First target: the last-installed forearm plate, a loose scale begging to be pried.

No—drop it. Even if I yank it off, his arm beneath is still metal; prying it is prying air.

Her chest tight with urgency, Yekase measures her limits. Ten minutes of total stamina; three minutes if she goes full tilt head-on, a candle flaring before it gutters. She needs a rhythm that lets her steal breaths while making him freeze.

Against an enemy at full strength, the first attempt must draw blood.

While that thought flickers, Ma Wei’s fist is already surging in, a piledriver wrapped in steel.

His Prismatic War Chariot wraps him like faceted armor, a mid-to-high grade rig by market standards, value-packed in recent years. Their engineering team then tore it apart and rebirthed it, patched over mass-production sins, grafted on tricks like a wolf with brass fangs.

Flame thrusters kick from his elbows. His iron fist rips the air with a shriek, a falling star aimed at Yekase.

The smirking mask vanishes from his sight.

Below!

She lets everything go limp before impact, drops in a boneless crouch. The punch’s wind just flicks her hood, a hawk grazing water without a splash.

She doesn’t let him reset. From that crouch, she knifes up, the blade spearing the gap behind his right knee. Sparks scatter like fireflies; the single-soldier armor is tighter than expected. One stab doesn’t peel the plate, only bites a seam.

Not great.

She’d watched the install, saw his back reinforced like a tortoise shell, assumed the legs were mass-produced soft spots. Looks like those got quiet upgrades too.

Wait—are his legs mechanical?

One move fails. Yekase withdraws without pride, slides back, and a chopping hand misses her by a breath, wind shearing like a guillotine.

“Speed and strategy—first-rate.”

Ma Wei shakes out his hand, stance locking like a tree rooted in rock.

“But an attack that can’t breach the shell is meaningless at light speed! Watch what happens when a mere human tries to stop a chariot with insect arms!”

His forearms clack and shift. The thickened plates slide back toward the floor and punch in, spearing concrete like plastic thinskin.

Anchors.

“Let’s see you dodge this.”

His chest-plate smokes and glows, energy pooling like molten gold made visible.

No—this one you dodge. But—

“Prismatic Flame!”

A white-hot glare erupts from his chest. It’s neither “ray” nor “flame” as language goes; the cavernous basement turns noon-bright in a blink. Heat floods like a bursting dam, drowning half the room in incandescent wrath.

“Ye—” Shen Shanshan, dueling the leader of Triple Calamity, feels the scorch roll in. She turns, sees half the space burned into one color. Her motion lags a beat. The leader catches that beat and flicks her weapon away.

She retreats a couple steps, yanks a spare blade from her pocket, and guards, eyes narrowed like a fox in ash.

The Prismatic Flame seems to sear forever, and then it’s gone like lightning’s afterimage. Floors and walls lie char-black and crumbling, gray smoke curling up like sorrow.

“Wha—”

“—?!”

Yekase stands in the dead center of the wreckage, untouched, a reed in a burned marsh.

“Zero point two five.”

Her voice, filtered through the modulator, speaks in four layered tones at once, a cold bell that makes Ma Wei’s eyes flare behind the mask.

“The Prismatic War Chariot is modded from Dading Heavy Industries’ Spring Escort model ‘Dingbianjiang,’ released two years ago in February. It uses a new-generation Omega Ray engine, shrinks hardware with clean lines. A solid entry in lightweight design these years.”

“…”

“Nice work. I almost didn’t recognize it.”

“You—”

“‘Dingbianjiang’ ships default with a chest-mounted lattice cannon. Its output is 380 kW. Its max-output sustain time is—”

She raises both hands and shows two numbers.

“0.25 seconds. Not a sliver more.”

He’s just fired that shot. The rig’s reserve energy is low, the Omega Ray receiver crawling on recharge. He doesn’t know when she’ll strike, so he grits through it and listens, sweat cold under steel.

“What the hell… are you?”

Under the hood and mask, Yekase isn’t as untouchable as she looks. She uses the lull to steal air, heart beating like a drum under silk.

That’s the perk of wearing a skin.

“Just a passerby. A mecha enthusiast.”

Good. Bluff landed clean.

Now, every move Yekase makes will carry extra weight in Ma Wei’s eyes, like ink on paper thickening into fate.

As long as Shen Shanshan’s side doesn’t break, Yekase can drag him into her tempo, screw by screw, until the last fastener drops.

No, not to that extreme.

She catches herself riding pride, shakes her head, cools the blood.

Then she runs again.

She aims at his waist, exposed while his anchored hands bite the ground. Ma Wei lifts a leg to guard. He has no breath left to counter. Yekase darts in and out, stabs four, five times, flips off two larger plates like popping bark.

Circuits breathe open to air.

Omega Rays flow in thin conduits, feeding the single-soldier armor. If Professor F were here, they’d have opinions. Yekase hasn’t studied enough; she knows a circuit when she sees one. That’s enough.

Ma Wei unanchors his left hand, fights one-handed, guarding the breach. “Damn that knife—”

He tries a burst, the small-caliber machine gun mounted on his forearm rattling. To his delight, Yekase dodges—she isn’t invulnerable.

He starts dumping the little energy he has, clawing the field back a notch.

“You’ve got it wrong.”

Yekase snatches a pried plate from the floor, snaps it up as a shield. Energy shots crackle against it like hail on tin. She corrects him as calmly as a surgeon:

“This knife is just a normal dagger.”

“Impossible! A normal dagger can’t scuff the Prismatic War Chariot!”

“Because the hand holding it isn’t normal.”

“You’re—”

“I’m someone who really loves machines.”

“…”

“Because I love them, I went to understand. Because I love them, I studied. Because I love them, I built. Because I love them… I took them apart with my own hands.”

“The first spark settled into stubborn habit. Ten years, twenty years—the grain grew smooth through practice. It all started to connect. That’s all it ever was.”

Are you even twenty?

All three others think it at once, a chorus under their breath.

Yekase doesn’t notice she’s slipped. She looks at her right hand and the dagger cradled there, and murmurs one more time, like a prayer folded in oil paper.

“That’s all it ever was.”

So—attack his guarded circuits again, or find a fresh break?

“Singing Wrecking Lady, I acknowledge your strength.”

Uh?

“Boss, use it!”

“Permission granted!”

Oh hell—no way.

Yekase feels the shift and moves to interrupt, an armor plate slung like a shield. The leader of Triple Calamity risks giving Shen Shanshan an opening, pivots, and tosses a short rod across Yekase’s path.

The rod hits and erupts into azure particles, spinning a shimmering barrier that blocks her like a river wall.

Her steel is useless against a pure energy construct. She can only watch as Ma Wei hits a hidden switch. His whole suit begins to unfold like a chrysalis cracking.

Second-stage transformation?!

His armor expands outward. Structures hidden under the plates reveal themselves, dark glassy bands webbing out across the body, forming a skeletal frame.

All at once, every band lights with pale azure.

The sight stuns Yekase, not with mystical awe—no mid-size outfit’s tech could do the impossible—but with a shudder that shakes the floorboards of her common sense.

“A… Soul Power frame? But why is the color—”

Pale azure—the hue of Mind Energy.

He’s driving a Soul Power frame with Mind Energy on a rig powered by Omega Rays.

It’s like walking down a normal street and seeing a dog walking a human. Known materials, known forces, combined in a way no one ever dared, and it slides together like water finding its riverbed. For one heartbeat, Yekase feels she’s crossed into a parallel world.

“You’re excellent.”

Ma Wei, wrapped in blue firelight, speaks with warmth.

“Even in Triple Calamity’s dev team, your judgment and knowledge rank first tier. With the power to force me to unveil my trump card—both brain and blade, rare as comets. You unaffiliated? When this battle ends, come to us.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the leader chimes in, grinning, “I’ll boot a certain two-timer right away. The Seat of the Patron Spirit opens—yours!”

“Boss, not cool. I didn’t take the syndicate’s money; I’m paying back a favor. Even if they win, we can still be friends.”

“You couldn’t repay that favor in a lifetime!”

Called out in front of everyone, even thick-skinned Shen Shanshan blushes and drops the banter.

“But first.”

Ma Wei’s glow swells, drowning every edge in azure, like moonlight poured over the world.

He’s about to trigger a final mode? Here?

The entire basement shudders, dust raining like dry snow.

“Stop! It’s your base!”

“If I lose, it won’t be anymore! That’s why I’m fighting with everything—to guard it. To guard Triple Calamity’s bond. The crystallized memory of our work.”

No, say it like that and we sound like the villains… Weren’t you the ones who declared war?

Yekase catches a glint in the leader’s eye, a fox’s grin hooked in the corner.

Of course. Leaders are all the same shade of black.

“With this rig forged from the whole organization’s mind and muscle—”

“Let’s put a period on this fight!”

“Prismatic War Chariot—Fortress Mode!!”