Iseul's eyes burned. Her body ached.
Her neck was stiff from leaning over the desk for hours, fingers flicking through digital pages at a speed no normal person bothered to match.
But Iseul didn't slow down.
She couldn't.
She was done fearing.
Now she just had to beat the system before it crushed her.
Every second mattered.
She couldn't afford to be slow.
It was already bad enough that she had to deal with Loadon's bounty. He could go from "illegal unregistered mech" to "fugitive rogue mech" in under a day!
Iseul was losing her mind just thinking about it.
It was totally unacceptable.
Bad enough with the exposure of her power. Although Iseul chatted and seemed to resolve things with her friends, she was still able to hear some of their concerned thoughts from their subconscious minds.
Those thoughts spoke the loudest with passion, and whether they understood it or not, from the little bit of experience Iseul had gained from accidentally hearing people's thoughts from time to time.
She knew that the most passionate subconscious thoughts were the most honest.
Iseul knew her friends meant well, but some of them feared her power and what she could do.
They had no ill intent—they were just worried.
For a moment, they thought she wasn't human or possibly a Cosoma spy, even though it was just a flicker of a thought before it was squashed down. It hurt slightly, but she understood.
She decided she would never let them know, as she could hear their thoughts and knew the hidden truth of their subconscious minds was more honest.
It was normal to fear what you don't understand or can't control.
Even she herself forced herself not to feel fear toward something that was connected to her, to keep an open mind.
Most humans inherently reject new things that are different.
The same way people, when encountering someone smarter, stronger, or more confident than themselves, subconsciously react with hostility.
It is their natural biological instinct to feel threatened by something different or a whole new worldview.
Not willing, but Iseul had to gamble everything on a Tinker license that would signify Loadon as a legal existence, which also protected Loadon from being a permanent liability.
Hours slipped again without her noticing.
By the time the two twin suns began to creep over the jagged scrap-built skyline, washing the clouds in pale gold and rust-orange, Iseul finally leaned back in her chair with a soft, exhausted breath.
"Guess I'm really doing this," she murmured.
Only then did Iseul notice the glow creeping through the cracked window.
The twin suns were rising over the jagged skyline, bathing the metal rooftops in pale gold and copper.
"…Morning already?"
Her voice came out hoarse.
Iseul's eyes were bloodshot, dry, and aching, but the fatigue couldn't drown out the quiet satisfaction building in her chest.
Straightening up in her chair, tired satisfaction etched into her face—Iseul's eyes were fearless, burning with quiet determination.
The last real obstacle left was to create an unforgeable mark.
Creating her own unique Creator signature and acquiring material was going to be quite a troublesome matter.
Every registered Tinker was required to have one—a unique energy imprint that linked all their creations to them.
It functioned like a genetic watermark for inventions.
Without it, any mech or construct they built was legally considered unowned… and therefore illegal.
She could choose a basic Bureau-issued signature, which was cheap and fast but painfully generic.
Or…
She could design her own.
Custom signatures were stronger, more stable, and harder to forge, but they required specialized materials and energy calibration.
Normally, they took days.
If you paid enough, though…
She exhaled slowly, eyes glowing faintly as she stared at the projected cost estimates floating above her desk.
"…So it's either time or money."
And she didn't have much of either.
But she had to do this.
Not for prestige. Not for business.
For Loadon.
For her brothers.
For survival.
Despite the exhaustion crawling through her bones, her lips slowly curved upward.
Her all-night research had paid off.
On top of that, she still had to:
• Open her shop
• Buy suppressants and herbs for her brothers
• Gather materials to help Hanseul raise his gift rank
• Take some school missions to get more practical experience before the trial courage
• And now protect a rogue mech with no legal identity
Her funds were decent, but already about to be stretched thin.
Iseul couldn't afford to hesitate.
Without wasting time, she purchased the most recent Tinker Exam study books, then several sets of simulation materials.
900 credits gone in an instant, scanned without a blink.
There was no wait time as the files downloaded instantly.
The downloaded content filled Iseul's library archive system with structured tutorials, schematics, and virtual workspaces.
After studying for a few hours straight, Iseul felt prepared.
Taking small breaks in between, she prepared breakfast and readied her brothers. She shooed them quickly out the door for school with a forced smile, hiding her fatigue.
Honestly, Iseul felt pretty overwhelmed and wanted to cry, but she had no tears to shed.
It was too wasteful to shed tears over something that could be resolved without crying.
Sucking up her little pity party, Iseul quickly straightened up the kitchen and took a bladder-relief intermission.
She finished her break preoccupied, thinking about what material she was going to use and how much money she would have to spend.
Searching the scrapyard was completely out of the question, so the only choice she had was to buy material for her Signature.
While pondering and looking up prices online, Iseul felt a sharp fluctuation from her domain and a sudden drain of energy.
Black spots clouded her vision for a moment.
"Ugh, woah… lightheaded," Iseul paled as she placed her hand on the desk to stabilize herself. The other hand held her head in slight discomfort.
Something dripped from her nose. She looked down. It was blood.
This feeling felt familiar—when she first used her gift and was drained of her infinita force, she got nosebleeds. Her body felt weak and began attacking itself like radiation poisoning. But this time it wasn't as painful or brutal, as Iseul still felt she had infinite force in her domain and could call upon it to absorb more.
'I'm gonna be sick,' she thought, hunched over, dry-heaving.
Iseul slowed her movements for a moment, sensing the rich infinity force swirling in her domain. She called out to it and let it into her body.
This continued while waiting for the sick feeling to pass.
Confused, Iseul wryly inquired, "Is something wrong?" She reached for her gift mentally, wanting an explanation.
When not receiving a reply, Iseul mentally summoned her inner domain.
The vast domain responded instantly. When checking around for anything, she saw something that made her freeze.
"W-wha— When did this appear?" she spluttered in disbelief.
There was a massive heap of scrap metal she had dumped beside her workshop, and now it was nowhere in sight.
Instead, in its place, was a neatly stacked collection of unknown alloy blocks—clean, uniform, gleaming faintly with a strange metallic sheen.
"Did my gift do this?" she gasped in disbelief.
Iseul reached out mentally for one and took it out.
The block materialized in her hand.
It was light, yet dense. Cool to the touch.
Smooth, but not slippery.
When she bent it slightly with her fingers, it flexed instead of cracking—resilient and elastic in a way no common alloy should.
"This…" her eyes widened. "This looks quite high-grade."
Even someone as broke as Iseul could tell that.
This wasn't scrap metal anymore. This was pure 100% alloy with no radiation.
She couldn't send any form of radiation in it.
Maybe her domain had… refined it.
Iseul had yet to understand the power of her subconscious thoughts as a creator.
Nor had she realized she was the cause that had created the alloy—not her domain or gift.
All that junk had been processed, fused, and purified into something far more valuable.
A perfect medium.
Her heartbeat picked up.
Signatures required a stable, high-resonance base material to hold mental imprints without degrading.
This alloy felt like it had been made for exactly that purpose.
And more.
Anything built from this would be harder to hack, harder to copy, harder to trace.
Practically unforgeable.
Slowly, she exhaled.
"So that's what you did…" she murmured to her domain.
There was no response—but she didn't need one.
She set the alloy block on her desk, eyes sharp with focus.
This alloy would be used for her signatures.
She would embed her gift, her mental frequency, her identity into it—and submit it directly with her registration.
The cost might be high. But the value would be higher.
If needed, she could even sell one of the extra blocks from her domain.
A single brick of this stuff could fund most of her fees.
Still… she hesitated. Attention was dangerous right now.
Selling rare alloy during a lockdown was basically begging for trouble. But so was staying unregistered.
Iseul leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, staring at the glowing metal.
"…I really don't get easy days, do I?"
She mused, eyes flickering with a strange light.
No matter what, now that she had invested so much and put everything in order, she must succeed.