Fate's Slave - Shadow Slave X Honkai Star Rail

Sunny stepped through the door expecting many things.

What he did not expect was the wall.

Or rather, the lack of one.

He stopped in the doorway and stared.

A significant portion of Clara’s mansion — specifically, the side of the room that had once politely separated ’inside’ from ’outside’ — had been removed from existence with all the subtlety of property damage. Where there should have been reinforced stone and carefully maintained architecture, there was now only open air and a breathtaking view of the Robot Settlement beyond.

The broken edge of the wall was jagged, split apart like the building itself had objected to continuing. Through it, he could see the settlement stretching outward in organized chaos — rows of temporary shelters, automatons moving supplies, civilians huddled together in groups that were trying very hard not to look like refugee camps.

The morning light poured in through the destruction, illuminating floating dust and fractured stone.

There were four people inside.

Svarog stood nearest to the ruined opening, the only one still standing. His massive mechanical frame was motionless, but there was nothing passive about him. His crimson optics had fixed onto Sunny the moment he entered the room, and unlike the last time Sunny had seen him months ago, it was immediately obvious that the ancient automaton had undergone upgrades.

His chassis was heavier now, cleaner in construction, with reinforced armor plating and subtle structural changes that made him look less like an unusually advanced machine and more like the answer to the question of what would happen if inevitability learned how to throw someone through a building. The geometric precision of his frame carried the quiet arrogance of something designed by engineers who had never once considered the possibility of failure.

Clara sat nearby in a chair that had somehow survived both the room’s destruction and the general trend of everything collapsing around Belobog. When she noticed Sunny, she gave him a small wave.

It was the kind of wave that said hello, thank you, and please do not start anything for at least ten minutes.

Sunny respected the optimism. Because, unfortunately for her, he was going to start something.

Across from her sat Aventurine, seated behind what had once been a table and was now a table being held together almost entirely by the determination of nearby automatons refusing to let it collapse.

This was the first time Sunny had seen him without the glamorous armor.

Unfortunately, he was annoyingly stylish.

Blond hair, sharp features, and the kind of face that looked like it had been specifically designed to make honest people suspicious. His clothes were expensive in the way only rich people and villains managed to achieve naturally: black and teal with gold accents, perfectly tailored, decorated with white fur trim, jewelry that probably cost more than entire neighborhoods, and the posture of a man who had never once apologized sincerely in his life.

Under the sunglasses, however, he was wearing a blindfold.

For some reason.

Next to Aventurine sat a woman with short white hair, wearing a thick coat that seemed like it was specifically bought for Jarilo-VI’s extremely cold weather. She didn’t seem particularly uptight, but one could never trust the IPC.

A strange little creature shifted around in her lap, round and oddly expressive, carrying the deeply unsettling energy of a tax collector that had somehow been turned into something marketable.

’What a freakish little critter.’

Before anyone else could speak, he gestured toward the missing wall.

"...What happened to the wall?"

Aventurine leaned back slightly and gave a lazy shrug, as though structural destruction was merely an unfortunate side effect of doing business.

"It came crashing down when that ice queen dropped in."

His smile widened just enough to become suspicious.

"Furthermore..."

He paused, tilting his head with what looked like genuine curiosity.

"You survived. That was a Saint, Corrupted as she may be. How did you manage that?"

Sunny smiled.

There it was.

He had been waiting for that question.

Not specifically from Aventurine, although that certainly made it more satisfying, but from someone. Anyone who could separate truth from lies, which he suspected applied to the blonde, at the very least.

It was part of the plan, after all.

He walked into the room like a man arriving for afternoon tea instead of post-apocalyptic negotiations and casually sat down on a surviving section of stone near the shattered wall. He crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands together with the ease of someone about to tell a story he had been preparing for.

"Oh, that?"

He waved a hand dismissively.

"It was nothing too special. While I was fighting Cocolia — that’s the Saint, by the way — I decided to try a couple of things. First, I stabbed her a few times, and then I bit out her spine and used it as a makeshift weapon to stab her with."

He paused thoughtfully.

"Unfortunately, she just would not die. So I dropped a mountain on her. Then I followed that by dropping the force of an atomic bomb directly on top of her, but she still would not stay down."

He sighed with genuine disappointment.

"Honestly, very rude. So, I was preparing to use an even bigger bomb, but then that Great Devil came barging in. I killed it pretty easily with a single attack."

Clara made a small noise.

"After that, I set off my bomb, which left her crippled. Then I killed her with only two swings of a blade."

He glanced upward like he was remembering something mildly important.

"Did I mention she was a Lord Ravager? Because apparently she was."

Sunny sighed and casually inspected his nails.

"Honestly, it was not all that impressive. Before I Ascended, I had already killed a Saint. Actually, I killed her twice just to prove a point."

Sunny continued with the exact same conversational tone.

"Just a couple of weeks ago, I fought an even stronger Lord Ravager — a Supreme Titan — and defeated her by slicing her gargantuan body in half. Plus, that dragon was only the second time I killed a Great Devil. I killed one in a single hit as a Sleeper, and it couldn’t land a single attack on me. It was like stealing candy from a baby, if stealing candy was equivalent to murder."

Silence settled over the room.

***

From Aventurine’s perspective, the room had become significantly more offensive.

Not because what Sunless was saying sounded ridiculous.

Ridiculous was manageable.

Ridiculous was familiar.

Ridiculous could be filed neatly under the category of something he could simply forget about.

No, the problem was that every single word was true.

The lie-detection Memory he carried — a subtle but invaluable little thing issued to high-ranking IPC officials expected to negotiate with dangerous people — was not reacting at all.

Not once.

No warning.

No contradiction.

No hidden deception.

Nothing.

Everything Sunny was saying was true.

That was the problem.

Aventurine sat there without moving, his smile remaining perfectly intact because professionalism was, at its core, simply emotional manipulation with better tailoring.

Behind the blindfold, his eye remained closed.

He had chosen not to look directly at Sunless for a reason.

He recently had a premonition that looking directly at the anomaly on Belobog would lead to immediate madness. Looking directly at him felt like the kind of decision that would either end in divine revelation or immediate violence, and while both had their entertainment value, he preferred to postpone them until... well, never, actually.

Instead, he was using Memories to sense the room around him.

It was enough.

Enough to know where everyone sat.

Enough to feel the shape of Sunless’ presence.

Enough to know that whatever expression Sunless was probably wearing right now was likely infuriating to most people.

Aventurine himself found it amusing.

More importantly, he had already known Sunless was dangerous.

He knew because of luck.

Because of Fate.

Aventurine’s relationship with probability was intimate in the same way a knife had an intimate relationship with throats. He understood patterns. He understood outcomes. He understood when the Universe was behaving normally and when something had walked into the script and started improvising.

Sunny was not merely important.

He was a focal point.

The Strings of Fate wrapped around him so tightly they looked like they were trying to strangle and caress him at the same time. Probability around him did not behave correctly. It bent. It warped. It produced results that should not happen naturally.

Two Category Four Nightmare Gates opening at the same time in the same place.

A Corrupted Saint appearing alongside them.

Aventurine strongly suspected the answer to all of it was, in some deeply irritating way, the random Master before him.

That made him valuable.

That made him dangerous.

That made him interesting.

Aventurine tapped the table twice.

It was a small sound, subtle enough that most people in the room would have ignored it entirely, but for Aventurine, it was as clear as a spoken command.

Across from him, Topaz shifted slightly.

He knew she understood immediately.

Grab the Cornerstone. Check the valuation.

It was not something that needed to be said aloud. People in their position learned how to communicate in smaller movements than language allowed, and Topaz was far too competent to require explanation.

The moment her hand began to move, Sunny’s voice echoed across the room.

"Reaching for your Cornerstone?"

There was amusement in it, light and almost friendly, which somehow made it far more irritating.

"Go ahead. I will allow it."

Aventurine felt his eye twitch beneath the blindfold.

’Asserting yourself in front of two Stonehearts? Who does he think he is...?’

For a brief and deeply inconvenient moment, Aventurine realized something strange.

He was annoyed.

Genuinely annoyed.

Not amused, not entertained, not politely intrigued in the way he usually was when dealing with arrogant people who mistook recklessness for confidence. No, this was actual irritation, sharp and immediate.

How odd.

How inconvenient. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

He had almost forgotten what that felt like.

Still, none of it showed on his face. His smile remained as pleasant and harmless as ever, polished into place by long practice.

"Well? You heard him, Topaz."

Topaz muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like ’stupid blonde hooligan,’ which was obviously not directed at him, because that would have been rude, and she generally valued her continued existence.

Probably.

She reached into her coat and wrapped her fingers around her Cornerstone.

The topaz jewel rested warm against her palm, carrying stored authority and the weight of the Preservation behind it. The moment she grasped it, the room shifted in a way that was almost impossible to notice unless you knew what to look for.

Power settled into place.

Perception sharpened.

Aventurine felt it immediately.

Topaz’s gaze moved with deliberate care, sweeping across the room without appearing to linger too long on anything. She checked the shattered table first, then the broken wall that exposed the rest of the Robot Settlement beyond it. Her attention moved to Svarog, standing like an unmoving fortress beside Clara, then to the automatons positioned quietly around the room.

She glanced over Aventurine himself.

Then, finally, her eyes landed on Sunny.

She paused.

Not for a second, not for politeness, but for a long, noticeable stretch of silence that made even Clara shift in her chair.

Long enough that Numby stopped moving in Topaz’s lap.

Long enough that Aventurine slowly turned his head toward her despite not being able to see her expression directly.

’Interesting.’

That silence said more than any report could have.

Then Sunny spoke again, his voice warm with mock politeness.

"So, what is my value, Topaz of Debt Collection? Actually, does it count the things I have on me?"

Topaz answered without looking away from him.

"The value of a human? My Cornerstone cannot calculate things like that. Nobody can put a number on human lives."

That part, Aventurine knew, she genuinely believed.

For all her work as a debt collector in a very expensive coat, Topaz was sincere about that much. She did not believe people could be reduced to currency, no matter how often the IPC behaved as though they could.

She continued, her tone steady and professional.

"I was more interested in Svarog over there, and that Transcendent armor you are wearing."

It was smooth. Clean. Mostly true.

But not entirely.

Because Aventurine knew better.

Her Cornerstone absolutely could evaluate humans.

It simply did so differently.

It did not assign a current value. It measured potential.

Not what someone was worth now, but what they might become. Not present assets, but future investments. It was why Aventurine was recruited in the first place... well, partly.

And judging by that pause, whatever valuation Sunny had produced had been something absurd enough that even Topaz had needed a moment to process it.

Aventurine did not need her to say it aloud.

The silence had already said enough.

’Very interesting.’

He folded his hands neatly on the table, his smile never changing.

Sunny had started this conversation with impossible truths for a reason, and now the structure of it was obvious.

He had correctly guessed that the IPC routinely equipped high-ranking officials like Aventurine with Memories capable of detecting lies. Instead of trying to bluff past that, he had chosen something far more effective.

He told the truth.

Not ordinary truths. Outlandish, ridiculous, absurd truths that sounded like obvious lies the moment they left his mouth.

Truths about killing Saints.

Truths about defeating Great Devils.

Truths about dropping mountains and setting off bombs large enough to erase battlefields.

Truths designed so that any reasonable person would dismiss him immediately as either insane or insufferable.

And then the lie-detection Memory would quietly confirm the worst possible outcome.

That he was not exaggerating at all.

That realization created imbalance.

And uncertainty, in negotiations, was leverage.

By surviving that silence — by letting everyone in the room sit there and process that he was either the greatest liar alive or, somehow worse, completely honest — Sunny had already secured the most important advantage.

He had established position.

Not as someone requesting terms.

Not as someone negotiating from weakness.

But as someone who had already decided he belonged at the top of the conversation and was simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.

He had claimed leadership before negotiations had even formally begun.

For someone so young, he was offensively competent.

Aventurine almost respected it.

Almost.

Because when it came to the actual negotiations, there was, frankly, very little to discuss.

The loot acquired from the Great Devils alone — the corpse materials, Soul Shards, salvageable organs, scales, blood, bones, claws, and every other horrific thing that could be converted into profit by sufficiently flexible morality — was more than enough to erase Belobog’s debt several times over. There was the Echo he received, as well, which was so obscenely valuable that he wasn’t even sure how many star systems it was worth. At least two, which was ridiculous enough.

That problem was solved.

Cleanly, even.

There would be paperwork, certainly. There was always paperwork. Entire departments probably reproduced asexually through paperwork.

But functionally, the debt issue was finished.

No more business.

At least officially.

Which meant the real question was not what the IPC wanted.

It was what the Starkiller wanted.

Because people like him never moved for free.

No one with that kind of strength, that kind of instinct, and that kind of deliberate recklessness ever played without purpose.

Aventurine leaned forward slightly, his smile still calm and pleasant.

"Since we are all being honest, let us skip the part where we pretend this is just a courtesy visit."

The room grew quieter.

Even Numby, who had been shifting lazily in Topaz’s lap, stilled as though it also understood that the real conversation had finally arrived.

Aventurine continued, his tone light enough to almost sound casual.

"Belobog’s debt is resolved. The Nightmare Gates are under observation by Miss Clara’s little army. The Great Devil materials are already more than enough to satisfy the Corporation."

He let that settle before tilting his head slightly.

"So, I am curious."

His voice remained soft, but the question underneath it was sharp.

"What exactly are you aiming for, Sunny? Can I call you that? I think I will."