When they reached the seventh level, they had to slow down.

  There were no lights whatsoever, and Jace hadn’t sensed a scavenger in two days. The traps were coming at a greater frequency, and he and Kinfild walked side-by-side to both detect, in case Jace missed anything.

  The traps seemed to be scattered randomly all throughout the hallway, whether they were spikes that shot up from the floor or toxic gasses that would pour from invisible pores in the surrounding stone. They identified the bricks to avoid, then stepped around them.

  There were no scavengers to clear the way for them, but it also meant they hadn’t stripped the hallways clean. Veins of Luminian Steel and Luminian Gold ran throughout the walls, and sometimes, they formed runic shapes. The scavengers hadn’t cleared it out yet.

  Every so often, and Jace figured it matched the overall resonance period of the entire tomb, a pulse of Shield Aes ran through the runes, conducting upward to the surface and fuelling the shield generators.

  The guardian automatons also appeared at a greater frequency. They plowed through the walls, emerging from the stone seemingly as a last resort to prevent intruders who’d passed certain sections of traps.

  The automatons were all rated [Level 35], and they only seemed to be getting stronger the deeper Jace, Kinfild, and Lessa delved.

  From destroying automatons, though, Jace was absorbing more Aes at an increased rate. He got at least one kill every day, which fuelled his ingestions.

  Already, he’d advanced to level thirty-one, and he distributed three attribute shards. One in Resistance, which counted for two, and two in Vital, bringing both ratings to fifty.

  But still no individual coffins.

  On the third day after reaching the seventh level, when they had descended to the same elevation as the next crust-lift, the ceiling exploded.

  Jace and Kinfild leapt back from the shower of rocks. Dust choked the air, and he waved his hand in front of his face to clear his vision. An automaton descended through the cloud, hovering down slowly, green lights accenting its curves.

  But it wasn’t human-shaped, not like the other. It was more like an albatross, but with four wings and symmetrical along both axes. It didn’t flap. The air beneath each wing thrummed, like repeller-cars did, making the dust swirl.

  In the center of its body was a hollow core, and a head sprouted directly up from its Luminian steel back—shaped exactly like the regular automaton’s head had been.

  “Not good…” Kinfild muttered.

  The tag [Level 42 Magnet-Aspect Automaton] hovered above its head.

  “Not good,” Jace echoed.

  The automaton’s core illuminated. The hollow tube at the center swivelled toward them, and its edges glowed green.

  Jace jumped to the side, and Kinfild and Lessa jumped the other direction. Their backs pressed up against the sloping walls of the dungeon hallway. It was a regular hallway, about two storeys tall, with room for two people to stretch their arms across it, but the hunter automaton made it feel tiny.

  Its wingspan was Jace’s height. If hovered like a drone would back on earth, but it was eerily silent.

  And then a beam of green-Aes spiralled out from its core. It was lime-green and bright enough to leave stains in Jace’s eyes. Electricity crackled along the buckles of his armour, and his blood tingled. Static built on the surface of his skin.

  The beam didn’t damage the floor, but electricity sparked out from the impact point.

  Jace didn’t remember much from high school physics, but they’d talked about electromagnetism a few times. It was affecting the metals in the floors and walls, and inducing currents in them?

  “Don’t touch the walls!” he shouted. None of their boots were metal, and unless the electricity arced to them, they’d be fine—as long as they didn’t touch the metal.

  The beam of spiralling magnet Aes swept out to the side, racing toward Jace. He’d been making the most noise. It scoured the wall behind him. Currents of electricity played along the metal wall inlays and arced over the stone, but Jace ducked and leapt away.

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  He drew the Whistling Blade and held it up, then slashed at the hunter automaton, but it hovered out of the way in an instant, adjusting its position.

  “It has incredibly high Agility and Potency,” Lessa shouted. “I’d bet if you get hit by that beam, it puts a curse on you!”

  “What’s the specific level?” Jace said. “Do you know the number? If it’s higher than fifty, I can’t take a hit from it!” A curse was a challenge between the user’s Potency and the target’s Resistance.

  “Give me a moment!”

  Jace inhaled with half-annoyed acceptance. He couldn’t just stand around, but he also had strategies to get close to it. Its agility didn’t matter when he could move faster than light. Resistance-Potency clashes meant nothing if it didn’t have a chance to hit him…with whatever that beam did.

  It wasn’t an electric shock, that much was certain, but electric shocks weren’t curses. It was probably something much worse.

  He activated his hyperdash and flashed through the hunter automaton, targeting the open space above it. When it’d crashed through the roof, it left a hole in the bricks where it smashed through. A separate channel for movement ran through the stone, allowing it to traverse the bulk of the dungeon with ease and attack targets.

  Jace emerged in the area above it with a flash, then fell onto its back. He flipped his blade over and held it in a reverse grip, then drove it down toward the automaton’s core—or the area just beside it.

  Before his blade could pierce, the automaton bucked and shook. It tilted to the side abruptly, throwing Jace’s aim off. The blade whistled through the air but struck nothing.

  Then, the drone-shape automaton rose. Abruptly, it raced toward the ceiling, trying to crush him. He had no choice but to jump off.

  He struck the ground, but tucked his head and rolled to keep the damage low. As soon as he stood up, Kinfild pulled him aside—out of the way of a spiralling beam of magnet-Aes. If he hadn’t moved, it would’ve blasted him straight in the chest.

  After firing a beam, it shuddered and dropped lower, and it barely moved anymore, as if it was tired.

  “Its Potency is sixty-four,” Lessa said. “With ninety percent certainty. Plus or minus one.”

  Jace almost rolled his eyes at the uncertainty, but it was much better than before, and given limited time, he accepted it. Plus or minus one point made no difference to the calculus.

  “Kinfild, I have an idea,” Jace said. “Can you use the Hollow Dragon’s Bite on it and lower its Potency?”

  “I can.”

  “Then I can take a hit and resist it,” Jace said. “Once it hits me, I’ll be right in position to dash to it, and it’ll be too tired to throw me off or crush me.”

  Kinfild nodded, then pointed his staff at it. He spun the staff and triggered the card, but it dipped to the side, and the bar of whirling orange flame smashed into the ceiling and sputtered along the runes, conducting through their shapes in lines before fading away.

  Jace grimaced. The automaton turned toward them, pointed its core, then fired, scraping its beam along the wall.

  Jace pushed Kinfild and Lessa to the other side of the hall, then jumped along with them himself, but the beam clipped his shoulder. Just a glancing blow, but it made his skin tingle. For a few seconds, the curse fought with his Resistance, then eventually, overcame it and penetrated an inch into his muscle.

  It wasn’t a physical attack, but it felt like thousands of tiny ants chewing away at his flesh, blackening it and making it peel. It was almost like his skin had been magnetized, like little strands of it had been forced to align. Already, a faint force pulled him toward the automaton. It’d turned him into a metal, and it was pulling him closer, activating the curse.

  Jace gritted his teeth, but he couldn’t delay. They had to destroy it before it drew him in.

  “Kinfild, lead your shot!” Jace called. “Lessa, aim right at it! Fire off to its left side, and it’ll move to the right—right into Kinfild’s technique!”

  “Got it!” she shouted, then pointed her rifle and fired without warning. Sure enough, the automaton dodged—and flew right into Kinfild’s attack.

  Swirls of orange flame coursed around the automaton in rings, eating away at its Potency and trying to get inside it. It was a curse of Kinfild’s own, which diminished the target’s Potency.

  The automaton fired another beam of magnet-Aes at Jace, but this time, Jace held his ground. The beam blasted against his raised forearms and washed over the ground below, sending up sparks, but this time, his body resisted the curse.

  Jace grinned. As soon as the beam ended, he activated his reset card, then, with the buff it gave him, used his hyperdash. He flashed through the air and appeared overtop the automaton.

  Sure enough, it barely flinched, and didn’t try to throw him off.

  He stabbed his blade down, concentrating solely on fuelling it with hyperspace Aes. Like a filament in a lightbulb, the fast-moving Aes heated up the glass cutting edge, regardless of whether it was plasma or not, and the blade moved faster through the air.

  He rammed it down beside the automaton’s core, piercing armour and mechanical innards. He struck twice more before it fell out of the air and clattered to the ground, then fell still.

  “Get back!” Kinfild called.

  Jace scrambled back along the hallway as the automaton’s innards exploded, his arms still vibrating from the intense impact of the automaton against the ground. A shard of shrapnel pierced the stone just beside his foot.

  As soon as the automaton exploded, the pull on the faint curse it’d applied faded, but Jace glanced down at it anyway. Whether the curse was gone or not, it’d still done slight damage to the flesh. He rubbed his muscle. It felt like jello, and his whole arm felt weaker than usual.

  But as soon as he glanced farther down the hallway, through the dust, a tomb lay at the end of the hallway.

  They’d better have more stim shots.