The crack of my gauntleted fists battering the training dummy echoed through the training room. I grinned, watching as even the magically reinforced metal and stone began to give way underneath the repeated impacts. The base gave out under the abuse, and the dummy fell to the floor. Grinning, I dove on top of it and continued my assault. When the head finally sheared off, it bounced once on the gym mat before rolling to a stop several feet away. I snorted in satisfaction, then rose and grabbed the battered training dummy by the torso to reset it on its stand. The whole apparatus wobbled—the mounting base was apparently not rated for my kind of abuse—and for a moment I considered what it might cost the Banner to keep up with my equipment attrition.

  I flexed my gauntleted hands, admiring the way the new gauntlets fit my hands. The finish was matte black to avoid throwing a shine or glint in low light conditions. Otherwise, they were plain, made up of simple, clean lines. The flat panel affixed to the back of the gauntlet jutted out over my knuckles slightly, just enough that whatever I hit would meet its edge before my knuckles. They certainly seemed like they were durable enough to stand up to the abuse I would inevitably be putting them through. There were even small gaps where the finger sections met the backing plate, large enough that I would still be able to easily utilize my webs with the gauntlets one, but not so large that a blade could be slipped inside to mange my hand. It was odd to see such a blatant example of the way Skills worked to suit their wielder's purposes. Like when they shaped something to account for a need that I had forgotten myself. It was easy to forget how endemic the System actually was, working away in the background, yet constantly touching every aspect of life with it.

  The rest of my new gear looked much the same, in plain dark colours and built to be more utilitarian than aesthetically pleasing. Though some aesthetic elements had apparently come through courtesy of the monsters, the base materials came from. Like the white mantle of yeti fur that hung over the shoulders of the breastplate. Or the silver etching of orca jaws that covered the right side of the helmet. These weren't things I had intentionally added to the equipment, but things that seemed to have appeared due to the innate nature of the cores I used to make them. If the nature of the core affected the output, it was an interesting consideration that I would have to be aware of in the future as I made more powerful and more complex pieces of gear.

  I rolled out my shoulders and admired my reflection in the wide window made of one-way glass that marked the location for the control room. The new armour was bulkier than what I was used to, but it wasn't anywhere near as restrictive as I might have thought at first glance. The brigandine flexed well and moved with me easily, while I actually ended up with more flexibility with the half breast plate than I'd had previously. The greaves and gauntlets added extra weight, but that was hardly a concern at all. With the stats I had, I could wear another hundred pounds of gear before it even became mildly inconvenient.

  I turned to face the entrance as the door slid open to reveal David Giffle.

  “I see you’ve picked up a few interesting things.”

  I shrugged, "A few things, here and there." I liked David, and we had established a degree of trust, but that didn't mean I wanted to tempt him. More importantly, I didn't need his superiors getting the idea that I could manufacture equipment for them. Greed often made fools of the best. "I've been needing an upgrade for a while, so it was convenient at least."

  "I see," David knew well enough I was lying through my teeth, but he also wasn't willing to push me on it either. "Regardless, I am hoping you have some time to discuss recent events."

  I let out a sigh, dismissing my armour into my [Inventory]. It had taken a bit to get the nuance right, but I found I could deposit it into inventory as a single set and equip it as one. The only downfall was that I needed a moment where I was standing still. It was much harder to do if I was moving at all. Dismissing my armour left me standing in a t-shirt and a pair of comfortable sweatpants.

  "I was wondering how long it would take you to get to me. Victor did let me know you were debriefing everyone individually." I raised an eyebrow at David. He just grinned. We had enough professional respect for each other by this point that we could dispense with most of the maneuvering.

  "I already had some of what I needed. But Banner protocol has changed after what happened. We want every possible angle on the 'Impostor' incident covered. We're not the only ones concerned about the implications."

  He set himself on a battered foam block by the wall, shoes tapping out a rhythm against the linoleum. “I’ll be blunt: do you have any theories? Anything you’ve cut from your official reports, or that you’re holding back?”

  "That depends, you turn on the cameras when you came in here?" I grinned malevolently at David, pointing at my eyes with one finger. [All-Seeing Eye] felt like a cheat at times. In truth, it really was a massive advantage in most situations, and I had spent a significant amount of time researching various topics so that I could get the most use out of it. For instance, learning to recognize the signs of electronics booting up and turning on, or that many modern cameras emitted a very low-power electromagnetic field in the direction they pointed when they were recording. Incidentally, it was interesting to learn that the Banners' cameras looked slightly different, a denser shimmer in the air, thanks to the magitech components.

  David shook his head, holding his hands up in mock surrender before turning to look up at the nearest camera, making a cutting motion over his neck. A quick glance around the room with [All-Seeing Eye] revealed that all of the electronics that weren't related to operating the room were shutting down.

  "You can't just let me have one, can you, Aiden?" David shook his head, reaching into his suit jacket to pull out a notepad and pen. As if he'd expected that I would notice the cameras, and then be suspicious of electronics afterwards. He might not be able to beat me in a fight, but David was certainly craftier than the average idiot manager. He knew how to play games quite well; it was impressive, really. I didn't play all that well; I tended to just bull through them, but I could respect the skill involved.

  "If I let you have one, sooner or later the rest of them will start thinking they might be able to get one too." I shrugged once again; that was true enough. I knew quite well there were plenty of people in the Banner, the higher up the chain you went, who eyed me as a resource they could use.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  David let out another sigh. He knew I wasn't exactly wrong. "Regardless, what can you tell me?" I considered for a moment how much I actually wanted to tell him. I disliked the idea of holding out on David himself, but anything I gave him would inevitably pass through the hands of at least a half-dozen higher-ups, several of whom I trusted about as much as I trusted a bear not to shit in the woods. It wasn't a matter of if, but when there would be a problem. There hadn't been any threats made, but I'd caught enough hints to know that the Abstainer faction was hanging on to its sanity by a thread, staying between the Serpents and Knights who made up the other two factions in the Banners' upper echelons. I couldn't say I blamed them either; they were stuck being the sane and reasonable ones between two groups who wanted to rule in different ways and for different reasons. Personally, I couldn't be paid enough to deal with that type of political shit show. Not without the option of beating everyone involved black and blue until they could listen to reason.

  I weighed my words carefully. "Impostor's a good enough catch-all term, but what we saw? Doesn't fit the mould of anything I could find in the archives." I crossed my arms while I parsed out what I was willing to reveal. "It wasn't just a mimic, or shapeshifter, or even one of the Unseen; they all need mana to operate, and the changes are mostly surface level, you know, cosmetic."

  David nodded for me to continue, the light scratch of his pen scribbling across the notebook page. "This was more like whatever it was had hollowed him out and was wearing him like a meat suit. It wasn't him anymore, it just looked like him."

  David nodded seemingly to himself, turning over the pen absently in his hands, but I could see the tension in his posture, the way he hunched over even while feigning casualness. "The reports say it mimicked Matt down to the mana traces. The autopsy we conducted confirms that as well.”

  "Yeah, that was why it took me a bit to figure it out. I thought he might just be running on empty. That wasn't what gave it away, though."

  David’s head snapped up to look at me sharply, “And what was that?”

  “The aura.”

  David's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and he lifted the pen just a centimetre above the pad and waited. I smiled a wolf's smile and watched the gears turn in real time.

  “So the aura's the giveaway.” David scribbled something, but it wasn’t a question. Maybe an underline, or maybe just a line to keep his hands busy while his mind chewed on it.

  I leaned back against one of the benches, arms crossed over my chest. “The lack of one, to put it more precisely.” I said darkly, “My ability to sense auras is more potent than any other Ranker I have come across. I recognized something similar in the Vish I’ve confronted. This was like getting a fast forward to the end of the process. I’m not sure I can explain to you how wrong it is on a fundamental level for it to not have one at all. Not even the faintest trace.”

  "Worse, it was almost like a blind spot in my senses. Every living thing's got an aura, however dim. Plants, bugs, even people with suppressed mana still ping. This… abomination was a void. If you beef up one of those aura detector devices I saw during the autopsy, I'm fairly sure you could use them to screen for them."

  David’s pen slowed, stopped. He nodded. “If that becomes necessary, I’ll make sure you get the credit.” He didn’t mean it as a joke, but I barked a laugh anyway. “I get the sense you’re not confident the threat is over.”

  “No,” I said. “Not unless you believe bugs only ever lay one egg.”

  That landed. He paled beneath the office tan and glanced toward the door, as if he half expected an army of hollowed-out Matts to come pouring through it. "Nightmare fuel," he muttered. "That's just what the Banner needs right now."

  "There is one point I need to make here in absolute seriousness, David. About what I said about all things having an aura. It's something I've learned myself, the aura is fundamentally an expression of the soul, to not have one…" I trailed off; even just the memory of it was unsettling in a deep way. I could butcher monsters in job lots, crush people under heel and be completely unbothered. For some reason, what had happened to Matt made my skin crawl. The silence hung for several moments in the wake of what was left unsaid. I didn't need to elaborate; David, for all he was a paper-pusher and diplomat these days, he had been in the field often enough to be in the know. He nodded, silent for a long moment.

  "I see," was all David said. Like all Rankers, David had the ability to sense auras, even if it was weak and rudimentary compared to my own improved ability. "I'll take this up the chain. Although"—his mouth twisted into a grin that was all gallows—" that will go about as well as you would think." He turned grim. "I'll make sure they know you felt something similar from the Vish, hopefully that will get them to move a bit faster on taking the fight to them directly."

  “We can hope.”

  ——-

  I sauntered into a different training room. Dealing with David had left a bad taste in my mouth. Left me needing a break. I figured it would be a decent time to check in on Sean and Vicky since I had been able to feel their auras in a training room down the hall for the last few hours. They were clashing repeatedly, almost like they were sparring, but it lacked the controlled aggression one would normally see in sparring partners. The door slid open almost soundlessly to admit me to the room.

  What I found the two of them doing wasn’t sparring. Not exactly.

  Instead, I found Sean with a heavy training sword in his hand, steadily battering at a shimmering blue shield that surrounded Vicky. The first strike cracked the barrier, and the second saw cracks sent across it like spiderwebs. The third strike saw it shatter outright and left Vicky on her knees, gasping for breath. I recognized the symptoms of mana drain when I saw them; I'd experienced them often enough. Thankfully, Sean noticed as well and stopped in the process of drawing the training sword back for another strike.

  "Don't overdo it, Sean," I called, voice relaxed, but my eyes flicked from my little brother's flushed face to Vicky's pale, shaking hands. "You're not going to level up faster by beating the healer into the floor."

  Vicky shot me a look of pure sibling venom—not so much for the comment itself, but for being caught at a moment of weakness. She hated anything that hinted at fragility, always had. Maybe it was the baby-of-the-family thing. Maybe it was a habit. But her hands, when she pushed herself upright, trembled as if she'd just sprinted a mile. Glittering sweat beaded her hairline.

  "He's not overdoing it," she said, her voice edged but breathless. "I need this, need the practice. I can only hold it for a few seconds.”

  Sean just held up his hands helplessly, as if asking, 'What do you want from me?'

  I sighed. Vicky was supposed to be the reasonable one here. I wasn't very good at it. "Have you ever considered that each shield cast is meant to be single use? I mean, its mana cost is pretty low, isn't it?"

  The two of them looked struck dumb for a moment and then immediately abashed. I rifled a hand through my hair and let out an exasperated chuckle. "I know I'm supposed to be the one in the family with the best battle IQ, but c'mon, really?"

  "One of you is trying to brute force through your mental block, the other is hoping the answer is just to tank the hits until you luck into something better." I pointed at them both in turn with a grimace. "You’re both wrong—and worse, both right. To get better, you gotta practice smart, not just hard. Vicky, your shield is a Spell as much as it is a Skill. You don't need to hold it; you need to snap it on and off like a light switch. Sean, stop whaling on her like she’s a punching bag. Try hitting in bursts instead. Predictable swings are easy to block. Real fights are messy."

  "Shields don't exactly come with a user manual, Mr. 'Best Battle IQ," Vicky muttered, but already she was rolling her shoulders and wringing her hands like she was testing her own excuses for weak points. I could see it on her face, though; she was already integrating the new information, testing and retesting it in her head. To see what held water and what didn't.

  Sean rolled his eyes with classic little brother energy. "You can dish out all the advice you want, but I'm not the one struggling to keep up," he said. "When are we going to do some real training, Aiden?" He jabbed a thumb at the shield's remains: frosted sparks of blue flickering and fading out.

  The laugh that came out of me was a laugh all older siblings knew well. The laugh of the cat when the mouse presented itself for dinner.

  "Oh, you want real training? How about 2 on 1 then?" I grinned evilly at Sean, "That is, unless you're a chicken, little brother."

  Sean bristled, "You're on!"

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