Jace rose to his feet slowly and pulled the stolen plasma rifle off his shoulder.

Another growl seeped out of the shadows, and a beast took a step out of the darkness. It was a badger, with a white-and-black striped head, but it was the height of a wolf, and maybe a little longer. Its claws glistened, and it had a maw of dagger-shaped obsidian teeth.

And a set of antlers sprouted from the top of its head.

It stepped out of the shadows, and a ray of evening sunlight (sunslight?) blasted across its face. It hissed.

The suns illuminated its dusty, matted fur, and countless scrapes and slashes along its face and body. They leaked tar and black, oily blood. A patch of fur was missing along its flank, and the flesh beneath it was rotting away, revealing bones and tendons.

A giant, undead badger.

Jace retched, both from the sight and smell, but he wrenched his body back under control. He flipped the rifle’s safety catch off and pushed the bolt forward then down. It slotted in place with a satisfying clunk. His finger drifted onto the trigger.

A tag lit up above the beast’s head: [Level 5 Darkling]

Yeah. No way was that thing friendly.

It took another step down the opposite bank of the stream and hissed at the beam of light scouring its face. It took a step back, and for a moment, Jace wondered if it was going to back off.

But even if it didn’t like direct sunlight, that only gave him about an hour.

He took a slow step back. Maybe if it was like the badgers back home, it was just being territorial, and he could walk away.

It let out another growl, then bounded across the stream in a single leap, landing in the shadows of the trees—on the same side of the river as Jace was.

There was no time to think. When a wild animal was charging, he couldn’t just let it kill him. He clamped his finger down on the trigger, and a bolt of searing plasma blasted out the rifle’s muzzle. It struck the beast—the darkling—in the shoulder.

The blast ripped a glowing hole in its flesh and the impact made it stagger a few steps back. Tarry blood and seared particles of flesh spattered the trees behind it.

But it stayed on its feet. He pulled the bolt back, ejecting a used brass casing, then rammed it forward again, chambering the next shot. The badger pounced, and he fired his next blast. It blew a red-hot hole in the beast’s foreleg, deflecting its claws before they could slash his throat.

He needed that technique card.

He jumped back a step, putting a tree between himself and the dark badger. If he could just get to the other side of it, he could surprise it and take it down. He took a deep breath, trying to steel himself.

It didn’t work, but he leapt out of cover anyway and willed the technique card to manifest, just like he’d done a few hours before. It appeared in the air above his hand, and he crushed it while staring at his destination—the stream’s shore, a few paces behind the darkling.

An invisible force pulled outward on his skin, and he flashed through the air. White fire flared across his vision, and he appeared on the opposite side of the beast. He fired another shot into its flank—the biggest target he could find.

The rifle blew a searing hole in the beast’s side, ripping fur and flesh away from its ribs and revealing a seething mass of dark liquid and…mist. It was like someone had crunched up charcoal and turned it into a searing tornado, and it waited at the base of the beast’s neck.

A core, just like the hypercore, just utterly devoid of light.

The badger whipped around to face him and pounced, its jaws wide, and he raised his armoured forearm.

The beast bit down on the plastic-y vambrace. Its teeth smashed against armour, dripping black blood onto his arm and applying a pressure—like he’d just rammed his arm into a hydraulic press.

He slammed his rifle’s butt into the side of the beast’s head again and again, but it didn’t budge. Its jaw tightened, and one of its fangs pierced through his vambrace, penetrating a few centimeters into the flesh below.

But its other fang shattered against the armour. The darkling yowled and released its hold on him, and he chased it. He rammed the bayonet into the side of its neck, right where he’d seen the core of swirling darkness. The tiny blade, jittering and vibrating, tore into the darkling’s flesh.

The beast fell to the ground. It thrashed its legs. Bayonet still embedded in its neck, Jace pulled the rifle’s bolt back, then slammed it forward again, preparing one more shot. He fired, and at point-blank range, it blasted a two-inch wide hole straight through the beast’s neck. The plasma blast seared out the other side and smashed into a tree on the other side of the river.

The darkling collapsed and fell still, but for good measure, Jace readied another shot and blasted it straight into the beast’s skull.

Panting, he fell back onto the gravel shore. His lungs burned and his arms screamed, and his stomach gnawed with hunger.

For a few seconds, he didn’t move. He stared at the monster, at its leaking corpse. Its flesh peeled away, turning into black ash and dust, and it whisked away, borne by an invisible wind. The dark core was the last to disintegrate. It hovered in the air for a few seconds, dimming and dissolving.

He pushed himself and reached out toward the core, but before he could touch it, it dispersed. It turned into a puff of golden sparks, then floated away on the invisible wind with the rest of the ash.

He lowered his arms, then heaved a breath. Maybe he could’ve absorbed it, like he’d done to the hypercore, but…well, he already had a core, and the golden sheets hadn’t appeared again to prompt him, to tell him to absorb it.

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There was some sort of bounty his Class afforded him, but without the Core Seed—whatever that was—it wouldn’t work. The sheets had told him that much. And, judging by the quest they’d given him, it was important.

But first, he needed to patch himself up, and he needed shelter. That couldn’t have been the only darkling.

Keeping an eye on the setting sun, he stepped into the stream and lowered his arm into the water. After a few minutes of rinsing his arm and cleaning his wounds, he pulled off the damaged vambrace and cast it aside. It had served him well, but it wouldn’t block another hit in its current state, and it’d only slow him down.

Then he pulled the stim shot and bandages out of his backpack. The little syringe glowed an even brighter green in the fading light, but it was still a warm, welcoming green. He jabbed it into his injured arm and pressed the plunger down—there couldn’t be any other way to use it.

The green liquid flooded into his veins, lighting them up with green light. They traced pathways beneath his skin. It flooded out into arteries and sunk into his flesh, filling him with a cool, calm feeling and a pleasant tingle. His skin shifted, as if healing at ten times the normal rate. New layers tried to crawl over the burns and seal them, and his scrapes tried to close up.

Wrapping the bandages around his arm, he sealed off the worst of the burns and scrapes. The stim shot wasn’t going to fix him instantly.

He walked back to the shore and took another swig from his water bottle, then ate the last granola bar he had from earth.

It was probably the last time he’d ever have food from home again. He tried to savour it, but he was too hungry. Once he downed it, he pulled out a ration bar and opened it, revealing a grim rectangle of pressed brown mash. The only constituent he could really make out was some kind of oat with a serrated edge.

He forced himself not to think about it and scarfed down the flavourless substance with a grimace. It filled his stomach, and that was all he could ask for.

But there were only two left. If he didn’t find civilization soon, he was going to starve.

By the time he had finished the ration bar, the sun had dipped halfway behind the horizon, and only glimmers of light seeped through the forest canopy. He needed a place to hide, and he didn’t trust a cave. Sleeping on the forest floor? Not great, either. He’d be zombie badger food in no time.

He was probably better off in a tree. He picked the tallest tree he could find, then scrambled up its black-bark trunk. The bark was glassy and slippery, but once he halted himself up to the branching canopy, it was easy enough to climb. It wasn’t the first time he’d climbed a tree.

He picked the highest branch that would support his weight, then tucked into an elbow of the tree. Lavender leaves crumpled beneath his weight, and he wouldn’t roll off easily.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. He needed to sleep and rest, and he could figure out more in the morning.

Hours passed sleeplessly. He shifted, trying to get comfortable, but even with a patch of leaves below him, sleeping in a tree wasn’t an easy feat. A knot pressed into his back. A branch scraped his shoulder. Something slithered along the forest floor, and an insectile chitter rang out in the distance. He cradled his plasma rifle in his lap, ready to use it at any moment.

A few hours into the night, a pang of anxiety struck him, and he refilled the rifle with the rest of the plasma bullets he’d stolen from the scavenger. Maybe knowing he had a full magazine would quell his worries.

It didn’t.

Worse than the uncomfortable position, this world had three moons…and was that a ring? Like saturn? A wedge of white pebbles hovered above the horizon, misty with distance. All combined, they reflected a lot more light than he was used to. Rays of moonlight shone right in his eyes.

Halfway through the night, around midnight, the golden sheets erupted out of his chest again.

[Warning: no Core Seed. Embed Core Seed to prevent worldjumper decay. If no core seed is embedded in forty-three (43) hours, the worldjumper will die.]

He rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on the sheet, but it faded after a few seconds.

“Core seed…” he muttered. And the threat of decay. Wonderful.

But if he went down to the ground, he’d be committing suicide. No, he needed to stay up here until morning and wait out the night. The darkling hadn’t liked direct sunlight.

In the morning, he could sort out this Core Seed—whatever that meant.

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_796dc4ba52ca470e87e727995bf487fb~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_400,h_332,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/hyperh%20logo.png]

Jace couldn’t say for certain if he’d slept at all last night, but it didn’t feel like it. Maybe an hour, at best. But warm sunlight washed across his face, and he needed to keep moving. He pushed himself up, then descended down through the tree.

Overnight, the stim shot had worked its magic, and his burns were nearly gone—just a few bubbly red blisters and white scars. His cuts had sealed entirely, leaving faint valleys of red flesh. Not perfect, but better than bleeding everywhere. He took his bandages off and threw them away into the woods. They wouldn’t do him much good anymore.

Now, time to deal with the Core Seed.

It had been…six hours, maybe, since the golden sheets had warned him about his decay, and whether it was because of hunger or something else, a faint gnawing sensation rippled beneath the surface of his skin, running along invisible channels in his body. Something was falling apart.

He stayed in the direct sunlight, following the river. “Hey, sheets?” he asked, pushing intent into his words with the same effort as before, the same way he’d willed the sheets open and shut. “Any chance you can detect a Core Seed thingy? You keep telling me I need one.”

[One (1) spirit pond detected within two (2) miles] the sheets responded. Without elaborating, they evaporated into golden dust.

Helpful as ever.

But he’d fed it intent. It knew what he wanted. This spirit pond had to have something to do with the Core Seeds. And ponds needed water.

He followed the stream until afternoon. As he walked along the stream’s banks, staying in the direct sunlight—just in case any more darklings wanted to approach him—he ate another ration bar. One left.

When the planet’s binary suns hovered overhead, the stream widened. It bibbled down a rocky outcropping and fed into a pool. The trees peeled away, revealing a deep indent in the earth. At the bottom was a pond of cloudy liquid. The roots of the nearby trees dipped into it, and small seed pods bobbed up and down on the surface of the water.

He’d probably walked around two miles, give or take. That meant…those had to be Core Seeds? This was the spirit pond?

Jace stopped at the top of the ridge and stared down at the pond. It steamed like a warm bath, beckoning him closer. An invisible pressure weighed on his shoulders, just like it had in his vision—in the presence of the rune-covered man. A tag hovered above each of the seed pods when he stared at them intently: [Core Seed].

It was.

He didn’t know much about this place. No, scratch that, he knew nothing. But there was something special about this pond.

This would be his first step into advancing. He didn’t have to be a genius to know what taking the seed would entail—it’d practically be an acceptance of everything here. There was magic, and it was strong. He could become strong, and he could climb.

Or he could turn away, and live out his last few hours in peace. He could fade away into nothingness…

Back on earth, he’d been doomed to accomplish nothing. He had a chance to change that.

He stepped down the shore and approached the pond.