The medical bay of the Lower Academy smelled sharply of antiseptic and synthetic healing gel. Chen Xi sat on the edge of a pristine white examination table, staring blankly at the floor. He was clutching a standard-issue blanket tightly around his shoulders, his body shivering with perfectly simulated, delayed-onset shock.
"Severe micro-abrasions on the knuckles, mild thermal singeing on the epidermis, and elevated cortisol levels," the medical droid droned, applying a layer of cooling gel to Chen Xi’s torn hands. "Diagnosis: Acute stress reaction. Treatment: Rest and hydration."
Through the glass partition of the med-bay, Chen Xi could see the lead instructors arguing with an Academy disciplinary officer. Though the soundproof glass blocked their voices, Sylphe’s digital presence in his mind was translating their lip movements with flawless accuracy.
"The disciplinary officer is demanding an investigation into the 'rogue mechs,'" Sylphe reported, her tone laced with amusement. "The lead instructor is defending you. He just called you 'the luckiest, most incompetent wrench-monkey in the sector' and insisted that a Rank-C mechanic couldn't orchestrate a thermobaric explosion on purpose if his life depended on it. Congratulations, Chen Xi. You are officially beneath their suspicion."
Good, Chen Xi thought, keeping his vacant, traumatized stare fixed on the floor tiles. Let them investigate the rust.
An hour later, Chen Xi was discharged. He walked through the dimly lit corridors of the Academy, keeping his shoulders slumped and flinching whenever a heavy door slammed. It wasn't until he swiped his bronze wristband and the heavy blast doors of Workshop Unit 73 sealed shut behind him that the facade finally dropped.
His posture instantly straightened. The shivering vanished, replaced by the terrifying, still calm of a predator returning to its den.
He tossed the Academy blanket onto his greasy workbench and took a deep breath.
Stellar Furnace Art: Ignition.
The ambient cosmic energy in the workshop rushed into his lungs. He directed the dense, hot Kinetic Qi into his forearms and down to his torn knuckles. The healing gel the droid had applied was rudimentary; the Qi, however, actively accelerated his cellular division. Within minutes, the torn skin on his knuckles scabbed over, dried, and flaked away, leaving behind smooth, hyper-dense tissue.
"Show-off," Sylphe teased. Her holographic avatar flickered into existence, sitting delicately on top of a stack of scavenged Old Era motherboards. She was wearing a tiny, sleek black tactical outfit today, her golden eyes glowing brightly in the dim light. "Though, I suppose I prefer my host without bleeding hands. You have a lot of work to do."
"We're not building anything tonight, Sylphe," Chen Xi said, walking over to a hidden compartment beneath the floorboards. "Tonight, we dismantle."
He reached to his collarbone. Wraith, perfectly camouflaged against his jacket, uncloaked and scurried down his arm, resting its bladed legs on his palm.
"Zhao Ming’s dorm is in the Inner Academy’s Platinum Spire," Chen Xi said, looking at the tungsten spider. "Can Wraith bypass the biometric scanners at the Spire's entrance?"
"Biometric scanners are for humans," Sylphe scoffed gracefully, crossing her legs. "Wraith is entirely inorganic and powered by your internal Qi, meaning he emits zero thermal or electromagnetic radiation. To the Spire's security grid, he is literally a speck of dust. I have already mapped the ventilation shafts. Deploy him."
Chen Xi carried the spider to the workshop's ceiling vent, unscrewing the grate with his bare, Qi-reinforced fingers. Wraith slipped into the dark shaft and vanished.
Chen Xi walked back to the workbench and pulled a battered datapad from his bag. The screen flickered to life, hijacked by Sylphe’s Origin code. It displayed a high-resolution, wireframe map of the Academy, with a single blue dot rapidly traversing the ductwork toward the towering Spire in the center of the campus.
For twenty minutes, Chen Xi sat in silence, meticulously cleaning the mechanisms of his Viper-Mantis bracers, stripping them down and re-oiling the pneumatic chambers. He didn't use his [Basic Mechanical Affinity] as a magic wand to clean them; he used his hands, a rag, and solvent. A weapon only took care of you if you took care of it.
"Wraith is in position," Sylphe announced suddenly. The datapad screen split, half displaying the map, the other half showing a live, night-vision optical feed from the spider drone.
Wraith was clinging to the ceiling of a lavishly decorated, massive dorm room. Below, pacing frantically back and forth like a caged animal, was Zhao Ming.
The syndicate heir looked terrible. His expensive smart-suit was rumpled, his hair disheveled, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was clutching a secure comms-link, screaming into it.
Through Wraith’s audio receptors, Chen Xi listened.
"...what do you mean you can't find them?!" Zhao Ming roared at whoever was on the other end. "I paid for three elite executioners! Their vitals are still broadcasting to my pad, but they aren't responding to comms! Sector G is locked down by Academy proctors. If those idiots got captured, my father will kill me before the disciplinary committee even gets a chance!"
"Ah," Sylphe whispered in Chen Xi's mind, a cruel smile touching her holographic lips. "He is looking at the fake vitals loop I created. He thinks they are alive and hiding. The paranoia is eating him alive."
"Listen to me," Zhao Ming hissed into the comms, his voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "I need to get out of the Academy tonight. I have the Elite Combat qualifiers tomorrow, and my nerves are shot. That slum rat... something is wrong with him. I need the Black-Lotus plasma-stimulants to ensure I take first place and secure an alibi. Have the dealer meet me at the Old Sector 4 boundary wall in exactly one hour."
Zhao Ming crushed the comms-link in his fist, tossing it into a corner. He grabbed a heavy, armored trench coat and a plasma-pistol, shoving it into his waistband before storming out of the room.
Chen Xi’s eyes locked onto the screen, cold and calculating.
"The Old Sector 4 boundary wall. It’s a dead zone. No Academy cameras, no Peacekeeper patrols," Chen Xi said smoothly, turning the datapad off. "He's handing himself to me on a silver platter."
"He is desperate," Sylphe agreed, floating down to stand on the workbench. "A Rank-A Plasma Esper using black-market stimulants. His raw destructive output will temporarily spike into the early Transcendent Realm tier. If you fight him as a mechanic, you will die. If you use your Origin Forge creations, the syndicate will trace the unique metallurgy back to you."
"I know." Chen Xi reached into the floorboard compartment again.
He didn't pull out a gun. He didn't pull out a drone.
He pulled out an old, heavily rusted scavenger mask he had worn years ago in the toxic wastes. It was made of thick, dented iron, completely covering the upper half of the face, leaving only the jaw exposed. Next, he pulled out a pair of weighted, reinforced combat boots and a dark, unmarked tactical jacket scavenged from a dead mercenary.
"Zhao Ming wants to see what the wastelands breed?" Chen Xi murmured, strapping the iron mask onto his face. His voice instantly became muffled and deeper, devoid of its usual calm neutrality. "Let's show him."
He didn't equip the Viper-Mantis blades. He left them on the workbench. He left his toolbelt.
Tonight, he wasn't Chen Xi, the Rank-C Mechanic.
He closed his eyes. The Stellar Furnace Art roared to life inside him. The latent cosmic energy in the room surged into his body, compacting into his muscles until his veins turned a dark, bruised purple beneath his skin. The sheer density of his Kinetic Qi warped the air around him, creating a faint, localized gravity distortion that made the loose screws on the workbench rattle.
He was going to beat a Rank-A Esper to death with his bare hands.
"Your bio-etheric output is currently reading at 340% of baseline," Sylphe whispered, her digital voice trembling slightly, not out of fear, but out of sheer, undeniable attraction to the raw power her host was emitting. "Try not to break the planet, darling. I'm routing the Academy's perimeter patrol paths to your HUD. You have a forty-second window to breach the outer wall unseen."
"Understood."
Chen Xi didn't use the door. He walked over to the reinforced ventilation grate at the back of his workshop, gripped the steel bars with his bare hands, and ripped the entire fixture out of the concrete wall with a sickening crunch.
He slipped into the darkness, a ghost made of iron and compressed violence, hunting the man who thought he was a god.