The entire sphere shook when it collided with the ceiling of the lava lake. Jace couldn’t see what happened, but he didn’t need to. Debris pattered against the sphere’s outer dome, stone cracked, and the floor shook uncontrollably.

  “This thing can’t smash all the way through the crust, can it?” Lessa asked. “It’s solid rock!”

  Jace glanced around wide-eyed. Either this thing was their ticket to the surface, or it was just going to crush them against the ceiling. But the latter seemed like a really stupid invention. Why would the Luminians build a starship that couldn’t make it more than a few kilometers from its starting point.

  “I doubt it,” Ash said, echoing Jace’s thoughts. “This sphere’s outer armour was thick enough to withstand most modern plasma cannons, and now, it has an entire dungeon core’s worth of shield Aes flowing through it. It isn’t breaking any time soon.”

  “It’s still trying to bash through miles of solid stone,” Lessa muttered.

  “Unless it’s plowing through the rest of the dungeon,” Kinfild suggested. “It would be easier to break through the hallways and chambers of a dungeon level than solid rock.”

  Jace pressed his lips together in thought, then reasoned, “The crust-lift that led directly downward from the fourteenth level left us at the edge of the dungeon. Unless there’s something else above us, we’re going through plain stone.”

  “Or a channel specifically carved for the dome to rise through,” Ash pointed out. “Listen and feel. Do you hear the repetitive cracking? The waves of shudders?”

  Jace shut his eyes and tried to imagine his surroundings. He could barely hear the cracking noises that Ash described over a distant roar. It was like a starship’s thrusters, but without the thrum of a particle propeller and without the whir of crankshafts and gears. Just raw expulsions of energy to push them upward.

  But the repetitive shudders in the floor, those Jace did notice. They weren’t as violent as the first impact, but they still sent vibrations up through his knees and spine. The starship was breaking through individual, smaller layers of stone on its ascent.

  “Is there a way to control it?” Jace asked. “Or at least to see where we’re going?”

  “Unless you want to fight your way through a bunch more angry automatons, looking for a room that may or may not exist, I suggest we stay right here,” Kinfild said. “There is no reason to jeopardize ourselves, and I am exhausted. You look exhausted.”

  Jace exhaled. “Yeah. I am kinda exhausted. But…I guess we just have to trust the dungeon. Doesn’t seem like something super trustworthy.”

  “Hey, now,” Perril interjected. “A free ride to the surface is a free ride, and you shouldn’t complain about that, aye? But Kinfild, now that the shields are down, have you tried calling up your starship. However high this thing goes, we’re going to need a way off.”

  “I’ll get to work.” Kinfild reached into his robes, fumbling for equipment. “Let’s hope Err-Seventeen can figure out how to get the Luna Wrath running.”

  For the next few hours, they milled about in the central core room of the starship. Jace took a seat, and at first, just rested. But after a few minutes, he began bandaging his injuries. He could fix them up properly when they got to the surface.

  And, if Perril was going to be travelling with them long-term, then they would probably need to capture something for her to draw Vitality from. They could probably capture a darkling or two. Leave it in the Luna Wrath’s engine room, though, so it didn’t stink up the rest of the ship.

  After he’d covered over his newest injuries, he assessed his gains from defeating Rallemnon. He first activated his sheets and assessed his main status page.

  Immediately, though, before even allowing him to view the main sheet, it warned him that he had four unassigned attribute points, so he drew himself into the dreamspace and placed them down. Two in Strength, two in Resistance.

  [Gathered Analytics]

  Name: Jace Scott Baldwin

  Worldjumper #: 5

  Class: Core Hunter

  Advancement Progress: Soul-Circle Blending – Stage 1 (12%)

  Standard Level Rating: 47

  [Attributes]

  Strength: 37

  Vital: 77

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Resistance: 96

  Agility: 43

  Potency: 1

  [Technique Cards]

  Hyperjump (Reforged) (Utility)

  Wanderer’s Banishment (Attack)

  Purify (Utility)

  Questforger (Reforged) (Curse)

  Lightvein (Fortification)

  [Significant Items]

  Whistling Blade (Arbiter), spirit-enhanced clothing, Luminian Praetorian Guard armour, the Halcyon Spear.

  [Titles]

  Worldjumper #5 (no effect) (cannot be removed)

  Witness of the Ancients (+1 Agility) (cannot be removed)

  Delver of Ifskar (+10 Vitality) (+10 Strength)

  At first, he’d been a little surprised to see that his Strength and Vitality were so high—or higher than where he’d left them—but then he saw the new title, and that explained it.

  Considering how far he'd come since he entered the dungeon, he felt satisfied. He'd probably advanced so far in the past month that he wouldn't see a warning about needing to level up to stay alive time soon.

  He dismissed the sheet and turned his attention to the Halcyon Spear. Again, he tried fuelling the technique card in its center, but nothing happened. He couldn't conduct Aes across the gap between the spear's outside and inner layer.

  Besides...a spear wasn't really what he wanted. He already had a sword for melee fighting, and if he split his attention to learn a different weapon, he'd just end up subpar at them both. But that didn't mean he couldn't put it to good use. Its materials had to be valuable, and that card had to be important. Even if he couldn’t use shield-aspect Aes, if he ever ended up with his own starship, or just as a modification for the Luna Wrath…

  Then a pang of realization struck him. "Should we give this to the Starrealm?" He asked. "It's kinda dangerous to just carry around, knowing what the weapons could do if put together."

  "Giving it to the Starrealm would be like giving it directly to the Generous Hand," Ash said. "Unwise, in the Realm’s current state."

  “Is the First Attendant in on it, do you think?” Lessa asked. “A servant of the Generous Hand?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the First Attendant had never even heard of the Generous Hand,” Ash said. “At least, from what Lady Fairynor tells me. She keeps a close eye on him, but he is aging, and his mind is failing.”

  Mind is failing? Jace almost snickered, but he restrained himself. That, I could figure out on my own.

  “So I guess…I just carry it with me, then?” Jace tilted his head. “I could do that, but I’m probably gonna modify it and use it at some point. Assuming no one else here wants it.”

  “None of us can use shield Aes,” Kinfild said. “By right of the conquest, it is yours.”

  “Well, you guys helped me.” He shook his head, then stood up. “We’re a team, now, so I guess it doesn’t matter. I’ll keep watch over it, but it’s ours. We worked together to get it, and I’ll make sure it benefits us all.”

  For the next few hours, they fell silent. Not because there wasn’t anything to talk about, and Jace was pretty sure it wasn’t because of his proclamation. If any of the others were as exhausted as he felt, then there wasn’t much energy left for talking.

  The spherical starship rose. Jace’s ears popped from the rapid ascent, and though he hadn’t noticed on the way down, the air was starting to get thinner. More like a regular atmosphere again. He took slightly deeper breaths.

  Then the starship’s floor bucked. It threw Jace a few feet into the air, and a vibrating shudder resonated through the floor long after the impact. Distant thuds of stone clattered against the spherical hull, and louder than before, as if it was trying to slough off a massive chunk of stone. Gravel, dirt, and stone shuddered off the edges, then plummeted down the channel they’d risen through.

  But then, the thuds and cracking stone stopped, and the ascent sped up. Air whooshed in, and some artificial atmosphere-generating system kicked into action. The air just tasted fake, a little stale, and with a hint of some chemical he couldn’t name. It wasn’t killing them, though, at least no immediately.

  “I bet we’re rising through the atmosphere right now,” Jace said. “The Luna Wrath is on its way, right?”

  “Indeed,” Kinfild said. “Err-Seventeen knows where to find us.”

  “Now we just need a way out of the ship,” Jace said. “We should see if we can get one of the boarding ramps open again. Tell Err-Seventeen to land on it once we get the ramp open.”

  “Will do.”

  Once Kinfild sent the next transmission, they retraced their path back through the hull of the starship, following the trail of destroyed automatons. Along the way, Perril accumulated a supply of spare automaton parts, in case they needed to fix Jace’s hand or repair Lessa’s exo-suit (and that wasn’t just an ‘in case’—they would actually need to fix it).

  By the time they made it back to the boarding ramp they’d entered through, the starship had stopped rising. Veins of green Aes ran through the floor, manipulating the gravity enough that they could stand upright even though they were probably in orbit now.

  The entrance hall had a high ceiling, accommodating the boarding ramp, and Jace might have called it a hangar bay if it had any sign of a smaller starship inside. But only statues lined the walls.

  He found a control panel by the wall, which he hadn’t thought much of on the way in, but it functioned much like the gates to open the doors outside the architect’s tomb. He activated it before he realized what he was doing, then shouted, “Grab on to something!”

  “Let’s hope your kyborg found us and sees the open door!” Perril exclaimed. “Or we’re gonna let all the air out!”

  But there was only a faint whoosh of air as the enormous boarding ramp folded out from the hull once more. A misty film hung over the opening, keeping the air inside, and functioning as a window out into space.

  Jace ran to the brink, holding his breath just in case, and looked down. Ifskar floated in the void just below them, its oceans teal and sandy beaches beckoning. All across its surface, the shield wall dissipated, disintegrating into small patches of neon orange before fading away entirely.

  He blinked furiously, trying to make his eyes adjust to the new light. The sun glared over Ifskar’s curve, nearly blinding him with its intensity.

  “It’s a shame we didn’t get to stay longer,” Lessa said. “Looked like a nice place…if it wasn’t overrun by scavengers.”

  Jace nodded. “I’m sure we’ll have another chance to…see some nice planets, though.”

  “One can hope.”

  “Watch your heads, both of you!” Kinfild called. “Err-Seventeen found us!”