Rhys was a silhouette against the immense, cold steel of the Outer Wall, leaning heavily as the adrenaline finally wore off. He was inside Aethel Prime, but the city wasn't a haven—it was just a larger, more organized cage. He was a Lantern Rank (C-) now, a massive jump from his Scavenger origins, but he still felt the crushing weight of the Furnace Rank Hunter, Karrus, on his heels. They'll be tracking the residual energy from the fight, he thought, rubbing his tired eyes. I need to disappear, and I need money, but most of all, I need to see the threat. His remaining 100 Arcana Points (AP) seemed like a cruel joke, enough for one crucial mistake or one critical upgrade. He chose the latter.
"System," he whispered, the sound absorbed by the wind rushing over the massive wall. "Purchase Arcana Vision." The prompt flashed in his mind, confirming the cost. "Yes! Confirm!" The AP count vanished, replaced by an odd, tingling coldness that swept through his skull. It wasn't pain, but an acute, electric expansion of his consciousness.
[SKILL LEARNED: ARCANA VISION (LEVEL 1)]
[ARCANA POINTS: 0]
Rhys gasped, staggering slightly. The world instantly inverted. The physical reality of concrete and rust became secondary, overlaid by a roaring, vibrant dimension of pure energy. He saw the Outer Wall not as steel, but as a vast shield crisscrossed by deep, humming blue conduits—the city's controlled Arcana flow. He saw the faint, shimmering white mesh of the security grid and the points where it pulsed a sickly yellow—C-Rank Arcana Traps—ready to vaporize any unauthorized contact. Gods. They really are watching everything, he thought, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He immediately spotted the tiny, pulsing heat signatures of micro-drones patrolling the parapets, invisible to the naked eye.
He began to search methodically, crawling along the base of the wall, using his Arcana Vision to isolate an anomaly. He moved with the quiet grace afforded by his Steel Heart Martial Art, his body instinctively adopting a low center of gravity. Finally, fifty yards down, he found the flaw. A maintenance grate, thick with graffiti, where the clean blue lines of the grid were choked by a corrosive, muddy ochre color—Mists-Arcana had bled through the bedrock, short-circuiting the system's protective field. A corrupted blind spot. He drew his Shadow-Edge Blade and used its sharp, dark edge to pry the grate open, focusing the raw physical strength of his Lantern Core into the movement to keep it silent. He slipped into the dark, damp, subterranean shaft, pulling the grate back into place. First obstacle cleared. Now, the descent.
The shaft led him deep into the foundations, past the ruins of ancient rail lines and into a junction where the tunnels narrowed. He reached a final, heavy blast door. His Arcana Vision instantly recognized the burnt amber glow of an unofficial security loop—the signature of the Black Market. The Coil-Worn. He pressed the six-sided Obsidian Compass against the door's data port. The artifact silently hummed, draining a whisper of his Arcana, purifying it, and then instantly mimicking the black market's irregular security pulse. With a slow, grinding hiss, the heavy door slid open.
The contrast was blinding. Rhys stepped out of the cold, dark silence into a sensory riot. The Coil-Worn was an immense subterranean cavern, loud and vibrating with uncontrolled power. Makeshift buildings of rusted cargo containers were stacked three stories high, forming dense, neon-scarred alleys. Above it all, massive, sparking power Coils leaked pure, unfiltered Arcana into the air, creating a dangerous, energetic haze. His Arcana Vision was instantly overloaded, painting the crowd in a chaotic tapestry of red, yellow, and shifting green Core signatures. He saw dozens of low-level Candles and, worryingly, several individuals in heavy cloaks whose Cores burned with the focused, intense energy of Furnace Rank (B-). These were the powerful criminals, the ones even the City Watch feared.
Rhys quickly pulled his hood lower, his Steel Heart training forcing his breathing into a steady rhythm despite the panic. He had to look like a desperate delivery runner, not a fugitive warrior. As he hurried past a makeshift bar, a brute with cheap chrome armor and a dull yellow Candle Core stepped directly into his path.
"Hold up, gutter-rat," the thug growled, spitting onto the stone floor. "Toll to pass. Fifty credits."
Rhys stopped dead. He could fight, but a show of force here would be disastrous. "Move," Rhys commanded, his voice barely audible over the market noise, yet laced with the cold certainty of his recent power. Without moving his core visibly, he channeled a tiny, needle-point sliver of his C-Rank energy directly into the thug's forearm—not enough to hurt, but enough to shock.
The thug flinched violently, his eyes widening. He felt the cold, sharp penetration of C-Rank energy, utterly unlike anything a street Scavenger could muster. "Hey! Easy, man. Just having fun. Move, move along!" The thug quickly backed into the crowd. Rhys continued, his heart rate elevated, knowing he had bought his passage with a silent threat.
He navigated the maze, ignoring stalls hawking illegal energy weapons and contaminated cultivation powder, until he found her. Zara, the pre-Fracture artifact dealer. She sat under a massive, hissing power coil, polishing a strange, complex clockwork rifle. Her Lantern Core (C+) was bright and steady.
Rhys dropped the ancient metal scraps and crystalline orbs onto her metal counter. "Pre-Fracture. Archive loot. The last of it."
Zara didn't look up immediately, but her fingers stopped their rhythmic polishing. "You look desperate, Scav. And you smell of fresh disaster. If you're selling me broken tech, the price is what I say it is." She finally raised her eyes, which were magnified by a high-tech visor. Then her gaze dropped to the metal. Her core pulsed with intense, unmasked greed.
"Gods," she breathed, dropping the rifle. She picked up one of the dark shards. "Where did you get this, boy? This metal is still breathing. It's soaked in residual, clean Aethel Arcanum."
"Found a deep seam," Rhys repeated the necessary lie. "It's too hot to sell on the street, so I brought it to the specialist. I need credits, and I need a steady supplier for cultivation aid. Fast."
Zara leaned back, studying him. "You're a Lantern, C-Rank. Barely two days old, judging by the residual Mists-Arcana bleeding from your Core. You skip D-Rank like that, and you come in here smelling like a fresh kill, carrying loot that should be in a Furnace Rank's private collection. You're either the dumbest kid in the city, or the luckiest." She paused, then settled on her price. "Three thousand credits for the haul. Non-negotiable."
[TRANSACTION: +3,000 CREDITS]
Rhys scooped up the small, heavy stack of credits. "Agreed. Now, the second part of the deal. I need to push C- to B-. Cultivation. Immediately."
Zara's expression hardened, all amusement gone. "Listen to me, boy. You look like you got hit by a Sun-Core explosion, and you're still shaking. You rushed from Ember to Lantern. Your Core is unstable. Trying to jump to Furnace right now will kill you. It's not a risk, it's a guarantee." She jabbed a finger at his chest. "But I think you have bigger problems than stabilization. You smell of ruin, boy, but also of vengeance. Who are you running from?"
Rhys hesitated, but the urgency outweighed caution. "A Furnace Rank Hunter. The Flame Sentinel."
Zara's eyes narrowed further. "Karrus. I knew it. He's got his Iron Sentinels flooding this market. They're buying up surveillance data and paying triple for anyone who can confirm a sighting of a 'fast-moving Lantern with a unique crimson trace.' He's not looking for loot anymore, Scavenger. He's looking for revenge. He wants to wipe you out for humiliating him. If he finds you, he won't stop until your Core is dust."
She reached beneath the counter and pushed a small, rolled-up data chip toward him. "The money is for buying food. This is for your life."
"Why the help?" Rhys asked, confused by the sudden shift from ruthless merchant to wary ally.
"Karrus is bad for my business," Zara explained coldly. "He attracts the Watch. You, you're a wildfire. You'll keep him busy. Use this. It's an encoded map showing the city's hidden exits, security blind spots, and the location of a forgotten maintenance outpost deep under the city. It's completely off the grid. Get out of the main sectors and lie low."
Rhys gripped the chip. "Thank you, Zara. I won't forget this."
"You better not," she said, already picking up her rifle again. "And one last thing: your martial art is solid, but that sword you're hiding? The Shadow-Edge Blade? It's an Evolving Artifact. It needs Arcana to get stronger, specifically Corrupted Arcana. Don't waste time hiding in a hole. Go find weak corrupted beasts and feed it, or you'll have nothing but a fancy letter opener when Karrus finds you."
Rhys nodded, weaving his way back through the crowded Coil-Worn. He sealed the blast door behind him and started following the encoded map on his data pad. The journey was long and winding, taking him through layers of the city's forgotten mechanical heart. Finally, after hours of relentless travel, the map guided him to a small, hidden utility hatch deep beneath Sector 4.
He unlocked the hatch and stepped into a chamber that was small, reinforced, and completely silent. No Arcana conduits flowed in or out. It was a pre-Fracture maintenance outpost, completely off the grid. He slumped onto the rusted metal cot, laying his Shadow-Edge Blade and the Obsidian Compass beside him.
He was safe. For now. He had 3,000 Credits, a base, and the silent pressure of the Evolving Artifact beside him.
[NEW QUEST TRIGGERED: EVOLVING ARTIFACT]
[OBJECTIVE: FEED THE SHADOW-EDGE BLADE CORRUPTED ARCANUM (0/100)]
[REWARD: SHADOW-EDGE BLADE RANK UPGRADE (Evolving Artifact Lvl 2)]
[LOCATION: THE ABANDONED UTILITY SECTOR 7 (Dangerous, low-level Corrupted beasts)]
Rhys was still fatigued from the fight with Karrus, and the Blade demanded a dangerous hunt in the Corrupted Utility Sector 7. Before risking the hunt, he had to prepare.
Rhys has 3,000 credits and two critical priorities: