Tori and I sprinted down the half-finished, scaffolding-lined hallway. We had less than ten minutes to find the Fireborn Crusader, get inside the room with him, and either get control of the beacon, kill him, or both.

  Ideally, both.

  I wasn’t a murderer. I hadn’t been even when I’d killed Eddie or Saul. I’d fought them exactly like I had the boys in middle school in stick-wrestling—with my muscles, my skill, and my speed. One-on-one. Just them and me. But with Taven Liu, I didn’t have any intention of doing that. I was going to put my hammer through his head, and if Bobby and Tori wanted to help, more power to them.

  Bobby, speaking of the devil, was a few yards back, following us as we ran. “You know, maybe I made the wrong investment choices.”

  “Shut up, Bobby!” Tori said through clenched teeth.

  I rounded the corner first, and there they were.

  One looming, white-and-purple beacon. Two snakes made from bone and flame. And one man, armored, with a two-handed sword. Taven Liu’s eyes went wide, and his mouth opened to say something.

  Waypoint Contested

  An inactive Waypoint Beacon within this dungeon has been contested.

  I didn’t give him a chance to finish. The Siege Hammer ripped down, its firing mechanism rocketing the hammerhead forward. The Crusader’s sword came up to meet it. Sparks flew—some of them blazing red, and others long chains of orange Charge. I pushed with all my strength, then pushed Charge into the Voltsmith’s Grasp until it strained against my forearm and glowed so bright it was almost orange. And, bit by bit, I forced the Crusader’s sword back.

  “I thought I told the boy to kill you,” Taven snarled.

  My only response was the hammer firing again, the impact ripping down the sword’s blade and into his arms.

  The first Flamecaller slid past me, only for Tori to drop a Gravity Well on it, then Push it into the wall. She spun and repeated the process on the second one. “I got these, Hal!”

  “Thanks!” I yelled back. Then I focused on the man in front of me. He had no helmet, and I tried to bring the hammer down on his head. He turned to smoke. I waited a beat, then followed as he billowed past me toward Tori.

  Bobby appeared in the way. “Taven Liu. Does this mean you’ve reconsidered Bobby Richards’s offer?”

  The Crusader turned solid, and I took the opportunity to crush a Flamecaller’s spine as I sprinted to reengage. “No,” he said.

  “Shame. It’s a good offer, and it’s only getting better by the minute.” Bobby’s brass-knuckled fist lashed out, and Taven had to parry it. The Siege Hammer came down. He turned to smoke again and started surging toward Tori.

  “Nope!” she shouted.

  Gravity Well fired, and the smoke stopped rolling toward her. Then she Crushed the smoke, compressing it with her telekinetic magic until it was nothing but a tiny ball of the stuff. “Get the Flamecaller!”

  “On it!” I whirled. The monstrous snake was still a few dozen feet away, guarding the Waypoint Beacon like it was important to be close to it. Scaffolding barred the path forward, so I let go of the Siege Hammer.

  Three shots, thirty feet. The Voltsmith’s Grasp hummed as liquid Charge poured into the railgun and flung the three small pieces of steel faster than a bullet. They ripped into the monster one after another, leaving tiny puncture holes in its bone body. Then the ‘spent’ Charge flowed back down the wires in electric form, rejoining my pool of the stuff. I slapped a taped-together set of three bolts into the railgun and sprinted toward the monster.

  I was reloaded and ready for more. The Voltsmith’s Grasp felt massively superior to the Rank One, Rube’s Principal-controlled one I’d built before. I missed my real arm, of course—but this was pretty good, too. It had advantages, for sure.

  “Hal, watch it!” Bobby said.

  I whirled. The Voltsmith’s Grasp’s fingers opened, and Taven Liu’s blade crashed down on it.

  It gouged into the delicate metal fingers as they closed around it like a trap. I didn’t bother flinching; the gauntlet itself would be fine, and I hadn’t built any essential infrastructure into the fingers for a reason.

  There was a principle—not of Voltsmithing, but of mechanic-work. I’d thought about it before. Catastrophic functionality. I’d engineered that into the improved Voltsmith’s Grasp’s hand. Nothing essential was there; I could lose fingers and keep working—or fighting. In fact, I’d thought about how the gauntlet would hold a hammer-shaft without any fingers, and determined that it’d be awkward, but doable. It had taken a long time to work the fingers into exactly the shape they needed to be, with precisely the power train to function from all the way up my forearm—hours I hadn’t really had.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I’d done all that work for two reasons.

  First, I’d been all but helpless as a Voltsmith with only one hand. Without Tori, I’d never have finished the rebuild, and I never wanted to feel like that again. Even if it was awkward, the Voltsmith’s Grasp was built to take as much damage as possible before failure—and for that failure to be easily repairable.

  And second, the Grasp was a weapon.

  The massive greatsword stopped about halfway through the gauntlet’s pointer finger. The other three and thumb gripped it, and I started to drain Charge from the weapon. It happened fast. One second, the Fireborn Crusader held an epic magical item that empowered him to fight against the Siege Hammer—or any other weapon I could make. The next was a slab of poorly balanced metal.

  He threw it aside and stepped back, then turned into smoke again. I spun. The Siege Hammer fired, but it was too late; he was already gone. Tori grabbed the second Flamecaller and Pulled it; as it flew through the air, the Siege Hammer fired again, and bone shattered. The summoned snake exploded into burning-hot, razor-sharp shards.

  Then the room started heating up. Fast.

  “That was a neat trick you pulled, back in the Urban Sprawl,” Taven Liu said from somewhere high above. He’d landed on the scaffolding, and his armor had turned a bright, molten red as fire magic poured across his body. “Can you do it again?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to. We’re going to take this Waypoint.”

  “I think not.”

  The words hung in the room, and I stared up at him. “Tori, Pull!”

  She Pulled. The scaffolding wobbled, then collapsed. Taven’s hands went out, and two jets of flame filled the air under him, leaving burning-hot marks on the floor around him as he hovered mid-air.

  I shifted the Siege Hammer. “Hold him!” I said. Tori cast a spell, and I opened up with my rail gun again.

  Three shots. Reload. Three more. A half-dozen holes and dents appeared across the Fireborn Crusader’s armor, only to glow yellow-red as the flames around him doubled in strength, then tripled. I couldn’t deal damage to him—not faster than he was healing it off.

  “Pulling!”

  Tori Pulled again. This time, the spell focused entirely on the Fireborn Crusader. It ripped him out of the air like a comet slamming down to earth. Fire erupted all around him, and I shielded my face from the embers with my damaged metal hand.

  When I lowered my hand, Taven Liu was gone.

  I breathed, letting the icy cold air fill my burning-hot lungs. Tori looked around, anger across her face. “We’ll get him,” I said.

  Then I pulled up the beacon’s status.

  Waypoint Contested

  An inactive Waypoint Beacon within this dungeon has been contested.

  It took us a minute to figure it out.

  In the end, it was Bobby who pointed out the obvious. “Now, Hal, I like you two—“

  “That’s why you offered the Fireborn Crusader a deal mid-fight.”

  “Tori,” I said softly. Then I nodded at Bobby. “Go on.”

  “Like I was saying, I like you two. You’ve got something going on, and I think Museumtown’s my second—or maybe third—best investment. But I’m not part of Museumtown, and that makes us enemies.”

  Tori stiffened. So did I. Bobby didn’t move from where he stood, leaning casually against the Waypoint Beacon. His hands were in his suit pockets, and he stared at me. “I mean, according to Integration. Jesus, Hal. Bobby Richards ain’t stupid enough to pick a fight with you two. I want you to take the beacon, but you’ve got a problem. He’s out there, and there’s no way you’re walking out of here with that thing.”

  “Right. It’s too heavy,” Tori said.

  “Exactly. You can’t leave with it. You two are stuck here, and he’ll pick you apart with those summons if you don’t change that.”

  “So, what are you suggesting, Bobby?” I asked. My fingers loosened on the Siege Hammer’s shaft. I wasn’t ready to fight Bobby over this beacon, but at the same time, I’d do what I had to.

  “I’m suggesting, Hal, that you leave the beacon with me, go fight Taven Liu on your own terms, and—“

  “Absolutely not,” Tori interrupted. “There is no way I’m going to do that!”

  Bobby Richards had Hal Riley over a metaphorical barrel, and he knew it.

  And it was a good thing, too. He hadn’t shown how weirded out he was by Hal’s current nameplate—the one that showed his level as an error. Externally cool as a cucumber, he was having a panic attack inside. The Voltsmith was weird. Really weird. And he was doing stuff Bobby hadn’t thought possible. He hated having to change his mental calculations on the fly, but Hal kept forcing him to do it. It was frustrating.

  But he plowed forward with his offer anyway. “Look, I want you to take the beacon, Hal. But you can’t do that and defend yourself against Taven Liu at the same time. I’m offering you a chance to do both things—deal with the Fireborn Crusader and claim the beacon. All you have to do is trust Bobby Richards.”

  He wasn’t lying. He had, of course. Museumtown had been his second-best investment up until the point where Hal Riley had popped open the Hand That Feeds’ first floor like it was a peanut and broken its shell completely. After that, he’d had to reevaluate. The folks at the Garden were good people, and the Gardener himself was going to succeed at Integration. He was going to drag everyone in Green Bay along with him, too. A safe bet.

  Hal Riley, though?

  If Bobby Richards invested in Hal Riley, he could break Integration, not just succeed at it. Bobby was sure of it.

  “He’s lying to you, Hal,” Tori hissed. Her eyes narrowed, and Bobby made sure his face looked properly offended.

  “Lying? Bobby Richards’ mother didn’t raise no liars. Am I telling you the whole truth? Absolutely not, and there’s a good reason. You don’t need to know who else I’m invested in. All you need to know is that Taven Liu isn’t on that list—and not for lack of trying!”

  “You trying at all is why we can’t trust you,” Tori spat.

  “Now, Tori,” Bobby said, “I’ve been nothing but honest about Taven Liu. I told you I’d work with him if I thought he was a good option. There was a point where I thought he was a good option, and I offered him a deal. He didn’t take it, and we didn’t have any more business to do. If it had defused him back there, the offer would probably have been worth re-offering. He didn’t take it. It’s over.”

  He would have said more, but Hal cleared his throat. “We’re going to accept your offer, Bobby—“

  “What, Hal? No!”

  The Voltsmith ignored Tori’s outburst, much to Bobby’s amusement. “We’re going to accept your offer, but with a slight change of plans. Tori and I can’t beat the Fireborn Crusader—not how we are right now. We need to change strategies…and I need to embrace my class.”

  As Hal Riley laid out his plan, even Tori shut her mouth, and Bobby Richards nodded slowly. Part of that was to show he was listening, but most of it wasn’t about Hal’s words at all. It was mostly a single thought.

  Maybe my investment portfolio has been completely ass-backward.