The morning after the spar Ren left for her L4.
Solo. The Eclipse default since she'd come back from Valdros. She was at the Floor One pad at quarter past nine in her travel coat. No squad. Lyra Quist was up on Floor 18 going through Ops paperwork; she came down to see Ren off and went back up before the pad lit. Brandt at the duty desk. Adam at the rail.
Ren stopped halfway up the pad.
"Don't do anything stupid."
"You're the one going."
"Mm. If an incursion lands while I'm gone, take it. Don't push it to one of the other teams. The Veil-Shadowstep combo needs a public run before the raid."
"I know."
"Don't break too many bones doing it."
"I'll try."
She came back down the pad and kissed him once, brief, like she was already on the other side.
"Be here when I get back."
"I will."
The pad lit. She blurred out alone.
Brandt had his coffee in his good hand. The prosthetic flexed once at the elbow.
"Right. Back to work."
"Back to work."
He turned and walked toward his office.
The incursion alert hit the duty terminal forty minutes later.
▓ INCURSION DETECTED
Location: Velden basin, west of Greyhill.
Time to landing: eleven minutes.
Hostile profile: Vethrak. Estimated count: seven. Two Warrior-class commanders (L4 equivalent). Five Warriors (L3 equivalent).
Threat rating: L4 incursion event.
Civilian exposure: High — Greyhill town centre falls inside the projected drift cone.
Response routing: nearest available L4-rated Explorer team.
Adam was already up.
Talk about foreshadowing.
Brandt came back through the office door before Adam reached the lift.
"Greyhill."
"Yep."
"Eleven minutes lead time. Still feels like a gift."
"Mm."
The early-warning had been live for nine months. Since Earth-Prime had pushed through the Yautja gate and held the other side, the Bazaar had started flagging incoming incursions before they landed. Before that, the only signal an Explorer ever got was the gate opening — enemies on the ground, civilians already exposed, response time measured from the first scream. The whole IEC response doctrine had been rewritten around the new lead time.
Adam still half-expected the alert to come the old way, sometimes. Reflex from his first three years.
"Lena and Henrik are home today. I checked the schedule."
"Sage already pinged Henrik. He's pulling Lena to the bunker. Marc is at the university."
"Good. Who do you take."
Adam went down the available roster. Sage had it on the overlay.
[ Sylven Marchand, L4, Nen, Transmutation Hatsu, fire based. On site, ready. Ines Korva, L3, Werewolf transformation. On site. Petar Iliescu, L3, Apprentice Necromancer. On site. Tovis is in Research and not field-cleared. Lyra and the rest of Ren's wing are on Ops rotation. ]
"Marchand, Korva, Iliescu. Plus me."
"Vethrak. Two L4 commanders."
"This is on the lower scale of Wave Two. Should be routine. Low risk."
"Yautja and Xenomorph incursions stopped since our L7s established a stronghold on the other side last year. Vethrak are the ones still hitting at scale."
"And now harder."
"Take it carefully."
"I'll take one of the commanders solo. The team handles the second and the five Warriors. Standard incursion split."
Brandt watched him for one second.
"You're cleared at L4 for the books. Don't break the cover today unless the kill demands it."
"I talked with Ren about this. It's fine if they notice something off."
"Press will be there inside twelve minutes. Greyhill is under IEC surveillance network."
"I know."
"This is your first public showing since the last deployment."
"Well them I better perform well."
Brandt nodded once.
"Go."
The squad assembled at the Floor One pad at three minutes to landing.
Sylven Marchand was already there. Twenty-eight, Valdros expat in Eclipse since Month Three, compact and sharp-edged, hair cropped close. Her Hatsu was famous these days. They called her the laughing pyromancer, because she enjoyed burning enemies a bit too much. She wore the Eclipse field kit in dark slate with the silver collar bar.
Ines Korva at the second rail. Twenty-four, half-Kessho, raised in a Kerenth industrial family. Known for her werewolf transformation. Quite a unique ability for a girl to choose. Apparently she liked it up close and personal... I always felt uncomfortable around her.
Petar Iliescu at the third rail. Twenty-six, Khovari, dryland-born. The person with the most potential in Adam's opinion. He had an ability called Raise Skeleton and a magic-based system. He had two skeletons following him around for now. They were from his last deployment. One was an armored skeleton with a broadsword and the other a spear bearer. He rated them individually at L3.
Adam took the guild leaders's pad.
He wore the Quiet Coat in its clothing state, reading as the same Eclipse field kit the others wore. He let it stay there. The fighting-form silhouette would not surface today unless he asked.
He looked at his squad.
"Vethrak. Two L4 Warrior-class commanders, five L3 Warriors. Greyhill civilian exposure low. I'll take the first L4 directly. Marchand, you anchor the second L4. Korva, Iliescu, pair on the five L3 Warriors. You should be able to handle it easy enough."
"Copy." Marchand, already turning toward her pad.
"Anchors up." Iliescu, fingers running across the copper studs at his hip.
"On it." Korva, last.
The pad lit.
They blurred out of the Hub and into the Kantgade Earth office rooftop pad inside the same blink. The Hub-side exit was anchored to the Earth office. From there the squad cleared the rooftop in twenty seconds and boarded the Eclipse transport helicopter already turning over on the south pad with its skids two centimetres off the deck. The pilot was a Brandt-vetted ex-HEC contractor named Søren Halle who flew Eclipse field-team rotations as his standing assignment. He had the rotors at full pitch before the door was closed.
The chopper lifted at three minutes to incursion, banked west over the Velden, and ate the distance to Greyhill at standard tactical cruise. The comm channel was open.
[ Two minutes ten to the basin perimeter. Civilian evacuation cleared at the four-hundred-metre line. Press has reached the south ridge. The gate is still pre-emergence. ]
Halle put them down on the basin floor at fourteen seconds to incursion. The squad cleared the chopper in three. Halle pulled the bird up and out to a holding pattern half a kilometre west, clear of the engagement.
The basin was a wide low cup of grass and gravel two kilometres west of Greyhill, used for HEC training drills and not much else. The sky above had the faint heat-shimmer that came before an incursion gate opened. Greyhill's town centre sat on the ridge beyond, four hundred metres across the open ground. The IEC standing cameras were already swivelling.
Sage flagged the press van on the south ridge.
[ Three press teams. HEC liaison observer. Two IEC cameras on the basin perimeter, one drone overhead. Civilian evacuation already pulling back. Henrik confirmed in the bunker with Lena. ]
Good.
The gate opened above the basin at zero seconds. Vertical seam of compressed colour, pressure-pop, wash of chitinous shapes spilling out and dropping into the basin floor.
Seven landed.
The two L4 commanders were the size of small cars. Chitin plates the colour of wet basalt, mandibles half a metre across, four legs and two articulated mid-arms each tipped in a hooked blade. The five L3 Warriors were smaller and faster, the size of large dogs, mandibles tighter, faster on the legs. They oriented to the ridge inside half a second.
Marchand was already moving toward the second L4.
Iliescu dropped with his skeletons and let them charge. Korva ran forward while transforming. When she reached the first L3 Warrior she jumped on it and started slicing, biting and ripping.
Adam went the other way.
He set the Veil and walked forward.
He wanted to test the Veil's sensor-bypass against a Vethrak commander at this Sequence, and it would tell him cleanly whether the commander's spiritual signature reads picked him up.
They did not.
The L4 commander tracked Marchand's advance, tracked the cameras on the ridge, tracked the spilled press-team movement, and did not register the man in the dark slate coat walking diagonally across its blind quadrant. Adam crossed forty metres of open basin floor in the open at a casual pace and the commander's compound eyes slid past him three times.
Sage flagged the Veil cost.
[ Sensor bypass clean. The commander has no perceptual category for Stalker-class concealment. We are invisible to it. ]
Showing off a bit.
[ You may. The angle is good. ]
He came up on the commander's left flank at four metres. The commander's mid-arm blade was raised against Marchand's approach across the basin. Its head was turned the other way. The chitin plating on its left thoracic segment sat in its standard configuration: three overlapping plates the size of dinner platters, with a hand's-width seam between the second and third plate where the muscle attachment ran through.
Adam looked at the seam.
[ Vital organ behind the seam: primary cardio-equivalent. Approximate depth: thirty-two centimetres. The Trespasser physical enhancement will push your hand through the chitin and through the seam without resistance. Close the grip, pull straight back; the organ comes with you. ]
Right.
He stepped in.
His right hand drove forward at full Trespasser physical enhancement, fingers extended. The chitin plate cracked at the seam. His arm passed through the seam to the elbow. He felt the heat of the commander's internal cavity, the wet weight of the cardio-organ in his palm, the muscle wall behind it.
He closed his hand around the organ.
He pulled.
The organ came out clean. His arm slid back through the chitin seam with the same low resistance it had gone in with. The commander's head turned half a degree. Its compound eyes registered the wound an instant before the autonomic systems failed.
It collapsed.
The basin floor shook once when the commander hit it.
Adam stood beside the body with the cardio-organ in his right hand. The organ was the size of a watermelon, dark red, faintly luminescent at the chambers. He dropped it into the Spatial Pocket. The Research floor would want a sample.
The kill had taken eleven seconds from the moment he started walking.
[ Vital organ secured. Body intact. Press caught the approach from the ridge. The Veil dropped at the moment of strike, by design. They have a clean visual of the kill itself, no visual of the approach. ]
Perfect.
Across the basin Marchand was burning the second L4 commander.
She cooked it bit by bit. The shell was tough and somewhat fire-resistant, but that didn't mean it was immune to the heat. The commander was turned into a pressure cooker.
Twenty-three seconds, start to finish.
Iliescu took three of the L3 Warriors by himself. His two skeletons worked together to take down two of them while he stalled the third. Once they were done, they turned and finished it off.
Three down.
The other two L3 Warriors had also been dealt with by Korva. It was a scene alright. Total dismemberment. This girl really enjoyed it.
Five down.
The basin was clear.
Total time: thirty-eight seconds from gate open.
[ Incursion neutralised. Seven hostiles confirmed dead. Zero civilian casualties. Zero squad injuries. Press footage clean. Cameras tracked the engagement throughout. ]
Adam exhaled.
Not bad for a first showing.
[ Not bad. ]
Iliescu came up to Adam.
"Boss, can I take those two L4s?"
[ Host. From what I can see that would be his current limit. ]
"Go ahead, I already acquired research material."
Iliescu started chanting and his magic seeped into the bodies. They melted into a black goo. From that goo two fresh skeletons rose.
[ Interesting. He converted the remaining bodies and energy into skeletal constructs with similar strength to the originals. He currently can keep 4 skeletons. These 2 L4 seem to place a lot of strain on his mind. I recommend he release one and raise another L3. His final combination would be 1 L4 and 3 L3. A very competitive showing at his level. ]
"Hey Iliescu, you should probably drop one of these L4s and replace it with an L3. I know you can keep it but your overall combat efficiency drops hard. I see that it puts a lot of strain on you."
Iliescu looked up.
"I know boss. I was testing the limits. As you said it would be too much to keep this up for any battle that lasts longer than thirty seconds."
He quickly released one L4 and raised one of the remaining L3s.
The press van came down off the ridge inside two minutes.
Adam waited at the centre of the basin while the press crews crossed the open ground at a half-jog. Marchand and Korva and Iliescu held the perimeter at his shoulder. The IEC observer came down behind the press with a tablet already open.
The first reporter to reach them was a woman from the Kerenth Daily, mid-forties, who had covered Adam since the Marvel Raid graduation. She had her recorder out before her boots had stopped moving.
"Eclipse founder Varen."
"That's me."
"Can we have a moment of your time?"
"Yes, of course."
"That kill took eleven seconds. The cameras tracked you from the moment the gate opened until the strike. We did not see you approach the commander. The footage shows a gap. Care to comment."
"My approach is part of my current build. The build is private."
"Sir, we saw the effectiveness of your team. Can you tell us about your battle plan?"
"We train every day. We have a build philosophy. These make us stronger. Our plan was very simple. Finish the battle before it escalates. I assigned roles to the members based on my own judgment of their ability. It looks like the judgment was correct."
"We see two fresh faces, the werewolf and the necromancer. Can you tell us anything about them?"
"I won't talk about their builds, but they are very promising L3 recruits, I have very high hopes for them. Petar Iliescu the necromancer and Ines Korva the brawling werewolf."
Adam looked at the camera over her shoulder. He saw himself in its lens. Eclipse slate, blood on the right sleeve to the elbow, the Greyhill ridge behind him in the morning light.
He spoke clean and level.
"I have some news to share about our Guild. Eclipse has obtained a set of Bazaar listings that are available only to its members. The listings unlock a power system I personally rebuilt my entire kit around over the last two months. I am very satisfied with the results. The kill you just watched was executed inside that new kit. Eclipse members who meet the prerequisites will be offered the listings. The kit is not for sale outside the guild for now."
Hannel did not blink.
"You — Eclipse has private Bazaar listings?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"The Bazaar offered them. I accepted. The mechanism is private."
"What is the power system?"
"Private."
"Sir, you cannot reveal that Eclipse has exclusive Bazaar listings and then refuse to describe them."
"I just did. Apply for a membership, the recruitment channel is always open. Read the five build principles, fill out the form, we will review your application. If you qualify, you will see the listings yourself."
The second reporter was already shouting over Hannel's shoulder.
"Sir, did you switch off your prior build entirely?"
"Yes."
"All of it?"
"All of it. The new system replaces the prior kit. The old build is retired. The new one is what I deploy with from here on."
"And the kill —"
"Was the new kit. Yes."
The IEC observer behind the press lifted his tablet.
"Gzuild Leader Varen. A word."
Adam looked at him.
"Yes."
"My name is Director Hels Korven. IEC liaison, guild relations. I would like to schedule a sit-down at Eclipse Tower at your earliest convenience to discuss the implications of your statement."
"Tomorrow at ten."
"Works for me."
Korven inclined his head and stepped back.
The press kept shouting questions. Adam answered three more cleanly, refused the rest, and walked off the basin with his squad behind him.
The press footage went out on the Kerenth Daily seventeen minutes later.
By the time Adam walked back into Eclipse Tower the lines were already lit.
Brandt was at the duty desk with three tablets open and the desk phone in his good hand. The lobby was full. The Hub-side door had a line of guild scouts standing in it. The Kantgade Earth office was reporting a queue around the block.
Sage's voice surfaced clean.
[ Hour one since the publication. Inbound contact requests: IEC field office (general counsel), the IEC Council secretariat (member-relations), Astren Strategic Operations (Cassiel Vane's office), Shenluo Foreign Affairs (cultural-attaché framing), Kessho Engineering Federation, Whitespire guild, Three Crowns guild, Stormhold guild, Vaelport Atelier, two private Shenluo houses, Iskar Defense Corporation, Vitalink Medical, Cascara Industries, the Valdros Ministry of Strategic Resources, the Haldren government Defence Directorate, and a delegation from the Solan Confederacy industrial board. All requesting in-person meetings at the earliest possible time. Most are offering to send their senior representatives to Eclipse Tower today or tomorrow. ]
Brandt set the desk phone down.
"Adam. We can't fit them in the lobby."
Adam stood at the duty desk and thought about it.
The eight admissions Sage had drafted into a target list at breakfast. The Houseguest acting method came back to him as a single line. Be allowed into owned spaces. The higher the tier, the more the potion digests. Hostile spaces digest faster than welcoming ones.
He thought about a roomful of people coming to him.
That was the wrong direction.
[ Host. You are happy. ]
I am.
"Brandt."
"Yes."
"I'm not having any of them here. I'm going to them."
Brandt looked at him over the rim of his coffee.
"That's a lot of travel."
"It is. It's also forty admissions to owned spaces in fourteen days. The Sequence digests on admission to owned spaces, weighted by tier and hostility. Half of those callers think they're inviting me as a courtesy to soften a deal conversation. The other half think they're testing my political weight. Either way they open the door."
"You want to digest Sequence Seven while taking the deal calls."
"Exactly. I show up at their facility. I sit through their pitch. I decline their exclusivity offers. I ask to tour the facility while I'm there. Courtesy, professional curiosity, research framing. They walk me through the space. The Sequence grades the admission. I bank the digestion. Everyone gets what they came for."
Brandt thought about it.
"Sage. Build the calendar."
[ Already building it. Two visits per day with travel buffers. Routing optimised by hostility differential to maximise digestion per Earth-side day. Highest-hostility hosts loaded toward the back of the schedule to land the digestion at the finish. Fourteen days. Forty visits if we include the consular swing. Adam clears the queue by Day Fourteen. ]
"Take Korven first," Brandt said. "Eclipse-IEC framework; everything else sits on top of it."
"Done. Tomorrow at ten was already on the books."
"Press wire goes out at six in your voice. Guild leader Varen will personally visit interested partners over the next 2 weeks to discuss framework participation. Frames it as your initiative."
"Sage. Send it at six. Also send Vane an Eclipse-press release in my voice, two paragraphs, set the meeting after the IEC tour ends for the day after the tour closes."
[ Drafted. Queued. Sending. ]
The phones did not stop.
Sophie called at seven-thirty.
He took it on the kitchen floor of Floor 40 with a sandwich in his other hand.
"You're famous again."
"I was already famous."
"You're more famous. Henrik wants me to tell you he is proud of you and also that Lena cried twice when the footage came on. She is fine now."
"Say hi from me."
"I will. Also."
"Yes."
"You're an idiot."
"Huh."
"The whole world saw you walk into a Vethrak commander and remove its heart with your bare hand."
"So what."
"Adam."
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Just don't pretend that wasn't a flex."
"It was."
"There we go."
She hung up.
Kids these days, you can't even have fun anymore.
[ Host. I detect that your behaviour has changed. You are a lot more open and relaxed. ]
Sage, that might be true. Ever since, you know, Ren and I started living together, I have become happier. The Guild helps too. I don't feel like a soldier anymore, but more like an adventurer. I can do what I like, even when the job is dangerous.
The tour started the next morning.
Korven arrived at ten with his two deputies and a sealed brief. The brief proposed a tiered framework: IEC institutional partners would be offered priority placement in the Eclipse member queue, in exchange IEC would increase funding and share resources. The proposal was clean and the numbers were generous.
Adam accepted the principle and rejected the queue-priority clause. Eclipse intake was by merit and disclosure, not by partnership. Korven had expected the objection and offered a revised version where the IEC's institutional partners would get a guaranteed review window, not priority placement. Adam accepted.
Before signing, Adam asked to see the IEC guild-relations division floor at Geneva. Korven flew him out personally that afternoon on the diplomatic shuttle. Adam spent ninety minutes touring the floor, asking pointed questions about partner-engagement metrics that Korven's deputies answered cleanly. The framework was signed at the end of the visit.
[ Digestion at four percent. Tier high, hostility very low — this was a friendly host. Routine. ]
That night Adam flew Whitespire's facility in Vaelport.
Whitespire's senior council had not extended an invitation to Eclipse in the eleven months since Eclipse's founding. The press footage broke that posture inside an hour. Their chief of staff called Brandt at four in the afternoon asking when Guild leader Varen could be received. Adam was on their doorstep at nine that evening. Their council chamber was large with a long obsidian table. Their chief of staff and four senior councillors received him in person. Adam declined the exclusivity transfer they proposed, accepted the suggestion of a future cooperation, and asked to walk the training floors before he left. Their chief of staff escorted him personally, jaw tight the whole time, through three floors of training infrastructure Whitespire had never shown an outsider.
The chief of staff was politely furious by the time they reached the lift.
Adam thanked him with a small bow and left.
[ Digestion at twenty-three percent. Hostility differential high. Whitespire just paid for the privilege of hosting you. The Sequence loves this. ]
Day Three was a triple. Morning: Three Crowns at the Hub-block 4A reception suite. Two hours, tea, again proposal declined, request to view their L3 training floor granted reluctantly. Afternoon: Astren Strategic Operations at the Vaelport satellite office; Cassiel Vane's deputy received him, walked him through the operations floor and map room. Evening: Iskar Defense Corporation at their Kerenth executive suite; the CEO himself received him, walked him through the prototype barrier-generator development floor.
Day Four: Shenluo's cultural attaché in Kerenth (forty-minute reception, walk through the consular research wing); Vitalink Medical at their Hub-side R&D facility (the chief technology officer in person, tour of the kiosk-development lab); Stormhold's Vaelport HQ (the council chamber and the senior reading room; Stormhold's officers were furious but admitted him on protocol).
Day Five: Kessho Engineering Federation at their Kerenth office (engineering floor and prototype hall); Cascara Industries at their Hub-block 6 office (battery development floor); the Valdros Ministry of Strategic Resources at the Valdros embassy in Kerenth (the senior officer received him personally and walked him through three secured rooms).
Day Seven: Haldren government Defence Directorate at the Capitol Annex (Director Brauer of HSIB received him without comment and walked him through the Wave 2 briefing chamber, an L7-rated space). Solan Confederacy industrial board at their Vaelport delegation house (the chief representative in person, tour of the delegation's strategy floor).
By Day Seven the digestion sat at sixty-eight percent.
Day Nine: a second swing through the legacy houses Brandt had identified at breakfast. Vaelport Atelier (small, polite, low hostility); the two Shenluo private houses (politely hostile, high tier); a private patron in Hub-block 12 who had been quietly buying Tovis's research publications and wanted to discuss licensing (high tier, no hostility, large floor).
Day Eleven was the Kessler Foundation in Aldermere.
Aldric Kessler had not extended the invitation directly. Jonas had, on his grandfather's behalf, on a back-channel through Westfall. Adam took the invitation and travelled to Aldermere that afternoon by train so the visit would be seen as routine rather than diplomatic. The Foundation's residential compound sat on a quiet ridge above the river. Jonas met Adam at the door, walked him through the archive's upper galleries himself, and showed Adam three artefacts the family had decided he was allowed to see. They stayed an hour and twenty minutes, The Kesslers wanted to buy the privilege of access to the Eclipse-exclusive catalogue. Adam declined. The hostility behind the welcome was the highest of the fortnight. Aldric did not come down to greet him. The absence was the signal.
Adam thanked Jonas at the door and took the evening train back.
[ Digestion at ninety-one percent. The Kessler foundation is the largest single jump on the schedule. Two more admissions and we land. ]
Day Twelve: Stahn's lower receiving room in Hub-block 9 — one of the standing L7s. Mirelle Delacroix had brokered the visit. Stahn was on a quiet rest cycle and tolerated visitors of a certain calibre. Adam was admitted to the lower receiving room of the floor, not the personal residence. Stahn was cordial in the distant register of a man who had seen too much above L7 to find any L4 interesting. They talked for twenty minutes about gate-perimeter protocol. Stahn poured the second tea himself.
Day Thirteen: the Auran consular annex at Vaelport (back rooms, political-officer reception); the Hub auction house senior viewing floor (Eclipse Research courtesy access, forty minutes, low hostility).
Day Fourteen at quarter past nine in the morning, in the kitchen of Floor 40 with a coffee in his hand, the reserve in his chest sat full.
[ Sequence Seven, Houseguest, digested. The acting method has finished. Forty admissions across the 2 weeks. Whitespire and Kessler carried the bulk of the digestion through the hostility multiplier; the volume of the tour finished the rest. The pathway has pulled deeper. Spirituality reserve is at the new ceiling. All Sequence Seven traits are operating at full integration. ]
He noticed it as a settling, not a surge. The spiritual layer in his chest had carried the unfinished potion for two weeks the way a meal that hasn't digested sits behind the sternum. The reserve sat heavier and quieter and more available.
[ Decryption is at full throughput. Mystical-knowledge mastery has compiled its working index. Houseguest's Right and Reach-Where-Invited both registered at the new Sequence ceiling. No surprises. ]
Right. Now I just have to get the new potion.
[ Notice. You are at zero NP. Guild vault holds at four hundred and ninety. The next NP injection waits on the L4 raid offer or a deployment outcome. ]
Of course. How much is the next one.
[ 45000 NP. ]
What the hell?
[ It signifies the jump in power. Should be a significant upgrade. ]
For that price I expect it to be.
Eclipse suddenly had a lot more deals and cooperations with other parties.
Forty hosts had received him. Most had walked away with no exclusivity, no priority queue placement, and a framework conversation that was not yet a deal. A few had walked away with revised terms they liked. None of them had walked away thinking Adam was the easy one to work with, which was the point.
Three quiet things had happened on the tour that did not surface in the public space.
The first: Whitespire's chief of staff sent a one-line note on Day Three. We are not happy with the arrangement. Nothing followed. Sage logged it.
The second: Aldric Kessler's name was added to a guest list for an Eclipse Research Floor 21 quarterly preview in eight weeks. Tovis had put it there with a small note: He asked.
The third: at the end of the Astren Strategic Operations tour Day Three, Cassiel Vane's deputy had quietly handed Adam a sealed envelope with three sentences inside.
Cassiel sends respect. The new Wave is not what the IEC is briefing. We will talk privately when you are ready.
Adam read it once and put it into the Spatial Pocket.
Compendium training in the afternoons of the tour, when the schedule allowed.
Fire, ice, and lightning settled in across the second week. Adam ran the throws against the Floor 19 sparring hall's force-absorbing wall whenever he got an hour between visits. Fire-throw at sustained arc burned half a percent of reserve per second. Ice-throw cost slightly less. Lightning-throw discharged in a single arc and cost a flat slug per shot.
Sage added a fourth on Day Six between visits.
[ Decrypted. Direct-projection compressed-air burst. Cost: ×4. Range about 6m. Effect: knocks an opponent off balance, cracks concrete, breaks small wooden furniture. Call it Air-burst. ]
Adam tried it in the sparring hall. The hall floor reverberated. He could repeat the burst twelve times in a row before the reserve felt it.
Sage proposed a fifth on Day Nine from a memory of an enemy gravity user Adam had crossed paths with on an earlier deployment. It failed eligibility. Gravity manipulation required pathway authority to bind the spatial layer; the Compendium could not reproduce it.
Sage proposed a sixth on Day Eleven: a short-range water jet. Passed eligibility. Cost ×3. Range 4m. Useful for putting out small fires Adam started himself.
[ Possibly recursive. We could in theory build more variations. ]
Sage. Are you having fun.
[ I am, Host. ]
Good.
The raid sat at the back of his head the whole two weeks.
Sage gave him an estimate and a reminder.
[ Raid mechanics is online. Once an Explorer clears their second deployment at a given tier, the Bazaar permits them to register for the tier's raid pool. Raids open at irregular intervals — the Bazaar does not publish a schedule. When a raid opens, every registered Explorer is offered a single confirm-or-decline window. Casualty rate at L4 raids is between fifteen and twenty-two percent historically. Estimated wait for the next L4 raid: between two weeks and six months. Median forty-one days. ]
We will go.
[ Noted. ]
He did not tell Brandt about the raid registration. He would tell him when the Bazaar announced it.
Adam sat on the Floor 40 balcony at midnight on Day Fourteen with a glass of water and the Hub skyline below him.
He thought about the Compendium. While useful, it would barely see any use in actual battles. The cost was too high and the power behind it too low for his level. The Houseguest enhancement and the Veil sensor-bypass had carried the kill two weeks ago and the tour had carried the digestion since. The raid registration sat open. No offer yet.
Will Ren make it back in time for the raid? He wondered.
[ Host. The Whitespire council sent a second-tier officer to the Eclipse front desk this afternoon at four asking for a follow-up meeting. Brandt tagged the request and requested your review. Also the Cassiel proposal. You have not opened it again. ]
They're going to keep digging. Whitespire and Cassiel both. I'll open the it when I have an hour to think it through properly.
[ Affirmative. Goodnight, Host. ]
Goodnight, Sage.
The raid offer would come when it came. Until then, training, intake, and meetings.
AN: If we get to 500 power stones, I will release an extra chapter on 700, another one. If you wish to support the story and read ahead, visit [email protected]/skeri123