifyingly ferocious body.

It was far from dead. The agonizing pain had only driven it into a state of absolute, unhinged frenzy.

At some point during its confinement, the beast had dug its claws into a massive decorative landscape boulder embedded in the plaza. Its arm muscles bulged to their absolute physical limit, thick black veins threatening to burst through its skin.

“Roar!!!”

Accompanied by a garbled, deafening shriek, the monster swung its massive arm in a brutal arc. It hurled the boulder, easily the size of a millstone, with catastrophic force.

The projectile was aimed dead center at the masked girl, who was still frozen in her victorious pose.

“Watch out!”

The massive rock tore through the air, emitting a shrill, wailing shriek of displaced wind.

The girl clearly had not expected the creature to survive, let alone launch a lethal counterattack. Facing this sudden shadow of death, her body locked up completely, stiffening in pure shock.

But Cyrene was already moving.

From the exact moment she registered the red dot on her radar, her muscles had coiled for an evasion maneuver. Without wasting a single breath, Cyrene lunged sideways. Her deceptively slender body erupted with astonishing kinetic power. She grabbed the paralyzed girl by the waist and, using her own forward momentum, tackled them both onto the soft grass of the plaza.

The massive boulder grazed the very tips of Cyrene’s flying hair.

The violent wind pressure scraped her cheeks with a painful sting, immediately followed by a deafening boom right behind them. The boulder slammed directly into the solid brick wall they had just been standing in front of. The structure instantly caved in, collapsing into a violent shower of shattered brick, mortar, and blinding dust.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.