Chapter 86

NO WORDS

The countdown ticked its final seconds. Alexander kept his breathing steady, forcing himself not to glance upward at the gap in the ceiling directly above him. Fifty floors to climb. Against someone whose energy signatures felt like barely contained lightning.

His gauntlets hummed to his senses with stored charge, capacitors full. He had metal to grip: chest plate, heavy belt, gauntlets, and boots. But throwing himself around with Metallokinesis was exhausting in a way that manipulating external objects wasn’t. Still, it was his only option.

Ten seconds.

Chen Wei rose from his meditation pose in one fluid motion. No wasted movement, no preparation. Stillness transforming into readiness between heartbeats.

Five seconds.

The cultivator’s eyes opened, fixing on Alexander with an intensity that felt almost physical. Alexander met that gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to reveal his planned escape route with an ill-timed glance up.

Three.

Two.

One.

The barriers fell.

Chen Wei crossed ten meters in the blink of an eye. A glowing fist thrust forward, aimed at Alexander’s chest.

Alexander yanked himself upward by his chest plate and belt. His body shot through the gap in the ceiling. Below, Chen Wei’s fist struck the wall.

The stone exploded outward in a perfect cone of destruction.

Alexander cleared the second floor, struggling to control his momentum. Chen Wei tilted his head up. Something that might have been respect crossed his features.

Then the cultivator crouched slightly and leaped.

He cleared the entire distance in one motion, passing through the gap like an arrow. Alexander threw himself sideways, then up again through another hole to the third floor. The sudden accelerations made his ribs ache.

Chen Wei hit the second floor, took two running steps up the wall itself, and launched again.

Alexander spun midair, both palms facing the gap he’d just passed through. He discharged both gauntlets at full power.

Twin bolts of lightning erupted downward.

Chen Wei twisted in midair, dodging one bolt entirely. The second he caught on crossed forearms, the energy crackled across his skin as it slammed him into the wall. The smell of burnt flesh wafted up, but when the lightning died, the cultivator merely shook his arms out. Char marks crossed his forearms.

Alexander’s mind raced at the possibilities. Resistance? Absorption? Or just endurance beyond anything human?

Chen Wei answered by launching forward again. This time he spun midair, leg extending in a kick.

Alexander brought both gauntlets up, catching the blow on their reinforced backing. The kinetic dampeners absorbed most of the impact, feeding charge to the capacitors, but the force still drove him backward into the tower wall. His skull cracked against stone. Stars exploded across his vision.

The cultivator landed and immediately sprang again. No pause, no recovery. Just relentless pursuit.

Alexander snapped both hands out, discharging the kinetic energy the gauntlets had just absorbed, amplified by his own Electrokinesis. This time the cultivator couldn’t dodge. Twin bolts struck Chen Wei center mass.

The lightning threw him backward and down. He crashed onto the stone of the second floor, the impact sending him sliding across the surface. Without missing a beat, Chen Wei planted one palm behind him and kicked up into a backwards flip, landing on his feet in a ready stance.

Alexander felt his control wavering. Holding himself aloft through pure Metallokinesis was draining him faster than he’d expected. He glanced up, spotted the route to the fourth floor, and threw himself toward it.

The trajectory was off. Instead of sailing through cleanly, he crashed against the edge, catching it with both hands, legs dangling. Below, Chen Wei was already moving, crouching for another leap.

Alexander reached out with his mind, gripping a metal platform jutting from the wall below. He ripped it free just as Chen Wei launched upward.

The platform caught the cultivator completely by surprise, slamming into him mid-leap. The collision sent him tumbling into the wall with a crash, buying Alexander the seconds he needed to haul himself up.

Fourth floor. His arms already ached. His breathing came harder than it should. But something else caught his attention.

His Technopathy sensed devices a couple floors above. Dozens of them, built into the walls. They felt like cannons, which made no sense even though they responded to his probe, sluggish but functional.

Chen Wei exploded up through the floor behind him.

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The cultivator had changed tactics. Instead of leaping through the gap, he’d punched straight through the stone floor, sending debris flying. He twisted mid-ascent, one foot tapping the edge of the hole he’d created to redirect his momentum forward.

The punch came too fast to dodge completely. Alexander yanked himself sideways by his armor, but the fist still clipped his shoulder. Even a glancing blow sent him spinning. Droney zipped away in the opposite direction, causing Chen Wei’s eyes to track it for a heartbeat before refocusing on Alexander.

The cultivator touched down with just his toes, already rotating into another attack.

Alexander launched himself upward, noting the gauntlets hadn’t recharged yet. He kept pushing a steady stream of current into them; even if the damage they caused was minimal, they could still prove useful. He grabbed two platforms with Metallokinesis and sent them spinning from opposite directions at Chen Wei.

The cultivator slid to a halt, hands shooting out to catch both platforms. Energy pulsed through them, and Alexander felt his control over them shatter. Chen Wei leaped, spun horizontally, and flung both platforms like spinning disks.

Alexander barely cleared the next floor as the platforms sliced through the air where he’d been. He hit the fifth floor hard, rolling across the stone. Behind him, Chen Wei smashed through the floor again, barely missing Alexander as he slid past.

The cultivator was already rotating midair as he reached the apex of his upward momentum. His eyes found Alexander.

Alexander felt Droney rising through the hole beneath Chen Wei. He grabbed the drone with Metallokinesis and propelled it upward at full speed.

The drone caught Chen Wei under the chin with a satisfying crack. The cultivator spun through the air, looking genuinely dazed for the first time.

Alexander used the moment to stand, grab both himself and Droney with his power, and leap for the next gap. He cleared it, landing on the sixth floor.

The entire floor was lined with cannons just as he’d sensed. A strange mixture of archaic design built around technological firing mechanisms. But as he rose through the gap, he realized this wasn’t just one floor. It opened up into a massive chamber spanning what could have been fifteen or more floors. Ancient turrets covered every wall in an upward spiral pattern, maybe five per level. Eighty total, if his quick count was right.

They immediately swiveled toward him, tracking his movement.

Alexander’s Technopathy raced upwards through the room, overriding the target parameters just before the first turret fired. He redirected them all, setting them to track Chen Wei instead.

The cultivator burst through the floor, and the chamber erupted. The nearest cannons fired first, then a heartbeat later the next level joined in, then the next. The thunderous wave rolled upward through five floors before stopping. The rest remained silent, as if waiting for targets to enter their range.

As cannonballs filled the air, Chen Wei’s eyes widened for just an instant before he started moving. He twisted, dove, and rolled. Light touches with his toes and palms deflected projectiles by millimeters. Others he simply smashed through, the explosions creating clouds of smoke and debris.

Alexander looked up, aiming to use the distraction to gain distance, then realized there was a problem immediately. There were no platforms here. No floors between the bottom and top of this massive chamber. Just turrets jutting from the walls. He’d have to leap between them while maintaining control of the entire defensive system.

He threw himself toward the nearest turret, landing hard on its barrel. Below, Chen Wei had already adapted, weaving through the barrage with increasing confidence. Cuts appeared on his arms and face from shrapnel. Burn marks crossed his chest where he’d punched through explosive rounds. But he kept coming.

Alexander leaped to another turret, then another. Each jump drained more of his strength, the Metallokinesis taking its toll. Behind him, Chen Wei had started destroying turrets, but after obliterating three, he seemed to realize something. Each turret only fired once.

The cultivator shifted tactics, focusing purely on pursuit. He bounded up the walls, using the smoking remains of destroyed turrets as stepping stones.

Alexander pushed harder, jumping faster between turrets. His control over the defensive system started slipping. Some turrets fired wild. Others didn’t fire at all. The cultivator was gaining.

Landing on a turret near the top of the chamber, Alexander interfaced with Droney through Technopathy. The drone’s sensors tracked Chen Wei’s movement, calculating trajectory and timing. Patterns emerged. The cultivator would be in open air, completely vulnerable, in seconds.

Alexander finished charging the gauntlets, aimed, and fired.

Chen Wei raised both arms to block, but he had no way to dodge midair. The lightning struck full force, blasting him backward. He fell, tumbling down past dozens of turrets before catching himself on one far below.

Alexander considered pushing upward to the exit. But the exertion of throwing himself around was already making his muscles shake. He watched Chen Wei stand on the distant turret, looking up. Their eyes met across the vast chamber.

Then Alexander reached out with Metallokinesis, not grabbing himself, but everything else. Every turret. Every cannonball, fired or unfired. Every piece of metal debris. The entire chamber’s worth of material.

He started it all spinning.

The metal vortex was easier to maintain than throwing himself around. Much easier. Alexander didn’t understand why, but he could feel the difference. Moving everything in the same direction, even in a complex pattern, took less Will than controlling his own movement.

Chen Wei began showing what he was truly capable of. He jumped between spinning turrets, ran along rotating cannonballs, used pieces of debris as stepping stones through the chaos. Each movement perfectly calculated, slowly ascending through the maelstrom.

Alexander tried to focus on individual pieces, pulling three turrets from the mass to target the cultivator specifically. But controlling separate elements while maintaining the whole proved exponentially harder. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

Chen Wei kept climbing.

Alexander abandoned finesse. He clenched his fist, pulling all the metal inward toward the cultivator. At first Chen Wei dodged, but metal clipped his leg, sending him stumbling. More pieces struck him and began piling on.

Alexander stretched out both hands, pulling everything together. The cultivator disappeared under tons of metal. Alexander discharged the gauntlets again at full power, lightning coursing through the entire mass.

He stood panting, certain that had to be enough.

A few moments passed. His heart hammered in his chest. Breathing came hard.

Light began seeping through cracks in the metal. The mass started vibrating.

Then it exploded as Chen Wei roared. Alexander lost all control over the metal as the cultivator dropped down, then kicked off empty air itself with a bright flash of light, landing against and then running in a spiral up the wall.

Alexander clamped down on his frustration. He grabbed Droney and threw himself up through the exit to the next floor.

Another massive chamber stretched above. Another fifteen or more floors of open space. But these cannons looked different. Where the ones below had looked technologically archaic, these looked truly ancient. Made of what appeared to be obsidian and covered in runes that glowed faintly.

They swiveled toward him and opened fire immediately. Alexander reached out with Technopathy.

Nothing. They didn’t respond at all.

They were Qi-powered. And they clearly didn’t like him.