Luke had never been skydiving, but with his Acuity boosted perception of time, he felt like he did a pretty good job. He had his arms out, his legs bent, and he was falling as slow as he could. It was still terminal velocity and he would die if he hit the ground at this speed. He had a plan for that.

  A few floors ago, he had fired off his Apex Machine skill. A runic helicopter was now slowly forming on the ground floor. Time passed with agonizing slowness as he fell, staring at his skill as it went to work.

  The gray ball of his mana puffed out.

  Wind whipped by his face as he fell twenty feet.

  Thin lines of violet color started tracing the outer edges of the heli’s body and canopy.

  Multicolored lightning cracked nearby as he fell another forty feet.

  A flat disc formed atop the highest section.

  Rain pelted him as he fell faster than the water droplets did.

  Runes started forming out of violet light, etching themselves into the gray structure.

  He fell another fifty feet and his Acuity boosted bullet time ran out. His fall seemed to suddenly accelerate and he felt like the ground was rushing up to meet him. In panic, he threw out the Greater Machine Soul before he got confirmation the skill finished summoning.

  The gods of magic must not have hated him too much because the soul slid into the runic heli the instant it was ready for it. Luke had given it instructions before he even jumped, so the Greater Machine Soul immediately took off, heading straight up at Luke.

  They met midair about thirty feet above the ground floor, and the runic heli pulled itself down at the last second to give Luke the gentlest landing it could. Thankfully, the heli had a flat disc instead of blades, so he landed directly atop the flattest portion, spreading his arms out to lessen the impact.

  He still hit hard. He banged his head against the gray surface and flopped around for a half second. He caught himself before he fell off and the heli finished lowering itself all the way to the ground.

  He took a deep breath and hopped off the flight surface. He suspected that if he didn’t have an enhanced constitution, he would have broken bones with that stunt. Instead, he was only slightly bruised and able to climb into the runic helicopter and close the canopy.

  The wind and rain immediately cut out and he sighed in relief. He leaned back in the comfortable chair Apex Machine had created. It was like a cross between a lazy boy chair and a racing seat.

  He felt a strange sensation wash through him. It was like he was being filled up. When the sensation passed, he finally recognized it. Glory. He was starting to develop that sense now. Apparently jumping out of a skyscraper castle, plummeting over a hundred stories, in the middle of a mana storm, and surviving, was worth a lot of glory.

  “Head back to the apartment at top speed. Stay low and keep a building or two between us and the castle,” Luke said.

  He was immediately pushed back into the seat, glad for the extra padding. The runic heli banked around nearby apartment towers and shot forward, heading for Momoh’s family tower. Luke winced as they slid by tower after tower with only a few feet to spare. No wonder the hover transports usually flew higher.

  We are being followed.

  Luke jerked at the sound of the voice in his head. He looked up, but couldn’t see past the flight disc above him. “How many of them are there?”

  Two flying hexagons have taken off from the castle and are headed this way. Both appear to have three passengers each.

  As the voice talked, a screen appeared in Luke's mind. It showed a view from the top of the heli, pointing at the sky above them. The mana storm took up most of the screen, but on the edges were a pair of hexagons slicing through the air. They were fairly far back and losing ground. Even with the weaving through buildings, the runic heli was faster than theirs. A yellow fireball shot towards him, missing the heli by few feet. It splashed against the street below them and kept burning long after contact.

  Luke checked his mana. It had been full from the potion and even the enhanced draw of Apex Machine hadn’t dropped it below half yet. He estimated that he would get to the apartment with about fifteen points of mana left. He might want to-

  His thought was interrupted by a louder than normal crack of multicolored lightning. One of the following flying machines had gotten hit and was tumbling to the ground. The other hexagon stopped midair and started lowering itself to the ground. It wasn’t fast enough. It got hit by the storm a short while later.

  Luke didn’t get to enjoy the sight because his own transport was hit two seconds later. A whipcrack of multicolored lightning hit the runic heli and reduced it to a puff of mana. He found himself flying through the air in the middle of the city. Before he could even consider summoning another vehicle, he smacked into the third story of a stone building. He deflected off, spinning through the air. His Acuity tried to help him, but it just made the spinning pain worse. He blacked out midair.

  ???

  He was wet and he hurt. Did water hurt him? Some of the wet was warm. Was he bleeding?

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  His thoughts slowly ordered themselves and he remembered how he had gotten here. Apparently there was a valid reason why people didn’t fly in mana storms. Good to know.

  He touched his face. His nose was broken. He checked for broken bones and thankfully found none. He was bruised and bleeding all over, but it was something his healing potion could fix. Assuming it hadn’t broken in the fall. He reached for the bag he took from the thugs.

  It wasn’t there.

  The bag must have fallen off him as he crashed into a building. He looked around for it. He was on the ground floor, the level the dwarves kept green and growing. The rain kept falling and the whipcracks of lightning never stopped. He saw where he had crashed through a nearby tree on the way down. The bag was hanging from a branch about ten feet above him.

  He wasn’t alone. In the windows of several of the nearby apartments were dwarves, right up against the windows, staring out at him. He waved his hand and yelled for help.

  No one came.

  He slumped back and let himself cry in pain for a little bit. Maybe some frustration too. He could understand that the mana storm was dangerous and no one wanted to go out in it. But he was injured and not a one of them wanted to help? That was hard to bear.

  After a bit, he psyched himself up and stood up with a shout of pain. He couldn’t put any weight on his left leg, and his left arm was in agony. He hopped over to the tree and grabbed the trunk. He used every bit of his buffed strength to snap off the branch his bag was caught on. Once it was on the ground, he scooched over and opened it up. Several bottles had shattered so he had to carefully sift through the shards. Thankfully, the healing potion was still intact. He popped the cork and downed most of it, pouring the last bit on his nose.

  Then he slumped to the ground and closed his eyes. He ignored the wind blowing and the rain pelting his face. He lay there motionless while the potion did its work. When he felt the magic had run out, Luke stood back up. He wasn’t back to 100%, but it was good enough. He would finish healing overnight with his passive health regeneration. He wondered if he should bump his Constitution next level up. If he hadn’t had his buff active when he hit the building, he might not have survived the impact.

  He shook his head. Leveling up his main class was a ways away, he had to get his skills above twenty-four first. No wonder people were stuck at this threshold for a while.

  He ignored the dwarves and strode over to a main street with only a slight limp. The nobles had said something about the zipstring still working in the storm. He walked until he found one and handed over the thug’s money to rent a covered transport.

  The hover sled was pulled along at high speeds down the main thoroughfare while Luke thought about next steps. There was a good chance the people after him had called ahead and sent goons to the apartment. He decided that if any of them threatened Jinx they were all going to die. If not though, he just wanted to get out of here. Kruro was already on the train south, he would just board the next one. Hopefully he had kept enough money here for a ticket.

  As he neared the apartment tower, he slowed down and watched the windows. The light in his apartment was on. He hadn’t left it on. He frowned. If those assholes had touched Jinx, he was going to send enough cannon fire into the building to flatten it atop them.

  He reached into the bag and pulled out the stun baton. He would start with Mr. Nice Guy, and then use the tube for Variable Ammunition if needed. Too bad he couldn’t just fire whatever spell he wanted from his hands. It needed the containment of a rifle barrel or a baton tube.

  “Hey, Luke. Come over here. Get out of the rain,” a voice growled out.

  Luke spun around and was shocked to see Jinx there. She was hiding by the pillars of a different building almost a block away from his apartment. He hurried over to her with his arms out wide. “You’re ok! I was so worried.”

  He tried for a hug, but she phased through his arms. “No grooming until after you are dry. Why are you all wet? What is going on?”

  “I should ask you the same thing. What are you doing out here?”

  “You first,” Jinx insisted.

  Luke nodded. “There is this noble guy, Viscount Osifo, that hates me because I’m human and I won the tourney he tried to rig. He had his thugs capture me, but I escaped and came here to check on you. What happened to you?”

  Jinx narrowed her eyes because she could tell he was leaving stuff out. “I was sleeping when I heard people break into the apartment. They were loud and started breaking stuff right away. I thought about killing them, but I wasn’t sure if you would get mad at me. You said not to murder elves. So I took a few of your favorite things and dropped through the floor. And then the next one and the next one. I wasn’t sure where to go next, but then I felt you coming so I waited here.”

  “You felt me coming?”

  “Yes, through the bond. Don’t you feel it too?”

  Luke pushed his Perception and searched for a metaphysical connection between the two of them. Now that he focused, he could kind of feel it. Maybe. “I guess I can feel it. You must be much more sensitive to it than I am though, no way I could feel you coming from a way off.”

  “Yes, I’m wonderful. Maybe one day you will be as fantastic as I am. You will have to train hard to keep up with me.”

  Luke laughed. “Sure thing. I’ll train hard. You said you brought my favorite things?”

  She took a few steps back and showed him a small pile of things. A package of dried fish, a toothbrush, and a thin book. “This is all I could carry. Well, I brought some cores too, but I had to eat them. I needed the energy in case more people attacked.”

  Luke reached down and picked up the book. It was slightly wet from cat saliva, but it still made him smile. “Runes for High Intensity Combat. You’re right, Jinx. This is my favorite thing. But I should probably get my power armor too. Do you know if they are still in the apartment?”

  “I think they are waiting there to ambush you. They broke your metal suit. It was the first thing they did.”

  Luke frowned. It made sense that they had been sent ahead to lay a trap for him. The fact that they broke his mech suit right away was concerning though. These people might be more competent than the two he had dispatched at the castle. He might be able to defeat them and get his suit back, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Better to avoid the fight and meet up with Kruro to get his bigger mech back.

  “Forget about them then. They can wait forever for an ambush that’s never going to happen. Let’s go to the train station and see when the next train is heading out,” Luke said.

  Jinx had eaten the money he needed to buy a ticket, but maybe they could sneak on. Luke packed away the book and fish and headed back out into the storm. It took some convincing to get a cat to follow him into the rain, but eventually she came along.

  Another zipstring trip later, and they were at the train station at the edge of the city. Most of the city was deserted because of the storm and the station was no exception. There were only a few people doing essential jobs and running errands that couldn’t wait.

  There was only one problem. All of the ‘employees’ were more muscular than average and a few of them had fancy tunics peeking out from their ill fitting uniforms. This was a trap. Apparently, Osifo really wanted Luke dead and had the influence to get it done.

  Too bad for him, Luke had a way around all of that. He turned to Jinx and said, “How do you feel about flying?”