Chương 116: 116

Mark sat cross-legged on a pillow, in an extra room to the side of the house. The sun was just rising over the horizon, and Mark was awake and ready to try some weird Unions. The first thing he did was open his blood to adamant and weakness, his heart beating strongly, black veins pulsing outward from his heart, across his chest and over his shoulders, down his biceps and around his forearms.

Everywhere that his blood beat underneath his skin, it also broke off from his body, escaping into the air, black veins pulsing up from pale skin. Mark let his mind wander, as he looked at his skin. He used to be tanned from being outdoors and running and learning how to fight in class, but ever since he Awakened his skin had turned whiter. It was a common affliction for most people who Awakened as a Brawny of any sort. Tanning became impossible. But then again, Mark figured his skin was too white.

He never imagined he was quite this pale, and he blamed Addavein. Mark's hair had turned absolutely pitch black, too, which was definitely related to some part of Mark's situation. He wasn't sure why he had physically changed so drastically, but it had happened… Might have been because of the Color Drop treatment, too. Who knew! Mark liked the muscles and the power, though. Mark's heart continued to beat with adamant and weakness, which was not his usual Union.

Usually he did resilience and weakness, so that he could judge the powers of others as strong, or weak. Some monsters could actually resist a normal Union of resilience and weakness, and when Mark came across those ones, he knew the foe he faced was truly dangerous. If Mark opened with adamant and weakness right away then he would overpower every single monster he ever encountered, and if he did that, then how was he supposed to learn how to gauge threats?

So Mark stuck with resilience/weakness until he learned what he needed to learn from a monster, and then he usually killed it fast with a Union of adamant/weakness, and swipes of adamantium. Mark meandered through his meditation for a little while, and then he opened his eyes and watched the sunrise beyond the window. Snow lay upon the ground outside of the meditation room, and the morning was overcast. Grey, but not too oppressive. More snow would fall soon enough.

Mark could barely see the sunrise beyond the bare trees, like gold glints hiding between shadows. And now Mark focused on going the distance. Mark pushed his Union as far as he could go, enmeshing with the fabric of the world. He felt the cold birds in the trees, where they tweeted tiny cries that curled into the cold like smoke from a pipe, fog heavy in the morning light. Squirrels cuddled inside burrows. Mice and rats huddled here and there. A raccoon family turned in for the morning.

Eliot slept soundly in his room, while Isoko's vector began to stir, to wake. With his consciousness expanded over a hundred and fifty meters in every direction, Mark focused downward, into the ground, into the crust of the Earth where precious metals and all sorts of things lay there, dispersed. He had really liked the idea of pulling metals out of the ground, if he could, but Mark wasn't sure he could. Was there even gold down there, at all? Platinum? Osmium?

There was a lot of gold in the ocean, so there had to be metals in the very land under the house. Trace metals? It would be enough if Mark could make it work. Perhaps it would never work. He was going to try, anyway. Mark breathed in platinum. Just one breath! And… And… Mark looked around. He looked at his skin, at his body. Nothing looked different. Nothing felt different. Mark hadn't breathed out anything at all, and he was still holding his breath, so his Union felt kind of… not much different at all, really. …

Was his Union picking up anything at all? Maybe not. Better test it to make sure it was still working like it should. Mark breathed out a normal breath, then he breathed in good, holding his breath at the apex of his inhale. Instantly, he felt bloated. Just a little. It was a familiar bloat. When Mark breathed out normally, and did not actually breathe out anything 'good' or 'bad' at all, he held onto the good. Holding this sort of Union-load was akin to holding an astral weight.

Mark breathed in 'good' a few more times, and breathed out normally, not exhaling bad at all; just exhaling air. He felt like he was holding in a fart, now, except he was holding it in with his entire body. Yeah. So that still worked. Mark could do one-sided Unions. It just hurt to do so. Mark exhaled the bad— Like uncapping a boiling pot of water, filled with gloom, a minor blast of miasma billowed out of Mark's mouth and nose.

With practiced threading, Mark filtered the bad into the world, beyond the scope of the small meditation room. Some of the miasma was too thick, and it filled the room with a bit of a stench. An exhaust system in the corner of the room helped to get rid of that stench. Fresh outside air flowed into the house, through some filters and some heating elements, and then entered the room, while exhaust fans kept the 'bad' air flowing right back out.

Mark felt bloated as he continually exhaled, but soon the miasma coming out of him was practically nothing and easily dealt with. The stench vanished. His astral body was balanced once again." That's still working normally…" Mark mumbled. He switched to breathing in platinum. One breath inward, followed by a holding, and then an exhale of normal air. Mark felt no bloating at all on the first inward pull, nor on the second, third, or fourth.

Mark ended up breathing in platinum for a full ten minutes and he felt no change at all, which was probably confirmation that he couldn't breathe in platinum, or any other weird sorts of metals. Just to be sure, though, Mark tried gold next, followed by osmium, and nothing happened. He felt no metaphysical weight, no bloating of his astral body at all. So this wasn't working, at all. Mark hummed and watched the sun rise above the treetops as he thought." Maybe… Maybe I need to be less exact? A broader category?" …

What would that even mean, though?" Ah! I need to check and see if I can take in anything at all with this method." Mark tried breathing in 'carbon', and five minutes later, he still felt fine. No bloating at all." So maybe this method is completely flawed, and it just doesn't work this way." Maybe he couldn't target individual elements? Mark tried breathing in 'water' next, that worked just fine, though now he had to pee. Mark breathed out impurity and the pressure in his bladder vanished.

Taking in water was a rather normal part of solving the issue of survival in the wilds, so that still worked fine. Mark had a good grasp of that sort of pulling-of-resources. Water was pretty special metaphysically, though, according to Lola. Water could be targeted like that. So could 'air' and 'heat' and even weirder things, like colors and gravity. Perhaps elemental metals simply could not be targeted? It was a question that Mark needed to ask Lola.

He hadn't had one of those questions in a long time, but he usually found a way to go hang out with her once a week… He needed to visit her to talk about what he was doing right now, anyway. Mark thought about metals. Well… The birth of adamantium occurred in Mark's blood, in his bone marrow, so maybe he needed to use Union of Blood … But that seemed like a good way to really hurt himself.

Sure, his Power wouldn't hurt him, but depositing a bunch of platinum in his bones seemed like a good way to get heavy metal poisoning… And yet, Mark could just purify that away, couldn't he? Yeah, he could. Mark pulsed his heart with platinum, taking in the metal— Instantly a headache loomed and Mark rapidly switched to purity/impurity, like he had touched a stove and he needed to yank his hand away as fast as he could and run it under cold water.

The headache faded, but it remained in the background until Mark switched to resilience/weakness.

"… So that had worked?" He had a think. And then Mark did something reckless. He continued with this methodology He did a Union of Blood for gold— The headache came on slower this time, but it was still there. Mark cut the Union and let the headache naturally fade… And he wondered, as he let the headache fade on its own, if he had purified away all the platinum in his body when he had run his purity/impurity Union. And now he had no platinum.

Mark did a single heartbeat of platinum and eased off before the headache could loom. The headache still loomed." Welp! Time for osmium, which is the only one that really matters… maybe." Mark beat his heart a few times, drawing osmium out of the ground. Or at least that was the idea. Nothing seemed to happen and Mark's headache was getting better and better, so was he really doing anything at all? Mark kept drawing in osmium until he actually started to feel bloated, which was strange.

The headache was almost completely gone, too. … Maybe he had done it? Mark released his Union of Blood and waited for the bloating to go away, as his astral body released the tension it was holding. It was like Mark had thrown a bed sheet over a bed, trapping air in a bubble, and now the bubble was slowly deflating. … If it worked, it had worked, and that would be great. It seemed like it hadn't worked, though.

With his sense of adamantium, Mark felt out his body, looking for the usual grains of dust that appeared now and again. He only had a few today. Mark breathed out adamantium and collected those few grains of dust to add them to his collection, and then he set his adamantium to the side. With a twist and a dropping, Mark released the black metal to clatter onto the floor, and now he was completely free of all adamantium. It was time to start stretching his Union again, to try this crystal cultivation thing.

Mark beat his heart with adamant and weakness, drawing in strength while black veins threaded into the world, ridding Mark of every unwanted thing. His core felt warm like it usually did when he did this sort of meditation. Mark was primed to do some real meditation, to grow his adamantium… Maybe. Blackthorn had told Mark to focus on his goals and cycle through them, picking them up and putting them down, to prime his mana for purpose and then let it go.

In this way, his mana, which was really adamantium, would condense inside of him. Mark imagined the whole process was sort of like making a supersaturated solution, and then tapping it to crystallize out a precipitate. Or something like that. Mark had passed the science courses like everyone else in high school, but only enough to complete the exams. He was too busy practicing for the Tutorial, and then everything went to shit with that coma, and Mark couldn't finish school. That was almost a year ago, by now…

Mark looked out the window to the snow. He recalled his parents, and the last Christmas they had ever had together. Winters in Memphi had snow. Winters here were a lot different here than winters in Orange City, in the Floridas. Mark wanted to resurrect Mom and Dad. To bring them back. It was a nebulous, long-ranging goal. Mark couldn't even begin to fathom it as a real goal that was able to be pursued. Resurrection? Impossible. But Mark wanted to bring his parents back.

Maybe then he wouldn't hate Addavein so much. Mark also wanted to kill the dragon, but in a way that didn't make any sense at all. Why was Mark still so mad at a dragon that wasn't even responsible for a demon's actions? It was an unhealthy emotional response, for sure. Tutorial training with Instructor Gravel back in high school had knocked a lot of sense into Mark, before all of his issues, and then Mark's time at Citadel had done even more for him, but Mark still… did not like the dragon.

And yet, Addavein had once spoken about going to Endless Daihoon, now that he actually could. Now that it wasn't a death sentence. Because that's what such a trip would have been for Addashield and most other people, too. Endless Daihoon was full of monsters of all sizes. Only a High Dragon could even hope to survive it, and maybe not even then. Super-kaiju ruled Endless Daihoon. Or at least that's what Mark had heard.

Mark had no idea what 'super kaiju' actually were, only that he had heard the term in a few different places. Did Mark want to go with Addavein to Endless Daihoon? Yes. Probably. And wasn't that fucking weird. If his parents and everyone that Addashield had killed in his near-Fall were brought back to life, then would Mark have any reason to hate Addashield at all? Not really. If everyone lived again, then he could forgive the archmage and he might even enjoy being Addavein's 'brother'. … Yeah.

The more Mark thought of it, the more he realized that his nebulous plan for the future, for becoming a kaiju killer, a superhero, and to make a real home for himself in a city on Daihoon, the more he realized that a trip to Endless Daihoon with his talzarki, Addavein, was a good goal. One of the Big Goals, for sure. Mark smiled at that realization. … What was he going to tell the dragon when Addavein came back and started asking why Mark was talking about splitting him back into Addashield and Kanda. … Well.

In that case, Mark would just tell the truth.' Oh come off it. Of course tiny humans want to know if there's a way to fight a dragon without actually fighting a dragon. Addashield would have jumped at this whole vein of thought if he were still alive.' … Mark would come up with something more poignant in the moment, he was sure. For now, Mark set aside that Big Goal and focused on the 'smaller' goals. He needed to get a housing for Quark. A livium core, for sure.

That was going to run him 150k goldleaf, and it would be one of his bigger, first purchases when they got to the settlement. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. And then there were other artifacts he needed. A hoverbelt, Shaper training to allow him to surpass his astral/physical body limitations, learning how to do Unions that don't involve his personal self... Mark thought of his goals, picking them up and putting them down. He did that for a good half hour.

He was sure he was doing this correctly, but no adamantium grew anywhere. Not out of his spine, like Addavein grew adamantium, or in his black hair, which was another option, or in his guts, or in his bones. Mark pulled back his Union and thought. Isoko opened the door to the room, saying, "Any luck?" She had been awake for the last hour, working on hovercar homework and finishing with breakfast. The smell of bacon and eggs filled the air, along with the scent of rich coffee.

Eliot was awake in his bed, doing something on his phone, perhaps. Probably checking his social media feeds, according to Mark's Unionsense. Mark was pretty sure that Isoko had waited till Mark stopped with his Union work to open the door, and that had been nice of her. Mark got up and shook his head, saying, "No luck. I think the metal-grabbing didn't work… or maybe I was doing something wrong. I'm not sure." Isoko said, "Well breakfast is ready. I'll go poke Eliot."

Mark smiled a little, reaching out to grab his adamantium and slip it back against his skin, as he put a shirt back on, saying, "Thanks for making breakfast." Isoko smirked and walked away, saying, "Your turn to make dinner tonight!"" Of course! So I was thinking I can make pizza again. I can do it better this time." Isoko chuckled as she knocked on Eliot's bedroom door, saying, "Breakfast, lazybones!"

Eliot grumbled behind his door, but he started moving anyway— Isoko told Mark, "Your previous pizza was perfectly edible." Mark laughed.

"It was burnt and shit and you know it."" Only burned in good ways! Charred pizza is a delicacy in some places, I'm sure. Can you make it with corn this time, though?" Mark was aghast.

"Corn on pizza?"" Of course! And potato wedges, too."" What!" The conversation meandered about pizza toppings around the world as the two of them ate breakfast in the kitchen. Eliot eventually joined them, asking about if Mark had managed to grow any adamantium yet." Not yet! I think I got the process figured out, if it does indeed work like Blackthorn said it worked, but my attempt at drawing metals out of the ground only left me with a headache."

Eliot nodded as he squirted hot sauce all over his eggs and toast, saying, "I'll get some metals today. It'll be easy. No one will know."" Thank you, Eliot."" No problem. But you're gonna tell that Sally girl about it eventually, right? If she's going to be joining us?"" When is she getting in, anyway?" Isoko asked, and then she almost said something else, but she stopped. Mark wondered what Isoko had wanted to say, but he felt too great about finally seeing Sally again to ask Isoko what was up.

Mark said, "She's going to be visiting family over Christmas and I cannot wait for you two to meet her! We've been friends since we were little kids—" Mark and Isoko's phones blinked to life on the kitchen table. Isoko's phone flashed a warning that everyone focused on— But Quark spoke up, announcing the full truth of the new emergency, "An all-hands quest has been issued by Memphi and picked up by Slayer HQ, the Wall Guard, and many other local hunting agencies, for the Northeastern Memphi area.

A Low Green monster has been identified that meets your selected criteria for kill credit toward advancement toward Green Slayer. Memphi is offering a hovercar ride out to the monster zone, which has now spread over 2 square kilometers. The monster is a duplicator cow that infects other monsters with its own astral body, and replicates, not unlike goblins. This is an all-kill quest. The duplicator cows have the same intelligence as a normal cow, but they have a penchant for blood.

They infect their targets with a stab of their long tails..." What followed was a thorough description of the monsters' various physical appearance and capabilities, but Mark and Isoko had already shared a look and made a decision and promptly scarfed down whatever they could eat as fast as they could eat, to get ready to go out.

Soon they rushed into their rooms to put on their gear, while Mark called out for Quark to accept the kill quest, and Eliot said something about cleaning up breakfast while they went on a hunt." You want to come?" Mark asked, though he already knew the answer." Nope!" Eliot said.

"I've got plans today." Mark had waited for Eliot to say 'no', but as soon as he heard that word he was racing out of the house, calling out behind him, "I'm gonna keep asking! You're gonna say yes someday!" Eliot chuckled. Ten minutes later a hovervan, flashing with yellow warning lights, dropped down onto the street to pick them up. Mark and Isoko hopped inside, joining four other people in a mad dash through the sky.

Everyone in the vehicle had on armor, but none of them were 'random hunters', like Mark and Isoko. They were professionals. They were all part of the Wall Guard, with black and yellow 'M's painted on their uniform chestplates. They were all called 'the Guard', technically, but colloquially, they were—" A bunch of bees!" Mark said, smiling as he greeted them, his faceplate still lifted, showing off his face.

With one hand on the overhead bar, Mark held his other hand forward to the lead guy, who was wearing a black and yellow shoulder cape.

"I'm Mark."" Isoko," Isoko said, as she shook the guy's hand, too." Union users." The lead guy greeted them both, saying, "The AI said you were paladin-adjacents, so you're both on backline healing/protecting duty. The snakes cannot be allowed to bite anyone."" Aye aye, sir!" Mark said, and Isoko copied. And then Isoko asked, "So it's a serious case? We're not free-for-alling?""

Absolutely no free-for-alling," the leader said, and then his phone jangled, or something, because he looked away from Mark and Isoko and started reading his phone.

He nodded to a woman in the group, almost as an afterthought, as he read the alert on his phone. The woman said, "They were cows for eating but they mutated hard. We're not sure how they got so far outside of the gate, or any shit like that. The cows have chimeric tails that are snakes that bite and pass on the transformation, while the front end just eats everything it can eat. If you got long range Powers then you can throw them at the monsters, but we don't want anyone getting near them.

I repeat: The cows' snake-tails have a range measured in 10 meters, and they bite everything all around them all the time, spreading the infection. It's an active contamination zone." She seemed like she had to deal with mavericks a lot." I got long range offense," Mark said.

"100 meters in every direction, 200 for distance. Shaper with decent movement." Isoko said, "I'm on heals." The woman nodded and looked to Mark.

"What's your Power?"" Offensive Union and metalshaper. Inquisitor-type in training—" Which was only sort of true, but the shorthand worked well in most situations, "—Villain name: Blackvein." The woman and two other guards were surprised by that, but it was hard to know which part surprised them the most. And then the woman said, "Inquisitor! Okay!

We don't know what happened out there but we don't suspect, uh, malfeasance—" She rapidly moved on from the idea that humans were doing bad things to each other, adding, "But if you see anything, then kindly report it, please." Mark said, "In training. I'm not cleared for that sort of work yet. I can still drop monsters easily, though." The bees all relaxed at that. The woman gave a nervous chuckle. The leader got off his phone as they crested the northern wall of Memphi.

He looked to Mark, saying, "The AI has labeled you as a party leader, so we're doing that." The bees were surprised by Mark being 'casually' labeled as a leader in the field, but Mark wasn't. This had happened twice before. The bees rapidly fell in line, though, and t his leader guy seemed to do the same. Mark wondered if they were all just brawnies. After asking them about their own capabilities, they all sounded off as brawnies.

They all expected to be on the backline today, but they'd be headed forward with Mark at the lead. Mark would lead them well. Mark happily said, "Then let's get out there and kill some monsters!" And that was what they did. The bees didn't know Mark before that day, but they certainly made note of his name when they saw him 'fly' and send 'black lightning' into a herd of charging cows with snakes for tails, and drop them all, making them bleed out from the inside.

The bees were on cleanup, right alongside Mark, who went around clipping off tails with swipes of metal to make killing the cows a whole lot safer. Mark couldn't drop the whole herd at once because a lot of people were out fighting the cows, and the infection was already a herd 5, 000 strong, but it wasn't long till Mark's progress outstripped most everyone else's. Mark, Isoko, and the bees they picked up along the way, led the charge against the herd.

Mark entered the flow, and everyone else did to o, right alongside him. He did not lead so much with words, but instead with a Union of Action, joining with the others out there, fighting the good fight. Soon, the battlefield was dead and humanity stood triumphant, and Mark was talking with others who had been there, making connections and having people notice him for other reasons than what had just happened. More than one person called him 'dragon brother', and Mark kinda just smiled and nodded.

With the battlefield under control, pyroshapers came out and started burning the bodies, making sure that whatever caused the dupli-cow infection could not restart from a corpse. Someone had identified that the meat was poison, though not before a few people had almost succumbed to a transformation. Some Hearthswellian paladins were on the case, though, and they cleared the infection better than anyone else could do so. And now Mark stood with Isoko, looking over the fires. He sniffed the air.

Isoko said what he was thinking, "It smells good." Mark nodded.

"I can almost see wanting to eat some of it myself." Isoko laughed. Mark grinned. Isoko asked, "So what are your theories?"" Thrashtalon mutated a cow and someone ate the cow and transformed out here. Or someone did something along some of those lines."" Going straight for the big explanation, huh?"" What do you think happened?"" I'm thinking someone's Power got out of control. Maybe a husbandry Power? A witch Power." Mark raised an eyebrow. He gazed out at the burning fields of corpses.

"… I'd prefer it to be that, but I think this was a Thrashtalon Wilding."" It's the snake tails," Isoko said, nodding." The chimeric transformative venomous snake tails."" Yeah…" Isoko sniffed the air.

"I think the smell is too good, too. Like… Someone was crafting something good to eat, and they wanted it to affect all of their cows and the magics got away from them." She added, "Magics can do some weird things."" I could see that." Mark looked around at the groups of bees and hunters standing around, watching the forests and cows burn under the steady flow of fire from many, many pyromancers.

"They all look hungry, don't they?"" Shit, Mark. I'm hungry again, and I'm pumping sustenance and deprivation right now to kill that hunger." Mark admitted, "Me, too." Hours later, Mark and Isoko got home, along with a bunch of fresh groceries. Mark put some steaks into the fridge, smiling a little. He was going to cook them up for dinner, and it was going to be fantastic." Better than pizza," Isoko said, nodding." Much better than pizza," Mark agreed, adding, "And I know how to cook a steak!"

Isoko rolled her eyes, laughing. Later, as Mark was cooking the steaks, Eliot showed up with a small bag for Mark. Mark opened it up there in the kitchen and saw three smaller paper bags, each of them labeled. Platinum, osmium, and gold. 99. 9% pure." You just walked around with those?" Isoko asked." I was circumspect!" Eliot said, scoffing. Mark was going to be circumspect and he was rather sure that Eliot had been, too, but the cat was already out of the bag as far as Mark was concerned.

"Thank you, Eliot! How difficult was it?" Eliot said, "No problem, and it was easy. I made a whole refinery today to push myself, to extract everything I could from the mining site, but what really did the deed was going to the Mississippi and setting up a filter system there. The whole thing gummed up with colloidal stuff like silica and iron. It was a lot easier to filter out of the Mississippi, though! We might be doing something with that on the Shine, over on Daihoon, in order to get metals and such.

Aurora and Iliandra are in talks with the miner guys and the fishery guys right now. Whatever happens, they'll decide." Eliot smiled.

"But that's for them to decide. So! Are you going to eat them?" Isoko asked Mark, "Down them like pills, or something?" Mark held three small pellets in his hand. Two of them looked mostly the same, both platinum and osmium being white-silver in color, while the gold was quite beautiful, like a drop of sunshine. Mark put them back into the bag and into his pocket.

"I'll ask around about this a bit more before I do it. Thank you though, Eliot."" Anytime! So how was the cow hunt? I heard from Aurora that they thought Thrashtalon was involved." Mark laughed once, then told Isoko, "I was right!" Isoko waved a hand, saying, "Just because he's the usual suspect when it comes to monster issues doesn't mean he's always the one responsible. There was that series of explosions last month that turned out to be someone's Explosion Power detonating secondarily when they were upset.

Despite the claims of his cult, Thrashtalon is not responsible for monsters themselves." Mark smirked.

"It's Thrashtalon this time. I'm sure of it." Isoko waved a hand.

"We'll probably never find out, anyway."