There was a version of preparing for a retrieval operation against the most militarily advanced clan on Vorga’s floating islands that involved weapons, training, tactical rehearsal, and the steady building of combat confidence. Max did all of those things. He also did the thing that none of the Morag survivors had a framework for, which was to sit cross-legged on the floor of the concealment section and press his fingers against a jacket for forty seconds while the System did something to its structure that changed what the jacket fundamentally was.
He had accumulated 240 IP and the days of planning and intelligence gathering with the Morag survivors had given him time to accumulate without expenditure. 240 IP was not an unlimited resource but it was a meaningful one, and he intended to use it with the precision he applied to any resource that had a ceiling.
He started with the jacket.
The pool generated three options and the first one made the choice easy.
Threat Triangulation at Grade II — hostile intent detection in a radius that covered immediate threat range, operating on the neurological signature of intent to harm rather than visible action. At Grade II, the radius was sufficient to give him warning before an attack completed rather than as it connected. Against several Vel-Thak war-caste Septur with enchanted weapons and a combat tradition built on coordination, that warning margin was not a luxury.
He pressed two fingers to the jacket’s collar and held contact. Forty seconds at Grade II. The inscription settled in with the quality he had come to recognize — not dramatic, not luminous, just the specific sensation of something finding the configuration it had been waiting for.
Threat Triangulation, Grade II, Cognitive. Active. 4 IP spent. Remaining: 236.
The dagger next.
He turned it over in his hand and ran the pool. The options that came back were calibrated to the blade’s composition and history — carbon steel, quality construction, one previous significant use in the spider encounter.
Fracture Frequency at Grade I was in the pool. He had been hoping for it and the hope was a calculation rather than a sentiment — against Septur enchanted armor, a blade that vibrated at the resonant breaking point of whatever material it contacted was not a finishing weapon, it was an opening gambit, and opening gambits in confined spaces against superior-sized opponents were the difference between a fight and a conversation about why a fight was a poor idea.
He took it. Eight seconds at Grade I. 4 IP spent. Remaining: 232.
He set the dagger down and picked up the shotgun.
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The Damage Boost on the shotgun was sitting at Grade I. He had applied it weeks ago in the underground cave, a 20% output increase that had been functioning exactly as specified through every encounter since. Grade II would take that 20% and make it something else entirely — the System’s progression tables showed Grade II Damage Boost as a qualitative shift rather than a quantitative one, the enchantment reaching deep enough into the weapon’s material identity that the boost integrated at the structural level rather than sitting atop it.
The cost was 100 IP.
He looked at his balance. 232. He looked at the upgrade cost. He looked at the balance again with the expression of a man doing arithmetic that he had already done three times and was doing one more time because the amount leaving was significant and significant amounts deserved a final confirmation.
He held the barrel with both hands and focused.
Twelve minutes.
The longest inscription he had performed. The System’s interface showed the process as a continuous thin line of light moving from his fingertips into the weapon’s composite body — not the quick settling of a Grade I inscription but a sustained penetration, the enchantment being driven deeper into the material with the effort of something that was being invited into spaces it hadn’t previously reached. His hands stayed in contact through the full twelve minutes. The barrel was warm when it finished — not hot, warm, the specific warmth of an object that had recently been through a significant internal process.
Damage Boost, Grade I upgraded to Grade II, Martial. Active. 100 IP spent. Remaining: 132.
He set the shotgun down and rolled his shoulders.
He had a Grade II Damage Boost weapon, Threat Triangulation on his jacket, Fracture Frequency on his dagger, Grip Enhancement on his boots, and Tether Point on his residence key. His Enchanting System had 132 IP in reserve. His Ghost was at Infant Stage, operational, tested, reliable.
He was, by any honest accounting, significantly better equipped than the man who had fallen through a nesting ground some days ago.
He picked the shotgun back up and loaded it.
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Sera had been watching the entire session from a position across the room that she had taken without announcement and held without movement. She watched with the quality of attention that specialists gave to other specialists’ work — not the casual observation of someone waiting for the session to end, but the focused assessment of someone building a model of what they were seeing.
When he set the gun down she said: ’Your system is strange.’
He was checking the ammunition load and did not look up. ’Everything about me is strange,’ he said. ’I’ve been told this before. It hasn’t been a problem.’
Sera looked at the jacket on the floor, the dagger beside it, the shotgun in his hands. ’You inscribe power into objects,’ she said. ’We inscribe objects with power. The direction is different.’
He looked up at this. It was a more precise distinction than he had expected and he acknowledged it with the specific attention he gave to precise distinctions.
’What’s the practical difference?’ he asked.
’When we inscribe an object,’ Sera said, ’we give it a fixed capability from our external power source. The object holds what we put in. When you inscribe an object, you wake up what it already contained.’ She paused. ’Our artifacts run out. Yours do not.’
He looked at the jacket. He thought about this for a moment.
’That is an accurate technical distinction,’ he said.
’It also means your objects have a ceiling determined by what they are,’ Sera said. ’Our objects have a ceiling determined by how much we put into them.’
’Different limitations,’ he said. ’Not better or worse.’
She looked at him with the expression of someone revising an assessment. ’No,’ she agreed. ’Not better or worse.’
He stood up and put the jacket on. The Threat Triangulation activated its ambient awareness immediately — the concealment section’s occupants registered as neutral presences in the expanded perimeter, their intentions toward him absent of hostility, the detection quiet and specific and precisely the difference between a security layer and a weapon.
He picked up the dagger and sheathed it. He settled the backpack on his shoulders.
’The warriors are ready?’ he asked.
Sera stood. ’They have been ready for thirty-seven years,’ she said. ’A few days of operational preparation was not a significant addition to the timeline.’
He looked at the five assembled Morag warriors who had been selected for the retrieval team — a number that reflected the balance between operational capacity and the concealment requirements of a mission that depended on not being seen rather than on winning an open engagement. They were equipped with the specific readiness of people who had been told their entire lives that one day the purpose of their preparation would arrive, and it had arrived, and they were ready.
He checked the Ghost. Infant Stage, deployed, sensory link active and clean.
He checked the Pathfinder. Active contestants: 6,203. He opened the Treasure Hunt tracker to check positions before moving.
The leaderboard had updated.
He looked at Raze’s position indicator and then at the estimated location of the Grand Archive and then at the distance between the two.
She had closed a significant amount of the gap since the last time he checked.
He put the phone in his pocket without changing his expression.
’We leave in ten minutes,’ he said.
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