"Weiss," Jaune shouted, louder this time, his voice echoing down the corridor. "Weiss, respond!"
Static answered him. Not even the faint crackle of interference, just dead air.
She had been speaking. He knew that and he had even heard it in fragments. A warning or something, about a new centurion variant, she had said. Then, abruptly, the connection had been severed.
A bad feeling bloomed behind his sternum. No. Worse than bad. It was cold and sharp and spreading, like ice crawling through his ribs.
Was Weiss hurt?
He didn't know.
Was she unconscious?
He didn't know.
Was she dead?
The thought slammed into him with such force that his steps faltered for half a heartbeat. His lungs tightened and he had to force air back into them, teeth grinding as he pushed the thought away with everything he had.
No. He refused it. He would not accept that outcome without proof.
"Penny," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. "Do you still have Weiss's signal."
There was a pause that felt far too long.
"I am still receiving data from Weiss Schnee's device," Penny replied. Her tone was controlled, but there was strain beneath it. "But the connection appears to have been severed. I'm uncertain as why."
Jaune frowned.
"Blake?"
"I'm here," Blake answered immediately with a few pants. The sound of explosions and movement accompanied her voice. "I heard it too. Weiss said something about a new unit and then nothing."
The cold in Jaune's chest tightened its grip. He wanted to immediately abandon what he was doing and rush after her. But he couldn't. They didn't have that type of time.
"I'm heading to the Eastern Sector now," he said. "I'll need to clear it fast."
"Alright." Blake said. "I'm also near—huff—the lab."
Jaune did not respond, he was already moving.
The corridor ahead of him lit up with hostile intent.
From corridors beyond, Centurions poured out in numbers that would have overwhelmed all strike teams. Archer units took elevated positions and their arm/shoulder mounted cannons spun up with a rising whine. Gladius units advanced in a tight formation, four bladed limbs igniting as they picked up speed. Even a Juggernaut lumbered into view, its shield arm locking into place as its cannon began to rotate.
Watts handiwork.
Jaune hated it.
"Die!" he snarled.
His weakness rune unfurled.
It was no longer a blunt instrument like before. After all the fights, Jaune had refined it. Under pressure, under repetition, under necessity, it had become precise.
He reached not for the Centurions as whole entities, but for the invisible architecture beneath their armor.
Runic channels and structural bonds. Stress points where reinforcement met flow.
The first Archer unit fired.
The barrage never reached him.
The molecular cohesion of the barrels failed mid discharge. Metal softened, warped, and then collapsed inward. Ammunition dissolved into useless gray slurry that splashed harmlessly against the floor. The Archer itself followed moments later as the stabilizers in its legs gave out and it folded in on itself like a marionette with its strings cut.
Jaune did not slow, even as Gladius units lunged.
He stepped into them.
A single sweep of intent, focused like a blade, severed the internal lattice connecting their four arms to their core. The blades hit the floor before the bodies did, metal flowing and sloughing apart without heat, without sparks, without resistance. They simply came undone.
Juggernaut armor resisted for a fraction longer but a fraction of a second was worthless, nonetheless.
He targeted the runic regulators embedded deep within its torso, the points where energy density peaked and redistributed. The pressure vanished. The Juggernaut sagged, cannon stalling, shield arm drooping as its internal structure failed in a cascading collapse.
It hit the ground and did not rise.
Jaune moved through the wreckage, aura burning steady and controlled. He could feel the drain, but it was even far less than it had been earlier. He was pulling the keystone and letting the rest fall on its own.
How many had he destroyed now?
Two hundred?
When these things were set to be deployed to every kingdom, they really hadn't been joking. There were just too many of these things.
The thought barely registered.
All that mattered was the Eastern Sector.
The corridor widened and the environmental markings shifted, warning signs etched into the walls signaling a testing area. Jaune burst through the threshold and scanned the room in a single sweeping glance.
Empty.
No containment tubes or storage racks holding what he was looking for. No sign of Penny's lower half.
Just shattered glass, scorched floor plating, and abandoned machinery.
His heart sank.
"Damn it," he hissed.
"Jaune," Blake's voice cut in again. "I've reached the Northern Sector lab."
He straightened instantly. "And?"
"There's something here," Blake said. "I found Penny's lower body. It was stored separately, sealed, no damage."
Relief and frustration collided violently in his chest.
"Of course you did," he muttered.
"Jaune?"
"I'm glad," he said more clearly. "Really, that's good. That means we're still in this... and for some reason, Watts didn't lie."
"What about you?"
"Nothing's here," he admitted. "And from Weiss's word earlier, no other components Penny's body was missing."
There was a brief pause on the line.
"I'm going to bring my half of Penny's body to where Weiss was," Blake said. "Something's wrong with her, I can feel it."
Jaune's jaw tightened.
"Blake," he said carefully. "Be careful. We don't know what hit her or if shes..."
"She's not! Shut up. But... I know," she replied. "I'm not leaving her there."
The bad feeling surged again, doubling in intensity.
Part of him wanted to tell her to wait. To hold position until he arrived. To regroup.
But another part of him, the part that had been counting down the quiet, invisible clock tied to Pietro's sacrifice rune, knew the truth.
Time was bleeding away.
If he doubled back now, if he wasted precious minutes retracing ground and rerouting, the borrowed strength could vanish mid sprint.
"Go," he said, the word tasting like ash. "Head to Weiss. I'll meet you there."
"Understood."
The line went quiet.
Jaune stood there for a second longer than he should have, staring at the empty lab, fists clenched so tightly his knuckles ached.
Then he turned and ran. The base reacted immediately.
Blast doors slammed down ahead of him with thunderous force, sealing corridors that had been open moments before. Warning lights flared red. New paths rerouted him into narrower passages.
And the Centurions came. They did not deploy tactically now. There was no formation, or patience.
They threw themselves at him like meat into a meat grinder.
Archer fire filled the air in chaotic waves. Gladius units charged without coordination. Juggernauts appeared in pairs, then trios, their heavy footsteps shaking the floor.
It was desperation.
Jaune bared his teeth.
"Fine," he growled. "You want me to go through you."
His rune erupted.
Not outward, but forward.
The space in front of him became a graveyard of cohesion. Walls sagged as structural supports weakened under the spillover of his intent. Centurions disintegrated mid charge, their internal frameworks collapsing into formless sludge that coated the floor and walls alike.
He did not stop moving.
He carved a path through the base, sprinting through dissolving metal and falling debris, shouting wordless fury into the chaos.
"Get out of my way!"
Juggernaut cannons fired point blank.
He walked through the impacts as they unraveled inches from his skin.
Gladius blades slashed.
They passed through him as harmless gray streaks, their substance failing before they could connect.
His runic energy flared brighter, not weaker.
The rune obeyed him with terrifying ease. Watts had wanted to slow him down. He wanted Jaune to burn his aura by using his rune.
Fine.
Jaune didn't care anymore. Screw trying to ration his aura.
Jaune vaulted over a collapsing bulkhead, slid under a half sealed blast door as it liquefied beneath his touch, and burst into the next corridor without breaking stride.
His vision tunneled.
Because somewhere ahead, Weiss lay silent and Jaune Arc refused to accept a world where he arrived too late.
.
.
Blake ran.
Metal screamed somewhere behind her—the sound of machinery tearing itself forward, joints grinding past tolerances and explosive attacks howling in frustration. Centurions. Still hunting. Still hungry.
In her hands, clutched tight enough that her fingers ached, were a pair of partial, synthetic-skin wrapped mechanical legs.
She really hoped that they were Penny's lower body.
Hope was dangerous right now, but it was all she had. It was the only piece she'd been able to find from that lab section. It had also been lying on the floor conspicuously as if it were waiting for her to pick it up
Blake exhaled through her nose, steadying herself as she vaulted over a collapsed pillar. Shadows peeled off her body mid-motion, three Phantom clones scattering in different directions the instant her boots hit the floor.
The Centurions behind took the bait.
She didn't look back, because for now, she was doing better than she should have been, considering Jaune wasn't here.
That thought brushed her mind briefly, an observation made in the narrow space between breath and movement. She had managed to kill two Centurions on the way here, not by luck but by control.
By something new.
Her Phantom rune burned quietly at the edge of her consciousness. It felt… like there was a greater, deeper layer to it now. Dense. As if the rune was folding inward on itself, waiting for a final alignment.
Comprehension level was close. Painfully close. She could feel it, like standing in front of a locked door with the key already halfway turned. Something was missing. It wasn't power or intent but understanding.
She was missing one final key component of the rune.
Before, Phantom had been simple and elegant. It allowed her to create clones which were independent constructs that mirrored her movements, assisted in combat, drew fire and struck from blind angles. It was effective and reliable.
But still slightly limited in terms of pure combat prowess.
The shift had happened back at the LUCID base, during that chaotic engagement in the ruined research wing. Gladius Centurions everywhere.
Instinct had taken over during that fight and somehow, instead of Blake dispersing her clones outward, she had pulled them in.
The result had startled even her.
A clone with four arms. Her silhouette, distorted and layered, striking with overlapping trajectories. It had been brutal and overwhelming. A storm of blades where a single fighter should have been. The Centurions hadn't stood a chance.
Afterward, she'd replayed the sensation in her mind again and again.
Why stop there?
Why create something separate when she could create something more?
So she refined it.
Now, instead of projecting full-bodied clones, Blake superimposed them onto herself. Phantom clone constructs layered over her real form, reinforcing her movements and extending her reach. Extra limbs phased in and out of existence as needed, striking in perfect synchronization with her intent.
Even better was how they seemed to function with her Substitute rune. If her body were to be damaged by an attack, she could substitute the damage to one of her cloned limbs and re-summon it to continue granting her power.
The best part?
She could also do the same thing for her full Phantom clones.
The even better part?
It was Aura efficient.
It was her, but more.
She knew exactly where the inspiration had come from, even if she hadn't wanted to admit it at first.
Raven Branwen.
She'd seen Raven fight multiple times in the Dream Realm, during their Rank 2 Nightmare Zone cleansing sessions. She had been flashy with her own rune, performing what Blake liked to dub as Raven's shadow Asura mode. Using her shadow rune, Raven could spawn limbs and weapons out of shadows on her body to attack. There was no wasted motion or grand displays. Just terrifying efficiency. Limbs moving where they shouldn't, angles that didn't make sense until it was already over.
Raven could fight like her body was only a suggestion and Blake had learned from that.
That was how she'd carved her way through the Centurions between the lab and now. Clones folding into her, blades appearing where there should have been none, strikes landing from impossible vectors. She hadn't overextended or panicked.
And now, she was almost there.
Weiss's last transmitted position blinked on her display, just around the bend. No Centurion signatures nearby. Either Weiss had cleared them, or something worse had happened. Though, considering there was no debris of Centurion bodies, something else was clearly afoot.
Blake slowed, breath shallow, senses sharp.
Then she turned the corner and saw the entrance to the lab where Weiss would have gone into.
But just in front of the entrance, at the center of it all—
Weiss.
She was being held by the back of her neck like a cat by the thing, behind her. She was clearly unconscious, with her limbs dangling uselessly. Blake spied a flutter of movement behind her eyes.
The thing holding her was clearly Centurion-built, but odd.
A new variant.
Blake wasn't entirely sure how she knew, but she could instinctively feel a threat of death from this thing. It was much more powerful than she was.
The chill that ran down Blake's spine had nothing to do with ice.
'Rank 2.'
.
.
AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon