The transition from the claustrophobic depths of the slums to the vertical heights of the city was not a journey of a few minutes, but a grueling trek through the skeletal architecture of the old world. Above them, the Pillar of Industry rose like a jagged needle, a massive, kilometer-wide elevator shaft that served as the primary tether between the decaying Sector 4 and the glittering Mid-Tier.
Jin led the way, his ivory-toned right arm hidden beneath a scavenged, oversized duster. Every step felt like walking on broken glass; the sacrifice of his bloodline had left his core hollow, a cold ache residing where his primordial warmth used to be. Beside him, Seraphina moved with the silent, predatory grace of a lunar shadow, her silver eyes scanning the rusted scaffolding for the heat signatures of corporate snipers.
In the center of their small group, Mei struggled. Though her neural pathways had been rewritten by the Star-Seed, her physical muscles were still the thin, wasted tissues of a decade-long paralysis. She wasn't in her wheelchair anymore—they had abandoned it to move faster—but she wasn't walking unassisted either. She leaned heavily against Jin, her small hands gripping his shoulder so hard her knuckles turned white.
"The air is getting thinner," Mei whispered, her breath hitching. They were currently three hundred meters above the slum floor, standing on a narrow maintenance catwalk that clung to the outer skin of the Pillar. Below them, the fires from the crashed Vulture ships looked like tiny, angry embers in a sea of darkness.
"Don't look down," Jin cautioned, his voice low and steady despite the tremor in his own legs. "Focus on the rhythm of the climb. One step at a time."
The realism of their situation was a heavy weight. There was no magical flight here, no game-system teleportation. Every meter gained was a battle against gravity and their own failing stamina. The wind at this altitude was a biting, unpredictable beast, whistling through the gaps in the rusted steel and threatening to peel them off the catwalk like dead leaves.
As they reached a junction point where the massive hydraulic pistons of the main elevator hummed with the power of a small sun, a sudden mechanical hiss echoed from the shadows above.
A group of "Maintenance Drones"—spider-like machines the size of dogs—scrambled down the vertical surface. These weren't combat units, but their multi-jointed legs were tipped with diamond-edged cutting torches meant for repairing steel. To the drones, Jin's group was an "obstruction" on the track that needed to be cleared.
"Get behind me," Seraphina said, her voice dropping into that chilling, lunar calm. She raised her hand, but no silver light erupted. She winced, clutching her chest. The "Burnout" from her awakening at the Cloud-Palace was still too fresh; her mana circuits were raw and bleeding.
Jin stepped forward instead. He didn't use his ivory arm—not yet. He knew the world was watching, and as long as his true power remained a mystery, he had an edge. He pulled a heavy, rusted iron pipe from a nearby rack.
The first drone lunged, its cutting torch flaring to life with a blinding blue light. Jin didn't swing wildly. He watched the "Source Code" of the machine's movement. Even in his weakened state, his Runic Eyes saw the flickering [Rotation] and [Thrust] parameters of the drone's joints.
He waited until the last possible millisecond, then stepped into the drone's guard, jamming the pipe into the central pivot of its front legs. The metal screeched as the gears ground to a halt. With a sharp twist of his hips, Jin used the drone's own momentum to hurl it off the catwalk and into the abyss.
"Two more," Mei warned, her violet-tinted eyes flashing as she tapped into the local sensor grid of the Pillar. "Jin, to your left! The one on the wall is targeting the catwalk supports!"
Jin lunged, his boots slipping on the oily grate. He reached out with his ivory hand to steady himself against a support beam. The moment his skin touched the metal, the beam groaned, a faint golden light pulsing through the steel. He felt the machine's "logic"—the tension, the weight, the vibration.
He didn't destroy the drones. He reached for a nearby junction box, his fingers moving with a fluid, terrifying precision. He didn't need a hacking deck like Mei; he simply touched the wires, his bloodline allowing him to perceive the electrical flow as a series of [Current] and [Direction] runes.
He gave the wire a sharp tug, "redirecting" the flow.
The two remaining drones suddenly froze mid-climb. Their sensors turned from red to a neutral green as Jin bypassed their priority commands. They didn't fall; they simply sat there, dormant, their diamond-edged cutters cooling into a dull grey.
"Let's move," Jin urged, pulling Mei closer to his side. "The energy spike I just used will be flagged by the Pillar's central AI. We have ten minutes before they send a security squad down the elevator shaft."
Mei looked at her legs, which were trembling so violently she could barely stand. She looked at the ivory skin of Jin's arm, hidden beneath his sleeve, and then at the exhausted Seraphina. She realized that she was the bottleneck.
"I can do more than just stand," Mei muttered to herself. She closed her eyes, focusing on the residual Star-Seed energy in her marrow. She didn't try to run. Instead, she "linked" her own nervous system to the metal grate of the catwalk beneath her feet.
She used a tiny portion of her soul to "soften" the gravity around her own body, essentially making herself weightless for her brother to carry. It was a slow, exhausting process of manual bio-feedback.
As the sun began to rise over the horizon of the year 2300, casting a dirty, orange glow over the smog-filled sky, the three of them reached the five-hundred-meter mark. The Sky-Docks were finally in sight—a sprawling forest of landing pads and docked frigates that hovered like massive birds of prey.
The climb was far from over. This was the beginning of the "Long Ascent," where the mystery of the Architect and the secret of Jin's bloodline would slowly be tested against the sheer scale of a world that wanted them dead.