Chapter 76: Mega Bronya

The Zero Shot—an electric shock at point-blank range—should have stunned the opponent instantly.

Bronya knew that well.

She had calculated every possible variable, from the enemy's physiological response to the effects of the electrical charge on the human nervous system. Even if the target was a Herrscher, the voltage she used was sufficient to disrupt brain signals for at least 0.4 seconds—enough for her to exploit an opening and deliver a finishing blow.

But reality did not unfold as she had expected.

The electricity discharged from the barrel of Bronya's Project:Bunny was stopped, not by an insulated shield or an advanced energy-nullification system, but by an invisible gravitational barrier—a transparent wall that even her scanning lenses couldn't analyze. The only thing she could confirm was that it had completely absorbed the current, as if all the energy had been swallowed upon contact.

Even so, the shot was not entirely in vain.

The electromagnetic blast had been strong enough to blow away the enemy's hood, revealing his true face.

A sharp and almost handsome face, if one ignored the brutish, violent glint in his eyes. His dark blue hair was slicked back, each strand catching the battlefield's glow, forming a strange contrast between his well-groomed appearance and his wild, savage aura. His eyes—a piercing shade of blue—gleamed with defiance.

He was smiling.

"You really think something that basic would work on me?"

His voice was dry, yet carried an infuriating level of arrogance.

He raised a hand with effortless ease.

Immediately, the gravity around Bronya disappeared.

She could no longer feel her own weight. No longer sense the ground beneath her feet. The entire environment had flipped into a chaotic void, where all familiar physical laws ceased to exist.

"I am the first Herrscher."

He crossed his arms over his chest as if delivering some grand proclamation.

"And my power far surpasses the nonsense you people call 'gravity.'"

Bronya remained silent.

Not because she was shocked, but because she had no reason to react.

People like him—those who proclaimed themselves the strongest, who believed they wielded some supreme power—always shared one trait:

They never knew how to shut up and listen.

She only needed to stay quiet, and he would keep running his mouth—perhaps even revealing something crucial in his arrogance.

"If gravity isn't your only ability," Bronya spoke calmly, her eyes locked onto his every movement.

"Then what exactly can you do?"

As expected, he immediately took the bait.

A smirk crept onto his face. He raised a finger, as if about to unveil some earth-shattering secret.

"My true power is—"

And then, he hesitated.

The smug expression twisted into something else entirely.

His hands clenched his head tightly, fingers digging into his scalp hard enough to draw blood. His breaths turned ragged, his eyes filled with bewilderment.

He couldn't remember.

Bronya saw it clearly—the disorder in his movements, the faint tremors spreading across his body, as if he was desperately trying to retrieve a memory that had been sealed away.

This moment—this was her opportunity.

Without hesitation, Bronya activated a classified protocol.

Something she had been developing, though it was still incomplete. An untested prototype.

But right now, she had no other choice but to use it.

The Mega Upgrade Project—Protocol X.

The battle with Chiyou had left Bronya with an enormous amount of data that she could exploit later.

Specifically, when she absorbed information from Yumeji's anomalous abilities while he requested her to fine-tune them during the fight against Chiyou.

Yumeji's skill protocols, his structural analyses of Boost and Fire Cloud—Bronya had dissected, decrypted, and reconstructed every single aspect of them using Project: Bunny's processing unit.

Every command line, every encryption, every minor algorithm—she had stored them all.

And now, she was going to apply all of it, here and now.

Beneath the white-gray armor of Project: Bunny, massive circuits started activating. The outer shell slowly shifted, joints emitting small electric sparks as the new protocol initiated. Excess armor pieces detached, then rearranged into an entirely new structure.

Bronya's body immediately registered the change.

The bulky metal frame of Project: Bunny had condensed into a sleek, form-fitting armor—a design she had taken inspiration from Megaman X, with red and gray as the primary colors. However, instead of a full helmet, the protective gear morphed into two butterfly-shaped bows, functioning as antennae for reconnaissance.

A specialized headset connected directly to the central processing unit, transmitting all sensor data to the scanning lens over Bronya's eye.

At this moment, she was no longer just remotely piloting a machine.

She had become the weapon itself.

Her opponent was still clutching his head, lost in the chaos of his own mind.

Bronya did not give him the chance to recover.

She shot forward like a silver bullet, her hand opening as the mechanical arms of her suit transformed in an instant.

Battlefield data was updating.

All weaknesses were being decrypted.

There was no room for mistakes.

This time, she would bring him down.

*******

Space shattered in the rage of the man who called himself the first Herrscher. He gritted his teeth and threw away his previous confusion, his blue eyes blazing with anger and arrogance, as he looked down at Bronya with a cold expression.

"You think you can defeat me with that cheap armor?"

"Not cheap," Bronya replied, her tone calm but sharp.

"Just more sophisticated than the scrap you're waving around."

"What did you say!?"

The stranger gritted his teeth in anger. His ferocious blue eyes were fixed on Bronya, as if pure rage alone could crush her to pieces. The air around him distorted, patches of ground beneath his feet cracked and floated, pulled up by the terrible pressure of gravity.

But Bronya?

She only tilted her head at a precise 15 degrees, her silver-gray eyes not showing a single trace of fluctuation, as if to Bronya, what the other guy did was nothing more than a shoddy performance.

"From what Bronya has analyzed, Bronya sees you as nothing more than an empty barrel making a lot of noise."

A simple sentence, but it carried a stronger mental destructive power than any bullet.

The arrogant guy in front of Bronya was so angry that the veins on his forehead throbbed continuously after hearing it. Blue veins popped out on his clenched fists, and each large and small rock was pulled towards him by the gravitational force, spinning like a storm ready to crush everything.

"YOU BASTARD—!!!"

The moment he raised his hand, all the fragments bent by gravity were suddenly shot towards Bronya like a meteor shower. The impact was so strong that if it was a normal person, or even a normal Valkyrie, they wouldn't be able to dodge it in time.

But the problem was—Bronya was no longer "a normal person."

She merely lifted her foot slightly, and then—she disappeared.

Not in a supernatural sense, but in a way that the human eye couldn't perceive. It wasn't teleportation, but a speed that exceeded the limits of anyone's reflexes. A red-gray streak of light streaked through the air, creating an afterimage like a shooting star, leaving behind a heat wave that distorted the surrounding air.

"…?"

He frowned, his eyes filled with doubt as he realized that Bronya was no longer in her original position.

The next second, a low, soft sound rang out in the air.

He raised his head and saw...

Bronya was standing there, on a floating piece of broken wall, her small legs seemingly not being under any gravity pressure. The space around her continuously fluctuated every time she moved, as if reality itself was malfunctioning right now.

It wasn't just simple muscle power, nor was it some kind of high-level reflex.

It was an acceleration system so complex that even genius minds would have difficulty analyzing it.

First, let's start with the basics. The X-Bunny armor wasn't simply a battle suit, but a mobile physics computing machine.

The Boost system (from the protocol obtained when Yumeji divided the Skill Boost) allowed acceleration to reach unimaginable levels, creating a short-term teleportation effect, but that wasn't the point.

The real problem lies in the Fire Cloud source code—a sophisticated algorithm that calibrates all of Bronya's firepower, and her dynamic performance in real time.

To put it simply: a person can run fast, but if they lose control, they'll stumble. The Fire Cloud system ensures that no matter how fast Bronya moves, she'll never lose her balance.

Consequences?

She was not just a living bullet—she was a bullet that could adjust its trajectory mid-air.

But of course, everything came with a price.

Such sudden acceleration consumed an enormous amount of energy. The Honkai energy burned at that moment distorted the space around Bronya, allowing her to perform short-range teleportation while her figure entered a state of distortion. It was like a game glitch—when you play a game for too long, and your screen lags or freezes. In this case, however, it wasn't her that was frozen; it was everything around her. While no one could perceive it, she was still moving within that frozen frame, appearing as a blurred, glitched silhouette in the eyes of others. Naturally, this effect was limited to a specific area around her, but even so, it was essentially a hack.

(If you're wondering why Yumeji doesn't exploit this mechanism—it's because he hasn't reached that level yet. When skill restrictions are lifted, levels no longer appear, and the stronger you are depends on how well you decode the absurd, massive amount of information embedded in the skill. Otherwise… well, your brain just burns out, and you go meet your ancestors.)

Of course, this pseudo-time freeze hack of Bronya's was prone to overheating—what gamers call a Free Fire. In other words, the suit Bronya was wearing was nothing short of a ticking time bomb. Without an adequate heat dissipation mechanism, she herself would be torn apart from the inside out. The maximum limit for maintaining this state was only 40 seconds.

But 40 seconds was more than enough.

"Looks like you're not just an empty shell, but you're also slow."

A casual remark, but to her opponent, it was nothing short of a slap to the face.

"Damn you…!"

He gritted his teeth, his eyes burning with hatred. His hands clenched tightly, twisting space as if trying to crush Bronya.

Immediately, a massive gravity sphere formed, its pull so strong that the surrounding boulders were sucked in, spiraling into a dark vortex.

"Let's see how fast you can run now!!"

The sphere shot forward, tearing through space like a cannon shell.

But once again—Bronya vanished before it could reach her.

PANG!!

A deafening explosion rang out as the sphere slammed into a distant wall, obliterating everything in its path.

And then—

A silver light flashed above the arrogant Herrscher's head.

Bronya had reappeared, floating in the air, the energy cannon mounted on her arm locked onto the target.

Click!

The laser sight activated, aligning precisely with the weak point in his defenses.

"Commencing counterattack."

A barrage of plasma rounds erupted, forming a storm of blue light. Each bullet carried a unique property—

Penetration rounds, with devastating force, capable of shattering any barrier.

Homing rounds, smaller in size but able to change direction mid-air, transforming into a labyrinth of death.

He hastily raised a gravitational shield, but—

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The Penetration rounds smashed through his defenses like sledgehammers pounding on rotting wood.

The Homing rounds slithered through every gap, striking from impossible angles.

****

A rain of blue light.

That was the only thing the self-proclaimed first Herrscher could perceive as Bronya's onslaught descended upon him.

He couldn't register anything except the blue light.

The space around him twisted under the heat and electromagnetic pulses from the relentless plasma fire. The interwoven trajectories formed a web of inescapable destruction—no room for evasion, no chance of survival.

For a brief moment, his eyes caught sight of Bronya—only for her to vanish immediately after.

Not because she disappeared, but because her small figure was moving at an inconceivable speed—gliding like a ghost, leaping off the ground, spinning mid-air, and abruptly changing direction mid-flight with flawless jet-boosted maneuvers.

A dance of death.

Every time she disappeared from his vision, another volley of plasma fire erupted.

Each shot was a meticulously placed note in a symphony of annihilation—every shot a deep bass, every flash of light a high note, and the entire performance leaving no moment of silence.

He swung his arm, generating a shockwave to repel the incoming rounds, but the instant the wave spread, a second barrage of plasma spheres had already filled the space. His force barely dissipated the first layer before the second, third, and then fourth wave surged forward like an unrelenting tide.

"This… is a matrix?"

Those who could create barriers typically relied on terrain or space to trap their enemies inside an invisible cage.

But Bronya needed no physical structure.

The very plasma bullets she fired became the terrain, forming deadly walls that sealed off every escape route, constricting space like a self-adjusting trap.

Every jump Bronya made was calculated to perfection, allowing her to fire from the most disadvantageous position for her enemy.

Every glide through the air was followed by a torrential downpour of bullets, like a meteor shower piercing the darkness.

Every single shot was deliberate—not a single moment wasted.

The suffocating pressure wasn't from the heat or the concussive force of the plasma explosions. It was because—

This was no longer a battle.

This was an execution.

Every action he took to resist was locked down before it could even begin.

His fighting mindset was pushed to the limit as he had to find a gap to escape.

But just when he thought he saw a gap in the battle formation—which turned out to be a false illusion—the blue light swept through like a scythe of death, ending all hope.

Since when...

Since when did the thing called "Bronya Zaychik" redefine the concept of combat to this extent?

The blue moon hung in the air, silently, but carrying the most cruel refrain. A dance of death woven from countless intertwined streaks of light, carving an indelible mark into the enemy's mind.

A sonata of moonlight, but not the gentle song of a quiet night.

Rather, it was the final refrain of someone about to be burned in a rain of plasma fire.

"WHAT—?!?!"

He was shocked, his body reflexively shrinking.

That was the moment Bronya had been waiting for.

With a somersault in the air, she launched herself towards the gravity sphere where Mei was trapped. A precise shot caused the gravity structure to lose balance, shattering like cracked glass.

"Proceeding to rescue Mei: Loading."

Mei began to fall, but before she hit the ground, Bronya caught her.

"Bronya…?" Mei muttered, her eyes still hazy from the aftershocks of gravity.

Bronya only replied with a short sentence, typical of her style.

"Bronya confirms, rescue mission: Complete."