Per the Demon King’s promise, the head maid guided two guests of the Endless City past the Skyward Launcher, piling jargon like incense smoke to look competent.

“Honestly, I only need to tell you where this Launcher will blow and what kind of fireworks it makes, like a map and a spark.

“But from another angle, as our first guests here, you can test the guide’s technical chops, like checking the edge on a blade.

“So I hope you two, after today’s tour, will write a survey from a human perspective, a mirror held up to our show.

“Relax—this isn’t unpaid help for an enemy. I’ll add premium cuts to your dinner, marbled like drifting clouds, in my personal capacity.”

Julian was used to this venomous maid, her words like thorns and her gaze like frost, contempt laid bare.

Qing An—Eil—kept still as a stone in a stream, emotion tucked deep, ripples held tight.

In truth, Qing An was busy learning the way Vega could deliver a whole paragraph in one breath, like a flute holding a long note in winter air.

She watched the mouth shapes, the rise and fall, where the breath came and how far it flowed, like a tide chart for lungs.

Professional beyond what any singer outside the academy would ever need, like scales etched on a jade slip.

Qing An loved learning, loved it enough to write it into her character sheet, ink drying like dew at dawn.

The plate Vega had gouged from her chest earlier was pressed back into place by Qing An, the cracked edge seeping brown viscous glue, like resin from a wounded tree.

It looked more like a creature’s carapace than steel, a beetle’s shell catching weak light.

No one present understood how this armor drove itself; curiosity hung like mist, but courtesy kept questions caged.

Not quite right, though.

One omniscient presence stood here, a being not sure it counted as human, knowledge pooled like a deep lake—he would know.

“Qing An… truly a good name,” said the boy in a sleeveless hospital gown, cane tapping like a metronome as he strolled with them.

He felt like he’d always been here, a lantern in familiar dark.

“Since I handed our ‘Righteousness’ as an element to Saster, I haven’t seen you,” he murmured, words falling like quiet rain.

“…”

“It’s fine, Qing An. I grant you speech,” said the Divine Being named Head, “holding ‘Wisdom,’ I can define a field of knowing, like a boundary drawn in sand.”

As the boy spoke, Julian walked with a heavy head, thoughts like stones, while Vega kept chattering, her tour notes flitting like sparrows.

But no sound touched Qing An; a few meters around her felt carved from the world, a paper cut-out held apart.

Only Qing An sensed the boy beside her, a living flame no other eye could see.

“…Can the helmet come off?” she asked, voice a small bell.

“It can, it can—just remember to put it back on,” Head said, cane steady like a staff.

“Hoo—ha—fresh air’s great! This helmet’s a coffin,” she laughed, breath curling like steam. “Mr. Head, how do you know my name? Oh right, you know the Master—he told you.”

Her dark hair swung like it drank the light, a velvet river beside a figure bright as the sun.

Qing An’s eyes jumped under the visor, a spark behind glass, then calmed like a pond.

Understanding gathered, data stitched and tied, a loom humming in her mind; with golden blood in her veins, her processing ran like lightning over clear water.

She knew only Head should know who she was, a single star in a dark map.

“Mr. Head, any guidance?” she asked, smile like lacquer. “About me about to be killed by my dad?”

“Is that so? You seem quite carefree,” he said, voice soft as balm.

“Me—oh me, Miss Qing An stays happy anytime,” she chimed, a stage lamp bright. “If an actor can’t smile, no audience will laugh.”

“A player… I see,” he said, thought like smoke coiling up.

“What’s wrong with that? Do you think I can’t be an actor? Or shouldn’t?” Her tone laid choices like cards—anger, disappointment, or weary knowing.

“You and your father both love offending people without restraint,” Head said, words crisp as frost. “But compared to you…”

“Dad’s sarcasm bites spicier, and it’s more fun,” she said, grin like a knife’s gleam.

“…” The boy shrugged in Andor’s signature style, shoulders lifting like reeds in a breeze, and offered no reply.

Qing An mimicked him, a gesture like a mirror held up for mockery, an echo with a wink.

“I didn’t know,” she said, humility like a bowed stalk. “Didn’t know this kind of ridicule existed. You long-lived ones share codes like constellations I’ve never learned.

“I won’t imitate the Great—Mr. Head—before I learn and understand,” she added, palms open like a vow. “Not just the tone of satire.”

“…”

“What is it, Mr. Head? Need me to do something?” Her smile hummed like a warm string. “If it’s not a hassle, I’ll help.”

“I want to tell you more,” he said, gaze steady as a lamp. “About you, and the future.”

“Whoa, whoa, a prophecy from the All-Knowing Great One,” she trilled, stage curtains swishing. “Can I refuse to listen?”

Qing An flipped the tone like a painted fan; the change came easy, a trick practiced on quiet nights.

“Of course,” Head sighed, breath like wind over grass.

“Then I won’t listen,” she declared, chin up like a pennant. “A warrior won’t ask a seer if they’ll return.”

“…”

“Honestly, Mr. Head, I hoped you’d gasp, ‘But you’re no warrior,’” she laughed, timing like a drumroll. “Then I could say, ‘Though I’m no warrior, the Eil I play is not only a warrior, but a great hero.’ Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“As you see, I know everything,” Head said, eyes clear as glass. “I foresaw this and declined your play. It’s time we spoke of what matters.”

“That sounds dull,” she pouted, a mask with a smirk. “Want me to sing?” The tease fluttered like a sparrow.

“Lately, in spare time, Julian taught me northern ditties,” she went on, voice spinning like thread. “She sings poorly and teaches worse.

“Slowly I sang better, like a flower opening; maybe I’ve moved from mimicry to completion,” she mused. “Why did we stop? Wait—what’s happening here?”

The Skyward Launcher sits out toward the Endless City’s rim, like a spear in a crown.

At its heart stands the reversed great clock, gears at impossible angles meshing like iron constellations, design cared little for mortal feet.

The city spurns weak legs like a cold cliff, a place that refuses easy visits.

Closer to the rim, the gears arc wider, tilt deeper, steel crescents rising like frozen waves.

As for a stage trick reshaping the city into a grand plaza in a blink—no.

A giant steel lance, twenty meters thick, stabs upward through stacks of gears, like a whale-bone through ice; physics laughs and says no.

No handrails, no stairs, no benches—nothing kind; gravity still holds like an old law.

Yet Vega denied mortal physics, and Julian and Eil leaned at a forty-degree angle, glued like lizards on glass.

Qing An called it “an operation that eats your sanity points,” a phrase that felt right, like a pebble that fits the hand.

But no matter how strange, you adjust; even nightmares blur with habit like fog over fields.

Freezing the scene wasn’t normal, though; first emotion should be fear, not peeking at a women’s bath, a joke tossed like a pebble.

“What’s with this?” Qing An muttered, mind racing like a millwheel. “By eye, this gear’s radius is around fifty kilometers, thickness over one.

“All steel, yet it doesn’t crush itself—already unphysical, like a house on clouds. I never understand Dad’s tricks.

“And now it’s changed—five minutes ago it was steel; now it’s made of hate, fire, and phantom smoke, a storm brewing in a shell.”

“Time has no meaning here,” Head said, voice steady as a plumb line. “Saster should have told you—time is always our friend.”

“Focus—the thing in front of me,” she snapped, finger like a pointer. “If this explodes, what happens? I can’t imagine.”

“This is the real, the essence,” Head replied, words like chisels. “The material world is a biased viewpoint, for now; concept is the world’s core.”

It seemed like the Godspeed Realm, yet not the same, a path familiar and strange like a fork in moonlight.

From her first sword to crossing blades with Saster, Qing An had dipped in and out of the Godspeed Realm, slicing a corner of his coat in three days, a feather cut from storm cloth.

In the Godspeed Realm, colors twist and smear like wet paint; the faster you move, the faster hues spiral and leap, a wheel spinning toward the edge.

Now it was different: everything was frozen, matte gloom coating all, living and dead folded into one backdrop, like shadows painted on a wall.

Only her hands glowed dim, Head blazed bright, and the skin around the Skyward Launcher shimmered, its inner stuff unnameable, a blank in speech.

At two years old she’d thought she could know everything, a child grasping stars with tiny hands.

After Grandpa showed her the true vista, she learned humans have limits; even beyond being human, there are cliffs you cannot climb.

But this scale of vast despair was new, a canyon opening under a clear sky.

“Is this the Final Calamity?” she whispered, the words a cold wind.

“Just a calamity,” Head answered, calm as moonlight. “Far from final.”

He lifted his gaze to that thing, then tapped his cane on steel, a knock like thunder behind a curtain.

The sepia gloom peeled away in one breath, or rather wrapped up, like cloth pulled over a naked frame.

Matter’s concept and physics’ nature re-covered the world’s base; color walked back in, like spring waking a gray hillside.

It was monstrous and ugly, filthy yet great, sacred like a temple built from mud—the lowest muck of the Ocean of Darkness made flesh.

That sight beyond human measure fled her mind quickly, like a dream at sunrise, but despair and fear stayed carved like letters on bone.

She forced her thinking back onto rails, eyes clear as ice.

“That could obliterate the mortal world in one shot,” she said, breath steady like a blade’s line.

“If you ask about the effect—more than that,” Head replied, tone quiet as dusk.

“Dad really built a monster nuke,” she said, a bitter laugh like iron. “Let me guess: this ‘Launcher’ isn’t for people.

“It’s a threat—you can’t let it detonate in the mortal world. It must explode in the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom, forcing the gods’ hands.”

“He keeps every decisive weapon in his own hand,” Head sighed, gaze like smoke over steel. “Even if I don’t hide it from the gods, this Launcher will fire at the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom.

“In essence, he never expects anyone to do anything for him,” Head said, shoulders settling like sand.

He stared at the restored steel shell, where ‘Safety First’ sneered in paint like a grin, and he sighed, breath thin as thread.

Then he turned back to Qing An, eyes kind as lantern light.

“Now let’s talk about you, Qing An,” he said, voice firm as a path. “About me, and what we owe you.”