Yet another obstacle. There had better be something good on the other side, because if they continued on like this…they were going to run out of supplies before they made it to the final core.

  Jace scratched the side of his head in irritation, then walked to the front and placed his hands on the door. He knocked, and though he wasn’t expecting a response, it let out a faint clank. It wasn’t too thick, maybe only a foot.

  “I can phase through here,” he said.

  “Do you sense any danger on the other side?” Kinfild asked. “You wouldn’t want to charge into a deadly room all alone.”

  Jace shut his eyes and analyzed his senses, hunting for any sign of immediate danger. He picked out a few traps, and no active automatons, but there might be one or two when he opened the door.

  “I’ll get through,” Jace said after reporting his findings—which didn’t really matter when both Kinfild and Ash could probably sense the exact same things he could, if not more, but at least Lessa wouldn’t be worrying. “Then…I figure there’s a way to open it on the other side. There has to be a way to open the door.”

  “It’s as good of a chance as any,” Kinfild said. “If you can’t find anything, you know the way back. And if there is danger, reset your cards and pass back through the opposite direction.”

  Jace nodded, then, before any of them could protest, used a hyperdash through the door.

  He emerged in a tall, cylindrical chamber on the other side. It had an arched roof, nearly ten storeys above the floor, with a domed top divided into sections by buttresses. In each segment was a different fresco, each made with glowing paint, which cast rainbow light down into the main chamber. Wherever Jace stepped, a different colour washed across his face.

  Most of the paintings seemed rather innocent. Ancient battles, starships clashing, but painted in the same style he’d expect a Napoleonic War painting at a museum. Or armies of Luminians with plasma rifles facing down dragons. But one, at the very center, drew his attention.

  It was the Wall. A great gate of steel and girders, surrounded on all sides by a nebula, with a statue-flanked central opening to let starships through.

  But in the painting, the wall was crumbling. Not exploding, but decaying, as if someone had just poured water on a pile of sugarcubes.

  Jace gulped, then drew his Whistling Blade for a little extra light. But he wasn’t here to sight see. He had to get the door open.

  And, worse, on the other side of the cylindrical chamber was a separate door, much like the one he’d just passed through, which he’d have to open as well. He turned in a circle, taking in the rest of the chamber, and trying to see if there was a way to open the gates. Something obvious, preferably. A cog, a winch maybe, or just a control panel.

  Nothing, save for the coffin at the very center of the room.

  Jace tilted his head, then approached the coffin, keeping wary of traps. He was on his own in here.

  Unlike the other coffins, this one was made almost entirely of golden Luminian…metal. Whether it was actually steel was another story. Carvings ran all along its sides, some runic, and others that reminded him of holograms. They weren’t; they were only two dimensional, but they had markings that looked like interference lines, and they had been drawn to depict a three dimensional object.

  Immediately, Jace’s heart began racing. Holograms were light-based, and if there was a card in there…

  He darted across the cavern as fast as he dared, but in here, he sensed no traps.

  Until he placed a hand on the edge of the coffin. His senses flared up in warning, alerting him to a ring of metal inlaid in the stone floor all around.

  It shifted, then spun. Where previously, it had been flush with the floor, it now rose up a few inches. There were distinct segments in it.

  Then it sprang up out of the floor and whistled past Jace’s face, still spinning. It flew up over his head, and eight legs sprang out from the main body at even intervals. A Luminian head, like the other automatons, rose out of a section of the ring facing the door.

  Jace’s eyes widened. He looked up, trying to take in the beast. Its ring-shaped body still stood a few feet above his head, but he couldn’t identify a core like any of the other automatons had.

  The automaton scampered back, running a few of its enormous paces—about ten meters—to put distance between itself and Jace. Jace ducked away from one of its legs as it scrambled past, but the blow didn’t seem poised to hit him. At least, not yet.

  At that distance, now that Jace could take it all in, a tag appeared above its head: [Level 43 Architect Guardian Automaton].

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  Jace stared at it for a few seconds, and it stared back with glowing white line-shaped eyes.

  “Hey?” he whispered. “I was just taking a look to see if—”

  The automaton dropped lower, bending the knees of its spindly legs simultaneously, and preparing to attack.

  “Not good,” Jace whispered. He placed a hand on the edge of the coffin’s cover and gripped it, then, leveraging his enhanced strength, flung the top off at the automaton. It slid through the air, like he’d just kicked a table at its knees.

  Except the cover only collided harmlessly with the shins of two of its legs.

  “Ah,” Jace said. “I didn’t mean it like that?”

  The automaton leapt overtop of him and landed on the other side, standing only a meter away. From beneath the mounting of its head sprouted a small arm of brassy steel with an eye-like sphere at its tip. The eye’s opening reminded him of a miniature core-weapon, like the other automatons bore, and its rim glittered with white light.

  Jace jumped to the side, and it launched a beam of holographic Aes straight at him. He jumped to the side, covering his head, and dove over the coffin to use it as cover. Didn’t even know holograms were a type of Aes.

  The beam sliced across the floor, barely etching the stone. It didn’t do any damage to the stone itself, but it left sparks in Jace’s eyes, an azure stain like if someone had their high beams on too bright.

  But the sparks and specks left in his vision didn’t just stay. They swirled, manipulated as if by the Aes, temporarily covering half of his vision with an ink-patch.

  An area of effect Curse?

  Jace narrowed his eyes. This automaton must’ve had high Potency, and without Kinfild, they couldn’t reduce its Potency enough for Jace to resist the effect.

  But it didn’t hurt him physically, and…his Resistance must’ve been having some effect, because it cleared up quickly.

  The automaton, however, didn’t let him rest. It leapt at him, charging, leading with its two foremost legs like it was going to trample him. Jace triggered his hyperdash once more, zipping back to the other side of the coffin and dodging the charge.

  Alright, he thought. One attack pattern down. It blinds then charges.

  As it charged past, he sliced at its hind legs, slashing along the armour, but he hadn’t had time to concentrate his Aes and bleed it into the Whistling Blade. It only left a thin glowing slice along the creature’s back.

  Jace grimaced. He had the pattern down, assuming it didn’t change. But if he couldn’t hurt it…

  As the automaton charged past and scampered around in a circle, Jace bent over the coffin and looked inside. He targeted the cube-shaped wooden canisters that he knew would have technique cards inside them. Hopefully, they were something useful.

  He pulled out each cube as quickly as he could and stomped them, crushing their shells and unveiling the cards within. Scanning over them quickly, he simply searched their tags, hoping to see anything that immediately screamed ‘useful.’

  If it was even possible. He didn’t exactly have hologram Aes.

  [Technique Card: Undercut (Rare) (Attack) (Compatible Class: All) (Compatible Aspects: Hologram, Light)]

  [Technique Card: Holocube Purges the Unseen (Legendary) (Forging) (Compatible Class: Architect) (Compatible Aspects: Hologram)]

  [Technique Card: Blind (Common) (Curse) (Compatible Class: All) (Compatible Aspects: Light, Pure)]

  [Technique Card: Architect Illuminates the Wall (Mythic) (Utility) (Compatible Class: Architect) (Compatible Aspects: Hologram)]

  [Technique Card: Lightvein Braces the Virtuous (Legendary) (Fortification) (Compatible Class: All) (Compatible Aspects: Hologram, Light)]

  Jace’s eyes widened on the last card. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t tuned to him, but it was a hologram card he could use, and light-aspect at that. He snatched it up. It was a thin sheet of plastic, like his own cards, except the wires and runes were golden, and the plastic had a slightly yellow tint. It floated above his hand without him even requesting it.

  There was no time to check its function or even think about what it would do. Only time to feel its effect and use it. He socketed it in one of his perfect pillars and immediately triggered it.

  At first, golden light flashed over his body, but it quickly shifted blue to match his hyperspace aspect. Being a subset of light, it could fuel a light-compatible card, but the card would use his hyperspace Aes.

  The fortification effect overtook his whole body, strengthening his limbs, turning his bones to steel, and making his muscles into pistons. He placed his thumb on the hilt of his sword, wedging it through the leather binding and contacting the glass tang. Aes fed into the blade without him thinking, without him concentrating.

  The Blade lit up twice as bright. The filament along its cutting edge still shone bright white, but the rest of the blade glowed blue.

  Jace whirled it into an upright position, then sprang back. His legs pushed off with twice their regular force, maybe thrice, and he shot back across the room. His back smashed into the wall, but he took no damage, even when his spine cracked through a pilaster.

  “Woah,” he muttered. That was fast.

  But the automaton still turned toward him. He didn’t know how much time he had left with the technique, so he’d better make it count.

  As soon as the beast charged toward him, he sprang diagonally to the side, leveraging the strength of his enhanced body, then spun around the creature’s back and slashed through its back legs. Two didn’t topple it, though he cut clean through, leaving only sparking stumps.

  He darted to the side as the automaton tried to adjust for him, hacking off two more of its legs. His blade flashed faster than ever before, as if there was no air resistance…or resistance whatsoever, and it barely looked like he’d moved it—except for the streak it left in the air.

  As the automaton collapsed to the ground with a clank, he cut through the ring, then jumped to its head and drove the Whistling Blade straight down through its skull. Its mechanical legs stopped writhing, and it fell completely still.

  Jace flourished the blade back into an upright position. “Alright…” he muttered. “That felt pretty good.”

  Now to get it to…stop working. How was he supposed to turn a card off?