Izekor tapped the paper on her desk and said, “I have found the perfect master rune for you. Perhaps too perfect. You may owe me a favor after you learn it.”

  “Now you have me intrigued.” Luke said and glanced down at the rune. It looked different from any other rune he had learned.

  “If you can learn it, this rune is perfect for keeping you safe in that metal box. The first hurdle is seeing if your language has a word for inertia.”

  “Inertia? I know that one. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force,” Luke said.

  His mind was already racing. An inertia rune would be perfect for creating an inertial dampener. It was the only way he could survive half the things that people in power armors did in the movies. Iron Man should have gotten brain damage after the first time he was thrown through a wall, and turned into jelly when Thor hit him. An inertial dampener would let Luke walk off a hit from a giant.

  “A crude understanding of the word, but sufficient for our purposes.” She slid the paper over to him. “This is a master rune. It seems simple, but it is anything but.”

  ?ζ?????

  “This is the Thenubian word for inertia. It doesn’t look like a rune because it has no connector characters. You have to create those out of intent. So, in addition to the four intents to power the rune, you’ll have to learn how to create metaphysical linkages. I know you expect to leave here in a quarter hour, but I would be surprised if you are done learning today.”

  “Well, then. I guess I can’t waste time. What are the four intents?”

  “The first intent is the feeling of weightless floating as you fall off a cliff. The second is jumping off a moving cart and rolling to a stop in the dirt. The third is the thudding impact of a falling boulder on thick mud. Finally, there is a theoretical number, a point product of each infinitesimal mass element and the square of its distance from the axis of rotation.”

  Luke tilted his head to the side. That last intent sounded very different. Instead of the usual flowery analogies, that sounded like something straight from his physics textbook.

  Izekor laughed when she saw his expression. “That is why I told you that master runes are much more difficult than the other ones. I had to take a month long class from a magister before I could understand what is needed for inertia.”

  “I was surprised because the translation my device gave me sounded exactly like the year long class I had. It was like it was directly from my college physics book.” Luke said and shrugged, “So yeah, it might take a class to understand inertia, but I already had that class.”

  The inner runewright smirked. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. We shall see. If you learn this rune today, I’ll teach you its twin. This one removes inertia, the other adds it.

  Luke smiled back at her and said, “Challenge accepted.”

  He took out his inscriber and spun it in his hand. Inertia. He could do this. Maybe even in a quarter hour like she said was impossible. He translated her flowery intents into the concepts of weightlessness, differential inertia, a heavy mass impact, and the formula for inertia: I = ∫r2dm.

  He got to work and didn’t let up for hours. Both of them were disappointed. Luke didn’t figure it out as fast as he expected, and Izekor was again frustrated by his quick learning.

  Reluctantly, she taught him the Master Inertia rune’s twin, which was almost the exact same thing with a few symbols changed around. A half hour later he knew how to temporarily add inertia to objects. Izekor was no longer surprised at his speed.

  Before he left, he got advice on where to add the inertia rune on his newest mech. He couldn’t add it to his current mech without a complete redesign, but he hadn’t inscribed his Mark IV design yet. If everything worked like he expected, the inertia rune would remove his inertia briefly whenever he moved too fast. It would be a mana hog, but it could save his life.

  On the way back down from her office, Luke stopped at Cormac’s office. An elf was just leaving, wearing the house colors of silver and gold and grumbling to himself.

  “Ah, Luke, good to see you. I got your message that you took care of the hive wolves. Thank you very much. That is a boulder out of my path,” Seneschal Cormac said and waved his meaty orc hands to invite Luke into his office.

  “You are welcome,” Luke said. “Is everything ok here? That last guy seemed upset.”

  “Do not concern yourself with him. The final day of the Malamon is tomorrow afternoon and everyone is on edge. But I called you here to discuss a different worry. I trust you heard about the updated arrival of the titan?”

  “I did. Three days, right?” Luke said and sat his armored form down across from the head orc.

  The seneschal’s office desk was considerably more crowded than the last time he was here, it was full of paperwork and scrolls of parchment.

  “That is correct, early in the morning of the third day. And as discussed, it will be your responsibility to divert the titan. I looked at the map, and it looks like our best plan is for you to meet it on the beach and catch its attention. Then draw it north and escape into the tidal caves there. Theobaldine hasn’t told me what kind of titan it is, but it is a large one. It won’t be able to follow you inside the caves.”

  “So you just want us to distract it? Not kill it?”

  “No, it would be very impressive if you were able to kill it, but no one expects it. I am only asking you divert the titan away from the estate village so our lord is not forced to fight. Lord Edobar could kill the titan of course, but it would be unseemly for him to stoop that low.”

  “Damn. I knew he was powerful, but I didn’t know he was ‘kill a titan’ powerful. I guess I should be glad that royalty doesn’t fight, otherwise I would be out of a job.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “No need to fear, the aristocrats rarely deign to do actual work, regardless of the social mores involved.”

  Luke chuckled, “Well then, I am thankful for laziness as well.”

  Cormac smiled and they discussed the plan in more depth. The orc went over different types of titans in the area, each of them sounding like a lovecraftian horror. They made plans to meet up early that morning and head out to the eastern beach.

  Luke headed back out of the village. He found the rest of his company near the edge of the forest. Vanessa had devised a crude obstacle course and was running it alongside four others. Despite having more practice than the others, it looked like one of the new hires was keeping up with her. As he walked closer, he realized it was Gina nimbly jumping over logs in the bulky mech.

  “Bossman! You’re back,” Bumblebee said excitedly. “Some of the newbies are talking smack and I think we need to show them what a GOAT operator can do.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. A benchmark that everyone can measure themselves against.”

  Bumblebee walked to the start of the obstacle course made of fallen trees. Luke joined him and grinned as he got into position. The younger guy might have class skills perfect for this, but Luke’s Machine Bond was the highest it had ever been.

  “3, 2, 1, Go!” Vanessa yelled.

  They burst into action, each trying their best. Bumblebee started to pull ahead as they leapt over seven foot tall fences and threaded through twelve foot tall posts. His Evade made it easy for him to flow around the obstacles.

  Luke caught up when it was time to go under then over then under fences. His higher strength and dexterity made it easy for him to slide, roll, and leap over the obstacles. The rickety bridge over the pond might slow others down, but he put on more speed and simply leapt over the twenty foot wide water hazard.

  They were neck and neck for the final obstacle, a twisting tunnel crawl. Luke dove and slid forward a bit before he started scrabbling forward. He couldn’t go all out since the “tunnel” was a trench with branches across the top.

  When he crawled out and rolled to his feet, it was just in time for Bumblebee to run across the finish line. Luke laughed as he crossed a few seconds later.

  “And, time! That’s 23 seconds, about three times faster than the rest of us,” Vanessa said. “I guess that means you haven’t gotten as fast as humanly possible. Imagine that. Well, back to training then, huh?”

  She was met by a chorus of groans and the four newbies in suits picked themselves up off the ground. Luke chuckled and shouted encouragements as they lined up again.

  They kept at it, stopping for lunch and then back to training. Later in the afternoon, Sandwich led them through sword forms with tree branches. Luke was happy to join in for that part, he hadn’t ever had formal training before.

  A few hours before it was time to head back, Luke held up a round magnet. “Everyone has a spring powered elemental attack built into your forearm. Lightning or Ice. It’s the perfect ranged weapon for swarms or breaking up a charge. Today you are going to get some range time in, and Vanessa will get some practice catching and throwing. You’ll fire the spell, she’ll catch it and throw it back at you, which you will dodge, of course.”

  Luke saw some concerned looks on their faces and chuckled. “I will be dialing down the spell power drastically so no one gets hurt. All the same, once I hand out the ammunition, no one is allowed to take off your helmets or get out of your armor before I declare an all clear.”

  Vanessa loved the practice, the others not so much. She quickly learned how to snatch the elemental spells out of the air, even when it seemed like it would miss. She threw the spells back at them with a speed that would make professional pitchers cry. She hit her target ninety percent of the time. The new hires only managed to tag her twice when they teamed up and fired as one.

  After the shooting practice, Luke led everyone back to Earth at a leisurely pace. They brought all the sets of power armor, but that still left three people to jog unassisted and he didn’t want to make them sweat.

  “Good job, everyone. I’m impressed with your skills and quick learning. We are going to do more training over the next few days on Earth, same 9 to 5 schedule,” Luke said.

  “When are we going to kill monsters?” Angela asked.

  “Once everyone has a bare minimum of competence, we will split up into two squads and take shifts on Kalibutan. It will be every other day, including weekends.” Luke replied. “Sandwich and Bumblebee will take Max, Jeff, Gina, and Daniel. Vanessa and I will take Angela, Dom, and Ivan. I hope I don’t have to explain why I split the teams up like that.”

  Jeff raised his hand timidly.

  Luke rolled his eyes. “Those three are in their system assessment phase. That means the system expects them to have an exciting and dangerous time sometime in the next week. I want to be there for them to keep them alive.”

  “What does that mean, exactly? Is the system going to throw things at us, or does it predict the future? Is the future predestined?” Angela asked, the longest stretch of words she had used all day.

  “Cormac, the seneschal in charge, says the system is very smart and predicts the future. Nothing is predestined, because sometimes the people in the assessment period die, and sometimes they don’t do anything impressive and don’t get a class,” Luke replied. “Basically, the system watches the entire world all at once, and the three of you are statistically likely to do something impressive soonish. It's not an exact amount of time because the assessment only progresses on Kalibutan. There isn't enough mana on Earth for the system to run, so spending a few days training back home will only help you survive.”

  Angela nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Once they were back on Earth and the power armor was stowed away, everyone headed home. Allen stopped Luke before he left.

  “We have a problem,” Allen said and held up a piece of paper.

  “What’s that?” Luke said and took the paper. It was some sort of official document.

  “The IRS is auditing us.” Allen said and threw up his arms. “Which is going to be a hassle and a half, but we will pass the audit just fine. You kept receipts for paying taxes at the portal, and KaliBay has easy records for our sales. That’s not the problem.”

  Luke dropped the paper to the table. He knew exactly where Allen was going with this. “The problem is that we haven’t been a business for long enough to deserve an audit. Audits happen after you pay taxes, not well before even the first quarterly tax is due.”

  “Exactly. Someone is targeting us. Someone with some serious pull.”

  “If they are telling government officials what to do, it can only be one guy. Atticus Adelson.”

  Allen nodded. “Yeah. You’ve pissed off a billionaire and they are gunning for blood. When we pass the audit, he’s going to throw something else at us.”

  “I didn’t antagonize him if that’s what you are saying. I didn’t let him have my mechs, and that’s it,” Luke said and shrugged. “Besides, you are acting like we are doomed now that he’s going after Monster Jaegers Inc. It's not like we can't fight back.”

  Allen wobbled his hand back and forth. “I’m not sure what we can do against a billionaire. I’m not saying we give up. But I think our focus is to weather his attacks. Trying to get back at him will only invite more retaliation.”

  “Maybe, maybe,” Luke said and tapped his chin. “But I have a feeling his riches only grant him power on this side of the portal.”

  “So? We live on this side of the portal. And don’t suggest we move, there’s no internet on Kalibutan.”

  Luke chuckled. “I’m not going to suggest we move. I was just pointing out that his power isn’t absolute. There might be ways to fight him on even terms.”

  Today’s chapter title comes from Alien (1979). That movie is pretty much exactly as old as I am.

  As a reminder, no chapter tomorrow. The new schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Friday.