The potential tucked inside Coffee Moon rivaled Flash Energy’s evolution, like a dormant volcano under silk. If you quantified it by a game panel’s “growth,” it would rate an A.

Yekase’s spark came from Jiang Bailu’s move days ago—she flipped Arcadia like turning a tide. Last time they caught a city falling from the sky; this time, a city rising from the earth. Both were half-bitten by a force field, like buns with a bite missing; chance playing house.

After that, Yekase kept wondering: why did Arcadia’s pedestal get swallowed by the field, yet the surrounding light passed clean through, without forming a black zone?

The answer: with at least three segments of Infinite Power reinforcement, Jiang Bailu could further steer Coffee Moon’s field. She stowed overlapping parts into subspace like folded cloth, and hand-picked what to twist and what to spare.

Using that property like a hidden hinge, they pulled off today’s maneuver.

Yekase finally softened, no longer slinging Dorothy over her shoulder; she shifted to a princess carry like lifting a moonlit bride. “You did great. Without you, the city wouldn’t have risen fast enough. You and Lu Yao, go rest somewhere safe.”

“Teacher.”

“Mm?”

“Feel free to praise me more, like rain on a drought.”

“…pfft.”

Peace Walker idled not far beyond the suburbs, like a patient ox. Yekase set Dorothy atop the mech’s head like a nesting bird and fled under Lu Yao’s curses.

They returned to Soville City, still in turmoil, like a hive kicked open.

Ling Yi had finished resting; she donned her white initial-mode armor like fresh snow. The two met on the road, then reached the small plaza and found Jiang Bailu.

“I’m done…” The woman who’d just saved a city collapsed like mud, breath fogging like a dying kettle. “My brain almost exploded… my cognition system’s rotting… I’m getting mentally corrupted…”

“Cognition system? Mental corruption?” The doubt hit like a cold splash. Your power’s a unique primitive base, almost like runes—how could… wait, damn, runes really can warp cognition.

If her ability went berserk and Jiang Bailu turned into Jiang Brain-Dead, they’d be finished. Panic prickled like ants. Yekase dropped to one knee by Jiang’s unfocused gaze and held up two fingers. “How many?”

“—Not that bad yet!” Jiang weakly lifted a hand, pushing her aside like moving wet paper. “It’s like… suddenly memorizing a whole dictionary in one instant… I’m better now, but earlier, really…”

“Suddenly memorizing a whole dictionary.” Ling Yi half-understood, brows knotting like twine. But Yekase grasped that abstract image immediately—because it matched her own reaction when she cranked Infinite Force Perception to max.

Even after countless trials, her senses still burned like singed wires, and only fusion could clear and reset that state. Could Jiang recover fully by blood-drinking alone?

If a flood of junk data stayed lodged in her mind like silt, unable to drain…

Yekase lowered her head like a penitent. “I get it. My plan was reckless. I won’t make you take that risk again.”

“So I…” Jiang rarely showed such weakness before her, shame knotting like a tight scarf. She stammered, cheeks hot. “I want… a doctor’s reward—tongue-kiss.”

“—You held back all that time just for this?!”

“We agreed the mouth was mine!” Ling Yi flared like a cat.

“That’s what you’re fixated on?!” Yekase’s voice spiked like a snapped string.

“What else can I do! The Doctor didn’t pick me in the end! Sister-in-law’s watching from the sky—how could I dig any deeper!” Jiang snapped, temper sparking like flint.

“You’re surprisingly pure! And ‘watching from the sky’—why say it like I’m some widow hovering in the clouds!”

Bad—voices too loud, drawing a ring of stares like moths to a lantern.

The eyes around them felt sharp as needles. Yekase glanced left and right, hunting for an inn like a fox seeking a burrow. A several-story-tall black puppet strode down the street toward the plaza. Tourists scattered like leaves, clearing an empty road. Thanks to that, the onlookers also bolted.

“Eh?! Right, we never found the giant-killer’s main body—he didn’t run?” Yekase shouted, drawing her Gunblade like a gleam, then swore at the empty chamber—five shots spent, no reload. She holstered it and pulled Southern Sky Cross instead, while Ling Yi and Jiang stayed lost in their nonsense spat:

“I’ve only kissed once—my turn first!” “Then go ask Ivaris!”

The giant puppet halted before them, shadow pooling like ink. “You… all of you—time and again you ruin my performance. My carefully prepared glorious explosions wasted! You’ll pay with your lives!”

Five fingers thick as utility poles carved the air like scythes, slashing at the two who still bickered, oblivious—

“Don’t bother us! Luminous Infinity! / Coffee Moon—!!” Their voices cracked like thunder.

Endless silver light speared the warped space like moonbeams through water. The black puppet froze mid-sentence, twisted like a cruller. Light-blades sliced it into a thousand shards that clattered and clanged across the stones.

“And you probably force the Doctor every single night to do things she doesn’t want!” “I do not! At most once a week, and lately no toys!” “I don’t believe you—unless you take me along!”

“…” Yekase sullenly stowed the staff, silence pooling like dusk.

“—Let’s go meet up with Lu Yao first! She’s got a few new allies who want to talk to me!” Her voice rose like a bell, cutting the fog.

That shout finally stopped their pointless quarrel like a slammed door.

“You’re right. We’re still mid-incident. I was too amateur.” Ling Yi’s self-reproach sat on her shoulders like wet cloth.

Jiang Bailu sighed in relief and pushed herself up from the ground—then couldn’t rise, like a puppet with cut strings.

“Huh?” Her body… turned to silence.

She could feel Coffee Moon’s presence, and the space within range like ripples in a pond. But not the concrete—her own body and limbs were snow without sensation.

She’d pushed the Doctor’s shoulder earlier, clear as sunlight. Now she tried to lift her right hand—nothing, like a dead branch.

She was sitting, yet in her sensory world she’d lost the body, become a head hovering inches above the earth like a drifting lantern.

“Doctor, save me!” Panic burst like a startled bird.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ve got high-level paraplegia!” The words fell like stones.

“???” The other two stared, shock pale as chalk.

Yekase swept Jiang’s body with Infinite Force Perception, sight threading like a loom. She saw chaotic, tangled Sorcery streamlines clogging inside her, unlike the smooth lines of normal Sorcery—everything knotted into a single twisted braid.

…Waste Sorcery.

The lingering feel of swallowing a city hadn’t retracted, like a tide stuck at high water. When she casually erased the black puppet, she pushed the already precarious primitive base. In that instant, a massive Sorcery surge collapsed into an aberrant type inside a narrowed, brittle base.

Force-casting beyond your Sorcery throughput leaves waste in the body like sludge… and Jiang Bailu had packed an entire base’s worth.

“What do we do?! If I end up disabled, Doctor, you’re responsible!” Jiang’s voice shook like a broken string.

“You call that a diagnosis?!” Ling Yi gripped her limp arm and shook hard—no response, like pulling a rope tied to air.

“No, this is Sorcery and base territory. I’m asking Alicia Alicia!”

Alice would definitely demand payment; better ping her own teacher first—Sandryon, an Ancient Alchemy master. It’d been a while. Yekase scrolled her ever-growing contacts down to S, found the name.

“Master, help!” Her plea flew like a sparrow.

“What happened?” Sandryon’s voice came cool as mist.

“My disciple’s got high-level paraplegia!” The words landed like hail.

“???” Confusion hung like fog.

“We reinforced a superpower’s primitive base with mixed Infinite Power, and overused it. Now she’s got massive waste Sorcery buildup—no sensation below the head!” Yekase’s explanation spilled like a river.

Sandryon heard those key words and understood most, like a chessmaster seeing the board. “Pouring other Infinite Power into a primitive base—how did you think that was fine?! One kind’s already dangerous; you used a mix?! Do you not value your lives?!”

“We didn’t know! Can we save her? If not, I’ll toss her to the Causal Horizon and gamble!” Yekase’s urgency burned like a torch.

“Hey!” Jiang shouted, outrage flashing like lightning.

“There’s hope, but she needs a master-level runesmith to rebuild the base fast. The longer you wait, the higher the chance of irreversible damage.” Sandryon’s verdict fell like a judge’s gavel.

“Can you do it?”

“Of course. Except…” Sandryon hesitated, voice wobbling like a loose string. “I’ll need about a day to arrive. Your dear grand-disciple might not last.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid of heights. I fly slow.” Her admission thudded like a pebble.

“…” You’re so hopeless. Yekase bit back the joke; her patience stiffened like iron. Time mattered more than teasing.

They’d have to beg Alice, no way around it. Yekase chose, hoisted Jiang onto her back like carrying a sleeping fox.

“Ling Yi, I’m taking her for treatment right now. You head to the outskirts and meet Lu Yao. Also check those four painters who approached me. If their ability passes, judge their character.”

“Eh?! How am I supposed to tell?” Ling Yi’s worry fluttered like a trapped moth.

“I trust your eye.” Yekase didn’t wait for more. She spoke a Celestial Speech flight spell and tore upward from the ground like a streak. She arrowed toward the towering World Tree on the horizon.

Jiang Bailu lay on her back, chin knocking Yekase’s slender shoulder, a dull ache like rain on stone. She kept quiet, words drowned like reeds.

She couldn’t understand. She’d awakened a unique power, and her body had become a full vampire—everything looked bright as spring. Why was she still trailing the now-shorter Yekase, chasing her back like a shadow?

Why was she still clinging like this, making Yekase ask a troublesome person for help on her behalf, like a boat needing a tow?

“Doctor, I—”

“It’s okay. You’ll be fine.” The comfort fell soft as snow.

…That’s not the problem. Though that is also a problem, the hard knot in Jiang’s chest stayed, like a stone in a shoe.

She knew she couldn’t be Yekase’s only one, but before, at least everyone shared the same starting line like runners at the gun. Now, Yekase had told her seriously—she seems to like Ivaris.

The Doctor once didn’t understand love, and only radiated kindness by instinct. After one night with Ivaris, she finally answered the nine-year-old question, like a broken seal. And Jiang wasn’t the standard answer.

Just thinking it put her in a boundless dark plain, swallowed by loneliness and void like winter night. It felt like everything she lived on drifted away like retreating tide.

Tears spilled unchecked down her cheeks like warm rivers, soaking Yekase’s shoulder.

“Even if I rewound time… how do I keep from loving you…” Her voice trembled like a thin string.

Yekase stayed silent for a while, then smiled, a crescent like a new moon. “The Longlifers I know told me—”

“In two hundred years you won’t ask these questions anymore. Yet the few of us will still stand by each other. Time’s span, the border of life and death, and the subtle shades of feeling won’t split us. That’s my answer.” Her words settled like dew at dawn.