The Gamer who traveled to Honkai: Star Rail

Taking a closer look at it—good grief!

Pei Guang really did say good grief out loud.

The watermelon had eyes and a mouth. Not only were they lifelike, they were crooked, twisted into an uncanny sort of "abstract beauty."

Stelle looked at him with shining eyes. "Ah Guang! Well? Fun, right?"

Pei Guang stared at the effect in silence.

After a long pause, he finally nodded. "Fun. Very fun. It's just… there's a debuff. Sometimes when you hit someone, it'll make them go berserk. Berserk means all their stats increase and they fight even more aggressively."

Stelle hissed, "Ooh! That sounds really strong. Let me try it?"

Pei Guang: "Sure."

Stelle pulled out her bat, and Pei Guang slotted the watermelon effect onto it.

Firefly had been quietly watching them fiddle around. But when she saw Pei Guang finish attaching the effect to Stelle's bat, her expression froze.

From her perspective, Stelle's bat had turned into a strange watermelon. At the tip of the bat, a pair of disturbingly real eyes and a wide, toothy grin were staring straight ahead.

Stelle asked eagerly, "Well? How is it?"

She swung the bat a few times as she spoke. Watching that swing, Pei Guang once again fell silent.

Every time Stelle swung, the watermelon's mouth twisted into an unnervingly ecstatic smile. The expression was so grotesquely abstract that just looking at it made your head throb.

And those eyes… just one glance made Pei Guang recall unpleasant memories.

Not just Pei Guang: even Firefly shivered and instinctively hid behind him. She could feel the hostility radiating off Stelle's bat.

In terms of efficiency, maybe the weapon wasn't that strong. But watching Stelle swing it, all Firefly felt was her brain trembling and her body recoiling in protest.

Seeing their reactions, Stelle smugly kicked her bat and slung it over her shoulder. Then she turned to Pei Guang with shining eyes. "Ah Guang! Let's go test this special effect out!"

Pei Guang pointed at Sparkle, who had already been pulled out of the trash can and looted. "Well, isn't she right here? And no one around is paying attention. Why don't you test it on her?"

Firefly hesitated. "That… doesn't seem right…"

Stelle beamed. "I think it's perfect! She dropped it, so of course she should be the one we try it on. Besides, she drank our coffee, she's out cold like a baby. Ten minutes of guaranteed sleep, just like Sampo. She's practically perfect test material!"

With that, Stelle poked Sparkle's butt lightly with the bat. She didn't use force, just a little jab to test the weapon's special effect.

The moment the bat touched, everyone present heard a strange, mocking voice.

"Brothers, who even gets this? Absolutely ridiculous. A Masked Fool, sleeping on the job? Is she trying to bore me to death? She's an embarrassment to the Masked Fools. Honestly, forget the truth, if I were the one pretending to be a Fool, at least I'd be more entertaining than this."

As the cursed watermelon sneered, its expression twisted rapidly: mocking one moment, disgusted the next.

Even without listening to its words, just watching those shifting expressions made both Pei Guang and Firefly feel an overwhelming urge to smash it.

But the problem was, the cursed watermelon was a special effect bound to Stelle's weapon: at its core, it was still just a bat.

They couldn't exactly grab Stelle's bat and spend all day playing with her bat, could they?

Pei Guang and Firefly both suppressed the urge to act, while Stelle looked at the bat in her hands, planted a kiss on it, and said with joy, "Perfect! I love this special effect! Waaaah, finally I've got a proper effect of my own!"

At that moment, not only Pei Guang and Firefly fell silent—even the Memokeepers and other existences watching the commotion around them were speechless.

After all, getting hit by that thing meant either losing your sanity or going berserk outright.

Compared to everyone else's silence, Stelle was genuinely thrilled. Ever since Dan Heng got his Pink Fluffy Bunny, she'd been waiting for an effect on par with his.

Her bat had followed her faithfully from the very beginning, and now it finally had an amusing special effect to go with it.

She hadn't expected to actually get one today: and all thanks to Pei Guang. If he hadn't caught such a lucky star, she'd probably still be stuck with ordinary firework effects.

At that instant, Stelle absolutely adored Pei Guang.

With her new treasure in hand, she leapt straight at him like a koala, hugging him tightly and rubbing her head against him. "Ah Guang! My Ah Guang~ you're the best! I feel so full of energy now!!!"

As she spoke, Stelle pulled out her bat and started swinging it, while Pei Guang barked loudly, "Get down! Get off me! And keep that bat away from me!"

But Stelle only clung tighter. Let go? No way! This was her treasure trove, she wouldn't let go even if March 7th showed up. Not that March could, since she was out shopping right now.

Stelle smirked proudly, but soon noticed Firefly watching silently nearby. "Hey? That one over there, what's your name again?"

Pei Guang introduced, "Firefly!"

Stelle nodded. "Oh! Firefly, come here! While Ah Guang's luck is hot, let's absorb some of his luck together."

Firefly hesitated. "Would that even work?"

Stelle nodded vigorously. "Of course it works! Anyone who's been around Ah Guang always has great luck. No matter what trouble comes up, with him there it always works out. No matter what danger, it turns into safety. That's the invincible Ah Guang!"

For some reason, seeing Firefly gave Stelle a sense of familiarity. And since she looked so pretty, Stelle's mischievous side stirred as well. So she pulled Firefly into the "luck-draining" too.

Firefly wavered, but seeing Stelle's expression, she took a deep breath, stepped closer to Pei Guang, and leaned in slightly.

"I'll absorb some too~" Firefly said, half convinced by Stelle.

In this moment, she was absorbing from Pei Guang purely wanting to gain some of his good fortune, with absolutely no other thoughts.

Looking at the two girls flanking him, Pei Guang was speechless.

Were they succubi or something? Absorbing from here of all places? And besides, his so-called luck was just "always losing bets" level: was it really worth drawing from?

But since they seemed happy, he let them be.

He did, however, make one point clear: "Fine, take my luck if you want. But don't go jinxing me by calling me invincible. Got it?"

Stelle: "Got it! Invincible Ah Guang!"

Firefly: "Got it! Invincible Ah Guang!"

Pei Guang rolled his eyes.

Firefly had been such a proper girl, but it hadn't even been long since meeting Stelle and she was already picking up her habits. It made him genuinely regretful.

While the three of them were fooling around, Sparkle, lying on the ground, began to dream.

A terrible dream.

In it, she was napping with a purple-skinned egg. But as she slept, suddenly an obnoxious voice whispered in her ear.

"Brothers, who even gets this?"

"Absolutely ridiculous."

"A Masked Fool with no fun."

"A girl of leftover scraps."

"Can't even imitate anyone properly."

The voices circled endlessly around her ears.

What had been such a comfortable sleep was broken by these taunts, until finally she couldn't bear it anymore. Her eyes snapped open.

"Enough!"

She looked up at the black sky of the dream world, her clothes soaked through as though she'd been submerged in water. It was just a dream, yet she was sweating so much her dream-body's clothes were drenched.

But as she rose, she saw a scene that left her stunned.

Not far away, Stelle was hugging Pei Guang with a strange watermelon in her hand. On it, a pair of eyes and a mouth were staring at her with a look that made her want to gouge them out on the spot.

The moment she saw that watermelon, her head echoed again with those sarcastic voices: "Brothers, who even gets this? Absolutely ridiculous."

Sparkle wanted nothing more than to jab out those eyes, sew up that mouth, and throw the cursed talking watermelon on the ground to stomp it into pieces.

Both Pei Guang and Stelle noticed her furious awakening.

Seeing Sparkle awake, Stelle pulled out some coffee. "Ah! Got too happy looting her corpse—time to shove the pacifier back in."

"Pacifier?"

Sparkle instinctively turned her head.

Beside her, she spotted a trash can. Next to it was an IV stand, but instead of a needle at the end, it was attached to a pacifier.

Her expression twitched instantly. She was always the one playing tricks on others: never had she imagined that today, she'd be the one getting played.

It wasn't even that being played was the worst part—the worst part was that against Pei Guang, she'd had no way to resist.

How could this be allowed? If the other Masked Fools ever found out, this joke would follow her for dozens of Amber Eras.

As that thought crossed her mind, both Pei Guang and Stelle began to move.

Seeing them, Sparkle's pupils contracted.