Ivalice fields stalwart mechanists, proud materialists who’d put Super‑class Infinite Power on a lab slab like a specimen under cold moonlight.

Yet beyond those independent city‑states, Europe still wears faith like ivy gripping old stone, roots sunk deep in damp earth.

That faith isn’t all the Church’s bright steeples; some light candles for old soil gods in shadowed barns, like embers hidden in straw.

Others even bow to Sorcery itself, a “Magus Nexus” cult sheltered by Mysidia, an order where clout rises like incense smoke and numbers crown saints.

Overall, the cross holds the biggest sky; the Church really sends riders like thunderheads, while those three city‑states are fortress gates, hard iron for common feet.

Among this broad sea of Christians, a fearsome rumor ripples like oil on water.

The Herdsman of Beasts, Lord of Demons, the utmost foe of the utmost evil—Satan—seems set to climb from the earth like a shadow rising from a pit.

Ears hear, hearts quake; those three titles stain souls like ink spilled on silk, and the name “Satan” hammers like a gravestone dropped in a well.

They carry panic and guilt like baskets slung on trembling shoulders, then tip them out to neighbors like winter hail, better to share doom than shiver alone.

Days stretch like long winter nights, but the stretch doesn’t last; Ivalice, one of the “three cities of sin” for its material creed, issues a crisp announcement like a bell at dawn—Ms. Luciferin is appointed professor at the State University.

Luciferin—Lucifer in—the name pricks like a thorn under the tongue, an open secret glinting like a black feather in sunlight.

In some scriptural tellings, Lucifer and Satan are one shadow cast by one flame, which ups the rumor’s weight like lead poured into a scale.

To use that frightful word as a given name feels like hanging a bat-winged banner in broad daylight, wicked as a grin under a church spire.

Meanwhile, the other “sin city,” Labyrinth City—atheism’s own brass horn—plays duet like a stage trick, loudly welcoming Professor Luciferin as honored guest.

The flock boils like a neglected pot, foam rising and lids rattling.

Labyrinth City loves to wave its Vatican occupation like a red rag, and the devout wash their faces in tears like summer rain, but this feels like a different storm entirely.

That scarlet beam, that “Blood‑Red Skyline,” a crimson seam in the clouds—an omen of demons—gets knotted to the rumor like thread through a wound.

So Yekase, without even knowing, becomes a demon boss walking the earth like a wildfire in shoes.

They say she opened Hell’s Gate in Soville City, a door swinging like a furnace mouth, and devoured those poor Iron Cross Knights like sparks swallowed by night.

They say she and the silver demon, Labyrinth City, met like old wolves under frost, and conspired like ravens on a gallows.

They say more, and more, and more, stories breeding like mushrooms after rain.

In short, the faithful grow certain her hellfire footprints have stepped onto Europe like coal on a white sheet; it’s too late, the wind already builds an evil empire’s sails.

……

……

And right now, Yekase—“Satan in skin, demon boss, sovereign of an evil empire”—wanders Ivalice State University like a leaf drifting on plaza wind.

The university spans 144 blocks like an electron cloud smearing orbit, not fenced like old stone schools, but spread across one wide Sector like starlight; the city has thirteen of those.

Its standing shows in the center of those blocks: a near‑two‑hundred‑square‑meter indoor square like a pearl inset in steel; in pricey Ivalice, only the city lord has another such chambered sky.

Yekase finds a flowerbed like a green island and sits, hands idle, thoughts roaming.

Just now, a classroom’s voices drifted like swallows.

A student argued Infinite Power’s birth might have other byproducts, maybe some “real particles” like pebbles left by a wave.

But when the teacher asked for an example, he stalled like a cart in mud, muttered “there are several phases; they can’t all be zero,” then slumped back like a wilted reed.

Back then, Yekase’s problems were blunt as iron—“Can it kill? Can it pay? How do we use it?”—no client ever asked if a blade was left‑handed or right‑handed.

They’ll never know this: out of nothing, two symmetric particles bloom like twin snowflakes, meet and annihilate like moths in flame, and their remnant becomes the first beam to light the universe; then a billion years strip that light like leaves from a tree, leaving only an original sigh like wind in a cave.

What are you thinking?

A worn voice lands beside her like a dry leaf; Yekase hauls her mind back from space like a kite tugged home and looks up—Principal Burns.

Principal, hi. The air of scholarship here feels good, like dew on new grass.

They’re the children I’m proud of, like stars I’ve named.

Did anyone sign up for my elective?

It’s at capacity; the site nearly buckled like ice under skates. You’re a big name now, a top young scholar.

Haha…

Set a small goal, she thinks like a quiet drumbeat: after the first class, maybe twenty stay.

She chuckles like water in a cup and says, I’m thinking—if Infinite Power mechs break their bottleneck and leap twice like a falcon, could it nudge us into the interstellar age?

If we step into that star field like fish into deep water, could we shift internal conflict into frontier work like snow pushed off a roof?

If we push our quarrels outward like boats leaving harbor, how long could that peace hold like a candle in wind?

Burns shakes his head like an old elm.

Each of us wishes to end war by science, like rain washing smoke, but the fruit of science walks away like a grown child; it may not be what we hoped, nor bless all hands.

Build robots to replace human labor, and not everyone lies home with bread like loaves raining from heaven; the replaced starve like lamps without oil.

Flash Energy’s answer is to give strength to the good, like sunlight favoring open windows; what’s your answer?

Make more robots. A shit‑ton of robots.

The auto‑translator softens that last phrase like sand over a spark; Yekase lifts her head and locks eyes with the elder like steel on steel, then repeats, firm as a bell:

Make a shit‑ton of robots, enough to replace everyone like tide over shore.

Let production surge like a thousand mills; material will cheapen like stones in a riverbed, and no one will brawl over food or resources scattered like leaves.

Humans can do creative work like weaving constellations, chasing beauty and virtue like swallows chasing spring.

That’s… a distant and grand dream, like a mountain beyond mist.

Burns gives a bitter smile like tea gone cold.

It suits your youth and purity like light suits morning; pity this old man won’t see that day like a boat seeing its far lighthouse.

That day will come. We’ll make it happen like hands building a bridge.

Yes. It must happen, like seed becoming tree.

……

……

A lecture hall inside the State University.

The side door opens a crack like a slit of dawn, and a black‑haired, black‑skirted girl slips in bent low like a cat crossing a fence.

Students and teacher look her way like sunflowers turning to light.

Sorry.

She presses the brim of her witch’s hat like a leaf pressing rain, voice soft and apologetic, then hurries to the back corner like a shadow seeking shade.

Since when did the school have someone this cute, like a plum blossom in steel?

Everyone, even the teacher, thinks it, and silence hangs for five seconds like frost on glass.

Ahem! Let’s continue.

Our shared premise has been that light speed can’t be reached; even nearing it is hard, like climbing ice.

But Teleportation moves objects across long macroscopic distances like stones skipping across a lake, and it might brush light speed in practice—a simple, repeatable, visible phenomenon we use everywhere like nails in wood.

Some scholars say Teleportation transmits photons carrying information like letters, then reassembles objects at destination like puzzles; evidence is that no one has extended casting distance past an equivalent speed of light, and there’s a tiny delay between launch and landing like a blink.

The teacher sketches the classic Teleportation array on the e‑board like chalk lines on slate; students buzz like bees in a hedge.

What about the variant—Portals?

Sorcery is a material, real‑class Infinite Power; why does magic yield mind‑side effects like dreams that leave footprints…?

If we fix a Portal in a mechanical ring and chain several in a loop like linked mirrors, can we step light‑years like stones hopping rivers?

Yekase sits in the last row like a bridge commander in her chair, eyes raking the room like radar spotting glints.

State University melts into the city blocks like milk into water; it’s hard to tell borders.

From a quick survey, this lecture hall’s the biggest, the most face, like the main stage under bright lamps.

Near sixty students fill the room like birds on wires; not all are solemn as monks, but most dive in, talking questions that pull Yekase’s curiosity like fish tugging line.

So the teacher lets them run a bit, pausing explanation like holding breath in a pool.

As for macroscopic faster‑than‑light motion by Portals, Yekase thinks like a spark under ash—recently, “open universe” already rattled Kelvin and Poincaré’s coffin lids like thunder under planks; waking one more Einstein wouldn’t be such a catastrophe, maybe even a blessing, like rain after drought.

A student mentioned Portals—what does the auditing girl think?

The teacher calls toward the back like a bell.

Ah?

Yekase lifts her head like a deer, and finds all eyes on her like stars on one moon.

Say anything; we’ll discuss together like hands around a fire.

Mm…

She stands, shy at first like dawn mist, pressing her brim lower like a curtain; the room catches the cuteness like a falling petal.

But her voice, though small, travels steady and clear like a stream under stone:

I think Portals are brief, controllable micro‑wormholes, like pinholes punched through velvet.

The hardest part of chaining Portals is that two arrays too close will interfere, like ripples colliding; swapping Sorcery input for Omega Ray would ease that turbulence like oil calming water.

Then fix the arrays mechanically like frames on canvases, and you can convert part of the Omega Ray back into Super‑class Infinite Power, which grants longer hops and wider throats like doors tall as barns.

Which Infinite Powers to mix, and in what ratios, needs batches of tests like vintages lined in a cellar.

As for the finished tool—if I get to name it someday—I’d call it Stargate, a gate like a ring of stars over a dark sea.

She says it all in one breath like an arrow, bows slightly like a reed, and sits back down like dusk settling.

The room holds silence for a full half minute like snow unbroken.

As the air turns awkward like a creaking board, the teacher finally jolts like a struck drum.

Ms. Luciferin, please come to the stage!