We’ve run base assaults more than a few times now. From Triple Calamity to Emerald Pool, in this age of raid-and-swap where low-tier fighters scrap in rain-slick alleys, we’re battle-hardened like stones scoured by a river.

Yekase lounges half-reclined in the Ambition Divine Ship’s conference room, a cat in sunlight. The projector splits into three panes, fed by micro-cams on Ling Yi, Jiang Bailu, and Lu Yao.

It’s a perfect spectator perch, a balcony over a brewing storm. She almost wants popcorn, the way neon spills like spilled paint.

It tugs her back to the year of war, when she was pure logistics, a paper lantern kept in the rear, flickering but steady.

Ling Yi and Jiang Bailu wait near the Crossed Blades base, shadows pressed to brick. Lu Yao, freshly juiced on Yekase’s blood and buffed like a drumskin, pilots a chopped nose-cone toward them, a gull skimming waves.

Ling Yi stands on a rooftop, dozens of meters out, hawk-eyed over the base. “Looks unguarded. Weird… oh! Lights on a few second-floor windows. Garrison should be there.”

Jiang Bailu shakes her head, a reed in a breeze. “Not necessarily. Could be overtime leftovers.”

“Fair point.”

With Coffee Moon stowed, Jiang Bailu looks like a harmless office drone—she is one—thin enough to pass for a lost clerk. She’s closer than Ling Yi, right on the street by the base.

She plays it casual, glancing in. It’s too dark, a pond with its surface iced; she sees nothing.

If only Coffee Moon had sight, she thinks, a second moon to light the canal. But double vision on a human-shaped deflection field? That’s a nightmare, two mirrors facing each other.

Still, her mind drifts back to the hotel in Cloudlong City, to the way Coffee Moon seemed to encourage her, whispers in a cup of steam.

Was that a hallucination? No idea. No cases to compare, no trail markers in the snow.

Forget it. Let the thought melt.

“First floor’s quiet,” she murmurs, a leaf turning in wind.

[Copy. Lu Yao is within a thousand meters. Prep for a window breach. Fang Tang found the base schematic. Sending it now.]

Jiang Bailu wears smart contacts. Yekase paints a 3D model on her retina, a ghostly blueprint floating like ink on water.

“…Doesn’t look like they have defenses,” she says, a hand brushing stone.

[We’re not invading Shadow Curtain International. Be appropriately cautious. Breathe a little, okay?]

Easy to say. Commander, aren’t you a bit too relaxed? The crunch of chips is loud in our ears, like gravel underfoot.

[Lu Yao, any route recs?] [crunch]

[You’re the commander. You ask me?]

They start passing the buck in open comm, a shuttlecock tossed in fog.

[I always go frontal breakthrough. Never planned stealth, that’s your lane. Second floor core has a backup power unit. Prioritize that. The rest can go.] [crunch]

[What about the main power?] Ling Yi asks, voice taut as a drawn bow.

[Hit the first-floor lobby. Main breaker’s in the stairwell. Flood it with Flash Energy and blow it.]

[Got it!]

No need to be that eager, is there? Born battle maniac? Or just delighted the plan’s this clean?

Jiang Bailu wants to quip, the line hot on her tongue, but the air here is tight as a drum. She swallows it with a wince.

[Then I’ll send them a little gift. A little chaos.] The comm carries rustling, like paper talismans brushing.

None of the three below knows the Ambition Divine Ship has drifted into the sky directly above the Crossed Blades base, a quiet cloud sliding over moonlight.

The bay doors yawn open. Yekase locks herself to the deck with pink magnetic sandals, then draws the Polaris Staff, an iron reed ready to sing.

From thirty kilometers out, she sights the building, a speck of dust dissolved in the city’s river of light. Using Part 3’s Infinite Power trajectory, the Flashblade System, and Jiang Bailu’s teleport ring—one line, two anchors—she locks the coordinates like pins in silk.

In the deep darkness of Infinite Force Perception, a night lake without stars, Yekase grips the iron staff and begins to cast.

……

Jiang Bailu sees a meteor, a silver needle threading the billboard sky, ripping through ad projections like paper screens.

It screams down at the building, a dragon tearing clouds.

[Impact plus ten seconds. Ling Yi charges the lobby and cuts their power. Plus twenty seconds. Bailu breaches near the first-floor safe stair. Meanwhile, Lu Yao suppresses all north windows for five seconds. Favor ricochets.]

[Vision’s gone. Muting to feel my way.]

“…Hey!” Jiang Bailu blurts, a swallow startled.

But Yekase’s channel blips and falls silent, a moth against glass.

Wasn’t Jiang Bailu the one who stopped her bloodletting and forced a drainage method? Regret is a late train; it won’t turn back.

She draws a long breath, steadies her heart like a bowl on a tray. Calm spreads like ink, slow but sure.

It’s fine. The deflection field is unmatched, a tortoise shell under thunder. It can snag bullets too fast to see, like fish hooked in black water. The fight against Soldier Hero proved it smothers pure melee. As long as she focuses, no one can touch her.

Her noise-canceling headset skims off car hum and foot traffic, leaving a faint, continuous whistle, thin as a thread.

It’s the meteor’s sky-tearing cry.

Boom—!!

Then the world erupts: explosions, shouts, sirens, engines, footfalls. Chaos rises like a brushfire licking rooftops.

Ten quick heartbeats pass.

[I’m in!] Ling Yi roars. Four thrusters slam to max, and she spears into the lobby like a comet. Windows that glowed go out. The base falls black, a lake with its lanterns snuffed.

Twenty seconds tick past, beads sliding on a cord.

“Coffee Moon!” she calls, a bell struck.

“—!”

A white-clad ghost flies out, silent as snow. Its fist hits tempered glass, grinding it into glittering dust, a sandstorm in a lightwell.

Jiang Bailu snaps on a mask, vaults the sill, drops into the stairwell. Her left hand clasps Coffee Moon’s hand, and the ghost drags her upward, a kite towing its line.

Roze is on the fourth floor, in a vault behind the boss’s office wall, a pearl sealed in shell.

The mission isn’t to wipe them, but to rescue a hostage—not quite human, but heart enough. Yekase chose the swift, spare approach, a blade that wastes no motion.

Ling Yi raises a riot in the base, a locomotive pulling cars of enemies, horns blaring. Jiang Bailu slipstreams through cover, straight to the fourth floor. Lu Yao lays down a line of sniper fire, suppressing corridors, ricochets singing off frames. And they’ll need rooftop cover for two people and one machine, a crane lifting them into night.

Crossed Blades has only two officers. If they’re homeward birds, all’s well. If they’re inside, our two can likely take them, anchors set, sails tight.

Jiang Bailu sprints to the third floor. Footsteps thump above. She cuts down a side corridor, a brook detouring around rock.

The corridor overlooks an atrium spanning floors one to three, a throat of space in the building. Ling Yi has deployed her Gauntlet. With four arms, she reaps fighters like wheat under a sharp moon.

[Fifty meters, then left into the conference room. A patrol on the corridor.] Yekase’s voice returns, steady as a bell.

Jiang Bailu even has room for a joke, a lantern swung low. “All done? That was fast.”

[I shrank my scale. Same proportions means less Flash Energy to drain. Left. Left now!]

“Got it!”

Coffee Moon punches the door handle. The deflected force runs through the lock body into the latch. With a tooth-aching squeal, the metal wrinkles like white paper and falls with a tuft of splinters.

Jiang Bailu slips in, shadow hugging wall.

The patrol doesn’t notice, too fixated on the atrium’s darkness where ghosts dance. Two beams wobble, flashlights shaking, no one seeing the door that lost its lock.

Five fighters. Each carries a Mind Energy rifle. No tactical visors. Two flashlights shared like candles in wind.

Can’t even outfit flashlights. The discipline here stinks, a stable left unattended.

She watches them fade down the hall, then eases out, a leaf riding current.

Her ability is a grinder for grunts. Five armed fighters at close range? Coffee Moon’s fists don’t even need three seconds. It’d be beyond dead, shapes their mothers wouldn’t know, ashes in a jar.

But fewer kills are better, a soft rain instead of hail. Heads don’t pay out anyway.

She glances down at the atrium; Ling Yi has hauled the fight elsewhere, a thunderhead rolling. Jiang Bailu quickens her pace, feet whispering on tile.

[At the end of this corridor, an unattended restroom. Break the ceiling and go up.]

“Isn’t the floor packed with pipes? I don’t want something nasty poured on my head,” she mutters, a cat hearing rain.

[Just hold a field overhead. Deflect it.]

“Ugh, gross!”

Even if the field keeps the sludge off, she won’t stand still like a statue. She needs to fly up. The field won’t follow if she moves—there’s a gap like wind under a door.

She slips into the restroom, back to tile, voice a small cry. “Can I go up outside the wall? Please?”

[Cameras might catch you… The spot I had you stand before entry is a blind angle. Climbing the outer wall isn’t guaranteed.]

Cameras. Yes, cameras are a web of eyes, a net she can’t ignore.

[Lu Yao, kill her cameras.]

[Copy.]

Problem solved, lightning in a clear sky.

Two crisp pops outside. Jiang Bailu eyes the grimy stalls, places hard to call clean. Gratitude blooms for Lu Yao, warm as spring sun. Their old grudges feel like frost melting on bamboo—gone for a breath.

[Act before I get annoyed enough to pop your head.] His voice is dry tinder.

“Ew—!” she flinches, a mouse startled.

No more stalling. She smashes the window. Coffee Moon pulls her up to the fourth floor, a white swallow under eaves.

Okay. Straight into the boss’s office. Grind the vault door with squeals until it’s powder. Bring Roze home, a tea set carried back intact.

She pumps herself up in her head, voice bright on purpose, a bell in fog, and steps out of the restroom.

“…Uh.” She freezes, a deer seeing open field.

The base’s atrium cuts through floors one to three. So what is the sealed fourth floor?

It should be in Yekase’s hologram, a map she didn’t check, a note left unread.

The fourth floor is a vast indoor expanse without walls, pillars so few they feel shy, a sea of floor under a low sky.

And at its very center sits a jet-black machine, a cairn in a meadow.

Flashblade System 1.0, AI mounted. They call it Roze.

It looks exactly like a boss arena from an action game, doesn’t it? A lone altar in a desert, waiting for the fight.