Chapter 41: Battle Against Bronya
"Mr. Rovel, the arrangements are in place," a voice crackled through his comms unit around five in the afternoon. It was Funahiki Gyō. "But I can only give you fifteen minutes. Tonight, from 11:45 PM to midnight sharp, there will be a system-wide power failure at ME Corp. All security will go dark. Use the side entrance and find what you need. Be quick."
"Understood," Rovel replied, his tone leaving no room for further discussion before he cut the connection.
The hours bled away into the deep of night. By 11:30 PM, Rovel was a shadow among shadows, positioned across the street from the towering ME Corp headquarters. The agents Funahiki Gyō had stationed nearby, hidden in unmarked vehicles and darkened alleyways, let out a collective, silent sigh of relief at his arrival. They relayed the confirmation up the chain of command, their tense watch finally reaching its critical phase.
The city was asleep. The streets surrounding the corporate monolith were deserted, wrapped in a deep quiet that seemed to amplify the anticipation. Rovel stood perfectly still, his gaze fixed on the building, patiently letting the seconds tick by.
At precisely 11:45 PM, the world went black. The ambient glow of the city block vanished as every light in and around ME Corp was extinguished in an instant, plunging the area into an oppressive darkness.
Rovel didn't waste a single moment. He flowed across the street, a phantom in the gloom, and slipped through the designated side door as Funahiki Gyō had instructed. Inside, the emergency lights had failed to activate, just as planned. He moved with practiced silence through the darkened halls, making his way swiftly to the top floor—to the office of Raiden Ryoma.
The air in the executive suite was stale, untouched. It was clear the space hadn't been cleaned in some time; it felt preserved, a snapshot of the day its owner had last left. The thought solidified in Rovel's mind as his eyes fell upon the desk, where a framed photograph of a smiling Raiden Mei still stood, facing the empty chair.
A fine, uniform layer of dust coated every surface, a silent testament that no one had disturbed this room. If Cocolia had truly seized control of the company, her first act would have been to purge all traces of its former president. This was a place she had overlooked, or perhaps, intentionally ignored.
Rovel began his search, his hands moving methodically under the heavy mahogany desk for any hidden compartments or misplaced files. Yet, even as he searched, his senses were on high alert. In a blind spot hidden from any potential observer, a high-quality wooden bokken materialized in his hand, its weight familiar and reassuring.
He activated his skill. 'Clear Mirror Sword Intent.'
The world seemed to decelerate. The motes of dust hanging in the air slowed their lazy dance, and the silence deepened, allowing him to perceive the slightest disturbance. Even with his senses sharpened to a razor's edge, he detected no one. No breathing, no shifting weight, no hidden presence watching from the corners.
Still, he refused to lower his guard. The moment his fingers brushed against the latch of the bottom-most drawer, a sharp hiss sliced through the quiet—a sound exceptionally piercing in the dead of night.
He was ready. In a fluid, economical motion, Rovel flicked the bokken. The wooden blade became a blur, intercepting the incoming projectile and cleaving the anesthetic needle neatly in two.
And in that instant, he finally pinpointed his enemy's location.
"Very keen intuition," a voice stated, utterly devoid of inflection or emotion. "Or... were you prepared for this all along?"
A figure emerged from the deepest shadows of the room. Bronya Zaychik stepped into a sliver of moonlight filtering through the panoramic window. The pale light gave her expressionless, porcelain-doll face a cold, ethereal sheen. Her silver hair was coiled into two immaculate spiral pigtails, and her petite frame was supported by detachable exoskeleton armor on her legs, hinting at a difficulty with mobility.
A crimson data tag shimmered above her head, displaying information that made Rovel's breath catch.
[Bronya Zaychik | Level: 45 | Trust: 0]
Level forty-five. A staggering fourteen levels higher than Mei. Any other player who stumbled into this ambush would be facing an impossible, unwinnable fight. There would be no escape.
"I had my suspicions," Rovel admitted, not denying the accusation as he rose to his full height.
Bronya held a file folder in her hand. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed it toward him. It sailed through the air and landed softly in his outstretched hand.
"This is what you came for," she said, her voice a flat monotone. "Defeat Bronya, and you may leave with it."
Rovel opened the folder. A quick scan confirmed its contents: it was the complete, irrefutable evidence of the conspiracy that had framed Raiden Ryoma. Bronya hadn't been lying.
As he secured the folder in his system inventory, she slowly raised a hand. Behind her, a bizarrely shaped, heavily armed robot materialized from particles of light, floating silently at her back.
"I've been wondering," Rovel said, his curiosity genuine. "What's the benefit for you? Handing over something this valuable to an enemy, setting up this little stage... Are you just trying to be dramatic? What if I had simply taken the file and made a run for it?"
To a question that dripped with provocation, Bronya offered a perfectly serious, logical answer.
"This is a signal. It is to inform you that you will absolutely not be escaping from here," she stated. "Project Bunny 19C, engage."
Compared to the massive combat mecha now humming with power behind her, Bronya herself, stripped of her ability to express emotion, seemed more like a precision instrument—a beautiful, cold, and lethally efficient machine.
Project Bunny began to charge. The cannon muzzles on its arms glowed with a gathering, orange-yellow light, the air crackling with raw Honkai energy.
Rovel didn't wait. Gripping his bokken tightly, he vanished. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, he was in front of her, the wooden sword arcing ruthlessly toward the pale, exposed column of her neck.
Hokushin Ittō-ryū: Battōjutsu!
If his timing was perfect, his blade would strike home an instant before Project Bunny could unleash its attack.
Yet, even faced with such blinding speed, only a flicker of surprise crossed Bronya's placid gray eyes. There was no panic, no fear.
Clang!
A sharp, crystalline sound, like steel striking diamond, echoed through the office. Rovel's lightning-fast draw had been stopped cold, blocked by an invisible barrier. Ripples spread across a perfect, spherical energy field that enveloped Bronya completely.
[-0]!
The damage number hung in the air, exceptionally glaring in the darkness.
In that same instant, Project Bunny's charge completed. A concentrated beam of pure Honkai energy erupted from its cannon, aimed directly at Rovel from point-blank range. To be hit by that blast would mean instant, absolute annihilation.
But at that impossible distance, Rovel's body twisted into an unnatural, eerie posture. The searing beam of destruction passed by him, missing by a mere fraction of an inch, and slammed into the far wall. Fortunately, the ME Corp President's office was constructed from reinforced, Honkai-resistant materials; the blast only managed to scorch a shallow crater into the surface.
The first shot having missed, Project Bunny's arms swiveled, and the deadly beam began to track Rovel's movements. He was forced into a desperate dance of evasion, leaping and weaving around the office as the beam tore through furniture, reducing Raiden Ryoma's expensive decor to splinters and molten slag. But within the tight confines of the room, empowered by his Clear Mirror Sword Intent, Rovel managed to dodge every lethal sweep of the cannon.
Soon, the weapon system began to overheat, forcing Project Bunny to cease its barrage. The oppressive hum of the cannon died down, and Rovel finally had a moment to breathe.
He planted his feet, pivoted, and channeled the rotation of his body into another powerful slash against the shield. The invisible field rippled once more, and two more mocking [-0] values popped into existence above Bronya's head.
Simultaneously, Project Bunny lashed out, its massive metal fist swinging in a heavy, crushing arc. Rovel ducked under the blow, the wind from its passage ruffling his hair, and followed up with a blistering Triple Slash from his crouched position.
Six more zeros bloomed in the air. The protective field shimmered violently under the assault, but there was still no sign of it breaking.
An almost imperceptible twitch creased Bronya's brow. Rovel was simply too agile. With the precognitive buff from Clear Mirror Sword Intent, she was finding it impossible to land a single decisive blow.
Her tactical processor, however, quickly devised a solution.
Bronya calmly sat atop Project Bunny's floating chassis. The protective field expanded, stretching to its maximum radius to envelop both her and her mecha. The form of Project Bunny's arms shifted, transforming from beam cannons into missile launchers.
The dark muzzles of the new weapons locked onto him.
A jolt went through Rovel's heart. This is bad.
In the next second, a shell shot out, but it didn't fly toward him. Instead, it detonated violently in the air just in front of him.
BOOM!
A surging wave of fire and shrapnel instantly swallowed his figure. The entire ME Corp skyscraper trembled from the force of the explosion.
This was Bronya's answer. If a single target could not be hit, she would simply resort to an attack that covered the entire map.
Firepower saturation.
However, even as the flames roared, Bronya had carefully modulated the explosive yield, ensuring the blast was just powerful enough to incapacitate, not to kill.
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