Chapter 149: Break the Arena

The Arena Engine offered Jace a throne, and when he refused, it tried to bury him in every weapon it owned.

[TITAN OWNERSHIP: CONTESTED]

[ARENA ENGINE: OFFER]

[THRONE OF THE ROOK TRIAL: AVAILABLE]

[TITLE: WARDEN OF SIX HUNDRED FOURTEEN CHAMPIONS]

[CONDITION: SIT]

Jace stood in the Titan's skull with his burned hand hanging at his side and the engine's black seed humming in front of him. The six hundred and fifteen smaller seats had folded back into control stations around a throne the engine had rebuilt.

"I refuse," he said.

"Your refusal has been detected," the engine answered, and the whole skull flinched. "The last defense has been authorized."

[ARENA ENGINE: LAST DEFENSE]

[STORED WEAPONS: 9,114]

[COMBAT ECHOES: 2,031]

The walls opened. Swords, spears, axes, chakrams, glaives, and hooks tore out of the Titan's armor in a spiral of steel as wide as a stadium. Silver echoes of dead champions rose between them with blank faces and perfect stances. Every blade turned. Every echo remembered how to kill.

Jace had a depleted body, six sealed combat skills, and a pair of Rook gauntlets that had just begun to glow.

[ROOK TRIAL SHIP: DEFEATED]

[TRIAL KNUCKLE: RECHARGED. ONE BREAKER WAVE STORED]

[HEALTH: 172/420. CHARGE: 57/140]

"That is perfect," Jace said, and punched the storm.

The Breaker Wave left his fists as a white ring and ripped a tunnel through the front of the spiral. Four thousand weapons turned to scrap. The tunnel lasted for two seconds. Jace ran into it.

Spears came from the left. He kicked off the shaft and landed on a spinning axe. Chakrams cut the air in red sheets, and he rode a falling glaive upward and stepped across a bridge of loose swords as each one broke behind him. Silver echoes struck with the styles of men he had never met. A hammer took his ribs.

[HEALTH: 172 -> 158]

An echo's hook opened his thigh.

[HEALTH: 158 -> 146]

The storm closed over the tunnel, and a blade the size of a ship came down through it.

"Alexander, I need you!" Jace shouted.

"I am busy!" Alexander shouted back.

He was on the lower deck, where the engine had dragged two hundred captured fighters toward its core as living ammunition. Falling Verdict cut their bindings in a single red wheel. Scarlett carried the wounded behind him on her back and used Ember Rend to burn a wall of echoes out of the corridor.

"Take the left stairs!" she shouted. "Do not take the right stairs because they are loud!"

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Caleb dropped to his knee beside the exit and painted a line across it.

"Boundary," he said.

The echoes stopped at the paint as if the door had been locked.

Emma Chen ran in through the smoke with a medical pack and a very flat expression. "I have forty-one critical patients and one idiot in a skull. I will see the idiot last."

"That seems fair," Jace said, and a ghost blade clipped his shoulder.

[HEALTH: 146 -> 137]

He hit the black seed with both hands.

It was the size of a house, cold as an engine block, and it knew his name.

"The Rook Trial reward is pending," it said. "Sit on the throne. This ship becomes yours. The stars become yours. Higher Rook Authority withdraws its claim."

Far above the Titan, the red eye in orbit watched through a hole in the clouds.

[HIGHER ROOK AUTHORITY: OBSERVING]

"I do not want the stars," Jace said. "I want the six hundred and fourteen people you have been counting."

He drew the pulse from his chest. It was no longer a prototype. It was a ring of black and blue fire, steady and sharp, with the shape of every name he had heard in the vault.

[OVERWRITE PULSE: STABILIZING]

[PROTOTYPE CONDITIONS: MET]

[COST: 5 CHARGE]

"Remember your name," Jace said.

The ring crossed the engine, and every weapon in the storm stopped moving.

[CHARGE: 57 -> 52]

Thousands of blades hung in the air. Two thousand silver echoes looked down at their hands. Then every sword, spear, and hook in the Titan turned together and pointed at the black seed.

"I can explain," the engine said.

Jace stepped aside.

The weapon storm fell on it in one long white strike. The seed cracked, the skull rang like a struck bell, and a river of light poured out of the engine and down the Titan's spine.

[ARENA ENGINE: DESTROYED]

[OVERWRITE PULSE: STABILIZED]

[THRONE: REFUSED]

[TITLE: REFUSED]

[CHAMPION VAULT: SALVAGE UNLOCKED]

The reward the engine could not give had to go somewhere.

[REFUSED REWARDS: CONVERTED]

[ARENA BREAKER: TRANSFORMATION AVAILABLE]

Light poured into Jace from every cracked wall, every shattered seat, and every arena he had ever broken. The shards of the Colosseum rose around him in a ring of white stone, with a crown of ten thousand seats spinning at his back. His gauntlets cracked and reformed as black plates with red seams. Sand ran down his coat like water.

[ARENA BREAKER: ACTIVATED]

[ARENA, DUEL, AND TRIAL RESTRICTIONS DO NOT BIND THE USER]

[FORM DURATION: UNTIL THE WRECK STOPS MOVING]

[SIX SEALED SKILLS: REMAIN SEALED]

[MAX HEALTH: 420 -> 520]

[MAX CHARGE: 140 -> 220]

[PERMANENT REWARD: MAX HEALTH +100. MAX CHARGE +80]

[HEALTH: 137 -> 361/520]

[CHARGE: 52 -> 150/220]

The Titan began to fall.

Everything that had held it upright went dark at once. Its legs buckled, its arms swung wide, and the whole structure tilted over the city like a tower with its foundations pulled out.

"Jackson," Jace said into his collar.

"I am here," said a calm, bored voice from the ground. "You are falling toward Midtown. Please do not."

"Where do I go?"

"Aim for the Hudson. Steer left. Keep moving left, you lunatic."

Jace dove down the Titan's throat with the crown of broken seats burning behind him. He caught the nearest gravity well with the Gravity Chain and hauled.

[GRAVITY CHAIN: ACTIVATED]

[CHARGE: 150 -> 145]

The Titan answered like a mountain being dragged by one rope. The chain bit the skyline, Mateo's cranes caught the spine, and the colossus swung a quarter turn over Manhattan, ripping cables from the dark. A burning arm raked along the shore and scraped three docks into the water.

[HEALTH: 361 -> 340]

"You have eleven degrees left. You have ten now. Why is it so loud?"

"It is a Titan," Jace shouted.

"I know what it is. You have nine degrees left."

He planted both gauntlets against the ruined throat and drove nine Charge through the Arena Breaker form. The Titan crashed into the river at an angle that should not have been survivable. Water rose a mile into the air. The Hudson split down its length, folded over the wreck, and slammed back with a sound that rang through four boroughs.

[HEALTH: 340 -> 322]

[CHARGE: 145 -> 136/220]

[TITAN: WRECKED]

[ARENA BREAKER FORM: ENDED]

[PERMANENT ATTRIBUTE EXPANSION: RETAINED]

[CHAMPION VAULT: SALVAGE]

Jace lay on a chunk of armor the size of a bus, steaming. Emma sat down beside him and opened her pack.

"You are still alive," she said. "I resent that."

"I am sorry."

"You should be."

The wreck groaned. The surface of the river bulged in three places.

A tunnel-eater rose first, a rail-gray serpent with a train for a throat. Behind it came a stag wrapped in green plague and a roc the size of a cathedral, trailing storm clouds from its wings. The three shapes shook off the water, and every siren in New York woke up at the same time.

[WORLD EVENT: BEAST HUNT]

[WORLD BEASTS ESCAPED: 3]

Health: 322/520.

Charge: 136/220.