Chapter Nine: Shockwaves!
Just as the audience’s enthusiasm began to wane during the familiar opening animation, Silver Wolf gave a light tap on her virtual keyboard.
"Whoosh!"
With a soft whistle, the stone gate cracked open. Instantly, the "players" felt as if they were being sucked directly into the gate, their perspectives surging forward. In a flash, a white light—so familiar it had become numbing—shone forth, followed by the classic "Genshin-style" loading screen. This sight was like a key, unlocking the old players' memories of past gaming experiences.
However, when the loading finished, the scene that appeared was not the conventional game start that the viewers in the live stream had expected. There was no opening cinematic of the twin stars streaking across the sky to begin the journey through Teyvat. Instead, two lines of text, piercingly poignant at first glance, slowly emerged on the screen:
{I can do nothing!}
{You are merely a witness!}
White text on a black background, bold and enlarged, dominated the entire screen, impossible to ignore.
[Pfft!! What, what is this?]
[My heart was inexplicably struck by an arrow.]
[I was hit by two—]
[Isn't this Genshin Impact? Why are Honkai Impact 3rd captains getting caught in the crossfire too? 〒▽〒]
............
The live chat room was in collective shambles. But then...
A boy’s voice resonated through the endless darkness. His tone was calm, yet filled with such determination and unquestionable will that it sounded like he was stating an established fact.
[Eh? This voice...]
[Wow, it sounds so good. I feel like my ears are pregnant just from hearing this one line!]
[Hiss—the tone... just from this simple sentence, I feel like I can see a boy stepping into the fray alone, breaking through that so-called "fate" step by step.]
[Young man, entering the game alone—are you not afraid?]
[No gnashing of teeth, no grief or indignation. It’s a simple statement, not like a declaration of war against fate, but rather like...]
[Like a being of the same standing as fate, or perhaps even higher, calmly expressing his own will, forcing fate to concede and change.]
[I don't accept it, so I won't allow it to happen! Is that it?]
[Hiss!! Why am I, a guy, feeling inexplicably swooned by this?]
[Hmm~, it is indeed cool, but whose voice is this? It doesn't seem to be Aether's.]
[I don't know. It's not the voice of any other character in Genshin either. Such a pleasant voice—if I had heard it before, I wouldn't have forgotten it.]
............
The chat room was abuzz with speculation, everyone chiming in to guess the owner of the boy's voice. Unfortunately, they were destined to never guess the answer, and no one in the live stream could provide clarity. Silver Wolf, sitting at her gaming desk, knew the answer, but she clearly wasn't about to spill it to these viewers. Because at that moment, even she was staring at the screen in a slight daze.
"This guy..."
Silver Wolf whispered softly, feeling her heartbeat quicken uncontrollably. *Hmph! I’m not about to admit that I was just charmed by that too!*
As the viewers scrambled for answers, the scene on the screen began to shift. Following the boy’s words, those two rows of poignant white text seemed to come under intense pressure; they compressed, twisted, deformed, and spiderwebbed with cracks that spread across the characters until, finally...
"Bang!!"
"ROAR!!!"
With a sound like shattering glass, the black screen and white text disintegrated. The image that immediately followed caught the audience completely off guard.
As the black screen shattered, a giant cyan dragon lunged forward, jaws wide, letting out a heaven-shaking roar as if to bite the screen itself. The intensity was so great it felt as if it would burst through the display and swallow the people watching.
The sudden turn of events made a fool of the unprepared viewers. One person, busy eating instant noodles, jerked their hand and spilled the bowl all over the table; another was drinking water and sprayed it out, clutching their chest and coughing; one fell off their chair and couldn't climb back up for a long time... It was a chaotic and pathetic sight.
[Holy sh*t! What is happening?!!]
[I’ll be damned! This is way too scary!]
[ (Inhaling sharply, gritting teeth!) You, Shengshi! You owe me a pair of pants!]
............
The live stream was instantly flooded with exclamations and complaints. As the camera pulled back, the audience recognized the creature: the Stormterror they knew so well, the Dvalin, one of the Four Winds of Mondstadt. With the strange, glowing corrupted blood crystals on his back, his crazed expression, and his crimson eyes, it was clear that Dvalin was in the period where he was being tortured by the corrupted blood and had lost control.
In the video, the maddened Dvalin roared at the heavens, whipping up gales that surged forward. Ahead of him, a black-haired boy, also wreathed in hurricanes as if he had become one with the wind, used the wings on his back to nimbly dodge every one of Dvalin's attacks, continuously closing the distance.
As he neared the dragon, the boy raised his hand, seizing the wind into a blade, and with a momentum as sharp as a rainbow, slashed fiercely at Dvalin. Both sides traded blows, each attack ruthless and visceral, as if determined to strike the other from the high skies.
The video did not show the aftermath of this battle. With one swift, sweeping claw strike from Dvalin, the screen plunged into darkness once more, only to brighten again a moment later.
"A thousand years of resentment, how can it be quelled!"
The earth cracked and boulders flew. With a roar from ancient times, the terrifying Geo Dragon King crawled from the depths of the earth. As he moved, mountains and valleys trembled. Azhdaha shook his massive frame, and the leaf-like Geo structures on his back fell like leaves in an autumn gale, transforming into a sky-obscuring rock storm—like countless arrows shot toward the boy blocking his path.
The boy dodged frantically, looking somewhat disheveled, yet he seized every minor opening to unleash sharp sword beams at the Geo Dragon King, hoping to deal damage. Until the Dragon King planted his four feet firmly into the ground, as if rooted to the earth to draw power, continuously pulling various elemental energies from the ley lines, and then...
"ROAR!!!"
The Dragon King's roar shook the wild mountains. Simultaneously, a tide composed of all four elements—Hydro, Pyro, Cryo, and Electro—erupted as if from a super-compressed water pump. The violent elemental torrent swept across the land...
The scene in the video changed again. Next, facing the Raiden Shogun, destroying the Shouki no Kami, taming the Narwhal...
Each scene, each battle, composed a breathtaking visual feast that stunned everyone watching!