The Luna Wrath lifted off the platform and shot up into the night sky. The ship began to shudder and hum. Jace imagined Aur-Six shovelling more starcoals into the furnace, preparing the ship for a jump to lightspeed. Kinfild pulled the handle above his head.
Jace braced himself for alarms—or some other type of malfunction. He gripped the armrests and clenched every muscle in his body. But, aside from the slowly-building hum, everything seemed normal as best as he could tell. Kinfild, at least, hadn’t even flinched.
The floorboards began to shudder so violently that Jace’s teeth chattered together. Then, in an instant, the viewscreen lit up with light, and a thundering boom rattled through the starship.
They were off.
Jace sighed and leaned back in his seat. At least this time, he hadn’t needed to jumpstart the ship by hand.
“Go get some sleep,” Kinfild said. “You still look tired, and we’ve got four hours until we arrive. I’ll wake you.”
Jace unbuckled his crash harness, thankful for the offer. He walked back to the lower bunk and crammed his coat into the corner of the bed and the wall. There was no better place to put them for the time. He laid down, and, making sure to keep his thoughts centered on something other than his abilities, he shut his eyes.
Some time passed peacefully. He didn’t know how much, but he knew that he had caught at least a few hours of sleep when he woke up again; his limbs didn’t feel so tired and his eyelids weren’t drooping.
He slipped out of the bunk and walked across the deck to the starship’s main seating area. Lessa and Kinfild both sat on the benches, facing away from him. They were in the middle of a conversation. “...to gather Aes.”
They were talking about him. He raised his eyebrows, curious but not offended. In their position, he probably would be doing the same—if he could think of the right questions to ask and things to say.
Kinfild looked over his shoulder. “Only two hours of sleep?”
Shrugging, Jace said, “I’ve survived off less before.”
“Well, then come sit.” The Wielder laid a hand on the bench beside him.
Jace walked around to the other side of the benches and sat down. “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”
“No, quite the opposite,” said Kinfild. “You should have gained quite a bit of Aes lately, yes?”
“Yeah,” Jace replied, rubbing the sleepiness out of his eyes. “Twelve-percent to an advancement, last I checked.”
“Do you still have the sheet of tasks I left?” Kinfild asked.
“Yeah.” Jace rummaged around his backpack for a second until he found the parchment sheet that Kinfild had given him.
Kinfild dragged his finger down the page. “We will need to get you a better cycling technique—one suited for battle. The first technique was basic and general-purpose, and it served you, but we can do better. You can’t absorb Aes from the environment yet, but this will help you trigger technique cards in battle faster—and, when you get more complex cards, it’ll let you use them.”
“Absorb it from the environment?”
“It is all around us, so long as we’re near the surface of a planet or in a hyperroute, like we are right now. You will eventually be able to absorb it raw and unpurified, and you’ll need to cycle it around your body to purify it. At your Foundation One Stage, you are building a base. You’re accumulating material to build Foundation Pillars with.” He paused, then added, “Being a Core Hunter, though, you’ll also be able to take it as a reward for killing darklings.”
Leaning back on the couch, Jace said, “I’ll kill darklings. I’ll…kill people if I have to, if they’re trying to kill me or someone else.” He wasn’t sure if he could keep that promise, but he had killed the scavengers before. He could do what he had to. “But you’re right. Learning a better cycling technique doesn’t sound like a bad idea. And this isn’t an absorption technique, it’s a combat technique, right? For triggering cards?”
“Correct,” Kinfild said. “I will teach you the Ten-Claw Inlet Cycle. Sit with a straight back and the best posture you can manage. Breathe in, concentrating on your core, and imagine yourself compressing the Aes into it. Guide it with your willpower and form it into a tight needle, then snap it like a whip. Keep your lungs tight, and stay in control. You are currently storing a technique card in your core; if you move the Aes too close to the very center, you will trigger it. Especially now, since you are lending your Aes a hyperspace aspect.”
Jace sat down on the bench on the opposite side of Kinfild. He placed his hands in his lap, shut his eyes, then inhaled.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Keep the pace steady,” Kinfild instructed. “Breathe five seconds in, and five seconds out. When you exhale, allow the Aes to push out through your body and shoot around the rest of your channels.”
Jace attempted the technique twice before he managed to hold a steady rhythm. His Aes brightened, turning pale blue (at least, in his faint perception of it) as it swirled around the hypercore.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he pushed as fast as he could. There was a lot of unpurified Aes in his body, and he needed to do something with it. With each cycle, he pulled it in and pushed it back outwards, steadily integrating it into his own base of magical power. With every exhale, he pushed out impure energy his body couldn’t use, until the air around him was practically tinged with it.
As he cycled the energy, his mind entered a trance-like state, and he felt himself slipping off to sleep. It took him shaking his head side-to-side to stay awake.
“It will be strenuous at first,” Kinfild said. “If you let your mind drift too far with your cycling technique active, you will likely end up in the dreamspace plane. Which isn’t necessarily a problem—we still have a few hours.”
“There has to be something more I can do with the dreamspace plane, right? I can’t just sit here for an hour or two.”
“Maybe one day, we will have you using a Vault Core in your free time, but—”
“Vault Core?”
“It’s no substitute for a real dungeon, no,” Kinfild said. “But it will tide you over until we do encounter one.”
“Dungeon?” The questions were coming easier, now.
“Dark, underground chamber?” Lessa asked. “Probably some magical weapons, or at least natural treasures and alchemical ingredients? You don’t have those where you come from?”
“He isn’t from a world with the Split,” Kinfild reminded her. “There, ancient Mage-Kings didn’t bury arcane treasures, and their monuments to the gods pale in comparison to what our ancient races buried.”
“Can someone tell me what a Vault Core is?”
“It will temporarily send a manifestation of you across the galaxy—to wherever the Split deems you most useful, and always a place filled with darklings. Most Wielders use them for combat training, but you should be able to use it to gather large portions of Aes. You, however, are not—”
“Not ready?” Jace tilted his head. “Kinfild, I know you have one here. I need to keep pushing. If I waited until people thought I was ready, I’d probably have disintegrated in the forest by now.”
Kinfild sighed, then stood up and turned to the drawers behind him. He pulled one open, then shut it again. “Not here…or here, or…” He pulled open another drawer, then exclaimed with delight. “Here.” He hoisted up a metal cube. Wires and tubes covered it, just like the Reader, and a deep thrumming sensation radiated from it. “A Vault Core. I, of course, have advanced well beyond this core’s range of use.”
Kinfild plunked it down into Jace’s hand. It fit into his palm, but it felt as heavy as a stack of bricks. A tag appeared above it: [Foundation-Rated Vault Core: awaiting Aes infusion].
“How do I use it?” he asked.
“Guide the Aes out of your hand,” Kinfild instructed. “Use a touch of it to fuel the cube. Its inner runes and mechanical workings will do the rest. The Split might even give you a direct prompt, being a worldjumper.”
Jace expanded his cycling technique to the little cube. He concentrated on the channels at the tips of his fingers, and pushed the Aes to their very tips. They sparked, then a stream of golden energy rushed over to the cube.
His hand began to shudder. Dust whirled in front of him, forming up into a sheet of light. [Activate Vault Core?] it requested.
“It’s prompting me,” Jace said. “I’m gonna try it. I’m not actually teleporting, am I?”
The Wielder chuckled. “No, you are not. You’re leaving a temporary impression in a distant reach of the universe. But, since you can do damage to the Darklings, you can be harmed, so beware. If you wake up without completing the Split’s request, you’ll lose any Aes you accumulated.”
Jace didn’t see why not. He looked at the golden sheet in front of him and, pushing with intent, he said, “Going in. Activate.”
He continued the cycling pattern. He concentrated on the timing, silently counting in his mind. His lungs inflated and deflated, and a rhythm began to pulse through his body. It resonated in his bones. Any second, he could activate his technique card.
Then his vision darkened. A pulse of energy shot through the Vault Core and lightning surged in his veins.
His mind flashed through a few scattered visions before a weight pressed down on him. He arrived on the barren, muddy dreamspace plane that he’d seen a few times before. The sky throbbed in time with his breathing.
Jace pushed himself up to his feet and walked across the plane. The Vault Core would pull him away any moment, but while he waited, it couldn’t hurt to assign the attribute shards.
He sprinted across the plane to the sapling and within seconds, the roots and Aes shards emerged.
One more shard went on the body map’s mind, for Resistance, but wasn’t sure where to place the last. He settled for placing the last crystal on the legs. Agility. He needed general balance of attributes.
As soon as the shard absorbed into the soil, the ground began to crack. The dirt fell away beneath his boots, disintegrating into an empty black void until there was nothing left to stand on.
He plummeted. His arms flailed, and he probably shouted, but he couldn’t hear it.
Gradually, the void lightened. The darkness grew less oppressive, and a green glow penetrated it. Below him, a landscape flashed into existence. Green fields, flowers, and distant hills. He was falling toward it—quickly, but something was holding and embracing him. He wasn’t falling fast enough to break his legs or hurt himself.
As he drew closer, his eyes widened. It wasn’t a field. It was a forest; the blades of grass were as tall and thick as trees, and withering black flowers towered above the,.
Directly below was a small clearing. Jace landed in a crouch amidst a cluster of grass saplings (which still rose up to his knees) and scattered stones. His legs buckled and a jolt rolled through his arms, but otherwise, he stuck the landing. It was dark outside, and an array of foreign stars filled the sky. A pair of moons shone down on him, and aside from a starship whizzing overhead in the distance, there were no signs of life.
He was here to hunt darklings, so that was what he would do.