The next morning on the planet began quietly. Pale sunlight washed over the city ruins as the team

  finished their gear check and gathered near the fractured stone steps leading into the upper tier. The

  structures here looked vastly different from the lower districts. Their silhouettes rose higher, their

  footprints wider, and their stonework cleaner and more intentional. Even after centuries of decay, the

  architecture made it obvious that this was where the wealthier population had once lived.

  The upper tier consisted of four districts arranged in a tight ring. Each street held around thirty twostory homes, all larger than anything the team had cleared before. Their windows were tall, their doors

  reinforced with ornamented metal, and their inner layouts would likely be more complex.

  Vanra looked back at the team. “Stay sharp. The density of structures here is higher. Expect tighter

  hallways and more places for enemies to hide.”

  Orran rolled his shoulders, loosening them. “At least these buildings look solid. The lower tier felt like

  kicking our way through cardboard.”

  Tyrish agreed. “As long as the floors hold, I am happy.”

  They ascended the final steps into the first district.

  The air felt different. Still. Thicker. As if the entire tier had been sealed off from the rest of the city.

  No movement. No skittering. No shadows slipping across alleys.

  Just silence.

  They approached the first house with caution, but after days of fighting the time-shifting insects in the

  lower tier, they expected more of the same.

  Bash walked behind Tyrish and Korvex as they moved to the front door. Before Tyrish gripped the

  handle, Korvex tapped Bash lightly with her staff, giving him a whisper of wind, fire, and water. Tyrish

  followed with a fast strike to Bash’s arm, adding lightning and mineral. Bash felt his suit respond

  immediately. The catalyst layers inside the armor tightened and activated, ready to echo the affinities

  for their full twenty-five-second duration.

  Bash said quietly, “Ready.”

  Tyrish nodded and pushed the door open.

  He froze.

  Everyone froze.

  The room beyond was crawling with movement.

  Not insects.

  Not crawlers.

  Dozens of large, hairy spiders clung to the walls, ceiling, and floor. Their bodies shimmered faintly at

  the edges, as if bits of them were not fully connected to the rest of their form. Every few seconds one of

  the spiders disappeared with a soft ripple in the air and reappeared several feet away, slipping through

  the floorboards or walking straight out of a wooden beam as though phasing through it.

  Weaver of Voids.

  Kayris whispered, “Spiders. Of course.”

  Orran groaned loudly, his shoulders slumping. “Not again. Why is it always spiders?”

  It was a legitimate complaint. Last time they had faced spiders, they were life steal variants that had

  wrapped him in webs, drained his strength, and nearly crushed him under their toxic strings.

  “These are not the same type,” Vanra said. “These distort space. The distortions might interfere with

  perception. We proceed anyway. We have a mission to complete.”

  The spiders all stopped moving at the sound of her voice.

  Dozens of deep black eyes turned toward the doorway.

  Vanra lifted her staff. “Engage.”

  The spiders moved instantly.

  Space folded.

  Walls stretched and twisted, and the ceiling above the melee fighters warped as though it were bending

  toward them. Orran stumbled forward as the floor under his feet turned at an impossible angle and then

  snapped back to normal. Tyrish wobbled, trying to swing both zweihanders but missing completely as

  his targets disappeared through the floorboards and reappeared behind him. Kayris moved fast but even

  she lost balance, stepping into a patch of distorted space that made her entire left side feel heavier than

  her right.

  Rhoen fired, but the spider he aimed at moved through the wall and appeared behind a stack of rotted

  furniture.

  Vanra immediately sent healing pulses through the room. “Stay together. Regain footing.”

  Bash stepped in and fired at the first spider he could track. His echoes activated in bursts of lightning,

  fire, and mineral that scattered across the shifting room. It was difficult to aim. Each spider flickered in

  and out of the surrounding structure as if refusing to remain in a single place long enough to be hit.

  The distortions hit him too. They spun the edges of his vision and made his breath hitch for a moment,

  but his footing held. He gritted through the pressure and kept firing.

  Ten seconds passed.

  The spiders continued their relentless shifting.

  Orran’s blade slammed into the ground as another spider disappeared from under his strike and

  reappeared behind him. Kayris darted after it, but the moment she struck, its body shimmered and

  slipped sideways into a floorboard.

  Tyrish swung wide and caught one in mid-phase. It shrieked and dissolved into a cloud of spatial

  distortion debris.

  Bash felt the pulse crash into him. His knees bent slightly as the impact hit. T3G Space. He held his

  breath and stayed upright.

  “That was heavy,” he muttered to himself.

  Rhoen finally caught another spider as it reappeared on the ceiling. The shot tore through its abdomen,

  and it dropped like a stone. Bash felt the next pulse slam into his chest. Then another. Then another.

  They came slowly, each one like a compact hammer swinging directly into his sternum.

  Vanra kept healing bursts consistent and wide. Her eyes stayed fixed on the three melee fighters, who

  were wobbling like drunk men trying to fight in a collapsing hallway. Every time they regained

  balance, the spiders twisted space again.

  Korvex sent wind-dust pulses scattering through the room. Each shot peppered the walls, floor, and

  ceiling with mineral fragments. Some connected. Some passed through empty pockets of distorted

  space.

  Minutes passed.

  One by one, the spiders dropped.

  The distortions gradually faded.

  When the last spider collapsed, Orran was leaning against a wall, panting and sweaty.

  “Never again,” he said. “Just put me back with the life-steal spiders. I would rather take that.”

  Bash steadied himself against a pillar. SC spoke in his mind.

  “Eighty-one T3G Space essence absorbed.”

  Bash blew out a breath. “Yeah. I felt every one of those.”

  The world seemed normal again. The floors and walls stopped bending. The team caught their balance

  quickly and stepped back outside while they recovered.

  Vanra nodded once they were steady. “Collect fragments and sweep the house.”

  Bash went back in alone. The remains of the spiders had left behind small spatially fragments, spider

  legs. He crouched and started gathering them.

  SC spoke softly. “Hold one in your right hand. Focus on the fragment. Imagine the sensation you felt

  when the relic linked to you. Direct that feeling into your palm.”

  Bash frowned slightly. “Why?”

  “Do it.”

  He closed his eyes and focused. The memory of the linking wave, that warm pressure rolling out from

  his chest, came easily. He directed the feeling downward into his hand.

  His palm grew warm.

  He opened his eyes.

  The fragment was gone.

  “What. Where did it go?”

  “You placed it into the relic’s pocket dimension,” SC said. “Call it again. Focus on the fragment being

  in your hand.”

  Bash concentrated.

  The fragment popped into existence in his palm.

  He nearly dropped it. “That is insane.”

  “Yes,” SC replied. “Now store it again.”

  He focused. It vanished instantly, leaving no trace.

  SC continued. “Store only a few per house. I need to determine capacity, and taking too many would be

  suspicious. Remember, the nexus has no record of how many beasts are in each house, so small

  inconsistencies will not be noticed.”

  “Got it,” Bash said, and continued sweeping.

  Outside, the team waited while discussing how disorienting the fight had been. Tyrish rolled his

  shoulders.

  “I think I was starting to adjust near the end. The distortions were less shocking once I expected them.”

  Kayris nodded. “Same. They twist everything, but if you know they will twist, maybe we can time our

  hits better.”

  “Then we try again,” Tyrish said.

  The team approached the next house. Korvex and Tyrish activated Bash again with controlled strikes of

  affinity energy. Orran ripped open the door. He rushed in first with Tyrish and Kayris close behind. The

  ranged followed and unleashed a barrage of power.

  This time, the melee regained their footing almost immediately. Tyrish landed two clean hits straight

  through a spider that was mid-phase. Kayris darted from floor to wall to ceiling, reading the distortions

  as they formed and striking just before each spider disappeared again.

  Orran anchored his stance and slammed his shield into the ground, catching two spiders as they

  materialized.

  The ranged made short work of the rest.

  Five minutes later, the house was clear.

  Bash absorbed eighty-seven pulses. He steadied himself against the doorway until the pressure in his

  chest evened out. The echoes faded and the distorted sensation left by the spiders slowly slipped from

  his balance. He took a breath, crouched, and began collecting the fragments scattered across the floor.

  He picked up three spider-leg trinkets and stored them one by one. The relic accepted each with the

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  same smooth flicker of warmth in his palm. He kept the rest in his hand to turn in later, slipping them

  into a pouch on his belt.

  By the time he stepped outside, the others were already regrouping in the street.

  Tyrish rotated his wrists in tight circles. “Better. Still weird. But better.”

  Kayris wiped a smear of dust from her cheek. “The distortions are easier to anticipate. They twist the

  same way before the spiders teleport through.”

  Orran shook out his legs as though they were heavy. “I will never like that sensation. But I can fight

  through it now.”

  Vanra looked over the team, gauging their stability. “Good. We keep pressure. No slowing. Next

  house.”

  They crossed to the neighboring building. Two stories, wide entryway, tall windows slanted with

  cracked, broken or missing glass. Tyrish activated Bash again with a fast strike to his arm, and Korvex

  followed with three controlled pulses. Bash’s gear lit internally with the familiar tightening hum.

  The door came off its hinges with a single pull. Orran charged in first, shield up, the others right behind

  him. The spiders erupted from the darkness immediately, but this time the melee fought through the

  warping angles as though they were swimming upstream. They struggled for a few seconds, found their

  rhythm, and then tore the room apart with clean coordination.

  Rhoen threaded shots into gaps in the distorted air. Korvex blasted whole corners with wind-dust

  bursts. Kayris melted from one surface to another, striking the spiders at the exact second they

  solidified.

  Five minutes later, the house was cleared.

  Bash absorbed another wave of pulses. Seveny-three more. His chest ached, but not sharply. More like

  a repeated thump, one that he was growing almost used to.

  He stored three more fragments, and the team swept the rooms with increasing efficiency.

  Then they moved to the next house.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  Slowly, steadily, the upper tier shifted from dangerous unknown to familiar battleground. Each fight

  taught them more about how the spiders distorted space. Each house refined their instincts.

  By the fifth house, the team was no longer stumbling. The distortions still bent floors at impossible

  angles, but the melee stayed upright through sheer familiarity. Rhoen and Korvex adjusted their timing

  with ease, sending shots and pulses into spots where the spiders would reappear rather than where they

  vanished.

  By the tenth house, Tyrish and Kayris were calling out patterns before the spiders even finished

  phasing.

  “Left wall ripple,” Tyrish would shout, and the spider would slip out of the woodgrain exactly where he

  predicted.

  “Ceiling bend,” Kayris would warn, and a heartbeat later she would carve into the spider materializing

  from above.

  By the fifteenth house, even Orran moved through the warped hallways with surprising confidence. He

  braced himself with his shield against walls that wavered, stepped across floors that dipped then

  straightened, and swung through distortions like he had been training inside them for years.

  Vanra quickly saw an opportunity.

  “Bash, you sweep from here on,” she said after they cleared the seventeenth house. “You collect

  fragments and check for relics. We move ahead to the next doorway.”

  Bash nodded. “Understood.”

  This became their rhythm.

  The team burst into a house, tore through the spiders in a controlled burst of chaos, dragged the

  distortions down with sheer force of will, and cleared the structure with increasing speed. While they

  marched to the next doorway, Bash slipped inside the previous house to complete the sweep.

  He sifted through collapsed storage rooms. He picked fragments off floorboards. Sometimes the bones

  of old furniture were bent slightly from spatial damage that had persisted long after the spiders died. He

  found broken dishes stuck halfway through walls, frozen in spatial malfunction. He stepped around

  beds whose frames had warped into S shapes. Every house carried pieces of the distortion with it.

  The second floor of the wealthier homes added extra layers to the sweeps. Bash checked bedrooms,

  balconies, stone bathrooms whose sinks were cracked in spiderlike patterns. He carefully stored only a

  few fragments at a time as SC instructed. Occasionally he found dormant void pockets the spiders had

  left behind, harmless once the beasts were dead but eerie to stand near.

  Meanwhile, outside, the team was becoming a well-oiled machine.

  SC observed quietly while he stored fragments and checked deeper corners the team ignored. He kept

  his pace brisk to avoid falling behind. By the time he exited each house, the team was already shouting

  inside the next one, blades clashing against chittering shrieks.

  Bash wiped dust from his hands and jogged to catch up each time.

  Every time Bash stepped back onto the street, he saw someone stepping out of a house covered in light

  debris or small cuts from distorted angles. Kayris often exited first, breathing steadily, hands already

  moving to clean her blades. Orran followed next with his shield raised. Tyrish always had a grin, proud

  of every pattern he predicted correctly.

  Vanra kept to the stree. When her healing pulses swept into the houses, Bash could see the faint glow

  leak out of windows and doorframes like light trying to escape.

  Korvex and Rhoen remained the anchors of every battle. They stood just outside each doorway, ready

  to fire the moment spiders blinked through floors or walls.

  The pace grew faster.

  His breathing quickened, not from exhaustion but from trying to keep pace with the speed at which the

  others were clearing the structures.

  And with every house came more pulses.

  Every time a spider died, another wave of T3G space essence hammered into his chest. Some were

  sharp, quick bursts that made him grit his teeth. Others rolled through his ribs like blunt, heavy strikes

  that he felt deep in his bones. The first few houses had nearly knocked him off-balance each time. Now,

  dozens of houses later, the pulses still annoyed him, still made him flinch here and there, but each

  impact blended more cleanly into the next.

  His body was adapting.

  The street was silent again. No distortions. No motion. The wind carried the same quiet hum it had that

  morning.

  The team waited for him at the district’s end.

  Vanra gave a nod. “That is one district done. Good work.”

  Kayris smirked. “It is strange. Those spiders were awful at first. Now I feel like I can predict half their

  tricks.”

  Orran let out a long exhale. “Still do not like them. But at least I am not falling on my face anymore.”

  Tyrish swung both blades once in a smooth, clean arc. “Next district is ours.”

  SC spoke as Bash finished sweeping the final house. “Two thousand four hundred ninety-one T3G

  Space essence absorbed. Ninety-seven fragments stored.”

  “Good haul,” Bash thought.

  The team gathered and Vanra looked over the district. “Slower than the lower tiers, but manageable. We

  continue.”

  They cleared the next two districts in similar fashion.

  The fourth district held a surprise.

  Halfway through, Bash went upstairs in one of the homes. SC immediately drew his attention.

  “Stop. I sense another relic.”

  Bash moved to the corner where a pile of collapsed shelves and rotted clothing lay. He sifted through it

  until his fingers closed around something small and metallic.

  A ring. Dusty. Warm to the touch.

  “Store it,” SC said. “We will evaluate later. It carries a weak gravitational resonance.”

  “Weak?”

  “Yes. But open to scaling. I will determine details later.”

  Bash stored the ring. He resumed sweeping the house, then in the next house. SC instructed him to

  recall the ring inside houses and dismiss it when leaving, ensuring no resonance leaks appeared in sight

  of the team.

  They repeated this pattern until the last house of the fourth district was cleared.

  Vanra checked the sky. “We finish the top tier tomorrow. Rest up.”

  The team found a suitable house. They ate, talked about the day’s battles, and discussed how each level

  had grown more difficult. The spiders, they agreed, were the most troublesome so far.

  Bash took first watch again.

  After everyone drifted to sleep, SC summarized the day. “Nine thousand six hundred sixty-five T3G

  Space essence absorbed.”

  Bash exhaled. “Yeah, I felt them, but they do not hit as hard as they did at the beginning.”

  “If your core behaves like a standard Spartor core, you would be near the sixth evolution already,” SC

  said.

  “Already?”

  “Yes. High-ranked essence accelerates the process.”

  He nodded. “Makes sense, so did you figure out the ring?”

  “Yes. It allows the wearer to control a gravitational field around themselves. The strength is linked to

  the size of the user’s total core.”

  “So it gives me something like a gravity affinity?”

  “Yes.”

  Bash grinned. “Could I tell them I unlocked gravity and keep it?”

  “No,” SC said sharply. “The ring is visibly a relic. You would need to wear it. It is too obvious to hide

  during use. You cannot claim an unlock.”

  “Fine,” Bash sighed. “Later then.”

  “Later,” SC agreed. “For now, keep it hidden.”

  Bash leaned back as the last of the sunlight faded. His shift ended quietly. He woke Tyrish, then settled

  down and drifted into sleep within seconds.