Alice and the Flash Blade Princess faced each other across a long, silent gulf.

This wasn’t a fight between two people—three, maybe—but a clash of avatars on the occult plane.

The First Force that builds a deterministic cosmos—

and the First Ray that births a probabilistic cosmos.

And the victor would rewrite the universe’s rules across Earth.

The Flash Blade Princess knifed through the air in tight, three‑dimensional arcs, dodging the World Tree’s whipping boughs. She seized an opening and struck, a Blazing Rekindle meant to counter by pure attribute.

Jiang Bailu thought once, then obeyed reality. She dropped to the ground; Coffee Moon just couldn’t handle giants. Luckily Dorothy stood there too. They compared notes fast and chose to hunt the Holy Crusaders flooding into the city.

Alice wouldn’t let them.

02, 06, 07—Life’s Fruit!

The World Tree shook its rack of branches. Hundreds, thousands of golden fruits rained down. They hatched on impact, birthing grotesque things that closed in from every direction.

“So gross!” Jiang Bailu shouted as Coffee Moon smashed a bipedal dog with a human head. She turned to Dorothy, fishing for help.

“I don’t do AOE! Archmage, got any trick?”

“Do mages have to be omnipotent?!”

Dorothy tried to go circular‑saw like War Sovereigns Curse. But she wasn’t an Ascender. The result barely scratched the swarm. The Ironclad Knight and the Scarecrow covered her front and back. The lion that remained—

A lion?

Dorothy blinked. The lion only stood there—it wasn’t good for much else—and the magical aberrations refused to enter its radius, leaving a round patch of open ground.

“These shapeshifts… fear Little‑Guts? Do they keep animal instinct?”

The lion is king of beasts. It cowed wild creatures by simply existing.

“That vampire!”

“—Huh? You calling me?”

Jiang Bailu froze, then got it.

“Your power,” Dorothy asked, “can you make a sound‑amplifying ‘loudspeaker’?”

“A loudspeaker? Bend the waves outward? I probably can—why?”

Her gaze dropped to Little‑Guts.

Jiang hadn’t worked much with Dorothy, let alone shared a battle. No chance for real synergy. Still, she caught the idea in a heartbeat.

She pointed. A horn‑shaped, skewed force field formed in front of Dorothy.

“Little‑Guts, it’s your moment!”

Dorothy actually cheered on her own summoned ghost. The sturdy lion, bunched tight, shook out its mane. Courage flared. It opened wide into the field.

ROAR—

The field twisted the cry. Volume lifted. Pitch climbed. The roar detonated across the garden.

—

Trees bent as if in a typhoon.

—

The pond’s skin heaved and slapped.

—

Petals and leaves took flight.

—!!

It almost shook the air‑dueling Flash Blade Princess out of the sky.

A tide of aberrant magical creatures burst under the sonic barrage. Blood leaked from seven orifices. Skin split like rotten fruit.

“Little‑Guts, you did it! You even have Lion’s Roar!”

“Rrrow!”

The lion ghost wore a smug grin.

“…Kinda terrifying.” Jiang Bailu dispelled the field circling her body. She eyed the nearest carcass, a chill at her spine.

The wounded fringe broke and ran. The two of them pointed at the densest knots and sent their summoned powers to press the advantage.

“Wait… something’s off.”

Several thousand meters above, Yekase felt a snag. Doubt and response didn’t need words; they flashed through the one‑mind‑one‑body with Ling Yi.

“ZEROS!”

White 00 bloomed on the right.

“ROZES!”

Black 00 flared on the left.

“Flashblade Activation—Linked Blade!”

The original Flashblade System: ROZES.

The latest, brand‑new shape: ZEROS.

Two sequence‑zero forms snapped together. A second Linked Blade outer armor locked on. The Flash Blade Princess’s Infinite Force Perception surged, spiked, went berserk—range, depth, precision, all exploded upward.

And then Yekase saw it.

Sorcery ran through the World Tree’s trunk, pure and bright—like a river system seen from high above, like a web of capillaries packed tight, running from root to crown without rest.

Sorcery pooled at the tips and ripened into those monster‑hatching fruits. They fell. Jiang and Dorothy smashed them. Sorcery seeped back into the root and the mother body.

What was that cycle for?

Yekase didn’t know the fine operation of the Runic Words. Alice had baited her once and forced her to open Paradise Lost, fusing her to the World Tree.

So now, she refused to read Alice’s moves as “she wanted to spit some fodder to keep them busy.” She hunted the occult concept hiding inside, the effect it would birth.

Nutrients shipped. Fruit formed. Seeds fell. The fallen turned back to nutrients—

A cycle of life.

Repeat it again and again and something—

“…evolves…”

Ling Yi breathed it tiny.

Evolution?

Evolution.

“She’s… mimicking Flash Energy with Sorcery?!”

Flash Energy has a concept on the cosmic horizon. An Idol Base can reproduce it.

From the Crown,

first there is Nothing,

then Infinity,

then Infinite Light—

Ain‑Soph Aur.

A world of light beyond matter, endless and unbound.

The archetypal realm.

She couldn’t watch it continue. She had to cut it off.

The Flash Blade Princess raised the Sky Striker in both hands. The one‑meter metal blade drank Flash Energy and swelled, surging to five thousand meters.

“Blade Spell—”

“—Luminous Infinity!”

Light clashed with light; Flash Energy slammed into Flash Energy.

Alice didn’t bother with a guard. The World Tree’s trunk split clean from top to root, parted like a book.

Inside the crack was no wood grain. Golden red radiance spilled like molten dawn.

This power… the World Tree is a toy.

A giant hand made of radiance thrust out and hooked the edges of wood.

A second hand followed.

They pulled together and ripped the World Tree wide.

…

Jiang Bailu and Dorothy felt a pressure like a mountain, and looked up.

The sky bloomed with half‑transparent gears, ghostly and vast.

Centered on the broken World Tree, they meshed tight and formed a shell—a half‑dome that sealed the entire royal garden.

The gears spun up in a rush, shedding lightning interlaced gold and red. Trillions of tiny electric spheres blasted from the wound and rose, a star‑river blazing across night. They linked tip to tail, grew like living tissue, evolved in place.

Thunderlight gathered. It took on human form—veins, vessels, channels—until a giant of lightning stood, tall enough to shoulder the sky.

Ten disk‑like point masses floated on its body, each etched with runes too arcane to parse.

Yekase squinted. Four of them were exactly the 06, 07, 08, and 09 Alice had taught her.

I am Isaac Newton! Walker of the Flaming Sword, seated on the Throne of Knowledge, the one who governs evolution and transcendence!

“How are you playing Knowledge now? Which faction is that?”

A lightning giant—she’d fought one before.

That time, she’d assembled all six Infinite Powers and fired a theater‑exclusive finisher. She didn’t have that luxury now.

And the gold‑red lightning that made Alice’s form was Sorcery transmuted into Flash Energy. In nature, it wasn’t different from what they used.

Only, the will of “evolution” split down the grain. If the Flash Blade Princess stood for possibilities that lead into the unknown, Alice stood for the opposite—possibility seized in one’s own hand, a tyrant’s certainty.

Like… reverse Flash Energy.

Yekase knew that Infinite Power.

It was Shadow Curtain International’s final trump, the legend that let their mechs edit causality. The Infinite Power of myth—

Demon King Power.

In another place, Yekase would’ve screamed with joy at the secret she’d glimpsed, and folded Sorcery into her invincible grand unifying equation. But now—

Sky, turn.

Time, surge like a tide.

Stars across the vault began to move in unison. The sky rotated. Their tracks drew endless lines of light.

Energy piled, terrifying and hot. Alice twisted the parameters of the local cosmos. She seized the curvature of spacetime.

I will surpass time, space, probability, limit. I don’t need unpredictable possibility—I will be the one who leads humanity forward, the Supra‑Being!

Space thickened, viscous and heavy like liquid. The stars rolled. The sun rose behind the eastern mountains, and set in a heartbeat. The moon flipped like in a jump‑cut, waning to waxing, waxing to waning.

Time began to race.

Yekase, as an Ascender, didn’t flinch. Ling Yi, half a step from ascension, fused with her and held firm. Jiang Bailu’s vampire blood sustained her. But—

But Dorothy?

A tremor shook the Flash Blade Princess. Fear bit deep. She looked down.

The fifteen‑year‑old French girl stood dazed, staring at her hands—the miracle falling on her like snow.

She shot up taller. Her chest filled out.

Her hair spilled to her ankles.

She burned through the most brilliant years of her life in a blink, and that gold turned dry, split at the ends, faded to a gray‑white winter.

She raised her head.

The face was old now, a stranger’s, softened by time.

“I…”

Warmth and life seeped away. Dorothy finally understood.

“…I don’t think I helped much,” she said, lip bloodless, and then forced a fearless smile.

“Teacher—France’s, Europe’s future… I’m leaving it to you.”