The captain eyed Ivaris and the mermaid on her shoulder—one layered up, one stark naked—and felt baffled, like fog rolling over a quiet bay.

“We’re both onmyoji. We’ve got a few secret arts for moving freely underwater, so we don’t need dive suits. But this kid loves fairy tales. She’s dead set on being a mermaid and couldn’t wait to slip into it.”

“…I see.”

His face said he didn’t, but they were Dewa Tech’s honored guests. Ask more, err more; better to smile and wave it off. These lovebirds played wild.

Even if trouble came, he’d already given every required warning.

The submarine punched through the churning vortex, then slid into the calm eye of the storm.

The water here was glass-clear. Sunlight poured through the last faint swirl at the surface, flooding the seafloor chamber, like everything wore a deep-green filter.

Fish and shrimp drifted like flecks of silver. Subs and divers busied themselves, rising and sinking like seeds on a tide.

And at the silent center—

The prototype of the world’s first low-gravity megacity, the Origin Dragon Palace, stood there.

It wasn’t the soak-and-bubble city Ivaris had imagined, nor a dome-sheltered island. It was a colossal steel pillar, ribbed by dozens of rings that narrowed downward. Thin rods with paddles linked ring to core. Every building and facility clung to those rings, circling the pillar in a slow, solemn rotation.

Hydro power, then? No—the steel pillar itself turned, like a mountain-sized auger grinding its teeth.

The city itself was a working drill, burrowing into the seabed’s depths.

Ivaris couldn’t help blurting, “Holy— Ori—”

Staff wriggled into normal dive suits, hefted waterproof crates, and filed into the flooding chamber. Ivaris cradled the mermaid in a princess carry, standing in a shadowed corner.

The racing mermaid seemed resigned to being a toy. She nestled in Ivaris’s arms like a sparrow seeking warmth. Her body only twitched along the control stud’s vibration, no more futile struggle. Without limbs, struggle had no leverage; without leverage, no evolution bar would fill. She could trade for Mind Energy and force-break through… yet she hadn’t thought to, or wasn’t in a rush.

There wouldn’t be any races in a yet-unfinished city anyway. Bloom Doll wouldn’t even run her debut before retiring. A pity, like a spring flower cut before it opens.

Ivaris turned the mermaid’s face toward the Origin Dragon Palace. Deprived of five senses, the mermaid let Infinite Force Perception bloom, blanketing the waters. But seawater holds no Infinite Power. The palace’s machines pulsed with energy—yet a strange, threadlike field screened it away. Nothing reached her.

Her last link to the world snapped. She fell into a complete, soundless night.

The mermaid hummed low, like a whale’s distant song.

Ivaris thought she was savoring the little toy—there was nothing else to do—and didn’t mind it.

Sea poured up and drowned the prep room. Ivaris flipped on an oxygenator for her—unnecessary; she could evolve gills. But stripping a mermaid’s ability to breathe air had ceremony. After losing face, limbs, rights, and name, even the last proof of land-birth was gone.

This step marked a racing mermaid’s fall. A farewell to what was human. From now to forever, only an “object.”

For the prior two hundred and eleven, it was brutal and terrifying, a no-return path under a Sinister Organization’s weight. For a vacationing couple, it was a game in precious free time, just roleplay.

The iron door to outside slowly opened. Staff flowed out, like a ribbon of bubbles.

At the same time, the mermaid found herself “seeing” again—not through the mask’s fake sea-blue eyes, nor her real ones sealed in gel. A non-existent organ caught the contours of the world.

Sonar kicked on cleanly.

She sensed the Origin Dragon Palace’s odd design and faced that steel drill, over ten kilometers in diameter. Even her tail forgot to flick.

Suddenly, as if she understood something, she powered away into open water.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Ivaris couldn’t match a racing mermaid’s speed. She locked both arms around her waist and kicked for show. The mermaid left the sub, then didn’t head for the Origin Dragon Palace. She circled it instead, swimming hard opposite the vortex’s spin.

Roaring water hammered their bodies. The mermaid didn’t yield; she leaned into the current. Flash Energy flared behind her, trailing a red comet-line, pushing speed toward no limits.

“Hahahahahaha! So fast—faster than Salamanda!”

Does Flash Energy count as cheating in mermaid racing? If not, could she own the Japan Derby and sweep the Triple Crown? That prize pool was no joke…

Arcadia’s Infinite Power Industrial Park was taking shape, but revenue would take years. We could’ve banked on the cardboard spaceship, but Yekase had a moment and priced it absurdly low. The budget still felt tight, like winter string.

Ivaris wrote in laser across the water: want to race two more years, give Bloom Doll a whole life, make a cool billion yen, then go? The mermaid shook her head.

If she doesn’t like racing, why swim upstream with such joy? There are four free years before we return to Huaxia. Sealed in a mermaid skin won’t block her study of Infinite Power. She even looks fond of it. Isn’t that perfect?

Maybe the same play for two days is play. Two years turns into punishment.

The mermaid didn’t know what Ivaris understood. In under ten minutes, she looped the Origin Dragon Palace once. Then twice. Then again…

…Wait, Yekase’s never this energetic.

Ivaris sensed something off. Her mind snapped clear.

She grasped a possibility—a “reason” for the all-out swim.

An endless vortex. A city-sized drill. A void where Infinite Power couldn’t be felt—

“Spiral Force…?”

A round fish eye fixed on Ivaris.

Eh?

They were still at high speed. A “motionless” shape slid beside them—how?

Either it matched their vector, or—

Its size erased distance.

“…?!”

The current scrambled itself.

The fish—a whale shark over a hundred meters long—opened an abyssal mouth toward them.

Water reversed all around, like a bottomless pull ready to swallow them as if they were shrimp.

“It’s been force-grown with Mind Energy. It’s here to keep secrets.”

“Eh?! How are you talking, darling?!”

“I chewed up the gag and digested it. Then I evolved an auditory sensor.”

Yekase’s voice drifted from under the mask, calm, saying impossible things like they were housekeeping.

“All Infinite Power in this vortex is shrouded by a gravitational field the Spiral Force creates—the Black Domain. Spiral Force is rare. Almost no one knows how to counter the shroud, so they can do secret experiments with impunity. Dewa invited us, betting I could peel off their veil, then claim credit.”

“Not the time, right?! Big fish! We’re getting eaten! I don’t even know if the laser can pierce—”

“The solution is to fill the anti-spiral with other Infinite Power. Which I just did. If the Black Domain’s undone, can’t you sense other energy reactions inside it?”

…Oh. Right.

First time seeing something this huge woke a fear carved in bone. I forgot.

Even with the scolding, Ivaris wanted to laugh. Yekase’s tone was grumpy; her state was adorable.

Inside the whale shark’s belly pulsed complex Infinite Power. Not just Mind Energy—there was Omega Ray and Sorcery, even Neptune Energy struck from the roster.

Did it swallow that machinery?

Why would the Origin Dragon Palace’s team let a beast this big cruise nearby and stall development?

“We’re going ‘inside to check.’”

“Knew it. A chance encounter in a giant fish’s belly—classic fairy tale. I love it.”

They let the skewed current carry them. Their silhouettes faded into the whale shark’s throat—

Head over heels, they shot along the esophagus into the stomach.

Splash splash splash!

The water thinned. The world changed, like a tidal cave at low tide. All around lay fish corpses and no small number of man-made things, each half-digested, each a frayed secret.

Ivaris set Yekase down gently, worry first: “Breathing okay?”

“Fine. Evolution incoming.”

“Want me to take off the mask?”

“This thing recited a wall of warnings to me. All in Japanese; I caught almost none. I only got that breaking it triggers punishment. Check my neck—do I have a new collar?”

She did. A seamless band clamped her slender neck. No turning, no tilting. Not even a finger could slide into the gap. Bold letters on the front read: PUNISHMENT IN PROGRESS.

Asphyxiation penalty? For her, that’s more like a treat.

“Took off the gag and got this. If we rip the mask, the gel will plug my mouth immediately. Better to leave it.”

“Okay.”

No freeing the body for the same reason? Right now Yekase was literally a fish out of water. Without Ivaris, she couldn’t take a single step.

“Also, Flash Energy to Mind Energy has a conversion rate cap. New limbs need time to rehab. Don’t play body-destruction games outside Sky Island next time. You’ll flip the cart.”

“Okay okay, I’ll behave next time.”