Alex took in a deep breath. He sat on the floor in the quiet of his room on the Nighthawk with his legs crossed. He already knew what he was doing. It was his exercises. Nightly, he practiced his breathing, funneling aether into his muscles. It wasn't how he normally used it in the Path of Might. There, he funneled it all into one limb, increasing the size and mass of his muscles to give a more powerful blow.

No, he had recently learned the concept of this from an interesting ally—the Path of Grit.

It wasn't the only one he had picked up from the old man, but it was the easiest to pursue. He already understood the Path of Might and the Path of Step. Those were integral to him now. The remaining three, Will, Breath, and Grit, were not ones he had learned in his long captivity.

Breath would always be a matter of time; focusing on flow was part of it anyway. Will would take longer, and it was harder for him to grasp. That left the easiest to understand and practice—Grit.

Alex's muscles tensed under the influence of aether, but they didn't expand the way they did under 'Might.'

"It's just part of the family business, son." The words echoed in his head, a wrench in the machine to interrupt his focus.

A flash of light crossed his mind. A blade extending out from his leg and cutting through a man's arm. An anvil aimed at a large man's head, crushing it like a watermelon. A man bound in a chair in a dark room, with only a single light in the darkness. A gunshot before he slumped in the chair.

Alex pushed the thoughts away. He needed to focus on the task at hand. He pushed aether across his body, spreading it like a web through each muscle. He then withdrew it, and the muscles relaxed.

With another breath, he did it again.

In and out. He pushed away all thoughts of the world around him. He pushed out his memories of the past. All he wanted to focus on was the technique.

He didn't notice the shadow that fell across the door until it was too late.

"Hey, Alex, are you busy?"

Li Wen stood at his door, bereft of her usual long leather jacket and wide-brimmed hat. To Alex's surprise, she even had a face now. Her gem must have been the one that Mister Deadman had broken.

She held a piece of parchment in her hand, rolled up into a tube shape. Alex frowned but pushed himself up from the floor. He'd never figure out the Path of Grit if things continued like this.

"Yeah, but tell me anyway," he said.

He hadn't noticed until then, but sweat covered his entire body. The focus required to work on a technique was simply too much stress on the body. Working with aether had a physical and mental cost, even in a relatively safe situation.

It was one of the reasons everyone had to name techniques. The words allowed them to control the flow of aether better than just using their mind. It called into being all the practice they had put into the technique and allowed them to control their power in stressful situations.

It took real mastery of your technique, curse or otherwise, to do it without words. That or a lot of power.

"I didn't want to come to you with it, so I didn't until I was sure."

LI Wen was fidgeting—she never fidgeted. Alex frowned. Whatever she was about to tell him, he already didn't like it. He just had to hope that it wasn't that the ship was falling apart around them.

"What are you talking about?"

"Take a look."

She handed the parchment to him, and Alex unfurled it. He turned his head as he read it. It had a sort of poem on it. He raised an eyebrow at Li Wen.

"It's nice," he said. "But I don't see what's wrong with it. Where did you get it?"

"Erin left it out in the open," Li Wen said, crossing her arms and leaning on the doorway. "I picked it up and read it, but it didn't make sense at first."

"At first," Alex said, looking over the text again. "But you kept reading it until you understood it."

"Linguist." Li Wen shrugged. "I didn't think much of it at first, but then I realized it was a code."

"Are you a linguist or a spy?" Alex whistled.

"I like codes," Li Wen said. "But what's important is what it means. She's being called back to the Revolution."

Fwoop.

Alex put the parchment down, allowing it to roll itself back into a tube. He took in a deep breath. It wasn't any of his business. Erin was part of the crew, but they weren't forced to stay together. He'd run the whole thing alone if he had to.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

But that didn't mean the idea didn't hurt.

Erin wasn't the strongest of them, but he couldn't deny that she had come in clutch despite her reluctance to fight. Would he be alive if she hadn't been there to help on Glory Plateau? Would Lucien have given the finishing blow before everything went to hell?

"What do you want to do?"

Alex grimaced. He was their leader, even if he didn't want to be. He didn't like that Li Wen had pried into Erin's business, but at the same time, what she had found couldn't be ignored.

Couldn't it?

"I don't know," Alex said, picking up the parchment again. "She isn't gone yet."

"What will you do when she does leave, though?"

"Honestly?" Alex asked, stuffing the parchment in his pocket. "I'll let her. We can't force people to do what we want them to do. We can't force her to come with us beyond what she's willing."

"It would be no different than the Military Police when they conscript civilians." Li Wen nodded.

"We'll take it as it comes," Alex said.

Crunch.

A sharp object slammed against his skin, and Alex blinked. He looked down at the wooden rooftop below him. How long had he been out? He didn't know. All he knew was that his entire body ached, and he was on his hands and knees.

"However you're doing this, it isn't cool," Mister Deadman's voice tingled in his ears, and Alex looked up to see the man standing above him with his double-bladed scythe. "You need to die now, you hear!"

The scythe came down, and Alex threw himself to the side. He rolled across the rooftop, his body complaining the entire way. However, he noticed in all the commotion that he was still in one piece. Even given the stunning effect of shattering a gem, Mister Deadman hadn't managed to cut off an arm or a leg.

That was odd.

Alex should have been dead, but he knew it. He approached his feet, facing Mister Deadman, and reached into his gate. His curse was already active. It was like he hadn't been gone at all. Alex thought that he would lose everything while stuck in a memory and have to reopen his gate to keep fighting, but that wasn't the case.

Whoosh.

"How do you do it?" Mister Deadman asked as he swung his scythe around him.

"No idea," Alex whispered, holding up his arm as electric sparks ran down it. "Junk Arm."

Bzzt.

Metal formed around his arm in jagged pieces, and a hot pain cut across his skull. Alex ignored it. He wouldn't let himself go down again so he could drop out of his second level soon. His body would just have to put up with the pain until he was done.

"Death's Advance!"

Ting.

Mister Deadman crossed the distance between them in a flash of movement, sliding forward with his scythe before bringing it down on Alex. Alex raised his arm and caught it, holding back the first blade as Mister Deadman pressed down on him. Alex grunted as he pushed the scythe up.

"Your body isn't normal, you hear?" Mister Deadman's breath came in ragged gasps. "You went down, but your skin turned as hard as a stone. It isn't cool that you can defend yourself when knocked out!"

Alex smiled. That explained it. He was subconsciously putting his efforts into practice. It wasn't enough to turn him into a wall, like some of the people he had faced so far, but it had stopped Mister Deadman from cutting through him while he was out. It was a sign that he was getting closer to understanding the Path of Grit. All that practice was starting to pay off.

"Well." Alex grunted as he pushed against Mister Deadman's scythe. "It's always good to see when effort pays off."

He pushed the scythe off his arm, swinging with an arm and catching Mister Deadman in the chest. His punch pushed Mister Deadman back, and Alex used the momentum to come around with his metal arm.

Crack.

A bone scythe came between his fist and Mister Deadman's body. Bone cracked but held against Alex's strength. Alex kept his eye on the blades as Mister Deadman held him off.

"Maybe we can come to an arrangement," Mister Deadman said. "You've already wrecked the plan, but we could let you and your crew go."

"Hah." Alex shook his head, drawing back his second arm as electric bolts appeared around it. "Rail Gun!"

Bzzt.

As he slammed his fist forward, a long metal bar appeared next to it, shooting out with a magnetic push into Mister Deadman. Alex had never tried a shot so close to another person, so he wasn't sure he would hit, but it was worth a shot."

Whoosh. Crack.

Mister Deadman jumped to the side, and his scythe caved under Alex's arm, splitting in two. Alex stumbled forward as his conjured metal bar shot into the distance and disappeared in a flash of blue light. At the same time, Mister Deadman spun on his foot, bringing around his shoe in a hard kick into his side. Alex didn't have time to block or dodge, and the foot slammed hard into his side.

"Oof." Alex tilted as he caught himself, taking one step before slamming his metal fist forward into Mister Deadman's chest a second time.

Thud.

Mister Deadman fell back from the assault, stumbling backward with his hands flailing. He rolled away from Alex. Alex took a moment to catch his breath, his hand going to his side as a dull pain crept up toward his head.

"Looks like I need to try again." Mister Deadman stopped, jumping onto his feet as his hands went into his pockets.

A finger pointed directly at Alex as he fished through them, and Alex already knew what would happen. Mister Deadman would break another gem to get in some free hits. Alex grimaced, forcing himself forward as he took in a deep breath.

Aether filled his body, and Alex let it flow to his arms and legs. His muscles bulged as he raised his arm. Mister Deadman pulled out a gem as Alex leaned forward.

"Acceleration Piston!"

"Bone Shot!"

Crack.

The bone bullet slammed into his fist as she shot forward, but Alex didn't stop. Mister Deadman had the gem in between his fingers. It would only take a little pressure to crack the gem open. He slammed his fist forward as he blurred, his arm extending as he careened toward the man.

"Bone Wall!"

Bang. Thud. Clink.

Alex's fist slammed into a hard wall as a gunshot rang through the rooftop. Whatever had happened, Mister Deadman hadn't managed to break the gem. Otherwise, Alex would have been trapped in another memory.

A quick glance to the ground confirmed that a purple gem lay on the hard wooden floor next to Alex's feet. A hard white wall stood between Mister Deadman and himself, but that didn't matter. At the end of the rooftop, where a small entrance stuck out, a man stood, smoking gun in his hands.

Bolton had shot the gem out of Mister Deadman's hand and forced him on the defensive. Alex had only a moment to process that before a noise rang out from behind the bone wall.

Snap. Snap.

"I'm done with this, you hear!" Mister Deadman yelled, "Bone Chimera!"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.