They left the heart of Exalting Plaza behind at a steady pace, the noise thinning into something more distant and manageable. The streets widened, the crowds organizing themselves into purposeful flows rather than chaotic clusters. Architecture followed suit. The decorative excess gave way to clean lines, layered platforms, and suspended walkways that spoke less of celebration and more of administration.
Sunny walked with his hands in his pockets, posture loose, gaze drifting with mild interest. He wasn't on edge. He wasn't relaxed either. He simply observed, committing details to his supposedly perfect memory for later.
Welt was the one to voice the question.
"How does the Divination Commission intend to extract information from Kafka?"
Sunny glanced at him. He had wondered the same thing. He doubted they could get Kafka to spill the beans… not that he knew why anyone would be spilling beans on purpose.
Maybe that was exactly what she was doing. Spilling them on purpose?
March tilted her head.
"Isn't that just… interrogation? Ask questions, apply pressure, see what sticks?"
Sunny shook his head.
"I doubt she'd be careless enough to spill the… I mean, say anything. As a big-time terrorist, she's either too zealous or too professional. I'd bet the latter."
March sent him a smug look.
"You would know, huh?"
Sunny blinked.
"Yes…? What's that supposed to mean?!"
She turned forward with exaggerated focus, hands clasped behind her head as she walked, gaze fixed firmly on the path ahead as if Sunny had not spoken at all.
Welt glanced between the two before coughing:
"As I was saying, interrogation seems insufficient for someone like Kafka. Even assuming cooperation could be coerced, the reliability of the information would remain questionable."
Sunny let out a quiet huff and let the topic drop, slipping back into step beside them.
Qingque, who had been lazily kicking at a loose pebble along the edge of the walkway, perked up at Welt's words.
"Oh, yeah, no, we're definitely not doing that. That sounds like way too much work."
Sunny glanced at her.
"That's… not reassuring."
Qingque laughed, scratching the back of her head.
"Relax. The Divination Commission has better tools than interrogation. Way better."
She slowed her pace and pointed ahead.
The path opened into a broad skybridge, its jade surface etched with faintly glowing runes that pulsed in slow, steady rhythms. Beyond it, the city fell away into layered platforms and floating districts, the artificial horizon stretching wide beneath a deep violet sky.
Suspended far above the skyline was a massive structure.
Sunny's gaze lifted despite himself.
The thing hovered with absolute stillness, an enormous assembly of interlocking jade rings and geometric plates arranged around a central axis. Translucent slabs rotated within its core, sliding past one another in precise, measured intervals. Runes flowed across every surface, rearranging themselves constantly, as though the structure itself were thinking.
Qingque pointed at it again, more enthusiastically this time.
"That's the Matrix of Prescience. It's a large-scale Jade Abacus calculation terminal."
Sunny nodded.
"Yes, yes, of course… and that means, what, exactly?"
Qingque sighed, already anticipating the explanation.
"Okay. So. Jade Abacuses."
She gestured vaguely, as though outlining something invisible in the air.
"Jade, when properly refined and inscribed with specific runes, can act as a medium for calculation and divination. The runes give it the properties needed to process information — storage, correlation, probability mapping, that sort of thing."
March frowned.
"That sounds suspiciously like math."
Sunny paled.
'M—Math?'
The world has ended, and he was in hell.
'…What am I talking about? I've never done anything beyond addition and substraction since the day I was born!'
He relaxed. There were truly benefits to never having to go to school.
Qingque replied to March:
"Eh. I guess it kind of is. The runes did come from Nous, who is kind of a omniscient super computer beyond the mortal plain, so… but they aren't complex enough for the Artisanship Commission to be unable to figure them out, since they've been the ones producing them."
March crossed her arms.
"So instead of asking Kafka what she's planning, you just… predict it."
"Exactly! Why rely on a criminal's honesty when you can rely on statistics?"
Sunny considered that.
Kafka allowing herself to be captured made more sense under that framework. If the Divination Commission already intended to bypass her entirely, then her silence — or even her deception — would be irrelevant. They would chart her past actions, the Stellaron Hunters' patterns, and the current state of the Luofu, then extrapolate forward.
Interrogation was unnecessary.
He found himself thinking of Noctis.
Long ago, Noctis had attempted a crude form of divination using layered runes and probability circles, trying to glimpse outcomes by brute force rather than insight. It had been unstable, inefficient, and wildly dangerous — a conclusion he reached based on the sorceror's demeanor — but the underlying principle was the same.
Given enough information, even fate could be approximated.
The thought lingered longer than he expected.
If this was what structured divination looked like on a civilizational scale, then what did that imply about Weaving?
At a certain level of mastery, he could most likely make something that was functionally identical to the Matric of Prescience.
…Not anytime soon, unfortunately.