Ling Nuo Si counted like thumbing prayer beads; he had one transformation left.
Resolve burned—he’d use it to take the Exogen King’s head. He was ready to go down in the same blaze. Except Yekase had just left him on the floor.
He was ground-bound as a stone; humans don’t fly.
If he transformed here and chased into that furnace of a sky battle, he’d get swarmed by mid-route adds like hornets, and he wouldn’t hit the fight at full strength.
What now? The path forked under fog.
“Big bro, you’re still here.”
Zhang Wendao drifted down before Ling Nuo Si, as light as a falling leaf.
Ling Nuo Si nodded. “Good timing. Since you still remember me, then what got eaten by the flame just now were Ling Yi’s memories of me, right?”
“...”
Zhang Wendao’s face hung between laugh and sob, like rain under sun.
“We’ve got allies, mechs at our backs. We don’t need to fight like nine years ago... Big bro, you just found your family again... do you regret this?”
Ling Nuo Si shook his head, slow as a reed in wind.
“I transformed with them, fought alongside them; that’s enough. We’re ghosts from yesterday. The future belongs to them.”
“And Ika... Yekase will back them, too.”
He clasped Zhang Wendao’s hand and gave it a firm shake, like passing a torch.
“As a senior, as a brother, I have to clear the old scourge here to pave their road. That’s not the captain’s order; that’s my own ask.”
“Come with me to the last battlefield.”
...
“Gladly.”
They rose, unsteady as lanterns in a gust, and flew toward the giant battleship in the sky.
Maybe their energy signatures were too small next to the mech swarm; not a single Exogen swooped at them along the way.
They slipped into the hatch where Luciferin’s silhouette had vanished. Zhang Wendao set Ling Nuo Si down, tired, and almost staggered herself.
“Weigh Anchor.”
Zhang Wendao stared at the familiar cerulean vortex and said nothing, sea-calm eyes on storm.
They walked an empty corridor and traded idle words. The iron hall stretched out of sight; only their voices and footsteps echoed like taps on a drum.
Until Ling Nuo Si caught the tremor of a fight, like thunder through floorplates.
They entered the hall. Yekase and the Cruiser-Destroyer were trading blows like storm and steel. Ling Yi and the Beast King Squadron—six, seven strong—poured in from another passage, ready to transform and dogpile.
At the far end, he saw a birdcage, a lone moon in the dark hall.
Golden chains gleamed and coiled around it. Inside sat a girl—no doubt, Lalabel.
Ling Nuo Si remembered this Magical Girl favored earth magic. She’d raise a stone pillar under an Exogen, launch it skyward, then skewer the landing with stalagmites—brutal methods for such a dreamy callsign.
But off the field, she was gentle to the Twenty Second Squad, often singing for them, a voice like wind over reeds.
With Yekase tying up the Cruiser-Destroyer, maybe he could slip in and free her first?
Then everyone could fight with both hands unbound.
Ling Nuo Si liked that play, a hawk’s dive in a busy sky.
Most would assume the cage was unbreakable until the boss fell. But life isn’t a game; there are no rotten wooden doors immune to greatswords.
The trick was simple: hit hard enough.
“All under heaven dissolves into—”
He opened with a finisher, no greeting, no mercy.
“—Sea-Blue!”
His straight punch wore blue ripples. The gale it carved surged and swallowed the golden cage.
“What the—?!”
Yekase had started to step back to make room. A vortex curled up at her side and drowned the chainbound cage—Lalabel and all!
“Never seen that power... is it you, the one erased from my memories?”
“To see me this clearly through a Reverse Meme—figures it’s you, Ika!”
She called me what?! Yekase jolted, then steadied, cold water over hot iron. She hadn’t told even Zhang Wendao. Yet this one knew—so past-her must’ve trusted him with the core secret.
“We can’t really notice you. Watch for stray shots!” she shouted, clean and sharp.
“Didn’t need you to tell me!”
The Cruiser-Destroyer tried to block Ling Nuo Si. Ling Yi and the Beast King Squadron wouldn’t have it; six people formed a ruthless scrum and let Yekase, two fights in, fall back to breathe.
When the finisher’s spray faded, the cage showed dents and scars. Lalabel was unscathed.
Seeing progress, Ling Nuo Si pressed. Second punch, third punch—hammer blows that warped the once-elegant construct into a sunken husk.
At last, he gripped both rails tight.
“Haaaargh!”
Creak—creak—creak—!
The bars yielded like common steel under his force. They snapped at last, leaving a man-sized gap.
“Lalabel! You with me?”
“...”
There was the faintest twitch. She wouldn’t recover soon. Ling Nuo Si chose fast, climbed into the cage, lifted the limp girl, and slung her onto his now-shrunken back.
He wriggled out through the gap and hugged the wall, edging toward a safe zone—
At that instant, Yekase, who had sunk against a wall to rest, felt something wrong, a thorn under silk.
...Too easy.
When the Cruiser-Destroyer captured Lalabel, it yelled the skill “Time Prison.” When Yekase first entered, Lalabel had been frozen, time-stilled.
The cage likely wore time magic like frost on glass.
But “that person” broke it with bare fists? Yekase felt no ripple of a spell failing.
Reach back for more threads...
On the walkway, she heard Lalabel’s finisher chant: “Even alone, before an unpassable long night, I’ll light hope for every sorrow.”
But in Yekase’s restored memory, something didn’t match.
The first half was clearly her activation phrase.
Her finisher’s chant should only be the latter half.
No proper Magical Girl—like Lalabel, who fought bravely as a third-generation warrior—would pad a chant for flair. Those few seconds decide life or death.
Unless...
...unless, like Aridaus, she was a fake, wrought by Exogens.
But that was even less likely.
Yekase might not place Aridaus at a glance, but she wouldn’t mistake a comrade.
Then, eliminate the impossible and the more impossible; what remains is the truth.
“She’s pulling her punches.”
Magical Girl Lalabel, faced with a finisher, had slowed half a beat and let herself get captured.
...Acting.
All of it was acting!
Yekase’s eyes burned. She hauled her tired body up and screamed at the stranger carrying Lalabel—
“Don’t show her your back—!!”
In Yekase’s world slowed to one-tenth time,
the limp, unconscious Lalabel opened her eyes.
“Good morning, ZEROS—and Dr Ika.”
She said,
“Welcome to the Differential Closed Universe.”
The world cracked.
Everything around them was a mirror image shattering. As the glass broke, the camouflage fell away, revealing the true dark of the void behind it.
“You...!”
Yekase lunged toward where memory said they were, but fell into shards of world. She climbed up. Only two people remained.
Magical Girl Lalabel.
And the one whose name she still couldn’t hold.
...A sword tip jutted from his chest.
“Ungh... pft!”
He coughed blood and hit the floor. Blue light burst, and his frame seemed to shift into a different form.
She used trust to punch through his chest with one strike!
Yekase bared her teeth and gripped Nayuta. “Lalabel... I don’t remember you being this underhanded!”
“Dr Ika, you’ve become so pretty,” the pink-haired Magical Girl said with a squinting smile, like greeting an old friend after years.
“Why would you...”
“It’s fine. Everything in a Differential Closed Universe is just a side silhouette of possibility. Repeat it as many times as you want; only one outcome gets observed. Once I find the path that severs every causality, she’ll be reborn in a newborn world.”
“A newborn world...?”
What is she aiming for?
The topic slid beyond Yekase’s frame, but her heart felt numb. Wonder didn’t spike; maybe she’d hit her quota lately.
She reached to prop the wounded comrade. Her hand clipped through him like a glitched model.
“I set the rules here. Right now there’s a dimensional wall between the three of us. You won’t interrupt me.”
Lalabel clasped her hands behind her back and spoke, unhurried, like a cat before a caged bird.
“When I’m done, everyone’s cognition will be rewritten to 2012. The objective world will hold some contradictions. But seven billion slices of common sense will become an Occam’s razor and shave off the errors. No one will question the shared memory.”
“Why do that?!”
“Someone as smart as Dr Ika can deduce it. I’m busy searching possibilities, so let’s not chat.” Lalabel flicked a small hand. The destroyed birdcage reappeared and closed around her.
No—she wasn’t confined.
From start to finish, this was her will.
Rewrite cognition to 2012... The last nine years twist and vanish. Those who recall the One-Year War will automatically observe the missing Twenty Second Squad and let them return, just as they were.
“You used the Exogens’ leftover grudges to stage all this... to resurrect them...!”
Right—Yekase couldn’t recall her codename or starter phrase at first. That was basic cognitive interference.
Snap!
Lalabel claimed to be busy, yet she still snapped to answer Yekase’s guess.
“Bingo. As far as I know, Ika hasn’t exactly been happy these nine years. Society’s still a mess. Rolling it back would be great, right? Why not help me?”
“...And these nine years will become a phantom bubble, dissolving in the sea of time...”
Ivaris would come back.
Those she’d lost... would truly stand by her again, not just a whispered I feel you by my side for self-comfort...
...
“I don’t accept that.”
The one who had reverted to his true body—
struggled on the floor and rolled over,
clutched his chest wound, and stood.
"Maybe the world didn’t—" he coughed—"get better. But across nine years, people forged memories, finished dreams. And you’d grind them all into lies. I refuse."
He drew a card with edges that smoldered, embers nibbling at its rim.
"Every memory of me—already spent as fuel. And this card is the last anchor of my existence."
The realization hit Yekase like cold surf. Her memory of him had been burned as fuel for his transformations. That’s why she could no longer recognize him.
Now he would offer what remained of his soul to the hearth, feed it as kindling until it fell to ash.
"Lalabel, right now only you still know me."
He paused.
A bright thread of blood clung to his lip, and he smiled.
"Watch closely—my final transformation."
"Weigh Anchor!"
"Dreamshift Star—‘Dolumo’!"
