The transition was abrupt. One moment, we were in the stinking gloom of the pipe; the next, we emerged via a ladder and a manhole into the beating heart of the Voss industrial complex.
The air here was heavier than outside the walls. It thrummed with the subsonic bass of massive pistons driving deep underground, a rhythm that you felt in your teeth rather than heard. The smell of ozone and hot metal was thick enough to chew. It reminded me of a brief, miserable life I'd spent as a coal shoveler on a massive ironclad. I'd been minding my own business, rhythmically feeding the furnace, when the steel walls around me groaned and buckled. I drowned a few minutes later when the foreman locked us in to save the ship's buoyancy. Turns out, the sacrifice was in vain. I found out the damn thing sank anyway when I watched the movie they made about it in a future life.
This time, however, we were dry, thanks to the vacuum trick Sir Plunge-alot had graciously applied. But as we stood on the edge of the shipping yard, we were dangerously exposed.
I turned back to the manhole. The Ronan Clone was waiting inside, perfectly still, his obsidian scales drinking the dim light.
"Stay here," I ordered.
The shadow nodded once. I realised then that he might be the coolest thing we had ever designed. I made a mental note to experiment more with body transformations. I was sure there was a way to incorporate a prehensile tail into the design; we just needed to figure out the neural mapping, so I didn't trip over it.
"That thing is horrifying," Grace whispered, staring at the blank, featureless face.
"Horrifying in a good way, of course," I corrected, turning away.
As we crept through the stacks toward the edge of the shipping yard, a thought struck me.
'Are you sure you are okay with this? Isn't this against the Paladin Code or something?'
'It is a grey area,' Ronan replied smoothly, his tone sounding suspiciously like a lawyer trying to justify tax fraud.
'A grey area? We are literally breaking into a Noble House to steal industrial quantities of their property.'
'Consider the ownership,' he countered. 'Grace Voss is the heir apparent to House Voss.'
'Is she? Maybe she is 'an' heir… I don't think she owns the company yet.'
'Technicalities. In the end, a lot, if not all of this, belongs to her eventually. Therefore, we are not stealing. We are simply helping the rightful owner move her future property to a new location. We are... simply 'helping out' a friend.'
I almost tripped over a loose cobblestone. 'That is the weakest, most pathetic excuse I have ever heard you make.'
'Please… you are loving every second,' he said annoyed. 'Now focus. Sentry at twelve o'clock.'
I shook my head, happy that Ronan was starting to bend the rules a bit. Breaking and entering today. Tomorrow, we sell a hundred kilograms of fake gold to an evil wizard. A guy can dream, can't he?
We reached the main yard. It was a labyrinth of large steel containers stacked four high, creating canyons that blocked out the blast-furnace glow of the sky. Rudimentary conveyor belts chattered overhead, carrying raw ore toward the smelters.
"Standard patrol patterns," Grace hissed, pressing her back against a crate marked 'Voss Shipping Inc.'
"The Sentry Golems here aren't military grade. They run a basic logic loop: Scan, Investigate, Alarm."
"In that order?"
"Yes. If they see movement, they don't scream immediately. They investigate to confirm it's not a rat or a loose tarp. Only if they confirm a threat, or if the target attacks, do they trigger the siren."
I peered around the corner. Fifty yards ahead, a Sentry—a hunched, four-legged construct of brass and gears—was blocking the intersection. Its head swivelled mechanically, the red searchlight sweeping the ground.
I focused on a low-cost summon. I didn't need strength. I didn't need durability. I needed a distraction.
A Shadow Clone coalesced in the darkness behind me. Like Sir Plunge-alot, it was scaled pitch black and featureless.
'Kite the golem for us if you don't mind,' I commanded silently.
The Shadow Clone bolted. It sprinted across the gap between the containers, a streak of black motion against the grey steel.
The Sentry's head snapped toward the movement. The gears whirred as it broke its patrol loop, the red eye flaring. It let out a low, grinding growl and charged toward the barrels to investigate.
The moment the Sentry rounded the corner, out of our line of sight, I snapped my fingers.
Dispel.
The Shadow Clone vanished into mist.
"Go," I hissed.
Grace and I sprinted across the open intersection while the mechanical watchdog was busy staring at a wall. We slid behind a pile of rusted girders on the other side just as the Sentry clanked back into view, looking visibly confused.
We reached the Graveyard without triggering any more sensors. It was a valley of silence amidst the industrial roar, a place where the jagged silhouettes of scrap metal rose like mountain peaks against the smog-choked sky.
"It's too quiet," I whispered, scanning the perimeter. "Where are the Heavy Lifters? A yard this size should have loader-golems moving this stuff."
"Maintenance," Grace whispered back, pointing to a massive hangar bay on the far side of the yard. The doors were sealed shut. "It's the first of the month. The loaders run on high-output cores. They have to be powered down and swapped out frequently. We have a twelve-hour window before they come back online."
"Convenient," I noted. I didn't trust it. In my experience, when the universe hands you a gift, it's usually a grenade with the pin pulled. I sent a few clones to the perimeter to act as tripwires, ordered to dispel the second they saw trouble.
I looked at the loot. To my left was a mound of copper piping roughly the size of a two-story house. To my right, a chaotic heap of star-steel shavings and rejected chassis plates.
"Alright," Grace said, reaching for her satchel. "Bring out the shield, like before?"
"No shield," I said, shaking my head.
She blinked. "Why not? The sewer trick worked perfectly."
"The sewer trick worked because water is a fluid," I explained, tapping my chest where the Core hummed. "Spatial magic has a tax. Opening a portal costs a flat fee of stamina. Keeping it open is cheap if matter is constantly flowing through it, like a stream of water. The portal treats the water as one long, continuous object."
I kicked a loose bolt on the ground.
"But if the gap between one item and the next gets too large," I said, "the portal has to process every single bolt, plate, and pipe as a separate entry event."
Grace looked at the mountain of scrap. "So... we pick it up by hand?"
"Pffftt…" I scoffed. "We're thieves, Grace, not common labourers. Have some dignity..."
Grace rolled her eyes so hard it looked like she was about to pass out. And yet her reaction seemed to scratch some invisible itch I didn't know I had.
I closed my eyes and focused. The Green Core surged, a heavy, rich pulse of power that flooded my veins.
The air around the base of the copper mountain rippled. Ten clones materialised instantly. Most were copies of Sir Plunge-alot, but a few were smaller, carrying bundled rolls of heavy, black canvas.
They didn't speak. They didn't wait for a pep talk. They moved like ants swarming a picnic.
Four clones sprinted up the sides of the copper pile, their enhanced strength and agility easily finding purchase on the shifting metal. Thick, black canvas cascaded down the sides of the heap. The clones at the bottom grabbed the edges and pulled.
Within seconds, the massive pile of copper was covered. It looked like we were preparing to fumigate a house.
"Pull it tight!" I ordered in a low voice.
The clones hauled on the corners, cinching the canvas until it was wrapped snugly around the scrap.
"Now," I whispered.
I didn't activate a bunch of portals. I activated one.
I reached out with my mind and touched the metaphysical signature of the canvas. The fabric was a Construct—made of my mana, an extension of my will. I turned the entire surface area of the tarp into a portal aperture.
There was no sound of suction. No dramatic wind. There was just a heavy, dull THWUMP.
The mountain of copper didn't fly into the air. The canvas simply... fell.
The metal underneath it ceased to exist in this dimension. It fell straight down, passing through the portal-skin of the tarp and landing in the White Void of my Inventory.
The black sheet hit the dirt, flat as a pancake. The mountain was gone.
"One activation cost," I said, feeling a sharp dip in my stamina. "It was still significantly more expensive than normal because of the size of the portal, but a lot more manageable."
Grace stared at the empty patch of dirt where a fortune in copper had been sitting ten seconds ago. She looked at the flat tarp. She looked at me.
"You," she said, her voice filled with a mixture of horror and admiration, "are a terrifying human being."
"I'll take that as a compliment," I said reluctantly. I signalled the clones. They gathered up the tarp, which was now light as a feather again. "Next pile. Move."
We worked like a colony of ants on a sugar cube.
My clones swarmed the next heap—a jagged mountain of broken and discarded parts. They scrambled up the sides, boots slipping on the metal, and threw the black canvas shroud over the peak. They pulled the corners tight, cinching the mass of sharp metal into a neat package.
I touched the fabric. I tapped the Green Core.
Drop.
THWUMP.
The canvas hit the dirt. The scrap vanished into the White Void.
We stripped the third pile. We stripped the fourth.
With every activation, I felt the drain. My limbs felt lighter, detached, and the cold ache in my chest grew sharper. The "Shroud" technique was efficient, but moving tonnes of matter into a sub-dimension demanded a heavy toll.
'We're running on fumes,' Ronan noted, his voice tight. 'One more and we are done.'
One more, I thought, eyeing a massive stack of crates near the back of a hangar.
"How are we doing on time, Grace?"
"We still have a few hours," Grace whispered, checking her pocket watch.
"We only need a minute."
I snapped my fingers. The clones sprinted for the crates. They threw the tarp. They pulled it tight.
The crates vanished.
And then the world screamed.