He gathered several artifacts and laid them out on the table. The majority were from the boxes lining the shelves and in various states of disrepair, but he tossed in the green flashlight orb.

Angel held his hand over the assortment of Magitech and focused on his new Feature. He watched the table expectantly. Nothing happened. That was relatively typical, so it didn’t perturb him much.

He ran his fingertips along each of the artifacts, keeping his focus. That didn’t lend any more results than the first attempt. He pictured the artifacts on the table sliding across it. The orb lit with its green glow. A low hum rose up from his arm as it twitched.

“Aha!” Angel exclaimed. He focused on the thought of the orb moving. It inched forward reluctantly. His eyes narrowed and he doubled down, spending all his attention to try and get the orb to roll.

Purple energy sparked at his forearm and the orb rocketed off the table and into the wall, striking it with a loud bang and putting a sizeable dent in the metal. Angel cursed and grabbed the orb, checking it over. It was undamaged.

“Interesting,” Angel said once his inspection was finished. He put the orb back on the table. He tried focusing on another one of the broken artifacts, straining so hard that a small headache built in the back of his head, but it didn’t budge an inch.

He gave up with a sigh. “Noted. This only works on artifacts that still, well, work. I suppose that makes sense.”

Angel picked the orb up and rolled it around in the palm of his hand. He shifted his request, this time picturing the artifact floating a few feet into the air. More easily this time, it lifted from his palm and hovered before him.

“Interesting. I wonder if there’s a size limit,” Angel muttered. He put the orb away and got his board, focusing on it instead.

Given the same command to float, the board lifted. It spun in the air at his behest, then lowered back to the floor gently.

Angel felt a slight dizzy spell tickle his mind. He sat back down and returned the board to his back. Magicore Command took up a rather significant amount of magic. It wasn’t something he saw an immediate use for in combat, unless there was no size limit – and he doubted that was the case. Launching an artifact at somebody wasn’t all that much more effective than hitting them with an overpowered lightening bolt.

“There’s got to be more to it,” Angel muttered, scooting his chair back to the table and mulled over the artifacts.

Hours went by as he tested the functions of the Feature, stopping to let his magic recover whenever it got too low. He was able to make the flashlight orb fly around the room and dance, but that was about the extent of his progress.

Angel could feel his concentration slipping as night fell and marched on without him. He rested his head in one hand, idly fiddling with a few of the artifacts. He reorganized them into a smiley face, using the green orb for one eye and a gear for the other. It turned out rather lopsided.

“You look like shit,” Angel informed the smiley face. It didn’t respond. That was too bad, as Angel did tend to prefer when his insults were acknowledged.

The metal shifted. A powerful wave of static assaulted the back of Angel’s mind and he leapt to his feet as he felt magic drain at a rapid rate. Wires and tubes within his little art project snapped together, reforming around the green eye.

Metal rivets skittered across the table to bind pieces together and edges sealed themselves together of their own volition. The smiley face slowly turned itself down into a frown. A puff of smoke rose up from the eye and the light went out.

The rest of it fell apart immediately after and it returned to a pile of scrap. Angel didn’t move for several seconds as he processed what had just happened.

“Buried Gods,” Angel breathed. “It was reacting to my insult?”

He picked up the broken flashlight orb. It was well and truly fried. The runes on it were blackened to the point where he would have been better off building a new one rather than repairing it.

“I see,” Angel said to himself. “It’s not that it only works with functional Magitech. It just needs an external power source. But the scope of this… Buried Gods. I’ve got a lot of testing to do.”

Angel yawned and glanced out the window. It was pitch black. With a sigh, he stood up and put a bit of order back into the workshop before heading to his own room right next door, a sense of smug satisfaction floating around him like a cloud.

He’d gotten his main goal. The intricacies were still waiting to be discovered, but they could keep doing that for a bit longer. It wouldn’t do to accidentally sleep through Alison and Tilly’s exam because he was working all night. He flopped into his bed and wrapped the blanket around him. Sleep took him within minutes.

Angel woke the following morning to a knock on the door. He rolled out of bed, shaking off the last vestiges of sleep as he went to open it. Lilian and Silver greeted him on the other side.

“Did I miss something?” Angel asked.

“We’re just checking on you,” Lilian replied. “You’ve barely left your room the whole time you’ve been here.”

“Why would I?” Angel asked, baffled. “I’ve got so much research to do. Although you have come at a good time, I just figured out a major obstacle. I’ve gotten almost everything I need from here. Having a place to stay where there aren’t monsters or bandits trying to kill you every few hours is a real efficiency booster.”

“That’s why choppers are the best form of air travel,” Silver said. “Unlike here, where you’re cooped up in a tiny boring room with four metal walls, a chopper coops you up in a tiny metal room with beautiful sights below you.”

“Are you trying to sell me a chopper?”

“Depends how much Vei you have.”

“Not enough,” Angel said with a chuckle. “By the way, I might have need of a chopper soon. I’ve got a plan to get the Key fully working, but we’re going to need to go on a road trip. I’d much rather make it by air.”

“Consider it done,” Silver replied. “I think I might have swindled a few too many people here anyways. It might be good to go on a short leave of absence, and Dalliah only told me to ‘help you however I could’. She probably should have been more specific there if we’re being honest.”

“Do you know when we’re leaving?” Lilian asked. “I can buy supplies.”

“Might as well get them today,” Angel said. “I don’t have an exact date yet, and I know there’s a competition that Silver wants to win so he can get his hands on a bracelet. Probably after he gets that.”

“He mentioned you assigned Alison and Tilly to winning that,” Lilian said, raising an eyebrow. “Do you really think two students are going to beat experienced Tinkerers?”

“Alison is a force of nature, Lilian.” Angel chuckled. “She’ll be terrifying in the future, so don’t just relegate her to a student. Tilly is no joke either. She’s quite capable, and they’ve both made good progress. Is it enough to beat a professional?”

He shrugged. “No clue. But, as Silver and I already discussed – if it isn’t, we’ve always got his old vocation to fall back on.”

Lilian smirked. “Robbing Molten Ridges while employed by a magistrate? That’s got to be a new one.”

“Not in the slightest,” Silver replied. “Half the bean counters embezzle funds. This will just be a little more direct.”

“More importantly, how’s the new core?” Angel asked Lilian. “You haven’t mentioned anything about it.”

“It seems to be working perfectly,” Lilian said. “I’ve fed it a small artifact already and it functions as normal. This should last indefinitely.”

A part of Angel wanted to ask Lilian why she planned to stick with them if her core was fixed, but he suppressed it. There was no reason to dig at old wounds. If she wanted to turn a new leaf, he wasn’t about to stop her.

If anything, Silver’s support was more suspect. But, as long as they either had enough coin or an exciting enough job, he suspected the former bandit wouldn’t have much complaint following along.

“I’m glad Soul didn’t do anything too overt, then,” Angel said. “Don’t let your guard down, though. I’m serious – this isn’t an if but a when. He did something, we just don’t know what.”

Lilian nodded. “I understand. In any case, I’ll go get the supplies. How much should I get?”

“Two weeks should be more than overkill,” Angel decided. “And Silver, how long would it take to get a chopper ready? In case we need to leave early because the city was mysteriously liberated of a certain bracelet.”

“Already prepared,” Silver replied with a grin. “It’s waiting for us in the hangar.”