Honkai Star Rail: Summoning the Chrysos Heirs — Chapter 47

Chapter 47: Admitting Fault

KABOOM!

The ground convulsed violently, bucking beneath their boots as if a colossal beast slumbering deep within the earth’s crust had suddenly rolled over in its sleep.

The Five Elements Hunting Squad had only made it halfway down the tunnel. They didn’t even have a fraction of a second to brace themselves before the deafening roar of the explosion tore through the cavern, piercing their eardrums with a sharp, ringing agony.

Immediately following the shockwave, a terrifying, unnatural heatwave surged out from the deepest bowels of the cave. It swallowed the narrow stone passageway in an instant, turning the air into a suffocating furnace.

“It’s too hot! This temperature is completely unnatural!” Thorn cried out, instinctively throwing her arms up to shield her face from the blistering wind.

As a Supernatural Ability User with a wood-type affinity, she was agonizingly sensitive to extreme heat. In that split second, she felt as though she had been hurled headfirst into the caldera of an erupting volcano. The moisture on her skin evaporated into steam, the very tips of her hair began to curl and emit a foul, burnt odor, and every desperate gasp for air felt like swallowing lit charcoal.

“This energy fluctuation… what on earth is happening down there?!” Captain Shen Rui narrowed his eyes against the scorching gale. He turned his head, peering back into the abyssal darkness of the tunnel—a darkness that was now illuminated by a violent, rolling fiery red.

His eyes, which usually carried a lazy, half-asleep droop, now reflected the churning hellfire. His expression hardened into unmatched gravity.

“I don’t know, but that power is leagues beyond anything we can handle. Don’t look back! Retreat at full speed!”

Hearing their captain’s absolute command, the squad didn’t dare waste a single breath on hesitation. Thorn forced herself to endure the suffocating, skin-searing heat, pushing her burning leg muscles to their absolute limit as she stumbled blindly toward the exit, keeping tight to Shen Rui’s heels.

Minutes later, the cool, biting night breeze finally washed over them, stripping away the dry, clinging heat from their skin.

The moment they burst out of the cave entrance, Shi Lei habitually threw his arms up, his massive muscles tensing as he scanned the dark perimeter with hyper-vigilance.

But a second later, the hulking man froze entirely.

The usually boisterous, loud-mouthed brawler looked as though an invisible hand had clamped down on his throat. His jaw slacked, hanging wide open, and the thick finger he raised to point into the distance trembled uncontrollably.

“Hey… look! What… what the hell happened here?!”

The rest of the squad snapped their heads in the direction of Shi Lei’s trembling finger.

Thorn, who had been bent over and panting heavily, abruptly stopped breathing. Even the perpetually stoic Captain Shen Rui felt his pupils shrink to the size of pinpricks, his face slackening into a rare mask of absolute disbelief.

The towering mountain they had just desperately fled from had been entirely disfigured.

Right across the broad mountainside, a catastrophic, gaping chasm had been torn open. The sheer fissure pierced straight through the solid rock, as if some wrathful god had descended from the heavens, swung an impossibly massive axe, and cleaved the peak in two.

Thick, billowing columns of black smoke vomited from the breach, choking out the pale moonlight. Along the jagged edges of the newly formed canyon, the sheer ambient temperature had melted the solid stone into a glowing, crimson sludge. The magma oozed slowly down the slopes, making it look as though the mountain itself was bleeding out, painting half the night sky in a horrific, apocalyptic red.

Physical Data Space.

The simulated galaxy flowed in absolute, serene silence. There was no choking smoke of war here, nor any flesh-melting heatwaves.

“Phainon! Are you hurt?”

Spotting that familiar, towering figure materializing out of thin air, Cyrene immediately floated over. She drifted in rapid circles around him, her diamond-shaped eyes wide and swimming with a lingering panic. Her usually lazy, playful voice was tight with genuine urgency.

Watching that world-ending strike through the system screen had been incredibly satisfying, but the sheer scale of the destruction had also sent her heart leaping straight into her throat.

“I am fine.” Phainon shook his head slowly. He lowered his gaze, his large hands moving with a gentle, unhurried grace as he brushed non-existent dust from his pristine robes. “Aside from a little debris, I suffered no injuries.”

“You say you’re fine, but you’re literally bleeding right there.” Cyrene floated to a stop right in front of him, jabbing a delicate finger toward his temple.

There, a single, striking streak of golden blood was slowly sliding down the flawless texture of his skin. The divine, metallic ichor looked particularly glaring against the pale, sharp contour of his cheek—a fresh scratch left behind by the flying shrapnel of the collapsing mountain.

Phainon paused. He subconsciously raised a hand to his forehead, his fingertips brushing against the warm, wet sensation. He lowered his hand, glancing at the golden smear on his skin, and then offered a soft, indifferent smile.

“It is merely a superficial scratch. I exerted a bit too much force just now, and the skin split slightly. It will heal momentarily.”

“An injury is an injury.” Cyrene’s brow furrowed, her eyes softening with a deep, obvious distress.

Without thinking, she reached out, wanting to gently wipe away that glaring golden stain. Her movement was entirely instinctual, as natural as if she had performed the exact same gesture a thousand times in a past life.

However.

The moment her delicate fingertips met his cheek, there was no sensation of warmth. There was no friction of skin against skin.

Her palm phased straight through Phainon’s head without the slightest hint of resistance, passing through him as easily as a hand sweeping through a cloud of morning mist.

Cyrene’s arm froze in mid-air.

She stared blankly as her translucent palm intersected with his solid form, the harsh reality of her current state crashing back down on her.

“Ah, right…” she murmured, her voice dropping a fraction. “I’m just a mental projection right now. I can’t actually touch you yet.”

She sheepishly withdrew her hand, curling her fingers inward as if trying to hold onto a phantom warmth.

Phainon watched the fleeting flash of disappointment cross her expressive face. His previously calm, unreadable gaze flickered. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he simply raised his own hand and pressed his thumb heavily against his temple, wiping away the golden blood himself.

The streak vanished, revealing smooth, unblemished skin beneath. Thanks to the rapid restorative properties of his Memory Trace, the minor laceration had already knitted itself back together.

“See? It is already healed.” Phainon lowered his arm, tilting his head slightly to show her his clean forehead. His deep voice was incredibly gentle. “Please do not worry. It was a trivial scratch. My recovery is quite fast.”

Cyrene let out a soft, indignant huff. While the visible distress on her face melted away, she immediately crossed her arms over her chest, floating a few inches higher to establish a commanding, interrogative height advantage.

“The wound healing is one thing,” she said, her tone shifting into strict seriousness. “But your behavior out there is entirely another.”

She kept her face perfectly straight, trying her hardest to project the aura of a dignified, untouchable mastermind. “Phainon, why did you suddenly break formation and rush out to hunt down that Abomination?”

“Do you have any idea how reckless that was?! You only have a tiny fraction of your original strength unlocked! We don’t even know the upper limits of the Abominations in this world yet, and you just charged in completely blind!”

She leaned forward, her diamond eyes narrowing. “What if you had run into an Alpha-class threat? What if it was an ambush?! Something terrible could have happened!”

“This…”

Faced with Cyrene’s rapid-fire, mother-hen scolding, Phainon’s cool, untouchable warrior facade instantly cracked. He blinked rapidly, his gaze suddenly refusing to meet hers, drifting unnaturally toward the massive stone pillars in the distance.

“After all… if I wish to rapidly accumulate Memory Traces, hunting Abominations is the most efficient path currently available to us.”

He cleared his throat, desperately trying to inject a tone of righteous, calculated logic into his voice. “In order to restore my full strength and ensure our strategic foothold in this world, I ran a rigorous tactical assessment. I concluded the risk was entirely acceptable.”

Cyrene mercilessly dismantled his defense, floating right up to his face until her delicate nose was practically touching his.

“Your eyes only ever drift to the bottom right when you’re lying to me.”

She scrutinized him with the piercing intensity of a master detective. “Besides, after that monster mutated, its energy signature was clearly beyond what you should be casually engaging right now. A tactical assessment would dictate observation and retreat. But your killing intent was completely off the charts. You didn’t look like you were farming Memory Traces at all. You looked like you were venting your temper.”

Hearing his exact motives laid bare, Phainon’s stoic composure completely shattered.

The ‘cool, aloof expert’ disguise couldn’t survive more than three seconds under Cyrene’s gaze. He awkwardly scratched the back of his head, the rigid, proud posture of his spine visibly slumping.

For a few heavy seconds, the simulated galaxy was dead silent.

Then, looking exactly like an oversized child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Phainon lowered his head. When he finally spoke, his deep voice was muffled, carrying an undisguisable, heavy note of grievance.

“Earlier… I saw you faint from mental exhaustion because of that creature.”

He raised his eyelids, stealing a quick, guilty glance at her before immediately looking back at the floor. “I was… very angry. Especially after confirming you were safe in the projection. The anger simply could not be suppressed. I only had a single thought left in my mind.”

He clenched his fists slightly. “I had to completely eradicate the thing that hurt you.”

Having confessed his crime, Phainon seemed to abandon all resistance. He took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut, bent his waist into a perfect, rigid ninety-degree angle, and delivered a flawless, textbook apology bow right to Cyrene.

“I am sorry! I know I was wrong! I should not have been impulsive, I should not have taken unnecessary risks, and I absolutely should not have made you worry! Please forgive me, I will never dare do it again!”

The entire sequence of actions was so smooth, so agonizingly practiced, that it was clearly a survival instinct permanently etched into his very DNA.

Cyrene froze, utterly dumbfounded.

She stared at the man who, just ten minutes ago, had literally cleaved a mountain in half with a single strike of his blade. Now, the terrifying god of war was bowing before her, acting as thoroughly cowed as a giant golden retriever terrified of getting swatted with a rolled-up newspaper.

She opened her mouth, but the massive lecture she had spent the last five minutes preparing instantly dissolved in her throat.

This guy…

He had literally risked his life just to vent his fury on her behalf, and now he was apologizing with such pathetic sincerity.

Looking down at the top of his white hair, the balloon of righteous anger in Cyrene’s chest popped, leaving behind nothing but a thick, overwhelming sense of helplessness. She really couldn’t do a single thing about him. He was technically the one in the wrong, but his reasoning made it physically impossible to stay mad.

She felt a dull throb in her temples. But, needing to maintain at least a shred of her dignified mastermind persona, she forced her face into a strict pout and let out a stifled, dramatic huff.

“Hmph… considering your attitude in admitting your fault is sincere enough, I suppose I’ll let you off the hook this time.”

Cyrene floated back down to the floor. She reached out, her translucent hand hovering just over his hair, pantomiming a gentle, forgiving pat with the exasperated air of someone wishing iron could turn into steel.

“It’s good that you recognize your mistake. But you’d better remember this. If you ever dare to treat your own safety as a joke again…”

She leaned in close to his ear, her voice dropping into a feigned, menacing whisper.

“Then I will be genuinely angry. The kind of angry where I will absolutely, positively, never forgive you.”