Micro felt weak and empty now that his core and all the energy in it had been drained away. He felt lucky that the process had been slow enough not to cause his energy to explode out of him as it had done the first time he’d taken apart his core, but he already missed it. He tried circulating his energy out of habit, but there was nothing there. He tried to take it from the air, but it was too strongly attracted to the half-formed humanoid shape hovering above the centre of the stage.

  “That’s just greedy…”

  With a makeshift core of tightly fitting chaos energy, he was barely able to prevent the life force of his soul from being drawn out of him, but he confirmed how powerless he was when he tried to jump up and grab hold of the glowing figure and failed to leave the ground. He tripped over the side of the stage, unable to correct his path with his weakened arms and legs. He braced himself to hit the ground, but something padded his impact.

  “Oof…” Several muffled voices grunted beneath him. Micro scrambled off the pile of immobile cultivators who had broken his fall, then looked back to see that one of them was Vera, the healer from the Soul Sect. He called out to her, still unable to catch his breath. “Sorry, are you okay…?”

  “You…” Vera spoke as she opened her glassy eyes. “Your soul… you…”

  “I’m fine, sort of—” Micro interrupted her. “But I don’t know what to do…”

  “Your soul… I see…” Vera sighed. “You were a traveller, after all…”

  “What do you mean?” Micro asked, kneeling down beside Vera.

  “I’ve seen the soul of one other hero…” she replied, closing her white eyes as the pain in her chest throbbed. “But theirs was corrupted… polluted by chaos…”

  “Pollution is a big problem,” Micro said, nodding in agreement. Vera opened one eye and reached out to touch his chest.

  “But yours remains pure, though hidden behind the same chaos that fills this place now…” she continued with shallow breaths, then nodded. “Run, if you can…”

  “I can’t leave my passengers lying on the side of the road!” Micro replied. “Is there a way to stop all this?”

  “Stop it…?” Vera groaned, turning her head to look up at the glowing form above the stage. “It still lacks a soul… If you could prevent the soul from entering the vessel, then perhaps…”

  “Where’s the soul now?” Micro asked.

  “There—You’re too late…” Vera replied slowly, pointing up at the sky. “It’s coming…”

  As Vera fainted, Micro looked up to see something like a shooting star falling toward the stadium. He climbed up onto the stage again, where the Imperial Guards and his friends still lay, and looked up at the floating figure. It had begun to look mostly human, and it slowly descended to the ground next to Micro as a familiar blue cloak materialized around it.

  “Hello?” Micro called out to the boy, but there was no reply. He continued to watch as it landed softly on its feet, apparently alive, though its eyes were closed. He waved his hands in front of the hero’s face, and poked its shoulder several times, but there was no reaction. He wondered if it was sleeping, but then recalled Vera’s words.

  “So the hero doesn’t have a driver yet,” Micro thought aloud, then he looked up again. “But the driver is that soul up there…”

  Micro then tried to push the soulless hero out of the path of the incoming soul, but he felt like he may as well have been pushing a mountain. He tried picking up the hero next, but he felt something pop in his lower back and gave up. He looked around the tournament at the mostly unconscious cultivators that surrounded him, but found nothing of use. As the soul grew brighter and brighter in the sky, Micro began to feel anxious, unable to think of a way to prevent it from entering the body in front of him. Eventually the soul shone above him as brightly as the rising sun, and he looked up in time to see it crash through the barrier of mysterious energy on its way to the hero it was meant to inhabit.

  “Ah, that might work!” Micro suddenly shouted as one final idea came to his mind. He clumsily climbed up the unconscious hero in front of him like a tree, coming to rest on its shoulders just as the soul came rushing down. He held his hands up to shield his eyes from the blinding light, but the soul wasn’t slowed by his hands. Micro yelped as the soul crashed into his chest, the force of which sent him flying off the hero’s shoulders and into arena stands. Landing on the stone seats between two unconscious cultivators, he looked around as the green barrier crumbled away, its particles blinking out of existence as they scattered. With the barrier no longer intact, the moon and stars were finally a familiar colour, though he soon realized that he was only able to see them with his right eye.

  What few cultivators were still conscious ceased their agonizing screams as the wind began to move gently through the arena once more, and several others began to wake up, but there were no words spoken. Ignoring the strange sensations in his chest for the time being, Micro ran straight back to the stage to where his friends still lay. He knelt down beside Kel and grabbed his shoulders.

  “Kel, wake up!” Micro shouted while shaking him with the limited strength he had.

  “Master…?” Kel mumbled as his eyes slowly opened. “You—Agh…”

  “Can you walk—” Micro began, but Kel suddenly rolled over onto his side and grasped his chest. Startled, Micro quickly rose to his feet, but he had no idea what to do next.

  “My core…!” Kel said through a cough. “It’s gone!”

  “It’s gone?” Micro asked, but as other voices began to echo here and there, similar statements could be heard. “Oh right, mine is too. Weird, huh?”

  “The array…” Lena called out as she sat up slowly. “It drained us of our internal energy, until the moment the hero’s vessel was complete…”

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  “But it didn’t kill us,” Azar grunted, still laying on the ground. “Why?”

  “It seems jade cores were most affected,” Lena said, though her own face was pale. She struggled to balance on her feet while looking around. “But all were damaged. Mine is unstable, so weak…”

  “I know the feeling!” Micro nodded sympathetically, though his casual demeanour seemed to cause Lena a good deal of mental strain.

  “Hmm…” Lena analyzed Kel for a moment as he sat in shock. “Your core is nearly gone, but it isn’t gone…”

  “What?” Kel shouted in agony. “What do you mean?!”

  “Keep your voice down,” Azar rebuked him as he raised a hand to his head in pain. “Your core is there, but any jade core in the vicinity is likely near death…”

  “Huh…” Blue spoke up. “Now I’ve been sacrificed twice. Looks like my core is mostly dried up too.”

  “That’s pretty lucky,” Micro replied, relieved to see her smiling.

  “Could be worse…”

  “But you, Micro… Even with a higher level jade core, you shouldn’t be able to—” She suddenly paused as she looked closely at his chest with glowing eyes. She gasped at what she saw. “Your core! It’s completely broken, but there’s something else…”

  “I fought to keep my core intact,” Kel said in confusion. “Surely you would have been more capable than I was—”

  “Oh, I covered my soul with chaos energy to keep things together. The kept the energy in my soul from flying away,” Micro explained. “It seemed pointless to hold on to the jade core. This one might feel weird, and I can’t use any energy, but it’s better than my soul bursting out of this tiny body. It’s the other soul swimming around in there that bothers me…”

  “What…?” Lena barely managed to mutter. “Wait, the soul!”

  She looked over at the cloaked hero who stood motionless only a few paces away. It radiated a terrifying aura, but it remained completely still. Vera slowly crawled up onto the stage and approached the group on her hands and knees.

  “We don’t have time!” Vera shouted as panic overcame her fatigue. “Your cores are tomorrow’s problem! The vessel is unstable!”

  As Vera warned, the hero’s empty vessel suddenly began to twitch and convulse. It collapsed to the floor as its breathing grew hoarse, and internal energy began to spill out of it in waves that violently pushed everyone on the stage away. No one among the conscious cultivators in the arena could harness a single drop of energy with their damaged cores, and could only crawl away.

  “That’s all the energy it took from us, huh?” Micro said, struggling to endure the pressure. “If that explodes…!”

  Even the two sapphire level Imperial Guards were unable to raise even the thinnest of defensive auras and helplessly backed away from the unstable hero’s vessel in terror. Kel tried to drag the still unconscious Tae away with him by her hands, but they were both pushed off the side of the stage by a particularly powerful wave of energy that shook the arena.

  “The core is destabilizing too quickly!” Vera shouted as the sound of panicking cultivators began to increase. “Run, if you can!”

  Blue found her way into Micro’s pocket as he helped Kel lift Tae off the ground. Micro started putting as much distance between them and the ticking time bomb behind them as possible. Micro noticed Ki lying in his way and managed to grab hold of her with his other hand, but he lamented that he could carry no more passengers to safety. For a moment, he was hopeful that he would be fast enough, but as he finally reached the exit, he knew it was too late. Without looking back, he knew, as did everyone around him, that an explosion of energy was about to consume them all. He looked up at the stars, still only visible to his right eye, wondering if the old man was somewhere among them.

  “Maybe another goddess will take me home this time…” he whispered to himself as he accepted his fate.

  “Room for one more…?” Blue let out a short laugh that sounded more like a weak cough before closing her eyes.

  “Sure,” Micro replied, but she was already unconscious. “I can—”

  But he didn’t finish his sentence, as he caught a glimpse of something like a bolt of lightning flying through the sky towards them. He thought it may be a problem with his eye at first, but after blinking away his tears, he was sure that it was coming straight toward them.

  BOOM

  He couldn’t turn his head fast enough to follow the flash of light as the light collided with the stone platform behind him, sending out a shockwave that knocked him to the ground and made his ears ring. Not a single cultivator remained standing as tiny pieces of the stone platform rained down on the arena. Micro peered through the cloud of dust, trying to comprehend what he had just witnessed, and it became clear with a gust of wind.

  The dust was quickly swept away by a shockwave originating at the centre of the collapsed stage, where the empty hero’s vessel now lay beneath the foot of a woman in light blue robes. She looked young and kind, but she released an aura that was hard to believe. Even compared to the unstable hero with an emerald core, her presence was like a mountain weighing down on him. He watched her summon a rope of radiant light, which she then used to quickly tie up the hero’s empty vessel, apparently stabilizing it enough to prevent it from exploding for the time being.

  “How strange,” the woman said as she looked with disgust at the being beneath her feet. “Another failed summon.”

  Apparently content with her inspection of the lifeless hero, she held out her hand and fired an energy attack similar to the Spirit Wave Skill which Micro had recently learned, but it was far more refined. In less time than it took Micro to blink, the empty vessel had disappeared along with a spherical chunk of the earth beneath it. Rather than exploding, all of the energy which had been confined in the hero’s vessel dissipated harmlessly back into the air.

  “Quickly, this way…!” a timid voice suddenly whispered behind Micro.

  “Hmm?” He turned to see a familiar face with one red eye.

  “Quickly!” The young woman grabbed him by the back of his robe and yanked him to his feet with surprising strength. He stumbled toward the exit as she pulled him out the door and turned onto the empty street.

  “Hello—What are you doing here?” Micro blankly stammered. “I thought you left…”

  “Forgive me, brave messenger!” the woman replied. “I sensed something had gone wrong the moment the barrier was erected. The summoning was corrupted by some unknown force…”

  “The summoning?” Micro gasped. “You knew about the summoning? Are you—”

  “Forgive my insolence, honoured messenger!” she shouted with tears in her eyes as she led him faster and faster through the alleys and buildings of the deserted city. “Despite your merciful orders, I couldn’t bear the knowledge that you were left to face a corrupted hero alone!”

  “Corrupted?” Micro asked. “Corruption, pollution… What a messy day, huh?”

  “I don’t know how, but a completely different soul than that which was promised for the vessel is what appeared in the stars,” she explained.

  “Oh, that’s been known to happen,” Micro replied with a subtle grin.

  “I don’t know what became of the soul, but it likely would have caused the hero’s vessel to mutate into something terrible. I’ve seen it happen…” the woman explained as she quickened her pace, pulling Micro along behind her.

  “Pump the brakes!” Micro dug his feet into the ground, bringing them both to a sudden stop between two old buildings. “You’re a magician?”

  “What…?” She turned around with a look of surprise. “Of course I’m not a magician…”

  “Oh, thank goodness—”

  “I’m a chaos witch.”