CHAPTER 10: THE UNWRITTEN RULES OF BẾN ĐỤC
Bến Đục had no dawn. At the bottom of Barcelia, the only light came from the industrial aether-waste pipes, which cast a sickly green glow, and flickering, rusting neon signs.
Kai De Rossi pulled his hood lower and passed through an iron door hidden behind a waterfall of industrial runoff.
Inside was the “Sunken Iron Market”—the largest underground exchange in the harbor district, where bloodstained goods were laundered before being sent up to the Upper-Class Tier. The air was thick with cigar smoke, sweat, and mixed mana. Mercenaries in mechanized armor, exotic-beast smugglers, and courtesans carrying enchantment arrays drifted back and forth.
Kai went straight to a trading booth tucked deep in a dark corner, protected by a magnetic glass cage. Sitting behind the counter was Vander, a smuggling kingpin with half his skull and his left eye replaced by magitech alloy.
“You don’t look like you’re from around here, kid.” Vander exhaled a thick stream of cigar smoke. His mechanical eye emitted a faint whine as it scanned Kai’s lean frame. “Lose your way?”
Kai didn’t answer. He tossed his field backpack onto the counter and unzipped it.
A cold, pale-blue light immediately spilled out. Thirty wild Ice-element Aether Cores lay stacked inside, the primal bloodlust of the Far North’s magical beasts still clinging to every edge of the crystals.
The space around the booth abruptly fell silent. Vander’s mechanical eye flickered rapidly, and the numbers on his spectrometer leaped wildly. The two towering guards behind him immediately placed their hands on the grips of their magitech guns.
“Ice Bear’s Ironhide Core and Frost Ape cores. Completely untreated.” Vander’s voice dropped, his mocking smile vanishing. “Far North goods. There are traces of Spatial Rift radiation. Did you rob Wolf Castle’s supply depot before bringing this ‘hot merchandise’ here? Any bank or trading guild in Barcelia that scans this radiation signature will have federal security on us within fifteen seconds.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Kai replied calmly, his deep-red eyes fixed on Vander’s. “Clean the radiation signature, erase the origin trail, and recast them as anonymous commercial crystals. Pay me in an untraceable black credit card.”
Vander gave a rough, cackling laugh, dry as metal striking metal.
“You understand the rules of the game. But this stuff is too hot. The risk to my refining furnace is enormous.” He tapped his armored fingers against the table. “Ten percent of market value. I keep ninety percent as a risk fee. Take the money and get lost.”
He jerked his chin. The two guards took a step forward, radiating the pressure of Intermediate Mages. They thought they could bully some reckless kid who had stolen goods beyond his station.
Kai sighed. A breath of freezing white mist escaped his lips.
His right hand, wrapped in bloodstained gauze, still hung at his side, but one finger twitched.
Establish boundary. Compress.
CRACK!
The crystal wineglass on Vander’s table suddenly shattered. It hadn’t been smashed; the entire glass structure had been crushed inward from four directions, compressed into a clear marble the size of a pea that bounced onto the wooden tray. Not a spark of mana escaped. No spell algorithm appeared.
Vander went rigid. His mechanical eye couldn’t detect any elemental fluctuation from what had just happened. The cigar fell from his lips. He understood all too well that if the invisible force had been applied to his throat instead of the wineglass, he would have died before he could blink.
“Thirty percent for the refining fee. I take seventy percent.”
Kai spoke blandly, breaking the deathly silence.
“And if you plan to secretly install a tracking chip in the credit card, that alloy head of yours will be the next thing I compress. Do we have a deal?”
Vander swallowed. He nodded slowly and gestured for his two guards to back off. “Deal.”
Fifteen minutes later, Kai walked out of the Sunken Iron Market. In his coat pocket was a black credit card containing 150,000 Elen—a small fortune, enough for an ordinary citizen to live comfortably for several years, but only just enough to let him set foot in the world of magitech algorithms.
His next goal wasn’t a weapon. It was saving his own hands.
The mana conduits in Kai’s right arm throbbed with stabbing pain. Overuse of Spatial Compression Force had left the dense network of capillaries riddled with cracks. If he continued casting high-intensity magic in the upcoming exam, this arm would be permanently crippled.
Kai turned into an alley flooded with garbage and pushed open the door of a decrepit machine shop called “Bio Scrap—Doc.”
Inside, artificial body parts were strewn everywhere, from hydraulic prosthetic legs to spectroscopic eyes. Old Doc—a hunched old mechanic with grease-caked hands—was dismantling a damaged suit of armor.
“I need a conduit device. Not a weapon, and I don’t need mana amplification. I need a heat sink and physical load-bearing support for my capillary system.” Kai got straight to the point and placed a stack of high-denomination Elen bills on the table.
Old Doc narrowed his eyes at the money, then looked at the teenager’s bloodstained, gauze-wrapped hand. He clicked his tongue and shuffled toward the pile of rusty oil drums in the corner of the shop, where he dug out a metal box covered in dust.
“High-end federal military gear, but defective.” He tossed the box onto the table.
Inside was an Algorithmic Channeling Glove. It had an open-finger design, made of a lightly textured black material that was incredibly tough. Blue-metal mana-conducting channels ran along the back of the hand and forearm.
“Experimental K-7 model.” Old Doc muttered an explanation. “The engineers wanted to make a load-bearing device for burst-damage mages. But its circulating algorithm system is defective. Feed mana into it and it dissipates heat extremely well and withstands immense pressure, but its feedback circuit is sluggish. Nobody can use it in a fight because it slows their casting by half a beat.”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand Elen.”
Kai swiped his card. He lifted the icy metal glove, removed the blood-soaked gauze, and slid his right hand inside.
CLICK... BZZT...
The metal joints automatically contracted, locking around his forearm and finger joints like a second skin. Pale-blue channels lit up as the glove connected to his Mana Awareness Zone.
Kai closed his eyes and decided to test it on the spot.
Establish boundary.
Compress.
He drove Tier 3 Ice-element mana and Spatial pressure into his palm. An incredibly brutal recoil immediately slammed back against him as it always did.
But this time, Kai’s capillaries didn’t tear apart.
The K-7 glove’s algorithm system roared to life. The matte-black metal trembled violently, absorbing the entire massive physical recoil in place of his flesh. The blue channels turned brilliant red.
HISSSS—!
A stream of white mist vented from the heat-dissipation valves running along his forearm.
There was no bleeding. No mind-searing pain. Only the deep, muffled sound of machinery operating. Better still, the glove’s complex algorithm system had created a perfect cover. Anyone looking at him now, or any spectrometer scanning him, would see only Kai operating a high-intensity Ice-element magic system through a mechanical device, completely concealing the invisible distortion of Space.
“The half-beat feedback delay doesn’t matter to me.”
Kai clenched his metal-clad fist, feeling the power poised to erupt. His Spatial magic had never needed magic circles, and his casting speed was already several times faster than an ordinary mage’s. The glove’s delay merely brought him back down to the speed of a normal person.
A perfect trade-off.
“Do you have any news about Saint-Helios Academy’s Freedom Exam?” Kai looked up at Old Doc, his deep-red eyes now gleaming with the confidence of a wild beast whose fangs and claws had just been sharpened.
Old Doc clicked his tongue and stuffed the money into his pocket.
“Kid, having money and nice toys doesn’t mean you’ll survive. The Freedom Exam isn’t a written test. The Upper-Class nobles call it the ‘Killing Furnace.’ If you want the right to pass through the academy gates, you’ll have to sign a Life-and-Death Contract. The day after tomorrow, at the West Gate Iron Ruins, people without recommendation papers like you will have to hack each other apart to steal Merit Points.”
Kai smiled faintly, a cold smile that hadn’t appeared once since he left Wolf Castle. Spatial pressure caressed the fingertips of his metal-clad hand.
“Perfect. I was never good with pen and paper anyway.”