Vane did not look back at the wreckage of the gear platform. He did not look back at Magnus, the fallen Iron Warden who was currently staring at his ruined gauntlets in a state of catatonic shock. To Vane, the noble was no longer a person. He was a completed transaction.

Vane moved with a rolling, silent gait through the transition tunnels of the Upper Foundry. The air here was a pressurized haze that felt like a physical weight against the lungs. It was a realm of screaming metal and superheated steam where the rhythmic thud of the Spire's primary pistons echoed like the heartbeat of a dying titan.

'Capacity is the bottleneck,' Vane thought, his eyes scanning the steam for heat signatures. 'The Argent Horizon demands a constant flow to maintain the sleeve. If I do not finish my encounters quickly, I will run dry before I even see the summit.'

He could feel the stinging in his mana channels. The pulses of the Silver Fang he had used against Magnus had left his internal circuitry raw, like a throat burned by swallowed lye. He was a Rank 3 Elite, but his engine was currently running hot. He needed to find a rhythm that relied on the mechanical perfection of his forms rather than the supernatural edge of his Authority.

He rounded a corner and stopped.

The path forward was a narrow gantry suspended over a three hundred foot drop into a churning vat of molten mana coal. Blocking the center of the walkway were four students. They were not the panicked stragglers from the lower levels. They stood in a disciplined diamond formation, their weapons drawn and their mana signatures flaring with the practiced confidence of the well born.

Vane recognized the two in the lead. They were Rank 3 Elites from House Valois, a subsidiary of the Empire famous for their heavy infantry. They wore reinforced breastplates that gleamed with Earth aspected mana. Flanking them were two Rank 2 Adepts, likely retainers or lower tier cousins, holding long range staves.

"That is far enough, Rat," the lead Noble said. He was a tall, broad shouldered youth with a sneer that seemed etched into his face. He leveled a heavy claymore at Vane's chest. "We saw the feed. You took out Magnus with a hidden trick. A lucky strike. But you will not find an opening here. We are the wall that does not break."

Vane did not answer. He unslung the Star-Metal Spear, the ash wood shaft clicking into his palms. He did not adopt a defensive posture. He simply stood there, his breathing slow and rhythmic.

He initiated the Spiral Circulation.

The high pitched Hum began to rise, a predatory whistle that cut through the roar of the steam vents. To the Adepts, it was just a strange noise. But the two Elites flinched. They had been trained by masters. They knew that a sound like that only happened when mana was being forced into a frequency of absolute perfection.

"Kill him," the leader barked, his voice cracking slightly.

The two Adepts fired simultaneously. Two bolts of condensed blue mana streaked across the gantry, aimed at Vane's head and heart.

Vane did not even raise his spear to block. He shifted his lead foot two inches to the left and tilted his shoulder. The first bolt hissed past his ear, the heat of it stripping a few strands of hair. The second bolt hit the Frictionless Sleeve surrounding his torso.

Instead of exploding, the mana bolt skidded. It slid off the rotating vortex of Vane's armor like a stone skipping across a frozen lake, slamming into a steam pipe behind him.

Vane moved.

He did not dash; he flowed. He used the Argent Horizon to strip the air resistance from his path, becoming a blur of grey and silver.

The second Noble, a girl with Fire aspected mana, roared and swung a horizontal slash with a flaming mace. It was a powerful, wide reaching strike designed to catch a fast moving target.

Second Form: Lunar Deflection.

Vane snapped the spear into a vertical rotation. He did not meet the mace with force. He met it with the Cyclic Resonance. As the flaming head of the mace collided with the spear, the frictionless mana sleeve caused the weapon to skid upward. Vane stepped inside her guard, the spear shaft acting as a pivot point.

The girl's eyes went wide. She had spent ten years practicing the perfection of that swing. She had been told by her tutors that her strength was undeniable. Yet, the Rat had moved her weapon as if it weighed nothing.

'Experience is the only thing that cannot be bought,' Vane thought, his mind a cold machine of tactical data. 'They have the gear. They have the ranks. But they have never fought for their lives in a gutter where a single mistake means a knife in the dark.'

Vane did not give her time to recover. He used the momentum of her own miss to drive the butt of the spear into her solar plexus. The impact was not just physical; it was a focused discharge of the spiral mana he had been gathering.

THUD.

The air left her lungs in a violent spray of saliva. Her mana shield shattered like glass, and she collapsed to the grating, gasping and clutching her stomach.

"One," Vane whispered.

The leader of the group felt a cold shiver of primal fear crawl down his spine. He was an Elite. He had been trained in the Imperial Academy's finest combat arts. He understood the logic of battle. But what he was seeing defied that logic. Vane was not using more mana than them. In fact, his output was remarkably low. He was just... better. Every movement was a masterpiece of economy. Every parry was a mockery of their effort.

"Get back!" the leader shouted to the Adepts. "Bombard him! Now!"

The two Adepts frantically began to chant, their staves glowing with desperate energy. But Vane was already in motion. He did not run at them; he ran along the side of the gantry, his boots finding purchase on the vertical cooling pipes.

He reached the apex of a cooling tank and leapt.

First Form: Quicksilver Thrust.

He snapped his wrists in mid air. The Star-Metal tip of the spear broke the sound barrier with a sharp, whip-like crack. To the Adepts below, it looked like a silver thunderbolt descending from the steam.

The first Adept did not even have time to scream. The blunted tip of the spear slammed into his shoulder, the kinetic energy dumping into his body and throwing him off the gantry. His emergency neutralization shield flared blue, catching him before he hit the molten coal below, but he was out.

The second Adept dropped his staff and scrambled backward, his hands shaking so violently he could not trigger his own shield. He looked at Vane, who had landed silently on the grating, and saw not a student, but a monster.

"Please," the Adept whimpered.

Vane did not blink. He swept the boy's legs with the shaft of the spear and tapped his wristband.

Transfer Complete. +50 Points.

Now, only the leader remained.

The Noble Elite was backed against the railing. His claymore was trembling. He looked at his fallen comrades, then back at Vane. He saw the way Vane held the spear: casual, relaxed, yet vibrating with a lethal readiness that made the air itself feel sharp.

"Who are you?" the Noble asked, his voice trembling with a terror he could not hide. "No commoner moves like that. No Rank 3 has that kind of... weight. You are a monster."

"I am just a student who paid attention to the basics," Vane said, stepping forward.

The Noble roared, a desperate, sobbing sound, and charged. He poured every remaining drop of his mana into a vertical overhead strike. It was a suicide move, a total abandonment of defense for the sake of raw power. The claymore glowed with a blinding brown light, the Earth mana making the blade weigh half a ton.

Vane did not use the Silver Fang. He did not need to.

He waited until the blade was an inch from his head, then he initiated a micro-burst of Spiral Circulation in his rear heel. He pivoted.

The claymore slammed into the metal grating, shearing through the iron like it was paper. But Vane was not there. He was behind the Noble, the spear tip resting gently against the boy's jugular.

The Noble froze. The heat of the Star-Metal was a promise of death. He looked at the deep furrow his own sword had made in the floor and realized that Vane had let him miss. He had been played like a practice dummy.

"Yield," Vane commanded.

The Noble dropped his sword. It clattered against the metal, a hollow, pathetic sound. He held out his wrist, his eyes wet with the humiliation of absolute defeat.

Transfer Complete. +150 Points.

Total: 900.

Vane did not offer a critique. He did not offer a taunt. He simply turned and continued his ascent toward the Spire. He could feel the eyes of the defeated Noble on his back, a gaze filled with a fear that would likely never leave him.

As Vane reached the next level, the temperature began to change. It did not just cool down; it plummeted. The steam in the air did not dissipate; it crystallized, falling to the floor as fine, diamond-like dust. Vane stopped. He looked at the railing. It was covered in a thin, translucent layer of frost.

In the center of a wide, frosted catwalk stood a figure.

She was a vision of cold, elegant lethality. Her silver-white hair was untouched by the soot of the Foundry, and her green eyes were fixed on the path ahead. The industrial heat of the Spire seemed to die in her presence, replaced by an aura that felt like the stillness of a winter morning.

Vane tightened his grip on his spear, his vision narrowing.

Isole Sylvaris.

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