The Thirteen Knight

Chapter 13- The Border Run

The Mythril chip was smaller than my fingernail, but it was heavy.

I held my breath as I lowered the soldering iron. One slip, and I would fry the delicate runic pathways etched into the metal. The workshop was dead silent, the air thick with the smell of molten lead and focus.

Tssst.

A tiny wisp of smoke curled up. The chip settled into place on the circuit board of the Apostate Bracer, bridging the gap between the power socket and the organic fiber housing.

I didn't plug the crystal in immediately. I waited, letting the connection cool.

"Okay," I whispered. "Phase two."

I took the cracked Type-4 Crystal and slotted it in.

The reaction was different this time. Before, the suit would seize up violently, hungry for power. Now, it was a smooth, liquid engagement. The demon fibers hummed, glowing with a steady, low-light crimson instead of the angry, flickering red from before.

I checked the output readings on my multimeter. The voltage was flatlining—perfectly stable. The Mythril regulator was acting like a dam, smoothing out the chaotic demon energy into a usable stream.

The crystal wouldn't crack now. But the capacity problem remained. It was like I had put a high-performance fuel injector on a lawnmower gas tank. The engine ran smooth, but it would still run dry in ten minutes.

I needed the raw core. I needed the Wastelands.

I retracted the suit and covered the bracer with my sleeve. I grabbed my datapad and pulled up the maintenance duty roster.

The Academy was under lockdown, which meant no students were allowed out. But pipes still burst, and power lines still went down. The Academy’s infrastructure stretched miles beyond the walls, reaching out to the geothermal plants near the border of the safe zone.

I scrolled through the list of work orders. Dorm 4 Plumbing... Library HVAC... Arena Cleanup...

There.

Work Order 77-B: External Conduit Repair. Location: Outpost 9 (Wasteland Border). Status: Pending Assignment.

Outpost 9. It was the furthest monitoring station before the Wild Zones began. It was basically a concrete pillbox staring into hell. Nobody wanted that job. It was dangerous, dirty, and required a Level 2 Security Clearance.

Or a maintenance waiver.

I grabbed my tool bag and headed for Randar’s office.

The office was a glass-walled box overlooking the main generator room. Randar was sitting with his feet up on the desk, reading a magazine about steam-powered drills.

He didn't look up when I walked in.

"I fixed the regulator," I said, leaning against the doorframe.

Randar turned a page. "Good for you. Don't tell me about it. I don't want to know."

"I need a work order," I said. "Outpost 9. The external conduit is acting up."

Randar lowered the magazine slowly. He looked at me over his spectacles. His eyes were sharp, calculating. He knew exactly why I wanted to go to the border.

"Outpost 9," he grunted. "That's a suicide run, boy. The demonic activity in that sector is up 200% since the breach. The Zodiac Corps are twitchy."

"Someone has to fix the conduit," I said, keeping my face neutral. "The sensors are offline. If a breach happens there, nobody will know until the demons are knocking on the front door."

"True," Randar mused. "And since we're short-staffed due to the lockdown... and since you're the only idiot desperate enough to volunteer..."

He picked up his stamp. He didn't ask me about the suit. He didn't ask me about the crystal. He just stamped a piece of paper with a heavy thud.

"Take the heavy crawler," Randar said, handing me the slip. "It's armored. And Chase?"

I paused, taking the paper.

"The conduits at Outpost 9 are near the old scavenger pits," he said, returning to his magazine. "Sometimes things... wash up there. Debris from the rifts. If you happen to find any 'spare parts' while you're working, well, the Academy doesn't need to know about every piece of trash you pick up."

He grinned, just for a second.

"Just make sure you fix the damn sensors."

"Understood," I said.

The heavy crawler was a beast of a vehicle—a six-wheeled, armored transport painted in the dull grey of the Maintenance Department. It smelled like diesel and old sweat.

I drove it out of the underground garage and toward the South Gate. The sun was high, but the light felt weak, filtered through the shimmering mana-barrier that protected the Academy grounds.

At the gate, a squad of Zodiac Corps soldiers stopped me. They were fully armored, their Divine Weapons glowing faintly.

"Halt," the leader said, holding up a hand. He scanned the crawler with a mana-detector. "State your business."

"Maintenance," I said, handing him the work order. "Sensor repair at Outpost 9."

The soldier looked at the paper, then at me. He saw the "Zero" status on my ID badge. He sneered.

"They're sending a Null to the border?" he laughed. "If a demon sneezes on you, you'll die."

"That's why I stay in the truck," I said, playing the coward.

He handed the paper back. "Go on. But if you see anything moving out there, don't try to be a hero. Just scream and die quietly."

The gate rumbled open.

I drove through. The moment the crawler passed the mana-barrier, the air changed. The heaviness of the Academy’s artificial atmosphere vanished, replaced by a dry, metallic taste.

The Wastelands.

The landscape ahead was grey and dead. Twisted trees that looked like clawed hands reached up from the cracked earth. The sky was a swirling mix of purple and bruised clouds. In the distance, I could see the shimmering rifts where the dimensions were weak.

I drove for an hour, the crawler bouncing over the rough terrain.

Outpost 9 appeared on the horizon. It wasn't much—just a concrete bunker half-buried in the side of a cliff, surrounded by a rusty chain-link fence.

I parked the crawler near the sensor array. It was quiet. Too quiet.

I grabbed my tool bag. I didn't need tools for the sensors—I needed them to harvest a core.

I hopped out of the cab. The wind howled, carrying the sound of distant screeches.

I walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. Below the outpost was the scavenger pit Randar had mentioned. It was a valley where the gravity was distorted, pulling debris from the rifts into a massive pile of otherworldly junk.

And there, prowling among the wreckage, were the locals.

Demons.

Not the weak Imps kept in jars. These were wild ones. Scavenger Hounds. They looked like wolves made of wet muscle and exposed bone, with no skin and too many teeth.

There were three of them, fighting over a carcass.

And in the center of the largest Hound’s chest, pulsating with a sickly green light, was a raw Demon Core.

It was bright. Unstable. Powerful.

"Target acquired," I whispered.

I looked around to make sure I was truly alone. No drones. No Zodiacs. Just me and the monsters.

I rolled up my right sleeve.

"Wake up," I said.

I pressed the crystal into the socket.

Click.

The stabilization chip worked perfectly. The demon fibers didn't snap or jerk; they flowed. The black chitin slid over my skin like oil, locking into place with a smooth, deadly precision. The helmet sealed around my head, and the HUD flickered to life.

System: Stable. Power Level: 15%.

Fifteen percent. That was all the cracked Type-4 crystal had left. It was enough for a skirmish, but not a war.

I flexed my claws. The movement was silent.

I jumped off the cliff, falling fifty feet into the pit. The armor absorbed the impact, turning the landing into a crouch.

The Hounds stopped fighting. They turned their eyeless heads toward me, sniffing the air. They smelled the demon energy on me, but they also smelled the human meat underneath.

They growled, a sound like grinding gears.

I stood up, the Apostate Armor gleaming in the purple light.

"I need a battery," I said, my voice distorted into a mechanical growl. "Which one of you wants to volunteer?"

The biggest Hound roared and charged.

Phase Two was over. Phase Three had begun.