Honkai Star Rail: Summoning the Chrysos Heirs — Chapter 69

Chapter 69: Laboratory

“This should be the place.”

Phainon stood in the dead center of the abandoned street. His gaze pierced through the rolling purple mist, locking onto the vague, jagged silhouette of a residential building looming in the distance.

Without a second of hesitation, he raised his right hand and clenched his fingers around empty air.

Golden light particles rapidly coalesced into a blinding vortex. With a crisp, resonant hum, the heavy greatsword—Morning Invader—materialized in his grip. He let the massive blade drop, its tip slamming heavily into the cracked asphalt and kicking up a violent ring of dust.

Dragging the greatsword behind him, Phainon strode toward the complex.

The heavy soles of his boots crushed shattered tiles into powder, the sharp, rhythmic cracks echoing through the dead silence.

The instant he stepped into the shadows of the first-floor hallway, his footsteps faltered. His brows pulled together in a tight frown.

The air here was thick enough to drown in. If the purple mist outside merely obscured the horizon, the fog trapped inside this building had festered into a solidified, toxic sludge. Visibility was compressed to an absolute minimum; extending an arm meant watching his own fingers vanish into the eerie, swirling violet haze. Every breath dragged a nauseating, metallic tang down his throat, tasting of rusted iron and decay.

“Such dense fog.”

Phainon waved a hand to clear the space in front of his face, but the purple dust clung stubbornly to his skin, lingering between his fingers like ash.

“But this also means I haven’t found the wrong location. It seems these people are hiding right under my nose.”

He didn’t slow his pace to accommodate the suffocating environment. Instead, he sped up, initiating a systematic, room-by-room sweep of the entire first floor.

Though, calling it a ‘search’ was far too polite. It was a demolition.

A deafening crash echoed down the hall as a bedroom door was violently kicked off its hinges, splintering into kindling against the far wall.

Phainon stepped into the ruined room. He swung his greatsword in a brutal horizontal arc, cleaving a massive wooden wardrobe cleanly in half to clear his path, before casually flipping a heavy double bed over with a single hand.

Wood chips rained down like shrapnel. Dust billowed into the air, mixing with the purple mist.

There, beneath the spot where the bed frame had rested, a pitch-black cavity was exposed in the floorboards—a hidden tunnel just wide enough for a grown adult to slip through.

After tearing three consecutive rooms down to their studs, Phainon had finally unearthed the entrance in the fourth.

“Found it.”

A faint, dangerous smirk curled the edges of his lips. He retracted his greatsword, resting it against his shoulder, and leaped down into the pitch-black hole without a shred of hesitation.

Following the narrow, winding concrete stairs downward, the surrounding temperature plummeted, the air growing increasingly frigid.

Soon, a heavy, reinforced alloy door blocked his path.

There was no keyhole. The only mechanism was a sleek electronic combination lock bolted to the steel, its single red LED blinking like an unblinking eye in the dark.

Phainon reached out, wrapping his fingers around the freezing metal handle. He gave it a sharp twist.

It didn’t budge a millimeter.

A second later, a flat, synthesized mechanical voice crackled from the lock’s tiny speaker.

[Beep. Unauthorized access detected. Please enter the password.]

“Password?”

Phainon tilted his head, staring at the blinking cursor on the digital input pad. A flicker of genuine confusion crossed his eyes.

He rapidly sifted through the tactical intelligence Cyrene had provided him. The origin of the disaster, the key figures involved, the enemy factions, the mutated monsters… he remembered all of it flawlessly. But there was absolutely no mention of a password for a basement door.

“Cyrene really didn’t mention this.”

After verifying his memory was correct, Phainon released the handle and took a half-step back. He summoned the Morning Invader to the front, gripping the elongated hilt with both hands.

The complex golden patterns etched along the massive blade suddenly flared to life. Intense, searing heat radiated from the metal, instantly distorting the freezing air around him into a shimmering mirage.

“Since she didn’t say a password was needed, it means I can get in without one.”

His muscles coiled tight. Power surged from his waist and abdomen, channeling directly into his arms as he swung the blazing greatsword forward in a devastating arc.

“Boom—!!”

A deafening roar shook the foundation of the building. The heavy alloy door, designed to withstand military-grade explosives, buckled inward and shattered as if it were made of wet paper.

Twisted, glowing fragments of shrapnel sprayed across the room beyond, and a massive cloud of dust instantly engulfed the underground space.

Third basement level. A subterranean laboratory reeking of formalin and fresh blood.

“Beep! Beep! Beep!”

The instant the reinforced door was violently breached, piercing red alarm lights began spinning wildly overhead. A shrill, deafening siren tore through the sterile silence of the laboratory.

“What’s going on? Someone forced their way in?!”

Hearing the blaring alarm, the leading Black-Robed Man snapped his head around.

A vicious glint flashed in his eyes, barely visible beneath the shadow of his heavy hood. He stared intensely toward the entrance corridor. The kinetic shockwave from the breach had been violent enough to make the concrete floor tremble beneath his boots.

“You. Go take a look.”

The Lord Bishop did not panic. He merely narrowed his eyes, his voice dropping into a cold, measured command as he addressed a subordinate standing at his side.

“Take those two newly calibrated Abominations, along with that squad of Puppet Soldiers. I don’t care who broke in. Eliminate them.”

He adjusted his dark sleeves, his tone dripping with aristocratic disdain. “Wait until I finish processing these ignorant ‘materials’, then I will come over to inspect the corpses.”

“Understood, Lord Bishop.”

The subordinate immediately bowed in a crisp salute. He turned on his heel, gesturing sharply toward the two massive, grotesquely muscled Abominations chained in the corner of the lab.

“You lot. Follow me.”

The heavy, thudding footsteps of the Puppet Soldiers, accompanied by the wet, guttural growls of the Abominations, gradually faded down the corridor.

Only after confirming his subordinate had left did the Lord Bishop slowly turn back around. His cold, turbid gaze settled onto the three ‘prey’ backed against the far wall.

“Alright. The annoying noise is gone.”

The Lord Bishop spread his hands wide. His tone carried the cruel, mocking cadence of a cat casually batting around a crippled mouse.

“I don’t have time to play house with you anymore. I still need to go see which suicidal Ability User ran all the way down here just to deliver fresh experimental materials to our doorstep.”

In the corner, the air was thick with the copper stench of arterial blood.

The young man known as Illusory Drawing leaned heavily against the cold tiles. His entire right arm hung at a sickening, unnatural angle, the bones completely shattered. Thick droplets of blood slid down his fingertips, pooling into a dark, shocking puddle around his boots.

“Damn it…”

Illusory Drawing glared at the Lord Bishop’s arrogant face, his eyes completely bloodshot.

Agonizing pain caused the muscles in his jaw to twitch violently, but he still raised his intact left hand in a desperate guard, a raw, furious roar tearing from his throat.

“Divine Advent Cult… you bunch of animals!”

Beside him stood the Middle-aged Man, the captain of their doomed squad. His condition was even worse.

His chest had been laid open by a set of razor-sharp claws. The lacerations were deep enough to expose the pale gleam of bone, and with every ragged breath he took, fresh blood spilled from the wound, soaking his tactical vest.

Yet, despite the catastrophic blood loss, he stood planted like a mountain in front of his two younger team members, his grim, unyielding gaze sweeping across the room.

Two massive, stitched-together Abominations. Six highly agile, ordinary Abominations. And a perfectly aligned row of Puppet Soldiers, their hollow, dead eyes staring blankly over the barrels of their raised assault rifles.

It was a dead end. An absolute execution.

Behind the two standing men, the youngest squad member, codenamed Instant Flash, kept his head bowed. His messy bangs completely shadowed his eyes.

He was as silent as a corpse. The only proof he was still breathing was his hands, clenched so tightly into fists that his fingernails had bitten deeply into his own palms, blood welling up from the self-inflicted wounds.

“You say we are animals?”

Hearing Illusory Drawing’s desperate curse, the Lord Bishop let out a dry, airy laugh, as if he had just been told a magnificent joke.

He snorted coldly, his eyes devoid of anything resembling human empathy.

“In the face of our grand evolutionary design, you are nothing more than slightly higher-grade nutrients. I am simply preparing a few lab rats for the operating table. Is that what you call an animal?”

Having exhausted his meager supply of patience, the Lord Bishop flicked his wrist dismissively, exactly like a man shooing away a swarm of irritating flies.

“Take them down. As long as they are still breathing, the harvest is viable. Limbs are optional.”

The instant the order left his lips.

The previously stationary Abominations snapped into violent motion.

A foul, rancid gale washed over the cornered squad. Razor-sharp claws tore through the sterile air, and with a suffocating, despair-inducing wave of pure malice, the monsters lunged ferociously toward the three crippled men.