The problem with fighting for your life when you are running on empty is that adrenaline is a dirty, stinking liar. It whispers sweet nothings in your ear, telling you that you have infinite energy, or that you look beautiful tonight—maybe even that it will never cheat on you.
All lies. And how do you find out? You take the early flight back from your mental business trip, only to find a stranger's foot lodged firmly in your arse.
I stood in the centre of the red-lit yard, chest heaving like a bellows with a puncture. My stamina gauge was flashing a critical red. My mana was technically high—thanks to the passive regeneration of the clone inside our inventory—but mana is fuel, not an engine. It couldn't move my limbs if the muscles were turned to jelly.
"Surely this world has items that can turn mana into stamina," I wheezed, wiping a mixture of sweat and grease from my eyes. "Right, Ronan? I don't care who we have to bribe, kill, or steal from. That is the next item on the shopping list. The moment we get home, I want a ring or a bracelet, something! That takes mana on the one side and spits out stamina on the other."
'Focus, Murphy,' Ronan's voice was tight, lacking its usual lecture-hall cadence. 'Get him talking. Buy us time to recover.'
I had enough juice to summon a platoon of clones, but without the physical stamina to back them up, they would possess the structural integrity of a damp tissue. If they tried to Phase through a punch, they would pop like soap bubbles.
"So," I said, spinning the twin blades in my hands with a wrist flick that felt heavier than it should have. "You're the Manager here? Or just the head of Human Resources?"
The Prime tilted its head. The porcelain face was impassive, painted with the cracked features of a pleasant serving man, but the voice that drifted across the yard was rich, cultured, and utterly chilling.
"I am the Curator," the Prime corrected. "And you are trespassing."
He raised a white-gloved hand and snapped his fingers.
Behind me, the three remaining Sentry Golems hissed. Their red eyes flared, locking onto my heat signature.
'Three targets,' Ronan analysed, slipping into his battle rhythm. 'Standard brass-alloy plating. Weak points at the neck servos and the knee actuators. Do not waste energy on the chest plates.'
"Understood," I muttered. "I'll aim for the bits that aren't tank armour."
The first Sentry lunged.
It moved with the heavy, hydraulic speed of a runaway cart. A few weeks ago, I would have been roadkill. But I had spent a hundred hours in the Infinite Dojo getting beaten into shape by a master swordsman. My body was tired, but my pattern recognition was wired on high-voltage coffee.
I didn't dodge. I pivoted.
I waited until the brass fist was inches from my nose, then shifted my weight. The metal knuckles grazed my bangs. In the same motion, I brought my left sword up in a tight arc, slashing the exposed hydraulic line under the golem's armpit.
PSSSHH.
Oil sprayed across the concrete.
"Gotcha," I whispered.
I drove my right sword into the neck joint, twisted, and kicked the construct away. It should have dropped. A human would have dropped.
It didn't drop.
The Sentry stumbled, oil leaking down its chassis like black blood, but the red light in its eyes didn't even flicker. It simply re-routed power, the gears grinding as it turned back toward me, raising its fist for a second strike.
'I guess you can't bleed a toaster,' I thought, ducking as a second Sentry swung a haymaker that shattered the crate I'd been standing on a second prior.
I looked at the three massive metal hulks closing in. Swords were useless. My body was too fragile to grapple. I needed a bypass.
I called on the clones around me. "Boys," I gasped, pointing at the golems. "Group hug."
The clones didn't hesitate. They didn't try to parry or block. They launched themselves at the Sentries with suicidal abandon.
Clones ducked under swings and tackled the Sentries, wrapping their legs around the metal waists like aggressive koalas. They slammed their hands against the heavy steel chest plates.
They didn't try to punch through. Their hands turned ghostly as they phased through three inches of hardened steel armour.
Inside the chassis, their hands became solid again. Fingers wrapped directly around the humming Mana Cores.
The clones triggered the Inventory's vacuum function.
WHOOSH.
It was a violent, hydraulic sound. The clones sucked the raw mana out of the Sentry cores, channelling it straight into my Inventory.
The feedback was instant. The clones exploded into mist, their structural integrity failing under the massive stamina cost of maintaining a Phase while conducting energy.
But the job was done.
The red lights in the Sentries' eyes died in unison. The hydraulic pressure vanished. Three tons of angry metal turned into three tons of scrap. They toppled over, hitting the concrete with a synchronised, deafening crash.
Slow, sarcastic clapping echoed across the yard.
"Resourceful," the Prime said, stepping down from the platform. "Using your own echoes as disposable ammunition. You have a lot of potential, young thief."
The air didn't just shimmer; it grew heavy. A dense, suffocating pressure washed over the yard, smelling of ozone and old dust.
The Prime unclasped his hands. He adjusted his white cuffs, smoothing out invisible wrinkles in his tailcoat. Then, he took a breath—a theatrical, unnecessary intake of air for a creature that didn't need oxygen.
VWOOM.
A golden aura flared around him. It wasn't the erratic, crackling energy of a mage casting a spell. It was solid, steady, and terrifyingly dense.
'My guess is... at least Yellow Core,' Ronan said, his voice dropping an octave. 'Mid-stage. He is a full tier above us, Murphy. Physically, he can move faster than your neurons can fire.'
"Great," I muttered, tightening my grip on my swords until my knuckles popped. "Lucky for us, your core weaving techniques mean we aren't just a simple Green Core either. We're a spicy Green Core!"
"Usually," the Prime said, his voice conversational as he began to walk toward me, "I would not deign to engage such a weak mage. It is... beneath the station of the Curator. Like a dragon hunting a mouse."
He didn't rush. He glided. His feet barely seemed to touch the oil-stained concrete.
"But because you didn't smash my children—you simply excised their hearts—I shall grant you a professional courtesy."
"A courtesy?" I asked, backing away slowly, trying to keep the distance.
"A personal eviction," he said.
Then he vanished.
He didn't teleport. He just moved so fast that my eyes couldn't track the frames.
Danger Sense: LEFT.
I didn't think. I threw myself to the right, crashing shoulder-first into a pile of scrap metal.
CRACK.
The space where I had been standing exploded. The Prime's fist had punched a crater into the solid concrete floor, sending spiderweb fractures racing out three feet in every direction.
He stood up from the crater, not a speck of dust on his coat.
"Reflexes," he noted, sounding like a teacher grading a paper. "Good. Are you afraid?"
"I'm cautious!" I yelled, scrambling to my feet.
I panic-cast five clones, instantly flooding the zone. They materialised in a chaotic cluster, each one standing dead centre on a heavy rug.
"Scatter!"
We broke formation, weaving in and out of each other's paths in a high-speed shell game to overload his tracking.
"You are running away," the Prime observed, his eyes tracking the clones as they weaved in between each other. "You see the shell, and you see a machine you can trick. You think I am like my children."
He locked on to me, ignoring the clones completely.
I lashed out—a desperate, quick thrust aimed at his eyes.
He caught the blade. With two fingers.
He didn't snap it. He just held it there, stopping my full-strength thrust with the casual ease of a man holding a quill.
"The House of Voss did not make me, boy," the Prime said softly, staring down the length of the steel. "They are not my creators. They are my Rescuers."
He flicked his wrist.
The force threw me backwards. I skidded across the dirt, fighting to keep my balance as my boots carved trenches in the ground.
"They found me in the dark," the Prime monologued, pacing parallel to me. "Buried beneath tons of rock in the ruins of the Old World. I was dormant. Broken. Forgotten."
He gestured to the silent factory around us.
"They woke me. They gave me purpose. They are my Patrons. And in return, I gave them the Runes to build my children. I protect this estate not because I am told to, but because it is where my children are born."
He looked at me, his eyeless sockets burning with a strange, paternal intensity.
"And you are trespassing in the crib."
"Touching story, really," I wheezed. "You should write their names in your diary."
I needed an opening. I couldn't beat him on stats. I needed to cheat.
'Ronan, can we swallow this guy?'
'Hypothetically? Yes,' Ronan replied, his voice tight. 'As long as he does not possess a Living Spark.'
'And if he does?'
'Then he would bounce right out and the stamina tax... it might kill us, Murphy.'
I looked at the Prime. He was walking straight towards me. Seconds away from stepping on one of the rugs my clones had laid out.
"Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question?" I yelled.
He slowed, tilting his head curiously. "Speak."
"You said the Ancient Ones made you, not the Voss family, right? Do you know if they gave you a Living Spark by any chance? Soul-binding? Anything like that?"
The Prime paused, considering the question with machine-like gravity. "No. They could not achieve such mastery. But I assure you, what I am is as close as mortals will ever come."
"Well," I grinned, dropping my sword. "That's good enough for me."
Swoosh!
The trap sprang.
He stepped dead centre on the rug. I summoned a large portal and sucked as hard as I had ever sucked on an ancient robot.
Gravity did the rest. The Prime fell.
He vanished into the Inventory.
'Got him!' I thought, triumph surging through me.
Then the Inventory bucked.
It felt like I had swallowed an elephant. A massive pressure spike hammered against my… everything.
'He's too dense!' Ronan yelled. 'His Core—it's not a simple core! It's some sort of dimensional reactor!'
PTOO.
The Inventory spat him back out.
The Prime shot out of the rug like a cannonball, landing on his feet ten yards away. My heart sank as a massive chunk of my remaining stamina evaporated, taxed by the failed digestion.
The Prime looked down at his coat, then at me. He looked confused. Then he looked offended.
'Oh,' I realised, reading his posture. 'He almost lost. And now he's going to stop playing.'
"I'm not done yet!" I shouted, my voice cracking. Panic and adrenaline were mixing into a toxic cocktail in my brain.
I focused. I reached into the depths of the memory bank, pulling up the chemistry textbook I had speed-read in the dreamscape.
Nitroglycerine.
The volatility. The molecular bond. The boom.
I summoned three clones ten feet away. In their hands, they held sealed glass mason jars filled with shimmering, oily liquid.
"Hey, Butler!" I yelled. "Catch!"
Ronan sighed in my head. 'Murphy, this is a bad idea.'
'It's a great idea! Science, bitch!'
The clones hurled the jars. They spiralled through the air, perfect arcs aimed at the Prime's chest.
The Prime just watched them fly in. I dived for cover behind a steel beam, curling into a ball, bracing myself for the earth-shattering KA-BOOM.
SMASH.
The glass shattered against his chassis. The liquid splashed all over his pristine coat and the heated metal of his chest.
I waited for the heat. The shrapnel. The glorious destruction.
Splosh.
The liquid dripped off his coat. It pooled on the floor.
It smelled like Nitro. It looked like Nitro.
But it was just wet.
The Prime looked at his soaked sleeve. He raised his arm, sniffed the liquid, and sighed.
"Water?" he diagnosed, shaking his head.
He looked at me with genuine, crushing pity.
"You disappoint me, boy. I thought you were a warrior. It seems you are just a conjurer of parlour tricks."
My heart sank. The Art could copy the form, but it couldn't copy the reaction if I didn't fundamentally understand the molecular bonding. I had just thrown spicy water at a tank.
I was out of tricks. And now, I was out of time.
"The lesson is over," the Prime declared.
The air screamed.
He moved. This time, I didn't even see the blur. My Danger Sense didn't just ping; it shrieked.
I tried to raise my swords. I tried to Phase. But the tank was empty.
The blow didn't feel like a fist. It felt like a carriage moving at top speed.
CRACK.
The impact caught me square in the chest. I felt my ribs give way like dry twigs. The air was forced from my lungs in a singular, agonising whoosh.
I was airborne.
The world was a blur of spinning grey and red. I flew backwards—twenty feet, thirty feet—until I slammed into the corrugated steel wall of a container.
CLANG.
I slid down the metal wall, leaving a smear of blood on the paint. I hit the dirt, my swords clattering from my numb fingers.
Grey spots danced in my vision. The sounds of the factory—the steam, the hum, the distant city—faded into a high-pitched ringing.
I couldn't breathe. My lung had collapsed.
Through the darkening tunnel of my vision, I saw the Prime. He was checking his cuffs again. He was preparing for the killing blow.
I'd treated this whole second life like a casino table. I thought if I just counted the cards and played the angles, I could cheat the house. But the house always wins eventually. I had taken Ronan's life—his one shot at redemption, his trust—and I had bet it all. Only to lose everything.
Then the world went black.
'I'm sorry, Ronan,' I thought, the darkness swallowing me whole. I drove us right off the cliff. It always ends like this, doesn't it? In the end, I just let everyone down.'