As soon as the guards returned to the far end of the hallway, Jace laid down and activated the Vault Core again.

He completed three more Vault runs. One flung him into the sewers of a stacked neon city, where he crushed enormous decaying rats with antlers, and the other two took him to distant green-leafed forests with a scattering of simple woodland darklings—like the beasts he had fought on Lyvarion.

Almost done the third set of card adjustments, Lessa said. Run one more Vault Core.

Jace, while still in the dreamspace plane, fired a puff of Aes into the Vault Core again, fueling it. The entrance prompt appeared inside the dreamspace plane, and he accepted it. While the core prepared to take him to a fourth Vault, he assessed his attribute shards.

Before the Vault Core pulled him away, he assigned a set of shards—they had appeared after the third Vault run. As he was placing them down (both in Strength, this time), he asked, “Lessa, when do the shards…appear? How do I get a new one?”

For a few seconds, Jace could only hear a faint whisper as Lessa asked Kinfild the same question. Then, she relayed the answer: They condense out of the Aes you have harvested. They are essentially whispers of it, which help you control precisely where the Aes flows in your body. Cultivating the body is a continuous, rigorous process that happens across all the stages of advancement. The more Aes you push to an area, controlled by the distributed shards, the more that area enhances.

“Yet I’m not just…uh, cultivating the body, right?” Jace said. “Does Resistance also not affect the soul?”

Yeah, it does, but if you spend effort enhancing your soul, it takes Aes away from other areas of enhancement, if you understand what I mean. It’s a choice to make early on—having a balanced soul and body is important. Having a balanced Path is important.

Jace nodded. “I…think that makes sense.” He was about to ask what they meant by a balanced body and soul, but before he could say anything, the floor crumbled beneath him, and the Vault Core flung him to a distant reach of the galaxy.

After a few seconds, the ground rushed up to meet him. He landed in an open clearing.

It was another forest of sorts, but the leaves were blood-red, and they hung down off their branches in tangled vines. But these leaves…they were glass. Pure, clear glass. They perched on black branches, which led to thick stumps. The trees, each nearly three storeys tall, spread across the hilly landscape as far as he could see.

The ground wasn’t littered with crystal shards or sharp stones, but there was the occasional glass leaf that fell from a tree. He brushed a swath of leaves aside with his bandage-wrapped foot, revealing bone-dry soil with a bluish tint.

It’s so alien in there…I didn’t think there were so many different things in the galaxy! Lessa chirped. I didn’t know there could be so many things that weren’t just…purple!

Now that he had landed, Jace asked, “What makes a Path balanced, anyway? I thought a Path would be more like a class—like hunter.”

A Class is only part of your Path, Lessa said. A Path, being the summation of your arcane aspects, can have certain bends to them. The Crimson Table’s Potency-heavy Paths are perfect for using their flame technique cards, and they cultivate mostly their soul and spirit. But they aren’t balanced.

While she spoke, Jace made a weapon. When he tried to snap a branch off the nearest tree, it didn’t budge. It creaked and groaned, but it was too strong—and it wasn’t dry or rotten. It just bent. He tried a bunch of branches, and all with the same result. Nothing.

But along the outer edge of the clearing, there were rocks. Gray rocks—normal rocks. Some were sharp. He gathered up the sharpest rocks he could find, then placed them in the center of the clearing. From there, he chose the two sharpest, dagger-shaped rocks. He held them like knives.

With the two rocks selected, he set off through the woods. He broke into a sprint, stone daggers at the ready. Every step, he glanced around. Something would attack him, but he couldn’t say what.

After a few minutes of running, he found a trail, but there were still no darklings. He didn’t even hear a distant rumble. He ran along the trail, hoping it might lead him where he was supposed to go.

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“If I find another person,” he asked, “will they see me? I’m leaving an impression of myself across the galaxy…”

After a few seconds, Lessa answered, Kinfild says they won’t. They might notice a ripple in the air or feel a tingle, and if they’re around when you slay the darklings, they’ll see those die, but not you.

Jace rounded a corner, holding a tree trunk to help himself turn, but stumbled to a stop. Ahead, there was a rift—a gap in the earth nearly a hundred meters long. His feet hung over the edge, and a trickle of dirt fell. A pool of bubbling, steaming water roiled at the bottom of the canyon. He swallowed. If the fall and impact with the surface didn’t kill him, he’d boil alive.

His first instinct was to go around. There was no reason to find a way over the dangerous ravine if he could just go around. But glass shrubs and other spiny plants covered the forest floor, and if he tried to even walk through there, he’d shred his legs.

There were small stone ledges along the rift’s walls, barely wide enough to fit one foot on, but they ran all along the edge of the thin valley. They were close enough that he could jump across the valley from one side to the other. Back and forth, and back and forth, and on and on.

He took a deep breath. He had to be fast. He had to be precise. If he messed up, he’d fall. Maybe Lessa would be able to pull him out in time, and maybe she wouldn’t be able to. But he had to try.

For an extra safety measure, he said, “Lessa, could I get the card now?” If he fell, he might be able to use a hyperdash to get back up.

In a few seconds. It’s a bit squishy at the moment, so we’ll have to be gentle with it—and it’s gonna cause some spiritual pain and strain. Oooh, that rhymed!

The moment Lessa put the card in his hand, he set off. He leapt to the first ledge. As soon as his foot touched it, he turned and leapt for the next one down the line. He would have to be fast, or he’d lose his balance and fall. Back and forth, back and forth…

He reached a pair of ledges, one right above the other, and he gripped the upper one with his hands. He dropped one of the stone daggers just to get a better grip. Pausing, he scanned the valley to see what was next. Fallen logs, more ledges, and more obstacles. He’d gotten through the first third, and it could only get harder—

Jace, watch out!

Before he could process Lessa’s warning, a bright magenta flash seared the edges of his vision. The stone beside his head exploded. He nearly tumbled off the ledge, but he held onto it tight, and only one hand slipped off. He recovered and placed the second hand back, then looked behind him.

On the side of the valley, an army of shadowy skeletons had gathered. They were eerily silent, and their dark bones were only barely visible in the gloom of the trees. In their hands, they carried plasma rifles, and they wore decaying, mismatched armour.

[Level 12 Corpsestealer] read the tag above the nearest one’s head.

Corpsestealers! Lessa exclaimed at the same time. Her tone landed somewhere between fright and fear. It’s a tiny darkling that takes over a corpse’s body after a battle! There must have been a great battle here long ago!

Jace turned his gaze up just above him. On the same side of the valley as him, more decaying skeletons had gathered, all armed with plasma rifles or plasma pistols. They aimed down at him.

He had to keep moving. He leapt to the next ledge. A barrage of plasma blasts chased him. He leapt onto a fallen log that stretched from one side of the valley to the other. When he reached the top, the skeletons pulled back their rifle’s bolts, and a bony clatter rang out. He was almost across the log when they fired the next volley. The blasts aimed where he used to be, not where he was. They blasted the fallen log, bolts searing through it.

The log creaked, groaned, then snapped in half. He leapt for the next ledge. Before he could make it, the log slipped out from under him.

He still had a hyperdash ready. In a split-second, he chose his target and triggered the technique card.

This time, he also felt a tug pulling him backwards. The stone dagger he had brought didn’t want to come with him, and neither did his clothes. They held him back. When he emerged from the dash, he had shot up only half the distance that he had hoped to.

His target had been a set of logs stretched across the top of the ravine, thin enough to wrap his hands around but not so thin they’d crumble under his weight. Instead, he arrived near a stone ledge. He gripped it with one hand. The rock above shuddered and melted when a blast of plasma-Aes struck it, and flecks of molten stone seared his knuckles.

Jace hauled himself up, then, as soon as he could place a foot on the ledge, he pushed himself up and across to another ledge, then to the thin logs. Once he had them in his hand, he swung across the top of the ravine like he was climbing monkey bars, until he reached another ledge. He rested on the ledge, catching his breath while the corpsestealers pulled their rifles’ bolts back.

But he couldn’t stay still forever. Near the end, the valley wall had hundreds of holes and burrows in it, and he climbed on it like he was climbing across a metal grate or a net. It almost worked, but the corpsestealers fired again. A blast of plasma neared his hand. He let go of the rock to save his hand.

Jace, your next hyperdash is ready! Lessa called. She hadn’t taken the card back yet.

He didn’t know if he could make the distance, but if he didn’t try, he’d end up with a burning hole in his back.

Push with your willpower! Exert strength from your mind, from the soul you have been enhancing—like you’re cycling really fast. It scales with your Resistance attribute…

He activated the hyperdash.