Midnight in the Lower Academy was a symphony of industrial hums and distant sirens. Inside Workshop Unit 73, the only sound was the heavy, rhythmic thud of Chen Xi’s hammer.
A sleek, unmarked stealth drone had bypassed the Academy’s outer perimeter an hour ago, dropping a heavily shielded titanium crate directly onto the workshop's delivery pad before vanishing into the smog. Lin Yuxuan had kept her word.
The crate was a treasure trove of strictly regulated, Elite-tier corporate assets.
Resting on Chen Xi's grease-stained workbench were ten kilograms of military-grade tungsten plating, a pair of Class-4 micro-gravity coils usually reserved for orbital drop-pods, and three chunks of Aether-infused raw iron. The Aether-ore pulsed with a faint, violet luminescence, reacting violently to the ambient cosmic energy in the room.
"The molecular density of that Aether-ore is incredibly unstable," Sylphe warned. She was in her Solid-State physical projection, standing across the workbench from him. She wore a heavy leather mechanic’s apron over her glowing, starlight dress, her silver hair tied back in a messy bun. She looked like a goddess playing blacksmith. "If you try to shape it with raw Kinetic Qi without a stabilizing agent, it will undergo spontaneous fission and take this entire sector with it."
"I know," Chen Xi grunted, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. "Corporate engineers use cryogenic stasis chambers to mill this stuff. We don't have that. But Aether reacts to kinetic force, right? If I match its resonant frequency with my breathing technique, I can suppress the fission."
He didn't rely on the Origin Forge to do the heavy lifting. He grabbed his heavy iron hammer.
He closed his eyes. The Stellar Furnace Art ignited, drawing the ambient energy of the room into his lungs. But this time, he didn't compress it for explosive power. He thinned it out, letting his Qi vibrate at a high, sustained pitch that matched the violet hum of the Aether-ore.
His eyes snapped open, glowing with a faint, terrifying heat.
"Origin Forge: Auxiliary Mode," Chen Xi commanded.
He brought the hammer down.
CLANG.
A shockwave of golden light and violet energy rippled through the workshop. The Aether-ore didn't shatter; it buckled under the perfect, mathematical application of his kinetic force. With every strike, Chen Xi fed a localized blueprint from Sylphe’s database into the metal, manually beating the impurities out of the raw iron while the Origin Forge smoothed the atomic bonds.
It was agonizing work. Every strike demanded absolute focus. If his hammer fell a millimeter off-center, the raw energy would rebound up his arms and shatter his bones.
For three hours, Chen Xi worked like a demon. His grey undershirt was soaked with sweat, his muscles screaming in protest. Sylphe watched him with breathless intensity, her golden eyes tracking the microscopic structural integrity of the metal, feeding him minor adjustments directly into his mind.
Finally, he plunged the glowing, violet-hot metal into a vat of synthetic coolant. The liquid hissed violently, sending a cloud of thick white steam into the air.
When the steam cleared, Chen Xi pulled his creation from the vat with a pair of heavy tongs.
"Perfect," he whispered, his voice hoarse from exhaustion.
Resting on the table were two matte-black, tungsten-reinforced tonfas. They looked deceptively simple—sleek, brutal, and devoid of the flashy neon lights that Elite students usually favored. But hidden within the handles were the Class-4 micro-gravity coils, and running down the length of the shafts was a core of pure, stabilized Aether-iron.
"The 'Aether-Pulse Eclipse,'" Sylphe announced, tracing her fingers over the cooling metal. "Weight: forty kilograms each. To a normal human, they are unliftable. But to a Rank-A Fighter channeling their Qi into the gravity coils, they will feel as light as feathers."
"Until impact," Chen Xi added, a dark smile forming on his lips. "The gravity coils invert upon striking a solid object. A forty-kilogram swing instantly hits with the mass of a four-ton transport rover. If Yuxuan hits a plasma shield with these, she won't just break the shield. She'll shatter the bones of the person holding it."
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"And the magnetic locking mechanism?" Sylphe asked eagerly.
Chen Xi picked up both tonfas and slammed the handles together. The gravity coils snapped into a perfect magnetic lock. The two short weapons seamlessly fused into a terrifying, two-meter-long heavy polearm, the Aether-core glowing violently at both ends.
"Versatility. Close quarters or crowd control. She's going to tear the qualifiers apart," Chen Xi said, disengaging the lock and setting the weapons aside.
He slumped back into his chair, gasping for air. His Stellar Furnace Art powered down, leaving him drained.
Sylphe walked around the table and stood behind his chair. She gently placed her hands on his shoulders, her cool, dense physical touch sending a soothing wave of energy into his aching muscles.
"You did well, Chen Xi," she murmured softly, her thumbs massaging the knots in his neck. "Most mechanics would have died trying to manually hammer Aether-ore. You truly are a monster."
"Coming from you, that's a compliment," Chen Xi sighed, leaning his head back against her. He looked at the remaining pile of materials on the desk. Six kilograms of military-grade tungsten and a handful of advanced servos.
"We have leftovers," he noted.
Sylphe’s eyes gleamed. She leaned over his shoulder, her silver hair brushing against his cheek as she projected a massive, complex wireframe blueprint into the air.
It was a beast. A skeletal canine structure made of pure, interlocking tungsten plates, designed to house a highly advanced combat logic core.
"Project: Iron-Maw," Sylphe whispered excitedly. "Wraith is excellent for stealth, but you need a vanguard. A heavy-combat proxy to fight for you when using your martial arts is too risky. If we use the leftover tungsten to build the chassis, I can partition a fragment of my own combat algorithms to act as its brain."
"Start compiling the logic core, Sylphe," Chen Xi said, a renewed spark of ambition cutting through his exhaustion. "We'll build the chassis tomorrow night. The Academy is going to wake up soon, and we have a very important client to deal with."
Four hours later, the morning sun burned through the smog layer of Mega-City 9.
The blast doors to Unit 73 hissed open. Lin Yuxuan stepped inside, her crimson eyes scanning the room. She looked tense, the pressure of the upcoming qualifiers clearly weighing on her.
Chen Xi was sitting exactly where he always was—drinking synthetic coffee, looking bored, a grease smear deliberately placed on his cheek.
"Did the materials arrive?" Yuxuan demanded, stepping up to the desk. "I need to know if this was a mistake, Chen Xi. If you wasted the Aether-ore..."
Chen Xi didn't say a word. He reached beneath the desk, pulled up the two matte-black tonfas, and dropped them onto the metal table with a deafening, incredibly heavy CLANG. The entire workbench groaned under the sudden, massive weight.
Yuxuan stared at the dull, unassuming batons. "They look... plain."
"Corporate tech is designed to look good on a broadcast," Chen Xi said flatly, taking a sip of his coffee. "My tech is designed to kill things. Pick them up. Channel your Qi into the handles."
Yuxuan looked skeptical. She reached out and grabbed the handles. Her eyes widened immediately as the extreme weight of the eighty combined kilograms tried to rip her arms down.
"They're too heavy! I can't swing these—"
"Channel your Qi," Chen Xi ordered, his voice suddenly carrying the sharp, authoritative crack of a master instructor.
Yuxuan flinched, instinctively pushing a burst of her Rank-A Fighter Qi into the grips.
The internal micro-gravity coils engaged with a low, thrumming hum. The violet Aether-lines running down the shafts flared to life. Suddenly, the weapons didn't weigh forty kilograms. They felt completely weightless.
Yuxuan gasped. She stepped back, giving the right tonfa a test swing. It sliced through the air with terrifying speed.
"Hit the testing block," Chen Xi pointed to a solid block of concrete and reinforced steel in the corner of the room, used for testing industrial mining drills.
Yuxuan stepped up to the block. She didn't use a martial arts technique; she just threw a standard, test jab with the tonfa.
The moment the weapon struck the steel, the gravity coil inverted.
BOOM.
The shockwave blew the dust off the ceiling. The reinforced steel testing block didn't just dent—it violently caved in, a massive crater forming where the tonfa had struck. The sheer kinetic impact shattered the concrete base beneath it into powder.
Yuxuan stumbled back, staring at the weapon in her hands in absolute, unadulterated horror.
"What... what is this?" she whispered, her hands trembling as she felt the localized gravity field humming in her palms.
"I call it the Eclipse," Chen Xi said, leaning back in his chair. "When you strike, the gravity field inverses. You are hitting with the concentrated mass of a transport truck. Lock the handles together."
Yuxuan, completely mesmerized, brought the two handles together. The magnetic lock snapped shut, extending the weapons into a brutal, two-meter halberd. She spun it once, the sheer gravitational force created by the movement warping the air around the blade.
She slowly lowered the weapon, turning to look at Chen Xi. The skepticism, the aristocratic arrogance, the doubt—it was all completely vaporized. She looked at him with a mixture of profound respect and genuine fear.
"Corporate engineers told me integrating gravity coils into a melee weapon was theoretically impossible because of the feedback loop," Yuxuan said, her voice shaking slightly.
"Corporate engineers use simulation software. They don't know how to hit things," Chen Xi replied lazily. "Will it win you the qualifiers?"
Yuxuan looked down at the Aether-Pulse Eclipse. A slow, terrifying smile spread across her face. "I am going to break the captain of the Gravity Faction in half."
She deactivated the weapon and placed it carefully into her spatial bag. She looked back at Chen Xi.
"You aren't a Rank-C mechanic, Chen Xi. I don't know what you are, and I don't care," Yuxuan said, her tone dead serious. "If anyone in the Inner Spire asks who forged this, I will tell them it was a private corporate contractor. I will protect your identity with my life. Because I am never going to another mechanic as long as I live."
"Glad you're satisfied," Chen Xi nodded. "Keep the resource shipments coming. And Yuxuan? Try not to kill anyone in the first round. The Academy gets fussy about paperwork."
As the blast doors closed behind the ecstatic Elite, Sylphe materialized on the desk, crossing her arms smugly.
"Hook, line, and sinker," she purred. "She is going to dominate the arena, and every time she swings that halberd, she will know she owes her glory entirely to you. You are building quite the collection of powerful women, Chen Xi."
"I'm building an infrastructure," Chen Xi corrected, standing up and grabbing his grey Academy jacket. "We have Aria securing logistics, and Yuxuan securing Elite combat supremacy. But my own body is falling behind. The Stellar Furnace Art is tearing my muscle fibers faster than they can regenerate."
He looked toward the small, reinforced window of the workshop, staring out at the towering structures of the Academy.
"Tonight, we don't forge metal," Chen Xi said, his eyes narrowing. "We forge flesh. It's time to visit the botanical gardens and see if we can find a cure for my mortality."