Yekase noticed the Emerald Pool rep had rushed once, then shrank back again, hovering like a moth without a moon, circling to watch them pound Bowman.

Odd.

That one hit didn’t show any unique armor traits. It was grunt-tier, a mass-production shell, a faceless soldier’s tin can.

So why did Mira call that filler pick “interesting,” with a sparkle in her voice?

Before the shield failed, when both sides still fought by the book, what did he do, what tool did he pull, to earn Mira’s “he’s been saving a big one” as a compliment?

A stubbled down-and-out who hides a mountain under a coat?

What anime nonsense.

Yekase snarked in her head, left Bowman smoking from a point-blank Flame Burst Spell, and darted toward the cowering Emerald Pool rep.

Hey! You fighting or not? If you’re not, we won’t make this harder on you—

Whoosh.

A laser wrote a thin line across Yekase’s cheek, a hot kiss of light.

...

I see.

The beam was green.

A sick, witchfire jade.

Shot in that color—unless the user dyed it on purpose—it could only be one infamous Infinite Power everyone avoided like plague:

Neptune Energy.

Found near Neptune, this cosmic fuel was a down-tier stand-in for the Omega Ray, worse in every way, and it came with brutal radiation. Expose a healthy adult for under ten minutes, and the body warps. The mind goes brittle and wrong.

What did you do to yourself—no. What did they do to you?

Because Neptune Energy was so garbage in nature and so stupidly abundant, it sold dirt cheap, a darling of the gray market. If you kept it from leaking, it was still an Infinite Power. Barely usable, but usable.

But.

What tier is Emerald Pool as an outfit?

Officially D-tier, real-estate money under the hood, assets closer to B-tier.

By any sanity, they’ve got no reason to hand Neptune Energy to a line fighter.

Tsk... Emerald Pool, you bastards.

That’s a straight management-law violation, right? Basic workplace safety for combat personnel—how is this different from cults sending believers to self-detonate?

Add that to his bizarre behavior, and the answer sharpened like ice.

They chose this fighter as a showroom dummy for Emerald Pool’s new Neptune Energy exosuit—and as a sacrifice.

This match would stream worldwide. Every organization would see: Emerald Pool had a Neptune Energy personal armor set.

They’d condemn it in public, then buy it in the dark.

Then they’d trick their own clueless fighters into wearing it—

...Ling Yi.

Ling Yi KO’d Bowman and drifted back to Yekase’s side, hovering like a hawk waiting for the glove touch.

I’m here, Doctor.

Bring your maximum firepower. We finish this clean. We... let him go.

Understood.

Ling Yi didn’t know Neptune Energy’s rotten history. She only read Yekase’s fury, a storm that wanted the Emerald Pool rep dead on the spot.

She tightened her grip on the Sky Striker.

ZEROS.

Code-00! ZEROS!

Maximum firepower—the new form’s new finisher, obviously.

Wait. Don’t pop the ult yet. We don’t know that suit’s limits. If we pop him here, the scattered Neptune Energy will poison a whole district.

Even furious, Yekase cooled the calculation and put a hand out to stop Ling Yi’s charge-up.

So we lure him away? But if that stuff pollutes the environment, where can we—

Yekase looked up at the night swollen with stormclouds.

Smelled like rain.

Neon billboards spun all night, their kaleidoscope scrubbing the real sky away, a prison roof painted bright.

Above that roof, the high air yawning open.

And higher still—

...Space.

A feral, dangerous smile flicked across Yekase’s face, a predator grin on a chipmunk stealing snacks. Ling Yi still sensed the big scheme coiling.

Ling Yi, take a lap in space with me.

Eh?!

Even Ling Yi didn’t expect the scheme to be that big.

Can the Flashblade System handle spaceflight? Even if it can, are you reentering the atmosphere with your actual body?!

Exactly!

Huh??

I grab his right hand. You grab his left. Go!

O-okay!

They arced in from opposite sides, two crescents slicing closer to the Emerald Pool rep.

Through her Infinite Power sight, Yekase saw it clearly: lethal levels of Neptune Energy inside that armor, already seeping into the pilot’s every corner like mold into bread.

The state resembled Xiaoyuan’s, but its nature was fatally different.

Even Mind Energy would scoff: I’m top-tier super-system. You, Neptune Energy, trying body-fusion too? You don’t have the chops.

The rep twitched, nerves crackling like frayed wires. He didn’t react to their approach, but four floating turrets launched from his back—

—and got carved apart at once by lasers that wrote death out of thin air.

Playing drone wars with me, are we...

Yekase chuckled, wrapped the rep’s right arm, and kept him from drawing.

This suit has remote control, right? I can’t imagine a pilot steeped in Neptune Energy staying lucid enough to manual a rig. But if you can remote it, why not make it a disposable drone?

The answer was a bruise on the wall.

Pure machines can only carry so much Neptune Energy. Add a human battery—

—and you can pack a dirty bomb that leaves a football field barren for fifty years.

Yekase was past anger. There was nowhere further to burn.

The rep roared without words and thrashed, Infinite Power boosting his strength to shove her grip wide. He almost tore free.

Yekase pressed her forehead to his helmet, and through what should’ve been one-way glass, she glimpsed his face. In that ill-omen glow, his eyes were filled with madness and despair, a storm with no shore.

She spoke, each word a hammer, to whatever hidden camera and mic Emerald Pool had tucked away:

Emerald Pool, listen well—

I’ll find you, and I’ll wipe you out—like I wiped out that water park stacked with the blood and sweat of workers.

Ling Yi arrived and locked the left arm. Two bodies, one intent, pinning him between sunrise and cliff.

Prepare for launch!

Got it!

Parallel Passion Cascade, Helen Disk!

An invisible shell blossomed around them, cupping the three like a glass bell. They met each other’s eyes, then poured on speed.

Toward the night. Beyond the night.

Climb, climb, keep climbing.

Two engines this time, fairing ready from the start; they punched through the cloud sea in a clean spear of light.

Second stratosphere run in a day. No novelty, only the drag of hauling a full combat suit, and the Sorcery burn heavier than she’d guessed.

She realized she’d probably burned a week’s worth of a normal caster’s Sorcery today. Even with Flash Energy cheating, the tank was rattling empty.

Worst part, this dumb blue bar didn’t warn before bottoming out. If she hit exoatmospheric and found she couldn’t even sustain the Disk, that would be a riot.

Breaking news: genius inventor, Infinite Power engineer, Magical Girl, first Flash Energy fusion subject, a promising youth who practices Alchemy, Miss Yekase—ran out of blue in outer space and died to pressure change.

What a fresh new hell-joke.

...Ling Yi, my blue’s low. I’m dropping here. You take it from here.

Yekase let go, sat on the underside of the transport’s Disk like a leaf on a stream.

Eh? Th—okay.

Ling Yi shifted position and hugged the Emerald Pool rep from behind, a clamp of light and will.

Yekase nodded to her, dismissed the Disk beneath her, and fell backward.

She didn’t refresh the Flight Spell timer. She let gravity take the reins and wrote a straight line down the dark.

Maybe she really did love free fall... she emptied her mind and let acceleration sing.

Ling Yi should be near the edge now, brushing the skin of space. Yekase didn’t care to go or not; she’d already seen the Causal Horizon.

Wind shrieked in her ears. The Disk’s skin and air sparked fire, and the heat seeped into her back like a warm hand.

Yekase wanted to scream.

Badly.

I...

She tested a note, then gathered breath, and sang off-key at full volume:

I’m gonna walk from south to north—

I’m gonna walk from white to black—

...

...

When all weight and pressure vanished, Ling Yi opened her eyes again.

She saw what she’d never imagined in any lifetime.

Earth, right under her feet.

Night draped the land, but human lights braided with the stars, and for a breath she couldn’t say which way was up.

Silence pooled on all sides, deep as a tomb.

...Outer space.

Gravity lost its script. Ling Yi released the already unconscious Emerald Pool rep. They drifted, two leaves parting on a black river.

She raised the Sky Striker. All her Mind Energy and Flash Energy poured into it, the blade weaving red and blue like twin rivers in moonlight.

Then the colors merged, turning into a shining white, a false dawn in her hands.

A little trick of mixed Infinite Powers: spend a sliver of output to fake a dye. A good friend when you need to bluff on the road.

Twin jets behind her flared two-tone, like a pair of ghostly wings. The Flashblade System had finished every check for its finishing strike.

The rep’s fingers twitched.

As if he dreamed of fields he’d never walk.

Ling Yi didn’t want to kill. But she knew the hero’s path would one day take lives by her own hand.

Bad men’s lives—take them and move. That’s where she started. Now it didn’t feel that simple. This fighter—fighters’ deaths were common, part of the risk. If he’d raised a blade at her, she’d have countercut without a blink.

But this? Wasn’t this a death not of his choosing?

She couldn’t untie the knot.

She’d ask the Doctor later.

The Doctor would hand her an answer that opened the clouds: about justice, about resolve, about the road the two of them would walk—

Blade Spell,

Above, an endless river of stars.

Below, a net of human lights.

Heaven and earth—

Luminous Infinity!

Pure white crossed the curved horizon like a comet’s stroke.

It dyed everything in front of Ling Yi into immaculate brightness.

If only holy light really purified evil that easily.

Good night. Sweet dreams.