He just had the sword.

  “Come on,” Alec whispered.

  The Stalker charged.

  Alec waited.

  At the last second, he sidestepped. He didn’t dodge away; he dodged in, past the spinning blade.

  He thrust the sword into the gap he had cut.

  He felt the blade hit something solid inside—a core, a battery, a soul.

  The sword pulsed violently in his hand.

  [EFFECT TRIGGERED: VAMPIRIC DURABILITY]

  The sword drank the oil. It drank the spark. Alec felt the weapon repair the micro-fractures in its own edge, feeding on the destruction.

  The Stalker shuddered and collapsed, its red eye fading to black.

  “One down,” Alec panted.

  “More!” Rina shouted.

  From the ridge above, three more shapes appeared. Smaller ones—Junk-Hounds made of rebar and wire. And another massive Stalker.

  They were surrounded.

  “They were waiting for us,” Virgil realized. “They hunt by vibration. Climbing the pile rang the dinner bell.”

  “We can’t fight a swarm,” Alec said. “Not without mana.”

  He looked at the reactor casing at the top of the ridge. It was only fifty yards away.

  “Virgil! Get to the core!” Alec ordered. “Rig the siphon! We’ll hold them here!”

  “I need time!” Virgil yelled, firing his rifle at a Hound.

  “You have two minutes,” Alec said. “Go!”

  Virgil scrambled up the slope. Jace went with him, covering his back with the shield.

  “Rina, with me,” Alec said. “Chokepoint.”

  They stood back-to-back on a narrow ledge of compressed trash. Below them, the Scavengers swarmed up the hill.

  “I have five arrows left,” Rina said calm, drawing her bow. “Then I’m down to knives.”

  “Make them count,” Alec said.

  The first Hound leaped. Rina shot it in mid-air. The arrow hit a hydraulic line, and the machine crumpled.

  Alec stepped forward to meet the second. He swung the black sword in a wide arc, decapitating the wire-wolf.

  But the big Stalker was coming. It climbed over the bodies of the Hounds, its saw-blade whirring.

  Alec checked his mana. 3%.

  He couldn’t cast anything. Not even a cantrip.

  “Physical only,” Alec told himself. “Remember the basics.”

  He parried a lash from a wire-tentacle. The impact rattled his bones. The sword held, but his arm was numb.

  Up on the ridge, Virgil had reached the reactor.

  It was a sphere of cracked ceramic, leaking blue light.

  “It’s unstable!” Virgil yelled over the comms. “If I tap it, it might blow!”

  “Tap it!” Alec screamed, ducking under a saw swipe. “We’re dead anyway if you don’t!”

  Virgil pulled a bundle of cables from his pack. He jammed them into the cracks in the reactor casing. He connected the other end to a makeshift distributor hub he’d built from the Reaper tech.

  “Connecting!” Virgil shouted. “Everyone, link up! Touch the hub!”

  “We’re kinda busy!” Rina yelled, kicking a Hound in the face.

  “Fall back!” Alec ordered. “Retreat to the core!”

  They scrambled up the last few yards of the slope.

  The Scavengers were right behind them. The big Stalker crested the ridge.

  “Touch it!” Virgil commanded.

  Alec grabbed Rina’s hand. He grabbed Jace. Jace grabbed Eleanor. Eleanor grabbed Virgil.

  Virgil slammed the switch.

  ZZZZZRT.

  It wasn’t a gentle flow. It was a firehose.

  Raw, unrefined mana surged from the ancient reactor into Virgil’s rig, and from there, into the squad.

  Alec gasped. His back arched.

  It felt like grabbing a live wire. Blue lightning danced across his skin. His veins burned.

  [MANA SIPHON ACTIVE]

  [RECHARGING… 10%… 30%… 60%…]

  The mana bar in his HUD filled so fast it blurred.

  The pain was exquisite. It was power. Pure, unadulterated power.

  “Capacity reached!” Lena warned from her position near the back. “Disconnect! Before you burn out!”

  “Not yet,” Alec gritted out.

  He turned to face the Stalker.

  He was glowing. Violet light poured from his eyes, his mouth, the cracks in his armor.

  [MANA: 120% (OVERCHARGE)]

  “Hey, scrap-heap,” Alec said.

  The Stalker paused, sensing the sudden spike in energy.

  Alec raised his hand.

  He didn’t cast a bolt. He didn’t cast a shield.

  He cast [Mass Architecture: Deconstruct].

  It was a skill he rarely used on enemies because the mana cost was astronomical. It was meant for taking down walls.

  But this enemy was a wall. It was made of building materials.

  “Break.”

  He unleashed the mana.

  A wave of violet distortion hit the Stalker.

  The bolts holding it together unscrewed. The welds dissolved. The hydraulic pressure released.

  The machine didn’t explode. It fell apart.

  In a second, the terrifying monster was just a pile of spare parts sliding down the hill.

  The other Scavengers froze. They processed the threat level.

  [THREAT: EXTREME]

  They turned and fled, scuttling back into the trash.

  Alec fell to his knees as the overcharge faded. Smoke curled from his fingertips.

  “That,” Virgil said, unplugging the cables with shaking hands, “was satisfying.”

  “Is everyone okay?” Alec asked, his voice rasping.

  Eleanor was breathing deeply, the color returning to her cheeks. “I’m full,” she said. “The Link is stable. I can hold Jace for days now.”

  Jace flexed his hands. “I feel like I drank a lightning bolt. Let’s not do that again.”

  “We might have to,” Alec said, standing up. “But for now, we’re back in the fight.”

  They took a moment to loot the remains of the Stalker Alec had disassembled. It was a treasure trove. High-grade gears, hydraulic fluid, and a pristine [Mana Capacitor] that Virgil snagged with glee.

  “We can use these,” Virgil said. “I can upgrade the rifles.”

  “Do it on the move,” Alec said. “We need to find the exit.”

  They climbed to the very top of the scrap mountain—the highest point in the Junkyard.

  From here, the view was breathtakingly grim.

  The Junkyard stretched for miles, a chaotic sea of rust.

  But above…

  Through the gaps in the smog clouds, Alec could see the underside of the next sector. And beyond that, the spiraling structure of the Tower rising into the infinite verticality.

  “Look,” Rina said, pointing upward.

  Far above them, on a walkway that spiraled around the central spine of the Tower, they saw movement.

  Tiny black specks against the white bone of the Tower.

  “Vane,” Alec said.

  He activated his [Enhanced Perception].

  He saw the banners. Red flags snapping in the void wind. He saw the lumbering shapes of Siege Behemoths.

  “They’re moving slow,” Jace noted. “They’re fighting.”

  Flashes of light illuminated the army. They were engaged in combat on the ramp.

  “What floor is that?” Virgil asked.

  Lena checked her map data.

  “Floor 38,” she said. “Maybe 39.”

  Alec looked at his own position. Floor 36.

  “Two floors,” Alec whispered. A grin spread across his face. It was a feral, dangerous grin.

  “The shortcut worked,” Rina said, grinning back. “We skipped the grind. Vane had to chew through every mob, every trap, every door.”

  “We caught him,” Alec said. “He’s right there.”

  “He doesn’t know we’re here,” Virgil said. “He thinks we’re dead in the Sanctum.”

  “Let’s keep it that way,” Alec said. “We shadow him. We let him clear the path to the top. And when he reaches the door…”

  “We stab him in the back,” Jace finished.

  “We take the Key,” Alec corrected.

  “Movement ahead,” Rina warned.

  They looked toward the exit gate of the Junkyard—a massive industrial airlock set into the cavern wall.

  It was guarded.

  Not by Scavengers.

  By a Scavenger King.

  It was a golem made of entire starship engines. It sat in front of the door, dormant but blocking the way. It was easily forty feet tall.

  [ENTITY: THE RUST EMPEROR]

  [LEVEL: 35 (MINI-BOSS)]

  “We can’t fight that,” Virgil said. “Even with full mana. It’s too big.”

  Alec looked at the mana capacitor Virgil had looted. He looked at the leaking reactor they had just siphoned.

  “We don’t need to fight it,” Alec said. “We just need to distract it.”

  “How?”

  “Virgil,” Alec said. “Can you overload that reactor? Make it go critical?”

  “I can make it explode,” Virgil said. “Big boom. Mushroom cloud.”

  “How big?”

  “Big enough to wake up the whole floor.”

  “Do it,” Alec said. “Set a timer. Two minutes.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we run for the door while the Emperor is busy looking at the fireworks.”

  They set the trap.

  Virgil rigged the reactor core to destabilize.

  “Run,” Virgil said.

  They sprinted toward the exit. They stayed in the shadows of the scrap piles, moving as quietly as possible.

  The Rust Emperor sat silent, a mountain of metal.

  They were fifty yards away. Thirty.

  BOOM.

  The reactor detonated.

  A massive fireball erupted from the top of the ridge behind them. Shockwaves rippled through the Junkyard. Debris rained down like hail.

  The Rust Emperor woke up.

  [THREAT DETECTED]

  Its eyes—massive searchlights—snapped on. It stood up, shedding tons of scrap metal. It turned toward the explosion, roaring a sound like a ship horn.

  It took a step toward the fire.

  “Now!” Alec yelled.

  They broke cover. They sprinted for the airlock.

  The Emperor heard them. It turned back.

  But it was slow. Massive and ponderous.

  It swung a fist the size of a bus.

  “Slide!” Alec shouted.

  They slid under the swing. The wind of the blow ruffled Alec’s hair.

  They hit the airlock controls.

  “Open! Open!” Jace yelled, bashing the button.

  The gears groaned. The door began to cycle.

  The Emperor raised its foot to crush them.

  “Virgil! Jam it!”

  Virgil threw a handful of [Scrap Grenades] into the door mechanism. The explosion forced the gears to spin faster.

  The door opened enough for a person.

  “Go!”

  They squeezed through.

  Alec went last. He looked back at the Emperor. The massive foot was coming down.

  He dived.

  He rolled through the gap.

  CRASH.

  The foot slammed into the doorframe, buckling the steel but failing to breach.

  Alec scrambled up. He hit the seal button on the inside.

  The blast door slammed shut, locking the monster out.

  Silence returned.

  They stood in a clean, white corridor. The air was sterile.

  “We’re out,” Rina breathed. “We’re out of the trash.”

  “And we’re close,” Alec said.

  He checked the map.

  [FLOOR 37: THE ASCENSION RAMP]

  “We climb one more floor,” Alec said. “Then we hit the Checkpoint at Floor 40.”

  “A checkpoint?” Jace asked.

  “A Safe Zone,” Lena said. “Like the Marketplace. But bigger. The Weaver says it’s a mandatory rest stop.”

  “Which means Vane will be there,” Alec said.

  “Face to face,” Virgil said nervously.

  “Face to face,” Alec agreed.

  He checked his sword. He checked his mana—still at 90%.

  “We’re ready,” Alec said.

  He led them up the ramp.

  The race wasn’t just a chase anymore. It was about to become a collision.

  7

  CHAPTER 7: THE CHECKPOINT

  The ramp leading to Floor 40 was a smooth, upward spiral of white marble that seemed to glow with its own internal light.

  Alec West marched steadily, his boots clicking rhythmically on the stone. The rust and grime of the Junkyard were gone, replaced by a sterile, unnerving cleanliness. The air was cool, smelling of incense and ozone.

  “Check weapons,” Alec murmured, though he knew it was a formality.

  “Charged,” Virgil said, patting his plasma rifle. “But if the Weaver is right, they won’t work in there.”

  “I’d rather have a broken gun than no gun,” Jace grunted. He was walking under his own power, the [Life Link] tether pulsing faintly between him and Eleanor. The color had returned to his face, though his eyes were shadowed with deep exhaustion.

  “We’re walking into a room with two thousand killers,” Rina said, her hand resting on the hilt of her ceramic knife. “If the Safe Zone flag glitches… we’re dead in three seconds.”

  “It won’t glitch,” Lena said, checking her Field Deck. “Floor 40 is a hard-coded Checkpoint. It’s a server stability node. Combat subroutines are completely disabled to prevent processing overload during mass transit. It’s the only place in the Tower where the System forces peace.”

  “Peace,” Alec scoffed. “Let’s call it a ceasefire.”

  He adjusted the belt of [The Sins of Bastion]. The unique sword felt heavy against his hip. It was a trophy taken from a traitor, and he was about to walk into the house of the man who had ordered the betrayal.

  “Ready?” Alec asked.

  The squad nodded.

  Alec pushed open the massive double doors.

  They swung inward silently on frictionless hinges.

  [FLOOR 40: THE SILENT CHAPEL]

  [STATUS: CHECKPOINT]

  [COMBAT: DISABLED]

  Alec stepped across the threshold.

  Immediately, a weight settled on his shoulders. It wasn’t physical gravity; it was a System suppression field. The mana in his veins grew sluggish. The aggression in his mind was dampened, covered by a heavy, unnatural blanket of calm.

  He tried to draw his sword.

  His hand wouldn’t move. The muscles refused to fire.

  “It works,” Alec whispered. “I can’t draw.”

  He looked up.

  The Silent Chapel was vast. It was a cathedral built for giants, with a vaulted ceiling that disappeared into a golden mist a thousand feet up. The walls were lined with stained glass windows, but they didn’t depict saints or gods. They depicted lines of scrolling code, binary streams, and geometric fractals that shifted slowly as the light passed through them.

  And the pews were full.

  The Hand of Vane.

  They were everywhere.

  Alec stopped. The squad bunched up behind him.

  Rows upon rows of black tents and bedrolls filled the side aisles. Ascendant mercenaries, Reapers, and armored soldiers sat on the stone floor, cleaning weapons, eating rations, or sleeping.

  But it wasn’t the endless sea of ten thousand that had crossed the lake.

  It was a remnant.

  “There’s maybe two thousand left,” Virgil whispered, scanning the crowd. “The jungle… the verticality… he lost eighty percent of his force.”

  The survivors looked brutalized. Their armor was scorched by acid, dented by falls, and stained with the fluids of a dozen different monsters. They didn’t look like conquerors. They looked like survivors of a shipwreck.

  As Alec walked down the central aisle, heads turned.

  One by one, the army noticed them.

  The murmur of conversation died. A silence, heavy and hostile, rolled across the cathedral.

  Two thousand pairs of eyes locked onto the five intruders.

  Eyes burning with hate. Eyes filled with shock that these “rats” had survived the same hell they had.

  A Reaper near the aisle stood up. He reached for his rifle. His hand twitched, fighting the System lock, but he couldn’t lift the barrel. He snarled, baring his teeth at Alec.

  Alec ignored him. He kept walking.

  “Don’t make eye contact,” Jace muttered. “Just keep moving.”

  “They look tired,” Eleanor whispered. “Look at them. They’re bleeding. They’re hungry.”

  “They’re the enemy, Mom,” Alec said softly. “Save the sympathy.”

  They walked the length of the cathedral. It felt like walking down the throat of a sleeping dragon.

  At the far end of the nave, raised on a dais of white obsidian, was the Altar.

  And sitting on the steps of the Altar was The Red King.

  Warlord Vane didn’t look tired.

  He sat with the stillness of a statue, his jagged black armor immaculate, his red cape pooled around him like a pool of blood. His helmet was off, resting on his knee. His face was scarred, hard, and utterly composed.

  He was watching Alec approach.

  He didn’t look angry. He looked… expectant.

  Surrounding the dais were his Lieutenants—the surviving elite. They were bigger, meaner, and better geared than the rank and file.

  Alec stopped ten yards from the steps.

  The silence in the room was absolute.

  Vane stood up.

  He didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t need to. His presence filled the room, pressing against Alec’s [Administrator Aura] like a physical weight.

  “Administrator West,” Vane said. His voice was deep, amplified by the acoustics of the room. It rolled over the army like thunder. “You are persistent.”

  “I’m motivated,” Alec said.

  Vane’s eyes flicked to Alec’s hip. To the black sword.

  Vance’s sword.

  Vane smiled. It was a cold, sharp expression.

  “I see you met the Captain,” Vane said. “I assume he is no longer with us.”