An ordinary person would be experiencing black spots in their vision right about now. Finn, on the other hand, did not, courtesy of his enhanced physique. He immediately set about trying to get it off.

  But the tangled, coiling mess of fabric was persistent. All the belts latched onto him even as he exerted all the strength in his muscles to remove the one restricting his airflow. Wasn’t working; it held fast despite his efforts. The adrenaline was flowing, but he managed to stay in a relatively calm state of mind. There didn’t seem to be any weapons on this thing, natural or otherwise. The worst it could do was try to choke him. That left it open to his attacks. He just had to muster the power to destroy it.

  Being in pitch darkness, relying purely on his power senses, generating photons was more difficult due to the delayed energy conversion process his nanite had to execute. Nonetheless, he managed. Light intensified all over his hand, heating up to the point where it could sear through stone. He released it in a cutting beam straight on the belt tightening around his neck. A sustained attack, slowly burning it off. It went slower and slower, until it snapped. Finn gasped in a breath.

  He’d be naive to think the attacks stopped there, though. It simply kept on going, constricting any limb it could find, his head, his legs, his arms and torso. Maybe it was even trying to break his bones, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  Without ambient light available, he had a limited amount of lasers to work with. He could recharge, but the energy cost outweighed the rate of replenishment. Especially considering that it might be growing resistant to lasers. He attempted to fire a lower intensity beam to conserve energy, boring into the leathery material. Minimal damage initially, reducing some more in the next second, then it plateaued there.

  That confirmed it, then. This thing’s defense against light was improving. Was that because of the darkness? Channeling a burst of kinetic energy, he rapidly extricated himself and kicked it away, causing it to bounce on the floor.

  It ceased moving instantly.

  He panted lightly as he lit his fingers up, if only for the purpose of allowing himself to use his vision. Though he didn’t think he’d learn anything new, this was too strange. It stopped, just like that? In his memory, he replayed the entire scene and came to the conclusion that, yes, it had.

  Looking further, the unknown presence it was emanating had not changed at all in the heat of combat, if it could be called that. And something else stood out to him, too. The fact that its movements were so… rote. No feints, no shifts in momentum, not even instinct. This demented, scissor-assaulted leather cape from hell wasn’t alive. It simply existed in some fashion that went beyond a mundane object.

  What?

  Finn wasn’t sure what to think, standing there observing the hostile piece of clothing. One thing was for certain. He now understood why no one had taken this thing along, if it did this to people. A regular human would have had a broken neck within the first second of that exchange.

  Forget artifacts, this was a death trap.

  The question was, did he want to leave it here? Sure, he could walk out the door and leave like nothing ever happened, but he could also stay to see what would happen if he poked and prodded it more. The most likely outcome was him getting attacked, of course. The distinction here was that he had a few things he wanted to test out.

  First, he had to know how to counter the bad matchup for his fighting style. His “opponent” was immune to his brand of precognition. It didn’t think or feel, thereby not projecting an outline of future movement under any circumstance. How to get around that? He’d grown somewhat reliant on that particular trick during his time on this continent.

  Wasn’t this similar to his own mental blob? The one he was using as a base for the artificial intelligence that might well be impossible for him to build? The bundle of deadly leather just reacted to stimuli in a set way, and nothing else. Hm, maybe there was no need to see its future because it was so predictable.

  Second, what were its capabilities? So far, he had seen it display some form of adaptive resistance, high flexibility, and the ability to move in response to threats. As he observed it further, he learned that the form it took also wasn’t completely set. There were slight shifts, parts of it growing shorter and longer. That meant its main selling point was its durability, he decided, in turn leading him to the final question.

  Third, could he get around its hostility? Whoever or whatever had made it obviously did not want anyone taking it with them. Assuming this thing had been made by a person to begin with, that was. He couldn’t be certain about that.

  In order to bypass whatever security mechanisms had been imposed on it, he needed to find a way to access an off-button. He doubted it would be that easy… but then he had an idea.

  Understanding dawned on him, and he started drawing on his power. His target wasn’t alive. That meant he could alter its color. Not only that, he could render it transparent to see if that revealed anything. With a flick of his wrist, gray faded from each belt, shifting their coloration. The leather shimmered briefly before losing its deep, dark hue, transforming into a dull, semi-transparent material.

  The sight made him freeze.

  Beneath the layers of woven belts, fine glowing strands ran along the surface, forming intricate patterns too precise to be natural. At the same time, they looked like nerves. And he couldn’t sense them.

  Not due to a malfunction of any sort. No, this part of the “artifact” was impossible to sense because it didn’t exist in reality. The material world just did not corroborate that he was looking at anything other than regular leather, therefore his power told him the same thing. Treated remains of an animal or primebeast. That was it.

  Where else had he seen that before? Wanderlust’s gatekey possessed aspects that he couldn’t perceive, but that was more like a spatial distortion. This, however, seemed more like a simple overlay. Still, it was similar enough to be worth noting.

  Similar enough, he suspected, for his power to work on it the same way. Reality impression had been the key to triggering the gatekey’s activation, so logically it should follow that this would be similar. Yet he didn’t want to enhance its presence and make it tougher at the moment. He’d just have to do the opposite.

  Instead of anchoring it further in reality, he unmoored it. As he sometimes did with himself, he engaged his lessening power, going from a substantial, almost glassy texture to making the connection between his target and reality looser.

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  It leaped at him.

  This time, Finn was prepared. The grasping tentacles wrapping around him were both expected and lighter. There was a weight lacking that had been there before, a consequence of his power being active on it.

  Granted, that didn’t mean it wasn’t a struggle. It was. But he was winning this round, pitting his strength against it. Once he began to wrestle it down to the ground, its form shifted, each belt thinning out into long strips. He didn’t care, pressing down harder with his body and mind.

  The hidden web of branching lines was laid bare to his eyes, lighting up brighter the more he tried to suppress it. It reached a point where he could hardly see the object they were nestled in, past the blazing web of impossible strands. Finn clenched his jaw. His power was working, but what exactly was he unmooring? The structure of the not-artifact was shifting, unraveling itself like something caught between two conflicting states of existence.

  The belts twitched violently, coiling in on themselves like they were resisting some unseen force. He pushed harder, focusing his will, pressing against the impossible elements embedded within. The invisible nerves, or whatever they were, pulsed in response. Their glow intensified, flickering erratically. Then—

  A sharp crack rang through the car, physical and not.

  He barely had time to react before the belts suddenly slackened, their grip failing all at once. The entity collapsed into a heap, its form convulsing briefly before settling into eerie stillness. The patterns of light coursing through it dimmed, then blinked out entirely.

  Another moment of tension passed. He waited with bated breath to see if it would get back up. When it didn’t for ten more seconds despite his prodding, he relaxed his muscles and color suppression.

  Leather faded back into existence, a regular, inert piece of equipment draped over his arms. He let it fall on the ground, rubbing his forehead to nurse the headache he was getting from power strain. Using his power like this was always taxing without Casey around to give him a boost. Regular exercise would be the answer, he supposed.

  “What do I do with you…” he whispered into the dimly lit room. It’d be time to get back soon, and if he wanted to get more use out of this thing, he would have to make good time on the way back.

  If there was nothing binding the… coat? Cloak? To this location, then he could start heading to camp while ruminating on his new haul. It had to be useful somehow, with his higher comprehension of its nature.

  Exploring the tunnels more would have been helpful, but it wasn’t essential, now that he knew how long it would take to find the next station. Besides, he still hadn’t hunted for food, and he didn’t want to wait too long with that. The refugees and Ernesto’s crew did help, it was just that the bulk of the responsibility had been on Finn ever since they ran out. Eating primebeast meat for the first time in his life had been an experience, albeit not a bad one.

  Wait.

  Primebeasts! That was it. He’d speculated that the leather could have come from a primebeast, though he hadn’t realized the implications three seconds ago. What distinguished primebeasts from standard animals was their powers. Everyone knew that. But powers could have lasting effects after death, depending on what they were.

  This one apparently was among those powers. After the primebeast it had come from died, an unidentified effect lingered. Shape-shifting, resistance building, those were aspects of the original. If he had to compare it to anything, he would say…

  Oh, yeah. He would compare it to a severed lizard tail moving independently. Except rather than stopping half a minute after being cut, this piece of hide remained responsive. Or maybe comparing it to a corpse twitching upon being poked would be more accurate? He couldn’t tell.

  The metaphysical nerves felt dead when he touched them with his power, at very least. He’d probably squeezed the last bit of life out of it if there had been some left. Torn and fractured, the network that had previously been full of vengeful vigor currently looked like scattered strings of yarn.

  Slowly, he tried to use his power to connect them, creating bridges between frayed ends in the hopes of reforming them.

  He had a suspicion that the primebeast’s lingering properties could still be harnessed, just in a different way. The coat wasn’t alive, not anymore, and that wasn’t an issue. It remembered movement. It wasn’t even instinct, it was merely… history. He could use that

  As he willed the fragmented strands to reconnect, something shifted. The material didn’t just twitch—it responded. The woven belts curled inward, as if waiting for instruction, and Finn felt a strange tension through his power, like an unspoken agreement. His fingers flexed over the leather, testing its reaction, and the material followed, shifting fluidly in accordance with his movements.

  Interesting.

  The glow of the threads dimmed as they settled into a new pattern, locking into place. The weight in his arms fluctuated subtly. Then it shrank. The belts coiled together, twisting and folding in on themselves without losing any apparent density. No extra mass, no thinning fabric. It simply adjusted, as though it had always been meant to do so.

  Finn inhaled sharply. So that was its trick. It didn’t adhere to conservation of mass, not exactly. Instead, it operated within a range of mass, capable of compacting or expanding within certain limits. That explained the level of force it had managed to bring to bear on him: its size was malleable, but it couldn’t just keep growing endlessly.

  Did that mean…?

  He knelt, letting his fingers hover over it. With another flex of will, he envisioned the belts unraveling and reforming around his body, draping over his shoulders, winding around his torso like armor. The moment he focused on the thought, the leather obeyed. It slithered over his arms, wrapping snugly against his frame, and in the dim light, he saw the shifting web of lines adjusting to accommodate the change.

  Comfortable. Fitted.

  Testing its limits, he commanded it to tighten, and immediately the material compressed, hardening in key areas. His chest, his forearms, his shins. He shifted his stance, rolling his shoulders, and found that despite the added reinforcement, his range of motion remained unimpeded.

  Defensive and pliable, good.

  Taking it up a notch, he made the leather meld into itself and flow over his entire body, leaving his head free and nothing else. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, so smoothly did it do what he wanted. Full-fledged body armor, just like that.

  Honestly, this was excellent. He’d been meaning to look into defensive options for himself. His durability had never been his greatest quality, nor did he expect it to be. He was never going to be Skaldvaldr, known for his indestructibility. He just found it preferable to not die in a single hit to some of the stronger powers he had and would face.

  Dodging was still his go-to, but if it came down to it, he had an ace up his sleeve. This was among the last additions to his toolkit. After this, he didn’t need much additional stuff, aside from a potential weapon to use for striking and deflecting. His priority was going to be refining what he had, and finding ways to make it all work in tandem, until they were greater than the sum of their parts.

  Nodding to himself, Finn stood and walked out of the train.

  The return trek to camp was steady and silent, broken only by the rhythmic tapping of his boots against the railway. Shadows swayed in his peripheral vision as his soft luminescence illuminated the path ahead, casting fleeting specters along the craggy walls. The subterranean air carried a damp, mineral tang, laced with the distant echo of dripping water.

  Similar to a second skin, his newfound prize rested, light against his frame. When he wasn’t thinking about it, he couldn’t even tell that he was wearing it. This really had been a remarkable find.

  And tomorrow, he would have to see if it was sufficient to complete this journey.

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