Chapter 130 - A Whole New World

A cold chill slithered down my spine as Fei’s synthetic voice crackled through the phone. Though Myrrh hadn’t put the call on speaker, Fei’s frantic cries pierced through the tinny speaker with such urgency that I could hear every word.

“What about Neil and Dianca?” Myrrh asked, her voice shaky with tension.

“Dianca… She… she kidnapped Neil!” Fei’s panicked voice echoed like a shriek in a cavern.

My breath hitched. For a moment, I nearly laughed—nervous and disbelieving. The idea of someone like Dianca—a bubbly, sweet-natured girl—abducting a hardened ex-terrorist like Neil? It was laughable on the surface. If anything, logic and their backgrounds would have had Neil dragging her away, not the other way around.

But then, a memory resurfaced. The words etched into the Gospel of the Machine God.

[Eliminate Dianca Fritz]

My knuckles whitened as I clenched my fists. A storm brewed in my chest, heavy with dread. I stepped closer to Myrrh, my gaze fixed on her as the tension between us tightened. Sensing my need to hear more, she silently activated the loudspeaker.

“Where is she taking him?” I demanded.

“I-I don’t know!” Fei stammered. “Dianca just—just transformed into a Frame Unit without any warning, and then pwooosh! She grabbed Neil and shot up into the sky like a missile!”

Her synthetic voice quivered with disbelief. 

“It all happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to react. I wanted to chase them, but my DERE armor doesn’t have aerial capabilities! If I had a support unit, I could’ve done something!”

I frowned, thoughts racing. “Wait… how did Dianca even manage to fly without a support unit?”

“She… she sprouted these bizarre wings—like giant human hands,” Fei stammered, her synthetic voice trembling with unease. “It was so creepy just looking at it…”

Giant human hands?

My skin crawled at the image. That wasn’t something any WEEB System could generate. Even the most twisted configurations of the TSUN armor couldn’t manifest something that unnatural. My thoughts spun in a vortex of disbelief and dread. Just what the hell is going on?

 And more importantly—what exactly is Dianca?

Myrrh narrowed her eyes and scanned the night sky, her long hair swaying gently in the breeze. A second later, she pointed sharply toward the northwest.

“Over there!”

I followed her finger. At the far edge of the horizon, a glimmering streak of light cut through the sky. It looked like a shooting star—only it was rising, not falling. We couldn't confirm if it was Dianca in her Frame Unit, but it was heading straight in the direction of our dormitory.

“We saw a launch near the dorms. Zaft and I will go investigate,” Myrrh declared with fierce resolve. “In the meantime, report the kidnapping to KAWAII Headquarters and find Agent Feena.”

“Got it!” Fei responded without hesitation.

The moment she confirmed, Myrrh ended the call with a sharp tap, her expression now steeled with purpose.

Myrrh exhaled softly, then turned to me with a bittersweet smile. “I’m sorry, Zaft. Whatever it is you were about to say… it’ll have to wait.”

“I know,” I replied, my brows knitting together. “Chasing Dianca comes first.”

I tightened the strap on my smartwatch while Myrrh raised her morpher skyward. Without hesitation, she called out—

“Frame Unit, Awaken!”

A blinding flash burst from her device, illuminating the surroundings with a white-hot light. The air pulsed as metal surged and shaped around her body. In seconds, Myrrh had transformed into a towering mechanical Frame Unit—gargantuan, majestic, and brimming with raw power.

She extended an open, metallic hand toward me.

Without hesitation, I leapt into her palm. The metal beneath my feet thrummed with energy as she lifted me gently, placing me onto her left shoulder. I gripped the ridged armor tightly, bracing for what was to come.

A shimmering hologram flickered to life before my eyes as my smartwatch synced with her system.

[Weaponry Enhancement Engineering Bios]

The system booted up with a low hum. I tapped the glowing interface and selected:

[Level 10 – Beast Transformation]

Blue circuits flared across my left arm, flowing like rivers of electricity beneath my skin. I reached out and pressed my palm to the base of her armored neck.

“Beast Transformation—Activate!”

The Frame Unit lurched midair as its components shifted and realigned. Gears churned. Metal plates slid and clicked into new positions. With a thunderous roar of propulsion, her humanoid form morphed into a sleek, avian beast—an enormous, metallic phoenix.

Wings of chrome and plasma burst from her back, and in one swift motion, she took flight. The boosters flared, catapulting us into the clouds at breakneck speed. The wind howled around us, and the world below became a blur of lights and shadows as we chased the trail Dianca had left behind.

“You could’ve used the jetpack, you know,” Myrrh said, her voice laced with playful scorn and a metallic cybernetic tinge that buzzed in my ear.

“I couldn’t help it,” I said, trying to suppress a grin. “The moment I saw you flying in your birdie mode, something inside me just had to try it out. It looked… fun.”

“Heh? Am I just that awesome?” Myrrh teased with haughty delight. “C’mon, admit it—you wished I was still your WAIFU the moment you saw my transformation. Elegant, powerful, beautiful—what more could a man want?”

“Shut up,” I muttered, cheeks burning as I pouted and pointed ahead. “Just focus on chasing that thing.”

Myrrh let out a mechanical chuckle, then snapped her wings open wide. With a thunderous flap, her boosters ignited, and we surged forward at breakneck speed. Twin blue contrails carved glowing lines into the night sky as she hit Mach 2, slicing through the wind like a missile with wings.

Oddly enough, the crushing pressure I expected—the suffocating G-force from such an altitude and velocity—never came. Despite the sheer speed, it felt like I was riding a 120 km/h motorbike through an open highway—no helmet, just the wind roaring past me, wild and exhilarating.

“There they are!” Myrrh shouted, her voice sharp with focus.

As we closed the distance, the “rising star” came into clear view. It wasn’t a comet. It wasn’t a trick of light. It was another Frame Unit—sleek and radiant in hues of deep blue and regal gold. But the strangest part?

Its wings weren’t feathered or mechanical in the traditional sense.

They were hands—lithe, blue-colored humanoid hands, dozens of them, fanned out like a grotesque halo that shimmered in the wind.

I felt a chill run down my spine.

Alas, they hovered roughly a hundred meters above us—just out of reach. Myrrh beat her metallic wings again, angling upward, and we surged higher, breaking through the thinning air of the stratosphere. The sky around us deepened into a darker hue, the stars beginning to twinkle in clarity as the atmosphere thinned.

I narrowed my eyes against the biting wind—and there, clutched in the left hand of Dianca’s monstrous Frame Unit, was Neil.

He hung limp. Unmoving. Unconscious.

My gut twisted as I focused on his face. The crimson roots that once coiled delicately around his neck were now flaring—glowing like embers. They’d spread halfway across his face, like veins of infection crawling beneath his skin. Blood streamed from his nose and mouth, caught in the rush of wind, spraying into the cold air like red mist.

“DIANCAAA!” I screamed into the void. “Why the hell are you doing this?!”

“She can’t hear you, Zaft! The wind’s too loud!” Myrrh shouted, trying to compensate over the roar of high-altitude flight.

But then, she did.

Not through sound. Not through radio.

Directly.

Her reply reverberated not through the air, but within the hollows of our minds—cold, absolute, and inhuman:

“This reality is mine now.”

Suddenly, the skies above ruptured. A portal tore open like a wound in the heavens, revealing a swirling abyss beyond—a black void devoid of stars. Dianca, still gripping the unconscious Neil, flew straight into it without hesitation.

And just as we lunged forward in pursuit, the portal sealed itself shut.

“Fuck!” I howled, pounding my fist into Myrrh’s armor.

We didn’t even have time to process what had just happened.

Because something else happened. Another rupture split the sky.

Not a portal this time—but a reality quake. The fabric of existence shivered, and then bent outward like a curtain being drawn.

From that rift, something impossibly massive emerged. A planet.

An entirely new planet, materializing out of thin air—gray and lifeless, its surface marred with cracks and jagged ridges like an ancient wound. Around it spiraled rings—crimson rings—thick and glowing, like bleeding scars orbiting a corpse.

And it didn’t just appear in the sky. It dwarfed the sky.

The gray world loomed overhead, swallowing a third of Xyraxis’s heavens. Its presence was suffocating, unnatural—a godless moon where no moon should be.

A whole new world just popped up out of nothing.

And we weren’t ready for it.