After that, Lorameia slipped into family life like a retired grandpa claiming his sunlit bench in the park.

Ling Yi invited her to play, and got turned down again and again; instead, Yekase’s lab drew her like a moth to a quiet lamp. She sat by, watching Yekase trace circuits with an engraving stylus bought in Ivalice.

A robot watching machines being made—was that like humans watching childbirth videos, breath fogging a glass screen?

Yekase didn’t care about robot ethics; a silent audience rustled past her focus like wind through reeds.

But a few days of quiet, and that audience began pecking at her bad habits like sparrows on a rice field.

“Your cuffs aren’t rolled. What if you scratch the finish?”

“Easy—the southbridge is crushing that capacitor.”

“The calibrator’s right there. Why are you eyeballing it?”

Nitpicks multiplied like fine drizzle on a tin roof; even giving face because she was her old man’s work, Yekase found her patience thinning like worn sandpaper.

Finally, after Lorameia pointed out for the thirty‑seventh time that she loved throttling flow by feel, Yekase set down the guide rail, a storm line between her brows.

“Are you my dad?!”

Instead of reflecting or blinking in shock, Lorameia’s eyes brightened like stars at dawn, full of expectant light.

“You said I… who?”

Yekase drew a long breath, letting her temper settle like dust after rain.

“Sorry. I got heated.”

“Tch.”

“Must be Dad, that gearhead, baked a bias to fixate on details into your thinking,” she said, voice dry as iron filings. “That bastard loves picking nits.”

“Bastard?! Details?!”

Anger leapt like a struck match—insulting the father before the daughter was rude as kicking an ancestral tablet.

Yekase slapped her forehead, a switch flipping in her mind. That smug guy had cranked her respect‑for‑creator value up like a dial to eleven.

When it came to bragging in the mechanical arts, father and daughter were forged from the same billet; the lineage ran like a straight grain through steel.

Under the gaze of a nearby overseer, Yekase forced her sloppy habits into line, like a river pressed back into banks. It felt like college shop class again, recalling the old lathe master barking nose‑to‑nose, voice sharp as a chisel.

“I’ll take you around the City of Ivalice,” she said, closing the dustless workstation’s glass with a soft, rainy click. “Got other business there today.”

“What business?”

“Shooting a public service ad to keep the peace.”

“Oh.”

Lorameia thought, like a crane tilting its neck at a new pond—being a robot, she should show proper interest in the mechanics city. Watching from the Horizon had been a far view; being there would be clear as water in hand.

“Wonder what novel alchemical machinery we’ll see…”

“Huh? How do you know Ivalice has lots of machinists?” Yekase’s eyes narrowed like knife‑edges. “The Machine God’s creations shouldn’t linger on the Horizon, in theory.”

“Ah! That’s because…”

Her heart fluttered—anxious yet eager—like a sparrow between branches; she stole a glance at Yekase’s face.

“What databases did Dad load into you?”

“Uh, all sorts.”

You exasperating child, Lorameia thought, teeth on edge like chalk on slate.

For Yekase, anything touching the Causal Horizon, deduction lost to Infinite Force Perception, like paper maps to the wind.

That high‑dimensional space was too idealist; nothing there was surprising, like clouds that change shapes by will.

Her senses said Lorameia’s Flash Energy lacked the aura of the Sky‑Thunder Ar Zeus. So her mind never turned that way, a compass refusing a false north.

But there was a deeper reason neither of them had noticed, buried like roots under stone.

Raised under her old man’s shadow, she chose her road watching his back, a line of fate like a path through pines. Her mouth tossed “old man” and “gearhead” with rough ease, yet her heart revered him more than anyone.

Even if, in time, clues braided together enough to guess Lorameia’s true identity, she would honor choice like a vow. If this loli mech‑girl from beyond light speed wouldn’t confess, she’d let truth sink like a stone under a closed differential universe.

Whether the “old man himself” or “the old man’s creation,” she gave absolute respect, steady as a mountain.

It mirrored when Liu RuoYuan first came to the Twin Towers—both sisters knew, yet never pierced the veil, silence like silk over a lantern.

So the situation was plain as morning frost.

Lorameia, for her father’s face, wanted Yekase to expose her. Yekase, for daughterly etiquette, waited for Lorameia to speak, courtesy like a knot that wouldn’t pull.

Two geniuses of Infinite Power mechanics, father and daughter in one line, both hopelessly awkward—twisting the matter in their hearts like ivy around a pillar for half a day.

And so they reached a common consensus—a dead end, still as a pond at dusk.

Yekase packed the lab, then led Lorameia into the City of Ivalice, lights flowing like a river through steel canyons.

Ling Yi had no class and waited early at Yekase’s faculty apartment—occupied by Jiang Bailu—holding a seasonal mulberry tea like a cool plum, and a classic Passionfruit Double Blast for her.

What was Jiang Bailu doing? Running the class, steady as a metronome. Huh? We used this gag ages ago, echo like a joke in a corridor.

Yekase took the fruit tea, speared the straw, and sipped, a small ripple across a quiet lake.

“I mean, Doc, aren’t you moonlighting as an alchemist?” Ling Yi said, grin bright as citrus. “Why no potions, vines, that stuff?” She hadn’t expected Lorameia; after a long hesitate, she offered her half‑drunk mulberry tea. Lorameia refused with a smile, soft as a crescent moon.

“Ancient Alchemist,” Yekase corrected, tone crisp as chalk. “Different branch. My two mentors are Rune and Fabrication. Potions and Botany—go ask the Alchemy Association. Not that I’m interested.”

Across the whole Association, barely a handful of Longlifers—it felt like a two‑bit outfit, feathers thin as a scraggly rooster.

Potions and Botany were barren backwaters—few famous researchers in history, few projects a year, budgets starved, inheritance on the brink like a frayed rope.

Even the so‑called all‑rounder Sandryon wouldn’t touch those, turning away like a cat from stale milk.

Bio‑chem‑env‑mats—no dog would touch it, tail tucked like a storm’s warning.

By the way, the infamous queen of mood swings, Xiaoyuan, was also an Ancient Alchemist. Which department did she belong to again…?

Probably the materials warehouse, a hermit crab’s shell piled with spare bolts.

Haven’t checked in with her; wonder how she’s doing, which lab she’s temping at now, drifting like a paper boat between piers.

They called a skimmer board and headed for the studio. The block number had arrived last night; Yekase keyed it and switched to auto‑route, fingers moving like minnows.

The public skimmer hummed to life, edge lights glowing against scrapes, gliding through the city’s grand oculus toward their destination like a swan through blue glass.

It stopped at a dock near the lower levels, air cool as a cave.

They stepped into a windowless container, a green‑screen studio laid out clean as fresh rice paper. Four or five staff bustled like ants, and two uniformed officers watched nearby, one the familiar captain who waved at Yekase with a palm like a flag.

“Ready? We can roll anytime.”

“I’m always ready,” she said, chin up like a spear tip.

Ling Yi and Lorameia sat aside on standby, calm as stones. Yekase described her choreography to the captain, hands sketching arcs like blades… Half an hour later, another skimmer settled outside the door.

Two officers escorted the “Sculptor” into the studio, a shadow wrapped in cuffs.

She’d been told: for turning girls into living statues, imposing continuous sensory deprivation and mental torture, she faced ten to fifteen years, a sentence heavy as wet clay.

With organized crime enhancements, luck could snap to life imprisonment, a chain cold as iron.

But Yekase had named her for the PSA. If she cooperated and performed well, they might count service under sentence, a narrow path like a plank over water.

After another hour of tense prep, filming finally began, lights blooming like lilies.

Midnight.

The clothing shop “Clothes Make the Man” had closed. The owner checked the empty street, silence like a held breath, then dragged out an unremarkable parcel from a wall corner and pried open the lid.

Inside lay a sleeping girl, pale as the moon.

“You’ll become a perfect piece…”

Muttering his suspect mantra, the owner lifted the limp girl and set her on the inner room’s workbench. The room brimmed with lifelike mannequins, faces still as ponds, and a stifled whimper threaded the air like a trapped moth.

He hauled out a box of clay from beneath the bench, cackling thin as a knife. He smeared it over the victim’s body, wet earth swallowing skin like a slow tide.

Within an hour, the girl was completely encased; the clay hardened into a rough mannequin, dull as old bark.

He polished her smooth, painted a false face like a porcelain mask, and mounted her on a metal stand, a cold spine of steel.

Fixed inside the mannequin, the girl stood like a true ceramic model, senses stripped bare. Sight, hearing, touch—gone like leaves in frost. Her full struggle was only a faint tremor, a moth’s wing against glass.

The other mannequins were living people too, turned into silent shells.

The owner kept cackling, trying to place the new porcelain‑white statue at the shop’s center like a trophy on a shrine.

But just then—

Crack—crack.

“What—?!”

The mannequin split, shards bursting like ice from a spring. The girl who was fully bound broke out with ease, fragments spraying and forcing the owner back two steps.

“This is a crime! Got you at last, Sculptor!”

“Damn Crimson Witch—pretended to be a victim and let me kidnap you!”

Flames of Infinite Power wrapped the girl like a dawn blaze. Her right foot slid back, stance solid as a rooted pine.

“Hya!” she shouted, voice ringing like steel. “All evil will be brought to justice in the end!”