Honkai: Star Rail — A Nameless Traveler, a New Path Every Day - Chapter 3

“He won’t be doing it again today…”

March 7 muttered to herself, looking worriedly at Welt and Himeko.

“Uncle Yang, Sister Ji, could you… come with me to his room?”

“Pam is going too. Pam sensed something very wrong in the car!”

“…Uncle Yang, do you smell something strange?”

Walter adjusted his glasses and nodded solemnly.

“It’s like some kind of high-concentration biological pheromone,” Walter concluded, his cane slightly raised, the tip gleaming. “Himeko, it seems the situation is even more complicated than yesterday.”

Himeko crossed her arms, her gaze fixed on the closed door, lost in thought: “Yesterday was a sudden death, but today’s commotion… it’s as if something terrible is being kept inside.”

“Buzz buzz buzz—buzz buzz buzz—”

The sound grew louder and louder, shaking the door panels slightly, and even the air in the corridor seemed to resonate with it.

“I’ll count to three, two, one, Uncle Yang, open the door, Sister Ji, cover for me, and I… I’ll just be responsible for screaming!” March 7th assigned herself a task that she was very self-aware of.

“There’s no need to be so pessimistic.” Walter smiled helplessly, then his expression turned serious. “Are you ready?”

“open!”

Wangchong

The insect in the room seemed startled and began to flap its wings rapidly.

“Good morning…buzz…up…buzz…okay…”

“Aaaaaaahh …

The screams of March 7th arrived as expected.

“A bug…a bug! It’s a huge bug!”

It was a giant insect covered entirely in a hard, bluish-purple carapace. Its elytra had a translucent quality, with eerie fluorescent veins flowing across them. Its compound eyes were composed of countless tiny crystals, reflecting the images of the people at the doorway.

“Don’t…buzz…move…buzz…hand…”

Strangely, the beetle was using wing vibrations to perform a sound-like function.

To be precise, it is not a true cricket, but a parent of a true cricket, and is closer in form to Taizyuros.

“Wandering…Wandering Flame?”

“Yes…buzz…I…buzz…”

The insect lowered its forelegs, trying to make itself look less threatening.

“Reproduction.” Walter pushed up his glasses, his tone knowing. “Yesterday it was intellect, today it’s reproduction.”

“Yes…buzz…yes…” Youyan tried to nod, but the insect’s physiology made the movement extremely difficult. He simply gave up and instead used his wings to vibrate, “I…buzz…control…buzz…split…buzz…don’t be afraid…”

“Control yourself from splitting apart?” Himeko understood what he meant.

“Yes… hum…”

The giant insect seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, and its entire body relaxed.

March 7’s expression shifted from fear to complexity, then from complexity to curiosity. She cautiously took a step forward.

Pam fell silent.

Pam was thinking.

Pam’s CPU is overloaded.

“So… today’s Flame Wanderer… is an insect?”

“The path of reproduction,” Walter explained. “Yesterday it was intellect, today it’s reproduction. As he said yesterday, it’s a random path that switches every day. But… I never expected the path of reproduction to take this form.”

That makes perfect sense.

The offspring turned into insects.

“Buzz…buzz…”

He tried to control the vibration frequency of his elytra, attempting to produce sounds more like human language.

“Yes… hum… doesn’t work… hum… can’t turn back… hum…”

“Don’t move yet.” Walter raised his hand to signal, carefully examining the creature before him. “You said you can control yourself from splitting, is this control absolute?”

“Yes…buzz…” Youyan nodded, the movement causing the tentacles on his head to sway. “Reproduction…buzz…special…buzz…can be controlled…buzz…doesn’t split…buzz…doesn’t infect…buzz…”

“Won’t you get infected?”

“It’s just…buzz…it won’t turn…buzz…things into bugs…buzz…” Youyan explained with great difficulty.

Himeko nodded thoughtfully and sat down on the sofa. “So, apart from your appearance changing, you’re still essentially yourself?”

“Yes… hum…” Youyan’s eyes—if those crystalline structures could be called eyes—brightened for a moment. “I am still… hum… I… hum… conscious… hum… able to think… hum… able to speak… hum… that is…”

He paused, his wings flapping hesitantly.

“It’s just…buzz…I’m trying to express…buzz…it’s a bit difficult…buzz…”

Pam finally recovered from her shock and cautiously peeked out: “Then, how will you eat, Pam?”

“Buzz…”

This question seemed to have stumped You Yan.

He looked down at his forelimbs—the pair of limbs covered with hard carapaces and sharp, sickle-like edges—and then at the leftover sandwiches from yesterday on the table not far away.

“I…buzz…don’t know…buzz…let’s just go hungry…buzz…”

“You can’t go hungry, Pam!” Pam immediately retorted.

March 7 blinked her big eyes, tilted her head, stared at Youyan’s pair of sharp, scythe-like forelimbs, and then looked at his huge mouthparts. An idea popped into her head: “Hey, I think, how about we try making his food into a liquid? Like juice, and then feed it to him through a tube?”

“Use pipes?”

“The traveler on the path of reproduction… I don’t believe that conventional organic matter can meet the energy requirements of this form. Hunger may just be a conclusion he drew based on the inertia of thinking from the human era.”

“What do you mean?” Himeko asked.

“He may not need to eat the food we are familiar with at all.”

Walter seemed to be deep in thought.

“Little March, why don’t you talk to him for a bit? We’ll warp to the Black Tower Space Station later and ask Lady Black Tower. She happens to be there; we have some things to give her.”

“Huh? Me, should I stay and talk to him?” March 7th didn’t hesitate much and nodded. “Yeah, you must be really uncomfortable like this…”

“Then it’s settled.”

“Thank you for your hard work, Little March.”

“The train conductor should go prepare for the jump start now!”

As the door closed gently, the room fell silent instantly.

All that’s left is March 7th, and that giant beetle.

The atmosphere froze for a moment.

March 7 blinked her pinkish-blue eyes.

How…how are we supposed to talk about this?

“Speaking of which…” March 7th suddenly remembered something, her eyes lighting up. She pulled out her ever-present camera, “Since it’s turned out like this, should we take a picture to remember it?”

“Remember…Om…Om…?”

“Yeah! When you turn back to normal, or turn into some other weird thing, this will be a rare and precious memory!” March 7th raised the camera and gestured towards Yu Yan. “Come on, look at the camera! I don’t know if you still have a sense of the camera, but try to smile?”

Making an insect laugh is indeed asking too much of an insect.

But Youyan still showed some respect. He struggled to prop himself up, stiffly raising his scythe-like forelimbs, trying to make a gesture similar to a “V” sign. Although beneath that ferocious appearance, the movement looked more like preparing to attack, he truly did his best.

“Snap!”

The flash went off, freezing that moment in time.

In the photo, a huge blue worm clumsily waves its forelimbs, while March 7th smiles broadly beside it.

“Hehe, not bad!” March 7th looked at the camera screen and nodded in satisfaction. “I’m definitely going to keep this photo safe!”

“Then… no need… no need…”

The flames emitted a buzzing sound in frustration.