The blue panel hung in the clearing like a small, stubborn moon, its light cold against the damp undergrowth. Text scrolled in tidy blocks, impersonal and precise, as if someone had translated a lifetime into metadata.
[Amber Era 2158 — Jarilo-VI origin. Fostered by Silvermane Guard. Early mechanical aptitude. Repeated attempts to enter a Path failed. Medical apprenticeship under Natasha. Lifespan anomaly: short-lived. Legacy: resilience.]
[Counterstrike System engaged. World mismatch recorded. Host location: Teyvat. Transfer of thirty-year imprint completed.]
[New prompt: You encounter a barefoot girl in red, surrounded by scavengers. Choose action.]
Kael read the lines twice because the combination of worlds still felt absurd. A Honkai ledger assigning choices in a Mondstadt clearing was not a normal morning.
Behind the glowing window the little girl fussed with bells on her backpack and muttered about bombs low on stock. She moved with the sort of reckless confidence only small children and people with nothing left to lose could afford. Wolves sniffed the air. Hilichurls shifted their spears. Predators read opportunity like weather.
The panel offered three options, each wrapped in an incentive the system thought persuasive.
Option one: ignore her, take a chance at a relic cloak. Option two: attack hard, earn an explosive automaton. Option three: intervene, earn a bond and an active skill that could lend destructive Path resonance to objects.
Kael had spent long enough in other people's plots to treat choices like currency. The labels did not matter; the outcomes did. He examined the setting like an engineer analyzing a trap. Wolves and Hilichurls reacted to stimulus. Bait a wolf and the rest followed. Send a flame, and Hilichurls broke formation. Create confusion and victory was efficient.
He tapped the air near the option three box, amused at his own habit of treating the system's choices like a mini ledgersheet. The panel accepted his selection with a single pulse.
[Option three selected. Reward queued: Clara-branch skill — I Also Want to Help.]
Kael gave the name a flat look. Honkai names never bothered to learn Teyvat sensibilities. Names were labels. Power was not.
He did not move like a hero. He moved like someone who had studied how heroes fared in other people's histories and chosen the outcome that left him leverage.
First: misdirection. A spark, a toss—small, theatrical things that slowed motion and magnified reaction. He kicked a loose stone into a shallow hollow, set the dust to skitter and the wolves to scent. A nearest Hilichurl lunged forward, distracted. Kael moved through the gap with the economy of a man who had learned survival without romance.
The girl watched, bright eyed.
"You okay?" Kael asked in the careful tone of a caretaker who had given up on sentiment but not on responsibility.
She puffed up. "Klee is fine. Klee has bombs."
"Keep your pack closed." He kept his voice dry. "And stay behind me."
She obeyed with blind, delighted trust. Kids were either liabilities or investments. He preferred investments.
He cleared the encounter without fanfare. Not a furious ballet. Not a signature spectacle. Precise blocks and angles, a few blunt strikes, a handful of red herrings to scatter the pack. The wolves learned distance. The Hilichurls learned pain. The clearing settled to an aftertaste of singed grass and damp fur.
The girl clapped. "Big brother saved Klee!"
"Temporary ally," Kael corrected, smoothing his blade on his sleeve. He let his mouth pull at the edge of a humor he rarely used. It kept conversations human.
The system chimed quietly, no trumpets. A line of code delivered the reward in sterile language.
[Skill unlocked: I Also Want to Help. Effect: Imbue an item with destructive Path resonance for a short period. Cooldown applies.]
Kael felt the new capability like a tool sliding into an invisible holster. Not flashy. Not divine. Practical.
He inspected the small device the girl offered him. A patched can, a short fuse. The system flagged it as eligible for the effect. A little, honest explosive—mundane, straightforward, the sort of device that made sense in a scavenger's pocket and a black market buyer's ledger.
Kael tested the small blessing the way tradesmen tested metal: pragmatic and cautious. He keyed intent to the item, feeling the I Also Want to Help skill fold into his perception like a new language. The can responded with a hum under his thumb, the resonance of destructive Path energy ready to be threaded into metal and cloth.
The payout here was not only the skill. It was the relationship. A bond with the girl, a narrative node that could be pulled to affect trust, markets, and favors. In a world where names opened doors and lineage locked them behind bolts, an asset that could empower objects was currency he could spend without selling his soul.
"Find shelter." He gave the girl directions that would get her to the town gate and into human sight, into family and mess and squares where people minded children and not machines. "Not the chapel. A family. Stay with someone who feeds you."
She tugged at his sleeve with the kind of implacable honesty children have.
"Klee likes exploring."
"Klee likes surviving," Kael said. "You are not the same thing."
She scowled, then brightened. "Big brother said Klee brave."
He watched her go, bells tinkling a light, optimistic staccato. The system panel hovered, satisfied. Kael felt the imprint of Honkai memories flick at the edges of his thought again—metalworks, field triage, cold winters and a stubborn, sensible kind of hope. The session had given him more than muscle; it had offered perspective and tools.
He pocketed the sense of advantage and walked back toward the road. The skill was small but specific. Useful in trade or war. Useful in tests of leverage where the right object made the right impression.
As the sun slid low over Whispering Woods, Kael allowed himself a dry quip under breath.
"Beginner's luck," he said, which was a lie mostly because he had engineered it. The system had handed him the choice. He had used it. That was the point.
He did not know yet how this odd interface would reshape politics. He only knew how to use openings. He would make a ledger out of moments like this. He would let the system's games be his tools, no more, no less.
Behind him, distant bells faded into twilight.