The blue energy of the orb surged into Jace’s body, swirling through his arm and searing along invisible channels. It raced into the center of his body, lingering in his chest for a second before sinking down to his gut.
[Core absorbed] read the sheet of light.
He raised his hands. The glowing blue light faded, leaving him with nothing but burnt, blistering flesh—both from the nearby blast of plasma and from grabbing a hypercore with his bare hands.
But the holes in the fabric of his existence had sealed, and his body was no longer dissolving, so he counted it as a win.
He almost sighed in relief, until the scavenger fired his next shot of plasma. It blasted only inches over Jace’s shoulder, searing his coat and making the skin beneath blister. He shouted and fell to his knees, gritting his teeth. It didn’t disintegrate his skin this time.
[Core cloud prepared] the sheet displayed.
“You’re surrounded, worldjumper,” one scavenger said. “Stay still, and we’ll make it quick. We wouldn’t want to ruin an authentic out-of-this-galaxy coat and hat, would we?”
He had been a farmhand his whole life, helping out with the family business. Everyone always bossed him around, told him what to do.
No more. Jace raised a hand to his head and pressed his hat down. “No.”
Staying alive was also an important bonus.
He looked around, trying to find anything he could use to fight with. Already, the scavenger with the rifle was pulling back the bolt, readying another shot of plasma. The weapon ejected a steaming brass casing.
Jace only had seconds.
[Warning: no Technique Card available] the sheet of golden dust read. [Socket technique card immediately. One (1) Technique Card detected within fifty (50) feet.]
As soon as the scavenger pushed his rifle’s bolt forwards again, Jace dropped to his stomach, crushing the sheet of golden light beneath him. The bolt of plasma sizzled overhead and blasted into the hull of the starship behind him.
He had five more seconds until the next shot was ready, but the rest of the scavengers—those with melee weapons—were closing it. He’d only get one more chance. He needed a weapon. When his gaze flitted past the empty container of the hypercore, a tag lit up in his vision—just like the tags that had appeared above the scavengers’ heads. It hovered above a clump of wires and plastic at the bottom of the tube.
[Technique Card: Trigger Hyperjump (Common) (Utility) (Compatible Class: All) (Compatible Aspects: Light, Pure)]
Jace’s eyes flicked across it as fast as they could. It gave a long-winded description of the technique as well, but he didn’t have time to process that. He reached into the container and grabbed the clump of wires. A few wires connected it to the starship, but he tore them out. A plastic sheet tumbled out of the clump.
Three seconds until the scavenger was ready to fire.
The technique card was the size of a playing card. It was a thin sheet of plasticy material with metallic lines across it and a rune-circle of copper in the center. It had been folded and bent a few times, and the wires were rusting.
But he didn’t have time to handle it with care. As soon as he grabbed it, he crushed it in the palm of his hand, holding tight to it so it stayed in his grasp.
The card, however, dematerialized into a puff of dust. Jace looked up, and immediately, he thought he was going to throw up.
Lightning-blue energy blasted away from his core and surged through his body, leaping out to the tips of his fingers. The edges of his vision blurred, then clouded over with streaks of bright white light.
Then everything snapped into a blank white screen. There was a crack-boom, like lightning had just struck a nearby tree. The white screen disappeared in an instant. Jace would have said he had teleported five meters across the clearing—if not for the streak of burnt grass behind him.
A…hyperspace jump, then?
There was no time to question it. He was right beside the scavenger with the rifle. The scavenger fired the shot, but he was aiming where Jace had been, and not where Jace was.
Jace wouldn’t get another chance. He reacted as fast as he could and punched the scavenger in the nose.
Jace wasn’t bulky, but he wasn’t scrawny either—as expected from a farmhand. His fist collided with the scavenger’s nose, and the man staggered back a few steps. Jace yelped, shaking out his hand.
He’d only ever punched someone once before, and that had been a schoolyard fight years ago. But if he didn’t take the rifle, he wouldn’t live to punch anyone ever again. He ripped it from the reeling scavenger’s hands.
Now these, he knew how to use. His father had taken him hunting plenty of times.
A tag appeared above the rifle: [Nee-Fieldmen Mk III (Ammunition: .303 Plasma-aspect Aes shells)]
Jace lifted the rifle and pointed it at the scavenger with the machete. “Stop! Don’t take a step, or I’ll shoot!” He pulled the bolt back quickly, ejecting a smoking casing. There were runes scripted down the side of the brass canister, and they still glowed.
Jace took a few steps back so he could see all four scavengers at once. He shifted the rifle back and forth between the man with the wrench and the man with the machete.
“Hah!” exclaimed the scavenger with the machete. “Worldjumper won’t use that on us! Look at him! His hands are quivering! And I’d bet that one little…what was it, hyperspace jump, took all his Aes! He’s running on empty!”
The man was right. Jace had never shot a human before, and he never thought he’d have to. Still, he put his finger on the trigger and pulled until it began to resist him. If he tugged a millimeter more, it would fire.
“Don’t come any closer!” Jace yelled. “Last warning!”
The golden sheet shimmered in front of him, distracting him for a second. It wanted something, but he didn’t have time. “Close!” he hissed at it, and it listened.
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The scavenger with the machete had started charging in the millisecond that Jace had been distracted. Jace pulled the trigger, and a bolt of plasma surged out of the barrel. At such a close range, it was hard to miss, but his hands were quivering. The shot flew a little too high and blew a glowing hole in the man’s neck instead of his chest.
The man collapsed, dead on the spot.
The scavenger with the wrench sprinted forward, yelling something that Jace couldn’t make out beneath the pounding in his ears. Jace jumped back before the scavenger could club him with the wrench, then drove the rifle’s bayonet forwards. It stabbed into the man’s chest. He pulled the weapon to the side, and the vibrating edge of the bayonet slid to the side with a sickening squelch.
The two remaining scavengers charged just behind the first two, armed with just their fists. Jace stepped back into the undergrowth and trees, pulling back the bolt. He blasted the third scavenger—the one who he had punched—at only an arm’s length away. The man collapsed with a smouldering hole in his chest.
The last scavenger managed to get a punch in. He caught Jace across the side of the face, sending him sprawling down into a bush.
The last scavenger tried to grab the rifle. His hand clasped the barrel, but Jace rolled onto his back and pushed the weapon to the side. The bayonet whirred through the air and slashed a thin gash across the scavenger’s neck.
Jace leapt up to his feet, but not soon enough to dodge the spurt of blood that erupted from the man’s neck.
Gasping, Jace stumbled back. He wanted to drop the rifle and run, but he couldn’t leave a weapon behind. He’d probably need it soon enough.
They’d been trying to kill him, but he’d still never killed anyone before. He wanted to curl up and hide. But he’d made a lot of noise, and if there was anyone—or anything—around, they would be coming. The scavengers had said something about a Wielder in the area. That couldn’t be good.
Staying alive mattered more, and adrenaline drowned out the terror and disgust.
He flipped the switch on the rifle’s side to turn off the bayonet, then found the safety catch and flicked it on, too.
But he couldn’t just go running out into the wilderness with nothing. He was in a new, different world, and he knew nothing about it. Anxiety bubbled up in his chest, but he stuffed it down and slammed it into the back of his mind, just like he always did.
The scavengers would have equipment and supplies, assuming it didn’t all get wrecked in their starship. He bent over the nearest corpse and pulled open the breast pocket of the man’s flak vest, revealing a strip of brass bullets. A line of runes ran down each bullet’s side, and they let off a tinkle, like wind chimes, whenever he moved them. A metal strip kept them in place, and if he needed to reload the rifle, they’d slot in easily.
He stuffed them into his backpack.
None of the man’s other pockets had anything. He moved on to the next scavenger. The man had a vambrace made of a dark, plastic-y substance. Jace tapped the rigid, futuristic-shaped edge with his knuckles. It didn’t even bend, and it felt like rock. Body armour of some kind.
He unbuckled it and strapped it to his own arm. It had worn leather straps and a rusted buckle, but it still fit.
The next man carried a haversack, and it contained a set of bandages and a syringe with a glowing green liquid. A tag appeared above the syringe: [Low-grade stim shot.] He snatched that up, too, and stuffed it in the front pocket of his backpack. Once he got out of here, he could patch himself up.
The last scavenger carried rations in the pocket of his flak jacket. At least, he assumed they were rations. They weren’t important (or powerful) enough to warrant a tag to appear above them, but they looked like food. A foil wrapper with a bar of something slightly squishy inside? They had to be rations. He took them and stuffed them in his backpack.
Hands quivering, he stood up and took a step back, then sprinted away into the forest.
He ran through the woods, trying to get as far away from the wrecked starship and cave as he could. Trees whipped past, and branches clawed at his face. He ducked and spun. The branches left scraps all across his cheeks. A twig tried to take off his touque, but he raised his hand and clamped it down atop his head.
If the suns here worked like they did back home, he was heading east. Not that it really mattered; he didn’t know where he was trying to get to.
A stream, maybe. A place to rest, a safe place, where he could patch himself up.
As if being stranded on an alien world was bad enough, he was pretty much alone. There wasn’t even an animal to hunt and eat—and what would he find out here? Three-headed ground squirrels? Maybe a venomous snake?
He was used to running places—hell, every morning he would jog a lap around the bounds of the farm just to see the sunrise and dream of anything better he could be doing—but running for your life was another story. After an hour, he slowed to a walk to preserve his energy. After another two hours, he heard gurgling water in the distance. Every thirty seconds, he glanced over his shoulder, in case anyone was following him.
No one was. Yet.
As he walked, he continued to take stock of his situation. This was obviously not earth, and he’d established pretty quickly that he wasn’t seeing things. He had some sort of magic interface, and now…a technique card. It almost sounded like a video game, the way it had urged him to pick a Class.
Not that he had time for video games, between helping out on the farm and secretly working on university applications behind his dad’s back. He was two years out of high school, now, and the farm could survive a little while without him.
But none of that mattered now.
What had happened to the technique card? He had crushed it, but it didn’t feel like it was gone forever. If it was supposed to activate the hypercore—for him, and for the starship’s purposes—it couldn’t have been single-use.
When his thoughts centered firmly on the card, the sheet of golden dust manifested in front of him. With a blinking message, it displayed: [1/1 Technique Card(s) socketed. Manifest manually?]
“Yes,” Jace said, exerting the same intent he had before. A faint heat built in the palm of his hand, and when he held his arm out, the same rusty, crumpled technique card floated there, waiting for him.
When Jace looked at it, the same tag as before appeared above it, followed by another request: [View details?]
“Yes,” he said again.
The sheet of dust shifted. It displayed the same tag from before, then added, [Technique description: Once every two (2) minutes, allows the starship to trigger a hyperspace jump in a chosen direction. Limited by fuel cell Aes output.]
Jace was pretty sure that he himself wasn’t a starship, but he had stolen the card from a starship. There were also a few terms he didn’t understand, but he could figure that out later.
“Close,” he ordered the sheet, and it did as it was asked—taking the technique card with it.
The page flickered, as if torn between his will and its own. For a moment, it displayed another message: [Quest available: Accept Core Seed. Reward: 10 Standard Aes Units. Unlocks: Attribute Shard manager and Core Hunter bounty.]
“Yes, yes, just—”
[Quest accepted.]
“No, wait—”
But the sheet was already dissolving. Once it had fully disappeared, he stopped. He took his backpack off his back and set it down, then rummaged around for a water bottle.
When he’d left home, there hadn’t been much time to prepare before he chased after the spooked horses, but he couldn’t just do nothing. So he had run off with just a half-filled backpack. He hadn’t expected to get dragged away to another world.
He found his plastic water bottle and took a small swig, then poured a dribble down his burnt arm. The rest stayed in the bottle. He’d have to preserve what he could for now.
The trees peeled away, dropping him at the edge of a stream. It had shallow gravel banks, and in the fading light of the day, the nearby trees cast long shadows across it. He approached, and first, he sniffed it. The air was clean, and it smelled faintly of pine. No obvious toxins.
He cupped his hands in the stream and splashed his arm, cleansing the surface, washing away the grime and soothing the burn. But he wasn’t brave enough to drink it yet.
When he reached down to get a third handful of water to splash on himself, a low growl seeped out of the trees.
Oh, great. Not now. Not now. Please not now…
In the shadows across the river, two black eyes and a mane of fur glinted in the evening light.