The Armor And Weapon

The elevator doors opened with a hiss and I stepped out into the armory section of the castle. The temperature dropped slightly, and the smell of hot metal, synthetic oils, and freshly ionized air hit me like a solid wall. I blinked.

This place was massive.

No, massive didn't do it justice. The entire section spanned vertically and horizontally for what had to be kilometers. Platforms floated mid-air, magnetic belts carrying crates of parts in every direction. Tech staff in armored exosuits buzzed around like mechanical bees, handling everything from cores to polished alloy plates. Giant assembly machines moved on rails above, occasionally sparking as they fused raw material into elite gear. Every ten steps, the entire vibe changed from classic blacksmithing stations with anvils to hypertech modeling zones with holograms spinning in the air.

Yeah. This was no simple weapon shop. This was a sanctum.

I had barely made it halfway across the central bridge when someone called out.

"Hey! Ennéa One, Periwinkle!"

The codename pulled my attention immediately—still weird to hear that out loud—and I turned to see a guy waving at me from beside a bench that had clearly seen better days. His hair was a tousled mop of sun-kissed blond, with a smear of soot across his left cheek like it was war paint. He had green eyes. Way too green actually. The kind of green that didn't belong to a guy who looked like he'd barely hit eighteen but had arms that spoke fluent 'blacksmith' and a back that probably hated ergonomic chairs.

He was cute, surprisingly.

I walked over, arms crossed. "You're the one who called me Periwinkle?"

"Yup," he said, wiping his hands on a thick cloth, smearing the soot even more. "Levnard. Weapon and armor specialist. Pente Three Flux."

My brow raised. "Pente Three?"

He grinned. "Means I've awakened three times at 5.0 Flux Rating. So, yeah. I kinda know what I'm doing."

I glanced around the forge zone. Yeah, I could believe it. He had two separate workstations behind him, both stacked with gear components and glowing flux batteries. He clearly wasn't the intern they sent to screw in bolts.

"Master Phaser sent orders. You're to be outfitted with custom gear. Weapon and armor. And, well, since you're apparently important now, I'm the one stuck with the VIP ticket."

I tried to ignore the light jab at the word important.

"So what am I getting?"

I asked, already daydreaming about dual katanas. Maybe a plasma-forged scythe with retractable chains. Hell, I would've settled for a flux-reactive longsword. Something dramatic. Something cinematic.

He whistled as he turned to a containment unit beside him.

"Well… your real gear's still being worked on. Phaser wants elite-tier layering and reinforcement for both the armor and weapon. Stuff that takes time. Days, maybe weeks."

He hit a switch, and the panel opened.

"So for now... you're getting a prototype."

I stepped closer. The suit he pulled out looked... surprisingly stylish and too modern for my taste but not in a bad way. More like someone had redesigned a female knight's armor with minimalist, high-grade materials, chrome-dark plating that shimmered faintly with golden hues, and flex-joints built for movement rather than flair.

There was a trench-length cloak attached to the back too, red with a subtle gradient of forest green at the edges. Damn. That was nice.

Okay. Armor was good.

Then he revealed the weapon.

I stared.

Long, coiled strands of glimmering metallic wire rested on a silver harness, almost like violin strings connected to a gauntlet. They didn't glow. They didn't hum.

"…what the hell is this?"

"Your weapon," Levnard said proudly.

I looked at him. Then looked back at the strings. Then back at him.

"You're telling me… my weapon is glorified metallic floss?"

He laughed a little too smugly.

"Not steel. Synsiline-thread. Hyper-responsive to neural flux impulses. Can cut through reinforced alloy if used right."

"But it's string," I stressed. "You expect me to walk into this Cursed Basin with… thread?!"

"I made this specifically for you!" he argued, defensive now. "Master Phaser said you had mobility, instinct, subtlety. Strings are perfect for that. You can snare, trip, dismember, eviscerate—"

"I wanted a sword! Or a scythe! Or hell, a gunblade! Something badass! Something that looks like it belongs in a story where I don't die in chapter three!"

He held up his hands, trying not to laugh.

"Okay, okay—listen. Look, I get it. You wanted something flashy. But trust me, these aren't gimmicks. Synsiline is one of the hardest materials to master. Most Flux Elites can't even sync with it. The fact that Phaser ordered it for you? That means he knows you're capable."

I crossed my arms, lips pursed.

"I'm not saying I don't appreciate your work, Levnard. It's just… string. String."

He tapped the gauntlet gently, activating a mini display.

The threads unspooled into the air, twisting into abstract patterns. Then, one line sliced through a block of reinforced steel on the workbench like it was butter.

I blinked.

"You're kidding."

"Nope. You see that cut?"

"…yeah."

"That's low-level sync. Once you master it? You could slice a skyscraper into coins."

I stared at the weapon in silence, my earlier frustration simmering into reluctant fascination.

"I still hate it."

He grinned. "Good. You'll fight harder to prove it's worth something."

"I really wanted a sword."

"You'll thank me later when some overcompensating brute swings a hammer the size of a car and you just wrap one string around his wrist and shatter every bone from fingertip to elbow."

I exhaled slowly. "Fine. I'll try it. But if I die in that Basin, I'm haunting you."

He gave me a salute. "Deal. And for the record, you'll look absolutely terrifying with this set once it's done. You'll be the first Rogue Flux Elite with a weapon that whispers before it kills."

I raised an eyebrow. "Poetic."

He smirked, smearing more soot across his nose.

"I have a flair for drama."

Yeah. He's cute and annoying.

I tapped one of the synthsiline strings, watching it tremble faintly. There was a pulse under the surface, like it was alive, or maybe hungry. It gave me chills. Levnard had gone back to tinkering with something on his holo-pad, but the question had been bothering me since the moment I saw Phaser fight.

"Hey... can I ask you something weird?"

He didn't look up. "You just drank a memory serum and started dodging death punches from Master Phaser. 'Weird' is kind of relative now, Periwinkle."

I ignored the nickname and asked, "What's Phaser's Flux?"

That got his attention. His fingers paused mid-air. Slowly, he looked up, expression more serious than it had been the entire time we'd been talking.

"No one knows," he said plainly.

"No one?"

"I mean, people have seen him fight. There are recordings and eye-witnesses. But even with all that, nobody actually knows what his real Flux is. There are guesses, of course. Some say it's speed. Others say it's some kind of barrier manipulation. That he can create force fields, redirect impact, or block Fluxes entirely."

I remembered how fast he was in the training room. It wasn't natural. It was like trying to track lightning mid-strike.

"He's too fast for a 9+ rating," I muttered.

"Exactly," Levnard said, leaning back against the bench. "There's speculation that he's higher. But even then, his Flux doesn't fit into any known category."

"So how do you know his actual Flux isn't the stuff we can't see?"

"Because what we can confirm," he said, pointing to himself, "is that he gave me orders to build with a certain technique and it worked. Because my Flux allows me to forge metal by syncing with its molecular structure. I can't control metal like the manipulation types. I can't make a wall of blades rise from the ground or summon armor from the sky. I can only work with it when it's in a forging space. I'm the son of a blacksmith Flux Elite after all."

That didn't sit right in my head. Something still felt off.

"But... the Flux awakened ten years ago. You're obviously an adult. How does that work? It's like saying that you were born even before the Flux started."

Levnard gave me a side-eye smirk, like I'd just asked why water was wet.

"Time here isn't like Earth. One day in Erae equals three days on Earth. So yeah, technically it's been ten years since the Flux was revealed to the public on Earth, but it's been around way longer here."

I frowned. "What do you mean 'revealed'?"

He lowered his voice just slightly. "The Flux didn't start ten years ago. That's just when Earth figured it out. But here in Erae? We've had it for decades. Maybe centuries. No one really knows. It just got uncovered down there and pulled from the dirt like a secret no one was ready to find."

Now I was getting really curious.

"Then who does know where it comes from?"

He looked me dead in the eye and for once, the soot-stained boy with the charming smile was gone and replaced by someone who understood fear.

"The Five Erasnae," he said quietly. "They're the furthest anyone's allowed to know. Even mentioning them too often will get you noticed. And not in a good way."

I opened my mouth to ask more but he cut me off immediately.

"Don't. Seriously. Curiosity here isn't enlightenment. It's a noose. You go chasing the source of Flux, you'll either lose your mind… or just disappear. Not like kidnapped. Like vanished. As if you never existed."

My throat felt dry.

"You wanted a weapon. You got one. You wanted to survive. You're trying. Stick to that. Stay grounded."

I nodded, slower than I meant to. "Right. No chasing secrets."

Levnard offered me a small smile again, this time a little softer.

"Periwinkle, trust me. The secret isn't worth it if you're not built to carry it. Phaser? He's carrying more than we'll ever understand. But you? You've got to make sure you even live past this week."

I looked back down at the synthsiline threads. They trembled again, hungrily.

I'd worry about secrets later. For now, I had work to do.