“Indeed, the card has been imprinted,” Kinfild stated. He shut his eyes for a second, and a slight chill flowed through Jace’s fingers. Kinfild had given the card a scan with his spiritual senses. “Regular Wielders,” Kinfild continued, “cannot tap into the Split directly, and we must use our spiritual senses to observe technique cards and their uses.”

Jace nodded eagerly. “Can I try the new card?”

Immediately, Kinfild’s face contorted, and he exclaimed, “Certainly not, Mr. Balwin! Not while we are travelling through hyperspace ourselves! If it even works while we are in hyperspace, it would tear a hole in the hull! It can wait until we land.”

“Right…” Jace whispered. “Sorry.” His body ached a little still, and a drowsiness permeated the back of his mind. For a moment, he considered sleeping, but his mind was running too fast—especially after advancing and choosing his class. “Why would the technique scaling with Resistance…work?”

“Aside from being the opposite of Potency, which the original card scaled off of?” Kinfild asked. “You are launching something with a burst of hyperspace Aes. The harder your stance is to break, the more force you direct out into the object.”

Jace nodded. He wanted to socket the new card, but he figured he would save it for a more expressly emergency situation—it had a longer cooldown period. “So, the more Foundation Pillars I have, the more cards I can socket, right?”

“Correct,” Kinfild said.

“How…exactly does that work, then?”

“You can socket a card for each Foundation Pillar you form, and the quality of the Pillar determines the rarity of the card you can hold. Effectively, you have one Pillar right now—the core is acting as one—but you will need to divide your core to host more. Each time you divide the core and shore up an individual ‘Pillar’, you will put yourself closer to advancing to the Soul-Circle Opening stages. When you reach five pillars, your core will try to advance, sealing the pillars back into a core, and you must hold back the advancement as long as you can if you want to push for more pillars.”

“How many do you have?”

“I have five Pillars, which is considered average for Wielders, though I have three perfect-quality pillars and can host three Mythic-grade technique cards, should I desire.” Kinfild held up a finger. “I have five cards currently socketed, and none are Mythic-grade.”

So the quality of the pillar determined the rarity of the card it could host. Jace nodded in understanding. “And Stenol?”

“He formed six. Two perfect pillars, and I believe he hosts a single Mythic-grade card—his staff technique, Scarlet Dragon’s Reprisal.”

“I need to form a few more pillars, then,” Jace said.

“All in time. What you need is more Aes, so when you split your core, you have enough Aes to form up the next pillar. I will guide you through the process when you reach around twenty-five percent advancement progress.”

“Alright, but I’ll hold you to it.” Jace rubbed the new card between his fingers. The edges were a little malformed from the heat of the imprinting process, and the surface was smoother than usual from almost binding to the table. “Wanderer’s Banishment. That almost sounds like it was…meant for my Path. But that can’t be possible.”

“Why not?” Kinfild asked. “You carved it, and the Path reflects everything about you. Why shouldn’t a card you use, which scales based on an attribute favoured by your Path, resemble your Path in some ways?”

“When you put it that way…”

“Precisely.”

Jace wound up the engraving needle’s cord and fuel-cell. As he tucked it into his backpack, Kinfild said, “We have time before we arrive. I highly suggest you run through a few more Vaults. Try to destroy as many darklings as you can; that will reward you the most Aes. You will recover a stronger Aes base.”

“Sounds like a good plan, if I can get myself patched up a little bit.” He leaned back against the bench. His shoulder still ached from where the Watchman had struck him, though a little less vigorously after the advancement (as if his muscles had already started knitting back together), and his calf stung. He would need to get them looked at sooner than later.

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“I will get the medpack,” said Kinfild. He rose and marched to the engine room. A moment later, he returned with the medpack in his arms—and with Aur-Six following on his heels. Kinfild set the medpack down, and Aur-Six laid a tray of food down on the table. There were only two bowls filled with white cubes (the screaming epitome of blandness), but they steamed. Jace knew better than to complain about a hot meal.

Jace activated the first-aid kyborg, and as it worked, he ate. The cubes were flavourless but filling, and had the texture of pasta—except just a little chewier. He finished and set the bowl back on the tray, just as the first-aid kyborg finished suturing his calf shut. Kinfild set his bowl down as well, and again, Jace’s stomach dropped. There were still only two bowls. He couldn’t shove the image of Ms. Kendine, the elder blacksmith, from his mind.

Lessa was still alive. Still out there somewhere.

“Are you alright, Mr. Baldwin?” Kinfild asked.

“I’ll be fine.”

“You will be fine? So you are not fine at the moment, is that it?” Kinfild tilted his head.

“Look, we have a mission, and I have a purpose,” Jace said. But, as the excitement of the Path revelation and advancement faded from his body, he realized that something was still missing. Something was off, and he couldn’t place it. “After we’re done here…well, I don’t know what I’ll do or where I’ll go. I have nothing here. I’ll just be scraping by, trying to stay alive.”

Kinfild said nothing for a few moments. Finally, he provided, “You do not have to have everything figured out.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t have to know everything you want, or how you’re going to get there. But just seeking survival is insufficient, I know that much.” Kinfild pressed his staff against the floor and leaned against it. “It was a lesson I tried to teach some of the candlefolk, but Lessa was the only one who seemed to truly understand that there was more out there.” The Wielder tapped his fingers against the shaft. “In the records, it said that some of the worldjumpers were very religious...”

“I wasn’t the type for that.”

“I guessed as much. It’s not a problem, but there had to be something you were living for.”

Jace exhaled quickly. “I did want to go on adventures. I wanted to have vacations and see the far reaches of earth. I wanted to camp under the stars and visit bustling cities and climb mountains…and I needed to get off the farm to do it. I am a wanderer.”

“And now you’re off the farm.”

Jace delivered a soft smile, then said, “And now I’ve gotta wander, I guess. But I don’t want to wander aimlessly. I can use this power for more than just survival.”

“That’s the spirit! Now, are you ready to raid some Vaults?”

“Always.” Jace walked over to the bunks, Vault Core in hand. Since Lessa wasn’t with them, he wouldn’t be able to switch the cards in the Vaults, and the Hyperdash was still his best option for the time being—if he got himself into trouble, he could get himself out of it. He left it socketed while entering and running the vaults.

“Make sure you are cycling, Mr. Baldwin,” Kinfild said. “Use the Base-Essence Rotation and purify the Aes to a Foundation Two grade..”

He ran through three more Vaults—all alien wildernesses, all with simple darklings—before the Luna Wrath started to shudder. When he emerged from the Vault, he pointed the Reader at himself. He’d reached eight-percent advancement progress.

Kinfild was already in the cockpit. Jace stuffed the Vault Core back in his backpack, then rolled off the cockpit and ran to the copilot’s seat. “Ten minutes until we drop out of hyperspace,” Kinfild said.

Jace slipped into the seat and fastened himself down with a crash harness. “So…we’re heading to the communications outpost? On Celacor—or, Ten?”

“Correct,” Kinfild replied.

“And we just have to protect it for long enough to send a…what’s it called…”

“Telesignal?”

“Yeah, that.” Jace gripped the seat. “We send out the signal, and Lady Fairynor brings in a fleet and army to push back the kobolds? I gather lots of Aes from the Kobolds, and we save the Starrealm from a public disgrace, stopping a war?”

“If all goes to plan. There will be plenty of kobolds to kill, and the Split will reward you handsomely for destroying them.”

“That sounds like a good enough reason for the time-being,” Jace said.

He stared ahead, tracing every swirl with his eyes, and he timed his breaths with them. After a few minutes, his eyes stopped focussing, and his mind stopped registering the minutes that passed. Then a device on the console began beeping. They were about to drop out of hyperspace.

Kinfild gripped the silver lever in the center of the dashboard and pulled back on it. The light washed off the viewscreen, revealing only dark realspace.

They had arrived at Celacor.