At 2:00 a.m., Eternal Meteor was jolted awake by the phone she'd hidden under her pillow, its vibration pressing straight into her skull.
Still half-asleep, she quietly reached under the bed and pulled out the decoy doll she'd prepared in advance, tucked it into her spot, and carefully pulled the blanket over it.
She didn't bother with tiptoeing.
Eternal Meteor got dressed, put on her shoes, and walked straight into the dorm bathroom. She waited inside for five minutes, then hit the flush—using the noise as cover—before slipping out of the dorm.
Once she reached the track, she began loosening up and warming her body.
"Seriously? Training at two in the morning?" X said, sounding appalled. "You think you'll be conscious tomorrow?"
"What choice do I have?" Eternal Meteor muttered. "I can only pull this off after Rudolf is fully asleep."
She sounded genuinely helpless. To avoid being caught by Symboli Rudolf, she could only train during the deepest part of sleep. That way, even if Rudolf got up in the middle of the night, she'd be groggy—too foggy to scrutinize the bed.
And lately… Rudolf had been acting downright pathological.
If she got discovered now, Eternal Meteor was pretty sure she'd be forced into a ban so hard she'd never see a starting gate again.
No. Absolutely not.
"At least wait until I'm dead before you ban me for training before full maturation," she grumbled internally, then forcibly threw the thought away as the cold night wind slapped her in the face.
Every second mattered. This wasn't time to roast herself.
But there was still one problem:
How the hell do you "activate" a Domain?
She kept thinking she was only one kick away from smashing open that "door"… yet she could never find the right angle for that last kick. All she could sense was a reserve of power inside her body that she couldn't pull out—as if something invisible was yanking her back by a rope.
Whatever. Thinking here won't solve it.
Run first.
She stepped onto the track, dropped into a starting stance—and launched.
She shot forward like an arrow loosed from a fully drawn compound bow.
No pacing. No saving strength.
She kept accelerating, trying to touch the limit—then break it.
Two laps.
Still nothing but that same feeling: the constraint, the almost-breaking-free, the maddening "one step away" that never actually became the step.
Then, suddenly—
"Focus. Spirit. Resolve." X spoke, as if he couldn't watch anymore. "I won't say anything else. This is your Domain."
Eternal Meteor froze in shock.
She'd honestly assumed X would never give her a hint—he'd been warning her not to use it this whole time.
The advice was vague as hell, but vague was still better than nothing.
Eternal Meteor began replaying every scene she'd ever seen of Domains being triggered in manga:
A rival. A looming defeat. A match slipping away—
And the single-minded will to seize victory no matter what.
Something clicked.
She started running again.
But this time, she didn't stop after two laps.
She kept running.
Even when her muscles burned. Even when sweat streamed down and spattered the track. Even when the pain began to accumulate and thicken like lead.
She ran like she was fleeing something.
"What are you doing?" X demanded, completely baffled.
Eternal Meteor didn't answer.
She didn't have the spare breath for it.
"Say something!"
Her body felt like it had sunk into the deep sea—every step took everything she had.
And that was exactly what she wanted.
That feeling.
The one embedded in her memory.
The feeling of being on the edge of death.
She remembered it.
Right before she died, it had been like this—her command to move her limbs disappearing into nothing, like throwing mud into the ocean. Even lifting a finger had been a luxury.
She'd been left to lie in a freezing heap of garbage, waiting for death to come and claim her, turning her into nothing more than rotting meat.
No one would remember her.
She wouldn't even be dust in history.
But now?
Now everything was different.
This short stretch of time alone had been a hundred times more dazzling than her entire previous life.
And she needed it to burn—burn into something undeniable.
She would let death harvest her body if it must—
But it would never steal proof that she had existed.
Eternal Meteor's vision blurred, but she locked her eyes forward as if she could see a finish line waiting just ahead—her longed-for endpoint.
Her lungs felt like a broken bellows, wheezing and hissing with every desperate breath.
She was about to collapse before the line.
One step short of the dream.
No.
No—!
Absolutely not!!!
"I'll win all the way to the end," she swore inside her skull, the words tearing through her like fire. "Even if I have to offer up my life! Even if I have to offer up everything!!"
X gasped.
In that instant, countless red points of light ignited inside Eternal Meteor's pupils—like a galaxy reflected in her eyes.
Red starlight began to bloom around her body, one spark after another, each point flickering like it was alive.
The crimson glow multiplied until it felt like she was running inside a scarlet galaxy—
And her eyes were its core.
Then, from the corner of that starlit field, one tiny point suddenly flared brighter than all the rest—burning violently—
And vanished.
Eternal Meteor's slowing steps seemed to accelerate by a hair.
The increase was so small it was almost imperceptible.
But if one burning star gave only a tiny boost…
What if all of them burned?
The fire leapt from the extinguished point to the next.
Like flame racing across paper, it spread.
More and more starlights ignited and burned away—and the more they burned, the faster Eternal Meteor became.
The remaining red glow stretched behind her at speed, drawn out into a blazing tail—
Like a meteor ripping through the atmosphere.
But meteors fall.
After only one-fifth of her lights had burned, Eternal Meteor couldn't hold it anymore.
Her speed crashed down in an instant.
Now she finally understood why both X and Rudolf had been warning her so hard.
The light in her eyes went out.
A choking pressure surged up her throat—her breath caught—
And she vomited.
Her stride snapped to a stop so abruptly that her body pitched forward.
She barely managed to throw her arms up to protect her face—
Then she hit the ground and skidded nearly five meters along the track.
"Cough—cough—cough… My clothes…" she wheezed, grimacing. "Good thing I used my 'trainer' status to get a few extra sets."
"You're wiped out like that and you're thinking about clothes?" X said, incredulous.
Her arms and legs were shredded—skin and fabric ground raw together. Blood surged from the torn wounds.
Eternal Meteor casually shook her limbs out, flexed a couple times, and didn't even flinch as the movement reopened the gashes.
"It's fine," she said, breathing hard. "Bones are fine. Surface wounds like this will be mostly healed by tomorrow morning."
"You're happy, then," X muttered. "Genius."
"Oh?" Eternal Meteor blinked, sounding delighted. "You're actually praising me? Are you sure you're the X I know?"
"Keep crawling, you naturally born idiot."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 126)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter134)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 87
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 79
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 73
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 49
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 45
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 45
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 31
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 27
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 26
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