Sofia was right. If he spent too much time here, he would lose everything. Elijah did not try to punch the wall. He knew from the system that physical attacks would just bounce off a Logical Ward. To break a wall of code, you had to be a hacker. You had to use the Akashic Mandate. Elijah sat down on the dirt in front of the giant brass wall. He crossed his legs. He closed his eyes. He pushed his Overclocked mind completely into the Mandate. The physical world vanished. The dirt, the mountains, and the sky faded away. In the world of the mind, Elijah saw the wall for what it truly was. It was not brass. It was a towering, infinite ocean of glowing green and gold numbers. It was trillions of lines of computer code, moving and shifting like a giant waterfall. Elijah reached out with his mind. He grabbed a string of green numbers. He began to "Digest" the wall. He untied the knots in the code. He deleted the rules that said the wall was solid. His Overclocked brain worked at 400% sp

Elijah stood on the ruined, dusty plains of China. His right arm was completely shattered. Violet blood dripped from his broken black glass skin. He was breathing hard. A few miles away, Adam the Plumber sat in a comfortable chair. Adam smiled. He held a giant, glowing yellow crystal. It was the seed of mutation. Behind Adam was the biggest Soul-Well on Earth. Ten million souls in a massive silver pool. That was the power Elijah needed to save his 12,000 sleeping people in New York. He had exactly one hour and twelve minutes left. "Stop!" Elijah roared. His voice shook the ground. He started to run forward. Adam did not look scared. He just smiled wider. "You broke the giant wall, King," Adam’s smooth voice carried easily across the miles. "You punch very hard. But you cannot punch time. You are too late."Adam dropped the giant yellow crystal into the massive silver pool. HISS.The beautiful, pure silver water instantly turned a sick, rotten yellow. Then it turned pitch black.

Elijah stared in horror. The power was trapped. The Spirelet was working, but the magic could not shoot through a mile of heavy ocean water to reach the sky. [TIME REMAINING: 15 MINUTES.]"Push harder!" Elijah yelled at the Spirelet. [NEGATIVE. MAXIMUM OUTPUT REACHED. THE WATER IS ABSORBING THE ENERGY.]Elijah looked up at the dark water above him. He had the power. He had beaten the guards. But physics was beating him. He needed something stronger than magic. He needed heat. Massive, unbelievable heat to vaporize the water and clear a path for the beam. But where could he find that much heat at the bottom of the freezing ocean? Elijah looked down at his feet. He remembered his history books from the old world. Japan was a chain of islands built on a massive tectonic fault line. It was an area where the Earth's crust was thin. Right below this sunken city was the Earth's core. "System," Elijah said. "If I connect the Spirelet to a geothermal vent, can it use the Earth's magma t

The moment the fireball hit, the nanobots simply scattered. They separated perfectly, creating a giant hole in the middle of the face. The black fire flew right through the empty hole and crashed harmlessly into an old building behind them. Then, the nanobots instantly snapped back together, reforming the perfect silver face. "YOUR ATTACK IS INEFFICIENT," the Swarm buzzed. "WE HAVE NO CENTER. WE HAVE NO HEART. WE ARE EVERYWHERE."Before Elijah could throw another fireball, the giant face dissolved. The silver cloud rushed forward like a fast-moving river of metal. It surrounded Elijah completely. Elijah was caught inside the cloud. It was like standing inside a dark silver sandstorm. The tiny nanobots were flying around him at the speed of bullets. And every single nanobot had a blade of "Solid Logic" on it. SCRAAAATCH!Elijah screamed. The tiny machines dragged across his dark obsidian armor. One tiny machine could only make a microscopic scratch. But there were two billion of th

The sky was screaming. It was not a human scream. It was the sound of the atmosphere burning. High above the Earth, the giant golden eye of the World-Eater stared down. The Father had spoken, and his voice had shaken the bones of the King of the Grey. Now, the Father was attacking. A solid pillar of golden fire, as wide as a city, shot down from outer space. It slammed into the brand-new gray shield that Elijah had just built around the Earth. Elijah stood in the wet, ruined plaza in Shanghai. He looked up. His perfect, beautiful gray ceiling was cracking. Thick, glowing lines of gold were pushing through the gray fog. The heat from the golden beam was so intense that the rain in Shanghai instantly turned to steam. The wet asphalt streets dried up and began to melt. [CRITICAL ALERT!][GLOBAL SHIELD INTEGRITY DROPPING: 90%... 85%... 78%.][WARNING: COMPLETE FAILURE IN 40 SECONDS.]Elijah’s Overclocked brain analyzed the attack. "The shield is too big," Elijah whispered. His purpl