Jace jumped to the side again. If what Lessa said about Neikir’s agility was correct, then he wouldn’t adjust well to Jace’s sudden movements.

  Sure enough, the scavenger’s Whistling Blade sliced past his nose with a screech and sliced through the floor, leaving a glowing hot gash.

  Neikir activated a fortification card and pressed his foot down. Metal shards pulled off the floor, metallic rune-lines ripped out of alignment and disintegrated into powder, then writhed around his arms and coated them in a strengthening layer.

  Jace didn’t have time to check the card’s function, but if it worked anything like Jace’s, it would increase his Agility and Strength.

  Increase Neikir’s Strength more than it already was.

  The man leapt forward with a sudden burst of speed, the air cracking around him, and Jace only barely dove out of the way of a swipe. Wherever Neikir stepped, the floor cracked beneath his footfalls, and soon, a cloud of debris trailed behind him.

  He swung at Jace once more, poised perfectly, so Jace couldn’t dodge. Jace tensed his arms, expecting a powerful hit, but he hadn’t been expecting something that strong. His elbows almost buckled, and vibrations ran through his bones. Whistling Glass on Whistling Glass let out a horrid, ear-splitting ring, and the blades shook more than they otherwise would’ve.

  Neikir’s blade also shone brighter. Its filament of Aes was still white, but it was a stronger edge, a hotter edge, bolstered by the aspect of metal. It wanted to cut and grind, and the plasma in Jace’s blade alone wasn’t enough to stop it. It was eating a notch into Jace’s cutting edge.

  But Jace pulled to the side, angling his blade, and letting Neikir’s swipe slide off to the side.

  As soon as he was free from the bind, he activated his own fortification technique. The world slowed down, his new strength manifested, and his blade shone brighter and sliced faster. He cleaved the air with each counter attack, painting broad streaks. Neikir’s eyes widened, almost in slow motion, and he staggered back.

  “How?” he exclaimed. “You cannot be this strong! I sense almost nothing from you!”

  “Maybe your senses are just shit,” Jace whispered. He concentrated on his core and projected as much strength through it as he could, readying his next cards.

  Perhaps…perhaps Neikir’s upbringing wasn’t as good as everyone else thought. Perhaps he just wasn’t that strong.

  “Soul-Circle Opening…First stage?” Neikir exclaimed. “It’s impossible.”

  Jace didn’t respond. He had a minute and a half before the fortification wore off, and he intended to use every second of it. He bent down and dug his blade into the floor, cutting fast enough that it dislodged chunks of debris, then snatched them out of the air.

  He triggered a hyperdash behind Neikir, and as the man turned to face him, launched the debris through hyperspace in an arc. The rock shattered, shotgunning his chest with particles. They pierced his armour with ease but crashed against his Vital and Resistance and only drew a little blood.

  But Neikir still stumbled. His Resistance might have stopped his skin from breaking, but there wasn’t enough left to keep him in place.

  As he rose back into a fighting position and turned to face Jace, Jace triggered his Cleanse card, erasing his cooldowns while out of range of Neikir (no sense in helping his opponent with the area of effect) and dashing back the other direction. He passed directly through Neikir, then emerged behind him once more.

  With a slash, he drove his Whistling Blade at Neikir’s back. The man whirled his own weapon up in a fancy twirl behind him, and he deflected Jace’s first blow, but just barely.

  Just barely? How?

  He was…what did Lessa say? A trooper-class? High strength with a fortification card?

  But Jace’s fortification was just better. His next swipe pushed Neikir off balance and made him stumble forward, and the Whistling Blade’s tip made a narrow gash down Neikir’s back. The blade, enhanced with hyperspace Aes, split the man’s skin with absolute ease and precision.

  As Neikir stumbled, he flicked his arms backward, using a technique card and launching shards of metal at Jace, each an individual dagger.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  There were too many to dodge. On a split-second guess, he triggered the questforger card, and instead relied on the enhancement of his senses. He picked out each dagger, each impression of warning it poked into his mind, then slashed them out of the air with a fortified twirl.

  In a flash of light, all the daggers except one melted into sparks and molten steel. He caught it between his fingers, then spun around and used his newly refreshed Wanderer’s Banishment card.

  With a flick, he flung the dagger back through hyperspace, targeting Neikir’s shoulder.

  This time, the dagger blasted forward and pierced straight through the top of Neikir’s shoulder, sending out a streak of white light and shattered armour debris. It flashed through the air and struck the opposite wall of the chamber. A statue exploded and toppled on the opposite side of the atrium.

  Neikir fell forward onto his stomach, then rolled over onto his back, panting. “No! You can’t! You can’t do this to me! My father will—”

  Jace narrowed his eyes. “Okay, okay, what are you talking about?” He ran forward and pressed the tip of his Whistling Blade up against Neikir’s chin, ready to pierce through the man’s neck or head. Or both. “You’ve gone missing in a dungeon. Who do you think will be to blame? The weakling—if you’ve even told him about me—or the powerful automatons and dungeon traps?”

  “My men will tell the truth!”

  “They won’t last a day without you,” Jace said, trying to keep the venom from his voice. These scavengers hadn’t exactly inspired him as paragons of virtue, and though he wasn’t sure if they all deserved death, he also couldn’t afford to cry over their demise. “So really, the question is: if I let you live, will you honour your part of our bargain, and will you keep hunting me?”

  Jace was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  A few of the mortal scavengers did too. They raised their plasma rifles and stepped forward, moving cautiously.

  The moment one tried to depress his trigger, Lessa fired a bolt of plasma from across the atrium. It struck the scavenger in the head, and as he fell back, his shot flew up high into the distance.

  The others panicked and aimed at Lessa instead, but a wave of turquoise energy pulsed up beneath them and threw them up into the ceiling, before slamming them back down. Ash’s doing.

  “Make a promise that you’ll leave me alone, and you won’t tell anyone about this,” Jace said. “Do the…whole soul pact thingy that you guys can do. Make good on your promise and leave the locals alone.”

  Neikir’s eyes widened, and a wild panic took over his face. In a blink, he crushed a technique card in his grasp, and though Jace tried to push the blade through Neikir’s throat, a burst of raw force pushed Jace back, just out of reach. A utility card of some sort—maybe a scavenger’s protective card in case of emergencies.

  Then Jace’s fortification technique sputtered out. Neikir’s hadn’t.

  “Oh, what’s that?” Neikir sneered. “Out of cards?”

  Jace put on an expression of mock terror, but he wasn’t out of options. He’d already reset his fortification card, and Neikir didn’t know.

  He’d given the man a chance, and now, Neikir was charging him, blade raised, poised to slice through Jace’s neck.

  At the last moment, Jace reactivated the Lightvein card and launched himself just out of Neikir’s swipe. A few feet to the side. Neikir’s sword sliced through empty air, and Jace slashed downward, fuelling his own blade with hyperspace Aes and cleaving through Neikir’s neck and fortification in a single blow.

  Neikir’s body collapsed, and his head tumbled away, but there was little blood—just a burnt, horrid smelling stump that made Jace want to retch. He turned away.

  There was only one thought on his mind: Pathetic.

  He finally had a chance to see how he stacked up against a Wielder of his own level, about, and that was the result.

  Kinfild had been right about his speed of advancement, at least…but probably also his strength. Jace was above average.

  He flicked his Whistling Blade once more to burn off the remains of Neikir’s neck, then tucked it back into his sheath. As he walked back to Lessa, Kinfild, and Ash, the remaining mortal scavengers turned and fled, sprinting to the north.

  “Thanks for the assist,” he said.

  “Uh, Jace…” Lessa whispered. That wasn’t the response he was expecting. “What’s that?”

  Jace turned around, looking down the hallway that Lessa stared at—the same hallway the scavengers were sprinting along.

  There was a faint green glow, a clack of metal on stone, and a raspy, coughing breath. A hunched man in a tattered cloak walked down the hallway in the opposite direction of the scavengers. When one drew too close, he swatted him with a flick of his arm. The man flew through the air and smashed into the wall of the hallway, then fell still.

  “Oh, that can’t be good…” Jace whispered. “Should we…go?”

  “Make for the central shaft,” Ash said. “Take the crust lift. He is beyond you.”

  “He?” Jace asked. But he didn’t hesitate. He ran back toward the center of the plaza, with Kinfild, Lessa, and Ash close behind.

  In a blink, before he could reach the spiralling stairwell, the hunched man sprang forward. He went down on all fours and bounded forward like an animal, and his hood fell back off his head.

  Revealing a steel face. A plain, silver skull with empty kyborg eyes and pulsing gore within. It connected to a segmented neck and an iron skeleton, with a furnace at its core and a line of smokestacks down its back, like a dinosaur’s spine-fin. Within its ribcage, surrounding the furnace, were the remains of a human’s organs, but the rest of the beast was a machine.

  The green glow came from its wrists. Shattered chunks of whistling glass, probably once a Whistling Blade, clung to its knuckles and forearms. Arcane brass knuckles.

  A tag appeared above its head:

  [Level 65 Wielder – Nascent Heart – 1st stage.]