Yekase hated her own curiosity for the first time, like a cat singed by the candle it chased.

“I wanted to ‘see his take on mixing Infinite Power,’ huh? Well, I’m seeing it,” she thought, heart sinking like a stone into a cold lake. “But can I beat it?”

The towering jet of lightning thickened into a human outline, a giant of light on the rolling hills, like an alien sun-god stepping onto earth.

That wasn’t something humans could fight; not even with Luciferin, like bringing a reed to a wildfire, unless the Dragon God Pioneer showed up.

Yekase started dialing Professor F on the spot, fingers tapping like rain on tin.

“Wait, shouldn’t we at least try first?” Ling Yi stared, wide-eyed as a deer under a sudden flashlight.

“Of course we try. Before the Beast King Squadron gets here, we stall this thing like sandbags against a flood. We can’t let it reach the camp.”

Yekase forced a smile like a paper lantern in wind, and rifled through her shoulder bag, hands fishing like a diver in a dark reef.

What miracle gadget would it be? Ling Yi watched, hope rising like dawn between peaks.

…She pulled out a syringe.

Rose-gold liquid shimmered inside, metallic as moonlight on a blade.

“What’s that?”

“Omega Ray recombination enhancer. Commonly called ‘Oni Serum.’”

“I don’t get it!” she blurted, nerves snapping like dry twigs.

“It’s that classic cheat buff with nasty side effects!”

“So it is!”

Yekase flipped the Oni Serum in her grip, popped the cap, and drove the needle into her sternum, thumb pressing down like a trigger until the last drop vanished into her body.

This was a gamble against a foe out of spec, a coin thrown into a storm, and Jiang Bailu would understand—no, she didn’t need Jiang Bailu’s approval.

Even if she could fight now, she didn’t need anyone’s shadow over her sun.

Light washed over Yekase in swells of white and red, like tides in a twin-moon bay, and her figure shifted back to seventeen—no, not quite.

Every joint at her elbows and knuckles showed mechanical seams, and her pale skin reflected like frostlit steel under the moon.

“A… mecha girl?!”

“I used Flash Energy as a primer, injected Omega Ray, and let it blend with my Flash. Omega’s property, on the human body, is ‘inorganification.’” Her voice came out with a crisp electronic undertone, like a bell wired to a circuit.

“Now I can refit my body by hand with Flash Energy. Metal’s easy to sculpt, like clay on a wheel.”

“Doctor, are you—are you insane? Can you turn back? And like… how do you poop like this?”

“Cute girl inventors don’t poop!”

While they argued whether robots not needing bathrooms was evolution or tragedy, her hands were already working, lines of light knitting like spider silk. She scaled herself up in one smooth ratio, like dragging a slider, until she was big enough to be a tokusatsu kaiju stomping through a miniature city.

Giant Yekase, like a mech-girl ripped from fan art and blown up to skyline height, faced the silver-blue energy being Li Erpao had become, two storm-pillars staring across a Gobi of dust and low hills.

Two giants over a hundred meters tall stood between desert and ridge, all savage myth and primordial sky.

A mecha girl stood towering upon the earth like a steel pine in gale.

She hadn’t even set her stance when Li Erpao swung a fist, a thunderbolt wrapped in muscle-memory.

You look like a sci-fi energy lifeform—couldn’t you attack like one instead of swinging like a street brawler?

She felt like watching someone use a beam rifle as a bat; she wanted to snark, but speaking at this size would be like thunder over a village, so she shut up and slid aside like wind around a cliff.

She gripped her now-colossal Gunblade, mimicked Luzhixing’s signature opener, and chopped down at Li Erpao’s head from the flank like an avalanching guillotine. He failed to dodge and got hit—only for the Gunblade to melt in two from the heat, like wax in a furnace.

No good. As expected.

Li Erpao’s lightning arm stretched a chunk, a whip of storm glass, and snapped back at her. She tumbled away, earth rolling like a wave under her, flattening whole swathes of trees like grass under a flood. The Gunblade flashed red and regrew like a lizard’s tail, but she slid it back into the sheath.

The Chao-Liang swarm had at least been material; this one was lightning incarnate, a thundercloud given bones. Physical strikes were a wasted prayer; this swing was only to confirm.

Then Infinite Power attacks… uh, would energy shots just heal him, like rain into a thirsty river?

Why was it always like this? The world’s huge, normal enemies are many, yet she kept drawing the rare drops. Give her any regular combatant, someone strong but sane, and she could work them with Infinite Power and instincts. But it’s always this weird roll, this shiny boss she didn’t order.

What now?

As Yekase questioned the lock with no key, Li Erpao’s pursuit came again, fast as a hawk’s stoop.

Lightning wrapped every move like ivy on stone; even the skittering sparks nicked Yekase’s metal skin, pinpricks like hail against a tin roof.

They kept this lopsided dance, sand flying and stones rolling across the Gobi, hills crushed and remade like dough, the fight looking even at a glance, yet damage stacked in her bones like frost, and she was slipping.

Keep this up, and she’d lose. No clouds about it.

She had to find a break before his silver-blue fist punched through her guard like a spear through paper.

…

Silver-blue?

Why silver-blue?

In the slow bleed of a losing battle, her mind snagged that useless thread like a fish hook in the dark.

Silver-blue meant a high ratio of Omega Ray and Soul Power, didn’t it? That would drain other Infinite Power channels, like a river diverted before it reaches the wheel. Stable, sure—too stable, like a bowstring tuned until it sings, then snaps.

Like a string pulled tight—

At their feet, Ling Yi moved.

Compared to the two giants, she was a gnat in thunder, a firefly between stormclouds, fragile yet fearless as she darted through the killing field.

She held Sky Striker in one hand and something else in the other, but she moved so fast, and it was so small, Yekase couldn’t see.

In a wordless pact, Yekase lunged at Li Erpao again and stole his gaze like a matador’s cape.

Ling Yi circled his feet, looking for an opening like a swallow tracking wind, then pitched the thing at his right leg like tossing a grenade.

Only then did Yekase see it—it was the used Oni Serum syringe!

Wait, Ling Yi’s aiming to—

[Doc, I’ve been watching forever. Is this guy OCD? Every time he throws his left, the next is his right. If he steps right, he twitches left to match!]

Seriously? Yekase had been too busy not dying to notice, like a swimmer ignoring sky patterns.

[So I want to break his symmetry with the syringe and see what happens!]

—Crackle!

Even as she spoke, Li Erpao’s lightning body made a wrong note, a glitching buzz, and locked up like a frozen waterfall of light.

Stability broke? From a plastic syringe? At that energy it should’ve vaporized like snow on a skillet…

Yekase’s eyes lit like sparks catching tinder.

Residue. The Omega–Flash hybrid left in the barrel!

“Are you a genius?!”

[If you praise me that much I’ll—whoa!]

A sudden ball of lightning burst beside Ling Yi like a popped star; she spun off like a maple seed, and Yekase caught her in one hand like a falling bird.

“Amplify Sky Striker’s field!”

[Uh—uh???]

Ling Yi obeyed; Sky Striker drank Flash Energy, its edge swelling like a sponge soaking rain, scaling until even a giant could grip it.

Yekase grabbed Sky Striker—and Ling Yi—with one massive hand and swung at Li Erpao like a crimson comet.

[I… I’ve become the Sky Striker?!]

The red blade of pure energy met his counterpunch, and for once it didn’t melt; red and blue energy masses collided like twin storms smashing, the boom rattling the world like a drum.

The recoil shoved them both back two steps, steps that crossed a hundred meters like strides over rooftops.

“At least now we can fight,” she said, breath steady as a tide.

They stepped forward over a ridge and crashed together again, two meteors crossing paths.

…but not enough to win. She didn’t voice the shadow in her chest.

Sky Striker and the syringe could disturb him; foreign energy could tangle the six-stream Infinite Power inside him like crossed strings, but the damage was unclear—likely tiny, like dents in a glacier. The lab’s torn ceiling kept geysering energy, feeding him a constant mix.

They needed a strong, steady disturbance, enough to collapse his form like cutting power to a magnet…but how?

Empty the Flash Energy in her whole body again? How young would she end up this time, a question mark written in years?

Gritting her teeth, she traded empty blows with Li Erpao, two unruly currents bashing between earth and sky, thunder answering lightning like drum to drum.

She started the math in her head, how much Flash Energy she could spare, what percent of his reservoir it even was, numbers like raindrops slipping off a leaf.

[Doc, since he can fuse six Infinite Powers, should we try it too?]

“We fuse? But from where—”

Wait.

She had Flash Energy, Sorcery, and Omega Ray inside. The Blade Armor carried some Soul Power components. Ling Yi herself used Mind Energy.

…We’re missing Spiral Force.

The gear-like little orb had Spiral Force, but holding it didn’t help, like a key without a door.

[Doctor.]

Jiang Bailu’s voice flowed through the earpiece like cool water.

[I think we can try her idea.]

[If Bailu-jie thinks so too, that’s two to one, passed!]

Yekase dodged another crackling swing. “I’m not against it. But how do we fuse? He used the forge to spin-mix Infinite Power inside—”

Spin. Spin?

Yekase sucked a sharp breath, like air after lightning.

The will of Spiral Force—was the will to fuse.

[We couldn’t before, but now we have Coffee Moon…]

Uh, what exactly could Coffee Moon do again? She’d been too stunned at the ghost summoning to ask, like forgetting the rules after seeing a miracle.

[I’ll… I’ll build you a cyclotron!]

Coffee Moon’s range was short. Jiang Bailu cast a flight spell with a whisper like a swan taking wing, and dove toward the giant’s feet, courage taut as a bowstring.

“You can do that?!”

[Gravity and acceleration are equivalent!]

“Crap, you’re right—!”

…

Before Yekase’s eyes, a bridge unfurled, translucent and starlit, a sky-road paved with constellations.

Its black deck glowed faintly under moonlight, hand-drawn with equations from E=mc² to the Higgs field, a chalkboard stretching to a horizon of night.

It arced over Li Erpao’s head and straight into a cloudless sky, like a sermon calling humankind into the unknown.

[Don’t look at the bridge. It’s a light refraction phantasm, bait for him to smash. While he takes it, drop to normal size and fly straight into the acceleration field!]

“…Give me back that one second of awe.”