The Cleaners would be using Mana-Sight to scan for the high-density signature I was currently radiating. To them, I was a localized sun moving through a dark wall. I needed to vanish, and idea appeared in my mind, the best way to hide a signal is to create Noise.
I pressed my back against the vibrating copper of a main steam-line. There was no countdown on a screen, just the steady, metronomic thrum of the Stone's effects.
I was bleeding heat. My supercritical core was scouring my pathways, and the thermal leakage would lead them straight to me.
I didn't have a cloak spell, but I had a Heat-Sink. I focused on the "pressure" in my core and redirected the excess thermal bleed into the Obsidian Dead Zone of my shoulder.
Because the tissue was carbon-dense , it could hold an immense amount of thermal energy. I felt nothing—no pain, no warmth—but I watched as the silver-blue lines on my left arm began to glow a dull, cherry-red. I was dumping my energy signature into my own "dead" hardware. I wasn't invisible yet, but my signature had dropped from "Sun" to "Warm Pipe."
Using the memory i had of of the manifests and floor plans I'd memorized during my week as a "janitor," I mapped the plumbing of the wing in my head. I wasn't seeing a digital map; I was remembering the blue-inked manifests and the physical location of the valves I'd hauled.
My mind was clearer and ideas kept coming but i didn't have the luxury to explore, I was in a rush and needed to focus at the tasks at hand so i ignored my worrying instincts and kept moving.
The vault I'd just breached relied on a balance of Liquid Frost-Salt (Coolant) and High-Pressure Steam (Power). By breaking those lines earlier, I had already destabilized the local equilibrium. Now, I was going to turn that instability into a Feedback Loop.
I found a junction where three steam-lines converged in the "Dead Space." I reached out with my obsidian hand—immune to the blistering heat of the metal—and gripped the manual override.
"If the volume stays constant and I restrict the flow," I muttered, "the pressure has to go somewhere else."
I moved through the gaps between the walls, hitting three specific junctions in a calculated circuit:
At Junction A: I jammed the coolant return-valve.
At Junction B: I bypassed a steam-governor.
At Junction C: I introduced a Water Hammer effect by sending a shockwave of kinetic energy back through the pipes.
I leaned my head against the stone wall, feeling the vibrations through my skull. I didn't need a display to tell me when to act. I waited for the three different pressure waves I'd created to meet at a single point.
This is Constructive Interference. When the peaks of multiple waves overlap, the resulting force is the sum of all three.
One. Two. Three.
A block away, in the opposite wing of Sub-Level 4, a secondary boiler shrieked as the combined pressure spike hit its weakest gasket.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG.
The pipes in the hallway outside the vault began to buck. A safety seal in the North Wing blew, venting a massive, blinding cloud of superheated steam that likely looked like a core meltdown on any mana-sensor.
"Breach in the North Wing!" a guard screamed. "All units, redirect to the Primary Boiler!"
The "Noise" worked. The Cleaners, trained to follow the largest energy signature, sprinted away from the vault and toward the "detonating" boiler.
I turned the other way. I headed for the Laundry Chutes I'd used to get down here. But this time, the climb was different.
With a Supercritical Core, I didn't just have to rely on my muscles. I pushed a controlled burst of mana into my legs. The power was intoxicating—frictionless and immediate. I didn't climb; I launched myself up the shaft, my "Dead Zone" arm acting as a high-friction brake whenever I needed to stop or slow my ascent.
I reached the Apprentice Wing minutes before the morning bell was set to ring.
I slipped through the vent in my room, stripped off the soot-covered apron, and looked at my reflection in the small, cracked mirror. My shoulder was cold, my core was humming, and the orange glow in my arm was slowly fading back to silver.
I collapsed onto my bed, pulling the thin sheets over my "forged" shoulder just as the first rays of Orizon's sun hit the window.