Chapter 43: The Iron Wastes

Chapter 43: Chapter 43: The Iron Wastes

"The fates guide those who come prepared, and abandon those who do not." — old drill sergeant’s saying.

---

The Academy’s private portal hall opened for Joel at dawn.

The hall sat beneath the Merit boards, inside a vault of white stone. Along the far wall stood a row of portals ranked from Iron to Gold. Each was a standing seam of light with its own queue and opening hours.

Joel had booked his portal the night before through the private window. Fourth Stratum. Solo clearance. Earliest available slot.

The duty clerk had read the request twice before stamping it. First-years rarely began with the Iron Wastes, and those who tried usually didn’t come back to renew their bookings.

"Your clearance is provisional, candidate," the clerk said, stamping the form anyway. "The Wastes range from Level 25 to 35 near the boss floor. Magnetic interference can disrupt most equipment, and the infirmary charges for every wound. Sign the waiver."

Joel signed the waiver, and the seam of light took him, and the light let him go in a place that rang like a struck anvil the size of a country.

•••

He felt the Fourth Stratum through the soles of his boots before his eyes had fully adjusted. The entire ground was metal, and the metal was moving.

A plain of rust stretched to the horizon in every direction. Dunes of oxidized iron rose and fell in frozen waves.

Through the rust stood the remains of the stratum’s history: gantries, wagon frames, and the ribs of machines no living person could name. They jutted from the dunes like the fossils of an industry that had died on its feet.

Above him, the sky was covered by bruised iron clouds. They turned in slow, enormous circles, each one trailing curtains of pale energy that crawled across the ground, searching for anything that could conduct electricity.

The wind never stopped. It carried the stratum’s true population: drifting shrapnel.

Flakes and slivers of magnetized metal rode the currents in visible silver swarms. They struck his coat in a steady, dry rain.

TK-TK-TK-TK.

The sound was patient and without malice. Given enough time, the metal could strip the skin from a man over the course of a long afternoon.

[Ding!]

[Fourth Stratum: The Iron Wastes.]

[Environmental hazards: magnetic storms (severe), shrapnel wind (sustained), conductive terrain.]

[Local fauna: Lv. 25-34. Apex entity: unregistered.]

Nyx emerged from Joel’s shadow, unfolding one blade at a time. Then she stopped and tilted her head.

Joel watched his general experience genuine dislike for the first time since her forging.

"The dark is wrong here, Architect," she said.

She flexed one obsidian hand. The shadow beneath the nearest gantry rippled, then pushed her away.

"I can hold your shadow and fight beside you when the darkness is deep. But I can’t make long jumps here, and I won’t be as fast. This stratum is a cage of light and sharp edges."

"Then the Wastes are a solo floor," Joel said, watching a wheel of cloud crawl across the rust, trailing a curtain of hissing energy.

"My general is grounded, my weapon is about to betray me, and everything here cuts instead of bludgeoning. That means the Frame can’t absorb most of the damage. This is the first stratum that wasn’t built for me."

He turned slowly, studying the horizon. The cold settled over him like a coat.

"Which means this place has exactly the lesson I came here to learn. Victor Kole is a lightning problem, and this entire stratum is a lightning problem. I intend to graduate before the term ends."

That was the calculation, cold and simple. The storm-brat’s gauntlet used lightning, and the Aegis Frame had one weakness.

Weaknesses weren’t something you ignored. You planned around them.

The Fourth Stratum was his training ground. Its magnetic storms and furnace bosses would either teach him to fight what he couldn’t absorb or kill him trying.

Either way, he would learn something.

Beyond the lesson, Joel needed a second soldier for his growing army. A shadow that could assassinate and an anvil that could absorb damage were not enough. He still had no answer to artillery.

Somewhere in this graveyard of iron, there was heavy metal he could recruit.

•••

The Ferro-Hounds found him within the hour. He heard them before he saw them, which was exactly the point.

Their howls came from three directions at once, rolling across the rust.

HRRAOOOOO!

Something about the sound felt wrong. Joel’s instincts caught it at once. Beneath the howl was a grinding screech, like metal scraping against metal. It sounded like a wolf howling through a millstone.

The pack raced over the dune, six Ferro-Hounds charging straight at him. Joel studied them as they came.

They looked like wolves, but they were anything but natural. Each was as large as a big hound, built from jagged, magnetized plates and steel joints. The plates overlapped along their backs in sharp rows, like blades. Their metal bodies buzzed faintly with the same pale electricity that crawled across the clouds.

The heads were the worst of the design, because they were mostly jaw, and the jaws were two slabs of shearing alloy edged like plane blades, and when the lead hound opened its mouth to howl again he could see the field between its teeth, warping the air with magnetism.

[Ding!]

[Hostile detected: Ferro-Hound (Lv. 26) x6.]

He pulled out his halberd and quickly learned why the clerk had smirked at the waiver.

He swung at the lead hound’s head. He had made this strike a hundred times before, but this time, the weapon moved off course. The magnetic field pulled at the forty-kilo halberd, dragging its blade to the side at the last moment.

Instead of hitting the hound’s skull, the blade slammed into its shoulder plates.

CLANG.

The blow staggered the hound, but it kept coming.

Worse, the magnetic field around the halberd attracted the metal slivers carried by the wind. By the time Joel finished his swing, tiny pieces of metal covered the weapon. They made it heavier, and more kept sticking to it.

’

’Right,’ Joel thought as he stepped back from the second hound’s attack.

The hound’s leap curved in midair. Its magnetic field pulled against the rust beneath it, changing its path.

Its sharp jaws caught Joel’s forearm as it passed.

SHNK!

The bite cut through his coat, skin, and flesh like a hot wire. His Frame did not absorb the damage. The wound was real, and so was the pain.

Right on cue, the system gave its dry little ring.

[Ding!]

[Host damaged: laceration (shear-class). Aegis Frame: partial absorption only.]

[Regeneration: active. Closing.]

[Lethal engagement survived (numerically superior hostiles, environmental interference).]

[Survival Accumulation: 22%.]

’So that’s the deal, Joel thought, watching the blood run down his arm. The pain made everything clear.

The Wastes hurt me, and the Wheel rewards me for taking the damage. This place isn’t a cage. It’s a sawmill, and I’m the wood being cut. At least the pay is good.’

Joel did the math as he fought. He had always been good at that under pressure.

The answer was clear. The magnetic field made his halberd unreliable, and the metal slivers made it too heavy to use.

So he made the choice the Wastes had forced him to make.

He strapped the halberd to his back and turned to face the second hound with empty hands. A small, cold grin spread across his face. He was ready for this.

The second hound clamped its jaws around Joel’s left forearm and bit down with all its strength. Its sharp metal teeth dug into his Epic hide but failed to cut through. The jaws were built to tear through armor, but his skin was tougher than they could handle.

For one full second, Joel and the hound struggled against each other. Its jaws stayed locked around his arm while its legs scraped against the rust, searching for grip.

Joel stared into its grinding metal face from just six inches away and showed it the new rules.

"You are not a wolf," he said. "You are a trap that walks, and a trap only closes once."

He closed his other hand on the hound’s lower jaw, and pulled, and the strength the Evolution had left him did the rest.

RRRIIIP.

Joel ripped the hound’s jaw from its metal frame. The plates tore apart with a loud screech, and its magnetic field died. The beast stumbled back, its ruined face sparking.

Joel finished it with a hard stomp to the skull, driving it into the rust.

The other five hounds spread out and circled him again.

But this time, they moved more slowly. The pale electricity around their bodies flickered as they reassessed their target.

Joel was no longer easy prey.

The five hounds howled together one last time.

"HRRAOOOO!"

One howl answered another, passing from hound to hound along the northern horizon. The sound spread farther and farther.

Joel stood in the falling shrapnel and listened. He understood exactly what the howling meant.

’They aren’t running away, Joel thought, flexing his forearm, which had already healed. They’re reporting. I’ve been added to a record, and that record is being sent north, deeper into the Wastes, to whatever runs this place.’

[Ding!]

[Ferro-Hound (Lv. 26) eliminated.]

[Survival Accumulation: 34%.]

[Recommendation: pursue.]

[System Note: the neighbors have filed a complaint, and the landlord is listening.]

He tucked the Null-Band deeper into his kit and rolled his shoulders until his joints cracked. Then he headed north across the rust at a steady pace, following the trail of broken metal plates and fading electricity.

He was going deeper into the Wastes, toward the place where the hounds had carried their report.

Above him, the clouds turned slowly.