Yekase suddenly caught a spark of an idea, like a firefly flaring in dusk.

If an enhanced body can’t handle subsonic... then enhance it again.

Like a Kamen Rider stacking forms like nesting boxes when the boss won’t go down, she didn’t have to tank with her base form.

"I feel you by my side."

Ivaris—and the other Magical Girls—if they knew she was tearing through the atmosphere on the will they’d passed down... they’d probably love the chaos and clap.

She reached out. Ivaris’s staff blinked into being before her palm, and she grabbed it.

What was this staff called again...

Right—Polaris Staff.

Back when it was designed, eighteen-year-old Yekase wasn’t skilled enough. She’d hired a grandmaster from Swordforging Manor to forge it in a secret furnace under the mountain. The master even gave it its name.

The staff was forged from alloy, hollow inside to let Infinite Power run clean and keep the weight down.

Up top, a Flash Energy transformer could unfold branch-like metal prongs. They’d drink in nearby sorcery and amplify spells, and their razor edges could turn the staff into a polearm.

The tip stayed open. Infinite Power could vent and harden into a light blade—Yekase had tested that—or you could socket a market-standard hilt and, with those branching prongs, get a brutally nasty melee weapon.

So Swordforging Manor made a new category in their armory just for it: gun-staff.

Ivaris’s favorite style was to pen enemies in with floating laser rigs, then rush in with the light blade—like rallying a unit for the charge.

Yekase could do that too. But those floating lasers, while cool, felt like burning bills.

On impulse, she swung a leg over the gun-staff.

"Ah..."

It jabbed her tailbone like a rock under a thin mat.

And it was slick. Hard to imagine Western mages commuting on brooms.

Next time, a cushion with a backrest. Polaris Staff’s passive boost felt like a permanent fervor-chant. The effect was obvious, a brick laid for her subsonic-body plan.

She eyed the sharp, wire-mesh prongs and pinched one. For the sake of her backside, she shelved that part of the upgrade.

Her legs flexed, clean as a spring swallow. She slid off the Helen Disk right as it neared its limit.

Gravity hooked her like a river current. She spread out, rolled, and stared up at a rust-red sky, like iron left in rain.

Wind lifted from below like a warm quilt. People say if you stick your hand out on the highway, headlights feel tangible. Right now, she lay between two giant headlights.

She thought of Omega F.

Then she thought of Mira—the woman could pinch a new face on herself anywhere, anytime. Sculpting a pair to rival Professor F’s headlights would be nothing. She loved foot spas, but she alone could be a whole foot-spa arcade...

"Before the Sovell Conference, I’ve got to act reluctant, wring the dragonization face-parameters out of her..."

Alone where no one could overhear, Yekase murmured her next con.

"...Fine. Parallel, Fervor, Delay, Silence, Battle, Chain, Poise—"

Six-linked affixes.

The cap for ordinary mages.

Holding six buffs at once scrambles the sorcery inside you. It’s easy to choke the most important spell after so many layers of reinforcement. But Yekase had Polaris Staff in hand. She could hand off the last spell to it. No cross-talk.

Flight Spell, she thought.

The last Magical Girl in the world vanished off a free-fall arc and became a pale shooting star.

Once she dropped her quirks and switched to a standard flight spell, her speed and control jumped another tier. She leaned in and pushed again.

With that push, she hit high subsonic.

Clouds piled ahead like an iron wall. The air flash-froze, crusting her in hoarfrost. Her limbs numbed, and her mind, caught between thrill and fear, felt ready to spring out of her skull.

"Holy—what?!"

So fierce?

She rode out the savage shuddering. The Helen Disk groaned like overburdened steel.

But she felt it—her body adapting to a speed human flesh should never touch.

This was Flash Energy, the will to evolve—

Keep accelerating.

At this point the blue bar didn’t matter—this week’s unused Phase Shifter quota would guarantee a safe landing. Tonight she’d test her edge, see how fast she could fly.

"Fervor. Flight—"

"One more tap on the gas and I’ll have to ticket you for speeding."

—!?

Yekase’s posture collapsed midair like a folding chair. She almost tumbled out of the Helen Disk’s cover.

She fought for balance, anger flaring, and looked toward the voice. She saw a person.

A loli, ten at most.

She wore a lacy, too-mature nightgown and lay on a bed.

Gold hair spilled like silk over pillow and sheet.

Hands folded behind her head.

One leg casually crossed.

She cocked her head and tossed out that line to Yekase—who was about to spear the sound barrier with Polaris Staff—in the tone you use to warn a roommate they’re about to cut class.

Yekase’s sharp mind rang like a bell. At this height, at this speed, anyone who could catch her like that, dressed like that, lounging like that, and still spare breath for a warning—she had no right to be mad.

She stared, stunned into silence.

"Hey there, little subsonic girl."

The blonde carried the chat herself.

"You’ve got talent. Wanna learn Alchemy from me?"

Uh...

What?

A hidden master offering a cheat?

Wait—Alchemy...

"What’s that got to do with Alchemy..."

Yekase muttered without thinking. The blonde’s ears didn’t miss it. A wave of sorcery washed over Yekase’s body. The girl frowned.

"My bad. I thought you were some back-alley alchemist’s piece. A combat doll for synchronized perception."

Her interest fell off a cliff. No extra words. She accelerated and flew away.

She flew away.

Accelerated...

What happened to the speeding ticket?

Yekase’s composure cracked.

Three possibilities:

Either she’s so fast even Shadow Curtain International’s enforcers can’t catch her,

Or she’s so strong that even if they catch her, they won’t ticket her,

Or she’s so rich she doesn’t care how many tickets stack.

Fast. Strong. Rich.

Maybe a combo.

People like that are usually a darling of B-rank or higher outfits. Getting close has perks—and more trouble.

After that stunt, Yekase lost interest in further tests—mostly for fear of tickets. She bled off speed and turned for home.

Being mistaken for a combat doll by a mystery bigshot left her... a little heartsore.

Not the “ah, I’m a monster, no longer human” kind of limp whining.

It was that her sweat-and-blood subsonic body trial ranked about the same as someone else’s slapped-together doll.

That hurt.

There’s always a sky beyond the sky, but when the trench-deep gap stands right before you, it chokes.

Shaken, she drifted in the air for a while. Then she remembered: she’d ramped straight to high subsonic and probably overshot to the North China Plain. At this pace, she wouldn’t get home till noon.

She retraced her path, swapping every Levitation Spell for a proper Flight Spell.

...

Back home, she found reheated dishes and Liu RuoYuan sulking like a rain-swollen cloud.

Yekase hurried to sit with a guilty smile, but her face, frozen by subsonic wind, hardly listened. Her muscles, as if receiving the memo late, all started aching at once.

"Ow..."

"Where’d you go?"

"Flew around nearby a bit..."

"Huh?"

"Testing the affixes in the field..."

"Aren’t you researching Flash Energy?"

"Switched to Magical Girl lately..."

"Oh, true."

Somehow, that convinced her.

Yekase marveled again at her sister’s pure heart.

She figured Liu RuoYuan deserved the play-by-play. "Then I went subsonic by accident and ended up over the North China Plain..."

"I don’t know whether to praise you or scold you."

"Then a mystery bigshot chatted me up in the sky. She thought I was someone’s combat doll."

"To be fair, your Magical Girl form is a bit too cute. Your base self is just pretty. That form slaps on lace, ribbons, makeup—so sweet and polished it feels unreal."

"No way. It’s just a sailor uniform!"

"A sailor uniform isn’t deliberate enough? This is Huaxia!" Liu RuoYuan slapped the table, not ladylike at all, and raised her voice. "So? What about the bigshot?"

"Once she realized I wasn’t a doll, she lost interest and flew off."

"Eh—"

Dinner had a new dish: black, bead-like kernels, like watermelon seeds. After a dry fry they turned crisp, crunching with a hint of chicken.

"What’s this called?"

"Also from the otherworld the Belly-Belly Bird visited. Spores of a fern that grows up to thirty meters. They named the greens jue-jue greens, so the spores are jue-jue seeds." Liu RuoYuan scooped a spoonful and crunched away.

"That survey team’s naming sense is... a bit scuffed."