When Scarroid emerged from the cloud of smoke, the air around his was steaming. Not vibrating, steaming. Cale was starting to feel he was no longer safe on his perch. The first attack Scarroid made, proved him right.

  He bent over and the massive red scorpion tail smashed where Darius had been. The blow made the whole ruins tremble and a spray of high speed rocks fanned in every direction.

  Darius responded by zig-zagging around the room. Every time he stopped, he fired one or two shots of energy from the tip of his umbrella. Scarroid hardly flinched when the struck his thick skin.

  Scarroid slammed his scorpion claw down and roared. Ripples of Mana that even Cale could sense flowed from the arm into the stone floor. The floor shook and ruptured, a thick scar exploding it open as a shockwave blasted Darius.

  A shimmering blue shield of energy enveloped Darius when he extended and opened his umbrella to block the attack. It threw him backwards, and immediately Scarroid rushed in to tackle him, sending projectile rubble everywhere. A rock the size of Cale’s head blasted through the floor of the balcony and made the wall explode behind him.

  He yelped and bolted out. It was time to move.

  *

  “So that’s how cultivators fight?” Cale asked. Now that he was safe and the fear and rush was settling, there was excitement. A greed to know more.

  “These were but middling level cultivators,” Aura said and sniffed. “The more advanced one was barely able to produce external Mana.”

  “Didn’t the big guy also use external Mana with the earthquake attack.”

  “Bah! After using a Mana-burn engine, and who knows what toxic elixir, he managed to produce a smidge of power. Amateurs!”

  “I don’t know,” Cale said, playing reruns of the amazing fight in his mind as he walked down a sloping tunnel. “Seemed pretty impressive to me.”

  “A truly advanced cultivator can cut down cities in one fell swing.”

  “How long until I can reach that level?”

  “If you start listening to me, surely in no time!”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I cannot fathom why my creators inflicted me with you,” Aura said and sighed in Cale’s mind.

  “Hey, Aura,” Cale said and stopped.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “I’m really glad you’re with me. Would really suck to wake up in a strange world completely alone.”

  “You— ahh… Oh no— FINE. I’ll teach you, even if you choose not to listen sometimes. You are a fine mule for carrying my amazing mind.”

  “I pour my heart out for you and all I get is ‘mule’? Tsk tsk.”

  “Stop it. We’ve only known for five minutes and you’re already sniveling against my shoulder. Have some dignity! And boundaries!”

  Cale chuckled. Suddenly the dark passageway was not so dark after all. He felt calm and warm as he walked further into the unknown. A slight hunger was starting to build up, but Cale still felt strong and alert. But that was another thing he needed to take care of.

  He skulked around, trying to learn to sense mana signatures around him as efficiently as possible. Perhaps it was using up some of his mana, but it had to be a good habit to get into. Being unaware and getting ambushed would cost him more than a bit of mana. Eventually, even Aura got excited when she leveled.

  [A.U.R.A skill advanced.]

  [Sense Mana: 1]

  “As wasteful as you are, maybe it is not all for naught,” she said and sniffed.

  Cale was happy about the progress, but his mind was occupied. Aside from wanting to eat and see the sun again, he was fighting a sense of being lost. (How Cale knew there was a sun he had once seen was as mysterious as the knowledge of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.)

  Who the hell am I?

  It bothered him. He needed answers. But right now Cale didn’t have much to go on.

  He took inventory. He had suddenly been born in this world which had all kinds of crazy shit happening. He had some aptitudes, like being cool under pressure and a clear taste for power. He was also fairly good at cultivating Mana and he seemed to have a knack for fighting murderous robots. Oh and he was fused with a magical AI.

  Cale stopped to crouch in a corner. Aura remarked on that, but Cale ignored her.

  What am I to make of all this?

  Did he just roll with it? Go outside and start… living? Do things he liked? Or was he supposed to figure out who he was, what had happened to the Nevani and what was this fail-safe business he was supposed to be? Did any of that matter?

  It does to me.

  That was all there was to it really. He liked to cultivate mana. As crazy as it was, he liked fighting the murderbots. The fight between the cultivators had excited him. He wanted it. All of it. This crazy hunt for power and knife’s edge situations. They gave him a thrill that was so profound, that until Cale found anything even close as interesting in this world, he would cultivate.

  And while I pursue cultivation, I’ll find out who I am.

  There was a sense of ease as Cale stated all this to himself. Something resolved. A knot in his stomach loosened. A tension he hadn’t realized he had been carrying in his shoulders melted. His brow unfurrowed. An easy, relaxed smile spread on his face.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Just picturing our roles reversed,” Cale said and smirked. “The arm flailing, screaming in panic, the works.”

  “You dare mock me? I’ll have you know, we would have been out of this damned cave hours ago!”

  “Maybe,” Cale said slowly as he got up. “But not without arm flailing.”

  “Pffft. Having a body is all you are good for!”

  *

  Cale passed corridors of darkness, with strange rooms that he checked. He stopped at something looking like a lecture hall, with an amphitheater shape to the room and furniture. A stairway from the door down to a sunken platform split the rows of long tables and piles of chairs. There was metal and glass still remaining from eons ago. Everything was made sleek and functional, but with a certain minimalistic artistry. Chairs were simple Z-shaped blocks of metal scattered around. Cale crouched to inspect one of them and saw no seams. There were round etchings on the seat, like a magic sigil.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I recognize that sigil. It is an inscription to make the seat more comfortable.”

  “This is a Nevani artifact?”

  “It’s a CHAIR, Cale,” Aura said and harrumphed.

  Cale smiled. “Alright, you got a point. This seems advanced, though.”

  “Of course it is advanced. My creators were truly mighty cultivators and peerless craftsmen.”

  “Then what happened to the Nevani?”

  There was a moment of silence before Aura answered. “I do not know. I can see it, Cale. The floating cities, the giant energy arrays. The beauty and grace of their advancement. But I do not know what brought them ruin.”

  “Let’s make sure we find out.”

  “We would be further along, if a certain someone didn’t stop to sniff some old chairs!”

  “Hey, now,” Cale said. “Let the record show, there was no sniffing involved.”

  Their lively banter was interrupted by a distinct screech of metal on stone. Something was coming towards the room, and Cale suspected it wasn’t an ice cream cart.

  Cale hid under a table and pulled a chair between him and the door. Soon enough, a red lens popped from the side of the door and in skittered a murderbot. To Cale’s chagrin, another one followed it. Cale slowly moved further from the staircase that the two murderbots were descending.

  Cale swallowed. His first instinct was to hide and wait for an opportune moment. Or maybe even escape, since fighting two could be trouble.

  No. I need to rise up. I need to be decisive.

  When the murderbots had descended the stairs to be on Cale’s level, he called all of his power and control of mana to his body. Cale felt a surge of power. He darted from under the table, pivoted on his foot and punched straight into the slim lens-bearing head of the closer murderbot. The strike was true, but Cale immediately felt a flash of pain in his hand.

  The murderbot groaned and slammed into the second murderbot and they both toppled. Cale kicked a claw down and stepped on it and placed a hand on the first murderbot, draining its power.

  The rush of mana exhilarated him, but he only got a whiff, before the murderbots clambered up and started attacking him.

  The untamed mana roiled inside of Cale, making it hard to keep up. He dodged and ran, but his balance and his strength were rocked.

  “You fool! You drained mana in the middle of combat. Why would you do something so monumentally stupid?! We are going to die!”

  Cale didn’t answer. He was reaching inside of him as he dodged another swipe of a claw, although this one ripped up his jumpsuit and drew blood. Cale gasped and jumped over a table to regain his composure. The bots didn’t wait, they circled from both sides and lunged at Cale in a pincer attack. Cale did the only viable option and high jumped.

  He realized immediately his mistake. The murderbots had checkmated him. They would skewer him when he landed. Aura was shouting something in the background of his consciousness. Cale reached inside, trusting his instincts. The roiling mana was there, making him sick and weak.

  One way to stop that.

  “Take this!” Cale shouted and extended his arm, expunging all of the boiling energy inside of him. A great blue arc of liquid lightning struck one of the murderbots. Sparks flew and the murderbot groaned and shook, until the red lens went dim.

  The other murderbot did skewer Cale when he landed. It immediately lunged and stabbed him. Cale managed to dodge, so that only two of its claws punctured his side. Cale let the pain fuel him as he discharged the rest of the energy he had drained, frying up the murderbot. It clawed at Cale again, but he charged, toppling his enemy. The last dregs of the drained Mana were spent and Cale fell on his knees in front of the pile of blackened metal and smoke.

  “Ho-ly crap. You can do that? You didn’t tell me you could do that! This… This is unheard of!”

  “Yeah…” Cale said between heaving breaths. His vision was swimming and he wanted to vomit. The reflex worked perfectly, annoyingly fine, but nothing came out of his empty stomach. The pain in his side was exquisite. “I’ll join the revelling in a minute.”

  After spitting out the bile and wiping his mouth, Cale got up on wobbly legs. He looked down and found he was bleeding. That wasn’t so good. He was alone in some long-abandoned dungeon with a wound that definitely required medical care. Maybe he could rip up his jumpsuit and stop the bleeding. But something had definitely punctured inside, so tying up the wound would only delay the inevitable…

  “Don’t just stand around there. Drain these two, so I can save you.”

  Cale got straight to work, skipping the stupid questions like “You can do that?”. If there was a way to continue doing this, he wouldn’t question it. He drained one of the murderbots and was about to get to the second one, but Aura stopped him.

  “Sit down and keep the mana steady.”

  Cale did as was asked, and found breathing and concentrating very hard. But he drained focus from the pain. The pain was his ally. It would keep him on the task. The energy boiled and stormed inside of him, but with gritted teeth, Cale managed to calm the storm after a few minutes of concentration. As he did so and the smooth and steady new mana circled inside of him, it started thinning with every cycle the swirl of mana inside of him got thinner and smaller. Eventually it was gone. Cale still breathed evenly.

  [A.U.R.A skill advanced.]

  [Molecular Tissue Regeneration: 1]

  “Done,” Aura piped up smugly.

  Cale dared open his eyes and looked down. His wound had knitted up. He ripped up the hole in his jumpsuit with both of his hands to see better.

  “Not a scratch on it…” he said aloud in wonder.

  “You are not the only one with surprises!” Aura said and Cale could hear her beaming with self-satisfaction. “I have initiated a cellular repair program. It may look like it’s healed, but you still have some damage. However, you are now stable. And I leveled!”

  “Huh,” Cale said. “Thanks for that. But is the mana gone?”

  “Of course it is gone. You cannot expect me to break the laws of the universe just to save your clumsy butt every time you mess up.”

  “Thanks,” Cale said. “You leveled?”

  “I did!” Aura said and Cale could feel her preening. “I am truly amazing am I not? I have some abilities that I am still discovering. Healing being one of them. The more I use it, the more mana efficient and potent it becomes. Simple function on your end. Extremely complicated for me. And expensive. So give me some mana!”

  Cale knew that rabbit Aura had pulled out of a hat had just saved his ass. His heart was still pounding from the adrenaline. That had been a close brush with death. It was scary, and it made him take serious stock of his situation. He did not want to die.

  But there was also a dark excitement. He had faced death and violence and overcome that. That made him powerful, that made him a winner. It didn’t matter that it had cost him some resources. The conflict had cost the opponent their existence. And there was something deeply satisfying about that.

  Huh. I’m kind of messed up.

  Despite Aura having saved his life with the mana, Cale still felt a pang of frustration at the lost chance to cultivate. Aura had leveled, so it wasn’t a complete waste. But Cale was still annoyed. He would have to be more careful.

  At least I still have one murderbot left.

  Cale drained it and sat down to cultivate the mana. He was getting fairly good at it. It only took him two, maybe three minutes to tame the boiling storm inside of him. Immediately when it settled, it got sucked up into some incomprehensible dimension.

  “Hey!” Cale protested.

  “I’m sorry,” Aura said in an offended tone. “Am I taking too much from you, in an attempt to save your life?”

  Cale groaned, but he supposed the snappy AI had a point. “How are you doing all this?”

  “It’s simple. My nanobots are transforming the mana into the correct chemicals your body needs to initiate the healing processes and to repair the damage. Then I supercharge the process with the magical sigils of my creators that are embedded into the nanobots.”

  “That’s amazing,” Cale said. “Are there any drawbacks?”

  “You know how you are now in Body Tempering stage two?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re basically like an extra tough mortal. Like a guy wearing a bear hide for skin.”

  “I feel like you are getting close to the point.”

  “The point is that it is still relatively cheap to repair your bear hide. But when you start reaching levels of cultivation which makes your body supernatural, we are going to need vastly increasing amounts of mana to heal this kind of damage. It gets very technical, you know.”

  “Vastly?”

  “Oh, vastly,” Aura said. “Oh, and I am going to need additional mana to recharge the sigils. So maybe try not to get skewered again, hmm?”

  “I’ll try, but no promises. I hear it’s trending this season.”

  “What even is a season?” Aura asked.

  Cale paused. Fractured memories of traffic jams, music jams, and aisles of jam flashed through his head.

  “It’s a fashion thing,” he said, distractedly. “Hey, Aura. Do you know what a taxi is? Or a milkshake?”

  “Milkshakes…?” Aura repeated cautiously. “Did you suffer a brain injury?”

  “Nevermind. Let’s just find one after we get out of these ruins.”

  Aura harrumphed in his mind, and Cale got going. He winced as he got up, as clearly the damage to his side wasn’t completely healed. He scouted carefully ahead, and the silence of the ruins fell on them again. Cale broke it immediately.

  “Anyway… uh, thanks for saving my life.”

  “I— well I had to, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t know,” Cale said and shrugged. “I don’t know anything, except for what a milkshake is. But I do know this. I’m very lucky to have you.”

  “I— I— Well, I like you too, when you’re not annoying me!” Aura snapped, though the flustered edge in her voice made Cale grin. He could almost imagine her blushing.

  "By the way," Cale said as he walked through the darkness. He found he was no longer so afraid. He had some power. The threats seemed manageable. Cale figured he might just see daylight again. Or for the first time, weirdly enough.

  "Hm?" Aura said. "What is it?"

  "You wouldn't have a map inside of you or anything?" Cale asked.

  "Oh!" Aura said in an angry huff. "Why did you not ask about that earlier?!"

  "Why is it my fault?" Cale asked.

  "Hush now. I'm reading the map. Ah. There is a treasure room ahead."

  "Treasure room, huh?" Cale asked. "Left by the Nevani?"

  "Indeed. Must be the very same these two cultivators were looking for. There will be many things in there to advance cultivation."

  "Enough to push me to Body Tempering stage three?"

  "Only if we get there before the cultivators."

  A dark greed flashed in Cale's mind. He indulged it and his steps quickened. "Let's hurry."

  "It's right ahead."