A rainbow pillar speared the sky, like an airdrop in a battle royale, and everyone knew the Golden Apple had fallen into the world.

At the garden’s edge, Peace Walker and Peter clashed like thunder and steel, while the Iron Cross Knights slipped through shrubs, bypassing the eerie maid automaton, rushing for the pillar’s base.

But someone had beaten them to it.

A dozen soldiers stood ready, each gripping a brown stick-shaped thing like a cudgel.

No personal armor—like a mantis bracing against a chariot, like ants shaking a tree. The Iron Cross Knights smirked, juiced their thrusters, and charged.

The last French army formed a line to receive them—behind their backs rose the World Tree, so there was nowhere to fall back.

They had never fought a day in their lives. Their only weapons were baguettes, their armor discarded, their shields a few cutting boards and dented iron pots from the kitchen.

Their enemy was fully armored—Europe’s dreaded Iron Cross Knights, army elites even the man with the little mustache would think twice about.

But every one of them believed this: if they seized the Golden Apple’s boundless power, France would survive the sudden catastrophe and rise again.

General Nicolas had gone to pluck the apple. They were the last line.

“Vive la France...”

Someone shouted it into the wind.

Hard baguettes hammered cutting boards, ringing like tin bells.

“Come on then, hounds of the Church!”

“““Vive la France—!!”””

At the base of the pillar.

Fujiwara Ningning had wondered what the World Tree’s new branch would look like. She thought she figured it out, and then it slipped away again.

Dozens of apple trees stood before her, every bough heavy with golden fruit, their branches bowed like old backs under treasure.

Hide a tree in a forest. Hide an apple in an orchard.

A black shadow shot off her back like a startled bat.

“If we don’t know which one, then pick them all! The victor is the first to seize the ‘napkin’—I, Charlotte, will be that one!”

Charlotte unfolded from bat to girl midair, and reached for the nearest fruit.

“You were tailing me?! Damn it, stop!” Fear hit first; Fujiwara grabbed for her, but it was already too late.

“On a narrow road, the bold win!”

Charlotte plucked the first apple, cradled it, and reached for a second—

—whoosh.

Golden fire bloomed like dawn.

“...Eh?”

Doubt flickered in Charlotte’s voice.

She looked down at the apple in her arms.

She saw only flame swallowing her body, a blaze that devoured her in an instant. The young vampire didn’t even have time to scream. Like the sect leader who’d died not long before, she turned to drifting ash in the sun.

“...”

Fujiwara and Nicolas stared at the spot where she’d stood, terror filling their eyes, their feet rooted like stones.

This was the World Tree’s last gate, the final anti-theft ward—hundreds of identical golden apples. Pick wrong, and the flood of Sorcery burned you to nothing.

Brute force wouldn’t work. No Sorcery fluctuation to sense. What now?

“It’s bad. The Iron Cross Knights just walked into the orchard... my brave brothers are already...”

Nicolas bit his lip, seized Fujiwara’s arm. “Miss, let’s hide. Those Church knights won’t find the right answer anytime soon!”

“R-right!”

Fujiwara feared death; the Knights’ reputation was legend. She wouldn’t stick around to die. When she nodded, Nicolas slung her over his shoulder and ran flat out the other way.

They dove into head-high brush.

They bellied down on damp soil, barely breathing, peering through leaves at the Iron Cross Knights.

The knights froze at the sight too. On the captain’s order, one reached out and picked a fruit—he died clean and quick. The rest locked up, awkward and silent.

“The royals must know the trick! The king and the crown prince can’t move. Go seize the traitor princess Dorothy!”

They broke ranks and scattered.

Fujiwara and Nicolas glanced at each other, faces close to the dirt.

“Where’s Dorothy?” Fujiwara whispered.

“I don’t know,” Nicolas whispered back.

Ahead lay a hundred “Golden Apples” they didn’t dare touch. Behind, two mechs kept clanging like anvils in a forge. Between blade and cliff, nowhere to stand.

How did it come to this?

They reached the place first.

They brainwashed the French general.

Two good turns overlapped, a dream stacked on a dream.

So why did it end like this?

Fujiwara bit her finger, anger bitter as iron. “Damn it. I was counting on this credit to make the boss bump me from number three to number one...”

The hunt for Dorothy began.

The Iron Cross Knights sprinted through emptied palaces and echoing corridors. They searched every room that could hide a person and every wall that might hide a tunnel; they even dragged up nests of roaches and rats.

But the golden-haired girl was nowhere.

Somewhere along the way, she had evaporated. She and the three ghosts of the Cosmic Wizard slipped from every gaze like smoke.

The French royal city was big, but not so big a girl could dissolve into it like a drop in the sea.

In Huaxia’s old law, you could keep knives at home, but armor meant the headsman. Europe had its mirror—restrictions on defensive magic.

The most famous defense was the Trinity Ring Grand Barrier around Mysidia, set by the Magus-King Endymion, which forced true names and nullified attack magic.

Second was the Paris Grand Barrier... mostly used to soothe hearts during royal speeches. It had been offline for two hundred years.

Beyond that, there were no such barriers. Even Labyrinth City and Jerusalem relied on active defense systems.

Personal magic was chained even tighter—the only allowed “self-defense” was using an Oz Floating Disc for spatial blocking. Invisibility, healing, purification—these circulated only among high nobles.

The milk Sandryon passed to Yekase belonged to Ancient Alchemy. The Church had no say.

So when Dorothy stayed lost, every Iron Cross Knight landed on the same answer: Dorothy was royal, trained in magic, and a natural caster who didn’t need Celestial Speech. She must have used invisibility to flee.

What to do?

Tear off the veil and seize the king and the prince.

So as the knights stormed toward the great hall, a nondescript manhole cover lifted in a garden corner, and Yekase climbed out.

“Bingo.”

She muttered it in some dialect and set the cover back with care.

She looked to the garden’s heart. Lu Yao had, per plan, drawn Peter away step by step. Before launch, Yekase had secretly fitted it with Arcadia’s black hole engine. Once the pilot noticed the energy never ran dry, she should be able to finish the fight.

As for both parties in the orchard, Yekase had watched it all. And Dorothy had already given her the standard answer.

“Celestial, parallel, passion, battle—”

She lined up the affixes as she stepped into the trees.

“—Levitation Spell.”

Every apple dropped at once.

Gold fire washed over the grove like a tidal blaze. Because she hadn’t touched them, the flames didn’t lick Yekase, and she adapted to the heat in a breath.

The answer was simple, and it was anything but polite.

There was no test of wisdom. The picker either had a body tough enough to tank the Sorcery flood, or found a way around it. Otherwise, no cleverness would matter—ordinary folk never had the right.

That was Newton and his alchemists’ answer, the royal French lineage’s answer.

The pioneer who broke Ancient Alchemy’s monopoly and opened magic to high and low was, in truth, an elitist. Popular magic was a by-product. The real aim was to levy a Sorcery tax, year after year... all for a single legendary Philosopher’s Stone.

When the flames dwindled, the orchard lay as a carpet of ash.

Only one apple remained, bright as hammered gold—

The true Golden Apple.

Countless dreamed of it. Countless bled for it. All for this purest crystal of Sorcery.

It swelled from the size of a fist to a basketball, then settled into two halves, just as Yekase had sensed down the rabbit hole.

“You did it.”

“...Yeah. I did.”

Alicia Alicia dropped lightly to the ground, like a petal.

Yekase glanced at her, then bent and lifted—no, hugged—the massive Golden Apple.

“I made preparations. I spun plans. I killed so many people, all for this.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Not really. As agreed, I’ll give you the Golden Apple. And you’ll let me see your dream—that’s what we said.”

“That’s right.”

“But how should I address you, romantic witch, my teacher? Do I call you Alicia Alicia, or...”

There was no thrill in Yekase’s face, no shining hope for a better world.

“—or should I call you Isaac Newton? Four centuries have passed. Let’s talk.”