By the time Jace and Lessa made it back to the wharf, his arm was starting to feel numb. He held it across his body to keep it stable, and had bandaged the worst of the wounds with shreds from the bottom of his shirt, but he needed to get medical attention.

  They scampered down the wharf, ducking behind boxes and keeping out of sight, but most of the workers and scavengers stayed over by their warehouse, and didn’t pay any attention to the pier the Luna Wrath hung from.

  When they slid down the ladder and ran up the boarding ramp, Kinfild said, “I was getting ready to look for you two. Hard time finding…the supplies?” He took one look at Jace then groaned. “Sit down. I’ll get the medpack.”

  “Now, let’s be fair to him,” Lessa said, “this time it wasn’t his fault. Not directly.”

  “Wouldn’t have been so bad if I had been more powerful,” he said. He tightened his bandages and sat down on the couch around the holoprojector, then held his injured arm out. “I’m a worldjumper, right? I’m supposed to be stronger?”

  Lessa sat on the couch adjacent and tucked her knees up to her chest. “Well, you’re just a guy who can see the Split as sheets.”

  “Special?”

  “You’ve just seen the Split and gotten closer to it, which is a lot more than most Wielders.”

  He hung his head. “Either way…you almost got hurt because of me, and we’ve got…we’ve gotta end this war. I need to make a concentrated push to…level up. Advance.”

  “That is what the dungeons are for, Mr. Baldwin,” said Kinfild, marching back into the main hold from the engine room, carrying a tin box with peeling paint. He set it down on the table and activated the first aid kyborg. The little ball of spinning gears and wires activated repellers and hovered above the table, then whirred over to Jace. It scanned his arm with a checkerboard projection of light, then beeped.

  First, it sprayed his wounds with a cold disinfectant, and he hissed in pain. Then, while his mind was still reeling, it injected him with a stim shot, which would help him heal faster.

  Exactly what he needed if they were going to delve tomorrow.

  “Those scavengers almost messed up our plans,” Jace said. “If they’d broken anything—bones, I mean—it’d be much harder to delve.”

  “As it is, you should rest,” Kinfild said. “We can take another day.”

  “No.” Jace shook his head. “I’ll be ready. I’m level thirty, now.”

  Kinfild glanced at Lessa for confirmation, and she nodded. “Seven pillars.”

  While the first aid kyborg worked, Jace manifested his sheets and analyzed the three new pillars he’d formed.

  Having formed them under pressure, he feared the worst, but they were all perfect—like he needed. Three mythic-grade pillars.

  “I’ll need to get the full story later,” Kinfild grumbled. “But that is an excellent foundation.”

  “Why…why is it so rare to have such a good foundation?” Jace asked. Maybe he was missing something, but if a Wielder focussed on their magic, if that was their whole life, then why wouldn’t they ensure they had the best foundation possible?

  “Do you think everyone has access to Aes-filled accumulator nodes that they can draw on for a burst of Aes before advancing?” Kinfild shook his head. “Much less actually has the ability to do so—consider the fluctuations of your core.”

  Jace nodded slowly. “Even then, though, they’d be able to make five perfect pillars with the instruction of powerful Wielders, or books, or something, right?”

  “And some of them do,” said Kinfild. “If you’re basing your expectations of the best of the best off Stenol, you’re sorely mistaken. But there are many who don’t. It requires concentration, purity of vision, and most times, novice Wielders don’t have true combat experience by the time they form their pillars. I assure you, having the push of…a true life or death experience helps your will, and your subconscious, perceived necessity to form foundation pillars.”

  Jace exhaled. The first aid kyborg injected him with a painkiller, and his whole arm went numb, before it began suturing his wounds shut.

  “I also need to get more cards to fill them,” he said. Simply put, in the fight with that scavenger Wielder, his arsenal had run out in seconds. He could reset his cards, allowing him to get by with less, but that ability would only improve if he could get more cards. “First off—” He cut himself off with a gasp when the kyborg tied a tight knot with suturing wire. It wasn’t painful, but there was a numb tug.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “First off, I need to try to get that…well, quest tracking ability into card-form. It’ll be much easier to use.” He glanced at Lessa. “Would you be willing to help with that?”

  “Of course,” she said. “But tomorrow. After you sleep.”

  He nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “And once we get to the dungeon,” Kinfild added. “We need to be at the entrance early in the morning, as I guarantee that’s when there will be the most bustle, and we can slip in unnoticed.”

  “Got it,” Jace said. “Will…will there be resources for card-making inside the dungeon?”

  “I don’t know what the scavengers will have taken yet,” Kinfild said. “But this was a tomb of an ancient Luminian king and his retinue, courtiers, and advisors. They all would’ve been buried with their cards, if they had any.”

  Jace tried to suppress a grin. The idea of robbing graves still made him shudder a little, but they were long dead, and he was trying to stop a war. There was no better reason.

  And there’d be plenty of cards inside to choose from.

  The next morning, Jace woke up before Lessa and Kinfild. He felt rested, but the painkillers had worn off, and his arm blazed with pain. That was probably why he’d woken up so early.

  Out the Wrath’s main door, down the boarding ramp and across the waves, the sun was just starting to peek up above the surface of the ocean.

  With a soft groan, Jace rolled off the bottom bunk, winced, then stumbled over to the boarding ramp. Leaning against the doorframe, he stared out across the waves. They’d left the ramp open; it didn’t cool down at night, or really…at all. For the first time since they’d landed, he stopped to take a breath, and found it hot, sticky, and humid enough to make him want to cough the air right back up. Either it was worse today, or he’d been too busy last night to notice. Probably the latter.

  All that in one night, huh?

  He glanced down at his arm. The stim shot had healed it nicely, and barely any blood was seeping through the bandages and the stitches. No swelling, no inflammation. It’d probably have been worse without his Vital rating, he figured. But survival was survival.

  Though, with how much Aes he’d taken in, he’d definitely have more attribute shards to distribute. No better time to deal with them.

  So, while he waited for Kinfild and Lessa to wake up, he sat down on the boarding ramp, legs crossed, and drew himself into the dreamspace.

  Eight more attribute shards awaited him, and he distributed them evenly across the four attributes he was working on. Two for Strength, two for Vital and Resistance, which both doubled into four, and two for Agility.

  Then, he drew his mind back to the outside world and leaned back. The Soul-Circle opening Wielders hadn’t been able to sense his stage or level, even when he wasn’t veiling himself. Neikir had assumed he was much weaker.

  He scratched the back of his head. His ratings were, in theory, much higher than an equivalent Wielder at level thirty, with his Path providing a significant boost to his durability, which let him invest in other areas. But he still should’ve registered as around the same level, right?

  Perhaps it was a fault of his core, then. Starships’ hypercores couldn’t have started out very powerful, and although Jace had advanced, perhaps it still had some ability to mask his true power.

  He hadn’t yet checked his main sheet since advancing, though. It’d been too chaotic. But now there was time. He mustered the golden sheet of Aes with a push of intent, and it appeared in the air ahead of him:

  [Gathered Analytics]

  Name: Jace Scott Baldwin

  Worldjumper #: 5

  Class: Core Hunter

  Advancement Progress: Soul-Circle Opening – Stage One (20.1%)

  Standard Level Rating: 30

  [Attributes]

  Strength: 20

  Vital: 48

  Resistance: 48

  Agility: 20

  Potency: 1

  [Technique Cards]

  Trigger Hyperjump

  Wanderer’s Banishment

  Cleanse Buildups

  Unknown Card - CRITICAL DAMAGE

  [Significant Items]

  Unnamed Whistling Blade, spirit-enhanced clothing, spirit-enhanced vambraces, spirit-enhanced plastoid cuirass.

  [Titles]

  Worldjumper #5 (no effect) (cannot be removed)

  Witness of the Ancients (+1 Agility) (cannot be removed)

  That unknown, critically damaged card had to be the debris of his Aes-extraction card. He deactivated the sheet, then ejected the damaged card. Sure enough, as it had appeared in his mind’s eye, its physical form in his hand was a crumpled, melted chunk of plastic. The wires were tangled, charred, and black, and the runes were more unintelligible than usual.

  Still, he wasn’t sure if it would be completely useless. He tucked it into his backpack, along with all the other cards and the empty accumulator nodes.

  He was about to pull out all the empty nodes and drop them back into the storage bin beneath the bottom bunk, but he stopped. They might need them later. Whatever they were, they stored Aes excellently, and they had to be some sort of rare material. There was a reason he hadn’t thrown them out the garbage chute when he’d finished with them.

  Plus, they were heavy. They’d help his body adjust to his new strength rating.

  So, instead, he took the nodes he’d previously stored away, and tucked them back into his pack, weighing it down. If they needed them in the dungeon, for whatever reason, he’d be kicking himself for leaving them behind.

  As soon as he placed the last node in the back, a faint beep blared out from the cabin—Kinfild’s alarm. He jerked up from the reclined captain’s seat and slapped the transmitter, which was making the noise, then hoisted himself to his feet with a groan. “Ah…Mr. Baldwin…already awake.”

  Jace tilted his head toward Lessa, who still lay on the upper bunk, one arm off the side, tail dangling. “Am I waking her up, or are you?”

  “You do it,” Kinfild grumbled. “And I’ll find us a cargo skiff.”