There's something inside the crystal that beckons Jace, no, to sing to Jace to be exact. He couldn't say why, but he knew that the Shurima gem still held unsolved mysteries.

He spent many months testing the crystal, including but not limited to: placing it in a gear centrifuge, burning it at high temperatures and then freezing it, tinkering, observing, formulating various hypotheses, and slamming his head into a copper ruler. Clearly, Jace wasn't used to working so hard: the damn crystal was the first thing he couldn't figure out with his brilliant mind. For the first time, he also experienced the feelings of his peers when they were puzzled by problems and encountered their own bottlenecks. He felt frustrated, he felt unfair.

If you have an arrogant inventor next to you who disdains you, you will probably feel even worse.

Jace realized that while he didn't think the ideas of his fellow scholars were worth it, they never gave up. They never stopped exploring and researching, and it was this spirit that shaped Piltover's progress and development. If they wouldn't give up, Jace decided he shouldn't either.

Maybe he should try to be kinder.

Perhaps.

Jace began to think about it from a whole new perspective. On a whim, instead of experimenting with the whole crystal, could he make some more daring attempts at its small fragments? Jace chiseled off a fragment and suspended it in a liquid metal alloy. As he applied electricity to the metal, the crystal shards suddenly emitted a loud, deep sound that nearly shattered Jace's eardrums. The crystal emitted a tremendous amount of heat, and the instantaneous brightness nearly blinded Jace. The effect was completely unexpected. This is a dangerous test. It's a step forward, though. Jace couldn't contain the smile on his face and worked from late night until dawn.

The next day, Jace is surprised to find his old friend Victor standing in front of his house. Victor detected the huge energy wave emitted by the crystal shard last night, and he made a simple and straightforward proposal.

Since being expelled from the Piltover academic community, Victor has been working on a secret project in Zaun. He now finally knows how to achieve his dream of eradicating disease, hunger, and hatred once and for all. If Jace joins him, the two of them will be able to achieve something never before that no one, whether it's Piltover or Zaun, can imagine what they can do: save humanity from their own hands.

A similar tirade Jace had heard Victor say before. He never liked the purpose behind these arguments.

Victor tells Jace that he only needs one thing to achieve his "glorious evolution" - only one energy source, such as Jace's crystal. Jace vetoed it immediately, suggesting that what Victor really needed was a moral education. Victor, tired of Jace's rudeness, pounced on him, snatched the crystal, and smashed Jace unconscious. A few hours later, Jace opened his eyes to find that although the crystal of Shurima had been taken, Victor didn't seem to see it, or maybe he didn't care about the small piece at all.

Jace knew that no matter what Victor's plan was, his use of such a strong tactic must mean that his plan was almost complete. While he didn't know what Victor meant by "glorious evolution", he certainly didn't care about the free will of others. As time counts, Jace retrieves the crystal shard and mounts it on a massive shape-shifting hammer - a blasting device he invented a few years ago that was shelved due to a lack of a powerful enough battery.

Although he had no idea where Victor would be, he could feel the Hextech Warhammer in his hand vibrating, and a force was pulling in one direction, not east, west, south, and north, but below, towards the underground city of Zun.

The crystal shard wanted to reunite with his mother, and the force eventually led Jace to the factory deep in the trench. In this labyrinthine cavernous building, Jace witnesses a horrific scene. Dozens of dead bodies lay there, skulls sawed open, brains removed and transplanted into the bodies of the Iron Soldiers, forming an army. Now they were all motionless, and the cables on their bodies had all converged in one place—the pulsating and glowing crystal.

This was the first step in Victor's "glorious evolution".

Jace gradually approached Victor, his steps becoming more and more faltering. He and Victor had quarreled before, but this time the conflict was completely different from before. Jace suddenly realizes that this time he may have to kill his old friend.

He shouted to Victor, and the army of robots next to him immediately stood up. Jace regained his grip on the hammer and asked Victor to look around and see what he was doing. Whatever it is, this so-called evolution is not the progress they sought when they were younger. To Victor's surprise, he even apologized, apologizing for his arrogance.

Victor sighed. He responded with only three words. "Kill him. ”

The robots rushed to Jace, breaking free of the cable attached to the crystal behind him, causing Jace to experience a new emotion: panic. He gripped the hammer tightly, and suddenly realized that he had never used it before. When the first golem rushed into range, he picked up the hammer with all his might, the crystal's energy surging into his muscles, and the force of the hammer swinging made Jace worry that it would fly out of his hand.

The hammer slammed into the mech, blasting it into pieces of metal with a single blow. In the face of the tragic death of their comrades, the other machines did not waver in the slightest, and still rushed towards Jace at full speed, menacing and aggressive.

Jace analyzed the formation of the mechanical army in front of him and tried to quickly calculate how to solve the most enemies with the least number of attacks. But it didn't make sense, and before he could pick up the hammer again, they were already in action. He fell to the ground, enduring punches and kicks, and Jace saw Victor's eyes, revealing not victory, but sadness. He'd defeated Jace and secured the future of humanity, but he also knew that that future wouldn't have room for his old friend. Jace vanished into a sea of steel arms churning.

For the first time in his life, Jace decided to stop thinking in his head and let go of the wreak.

Jace no longer thinks about his own safety, and he uses every inch of his strength to break free from Victor's mechanical army. He ran to the glowing crystal, and with all his strength he picked up the Hextech-enhanced hammer in his hand, smashing it into the mysterious crystal.