The shot crossed the chamber in a blink.
Jaune felt a dense mass of accelerated matter screaming through the air with enough force to pulp reinforced steel. He reached out with his weakness rune and the projectile instantly lost its argument with cohesion, mid flight.
Metal softened and its structure surrendered. What should have been a powerful blow unraveled into a roiling gray slurry, its inertia still carrying it forward even as its form failed. The impact slammed into a barrier of ice that Weiss snapped into existence between them and the Juggernaut.
The shield cracked into spiderweb fractures as the damage raced across its surface. What was left of the shot, splashed and slid downward before turning back into broken metal on the ground as Jaune's runic energy faded from it.
Weiss grunted. "That had weight. Can't get hit by it if you want to live."
Jaune grimaced. "Yeah. I barely caught it clean."
The Juggernaut didn't pause. It's cannon spun faster, internal mechanisms whining as it recalibrated. The shield arm locked forward, plating shifting to angle itself defensively as it advanced another step.
There was a small, distant part of Jaune that wondered what a proper fight with it would look like. What it would be like to test the Juggernaut's combat logic without weakening it first. To see how it would adapt, and to see how it might respond to layered pressure.
That part was swiftly silenced. They were on borrowed time.
Jaune extended his hand with flooding intent.
The Juggernaut's joints sagged.
It began at the knees, the complex lattice of reinforced alloys and runic conduits losing cohesion. The ankle servos seized, metal slumping like overheated wax. The shield arm drooped as its internal supports failed, the heavy plating sagging under its own mass.
The cannon stuttered.
Its barrels warped, rotation grinding unevenly before grinding to a halt altogether. Internal ammunition feeds collapsed in on themselves, mechanisms dissolving into useless sludge within the armored housing.
Jaune felt the cost register.
It was slightly higher. Not dramatically so, but definitely noticeable to someone like him. The Juggernaut carried far more runic energy than the Archers and Gladius units. The density of its internal systems resisted him longer, pushing back with a faint pressure like thick mud rather than loose sand.
Still, without Aura they couldn't combat his meta rune. And due to his current reserves, the cost barely mattered.
Dream realm strength translated into decisive authority.
The Juggernaut tried to take another step, but it failed.
The massive machine toppled forward, crashing onto the reinforced floor with a thunderous impact that echoed through the chamber. Its head optic flickered wildly before dimming to black.
Blake was already moving.
She surged forward, blades flashing, and tore into the fallen Centurion with ruthless efficiency. Reinforced armor split beneath precise strikes, internal cores shattered before any recovery routines could engage.
"Clear," she called.
They moved as one toward the blast doors.
Up close, the reinforced doors were even more imposing. Thick segmented slabs interlocked with runic seals etched deep into their surface, humming faintly with layered defenses. Penny floated to the control terminal, Jaune pulling his phone free and linking it to system without hesitation.
The terminal pulsed.
ACCESS DENIED.
Jaune frowned. "Try again."
Penny's eyes flickered as she ran diagnostics. "Watts has full administrative control of this facility. He is actively blocking external override attempts."
Weiss glanced up. "Cameras."
They followed her gaze. Dark lenses watched them from recessed ceiling mounts, tracking every movement.
"Great. So he'll knows where we are in real time," Blake muttered.
"Yes," Penny confirmed.
Weiss drove her rapier forward, summoning a focused lance of compressed flame and ice that slammed into the seam between the doors. Blake followed with a strike of her own.
The doors did not yield.
The impacts left marks in the surface, but nothing more.
Weiss hissed under her breath. "That barely scratched it."
Penny tilted her head. "The materials used here are designed to withstand extreme force. Including nuclear level impacts."
Jaune blinked. "That seems excessive?"
"I do not possess complete historical context," Penny said. "However, I hypothesize that this facility was constructed to survive catastrophic scenarios. Possibly including Rank Three level conflicts."
"Rank Three?"
That carried weight.
Jaune's thoughts drifted, unbidden, toward the Dream Realm. Toward the way reality fractured and rotted there. If this place existed as a reflection, what would it look like? Would material cohesion remain? Or would they stand broken and hollow, like every other part of the dream realm, a monument to a threat that had already passed?
After all, this base wouldn't be a part of Creation's influence. As far as Jaune had seen, everything in the dream rotted.
Jaune supposed it really didn't matter.
He placed his palm against the blast door and let his weakness rune unfurl.
It was an odd feeling, every time. Matter resisting, then yielding. Bonds loosening and strength bleeding away.
The reinforced alloy softened beneath his touch, the surface losing rigidity as if the door itself were exhaling. Thick slabs sagged, their lower edges deforming and beginning to drip, heavy material pooling on the floor in slow, viscous waves.
Within a second, the once impenetrable barrier was reduced to a molten curtain, sloughing away and leaving a yawning entrance into the facility beyond.
The interior of the research facility opened into a wide access hall, pristine compared to the tunnels behind them. White surfaces gleamed under harsh lighting. The floor was smooth, unmarred, the air carrying the sterile scent of untouched systems.
They barely made it three steps inside before the ambush triggered.
Panels slid open along the walls and ceiling. Turrets unfolded, barrels tracking with mechanical precision as targeting systems locked on.
Centurions stepped out from concealed alcoves.
Four Archers took elevated positions, weapons already drawn, runic energy gathering along their limbs. Four Gladius units formed a forward line, their blades igniting with heat as they advanced. And directly ahead of them, all anchoring the formation, stood another Juggernaut Centurion.
Same as the last.
"So," Weiss said flatly. "That's a welcome."
Blake sighed. "Amazing."
The fight blurred together in a way that felt almost unfair.
Jaune simply reached out and unraveled the important parts from the machines ahead of him.
Joints softened and their weapon housings failed. Internal supports collapsed into themselves as molecular bonds lost their resolve. Archer Centurions staggered as their spider-like limbs failed and Gladius units lurched forward only to crumple as their cores destabilized. Even the Juggernaut's massive frame betrayed it, armor sagging as if gravity had suddenly remembered it more clearly.
Unlike before, Jaune didn't bother to spare a thought for incoming fire.
Weiss had that handled. She summoned her miniature chibi elemental spirits which floated around her, and out of them, shields bloomed—overlapping layers of ice, crystal and compressed force that rendered shots useless. Archer shots hammered into translucent barriers and shattered into harmless spray. Turret fire slammed into domes of energy and dispersed outward in brilliant flares of light. The Juggernaut's cannon roared, but its shots never reached flesh.
Jaune and Blake dashed forward through the chaos.
Blake was a streak of motion, her blades flashing as she finished what Jaune started. Disabled Centurions were dismantled with ruthless efficiency. Cores shattered. Limbs severed. Any chance of recovery was eliminated before it could begin.
Behind them, Weiss advanced steadily, shields unfolding and collapsing in rapid succession as she adjusted to each new angle of attack. She tracked trajectories and threat vectors simultaneously.
They destroyed the turrets next.
Once the Centurions fell, Weiss swept the turrets aside with blasts of force or spears of ice, shattering gun assemblies and reducing targeting systems to scrap.
Then, they moved, again and again.
Hallways gave way to chambers. Chambers funneled into corridors. Every few dozen meters, more resistance appeared. Panels slid open. Centurions deployed. Turrets unfolded.
Watts was clearly not trying to stop them. He was just slowing them down.
Each encounter drained time and aura. Jaune felt it steadily, the borrowed power thinning as it was spent. His aura dipped from overwhelming abundance to merely excessive. From excessive to manageable. From manageable to something that demanded awareness.
They had to have fought at least a hundred units by now. Possibly 150? Jaune wasn't sure. He didn't bother counting.
The only thing that he was paying attention to was his reserves. They were at thirty percent.
That number stuck in his mind as Penny led them down a final corridor.
"This is it," Penny said. "The laboratory housing my prototype body should be directly ahead."
The doors slid open and when they entered, they were greeted by silence.
No Centurions, turrets or alarms.
Fortunately.
The room was wide and circular, its walls lined with advanced instrumentation and suspended platforms. At its center stood a massive glass containment tube, cables and conduits feeding into its base. The liquid inside glowed faintly green, gently circulating under internal pumps.
Jaune Blake and Weiss slowed to a stop.
The tube was empty with nothing floated inside it.
There was no humanoid form, dormant shell or prototype body waiting to be awakened.
Just liquid and light.
Penny froze.
"Oh no," she said softly.
Jaune's stomach dropped. "What do you mean, oh no?"
Weiss leaned on her rapier slightly, catching her breath. Blake moved toward the doorway, peering back down the hall, blade still in hand. Neither of them spoke for they didn't need to.
Penny floated closer to the tube, her eyes flickering as she scanned it again and again.
"The body should be here," Penny said. "It was stored here. Secured and inactive. Unless…"
She trailed off.
Jaune clenched his fists. "Unless what?"
Penny turned slowly. "Unless Arthur Watts removed it."
Silence settled into the room.
Weiss exhaled through her nose. "For what reason."
"I do not know," Penny replied. "But there is no other explanation."
Jaune swore under his breath.
Their entire plan collapsed in on itself in that moment. All the fighting, all the borrowed power, all the risk.... everything had hinged on this room and the body that should have been inside it.
And now it was gone.
Blake glanced back from the hallway. "No immediate pursuit by any centurion units. But that probably won't last too long."
Jaune dragged a hand down his face. "Great. Just great."
As if summoned by his frustration, the room's speakers crackled to life. Static hummed for a brief moment before resolving into a familiar voice.
"Hello, Jaune Arc, Weiss Schnee and... Blake Belladonna, was it?"
Jaune stiffened.
Arthur Watts' voice filled the lab, smooth and infuriatingly calm.
"I do hope you enjoyed the welcome I prepared for the three you," Watts continued. "It was just unfortunate that I wasn't able to prepare any gift for you. Too bad that."
Jaune's jaw tightened. "Of course. Now he's mocking us."
Watts voice chuckled softly. "You see, you and Pietro have been very predictable. Efficient, certainly, but predictable. When you committed to this course of action, there was only ever one destination that mattered."
The lights in the lab dimmed slightly.
"I simply arrived there first."
Penny's countenance seemed a bit angered and she shook her fist at the air. It would have been cute if the circumstances weren't so dire. "Arthur Watts. Where is my body?"
Watts' tone warmed, like a professor pleased by a good question. "Safe and Intact. Far beyond your reach, I am afraid. Or... perhaps not."
Jaune felt his aura stir uneasily. Thirty percent was no longer comforting.
"I don't understand. You planned all of this?" Weiss said coldly.
"Of course I did," Watts voice replied. "Did you truly believe I would leave such a valuable asset unattended while I occupied myself on more important matters elsewhere? Even I can admit that Penny's body can defeat me. I'm not that arrogant as to believe that I have no weaknesses, after all."
Blake's eyes narrowed. "So why do all of this? Why bother sending any of the Centurions after us if you already had the body."
"Well... there is a reason, but I'm not some two bit villain that reveals their plan only to get outsmarted by the protagonists."
"What?" Jaune couldn't help but ask
The speakers hummed again, and for just a moment, Jaune could almost imagine Watts smiling.
"You have been most accommodating," Watts continued. "So perhaps I should give dogs like you a bone. The body of Penny is still in this base. There are three possible locations that it could be in. The Northern testing sector, the Eastern sector or the Western sector. However, considering that your little escapade of power is about to run out—Pietro's sacrifice rune, was it? Well... the three of you will have to split up to search for it."
Jaune grimaced. "Fuck."
Jaune's thoughts raced. He wasn't sure why he had believed that they could possibly stand a chance against Watts. The man was a genius researcher who had practically created the centurion project. Of course he would think that Penny's body was a danger that he'd have to get rid of. He had even accounted for Pietro using his sacrifice rune to give Jaune, Blake and Weiss the extra capability to fight.
But why was Watts playing this weird game, now? Was it simply to buy time? That didn't make much sense. If Creation's defenses was that hard and if he had predicted the fact that Jaune, Blake and Weiss would show up, why didn't he just kill them off, then work on the defenses of creation? Why did he send the Centurions instead?
Something wasn't adding up. But... unfortunately they didn't have time to sit and think. They had to play his game. Penny was the only one who was a Rank 2 among them. If she got to her body.... only and only then would they be able to stop Watts.
Jaune looked to Penny for a moment. "Penny. Is Watts tricking us? Could the body be elsewhere instead of the areas which he just told us?"
Penny looked troubled but she shook her head. "It's possible but he wouldn't have had time to bring my body out of the base. It would have to be here, in the base. The problem is... if the three of you split up to search..."
"...We'll be in great danger." Blake finished.
Jaune's rune was what made fighting the Centurions easy. Without Jaune's presence in the battlefield, Blake and Weiss... might get killed. Those units were... extremely strong, after all. With peak rank 1 combat strength.
Yet... they didn't have a choice.
The three of them, during the conversation with Pietro had figured out something extremely dire. Watts was trying to steal the mimic creation rune, but that rune was dissipating. The only reason that it didn't dissipate yet was due to a bunch of resources being spent to make sure that they could draw out the process of it being a one time use rune.
However... if Watts was truly a part of Sleepless, then everything would change.
What important resource rune did Sleepless currently posses?
The answer was Perpetuity.
Arias, the displacement user's daughter who had created the Perpetuity rune had the ability to make Imbued runes permanent—if she could make this mimic creation rune permanent... then Sleepless could create an army.
An army of what?
Centurions.
Except where would they get the resources?
That was simple. They could artificially awaken people who were connected to nightmares and turn them into Rank 1s. Then, once the crops were sufficiently ripe, they could harvest them as materials for Centurion transformation.
Jaune wouldn't put it past Sleepless to do something as sinister as this. This was something right up their alley.
So they had no choice. Penny's body was gone and Watts was ahead of them. Whatever he was doing now, it had never depended on them succeeding here.
"We're running out of time," Weiss muttered.
"Yes," Watts voice from the speakers agreed. "You are."
The speakers fell silent and the lights brightened.
.
.
AN: Advanced chapters are on patreon