Ling Yi regretted it, the taste like cold iron under her tongue.

A few days after she got back to Twin Towers City, the offer landed like spring thunder. Direct campus placement into the Ivalice Federal University. She took the test, passed without suspense, and started packing for an early move to the City of Ivalice.

That’s when Jiang Bailu pinged her. Somewhere near Ivalice, a village. Church knights. A slaughter.

She couldn’t just watch the fire from across the river. She keyed the warp coordinates to the lat-long Jiang sent. A clean drop. Justice from the sky.

But—

That “but” cracked the plan like thin ice.

On the brink of stepping through the portal she remembered: Flashblade Red was a sensitive identity now. If she popped up in Europe, the smoke would draw too many eyes.

Then do what the Doctor does. New mask, new skin.

Speaking of masks, wasn’t there one she’d never used? Ling Yi slipped into Balafaruth inside the Ambition Divine Ship’s hangar. She forgot Yekase’s careful, tired warning: don’t fight in that toy form.

After that, the night ran wild.

The square boiled with Iron Cross Knights. Shoulder to shoulder, a tide of steel. Jiang hadn’t said there were this many.

Good thing she came as a dragon, not a girl. Otherwise she’d drown in bodies. She spared three seconds to be glad, even muttered a Deathwing line for style—then the knights fused right in her face.

Fused.

A mecha rose, thirty meters tall, looming like a cliff.

Wasn’t that just game over?

She’d never gone out in full dragon form. In her head, ground units were fries to be licked clean by flame. Instead, she got a fair fight against a giant war machine.

And Jiang had cranked some mystery music player and light rig to max, painting her entrance like a concert finale. The enemy didn’t panic. They formed up, all-in from the first beat. So much for an easy retreat.

Damn it.

She had to grit her teeth—well, Balafaruth’s teeth were steel. She mapped a plan. Flash Energy shots and controlled blasts, hit-and-run arcs, avoid that thing’s grip.

Just like playing Gale back in the day. The memory steadied her breath.

You look heavy, big guy. You gonna fly? Didn’t think so.

…

Ling Yi held her silence to keep the aura intact. Red particles pulsed like fireflies in a storm around her.

The body felt stiff, but not out of her hands. Six wing-claws rotated a neat 180 from back to front. She tested the waters with a hybrid blast.

Pa! “Israel” raised a blade to parry. The cobbled-together ship-cutter looked flimsy, yet it held like bedrock, only a scorch mark blooming across its skin.

He bled off the impact, spun the blade in a flourish.

Then one stride, ten meters swallowed. His free left hand reached for her throat. Ling Yi slid back, an instinct flickering like a struck match. The right-side three iron wings flashed cold. She stabbed.

Air.

So hard to control!

Next time, dye the armor black and play black knight. Anything but dragon brawling.

“Israel” hoisted the greatsword onto his shoulder and rushed. Even moving, the blade dragged wind like a hurricane door. He began to whirl it, a full arc.

It fell like a mountain ridge splitting the sky.

She tried to dodge right, riding the momentum of her thrust—then looked up and saw the edge chasing her face.

No—the edge wasn’t chasing her. She was moving into it.

“Those who hate you shall rule over you; you shall flee even when no one pursues. If you still won’t listen, I will punish you sevenfold for your sins!”

KLANG—!!

The blade crashed down. Ling Yi was slapped out of the air and hammered into the earth. Dragon-scale armor shaved off some pain, but her vision went dark at the edges.

What a strange sword style—wide open arcs, yet razor precise.

Had he stacked some assistive enchantment? Or read her dodge path in advance?

She had to open the distance. Now.

She rolled. Her razor wing tore across “Israel’s” leg, carving three deep grooves and breaking his pursuit. Then she bit down and spat a point-blank Flash Energy blast, forcing him back a step.

Nice move. Call it Dragon Fang, Dragon Claw.

Balafaruth’s twin iron wings, cribbed from a comet-dragon’s sins, were less wings and more six freely rotating jet nacelles. That’s why people called it a fighter.

No need to flap. Red-blue particles jetted from wing-claw tips at a tight angle, swinging the massive body in a clean circle. The tail-blade, nastier than “Israel’s” greatsword, howled through the air and lashed his abdomen.

The holy mecha knight had no nerves, yet still staggered like it hurt. He let go—his left hand flew to his gut on reflex. Under the palm, broken structures and circuits showed through.

Good damage. Dragon Tail Grand Sweep.

Three steps back under her counter. Perfect. At this range, she could try that move—

Ling Yi drove the tail into the ground and drew in breath.

Not an ordinary breath. Not the panting after a sprint. Something older, more dangerous.

Deep Breath.

Every dragon’s first lesson: the breath.

Different breeds spit different elements. A mechanical dragon like Balafaruth breathes Flash Energy.

Balafaruth inhaled, deep and long.

Rosy-magenta Infinite Power squeezed from every limb and bone, gathering in the hollow behind her chest.

Even through thick plates, the compressed Flash Energy glowed through, pulsing hard enough to sting the air.

Her six iron wings shifted into a crown around her skull. Their muzzles aimed as one at “Israel,” shaping a second mouth for the storm.

She pressed the energy down to a needle’s tip—

“I will break the pride of your power,”

“And make your heaven like iron, and your earth like bronze!”

Seeing he couldn’t close the gap in time, the knight captain intoned and hurled his greatsword straight at her.

The blade took on a blessing, bright silver light sketching a perfect line. It crossed a hundred meters in a heartbeat and slammed into her chest.

It didn’t pierce. The blade shattered. But—

Boom!

“—?!”

The gathering cycle snapped. Flash Energy already flowing into her chest lost control. It went turbulent inside her.

Ling Yi tried to breathe. Only a mouthful of scorched exhaust came out. She slumped, locked in place. Near the dragon-body’s heart, her human core took the backlash of that sudden internal implosion. The damage arrived all at once.

No… no.

Her core was about to ignite under hostile Flash Energy. She was a friend to Mind Energy and Flash Energy both, yet she’d never felt a burn like this. Raw. Alien.

So this is what it’s like to be on the other side of Flash Energy.

Her own Blazing Rekindle, the Doctor’s cannon named Heavenly Divide—this is what their enemies feel? Evolution, to them, is a blade with no mercy?

The cruel face of evolution isn’t a decree to obey. It’s a wound we humans must mend.

Yekase had said that under the Emerald Pool. Only now did she truly understand.

With our reason. With the mercy born from reason. With the dignity that stands on both.

“Let those born free understand…”

She could not lose here.

The people of this place—those who fled into the forest might live. But everything they had built was ash.

Oppression. Plunder. Judgment. Dominion. Stupor.

Whose “pride of power” was being condemned?

Her foreclaws clenched. The iron wings, strong as bridges, propped her up. She rose again to the earth.

The knight captain didn’t pick up his blade. He clenched his fists and chanted again:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega; the First and the Last; the Beginning and the End.”

That made four times.

Chant a verse, gain a blessing and strength. Strong. Convenient. Near wish-granting. No wonder their faith holds like iron.

“We were never given grace. We were never born bearing sin.”

…

Ling Yi’s body dissolved into Balafaruth’s chest, melting, then vanishing.

Mind Energy urges flesh to change.

Flash Energy grants steel a heartbeat.

Blended, they become a resonance of evolution. In that instant, Ling Yi truly became the mechanical dragon called Balafaruth.

If Yekase had been here, he would’ve seen it: the first attempt at dragon form, that flicker of hybrid Infinite Power, tinted rose-violet.

Infinite Power’s color-shift is a spectrum sliding. Force it by will, or fuse it with another strain—either way, the light moves.

“…roar.”

The dragon’s skin split.

Two cracks opened from the skull back, left and right, like drought-split earth. Then the limbs, the tail. The chest and shoulders bloomed wide, armor plates unfolding into a different shape.

Beneath wasn’t flesh but a bright, blinding frame. Crimson particles bled out, a fog of light filling the space.

Omega F’s mental-control Infinite Power skeleton, prepared for her and Yekase.

Maybe the energy ran too fierce. The once-shining silver-white scales smoked black inside the rising, spinning Flash Energy vortex.

Balafaruth’s left shoulder happened to be the transformed shoulder of Luciferin—the mech, not the woman. The painted code [B-666] split as the armor opened and meshed with the inner plates.

On that inner layer, finally seeing daylight,

another painted line lay hidden even from Yekase, slipping between the numbers.

Beast-666.

“ROAR—!”