Day 7 of Arach Duozu (Month 4), Year 175 A.T.M / July 1, 1617 Central Calendar; 19:10 Local Time

  Two entities were locked in combat.

  One was clad in black armor, like a warrior wearing an unflinching mask. The other was an Unidentified Lifeform, a creature in the visage of a twisted hybrid of man and bat, with a perpetually snarling expression and black eyes. It shrieked and unleashed a savage strike with its claws, as the armored one, Xyston Magia #12 Clotho, entrusted on a mission, took the attack full-on with her rotating cudgels, without flinching.

  The flow of battle continued like that, seemingly on and on, where the creature would try to kill Clotho, only for her to slip past its blows and deflect its strikes with almost no serious intention to injure her opponent, let alone kill it. The bat-like creature fought with a feral, animalistic instinct, while Clotho engaged calmly with the full precision her processing power allowed. She offered only enough resistance to sustain the fight, almost as if she were playing with it, keeping the ugly creature's aggression directed at her.

  However, all stories must have an ending, and this battle, too, must reach its conclusion.

  Clotho dragged on the fight for a reason, and once she determined she had gathered sufficient combat data on the Unidentified Lifeform under the most natural conditions possible, she resolved that the experiment had run its course.

  "...Ll'I llik uoy!"

  With a grunt, Clotho pivoted and unleashed a powerful roundhouse kick into the creature's flank, hurling the creature into a pillar and kicking up a burst of dust on impact. As the creature struggled to stand up, exhausted, Clotho advanced carefully.

  "...You've been saying that since we started fighting. I suppose the ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent, huh?"

  "Grrrrrr...!"

  The Unidentified Lifeform's breathing came in ragged bursts, as if torn between continuing the fight and fleeing from it. It had been so laser-focused that it probably forgot that it can fly.

  "Alright, stop resisting since I'm going to capture you," Clotho grinned.

  But then—

  A beam of white light slashed across the room.

  It swept from a gap in the front entrance Clotho had made, wobbling as whoever held the flashlight approached. The streak of light happened to land directly on the creature's head.

  Almost immediately, the creature let out a pitiful whimper and raised an arm to shield itself from the glare.

  "What—"

  Clotho stopped in her tracks, momentarily caught off guard by the creature's abrupt change in behavior. In the meantime, it lurched backward, wings snapping open in an unsteady flare. Dust scattered as it jumped and beat the air, trying to launch itself upward toward the rafters.

  "Hey! Get back here!"

  With an irritated grunt, Clotho flicked her arm, the motion punctuated by a metallic thwip.

  A wire fired and cinched tight around the creature mid-air, binding its torso, wings, and arms before the spool locked with a crisp click. The creature thrashed desperately, but the more it struggled, the tighter the coils drew. Clotho reeled the line back, guiding the captive down until it collapsed to the floor with a frustrated hiss.

  She glanced toward the doorway, where shaky beams of light jittered along the walls, casting long human silhouettes into the now-messy hall.

  "Tch... security? Local constables?" Clotho muttered. "I suppose our fight made more noise than intended, even with the rain... but no matter..."

  She set her boot firmly between the creature's shoulder blades to keep it pinned and drew a high-tech-looking handgun from the holster strapped to her thigh, setting its ammunition to STUN.

  Indeed, the rain outside masked most sounds, but not enough to hide everything. Waiting patiently, Clotho stood still as sloshing footsteps could be heard approaching her position.

  "...You sure this was the place? Didn't you say the flashes are in the opposite direction?"

  "I know what I heard! Something smashed through the damn ceiling! And comms aren't working, so we can't exactly call for backup."

  "Man, why did it have to be us?"

  Their half-panicked banter echoed ahead of the glow creeping through the entrance. Clotho turned her head slightly but stayed silent. Two individuals finally stepped into the corridor, one of them carrying a portable floodlamp. Their drenched raincoats clung to them, shoes squelching on the wet floor with every step.

  "W-what happened here...?"

  "Did something explode? Or..."

  "Just keep the light steady, man!"

  Aided with the light, they scanned the wrecked hall, finding shattered tiles, fractured pillars, metallic grooves from Clotho's weapons, and then the light swung, almost accidentally, across her helmet. The glassy black visor drank in the brightness like a void.

  "What the—!?"

  They recoiled on instinct, eyes widening, the floodlamp bobbling in their grip. Clotho simply raised her arm and fired.

  P'tshk—p'thsk

  Two blue-white pulses burst from her gun.

  Both officers stiffened mid-gasp, convulsed, and were blasted backward by the concussive discharge. They hit the floor several steps away and went limp as the stun charge finished scrambling their motor signals.

  And with that, the hall fell quiet again.

  "...Pointing a light in someone's face is awfully rude—"

  "Grrrr...! Grrrr...!"

  "Oh, shut up."

  Clotho prodded her wriggling captive with her boot to quiet it, then looked around, considering how she was going to deal with the mess she'd just created, completed objective notwithstanding.

  ?????

  Trinil Sectoral Police

  Special Lieutenant Arial Hepburn dragged the unconscious policeman back inside through the rear entrance, then sprinted off to find Chief Rennan. The officers she rushed past instinctively recoiled at her haggard look and blazing glare, but Hepburn couldn't afford to slow down. An unidentified mana signature within her sensing field was closing in on her—or rather the station's—direction, moving fast enough to suggest it was airborne.

  "Lieutenant, what in the—"

  "Move! There's—"

  Someone tried to stop her just as she was nearing the Chief's office, and the rest of Hepburn's warning retort died in her throat as her sensing field screamed. The unidentified mana signature's intensity suddenly spiked, its speed increasing in an instant. Instinctively, she snapped toward the window at the end of the corridor an eyeblink before it exploded inward.

  Glass burst into the hall, fragments hanging for an instant in a churning spiral before cascading down like a storm of blades. Silhouetted in the shattered frame stood a dark, heavy-looking figure. Then came the light.

  A detonation of light and noise that seemed to punch straight through eyelids and skulls alike flooded the corridor with afterimages and vertigo, cutting shouts of alarm and turning it into groans of disorientation. Her senses already taut, Hepburn had squeezed her eyes shut a fraction of a second before the burst, but the psychic backlash still hammered her temples, leaving everything spinning and ringing.

  Through swimming vision, Hepburn saw the intruder move. An armored hand extended, and compact spheres of bluish-energy shot forth, connecting with the torsos of the reeling officers with precision. One by one, the other policemen crumpled without a cry. Chief Rennan, stepping out of his office at the worst possible moment, took a blast square to the chest that snuffed the sound out and sent him sliding down the wall, unconscious.

  A similar bolt slammed into her sternum like a punch, but the expected wave of oblivion didn't follow. Like before, instead of shutting down, her body thrummed with a resonant backlash. The foreign mana dissipated across her skin like water on a hot stone, neutralized.

  The figure, having cleared the entire station simultaneously with its dynamic entrance, paused. Its helmeted head tilted, focusing on the one woman still moving, hunched over and gasping but very much awake.

  "........."

  Hepburn straightened, ignoring the protest in her ribs. Her hand went to her sidearm, while her mind was racing. She met the blank visor of the intruder, her own glare cutting through the lingering haze, then pulled the trigger seven times, practically emptying the gun's magazine.

  The reports of her 12,7 mm handgun tore through the cramped corridor as she fired at close range. But instead of collapsing, the intruder's chest plate spat brief showers of sparks that winked out almost instantly. It didn't even seem to register the blows beyond a slight, almost curious adjustment of its stance. The helmeted gaze remained locked on her.

  "Ngh...!?"

  At that moment, a chill shot through Hepburn. The large pistol in her grip, chosen specifically for its stopping power against Unidentified Lifeforms when regulations forbade openly carrying long arms, had discharged rounds beyond what a typical sidearm should chamber. On its own, it wasn't meant to kill a ULF, but it should have softened the target, setting it up for heavier weapons or magic to deliver the deathblow. But a sudden, awfully inconvenient comms blackout prevented them from calling reinforcements. And worse, all seven shots had failed to leave even a blemish on the enemy's metallic armor.

  'Could it be... a new type of Unidentified Lifeform...!?'

  Even amidst the confrontation, Hepburn's thoughts continued to spin frantically. Previous ULFs were resistant to firearms to some degree, but it was always a matter of biology. Even the 'armored' ones wore their protection as a shell, an integral part of their morphology.

  But this... this one was different. The realization crystallized as her eyes properly scanned the figure. Details such as the finely crafted armor parts, a backpack, and most damning of all, a sidearm holstered securely on its right thigh. In that instant, every assumption about who—or what—the intruder might be splintered into uncertainty.

  "Just what are you!?" Hepburn shouted in frustration.

  The intruder didn't answer with words. Instead, it slowly advanced. The blank visor seemed to drink in the sight of her.

  Hepburn made the decision in a heartbeat that switching to magic is faster than reloading. Her right hand left the grip of her handgun and snapped upward instead, palm thrust toward as she dug deep into her mana reserves and unleashed it without the need of a chant, letting loose a narrow beam of white-blue light.

  For the first time, the intruder reacted immediately. The armored figure halted and snapped its forearms up, crossing them in front of its chest as the beam impacted. Light detonated against the crossed arms, flooding the corridor with a piercing glare. Sparks and fragments of glowing energy sprayed outward, scoring the walls and ceiling.

  "Haaargh...!"

  She had no real idea how much damage an uncharged Beam could do to a fully armored opponent likely at peak condition, but Hepburn gritted her teeth and leaned into the spell, muscles trembling as she forced more power through the narrow channel.

  As it endured the attack, the intruder's crossed arms suddenly snapped apart, dispersing the beam into a violent spray that collapsed into sparks that scorched the corridor walls as the spell was forcibly broken. But before Hepburn could even register the impossible, the armored figure was already moving.

  It lunged forward with terrifying speed. The floor cracked beneath its boots as it crossed the distance in a blink. Its gauntleted hand snapped forward, too fast to dodge. Seizing Hepburn by the front of her clothing, it then lifted and slammed the woman down onto her back. The impact drove the air from her lungs in a painful gasp. Stars exploded behind her eyes, and the back of her skull rang against the floor.

  "Huh..."

  A noise akin to a humming emanated from the armored figure crouched above her. When it spoke, the voice was warped by some unknown process—flat, sexless, and eerily composed.

  "You are a Lord."

  ".........!?"

  Hepburn's eyes flew open in shock. That it could speak was surprising in itself, but what it said was the very last thing she had anticipated.

  "...That power of yours just now... You're definitely one of 'them,' aren't you? Nameless tools without past, brought into existence for no purpose but to enforce the regime's will," it continued, speaking clearly and pointedly at the still stunned Hepburn.

  "You—how—"

  "So you're really a Lord. Now then—hm?"

  Its monologue was cut off when Hepburn forced mana up through her chest and throat, resulting in a torrent of searing blue flame that erupted from her mouth at a point-blank range.

  The blast swallowed the intruder's upper body in incandescent fire, but the pressure on her didn't loosen. The armored knees pinning her shoulders and hips didn't budge an inch. Through the dancing fire, she saw the helmet turn slightly, as if regarding the flames now harmlessly dissipating across some invisible barrier or incredibly resilient material. A faint shimmer of heat haze distorted the air around its head before fading, leaving the visor unmarred.

  "...That was unnecessary," it said flatly.

  The pressure pinning her down vanished, only to be immediately returned, this time higher. The armored hand fisted in front of her shirt and hauled her up as if Hepburn weighed nothing. Before she could channel her mana again, before she could even bring her arms up, the world quickly inverted.

  "Hah!"

  "Agh—!"

  She was lifted clean off the floor and hurled back down like a discarded doll, the crash forcing another harsh gasp from her chest. Even then, she stubbornly clung to consciousness, despite her powerlessness to move or resist.

  Yet for the first time, Arial Hepburn felt an emotion she believed long buried: fear.

  …………

  "Your reactions are pretty sluggish for a Lord. What's wrong? Having trouble casting chant-less magick at will?"

  Facing such an alluring quarry relatively early in this Operation WHEELHOUSE, Atropos allowed herself a quiet thrill of satisfaction, her eyes trained on the battered young woman writhing uselessly in her grasp below.

  Of course, Atropos had done her homework. Prior to the infiltration, she had absorbed every scrap of information the Creator possessed on the Annonrial Empire. Included among those studies was the topic of the so-called "Lords." Capturing them upon encounter was a matter of course, though ensuring it was done without accidentally killing them proved to be an inconvenience.

  This southern fringe of the Known World was blighted enough that one could scarcely toss a rock without striking a human experimentation site. Among the few projects that endured into the World War era, however, was the Lords Project, which furnished the Annonrial Empire with legions of genetically augmented super-soldiers just as it entered the conflict, intensifying an already grueling struggle among nations. Since restoring the Ravernal Empire was already the Annonrial Empire's stated purpose, it was theorized that these super-soldier programs served as Zarathostra of the Messiah's contingency plan should resurrection fail: an attempt to artificially create Light-Winged Seraphim and found a new Ravernal Empire, or even to produce a multi-winged Seraphim Ultra like Zarathostra himself. The Creator found the hypothesis at least plausible, but whether it was true was ultimately beside the point.

  Among the oft-ambitiously horrific undertakings, the Lords as super-soldiers were relatively tame in comparison. Beyond the expected hallmarks of enhanced strength and mental capability, their powers were 'merely' immunity to nonlethal magic, immunity to poison, modifications that erased humanity's natural biological limits on spellcasting, allowing magic without chants or implements, and perfect mastery over immense reserves of mana, which they could shape at will. In essence, the Lords were the Annonrial Empire's unknowing biological counterpart to the Magias. Moreover, all these enhancements made them harder to knock out.

  Had Atropos been the one to decide, she would have deemed the Lords—with some alteration—a thoroughly rational first step in Mankind's evolution into something greater. Unfortunately, the Creator's personality abhorred the kind of experimentation on living subjects that Annonrial embraced. Whether this aversion arose from a fear that Pestilence and the Audience would mock his 'descent into monstrosity,' or from a lingering conscience—the very essence of his humanity—was unclear. Still, it was a shame that such limits curtailed humanity's potential. Atropos did not wish for the Creator to end up as an inferior being than the Magias he created. But even so, she respected those boundaries, hoping that in time Meteos would grow more receptive to broader possibilities and his own potential. After all, he bore his own Mantle of Responsibility.

  "Who are you!? What do you know about the Lords!?"

  "Hmm..."

  The female Lord's outburst snapped Atropos' attention back to her. Her bruised face twisted with confusion and resentment—and was that fear? She was far more expressive than any Lord Atropos was expecting. Come to think of it... since this was nearly 30 years before their known deployment, could this woman be some kind of imperfect, prototype version of a Lord?

  "I am one who can answer your questions, but you have to come with me."

  "Gh—!"

  The woman cringed, squeezing her eyes shut. But when she opened them again, her features slowly settled into a calm mask, a shift that caught Atropos' attention.

  "...Let me correct myself," she began speaking, this time with a lot of composure in her tone. "You're no Unidentified Lifeform. You are a Heretic."

  "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Why should that matter to you?"

  "Your kind and your 'moral high ground.' You believe so fiercely in your spotless justice. But what of all this? Here you are, ready to kill anyone standing in your way for whatever goal you seek."

  "Heh. The same can be said of your Messiah. Why do you think you're here, Lord? You think you're born!? No. You were lab-grown. And before that, the Messiah had to erase you, to wipe out everything you once were. So answer me this: do you even know who your parents were?" Atropos taunted.

  "You—urgh!"

  "You were never loved by anyone. So... let me love you in their place..."

  The woman's composure broke at those words, and her anger flared again. Yes, it was callous provocation. However, a provoked enemy possessed a higher chance of doing something dumb that Atropos could capitalize on. And it seemed that in this woman's case, that emotional turmoil manifested in literal headaches. The Lords usually cast off these 'human' emotions in order to become a perfect super-soldier, proving that though this woman exhibited a Lord's powerset, she wasn't fully a Lord, if she were actually one.

  Atropos' grip shifted. She slid an arm around the woman's neck, not crushing the trachea but sealing the carotid arteries instead, carefully throttling the blood flow to the brain rather than air to the lungs. A crude choke would have been faster, but that would have risked tearing soft tissue or triggering a fatal reflex. Lords were durable, yes. Their altered physiology made them stubbornly resistant to unconsciousness, and the margin between sleep and death narrowed uncomfortably when one could not rely on toxins or anesthetic magic.

  She monitored the woman's pulse through the mana turbulence in her veins, adjusting pressure in infinitesimal increments. Too much, and the heart would overcompensate. Too little, and she'd simply struggle until she broke free. A human would have gone limp by now. A Lord did not.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Then, after much grunting and futile attempts to wrestle the armored Xyston Magia, the woman's body spasmed. Atropos felt her mana's flow change, as if it was trying to readjust itself.

  When the woman's eyes snapped open, there was nothing in them. Then, the air detonated.

  A point-blank explosion spell bloomed between them, raw mana igniting without a chant. Then another. And another. Each blast overlapped the last, a staccato barrage meant to annihilate anything within arm's reach. Naturally, Atropos didn't budge just by that. The explosions washed over her like a storm breaking against an immovable spire, but there were other problems.

  Atropos abruptly slid her arm away and sent the woman rolling across the destroyed tiles, cutting off her attacks and putting several meters between them just as another detonation erupted from the Lord's lying form.

  As Atropos rose to her feet, she swiftly cast a water mist spell to extinguish the flames before they could spread and injure the other incapacitated Annonrial policemen, shouting accusingly at the other woman.

  "Unbelievable... You don't care about the collateral damage anymore, do you!?"

  The Lord rose, her movements eerily fluid. A faint bluish aura now enveloped her as her mana signature spiked, and the wings on her back flickered unstably, shimmering with an unstable light that gave the impression of nascent wings. Her face was a blank slate, all previous rage, fear, and defiance smoothed into an emotionless mask.

  'There,' Atropos mused, a flicker of analytical satisfaction cutting through her irritation. 'Now she resembles the Lords we know from the records.' It seemed the deep-seated mental conditioning found on Lords in the future wasn't yet perfected, as the woman's own only fully activated after a bout of mental distress from earlier.

  Without a word, the Lord raised a hand. Tendrils of solidified mana shot from her hands, seeking to bind Atropos in a crushing lattice of energy.

  Atropos didn't move from her stance. She simply swung her hands as the tendrils reached her, shattering the bindings with her knife hand strikes. The Lord showed no reaction to the failed attack, but Atropos was resigned to the fact that subduing her as quickly as possible was becoming a chore.

  "Maybe draining her mana and creating an opening could work..."

  Processing the situation, Atropos' processor came to a conclusion. There was a Manadriver design that had yet to be tested lying around. The situation was hardly ideal for a trial, but the principle was sound: if she couldn't safely choke the Lord out, she would have to drain the power fueling her resistance.

  Her right hand darted to her backpack, commanding it to toss her a palm-sized cylinder of dark metal with a glowing green core. A miniature counterpart to the Spire, this device was a Seed, which shared the core function of materializing a construct from the wielder's mind, but its small form factor restricted it to handheld objects. Each of the Three Dark Sisters carried up to ten of those for use in special circumstances, since unlike a Spire, once a Seed was turned into a device, it couldn't be altered further.

  As another volley of magic bolts streaked toward her, Atropos blocked them and clenched the cylinder tightly.

  The Seed pulsed in her palm. Its pedanium core's glow grew brighter, and a surge of her own mana catalyzed the process. In a flash of white-green light, the silhouette expanded, lengthened, and took shape in an instant. Where the cylinder had been, Atropos now held a Manadriver measuring one and a half meters in length, taking the form of a sleek black lance etched with dark blue patterns. Just above the grip, a rectangular crystal display blinked to life.

  A system window materialized in her visual interface, superimposed over the standing Lord.

  [New Device Integration Complete: DESIRE THOUSANDJACKER]

  "'MR Manadriver Copying Lance.' Huh... I already refrained from using lethal force, let's hope this tool will do."

  Switching the newly formed Manadriver to her left hand, Atropos surged forward without hesitation, charging down the narrow corridor of the police station.

  The Lord met her head-on, abandoning ranged combat in a single-minded drive. She stepped inside Atropos' thrusting range and lashed out with a knife-hand strike aimed at Atropos' elbow, her hand edged with condensed mana. In response, Atropos brought the lance to deflect it using its sturdy pedanium blade, the Jack Edge, the impact sending sparks.

  The Lord flowed without pause. Next, a spinning back fist followed, aimed at Atropos' helmet. Atropos dipped low, but before she could straighten, the Lord's knee came up in a vicious rising strike. Atropos caught it on her right forearm, while the Lord used the impact to plant her foot and launch into a series of snapping front kicks that impacted Atropos' torso armor.

  When she locked in, the Lord was actually good, Atropos observed. She gave ground, parrying and blocking, analyzing the movement. The opening came after a particularly committed axe kick that cratered the floor where Atropos' head had been a fraction of a second before. As the Lord recovered, her weight slightly forward, Atropos moved.

  She pivoted on her lead foot, her body becoming a spinning axis of black metal. Her trailing leg rose in an arc, a reverse roundhouse kick that bypassed the Lord's guard entirely. The armored heel connected with a thunderous impact against the Lord's side, the force lifting her off her feet and slamming her into the wall.

  Atropos didn't waste the moment. While the Lord was pinned and stunned, she stepped in. Gently, she placed the flat of the Desire Thousandjacker's lance tip, the Jack Suction, against the center of the Lord's chest. The dark blue design on the Manadriver pulsed with a soft light.

  Her right hand then snapped to the end of the lance's hilt, where a thick ring-like mechanism, the Jack Ring, awaited. Without hesitation, Atropos yanked it.

  BZRRRRRRRT...!

  A resonant hum filled the air. The Jack Suction flared with intense green light, and a visible torrent of shimmering blue-white energy erupted from the Lord's body. It was her mana, violently siphoned from her body. The energy streamed into the Thousandjacker, flowing down its length towards the rectangular crystal monitor, the Gain Stocker. Bars of light on the monitor began to fill rapidly, climbing from empty to a quarter, then a half, then three-quarters with alarming speed. The gauge continued to climb, the bars lighting up in sequence as the vast reserves of a Lord's mana were forcibly harvested.

  As her mana was taken away, the Lord's unstable light wings flickered and died, and the aura around her guttered out, but she was still conscious. Her blank eyes flew downward to the lance pressed against her chest, then brought a hand to swat it away.

  Atropos simply grabbed the Lord, threw her to the wall on the other side, and pinned her again.

  "We can counter anything you throw at us," she said with a smile. Not that the Lord could see it.

  The Lord's body tensed, the air around her beginning to distort and heat with signs of another point-blank detonation, but this time with a longer buildup that Atropos sensed. Irritation spiked in the Magia's processors. Enough of this.

  Before the spell could fully coalesce, Atropos seized the Lord by the front of her shirt and flung her away. The woman's body sailed down the corridor again, skidding and tumbling through shattered tiles before slamming into the far wall. The half-formed explosion went off mid-flight, detonating harmlessly behind her and tearing more debris from the ceiling.

  "In that case, how about this?"

  Atropos' index finger found a prominent switch on the Thousandjacker's grip, the Attack Trigger, and pulled it.

  CLACK-CHUNK!

  The extended Jack Ring at the hilt, previously locked in its pulled-back position, snapped forward with a satisfying mechanical noise, returning to its neutral position. Inside the Gain Stocker's crystal display, the bars of stored mana pulsed violently. A hum surged through the weapon as the amplification circuits activated, priming the harvested energy for release.

  [Activating JACKING BREAK]

  "Restrain the enemy," Atropos commanded. She then slashed the Thousandjacker low, dragging the blade along the floor in a wide arc.

  A crescent of energy burst outward, racing across the ground and passing beneath the Lord just as she struggled upright, tearing her feet away and flinging her into the air.

  The Lord hung there, suspended off the ground, limbs drifting uselessly as invisible force locked her in place. Mana bled from her in thin wisps, her systems struggling to reassert control in a field that denied weight, leverage, and footing all at once.

  Now, time to end this.

  Atropos charged.

  She launched herself forward, with her left hand drew back, shifting the Thousandjacker into a reverse-grip, its blunt end poised for a precise knockout strike to the temple. With the Lord's enhanced physiology, it would take a calculated blow. However, the Lord seemed to be weakened enough that Atropos was confident in this time's attack.

  But just as Atropos closed the final distance, the Lord's body glowed. A dense white-blue radiance erupted from within her chest, flooding the corridor in an instant.

  "Persistent—Haaaagh!"

  With no time to abort her strike, Atropos adjusted mid-motion, angling her blow upward as she slipped beneath the Lord's airborne form.

  Like a machine obeying a single directive, the Lord sought to erase Atropos at any cost. And yet, for a mana-driven construct, Atropos showed more humanity than this flesh-and-blood child of El...

  In the next instant, the world vanished into blistering white, followed by a deafening roar that consumed the air.

  July 3, 1617 Central Calendar; 05:30 Local Time

  Vladivostok Kremlin, Maypita, Malayo Province, Eastern Maritime Holy Milishial Empire

  The building beneath him had once been a temple to a deity long since forgotten, their memory erased when the Third Timeline traded the world's recollection of that god for the gradual restoration of Astarte's own. That bargain explained the building's neglected condition: abandoned for years, yet never torn down, spared for reasons no one could quite articulate. Meteos Roguerider, however, was certain of one thing—when Astarte finally awakened in people's hearts, they would return, and this place would be used once more.

  Pausing in his early-morning routine, Meteos settled onto the roof of a stone structure and pulled out his grimoire, indulging in whatever one might call a spymaster's version of doomscrolling. The sheer volume of information flooding into his grimoire from the White Lotus' sphere of influence had actually grown so overwhelming that it was only sensible to set up an organizational system in advance, one that delegated the workload to competent subordinates. Even so, he still checked it himself from time to time. After all, he was the White Lotus' leader.

  Take the Holy Milishial Empire, for instance: the wholesale restructuring of its ten ministries alone was a punishing affair, the pace of change racing far ahead of the people's ability to adapt. The Holy Empire's regular military fared marginally better by temporarily relying on LEGION drones for national defense, but before long, they too spiraled into a vicious cycle on their own. Just hearing—or reading—about it is enough to make one dizzy. So... still in the mood for infodumps?

  "Hm. I see you have grown fond of sitting above everyone else."

  Dragging his eyes away from his smartphone, Meteos lazily glanced back over his shoulder. Legiel was there, squatting atop a pole where a statue of the aforementioned deity ought to have stood instead.

  As he looked on, waiting for a response, Meteos stood up.

  "And I see you still like to twist everyone's thoughts to your liking. I suppose you're aware of the high ground's advantages, yes?"

  "Says the one who does the same," Legiel replied languidly. "But to answer your question, yes, I do. Just as I'm aware that being up there also makes you a very convenient target. Berthold Bragston would've said the same."

  At that name, Meteos' eyes narrowed, only for Legiel to cheekily clarify, "Walman's murderer."

  "...Oh."

  So, the man in charge of pulling the trigger of the Grade Atlastar's main guns that day was named Berthold Bragston. What became of him after Baltica? Had he died in the Gra Valkas Empire's most reckless gamble Meteos had ever seen? Not that the act of knowing it offered him any sense of closure.

  "Given the state of this dull world, it's only natural to want to separate yourself from it all and rise above. Don't you miss being powerful and able to look down on people, Little Brother?" Legiel smiled, resting a hand on his cheek. "But now that you're the leader of an organization, it's no longer a privilege—it's your obligation."

  Setting aside ad hominem, since it came from Legiel, those words weren't entirely wrong. The Warring Kingdoms Period had erupted because the one meant to rule had grown stagnant, allowing his authority to be gnawed away by scheming courtiers in a capital already rotting... a kingdom of death, where the deceased strode around devouring the living... That's nothing more than a perversion of nature.

  Those with power live, those without die—anyone who fails to understand this truth is nothing more than a fool.

  "...What do you want this time?" Meteos dared to ask after briefly entertaining such thoughts.

  "Ah, yes."

  At his prompting, Legiel pushed off from the pole, flipping once in the air before landing lightly on the roof beside Meteos. Pulling his own grimoire, he tapped rapidly on its glowing touchscreen.

  "I just want to show you something sent by an acquaintance of mine. He's quite a connoisseur himself, you might say."

  You've got mail!

  A melodic chime and an announcement sounded from Meteos' device. As he glanced on, a notification panel hovered over his grimoire's lock screen. The attached file name and its large size—even with compression—could be seen.

  "...Fleet Simulation N, presented by Baphomet?" Meteos murmured. He had heard that name before.

  Legiel decided to elaborate.

  "Well, nothing ever happens in this world, so I guess even the Game's G.O.A.T. can grow restless. So, he decided to open a custom game and show it off to me—not ranked, of course. His chosen champion this time is quite an interesting one... There's no reason you couldn't pick up a thing or two from watching it."

  "So, you're giving Ars Goetia the benefit of hindsight," Meteos stated, one brow lifting.

  "Only if you can realize that hindsight into something useful," Legiel corrected. "The protagonist of this custom game is on their way to make liberal use of teleportation. You see where I'm going with this, right?"

  Meteos frowned.

  Teleportation. The ability to instantly transfer matter or energy from one location to another without traversing the intervening space. As a power that warped space itself to the user's command, it ranked among the most demanding abilities to execute, let alone master. Yet the Ravernal Empire's jump to the future and the Civilization Annihilation Game's abduction of victims like Japan and Gra Valkas had proven that it was not only scientifically possible, but capable of transcending time and even entire universes. Meteos couldn't deny his fascination with it. Its potential alone made it one of the most sophisticated forms of faster-than-light travel ever conceived. With teleportation magic, a spacecraft could cross a galaxy in mere seconds, turning the vast expanse of Kosmos into something easily and endlessly explored.

  "Teleportation magic's mechanism is so simple it's one of the most boring takes on FTL I've ever heard."

  Legiel's flippant comment jolted Meteos out of his musings.

  "I mean, it's just mana responding to a sentient being's desire to project their imagination into reality. Dump in enough mana and desire hard enough, and you can bend even space and time. I suppose there's still neuroscience involved, but how is that interesting? There's a reason everyone else in the higher dimension, my Audience, starts crashing out the moment the Theos foolishly leaked mana from the higher dimension into this one—"

  "—What did you just say?" Meteos abruptly cut him off, genuinely surprised by what he was talking about.

  Legiel only answered with a sly, knowing grin as a roiling mass of dark clouds Meteos once saw him use to teleport 'in style' materialized beside him.

  "Whoops. Guess I yapped a little too much. Anyway...! Teleportation magic lacks realism, which is why it's cringe. Still, if you really want to learn it, be my guest. First thing you need to do is get over that mental block of yours—before your luck runs out."

  Legiel thus vanished into the unknown with that parting remark, leaving Meteos clicking his tongue. Those last few words, in particular, made his fist tighten on its own.

  "Mental block..."

  It was true that the inherited memories of Attarsamain had initially functioned like a convenient plot device, granting him knowledge whenever he needed it. But it was equally true that the more power Meteos sought, the more effort he had to exert if he were to use the memories as a fallback strategy—only then would the fragments of knowledge seep through from that immense pool. He could understand the limiter as a form of protection; after all, his mind would surely be overwhelmed if the full 13.000-year history of an entire civilization were dumped into it at once. Still, it seemed some portions could only be unlocked by overcoming hurdles beyond simply "working harder" or "wanting it more."

  Meteos believed that he or someone else would eventually rediscover teleportation technology, but it wouldn't be in time when he needed it most.

  Not that Meteos was angry at Kagaseo for placing such a limiter in the first place.

  "Maybe I really am lucky. Now, I wonder what it will take for me to be worthy of such power...?"

  As he attempted to take the first steps of learning again, the sun rose from the east, illuminating Mount Ophir behind the city with its golden glow.

  The faint chorus of cicadas could be heard.

  When he gradually opened his eyes, he was greeted with an unfamiliar white ceiling.

  He had no sense of how long he had been asleep; the passage of time felt eerily silent. Still half-dazed, Rennan watched an unknown light arc across the ceiling. It seemed as though it had been years since he had last slept so deeply.

  Upon taking a deep breath, Rennan took in the faint scent of disinfectant. This was... a hospital.

  Fragments of memory began to surface—the communications outage, the mist-laden night, the shadow that had breached the police station... and then—he had only seen it for an instant, but he was certain it had been black.

  Those afterimages continued to repeat themselves beyond his eyelids.

  "Are you awake? Do you know what your name is?"

  A nurse stepped into view, checking his pulse with an experienced motion.

  "Does it hurt anywhere? How do you feel?"

  Against the nurse's rapid-fire questions, Rennan replied in a daze. While doing so, he unconsciously began looking around the room.

  While the medical staff continued their examination, they explained that nearly two weeks had passed since the bizarre incident. Rennan and the Trinil local policemen brought in with him had remained in a deep sleep the entire time. For fear of agitating the patients, they had not been allowed to read recent newspapers, but the nurses assured them that television reports said police reinforcements had been sent to Trinil in their place. The situation was stabilizing, and there had been no reported deaths, allowing at least Rennan some peace of mind.

  There was no television in his room, leaving him cut off from further information. His phone had been placed in a nearby safe, but the phone's battery was dead. Now that his initial panic had faded, the reality slowly sank in—he had somehow survived the sudden assault of an Unidentified Lifeform.

  ?????

  That afternoon, a knock sounded at the door of Rennan's hospital room, drawing his gaze toward it on instinct.

  The person who stepped inside was none other than Special Lieutenant Arial Hepburn. She looked tired, her once-long hair now cut short in an uneven way, as if it had been hastily hacked away.

  "How are you feeling?"

  As she asked Rennan, he felt relieved to see a familiar face.

  "I'm fine... I'm glad to see you're doing just fine as well."

  "Yes..."

  The blonde woman kept her expression neutral, but her eyes dropped slightly, giving her an apologetic air. It seemed like she wanted to say something, only to stop herself. There was suddenly an awkward silence between them, so Rennan went ahead and changed the subject.

  "Well, for now, how about you tell me about the damages? What happened?"

  ".........The attacker destroyed part of the police station's roof, but the blast went outward, so the damage was limited. There has been a lot of commotion by sunrise, and a pair of Trinil citizens dared to go to the nearest town to spread the word."

  "I heard that there were no fatalities among the police. Is that true?"

  "It is—hard as it may be to believe. The Unidentified Lifeforms targeted the Trinil police. We know their actions usually follow a pattern, but this is the first time that pattern involved nonlethal measures. I've documented and submitted my report with the attackers being identified as Unidentified Lifeforms #24, #25, and #26..."

  "Wait, there were three of them?" Rennan cut in, startled.

  Hepburn nodded.

  "Yes. I saw to it that #24 is eliminated, but the other two escaped."

  "You killed it? How?"

  "...I have the right to remain silent."

  "Ah..."

  Only then did Rennan remember that Arial Hepburn was part of the Anti-Unidentified Lifeform Task Force, an organization bound by secrets he had no access to. In the end, instead of feeling reassured, the news left him hollow. Any sense of achievement slipped away, replaced by a quiet feeling of defeat as he withered under Hepburn's unreadable gaze.

  July 1, 1617 Central Calendar

  "Persistent—Haaaagh!"

  Spurred by urgency, Atropos slid down, hitting the deck just as the Lord lashed out with her wave of magic. At the same time, she manipulated the anti-gravity field restraining the Lord into a confining magic barrier, funneling the discharge upward at the cost of obliterating the ceiling and roof to pieces.

  About three seconds passed before even the Lord's reserves were spent. The white-hot beam guttered out, and the female Lord's singed form collapsed limply into Atropos' chest. After checking her out to confirm she was still alive, Atropos let out a heavy sigh and stayed where she was, staring up at the dark sky visible through the wreckage. Raindrops began to fall over them, while the lingering heat from the Lord's body warmed Atropos' breastplate.

  "Ha... hahahaha... hahahahahahahahaha..."

  Atropos laughed somewhat deliriously.

  Crazy bitch. The Lord had given Atropos quite a scare.

  A true suicide attack could be detected by reading the flow of mana through a caster's body, something Atropos was capable of. Right before detonation, suicide mages' brain would give a signal that forced their mana to overload the mana-producing organelles in every single cell of their body, causing them to burst violently. This Lord, however, had simply expelled her mana outward through her skin. Even so, Atropos had felt genuine fear—because more than anything, she did not want to be the one who violated the Creator's directive.

  Her sisters Clotho and Lachesis appeared on the scene some time later in a hurry.

  "You okay!?"

  "Whoa, quite a scene."

  While Clotho focused on her eldest sister, Lachesis made a comment either directed to the wrecked building or the fact that the Lord had burned away all her clothing and even hair with that attack, leaving her stark naked like a newborn as she lay against Atropos' chest. Maybe both.

  "Do me a favor and toss me some blanket," Atropos retorted. Almost immediately, a Seed-generated blanket was thrown her way. "Thank you."

  Atropos shifted the unconscious Lord to a sheltered part of the corridor, carefully wrapping the blanket around her form. Clotho watched the scene with her arms folded.

  "I still can't believe our luck. All in a night's work, huh?"

  "Indeed."

  She lingered there for a moment, eyes fixed on the Lord's face. Then Atropos rose to her feet.

  "I've got an idea."

  Both of her sisters turned toward her.

  "Prepare a runner drone. And while you're at it, retreat immediately with both captives back to the mothership."

  Lachesis tilted her head.

  "And what about you, sister?"

  Instead of answering, Atropos reached out and triggered the release on her helmet. With a soft hiss of equalizing pressure, it disengaged. Revealed was the face of a young woman with short black hair in a bob cut and delicate features.

  "Watch," she said simply.

  Atropos raised a hand glowing with mana and brought it to her own face. Her hair seemed to lighten from root to tip, turning into golden strands. Beneath her fingers, her facial structure shifted, until when she lowered her hand, it was the female Lord's face that stared back at her sisters.

  "Ooh, an impostor!" Lachesis exclaimed, pointing at her sister's altered face.

  "Yes, this is what I'm going to do. This form will allow me to walk in broad daylight, thereby giving me an easier time to infiltrate the local society..."

  Atropos smiled—the Lord's smile.

  "It should fit right in."

  The Available Information from Beyond

  DESIRE THOUSANDJACKER

  Also known as the MR Manadriver Copying Lance, the Thousandjacker is a Manadriver built into a polearm frame. While it is a practical multi-purpose weapon in its own right, both in melee and ranged combat with its powerful energy attacks, its length of 90 centimeters exceeds the limits set by the Holy Milishial Empire's weapons law and therefore cannot be legally carried in public. The Thousandjacker consists of the following parts:

  - Jack Ring: A ring fitted to the end of the hilt. Pulling it activates the Jack Suction system, initiating Jackrise and extracting energy from a target.

  - Gain Stocker: A storage and amplification unit that retains harvested energy and its associated data. Operational input and output are displayed on an integrated monitor, complete with a power gauge and movement indicators.

  - Jack Edge: A pedanium blade. By channeling energy and data supplied from the Gain Stocker into the blade, the user can unleash powerful attacks according to their intent.

  - Jack Suction: The weapon's tip. Activated via the Jack Ring, it draws energy directly from the target. Constructed from pedanium, it possesses exceptional piercing capability.

  - Desire Grip Linker: The handle. Beyond serving as a grip, it transmits parameters, operational manuals, and real-time status displays to the user, while also acting as the conduit through which the user's desire shapes the weapon's energy-based attacks.

  - Attack Trigger: A trigger mechanism used to activate energy-based attacks.

  - Core Circuit Dock: A slot designed for the insertion of magic circuits. Once a circuit is installed, the built-in Authorizer performs non-contact learning, enabling a Hacking Break that applies the loaded data's capabilities to attacks.