Honkai: Star Rail: Making Game Companies Great Again

Masked Fool Shise felt that the Elation in Dual-Phase Paradise had strayed from what Elation was supposed to be.

To set things right, she quit the Genius Society and went home to inherit her family’s game company.

Shise: Elation, at its core, is everything people are willing to live for.

Shise: If you think the Elation around you has gone wrong, come enjoy the pleasures of human instinct!

Need the thrill of combat? Fight the Antimatter Legion in our game!

Need the satisfaction of raising a character? Try this game, Raising the Reignbow Arbiter from Scratch!

Want to push your brain to its limits? Give our new game, Am I Supposed to Forge the Tomb? Strategy Edition, a try! Make the right strategic choices, defeat the head of the Genius Society, and save this Okhema!

Feeling stifled by all the flashiness? Here’s a little secret: we have a 21+ full-dive game… No 648, just 128, and you can take every card illustration home.

Shise: There’s only one path left for me.

To become an Emanator, win the Phantasmoon Games, become Aha for one minute, and then get everyone playing my company’s games!

*

As the second Emanator to be announced in this year’s Phantasmoon Games, Shise became famous in a very simple way.

Miss Sparkle herself became the spokesperson. The dress-up minigame, Find Idrila, topped every trending list in Dual-Phase Paradise as soon as it launched.

Sparkle: I never agreed to endorse it! And how did you get all my viewers to become players?!

Sparkle: Because she invited me to cosplay as Sparkle.

Shise: Besides, a streamer has to face millions of fans alone, but my game guarantees that every fan can have their own “custom-made” Aeon of Beauty.

When Many Wishes, head of the Happiness Smile Research Society, announced that the Emanators’ debate would be held at Many Wishes TV, her subordinate regretfully told her that the station’s ratings had been falling all month.

“Am I Supposed to Forge the Tomb? Combat Edition just launched. You can raise the Chrysos Heirs in the game and beat up the Tomb, and at the highest level, you can even raise an Aeon. If you can raise an Aeon, who’s going to watch TV?”

Even some Emanators themselves were busy raising characters.

Stelle (streaming version): First, you need to reset until you get a two-star Mem. Then, at the Oronis stage, you can get a three-star Fuli Xilian and raise a full team of three-star Chrysos Heirs!

Silver Wolf (cracked version): Blade, wanna give it a try? I’ve already used cheats: three-star 999 Silver Wolf, and you can speedrun Nanook on auto. This run’s a bonus stage! Hey, why did you pick Yunli at the start in Raising the Reignbow Arbiter from Scratch?!

When the Lord Ravager Guiji finally appeared in the skies above Dual-Phase Paradise, she announced that she would return the unexpected to this planet.

Shise: I’m afraid that when you played Longjie, you tried out the 21+ full-dive game I developed.

Shise (in a devilish whisper): You didn’t read the user agreement. There’s a clause that lets the game developer force players who are Lord Ravagers to log in or out.

Shise (starting the game): Take those empathy dolls of yours… no, your clones… and go experience the eternal, primal pleasure of being alive! I won’t let you get away, senior!

And so, the Masked Fool (crossed out), the chairwoman of the game company, who could even make a Lord Ravager tremble, won the Phantasmoon Games.

The newly appointed Aeon of Elation forced every living being in the galaxy to watch a one-minute game company commercial.

No one! Can! Stop her!

Make the game company! Great again!

*

The author knows that giving Guiji a shock of physical pleasure is an outrageous plot point, but ever since the idea appeared in my head, it’s haunted me relentlessly. I simply had to write it. If you’ve read this far, please consider your own appetite for chaotic fun, and make good use of the exit button (and the block function).

Pre-release blurb:

Yuying is a timid, honest woman. One day, she transmigrates and becomes the wife Wang Sheng left behind at his ancestral home.

Life is going fairly well, until her husband Wang Sheng suddenly returns with two people: a beautiful concubine he took in on the road, and her younger brother, whom he asks Yuying to look after.

Yuying despises her scumbag husband, but can’t help feeling relieved that the concubine has bewitched him and he isn’t coming to her to have a child.

But soon, she can no longer feel relieved: she begins to dream about herself and the younger brother again and again! In her dreams, the handsome, ravishing young man holds up her legs, kissing his way down as he looks up and murmurs, calling her “Sister Ying.”

For months on end, Yuying loses herself in those dreams countless times. Even though she tries to avoid the young man in real life, it does no good. She still wakes up with an aching waist and weak legs.

Yuying doesn’t dare tell anyone. She can only endure it day after day, hoping to save enough money to rent a separate house for the younger brother. Perhaps then things will get better.

At last, she has enough money and goes to see the concubine.

Standing outside a half-open window, she sees her husband Wang Sheng fast asleep. Beside him, in front of the dressing table, the concubine lies flattened into a roll of human skin. The ravishing young man stands before it, brush in hand, touching up the rouge on its cheeks.

Yuying is terrified out of her wits and stumbles backward, only to collide with an icy embrace.

The dazzlingly beautiful young man has appeared behind her without her noticing. He catches her with a smile, his cold hand gripping her wrist.

“Oh dear, my secret’s been discovered.”

His chilly breath brushes Yuying’s earlobe, almost exactly like in her dreams.

“Now that Sister Ying has leverage over me, should I eat you…”

His breath trails lower, past her collarbone, lingering where he nibbled at her in last night’s dream.

“Or should you give me something to hold over you, too?”

*

Wang Sheng has never liked his dull-witted wife, but she is virtuous, after all. He can at least visit her now and then and give her a child to provide for her future.

What he doesn’t know is that whenever he is enchanted by magic, the young man puts away his painted skin, kicks him under the bed, and holds his wife close as the bed creaks and the curtains close. His forefinger brushes over his wife’s flat lower abdomen.

“Even though this isn’t your first time, why are you still so ner-vous, Sister Ying?”

* The female protagonist and Wang Sheng are not legally recognized as husband and wife. The original host was deceived by Wang Sheng, and the protagonist was deceived too when she transmigrated.

* The beautiful concubine is the male lead’s painted-skin disguise.

Theme: Live well.