To this day, no one has a system for studying people who can change the color of Infinite Power—fog with no map, a sea with no lighthouse.

Different streams of Infinite Power shift color under wildly different triggers and difficulty, like blossoms that open in different seasons.

People’s ties to it range from fusion to dominion, silk or chains wrapped round the heart.

Too many factors, too much subjectivity; no scale can weigh it, no yardstick fits.

The names are a patchwork. Some call them Awakeners; some call them Resonators.

Every region talks its own dialect. The vain mint titles and make their crews chant them.

If there’s one unified name, it’s this.

The Strong.

If you can make Infinite Power change color, you’re never weak.

Yekase knew that, but she’d never practiced it. Knowledge sat cold; her hands stayed cautious.

Mira? She still didn’t dare drop a single “no” to Mira’s face, her tongue tied like a kite in crosswinds.

Her plan had been to stall with gadgets, drag time like pulling taffy.

Lure this Matrix‑styled swordsman into the combat zone, then melt into the crowd like foam in a wave.

But he said he’d execute Lei Zhenting. So she had to settle it here and now, on hard ground.

She couldn’t win head‑on. At least, try fencing with words.

He was stronger than she’d guessed—too strong to leave her room to script a line. Awkward as a blade snagging silk.

“What’s wrong, miss? Weren’t you about to speak? I’m always happy to listen.”

The man in black drove Yekase back with one cut, then flicked blood from the edge—her blood scattering like rain.

Yekase licked the wound on her arm. “That guy over there? I forced him to guide me.”

“Does that relate to his breaking the code?”

“You just want an excuse to kill, don’t you?”

“You misunderstand. I’m dutiful, always on task. Murder is one of my hobbies, sure, but on the clock I enforce penalties by the book.”

“Then your book is the problem.”

“—Our book is the problem?”

His face darkened like a storm front. His motion stalled for a heartbeat, then his voice rose, sharp as lightning.

“You dare say our Emerald Pool employee code has a problem?! If staff err, it’s on staff! Who sent you?! What are you trying to subvert?!”

Yekase felt she’d found a crack in his armor and went in again, but met a perfect parry, clean as a mirror.

His hands and his mouth seemed to run on different tracks, never crossing.

Even agitated, his blade stayed precise, clockwork steady. How could that be?

It didn’t match anything she knew about Mind Energy.

Mind Energy is the bluntest branch of the idealist school; emotion drives output and effect.

But on him she saw no oscillation, no ripple—calm as a sealed pond, dead water holding the sky.

He finished speaking and came on fast with his sword. Iron door at her back; she didn’t know if Lei Zhenting had run.

No retreat. Panic flared, then she tested the chance of transforming without getting caught—

Two cherry‑pink lasers swept in a cross over the floor ahead.

They shoved the man in black back a step, a petal‑colored shove against steel.

…Huh?

Yekase blinked behind the mask, heart snagged on confusion.

She hadn’t transformed, right?

How was she firing lasers? And why pink—

Forget it. Red laser, pink laser—if it hurts, it’s a good laser.

With the extra guns on her side, Yekase moved looser, breath finding a rhythm.

She started barely keeping up with his offense—only from helpless to barely holding.

A few exchanges in, she noticed his swordwork was razor‑sharp, but his actual speed wasn’t fast.

Kick on the hot‑blooded Flight Spell and she could carry Lei Zhenting and bolt.

But that meant giving up on saving Shen Shanshan.

Shen was an Infinite Power idiot—no good at the idealist path, no clue with the materialist path.

Shaking pursuit was already above her pay grade; expecting her to carve a path alone through a fighters’ station was fantasy.

On one side, a reformed old enemy. On the other, an old friend in deep crisis.

Yekase didn’t want to drop either thread. She had dropped enough threads already.

Clang!

She gripped Nayuta with both hands and braced the vertical cut aimed at her crown. Sparks scattered like fireflies.

…Wrong feel.

“Second hit!”

Clang!!

Same spot, same direction, another downward chop—iron rain on the same stone.

Yekase’s eyes widened. She finally found the source of that change.

Nayuta was cracking.

In a short span it took a shock harsher than ever before; spider‑veins split the blade.

Not good. Keep this up and—

“Third hit!”

Clang!!!

A third, hammering the same wound. Ruthless as a woodpecker on rotten bark.

He’d seen Nayuta’s state and targeted the same place, aiming to destroy her weapon.

Yekase read his intent, but her hands had no answer.

She felt minute shifts through the hilt, while her ears caught the sharp twist of metal deforming.

Swap out Nayuta now, slot in a Polaris Staff forged by Swordforging Manor—

“I feel—”

A stripe of silver sliced the air.

In Yekase’s slowed vision, Nayuta snapped at mid‑length, halves separating clean as broken ice.

The tip spun away into the dark.

“Confess and accept punishment—”

“Haahhhh!!!”

Lei Zhenting charged in from the door, slammed straight into the man in black, and wrestled him to the floor.

“—Go!”

“You dare?!”

The two were similar in build. Facing Lei’s death‑wish, even Mind Energy couldn’t free him at once.

Rage flared; he reversed his grip and stabbed Lei’s back several times, a hot fountain of blood bursting out.

Yekase wanted to help. Reason said the man was beyond saving.

She had something she had to do—then her legs moved on their own, as if wind took the reins.

She vaulted over their heads and dropped into the conduit to the station.

Just before the pipe walls swallowed her view, she glanced back at Lei.

His eyes had gone glassy, still roughly pointed this way. His lips worked, slow as a tide.

“You promised me.”

……

……

“…Can’t use it anymore, huh.”

The detention room in the station was empty. Only the wall held an irregular hole—Shen Shanshan must have blown it.

No sounds of pursuit above. At this point, urgency wouldn’t help; it was dust on a blade.

Yekase checked the many wounds the man in black had left, then looked at Nayuta in her hands.

It was broken crooked across the middle; the Infinite Power interference circuit inside had shattered with it.

The tip was lost upstairs, a star dropped from its sky.

Could it be repaired? In this state, it was better to forge a new one.

From her research days onward, it had stayed by her—irreplaceable as a name.

A symbol of Mechbreaker, equal to the mask. Was this its last step?

Not the time for sentiment. Not yet.

“I feel you by my side.”

She pinged Shen Shanshan again with the beacon. She stood and swung onto the Polaris Staff.

“Comet—time to run the city track.”

Magical Girl Icarus slipped through the hole like a swallow, then jammed the throttle wide.

At obtuse turns she pulled from floor to ceiling, buffering on the Z‑axis like a gull riding thermals.

At hairpins she cast a reverse Levitation Spell at the tip to simulate a drift. Speed held good, a clean ribbon through steel alleys.

Few fighters on the way; the ones she met couldn’t catch her shadow.

Following the beacon, Yekase reached a storefront shaped like a bar, neon smeared like wet paint.

So that was it—use the bar’s dim and the drunk crowd as cover, vanish like a coin palmed by a street magician.

No wonder; a merc raised in the alleys knows how to blur their outline.

“…But what’s with this stench of blood…”

Had the fighters found her?

Yekase eased her steps and pushed the bar door, breath tight as a bowstring—

The sharp reek hit like acid rain. Tears spilled without consent.

She forced her eyes open. First, two bodies beside her boots.

One face ruined, meat and glass all mixed; one jaw torn clean, tongue sliced in half.

Seeing those brutal deaths, heat rose in her chest, a nameless fire guttering in a storm.

She narrowed her eyes and shouted, words like stones thrown:

“Shen Shanshan! Look what you did!”

Two heads popped up from behind the bar.

“What? They swung first.”

“You’ve got time to paint the floor with mooks, but no time to call me? Where’s the headset I gave you?!”

“I worried about eavesdroppers. Used it and crushed it…”

Shen Shanshan’s voice trailed off, thin as smoke.

“…”

Yekase didn’t know what to say. As her eyes adjusted through the blood‑tinged air, she saw Shen sitting cross‑legged behind the bar.

A guilty look; a bottle of aqua vitae tucked behind her like a child hiding sweets.

“You—you’re still drinking—”

Then she saw Xiaoyuan.

“Xiaoyuan?… Why are you here?”

“Your friend?” Xiaoyuan asked without turning.

“My buddy. Been doing the hero thing lately. Don’t tell anyone.”

“How about you don’t tell anyone first.”

Xiaoyuan nodded. “I clocked it early.”

“…Huh?”

No way. Had Mechbreaker’s tower‑curse leveled up so much that even a one‑time acquaintance could see through her?

“Flash Energy fusion,” Xiaoyuan said, fishing orange juice from the cabinet and lazily twisting the cap.

“Your fusion coefficient beats mine.”

Shen Shanshan added, “She talked with me. Said anyone who studies the essence of Infinite Power can spot the quirks in your body at a glance.”

“You two get along… So, Xiaoyuan, why are you here?”

“Emerald Pool pays big for human trials.”

“Neptune?”

“Mm.”

Figures. Neptune mechs, remote bombs—nothing you deploy without clinical trials.

And the trial material sat right here, breathing in neon.

Yekase’s mind flashed to that fighter’s face, to the dark‑green clot in Old Li’s body.

She wanted to speak, and no words came, like a dry well under a blazing sun.

Shen saw her look, clicked her tongue, and grabbed the last clean glass.

She poured in Xiaoyuan’s half‑finished orange juice, then, heart aching, cracked the aqua vitae and filled it to the brim.

She wiped a knife clean, stirred the cup a few turns, and handed it over.

“It is what it is. Have a drink.”

“We still need to go up a tier. There’s a Color‑shifter blocking—”

“You’ve got two bad habits. First, when you tense up, you can’t keep your mouth shut. Second, when you tense up, you don’t remember to relax.”

“…”

Shen lifted the cup toward her. “It’s on me.”

Yekase took the glass already sweating with condensation, chill running like rain down a window.

She leaned back against the bar and slid to the floor with a soft thump.