Chương 139: 139

How was the talk with the armsmaster?" Eliot asked, after he shut the door to the room. Mark looked up from his video, reorienting his thoughts for a moment. He had been deep into a shaping exercise that he had discovered on the Open Internet for metalkinetics, even though the focus had been on Mithrilkinesis. Adamantiumkinetics were incredibly rare, but every Mithrilkinetic was mithril blooded, and the number of generalized 'Metalkinetics', without a focus on a particular metal, was rather high on Daihoon.

There might only be one Metalkinetic per thousand Tutorial-takers on Earth, but on Daihoon, there were between 10 to 30 people per 1000 capable of Shaping or Manipulating metallic things. That number included people like Eliot with his Man-made Manipulation, though. So there was a lot of stuff to research. Mark hadn't even been aware of all of this stuff. He was glad that the Grey Whale had a good connection to whatever networks were out there, because Mark was in the zone… Mark looked at Eliot again.

"Why aren't you with Isoko and Sally watching the movie?"" It got boring and I wanted to sleep for the arrival at Crytalis tomorrow."" They're letting people off?" Mark asked, surprised." Nah. Some representatives from Aluatha are coming on board. I might need to make an appearance." Eliot hopped into his bunk on his bed and angled himself onto a hand, to look at Mark.

"Sooooo…? How was Tulo?" Mark held up his tablet, showing a paused video, as he said, "Told me to do some self-education, first. Other than that, he seemed… I don't know." Mark didn't want to be mean, but he certainly didn't want to lie, either.

"Messy?" Eliot laughed.

"That's Tulo! Office a mess, but the forge? Immaculate. I'm sure if he had some proper focus then he could get a lot more done than he does, but he ranked second and third for the last two years of the Aluatha Grand Armsmaster Contest, or something like that, and he has a lot of allowance as long as the weapons keep coming. His weapons don't break and they're super reliable if a brawny has even the littlest bit of TT control."

At the mention of TT control, Mark breathed deep, excited, as he held up his tablet again, and held forth a spike of adamantium. He said, "That's what I'm working on right now!"" I thought that's what that funky bit of adamantium was for," Eliot said, nodding toward the spike floating in the air.

The spike was a crystal of pure adamantium that had taken Mark a few hours to figure out how to get the crystallization to start, and then half an hour to actually make a crystal that didn't fall apart due to weak inner fractures. His big success was 5 inches long and shaped like a 6-sided crystal of quartz, but thin. It was only half a centimeter wide. One end was dull, but the cutting end was fractured into a craggy, angled edge about an inch long and super sharp."

It's so much different than just Shaping the metal." Mark held the crystal up in one Kinetic grip, by just the soft end, and another centimeter-thick plate of adamantium, that was just a disk that Mark had thrown together for the demonstration. Mark then placed a few different coins of adamantium around the room, to provide him with the leverage for his demonstration, saying, "Watch. I'm gonna shove this crystal through the disk, and I will do it with just the strength of the adamantium.

I'm not actually holding onto the adamantium at the tip of the crystal, or at the center of the disk." It was difficult to keep the parts positioned where they needed to be positioned, but that's why Mark had supported himself with throwing out anchors, first. With stability and strength, Mark did exactly what he said he was going to do, repeating a demonstration he had done for himself a little bit ago. The noise was like metal piercing metal; loud and screeching, like a tram braking.

Eliot slapped his hands over his ears, saying, "Fuck that's loud!" The noise was already over. Eliot let his ears go, his eyes a bit wide as he looked at the hole in the metal disk.

"… Huh."" I know!" Mark grabbed the disk and the crystal spike, and then turned the disk back into a solid thing. It took effort to change the crystal back into a bit of loose adamantium, though. More effort than Mark usually had to expend to 'melt' and reform a bit of adamantium, but he managed that, too.

And then he combined the two bits of adamantium and slipped them back onto his wrists, saying, "I didn't know you could do that with adamantium, and I didn't know that this is what they did when they made a kaiju blade— Or. Well. What I did with a crystallization technique was the original method." Mark had seen a bunch of stuff on the internet already, and he would see a bunch more.

"There are new methods, though. Apparently they can vibrate and heat lines of adamantium to turn it into edged death. It's like, some sort of special forging process. I haven't figured that one out at all, but I think it would require actual heat and doing things that a Shaper cannot do, because that's what the internet is telling me."" How did you manage to make the needle, anyway?"" I started with a dot of adamantium, as small as I could make it, and then I had to, like…"

Mark started to make another spike as he spoke, going through the motions as he talked about them.

"So you start with a dot, yeah? And then you soak it into a bath of adamantium that you keep liquid, but only barely. It's difficult to do that while Shaping it at the same time, because once the stuff falls out of your touch, it turns solid, and you gotta let it fall out of your touch but stay liquid. So it's sort of like… Half…" Mark frowned as he felt his adamantium stay solid.

"… Well. I can't do it right now, for some reason. Fuck. Was the first time a fluke?" Mark felt out his liquid sphere of adamantium and the core of a solid dot at the center, and the crystal was not forming. Not in any direction at all. Mark pulled and pushed his Kinetic touch in and out of the sphere, feeling it out, and… and nothing. Mark huffed.

"Fuck… I'm not even sure what I'm doing wrong right now." He wasn't sure what he had done right the first time, either. Eliot chuckled.

"You might need to do more to the starter crystal. That's usually the problem I have when my crystals don't grow."" Oh shit— Of course you've done stuff like this before? What do you make crystals for?"" I haven't done anything with biometal, but crystals are used in timing for clocks and stuff. Electronic stuff. Also screens and base materials that others will use. I made crystals of all the metals, just to see if I could, and I couldn't get anywhere with any biometal, but gold? Bismuth?

Those are easy, as long as you start the process properly and go slow." Eliot added, "I didn't know that you could hurt adamantium with adamantium— Well. I knew forged adamantium was better than unforged. But not by that much." He added, "I think the real strength you had was actually in being able to push against yourself like that. That's… that's a lot of astral body strength, Mark."" Meh! Sally is stronger."" Not in that way. You just… poked metal through metal. Adamantium through adamantium.

The pressures involved there are… staggering, you know? … I don't think you know at all."" I really don't think that part was that impressive." Mark poked at the internals of the ball of metal as he said, "Forged adamantium is still Power Level 79, but… I think the forging does something esoteric to it that I still don't understand. I think it might have to do with the nature of adamantium itself as a metal that grows based on plans and plots and direction. Like… I think I figured out why adamantium is so strong.

Like, actually figured it out. Still haven't been able to do much with that, but… It's only Power Level 79, yeah? But the highest ranks of kaiju end up at Power Level 95. So there's a disconnect there. A big one." Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Eliot picked up what Mark was putting down, saying, "PL 79 can barely injure PL 95 in a direct contest, and kaiju are pretty much PL 95 across the board.

Little bit less in everything outside of Body, but not much less. So how does adamantium even work against a body so much higher than itself?"" Right! So there's a lot to adamantium. The metal is an Arch, Body, and Shaper-type of magic made real, so it can injure across multiple aspects of Power Level. That accounts for some of its cutting power. But the majority of its power comes from adamantium being purpose made real. Adamantium is condensed 'purpose mana', for lack of a better word.

And directed power, applied well, will always overcome indirect defenses. When in the hands of a brawny that can wield it, then adamantium can be empowered just that much more." Eliot laid back and looked at the ceiling of his bunk, listening. He said, "Sounds about right." And then he looked at Mark.

"Good luck with all of that. I'm rooting for you!" Mark chuckled. And then he said, "From what Tulo said, and from what I found, Mithril is solidified grace, which accounts for its ability to become anything and lends well toward weaponry but also armor, especially. Orichalcum is… I have no idea what orichalcum is. Maybe solidified faith? I heard Tulo talk about orichalcum blooded being the 'Speakers of the True Gods', whatever that means. Never heard that before today.

Didn't know that there were other people outside of the 3 empires of Daihoon, either. Tulo is some islander person? Is he from, like… an exiled people?"" Maybe! They call themselves the People. Other people call them the Water People. They have the largest concentration of orichalcum blooded people on Daihoon, and I think they trace themselves to some forgotten empire from ancient history, but there's a problem with all of that.

None of what they believe about the world and various histories of the world correspond to what the rest of the world believes about history. It's a whole big thing. Complicated, and I haven't gotten into it at all with Tulo, but only because he refused to talk about it when I questioned him about certain facts, like the arrival of the Sideways Land and what that meant for the dispersal of the Water People." Eliot's voice turned conspiratorial as he said, "I want to know what he's hiding."

Mark easily said, "Well I got no idea about that stuff." Eliot chuckled." He wouldn't tell you anything at all? Was he afraid you were going to make a video on him?" Eliot scoffed, mocking offense.

"Me? Tell other people's stories without their consent? Never!" He dropped his voice again, "But I still want to know what is happening for my own knowledge." Mark smiled at that.

"After I die saving someone's life, when you tell my story to the world, be sure to make me look cool."" Nope! I'll make you look like an idiot so you better not die and do a lot of cool things!" Mark laughed again." You know that stupid-guy villain persona?" Eliot slapped one hand against the other and then turned on the screen in the room. He wrote on the screen in big cartoon print, as he said, "Blundervein! The story of Mark Careed, lovable dumb villain!"

Mark saw himself slip on a banana peel and grab a big lollipop out of a baby's hand on the way down, and he started laughing a really good, deep laugh. Eliot grinned, and then he started teasing, talking about how Mark could really play up the dumb-guy angle, and Mark protested a whole bunch. The conversation meandered, as it did with friends. Soon, Eliot turned in to sleep, and Mark went back to practicing creating crystallized adamantium.

Maybe he couldn't Tactile Telekinesis his adamantium, making it as strong as someone with a 95 in Body, but Mark's own 90 in Adamantiumkinesis was certainly strong enough to get most jobs done. In fact, he hadn't run into a single opposed force that had given him trouble… Of course, he was always weakening things with Union as he killed them, though, so that had to skew the results a lot… possibly too much." Actually…"

Mark said to himself, in the dark of the room, with Eliot's blinds closed while he quietly watched more Shaping videos on his phone, "I have no idea how adamantium weapons work in the hands of another. Could I… do some tests?" … Well. Mark had around 3200 grams of the stuff now. He could make a sword of the stuff. Maybe. Mark flicked through some weight calculations for a normal sword versus a sword made of adamantium, and found out that a normal sword was about 750-800 grams, which was pretty normal.

Mark knew that measurement, but he had to check. That meant, according to the weight of steel at about 8 grams per cubic centimeter, a normal sword was about 100 cubic centimeters of steel. 100 cubic centimeters of adamantium was around 2300 grams, so about two-thirds of what Mark had on him right now. Mark divvied up his adamantium and then Shaped it to a good sword shape, and found that his calculations were correct; it took him 2300 grams to make a good sword.

Holding the weapon by its haft, and looking down the blade, Mark spent the next ten minutes straightening the weapon, balancing the blade, and then making the grip feel better. More secure— Isoko opened the door and strode in, whispering, "Hello~" Isoko seemed really tired. Sally was already yawning. Mark leaned out.

"Good movie?" Isoko waggled her hand, as she said, "Meh." Sally said, "It was in Xerk."" Subtitles are fine," Isoko complained, as she began stripping out of her chainmail.

"But I know enough to know that what was written was not what was said."" The jokes were so much better in the native language," Sally said. And then she pointed at Mark's floating sword.

"You making swords, now?" Isoko crashed on her bed, underneath Eliot's bunk, saying, "I would prefer a longer sword." Sally scoffed.

"That's too much money for either of us to be walking around with, anyway."" You'll get your swords later." Mark floated the sword into the air, and then he floated out a bar of adamantium, just a plain, 6 inches long and finger-thickness. He hopped off of his bed next, saying, "But I'm glad you two showed up! It occurs to me that I have no idea how adamantium works in the hands of others.

I was going to strike the bar myself, to see what happened, but if one of you wants to take the sword and attack the bar, then that would be useful to know, too. So? Want to give it a swing?" Both of them looked at Mark weirdly. And then Sally laughed. She shook her head and crawled into her bed, underneath Mark's bunk, still wearing her leathers. Isoko pulled her covers over herself, saying, "It's late and Eliot is sleeping, and that's going to make a lot of noise, hitting metal on metal."

Mark was too hyped up to sleep, though, which was a continual problem that only seemed to be getting worse as he got stronger. Mark said, "Okay... Then I'll be back! Sleep well." Sally and Isoko grumbled with acknowledgment. Mark went out the door with his sword floating behind his back. He wasn't sure where he was going to go, but the ship never slept. The hallways were empty and softly lit for night. The night guard was active.

A whole different group of people, really—" Oh," Mark said to himself, as he pulled Quark out of his pocket.

"Can I get that meeting with Reeni Thumb, now? The ARM lady?" Like… if she was awake, then yeah. Mark could go for a meeting right now. Quark flickered silver, a ripple of light expanding on the screen, thinking. A moment later he said, "Agriculture and Resource Management accepts your request for a meeting."" Oh! Well… Didn't expect that. I'll take it, though."