Pushing open the blast door on the third basement level, Su Yu stepped into a weapons testing range filled with the dry chill of metal and the smell of machine oil.
Mei stood at the console on the edge of the range, a tactical tablet in her hand.
Complex molecular structure diagrams scrolled across the screen. At the hiss of the blast door sealing shut, she looked up from the tablet.
Barely half a step separated the two of them.
"The hypermutation factor samples we gave Mobius earlier, along with part of the recorded data from the restructuring surgery, are almost parsed down to the underlying architecture."
Mei laid the tablet flat on the console and rapped her knuckles twice against the cold metal.
"Mobius has given her current assessment. It's completely uncharted territory, and this would be the first hands-on case in this world. She admitted that with no prior clinical data to lean on, nobody dares guarantee what the success rate of this surgery would actually be, not even to within a few percent."
The room went quiet for a moment, with only the hum of cooling fans from a few servers in the corner.
Mei's gaze settled on the rows of jumping data lines.
"But," she paused for a second, "I know exactly what would happen. If that plan ends up on the table, then with Kevin's temperament, he'll climb onto the operating table. That's exactly the kind of thing he'd do."
The light from the console fell along the side of her face, and the corners of her mouth seemed to sink half an inch.
Su Yu stood beside her.
He watched the pale glow of the screens wash over Mei's face. He didn't answer right away. His hands stayed in his jacket pockets as he listened in silence to the turning of the exhaust fan.
"If I hadn't brought out the data on those hypermutation factors, maybe none of these risks would even be up for discussion."
"Don't say that."
Mei shot back at once.
"If he doesn't do those things, he'll just have to stand by and watch everything slide toward the point of no return. And if one day Kevin finds out you were holding a way to make him stronger the whole time, and hid it from him in the name of protecting him..."
Mei stopped and looked at Su Yu.
"He'll hate you for the rest of his life. He knows you too well. The next step after you hide it is that you shove all your chips onto the table and go off to die alone."
Her fingers tightened on the edge of the console.
"Nobody wants to see him on an operating table with his life hanging in the balance. But if you really clamp those technologies in your fist, your head stuffed with that lone-hero routine, then Kevin and I are only going to get angrier."
Su Yu pulled his hands out of his pockets and shrugged.
"I can't do a thing with you two. You've been this stubborn since way back. Still, I have to say thanks."
Mei looked at him. Her lips twitched into a faint curve.
"If you really feel bad about it, bring some real skill to the test in a bit."
Before her words had fully faded, the automatic door at the side of the entrance gave a "hiss" of venting air. Two sets of footsteps came in, one after the other.
"Supreme Commander Su Yu! Dr. Mei! Good afternoon!"
Susannah Manatt was shouting from halfway across the room.
She must have been running too hard. She skidded on the slick alloy floor, her soles letting out a sharp squeal of rubber, lost her balance, and pitched straight forward.
Su Yu stepped forward half a pace, shot out his right hand, and caught the tactical webbing at Susannah's waist in midair.
Her downward momentum stopped dead against the strong pull.
"Watch your step."
A twist of his wrist set the rattled girl upright on her feet. He picked up the cap that had flown off and plopped it back on her head.
Susannah's face turned bright red. She tugged the brim down with both hands, giggled sheepishly a few times, and scuffed her toes back and forth on the floor.
Sin Mal, who had followed her in, stopped walking and rolled her eyes as hard as she could.
"There isn't a single hair on this floor, and you still manage to trip on flat ground?" Sin Mal planted her hands on her hips, her tone dripping with impatience. "Who do you think you are, the female lead of some last-century romance manga?"
She dropped Susannah and turned her gaze on Su Yu.
"Supreme Commander."
The three words came out stiff as a board.
As soon as she'd said them, her eyes slid off to the side, toward the rows of red and green buttons on the console.
Counting back, it had been almost four months.
Back then she'd just arrived at the base, swaggering around and picking fights. She hadn't even brushed Su Yu's sleeve before he pinned her to the floor in front of everyone and left her eating a mouthful of dust.
Since that day, the two of them had barely crossed paths in private.
Sin Mal wasn't the type who couldn't stomach losing. She'd accepted Su Yu's bottomless combat power.
But the tangle of lingering resentment and total submission made those first few seconds of seeing him hard to endure.
"Looks like you two get along pretty well." Su Yu watched Sin Mal's awkward expression. "I remember when you first got to the base, you looked down on Susannah quite a bit, didn't you?"
"Ahem..."
The remark hit a sore spot. Sin Mal coughed hard, her fist pressed against her lips.
"This idiot used to drag down the team. That's a plain fact..." Sin Mal dragged her gaze back and glared at Susannah. "After getting whipped into shape for a while, she finally looks halfway decent."
"Huh? That's not what you said in the dorm!" Susannah popped her head out from the side and protested loudly. "Last time you said I was your best partner!"
"Shut up!" Sin Mal's voice jumped several notches, and she stamped her foot hard. "When did the great Sin Mal ever say anything that disgusting! And in front of the Supreme Commander and the doctor, straighten your back! Don't disgrace our Immortal Blades assault squad!"
She scolded her with a stony face, firing the words off without pause.
Susannah just stood to one side, giggling behind her hand and saying "Got it, got it," but it was obvious none of the scolding was sinking in.
Heavy footsteps rang out from beyond the metal door.
Kevin walked in.
He wore a thick set of gray-black standard-issue armor, and the reactor on its back gave off a low working hum.
He dragged a heavy alloy Greatsword behind him, nearly two meters long and as wide as a door. Its tip scraped a shallow line across the alloy floor, and embers flickered around his feet as he moved.
Mei hit the master switch on the console, and the rows of high-speed cameras and sensor probes behind her lit up red in unison.
"Chatting's over. Mech data collection starts now." Mei looked down at the tablet in her hand. "Su Yu, you'll be the sparring partner. Collect each of their combat habits during the process, and give targeted mech modification suggestions afterward."
Kevin didn't waste a word.
He walked inside the yellow line at the center of the range, gripped the hilt with both hands, and heaved the Greatsword up as if it weighed nothing, holding it level at his side.
Su Yu stood at the other end of the yellow line.
A thought, and the liquid metal on his wrist flowed out and hardened in the blink of an eye into a heavy sword nearly identical in size to the Greatsword in Kevin's hands.
"Begin."
Mei's voice carried across the whole range through the loudspeaker.
No probing. No maneuvering.
Kevin kicked off the floor hard, and the pneumatic units in the legs of his armor blasted out high-pressure gas.
He shot forward like a cannonball leaving the barrel, slamming in with terrifying kinetic force.
The Greatsword swung through a full circle in midair, screaming as it tore the air, and chopped straight down.
Su Yu raised his sword in both hands to meet it.
The two heavy alloy weapons crashed together in midair.
The colossal impact boomed out beneath the empty dome.
At the point where the blades met, dazzling bursts of fire scattered in every direction.
The recoil raced down the hilt into the bones of Su Yu's arms. The downward pressure was as heavy as if an entire mountain had collapsed on him.
With a dull "clang," the soles of Su Yu's feet scraped half an inch backward across the floor.
That Strength was absurd.
Kevin had only unlocked the first-stage Genetic Lock, but the fusion-powered armor he wore multiplied his physical output many times over.
Worse still was the unreasonable physique he'd inherited from the Kaslana bloodline.
In this head-on contest of raw force, he was faintly able to stand against Su Yu, who was already approaching the peak of the second stage.
The speed of his swings, the tracking of his dynamic vision, and the muscle exertion that didn't buckle under heavy load were all things a first-stage Su Yu could never have matched in the past.
In a dozen-odd seconds, the two Greatswords traded more than ten blows head-on.
The embers of clashing metal nearly fused into a curtain of light between them.
Kevin had no fancy sword techniques, only sweeping chops and broad horizontal slashes.
Every strike squeezed the armor's output to its limit.
After taking three heavy blows in a row, Su Yu twisted his wrist. His liquid-metal blade scraped a streak of fire down the edge of Kevin's sword, borrowing the force to bleed off most of the downward pressure.
Then he drove from the waist, and his left leg whipped around like a steel lash into the flank of Kevin's armor.
With a dull thud, Kevin slid two meters to the right and planted his Greatsword in the floor to steady himself.
Su Yu dismissed his sword.
"That's enough."
Su Yu walked back to the console, rubbing his wrist, which had gone slightly numb from the shock, and looked at Mei.
"We don't need to worry much about flexibility in this standard-issue armor's design. Kevin's physique and neural Reaction Speed are top-spec, the foundation of a protagonist mech. His specialization should go entirely into close-quarters combat and maximum destructive power."
"Build this unit into a heavy assault trooper who can cut into a beast tide solo. His resistance to pressure is far beyond ordinary people."
Mei watched the heart rate and output peaks on the screen, then turned to look at Su Yu the way one looks at a monster.
"You wore no exoskeleton at all, unarmored against armored, and you still took the advantage head-on." Mei shook her head. "You're the real monster. Half a month ago you'd wheeze for ages just hauling a water-cooler jug up to the third floor."
"This is nothing." Su Yu smiled. "It's just that Instructor Rita is off running stress-resistance training today. If she were here, she could give you a live demonstration of what it means to tear a Gundam apart with her bare hands."
Susannah, watching from the sideline, had been wide-eyed for a while now. She gripped the railing outside the range and cried out before she could stop herself.
"Supreme Commander's kick just now was so cool!"
Sin Mal pressed her lips together beside her. She wasn't shouting like Susannah, but the longing and worship for absolute Strength in the eyes fixed on the center of the range had nowhere to hide.
"Susannah, you're next."
Mei called out the reminder.
Susannah put on her helmet and stepped onto the range.
Unlike Kevin's overwhelming heavy-firepower clash, Susannah's weakness in close-quarters fighting was laid bare. Su Yu used just a few routine grappling holds and her footwork fell apart completely. Within two short minutes she had been locked at the joints and pinned to the floor again and again.
"A woman's physiology and muscle distribution naturally differ from a man's. Compared to Kevin's explosive power, your advantage is the flexibility of your body and the range of your joints."
Su Yu released his hold and pulled Susannah up from the floor.
"Your close-combat habits came from Rita. Her joint locks need years of accumulated muscle memory and absolute combat instinct. You've learned them too rigidly."
Su Yu brushed the dust off Susannah's shoulder.
"But you've got real talent for tracking moving targets. For close-quarters self-defense, just learn the escape techniques. As for your strength in sniping, I'll have a word with Bronie and get Natasha to coach you full-time."
Su Yu turned to the console.
"Mei, her armor doesn't need any heavy defensive plating. Convert that whole weight budget into portable power lines, dedicated to sustaining remote overload fire for the high-energy sniper rifle. Her role is long-range heavy sniper support."
Mei nodded and quickly typed a string of modification commands after Susannah's name.
"Understood."
Last to step onto the range was Sin Mal.
She walked inside the yellow line, and her breathing quickened without her meaning it to.
More than four months had passed, but the memory of provoking Su Yu and being put down in a single move was still burned into her muscle memory.
Su Yu stood across from her, looked at her tense face, and smiled.
"Loosen up. Fight however comes naturally. You're part of the Immortal Blades now. You don't want to lose face in front of your good partner, do you?"
Sin Mal clenched her back teeth and nodded.
Her fighting style was simple and pure.
The instant her spatial storage ring activated, four high-explosive grenades were flung into the air at once, and right behind them she yanked a multi-barrel grenade launcher out of storage.
"Fire!" Sin Mal roared.
Mei was just about to ask Su Yu whether he wanted the protection-grade combat suit activated when a thin layer of metal fluid on his body had already spread rapidly over him from head to toe.
Key of Blankness, equip.
"Explosives don't have eyes."
Su Yu watched the grenades streaking out one after another, his tone relaxed.
"Besides, I need to save my strength. There's a pile of trouble waiting for me upstairs when I get back."
Blinding flashes of fire erupted one after another across the center of the range.
Sin Mal's skills as a demolitions specialist were on full display.
Every bomb's landing point was calculated with pinpoint accuracy, sealing off nearly every path Su Yu could take, forward, back, left or right.
The violent shock waves and heat twisted the air, and the acrid smell of gunpowder smoke spread in an instant.
Amid the fire and smoke, the newly gained Tarot ability of Su Yu's was silently triggered.
Horizon Fault.
A fault in Imaginary Space, thin as a cicada's wing and impossible for the naked eye to catch, surfaced across his skin.
The lethal fragments and waves of scorching heat were swallowed without a sound one millimeter before touching that fault, and exiled into a void dimension.
Bright Mirror Sword Heart spun up to full speed at that moment.
Formless Evolution, All Streams Return to One.
On Su Yu's retinas, every move Sin Mal would make next, every gap while she reloaded, every landing point of her retreating steps, unfolded with perfect clarity.
He didn't tank the blasts. Instead he slipped into the gaps between the explosions, closing the fault, drawing a breath, then snapping it open again.
His figure wove through the thick smoke like a ghost.
The grenade launcher in Sin Mal's hands let out only the click of an empty chamber.
Before she could pull another weapon from her storage ring,
a hand tore through the smoke in front of her and clamped down on the front of the launcher barrel, then yanked hard along its length.
The tremendous force ripped the weapon from her grip in an instant.
The next second, a precise low sweep hit the hollow behind her knees, and she pitched forward, out of control.
Her shoulder was wrenched behind her and she was slammed hard against a patch of metal floor untouched by the blasts.
The smoke cleared.
Sin Mal lay pinned spread-eagle on the ground, gasping for breath, sweat running down her forehead and cheeks.
Her shoulder was locked solid, and no matter how hard she strained, she couldn't budge it.
But there was no trace of defeat in her eyes. The eyes she lifted to Su Yu were startlingly bright, burning with fervent awe for an absolute powerhouse who could shatter an entire net of firepower with ease.
Su Yu let go, stepped back half a pace, and held out a hand to her.
"Nicely done."
Sin Mal panted on the floor for a couple of breaths, grabbed the offered hand, and pulled herself up.
"I'll definitely get stronger." She wiped the grime from the corner of her mouth and stared fixedly at Su Yu. "One of these days, I'll challenge you again."
"Sure." Su Yu smiled and shook her hand a couple of times. "I'll be waiting."
He turned and gestured to Mei at the console.
"Mei, the design focus for her armor should be ammunition capacity and firepower output. Add mounting slots for spatial storage units and raise the unit's defense. When it counts, that suit has to become a mobile metal powder keg."
Mei ran a quick check of the fluctuation curves of each parameter on the tablet.
"No other anomalies in the data. We can proceed."
Su Yu nodded. After adding a few more suggestions of his own, he said goodbye to the group, didn't linger, and headed for the exit of the weapons testing range.
The hall settled back into its earlier quiet, with only the steady hum of a few cooling units.
Susannah hadn't taken off her light tactical gear yet. She pulled off her helmet, ran over to the test bench, and propped both arms on the metal tabletop.
"Supreme Commander Su Yu was just so cool..." Susannah's eyes were still fixed on the stretch of yellow line where he'd stood. "That footwork, that pressure! It was over before I even saw him move."
Sin Mal stood a little way off by the weapon rack, jamming a heavy, empty grenade launcher tube into its slot.
"Quit swooning over there." Sin Mal didn't even turn her head as she reached for the load-bearing strap on her shoulder. "Go dial in the parameters on your auxiliary joints. Stop staring at other people all day. More training is what matters. Don't let yourself get pinned down again the second you step onto the floor next time."
"Yeah, yeah." Susannah drew out the words and reached to undo the fastening belt at her waist. "But you lost pretty thoroughly yourself. All that explosive, and you didn't even brush his sleeve."
Sin Mal's fingers froze. She turned around and glared at Susannah.
"Shut up! That was a firepower probe! Get back to work!"
On the other side of the range,
Kevin laid the heavy alloy Greatsword flat on the test bench. He didn't take off his standard-issue armor. Instead he strode straight over to the console.
Mei stood beneath the holographic projection, her fingers moving over the floating virtual keyboard as she filed away the combat data they'd just collected, one entry after another.
Kevin stopped beside her, his eyes resting on the red peak lines that kept jumping on the display.
"Mei."
Mei's fingers stopped. She turned her head to look at Kevin.
"How much do you think he put out just now?"
Mei didn't answer right away. Her gaze swept back and forth over several sets of comparison data on the screen, and then she shut off the holographic projection.
"Judging by the fight he just had with you, unarmored, he used about eighty to ninety percent of his Strength."
She tapped the edge of the console twice.
"But understand that this is only his base output. The prototype armament he carries, the one named Key of Blankness, amplifies it geometrically." Mei looked Kevin in the eye. "If he fought you in armor, at your current level of coordination and output, you wouldn't have a chance."
Kevin fell silent.
His gaze dropped from the console screen to the metal bracer on his own armored arm.
On it was a shallow white scratch, left by Su Yu's blade in the fierce clash a moment ago.
"Not enough."
Kevin said it quietly.
He turned his head and looked at the center of the range, where the fire had been flying only minutes before.
"I'm still too far from him."
Mei stayed where she was, quietly studying his tense face.
She knew what Kevin was thinking.
Ever since that night, when the double Spatial Rifts opened at the same time and that man plunged into the depths of the purple-black fissure and vanished, an invisible thorn had been lodged in Kevin's heart.
The way he'd been raising his training intensity day and night, and the near-limit-squeezing fight in the test just now, all pointed to one thing.
Deep in Kevin's subconscious, if he possessed enough Strength, Su Yu wouldn't have to shoulder those risks alone.
That helplessness of being able only to wait while someone else staked their life in a hopeless situation was the sole fuel that had kept driving this Kaslana body forward these past few days.
He craved Strength desperately, and not only to face the doomsday already fated to arrive in sixty-eight days.
It was for the next time that reckless man set out to do something at any cost. This time, he didn't want to be reduced to a spectator.
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