This drab, graffiti-scarred mech… is the prototype of Thunderbolt Zeus?!

Lu Yao looked it over again, hope flickering like a lantern in fog; still nothing like a lightning god hiding in stone.

“Then why does my ‘Impression’ show something I don’t know?” Her doubt rose like mist before dawn.

“Because it’s always here, a river-stone no dreamscape can move. The one I want you to take sleeps inside this cockpit.”

Lu Yao nodded, steadied her breath like a diver before a midnight lake, climbed the lowered right arm, and stopped at the plate guarding the cockpit like a shrine door. Oddly, only this section was carved with care, lines neat as frost on glass.

The ‘last person’ the Magical Girl begged her to carry waited behind that armor, in a hush like sealed snow.

The second-generation Magical Girls dragged into the void by the Exogenous Sovereign should’ve been quietly brought back by Yekase, no drums, no lanterns; so who lay asleep here?

Lu Yao lifted the plate, gentle as lifting a silence-lid on a still pond.

…

A girl reclined in the pilot’s seat, pale as moonlight on steel.

Fourteen, maybe fifteen at most, just past the edge of loli; her layered long hair shimmered like sunrise, outer strands gold, inner veils at ear and nape bright sky-blue. She wore a white sailor uniform over a black under-suit that hugged from throat to heel, yet up close it gleamed—metal, a fitted armor like a second skin of winter ice.

Her head tilted, like she’d dozed against the chair, a sparrow napping on a branch.

—No.

Her chest didn’t rise; no tide of breath, no whisper of life wind.

Even in a space no mind could tally, Lu Yao still breathed on habit like a shore tugging waves; the girl stayed utterly still, a mural fused into the graffiti mech.

Lu Yao reached out, hand lantern-steady in a cave.

…Touch.

No response. She summoned two mechanical hands like cranes in moonlight, lifted the girl, and carried her back with footsteps light as snow.

Lalabel stroked the girl’s cheek, voice soft as a lullaby bell. “Her name is Lorameia—alright, go. The Differential Closed Cosmos is a stage of possibilities; aside from me, already sealed like a coffin verdict, everything else gets gnawed by nearby concepts.”

“What’s concept erosion?” Her unease pricked like nettles.

“For example, stay near Ika too long and you’ll get dyed with ‘Magical Girl,’ ‘Flash Energy,’ and such—like ink soaking silk. Your body shifts irreversibly… you’ll resemble us.”

…That’s a disaster?!

Only Yekase and Ivaris are still active; Ling Yi barely counts as half. If Lu Yao picks up the Magical Girl concept, face stuck at ten-something, fights throwing sparkly effects like fireworks—she’d die of embarrassment before any enemy lands a hit!

“How do I get out of here?” The urgency bit like winter wind.

“The hypercube will carry you through hyperspace; blink, and you’re back on Earth.”

Ha, that easy—like stepping from shadow into sun.

“We still need to chase Omega M!”

“Still? Ika already left the roving whale’s belly.”

“????” Her gut flipped like a startled fish.

Good one—bolting before the crew even regrouped?!

“She searched, couldn’t find you, plans to finish the job then find you slow,” Lalabel said for old war-friend’s sake, voice a calm river. “You taking Lorameia home lifts the weight behind our backs.”

“…Fine.”

The radiant cube’s antimatter-water glowed like stars in a jar; it hurt to waste it, but she poured it out, a silver stream in dark. She set the cube down; it spun and grew like a seed sprouting, and she took Lorameia from the mechanical hands like cradling dawn.

A deep breath, steady as mountains.

“Fair winds.”

Lalabel waved goodbye, a petal drifting from a willow.

—Lu Yao dove headfirst into the boundary, a swallow into a cliff cleft.

…

…

When Yekase and Richard wobbled the Millennium Bug out through the roving whale’s mouth, they’d already threaded the black hole array and drifted into the starfield behind the firewall.

A clean, eerie emptiness—space scrubbed bare like a dry lakebed.

No artifacts, no planets, no dust; distant starlight smothered by black holes, horizons poured full of ink. Only R2D2 kept pace behind them, cutting wind with space compression like a dolphin riding the curl.

With the holo map, Richard managed a straight line, a plumb thread in night, and Omega M’s mark crept closer, like a beacon behind smoke.

Yekase fiddled with the map and triggered a recording, the cylinder officer’s voice echoing like a tin bell in a cave:

“This empty starfield is called the Black Domain, a treasure said to be left by a vanished super-civilization, waiting for a next civilization that can master black holes. A cube lattice of over a hundred million micro black holes walls it in; any probe into the interior gets swallowed, no message returns.”

“The Ironheart Extinctors are strong, but I don’t think their single ships can traverse black holes, so we likely don’t need to investigate here.”

…

…

“My mistake. I should’ve tested this waypoint earlier.” Her cheeks warmed, a dawn blush in vacuum.

Too many roving whales roam, yet no one enters the Black Domain. Maybe R2D2 isn’t ordinary—awakened, a super roving whale, a leviathan born from deep gravity? No wonder she’s so huge.

Yekase leaned out the side window to thank R2D2, words ready like bread warm from the oven.

“Wh—”

R2D2’s smooth head was torn with wounds, blue blood jetting in vacuum like comet tails.

“You’re hurt! Was it the black holes?!” The question cracked like ice.

“Woooo—” The whale song rolled low; she shook her head, a lunar nod.

Why? No shared fate, yet she helps to this bleeding brink—like a guardian crossing a storm.

“I see the ship! Dead ahead!” Richard barked, voice flaring like a flare.

“Now of all times…!” Her decision tightened like a bowstring.

She’d heal with Flash Energy or Mind Energy, threads of warmth in frost—but Omega M skated shadows with counter-tracking gear; miss this chance and it’s gone like a startled deer. She bit it down, slid to the helm, hands sure as iron on a rudder.

“Maybe he used a silicon-life precision edge, found a balance, and slipped the array,” she muttered, mind a chessboard. “Without R2D2, even seeing him, we’d watch him ghost away.”

“What about that probabilistic counter-recon system?” Richard’s doubt panned like a spotlight.

“We’ve observed him; the system should be dead.” Her certainty sat like a stone.

He could still hop out between a simultaneous blink, a fox in thorns—so Yekase killed her eyes, and drove Infinite Force Perception to the limit, senses burning like a halo.

In the same empty dark, that Omega Ray bloomed like a lantern, a single flame in ink.

“I’ll keep continuous watch. Next we compress space and close.” Her words were steel.

Richard saw the ship swell in sight, lines sharpening like a blade—

“…?”

Not a ship; a roving whale, shape wide as a hill.

No—wrong.

“Woooo—!” R2D2’s call surged, anger bright as lightning.

Yekase caught the truth like a hook in the gut. “That ‘thing’… it’s not a roving whale! It’s—a living roving whale made into a ship!” Her voice was a knife.

Even the Omicron couldn’t traverse a black hole lattice. A roving whale’s impossible flesh rides the gravity tides, yet no whale has cause to risk life entering. So Omega M sheathed himself in a whale—armor to dodge the hunt, a butchered titan turned hull.

And the whale-turned-shell was—

“Woooo—!” The grief tolled like a funeral bell.

R2D2’s husband—C3PO.

R2D2 surged out from behind the Millennium Bug, speed like a torpedo under moonlight, rammed the “ship” broadside, and knocked it off course, while her scattered blood fanned wider, painting space a pale blue like dawn over sea.

“R2D2—!!” Yekase’s shout tore like fabric.

From C3PO’s mouth, a cannon slid forth, a thorn from a flower.

Omega M rotated the hull, aimed at the whale’s soft belly—tender flesh over starlit tide—

Fire!

Richard slammed a fist on the console. “Damn it! That’s savage! Damn!” His rage bit like wolves.

The Millennium Bug had no guns; they watched R2D2 pierced by the energy blast, drifting on shock like a leaf.

Yekase said nothing. She popped the window, climbed out, hauled herself to the top, boots braced in the metal frame Lu Yao left, stance rooted like a pine.

She drew Dawn of Eden and Southern Sky Cross, blades of morning and southern stars.

No wind in space, yet inertia pulled her skirt and hair back like banners. Yekase shut her eyes, one hand flew over the gunblade’s mechanisms like a sparrow flicking seeds.

Trigger pulled.

Rotate the cylinder, pull.

Rotate, pull—

Flash Energy, Mind Energy, Soul Power, Sorcery, Omega Ray, Spiral Force.

Six rounds, all Infinite Power gathered in the gunblade’s chamber like thunder trapped in a bottle—wild, ready to shatter, the strongest, a brick thrown by a titan.

She’d never try it on Earth; that ratio isn’t a ratio anymore. But here, the “starry sky” concept looms like a cathedral, and Southern Sky Cross takes its blessing.

She propped the staff, laid the gunblade across it like a bridge, and aimed by perception, far and clean, at Omega M.

Into an empty, black ocean, she breathed out, a cloud leaving a mountain.

“Thus—Heavenly Divide.”

—!

Six-colored rainbow light lanced silently through night, a scalpel of dawn.

It bisected C3PO’s corpse and the ship nesting inside with one blade of light.

Behind, it lit space; the beam’s end stretched and warped like taffy, curling around a spherical region, forming an almost still arc, a halo frozen in gravity.

At the Black Domain’s heart, a black hole, vast as a city swallowing sky.

Richard cut speed, panic cold as iron; the Millennium Bug had already crossed into the well, falling fast like a stone.

“Adjust angle! Skim the edge!” He wrestled the helm, sweat colder than vacuum.

Yekase’s voice steadied through the comm, river-calm; her perception locked on the wreck, unblinking as a hawk. She collapsed the deformed Eden’s Dawn, raised her right hand, fingers poised like a lotus.

When she stormed Shadow Curtain International’s Huaxia Branch, heart newly clarified, she’d learned to crush metal from afar with Flash Energy—a power like a silent fist. She’d guessed that’s why the Archmage title bears the ‘Sword of Annihilation’ prefix. Later, it faded—super-class emotions ebbing like tides. Now, under the starry sky’s blessing, it opened again like a gate.

“This move is called…”

Palm up, fingers spread like spring shoots,

—then a sharp clench, thunder in a fist.

“Origin Suppression.”

Across a distance that felt near and far like a mirage, the two halves of the ship balled instantly, crushed from all sides like tossed into a stellar hydraulic press, compact as a napkin under rain.

—Yet, a heartbeat before the scrap became a dense pellet, a mechanical sphere shot free, a panicked comet streaking toward the central black hole.

Yekase looked at the round escape pod, then down at the Millennium Bug, calculus cold as moonlight.

She was silent for less than five seconds, breath a held chord.

“Live.”

She kicked the ship’s top, a heel like a hammer, forcing the hull backward, buying precious room to curve their path away.

She blazed like a shooting star, racing after the escape pod.

“Miss Luciferin—?!”