Over the English Channel, where water and sky stitched into one blue silk, a 200‑meter magitek sky‑rail named Love‑That‑Topples‑Cities slid along invisible streams of Sorcery.

Inside the lavish car, whispers rustled like moth wings against velvet.

“Look, that’s—”

“Isn’t that the Princess’s doll attendant?”

“So cute, like a porcelain doll…”

Lymriel slipped through the whispering crowd like a swan cutting still water, car to car. White‑silk legs moved with garden‑party grace. Her heeled ankle boots tapped the metal floor in crisp, metronomic clicks.

At last, she pushed open the rear door of First Class and stepped in.

【——Roman Cavalry choirs are singing——】

【——be my mirror, my sword and shield——】

Dorothy was listening to music on the home theater, sound flowing like warm light.

Hearing Lymriel enter, she sprang off the massage chair like a student caught daydreaming, fumbling for the power button as if hiding contraband under a desk.

It was the exact energy of a slacker busted by a parent or teacher—and, honestly, not wrong.

If it were Ling Yi, she’d invite Yekase to listen; Jiang Bailu would tilt her head a clean 45 degrees like a sparrow and watch herself walk over. Imagining their different reactions, Dorothy tasted a small sweetness of “raising” them, like tending three saplings in the same garden.

“It’s fine. Keep listening.”

Lymriel stopped at her side but didn’t disengage the outer shell.

Those beautiful yet useless gem‑eyes stared straight ahead like stars trapped in glass.

Silence pooled. Then she spoke low, resigned, like winter accepting its frost: “Someone’s about to make trouble.”

“What?!”

“The last two cars are off‑limits mechanical cars. In the car right before them, someone boarded under a dimensional veil, carrying an Infinite Power device with unknown purpose.”

How did they slip aboard? On the most critical maiden voyage? Where were the stewards? The questions beat like rain. But the storm had already broken; all that mattered was how to steer through it.

“An Infinite Power device… for what?”

“Likely to hijack or blow up the sky‑rail.”

Yekase huffed, a blade of breath in cold air. “I checked. The car’s full of tycoons and socialites—leeches fat on others, not worth pity. If it were up to me, once the fire starts, I’d take the hostages and the robbers in one sweep. Then extract you alone.”

“…”

Dorothy recoiled. Beneath the cool ripple of those words lay iron and blood, not just bias but scars. The ever‑smiling Teacher Luciferin in the classroom—what hell had she walked through before Europe, to hate with such calm, such ease, such depth?

“Please… spare them, teacher.”

“If you call me teacher, give me a reason. If you treat me as a maid, give me an order.”

“Half the literate people in France are on this train.”

“…?”

“The World Tree’s ‘blessing’ locked this land three hundred years deep, and a policy of stupefaction dragged it even farther back. I know it’s rich for someone seeking foreign help to topple a crown to say this… but until education spreads, we can only lean on them to hold the country together. After every commoner has light in their homes and letters in their hands, my sister and I will count their sins, one by one.”

“I hope you won’t be among them then.”

“I understand!”

At that, Yekase had no reason left to argue. She slid back to the matter at hand like a knife returning to its sheath. “He was taking notes. Didn’t react to a maid doll passing by. I stood beside him and watched for a while. From the notes, he seems tied to an organization called Shadow Realm War. Nothing else was clear.”

“Shadow Realm War?! It’s really them?”

“Oh? You know them?”

“That Sinister Organization’s been drifting around Europe for nearly half a century. Their goal seems to be stoking feuds between city‑states and nations, seeding chaos.”

Huh? For what? A classic Saturday‑morning villain group with no thesis… Wait—that is what ‘Sinister Organization’ means in the original sense, isn’t it?

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll move.”

Yekase smiled under the mask, a crescent hid by cloud.

Among her pile of aliases there was also Red Realm Demon King. Soon enough, they’d see whose “realm” stood taller.

The enemy’s probably a mage or an esper. Flash Energy’s mech‑tech specialty won’t bite hard. And as Lymriel, flashing Flash Energy isn’t ideal.

Luckily, almost everyone who saw Dawn of Eden is dead. I can pull out sorcery bullets and… test how the “Consecutive Sword of Strife” performs.

Plus blood‑line magic—no issue with combat power.

“Dorothy, can you fight?”

“I can.”

“What style?”

“Innate platform. Outside, they call it a superpower.”

“Oh, you’ve got a superpower… huh? You also have a superpower?”

So much for one‑in‑ten‑thousand—well, I’ve only met four total. Compared to Infinite Power, fine, still one‑in‑ten‑thousand.

Yekase sighed. “What’s it called? What’s the effect? Any specters bundled?”

“—Cosmic Wizard.”

The air behind Dorothy stirred like wind waking tall grass. A cloud of vapor took a shape, colored itself, and sprang between them.

A lion, all muscle and mane.

Beast‑type?

Yekase blinked. After Jiang Bailu’s awakening, she’d burned favors and networks to cram everything she could about espers. The data was thin as winter bark, and abilities shared no common roots—little real gain.

Still, two rules were clear.

First, each esper has only one ability.

For example, Coffee Moon distorts space by nature. It can set force fields and warp matter—developments of one core. It cannot, in any branch, create zombies.

Second, an esper may or may not have an accompanying “specter.” If it does, that specter is the esper’s subconscious made flesh.

So Coffee Moon appears as Jiang Bailu’s own shadow in a white lab coat, equations scrawled across it—her self‑portrait in function.

Then Dorothy’s lion means what?

Kingship? Strength? Wildness?

As Yekase guessed, the leftover vapor didn’t fade. It gathered again, drew bones from mist, and stood up as an armored soldier. He took sword and shield, stepped to Dorothy’s side, and lifted a guard like a wall.

“Mm?! Why do you have two—”

No, not just two.

She kept summoning.

The last wisp of gas knotted into a ragged scarecrow and plopped down behind her like a scare on a stick.

One person, three specters?!

Dorothy spread her arms, the lion, soldier, and scarecrow flanking her like three seasons. “This is my Cosmic Wizard!”

“They look impressive. What do they do?”

“Their ability is that I can summon them.”

“…?”

So… totally blank?

Oh wow. That’s an ability?

Under the mask, Yekase’s expression went technicolor. “Then… do you yourself know any magic?”

“Levitation Spell and Oz Floating Disc.”

Those ring a bell…

Yeah, those are the two Yekase used to spam the most. And they share one big trait: zero offensive power.

“Take my dagger. In a minute, just watch your own skin,” Yekase said.

She shoved open the First Class door, guns and blades tucked under clothes like thorns under petals, and stormed toward the last passenger car.

Trains under attack are a genre staple. Many leads sit still when a villain shares their train—that’s for an enemy hidden while we’re exposed. Yekase had the face memorized already. Strike first. Take the tempo.

She hit the spot and—

The seat was empty.

“…”

No.

Something’s off.

This Shadow Realm War member carried an odor of wrongness that spilled over the cup.

He had a way to slip a dangerous device past layer after layer of checks. Yet he let Yekase spot him at a glance. Yet he possessed counter‑surveillance so sharp Yekase never noticed he’d noticed her watching.

This isn’t about stealth skill tiers. These three traits don’t live in one person.

What did I miss?

He has partners? Or he’s a god‑tier thief who doesn’t care if his wrap is seen?

“—Ms. Yekase.”

“…?!”

My name… He used it.

Not “Lymriel.” “Yekase.”

Yekase turned.

The black‑clad youth stood right behind her like a shadow stepping out of a shadow. Ordinary black short hair. Ordinary face. Ordinary height and frame. Toss him in a crowd and he’s a raindrop lost in rain.

He spread his arms and smiled with a confidence that glowed like foxfire. “—Let’s make a deal?”

How do you know my name?

But some gut chill said if she asked that, something very bad would ripple out.

“This car’s passengers—move now to the forward cars and take shelter!”

Yekase shouted. In the heartbeat when heads lifted, 59 delayed Levitation Spells she’d hung on the doorframe snatched people from their seats like leaves on an updraft. The someone behind the door conjured two giant Oz Floating Discs, tilted inward like cupped hands, and caught them. Fifty‑nine business luminaries rolled away like hamster balls to the safe end, chaos somehow orderly, panic contained like water in a channel.

“—Now we can talk about you.”

The black‑clad youth hadn’t expected that lightning‑quick mass rescue. His thick brows flew up, eyes wide. In a murmur meant for no ears, he said, “It didn’t go like this in the sim…”

“As for you, here’s my guess. You learned my name by some means. You smuggled a dangerous item aboard by some means. If we don’t blame magic or a superpower, neither feat makes sense. And they don’t look like branches of the same tree.”

Yekase’s hand wrapped her Gunblade. She slung it on her shoulder. Through the ladylike corrections of the doll shell, the pose looked like a lilac girl in a rain alley holding a parasol, quiet and deadly as spring rain.

“Then let’s hear it. You planned to stand among fifty‑nine potential hostages and bargain with me. What exactly are your terms?”