During the banquet, Sandryon chatted with almost everyone, like a bee touching every flower. Yekase pushed past her limits again and ate twice her usual, like a bottomless pit swallowing stars.

After dinner, Yekase hustled to a couch in the corner and melted into it, like dough resting under warm cloth.

Only then did Sandryon sit beside her with a saucer of strawberry cream cake, pink as dawn on snow.

“I figured you were a shut-in at the workshop,” Yekase said, voice lazy like a cat in sun, “didn’t think you were this socially maxed.”

“Just social functions,” Sandryon replied, calm as still water. “Live long enough, and skills settle in on their own.”

“Loli grandma...” Yekase muttered, tongue a knife behind her teeth.

“Hm?” Sandryon glanced, eyes cool as glass.

“Nothing, nothing,” Yekase waved it off, smile thin as paper.

Flat, pint-sized, loli old hag, she added in her mind, venom curling like smoke.

“Next is the presentation session,” Sandryon said, slicing a corner of cake with the fork’s edge, clean as a moonlit blade. “Yours hits too hard, so I asked the chair to put it last.”

“The finale? That big a deal?” Yekase blinked, surprise popping like sparks in dry grass.

She’d never tasted treatment like this; it felt unreal, like a small-town neon flickering in a big-city night. Strictly speaking, a back-alley engineer like her had never attended a real conference—her degree was just a regular automation bachelor’s, plain as tap water. People who studied Flash Energy might be fewer than the heads in this banquet hall, grains of sand in a porcelain bowl, so no group or association ever formed.

“Kinda nervous,” she admitted, a tight wire humming in her chest.

“You don’t look it,” Sandryon said, gaze level like a plumb line.

True, Yekase stroked her full stomach, serene as a Buddha statue. But she shook her head, a shadow passing like a cloud. “I’m worried they’ll start something on the spot.”

Those Alchemists... Luzhixing didn’t seem to be here. The rest, aside from a girl riding a four-wheeled cart and a beige-haired Slavic woman, all had that... hard-to-name vibe. It hung like incense smoke, the smell of cliques and whispers.

They clustered in twos and threes at a distance, murmuring about anyone with thinner credentials, like crows pecking grain, sure nobody heard.

Alicia Alicia didn’t stoop to that petty judging, yet her air of pride and obsession, a fortress with arrowslits, was the strongest of all.

Like a classic old-school mage carved from oak and habit.

She was the one Yekase truly worried about, a flint in dry grass.

Open-minded as Sandryon was, even she had cursed “profane thing” when she first saw mechanical Alchemy, like thunder bursting over a shrine. What about the ones even more old-school than her? If they also held power and authority, would they turn sanction into steel, and belief into fire?

Worst case, fists and spells fly in the hall... with Yekase’s face on the line, masks cracking like ice. She wasn’t afraid of dying, but her identity would be a maze of knives.

As for that lady from earlier? Not even on the ledger, dust in a wind.

“I told you,” Sandryon said, a wink bright as a dropped coin, “I’ll vouch for you with the conservatives.”

“...Physically vouch?” Yekase arched a brow, a cat near cream.

“Alchemically vouch,” Sandryon said, lips curving like a seal’s mark in wax.

...Maybe coming here was a mistake, the thought pricked like thorns.

Why not just make a scene and get blacklisted by the association, Yekase brooded, a storm brewing in a teacup.

“All right, let’s go. It’s starting.” Sandryon hauled Yekase out of the couch, firm as a crane lifting a beam, and they followed the flow of people to a new room like a tiered lecture hall.

They picked a corner and sat, two stones in cool shade.

Five minutes later, the seats filled like a tide finding shore. A server stepped onto the dais and announced the start, voice a bell across calm water.

Then the Alchemists went up in order, one spark after another.

“My paper is... Origins of Infrastructure... based on the global Sorcery field... the essence is the mana web and the mana nexus... Newton’s design...” a voice droned, steady as rain on tiles.

“Please look, this is my result—grafting a World Tree sprout! Its advantages are—” another chimed, bright as spring shoots.

“Twenty-two isomers of Flow Runes and their use cases...” a third said, crisp as chisel on stone.

“...Can draw its own SCV array...” a fourth added, neat as gears meshing.

Each result came with a burst of noise, like sparrows erupting from a hedge. Five or six questions flew at once; sometimes the questioners argued with each other, sparks crackling on flint. Yet the scene never turned chaotic. It moved tight and fast, like a loom weaving daylight.

Yekase had come to gawk, a tourist among lanterns. Unawares, she was hooked, a fish caught on silver line.

Their creativity was no less than the Sinister Organization’s R&D, fireworks sharp as steel. The system differed, and projects ran smaller, seeds in teacups. But modern ideas bloomed everywhere, nothing like stale bread.

So those whispers from before... just meant their personalities sucked, smoke without incense?

She couldn’t square the circle, a knot in wet rope.

“My turn.” Sandryon rose and walked to the dais, steps light as petals.

The room’s chatter cut off, a blade through silk. She nodded to both sides, a fan opening, then took a fingernail-sized square crystal chip from her pocket, small as a dew drop.

“My project is Integrated Crystal Chip 2.0,” she said, voice clean as glass.

A hush of gasps ran through the audience, wind in wheat.

It’s just a name drop—what are you gasping at, Yekase thought, a sigh like steam.

“Compared to last year’s version, the Sorcery circuits are more optimized,” Sandryon said, words precise as latticework. “A single piece can carry the Sorcery throughput of a mass-produced oak staff. The transistor-like channel can do simple logic ops, like... telling you when you drew a rune wrong.”

A round of polite laughter rolled, beads clicking on a string.

Wrapped in this rational, friendly air, Yekase felt itchy all over, a tiger in a birdcage.

I swear, people should add a little aggression when they talk, she groused, thunder under her tongue. Weren’t the earlier squabbles perfect? Why turn polite for the guest?

She eyed the chip and found its structure close to the core of the Polaris Staff—nine-year-old tech, dusted like an heirloom. She suspected Sandryon had reheated an old project, sprinkled glitter, and came to juice a paper.

Interest gone, she pulled out her phone and scrolled, thumb a metronome.

After a bit, Sandryon stepped down. Others went up in turn, a lantern relay. Yekase noted the four-wheeled-cart girl and the Slavic one; her guesses clicked into place like joints.

Chubu Risa and Aurora.

Chubu Risa’s result was a multi-frame combinational method. Up to seven mechs could transform and combine midair, swallows forming an arrow in the sky. A new master console slashed co-pilot workload to a minimum, safer and steadier, like rails on a mountain road.

Yekase lit up at that, eyes bright as stars. Lately she’d been mulling whether Luciferin and the Blade Armor, plus Peace Walker soon enough, could do a three-frame combination—

Sadly, Chubu Risa kept things locked down. She only showed a few simple diagrams, lines like fences. Not even a basic demo model. Yekase’s shameless academic theft died in the cradle, a candle pinched out.

The Alchemists were lukewarm to it, a teapot left off the flame.

Next was Aurora. Wearing a culture tee under a quilted jacket, with headlights rivaling Professor F, this Slavic woman had even brought a wine glass from the banquet and set it on the lectern, casual as a cat on a wall.

Before Yekase could drag her gaze from that Mariana Trench, Aurora raised the glass to the audience, a toast like a small moon.

Then—she held the glass in both hands and gently pressed inward, like crumpling paper. When she opened her palms, there was nothing there, an empty sky.

“Huh?” Yekase looked at her, then at her own hand, confusion a fog.

I can do that too, she thought, pride a flicker.

“Watch closely. That’s not teleportation,” Sandryon murmured beside her, voice a thread.

“Not teleportation? Then...” Yekase leaned in, curiosity a lantern flame.

“I call it Exclusion,” Aurora explained, words carried by an interpreting device, accented like wind over reeds. “The excluded thing didn’t go anywhere. It’s still in my hands—just shifted into a parallel world where it isn’t excluded.”

Yekase’s mind snagged, a hook catching silk.

Parallel worlds? What kind of crooked trick is that? Hype, or real—does it tie to the Causal Horizon?

“The principle’s simple,” Aurora went on, tone steady as a metronome. “If I kill myself now, two worldlines appear: success and failure. I’m the observer, so I auto-pick the failure line where I live—so did the other path vanish? No, it didn’t.”

Her Chinese through the device had a lilt, but Yekase didn’t have room to care, thoughts racing like rain across tiles.

So it’s a worldline jump? She sent the glass to another worldline—did she also reach the Horizon?!

She went alone?

And—no signature of Flash Energy!

The Alchemists seemed unaware of what that implied, calm as a pond before a storm. Yekase almost rushed the stage, questions a flock of arrows—

“Everything I said so far was made up,” Aurora finished, a pop like a balloon.

“...Huh?” Yekase froze, ice crawling up her back.

Sandryon struggled not to laugh, palm over lips like a fan. “Aurora loves dropping a scare before her formal talk. It’s a tradition now.”

“...” Yekase stared, thunderheads gathering.

“You took it seriously?” Sandryon teased, a spark in her eye.

“Screw you,” Yekase hissed, heat a stripe down her neck.

“Why me? I wasn’t the one spooking you,” Sandryon chuckled, breeze through chimes.

Aurora then explained: her new technique is a cancel action you can insert after almost any move. Besides small items, it can cancel freshly drawn runes to force abrupt structure shifts in entire arrays, a trapdoor cracking underfoot.

“Isn’t that still disappearing?” Yekase asked, suspicion a needle.

“It’s just temporarily stored as data inside the mana nexus,” Aurora said, voice airy as mist. “At the heart of the hexagonal land, beneath the roots of the World Tree, the source of all Sorcery, the mana web’s origin and end...”

Feels a lot like a teleporter, Yekase thought, a line drawing the same circle.

“—Wait, are you messing with me too? I don’t see any Infinite Power signature,” Yekase narrowed her eyes at Sandryon, a fox sniffing bait.

Caught out, Sandryon dropped the act, shoulders easing like loosening silk. “The glass? She just zipped it.”

“...Compressed?” Yekase blinked, gears catching.

“Pinched into a glass bead,” Sandryon said. “Didn’t you see the little sparkle drop near her wrist when she opened her hand?”

Oh. Not gone. Just rolled into a tiny sphere, like a star in a seed.

“—What?!” Yekase yelped, voice bouncing like a pebble in a jar.

“Don’t yell in the hall,” Sandryon said, satisfied as a cat with cream.

“A while back,” Sandryon added, tone turning to memory, sepia as an old photo, “Huaxia worked closely with that red country that’s no more. As proof of alliance, methods of Mind Energy were taught to the Russians. Mixed with Ancient Alchemy from Tsarist days, it birthed Aurora’s physical-school Alchemists.”

“Patchwork and misshapen, sure,” she went on, fair as a judge. “Not great next to modern magic, but it’s their own path, carved with blood and bone. They even asked me to help refine their Sorcery nodes.”

“Aurora’s line means... using Sorcery and Mind Energy together?” Yekase asked, dots connecting like beads.

“Exactly,” Sandryon said, a nod like a seal pressed true.

Good grief... Before coming here, Yekase already knew combos like Sorcery + Flash Energy, Flash Energy + Mind Energy, Mind Energy + Soul Power, and Flash Energy + Omega Ray, threads twisting like rope. Tonight added Sorcery + Mind Energy, and Sorcery + Omega too. The Triple Calamity once ran Mind Energy + Soul Power + Omega...

A dangerous thought rose, a dragon coiling in a well.

What if every strand of Infinite Power—everything but the untouchable Demon King Power—what if the five known Infinite Powers, plus Flash Energy and... Spiral Force... were fused into one?

“Grand Unification.”

In Yekase’s mind, only that phrase remained, a bell tolling under a stormy sky.