Taking the stairs looked like a bull rush, yet every step hid a chessboard’s logic.

First, the Twin Towers squad had already burrowed below, like roots threading dark soil.

They couldn’t all crawl through vents or odd rabbit runs; the main body had to take the stairs like a river cutting basalt.

If Yekase and Ling Yi followed that stream, the soldiers would stomp the snares first, rain testing stones before the boat.

Second… do we even need a second, when the first beat already set the tide of war?

Flashblade Activation, a spark cracking the dawn.

Ling Yi slid into her armor and took point, a steel hawk cutting the wind.

“I’ll clear the path,” she said, voice like a blade drawn.

“Alright, torch’s yours,” Yekase said, passing the flame like a lantern in fog.

Yekase went with the current and slipped into her shadow, a leaf drifting into the lee.

Anxiety pricked first; without turning Magical Girl, her body felt a step slow, a sparrow heart fluttering against cage bars.

Maybe that’s the cost of power boxes piling like crates, while she cradled one mystical “evolution” like a slow-growing seed.

When did this box tower begin, she wondered, like dominoes she kept feeding?

Life fog rolled in around her boots, doubts curling like smoke.

Ling Yi didn’t know; she’d already gone half a flight down, helmet glinting like a blade.

She looked up and snapped a salute, crisp as winter air.

“Reporting, ma’am! Basement One’s a warehouse, stacked like reefs.”

“Scout again, then report,” Yekase said, ripples spreading from stone.

“Roger! Gale!” Her call cracked like thunder.

“Code-02! ‘Gale’!” she barked, the name cutting like wind through pine.

Ling Yi braced one hand on the rail and dove into the bottomless stairwell, a swallow dropping into a shaft.

A second later, the thrusters whooshed and lifted her back to Basement One, a gust hauling a kite.

Yekase, amused by her pent-up energy like a coiled spring, laughed. “You really love Gale. You used to preach starting with power types, heavy as mountains.”

“I like Kagari too—hits hard,” Ling Yi said, gauntleted fingers scratching her visor like claws on glass. “But accelerative flight… it makes me stupidly happy, like a skylark.”

“As expected?” Yekase asked, river reading its own current.

“Obviously!” Ling Yi grinned, sunlight through cloud.

Alright, after Emerald Pool, take Ling Yi up to scatter joy like petals in sky; only Jiang Bailu fails to get the thrill of speed, a stone against surf.

Yekase let carefree thoughts bob like paper boats while she descended the spiral, a shell’s curve underfoot.

They reached Basement Two, cool air pooling like water in a basin.

Across the main door, finally, a splash of light like a moth lamp.

Yekase signaled with her eyes, then remembered the mask, and spoke: “Stick to the edge. I’ll send a rover, like a mouse through brush.”

She reached into the transport box and pulled out an iron beast-bird instead, a clockwork sparrow clanking.

“Whoa, steampunk,” Ling Yi breathed, gears glittering like fireflies.

“…Here, you play with this,” Yekase said, tossing it like a toy to a child in rain.

She stuffed the iron bird into Ling Yi’s hands, fished again like netting at night, and finally got the rover.

She dropped it and remote-guided it through the door, a beetle slipping into a crack.

The phone feed cleared; after a stretch of darkness like a tunnel throat, not a lab or cell appeared, but—

Containers. Containers. Containers.

Containers. Containers. Containers.

Containers. Containers. Containers.

Color-splashed containers… countless containers… tier upon tier, stacked like cliffs on cliffs.

On that foundation, bridges, corridors, and stairs crisscrossed like ivy, a lattice of steel.

The rover had driven into a vast 3D maze, drowning in a storm of colors, a fish lost in coral.

“This… what is… this?” Yekase whispered, horizon spinning.

“What what?” Ling Yi blinked, pupils like moons.

Ling Yi leaned in to the screen, froze like frost on glass, then asked, “Doc, what game is this?”

“This is the inside,” Yekase said, a window held in palm.

“……”

A galaxy seemed to bloom behind Ling Yi’s head, starflowers opening.

Yekase ran the rover along containers, deeper and deeper like a river into caverns, yet the underground region’s edge never showed, no shoreline to the sea.

She saw gunfire flare, meteors scratching night.

Two squads were fighting ahead.

Muzzle flames and glowing energy trails burst from container windows and edges like fireflies erupting; the camera caught it all, and even silent, the battle burned fierce as a forge.

Yekase pulled the rover back to dodge, but drove into a slit, stone swallowing a seed.

After a tumble of jolts, the feed went black, curtain pulled.

“…Tsk. Can’t recover it?” The thought flicked like a pebble into a well.

Good thing the entrance terrain was mapped, lines etched like bark; deeper in… it’s a maze anyway, mist woods without a compass.

Now the issue flipped: their combat postures in those alleys—if you could call them alleys—were lanterns in night, too loud in shadow.

Before entering, Yekase never imagined Emerald Pool had built underground not a factory or fortress, but a residential district, a hive humming low.

Those residents were likely employees’ families, moss in a dark well.

They lived in a sunless modern slum, with failing space and infrastructure, and now, under invasion, they’d become human shields, a wall of flesh against the tide.

To eliminate Emerald Pool ambushes within the crowd, the Twin Towers squad might choose brutal, extreme tactics, a scythe through wheat.

“Prepare to fight. First, wipe the two nearby teams,” Yekase said, snuff two candles before dawn.

Yekase quickly checked her gear, bowstring taut, screws snug; ready down to the last bolt, time to move.

“How do we wipe them? If we rush in, won’t they pinch us from both sides, jaws of a trap?” Ling Yi asked, wind testing reeds.

“Assassination,” Yekase said, a shadow blade crossing water.

“Assassination?!” Ling Yi looked down at her armor; it didn’t scream stealth, it shone like a knight’s shell under moon.

“As long as you kill fast enough that they can’t see who you are, isn’t that assassination, dummy?” Lightning before thunder.

“That kind of assassination?!” she yelped.

However, Gale, the fastest, kept kissing walls in that narrow maze like wind clipped by cliffs, so she switched to Kagari, a heavier ember, and sighed.

Yekase leaned against a container and flashed a few hand signs at Ling Yi, sparrow flicks.

“???”

“I take left; you take right.”

“Got it,” two streams splitting around rock.

Yekase dipped low and slid out like a shadow skimming the floor, a swallow under grass.

Ling Yi followed tight, blade up, charging like a storm cloud over grain.

Emerald Pool and Twin Towers squads had been tangled at a wider junction, neither side able to crush the other, a knot of vines.

Emerald Pool had issued only one gun up top, while Twin Towers had their nerves pricked by the maze, scared of enemies popping from every nook, rats in rafters, so they dared not push.

“Ugh!” A bullet ricocheted off steel, a bell struck, and punched a young fighter’s gut.

His gun flew like a bird spooked; he collapsed inside the container, dust rising.

“Xiao Wang!” The middle-aged man ducked behind cover, cradled the limp body like a broken reed, and tried to staunch blood with a rag found in this container-home, a futile dam on a red river.

The young man gripped the captain’s hand, sweat sheening his face like dew, and forced a bitter smile. “Captain… I think I’m done. In the end, we were… abandoned, right…?” His voice drifted like a leaf cut loose.

“No! When this fight ends, we all get first-class merit!” the captain pleaded, dangling sunrise.

“Picture it—moving from a small unit to a mid unit—what furniture will you add? Picture it, don’t sleep,” he urged, words flung like seeds.

He only shook his head, slow as falling ash.

His widened eyes seemed to pierce the captain, the container, the strata, the cloud billboards, and reach endless sky and space, blue wheels turning.

Then the light left them, a candle pinched.

“Xiao Wang…! The rest of you, we hold!” the captain roared, dam against flood.

“If we break and fall, no one will block their reinforcements!”

“Oooh!!” the men howled, wolves in winter.

“For our brother—” they cried, fists like stones.

“—Sorry to interrupt. Are you the only gatekeepers here?” a voice sliced in, cool as rain.

…

……

…Huh?

Since when was she there, like a ghost in a mirror?

In the container they’d guarded for half an hour, in its cramped living space like a rabbit burrow, a stranger stood.

A hooded woman in a jacket, shadow hugging shoulders.

Her mask bore a casual black-marker demon face, lifeless and chilling, a paper talisman on a corpse.

“It’s a Twin Towers vanguard!” the captain roared, drumbeat cracking ice.

Two nearest fighters reacted on training and attacked from both sides, wolves closing in.

A thin one drew a tactical knife and drove it toward Yekase’s gut, a fang at belly.

A heavy one grabbed his rifle by the barrel and hammered for her brow, a mallet to an idol.

High and low, left and right, their instant teamwork sealed 270 degrees of frontal escape; the room was a coffin of steel, air thin, nowhere to run.

But that sealed only 270 degrees; there’s always a sliver of moon.

Behind Yekase stood the resident’s bed and wardrobe, islands in a cramped sea; they couldn’t fully deadlock her retreat, but the tight quarters made her feet heavy, mud clinging.

Her knee crook bumped the mattress, soft as moss.

Then she just lay back, water yielding to stone.

The stabbing knife missed and hadn’t withdrawn when Yekase’s raised legs pinched it, trap-vines snapping shut.

Her supple thighs wrapped the thin man’s arm; he had no mood to enjoy it, pain biting like frost.

The teammate’s buttstock swung wide, arc long as a falling moon, lost accuracy, and cracked the thin man’s wrist.

“Urgh!” he spat, breath a broken reed.

Yekase seized the offered buttstock and slid her finger onto the trigger, cold snake coiling.

Clack-clack.

…Nothing, clicks like hail on tin.

“Magazine’s dry; why didn’t you reload?” she said, tongue a flicked pebble.

Yekase clicked her tongue, took the knife like snagging snack off a shelf, swift as a cat, sliced a deep cross in its owner’s palm, bone white as ice, then flung it at the heavy one’s face.

She hadn’t trained throwing knives; the toss had zero technique, but the spinning blade still menaced, hawk wheel in air.

The heavy man instinctively leaned back, trunk bending.

Yekase released the disabled thin man, swung her legs in a half arc, and, sliding along the barrel, snapped a rabbit-springs-eagle kick into the heavy man’s twin chins.

With a crisp crack, his head bent back like a broken willow, and he slumped to the floor.

Yekase used the kick’s recoil to spring off the bed, a cat off a mat.

She saw the others already aiming, didn’t even drop the gun she’d grabbed, and dove out the cut-in hole to dodge rounds, bullets hissing like wasps.

Then she tossed two Black Spiders inside, midnight things scuttling.

She’d entered mainly to confirm Emerald Pool’s roster and combat level, and decide whether to stall for Ling Yi or finish it herself, scales weighing on water.

She hadn’t expected such quick reactions and tight teamwork, so she bailed and avoided a frontal clash, river curving around rock.

She looked up at the Twin Towers’ makeshift trench; Ling Yi had already carved the container with a few strokes, steel cuts still spitting sparks like fireflies.

The Twin Towers squad, flesh against powered armor, lay strewn like shattered jade across the floor—Yekase felt they were like the gate guards, far from the rumored professional killers, paper tigers in the rain.

Elites graduating from Silverwing Doomstar got silver wing badges from the Twin Towers leader, and were feared as “Silverwing Killers,” sharp birds in the night.

Maybe there were few Silverwing Killers; these were regular fighters—whatever, waves not worth measuring.

“Done over there?!” Yekase called, wind pushing reeds.

“One left! I’m—” Ling Yi shouted, scythe ready for the last stalk.

The last survivor on the ground, half his body a blur of blood and meat, widened bloodshot eyes like coals and bit the pin off his final grenade—

He hurled it at Yekase crouched in the corner, stone slung from a sling.

“—The hell?!” she blurted, heart thumping like a drum.