Kenji's face was pressed into a puddle of brackish, neon-green oil. Every muscle in his body felt like it had been shredded and re-stitched with rusted wire. The "World-Anchor" feat had drained him, but the "Migration" had done something worse it had changed the rules of his existence.
He rolled over, gasping, and looked at his hands. They were trembling. The iridescent glow was gone. He felt... heavy.
[LOCATION: THE LOWER FORGE - SECTOR 99 (THE GUTTER)]
[ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE: 4x EARTH STANDARD]
[MANA SATURATION: CRITICAL (POISONOUS)]
"Kenji! Stay down!"
A heavy boot slammed into the mud next to his head. Bjorn stood over him, but the Viking looked different. His rune-axe was cracked, and he was gasping for air, his massive chest heaving against the increased gravity of this "Outer Forge."
"Where... where are the others?" Kenji managed to croak.
"Scattered," Bjorn spat. "When the Tower peeled open, the shockwave tossed the Scrap-Venture into a different sector. Mateo and Priya are still on the ship, I think. Zola and Elara... I saw them fall toward the Industrial Spires. We're in the slums, Kenji. The real slums."
Kenji looked up. This wasn't the porcelain beauty of Aethelgard. This was a vertical city of gargantuan proportions. Pipes the size of skyscrapers pumped black sludge into a sunless sky, and the "ground" was a literal sea of discarded tech from a dozen different civilizations.
A shadow fell over them. A hovering drone, jagged and covered in sensors, descended. It wasn't a System Sentinel. It was something sleeker, more predatory.
[SCANNING...]
[TARGET: KENJI TANAKA]
[PREVIOUS RANK: MASTER APEX (LAYER 1)]
[CONVERTED RANK: 1 (ASCENDANT - UNSETTLED)]
[THREAT LEVEL: NEGLIGIBLE]
"Negligible?" Kenji whispered, a spark of his old fire flickering in his dark eyes.
The drone opened a hatch, revealing a high-frequency cutting laser. "Anomaly detected. Collection for the Void-Reaper archives initiated."
"Bjorn, move!" Kenji tried to trigger [Void Step].
[ERROR: MANA INSUFFICIENT]
[COST: 500 MP / CURRENT: 12 MP]
The realization hit him like a physical blow. His skills hadn't been deleted, but the "Scale" had changed. To perform a Rank 7 move in a Rank 10+ environment required energy he no longer possessed. He was a master swordsman trying to swing a blade made of a neutron star.
The laser fired.
Bjorn shoved Kenji aside, taking the hit across his pauldron. The metal hissed and melted instantly. Bjorn roared, swinging his axe, but the drone moved with a speed that made the Rank 9 Primes look like they were standing still.
"We can't fight it with stats," Kenji realized, his mind racing through the "Base Code" he could still see, though now it was garbled and complex. "Bjorn! The pipe! The one with the green valve!"
Kenji crawled toward a pile of jagged metal scrap a discarded cooling unit from a Void-engine. He didn't have the mana to "Recycle" the whole thing, but he didn't need to. He just needed one component.
[SKILL: MICRO-FORGE (RANK 1)]
He focused all 12 of his remaining mana points into his fingertips. He didn't forge a weapon; he forged a Key. He jammed the twisted piece of metal into a nearby pressure-junction and twisted.
HISSSSSSS!
A jet of super-heated, corrosive steam erupted from the pipe, drenching the drone. The machine's advanced sensors weren't designed for "Gutter-tier" hazards. Its logic-circuits fried as the steam melted its casing.
The drone spiraled, crashing into the oil-slicked mud.
[SCAVENGER KILL REGISTERED]
[EXPERIENCE GAINED: 5,000 (LAYER 2)]
[LEVEL UP: 1 -> 4]
Kenji felt a rush of fresh mana cleaner, sharper, and far more potent than the "Limiter" mana he had used before. His lungs adjusted to the pressure. The "Heavy" feeling didn't vanish, but it became a foundation he could stand on.
"Five thousand XP for one drone?" Bjorn blinked, looking at his own notification. "I just leveled up three times from a single kill."
"The scale is higher, Bjorn," Kenji said, standing up and wiping the oil from his face. He looked at the drone's carcass. It wasn't scrap to him anymore. It was a treasure trove. "The Architect didn't reset us to be cruel. He reset us because we reached the end of the simulation. This... this is the real world. And the real world is built on much better scrap."
Kenji knelt by the drone and began to pull it apart with his bare hands.
"The Seventh Revision didn't destroy the world," Kenji whispered, his eyes narrowing as he found a glowing core of Void-Ether inside the machine. "It just invited us to a bigger fight. And I'm still the Scrapsmith."
He looked up at the endless spires of the Outer Forge. somewhere up there, the True Architect was watching. Somewhere out there, his team was fighting to survive.
"Bjorn," Kenji said, holding up the glowing core. "Get the ship's frequency. We need to find the others. We're going to climb this tower, too. But this time, we're not stopping at the sky."
[NEW QUEST: RE-ASSEMBLY]
Objective: Find Elara and Zola in the Industrial Spires.
Current Rank: 4 (Ascendant)
Scrap Value: 1,200 (Void-Grade)