Chương 286: 286

Mark woke up to a comfortable bed and wonderful softness— Goblins. Fully awake, eyes slammed open, adamantium suddenly flexing off of the nearby shelf and onto his body… There were no goblins. Mark had gone to bed in an adamantium shell, but it had fallen off of him earlier, maybe when he went to the bathroom, or whatever? And now Mark was just in his bed, in the blankets. He didn't really remember… At all. Mark stopped his adamantium before he ripped up the bed again, though a few scales cut into the sheets.

Mark sighed at that, and then he sat up in bed and spilled the blankets away. Maybe he would have gotten up, but instead he sat there and stared at the walls of his room. It was a pretty great room. Everything on this half the room was enchanted to self-repaired, even the bed and the bed sheets and the floor and the desk. The small tears in the mattress and otherwise would repair as soon as Mark got up… Mark put forearm over his face to block out the small light from the windows, and asked Quark, "Goblins?"

Quark's tiny internal vector had been elsewhere, his senses on various cameras and databases and whatever, but he came back at Mark's words. He softly said, "There have been no goblins in a while. You have a voicemail from Aurora labeled non-important so I did not wake you. Would you like to hear it now?"" Yeah."" Hello, Mark!" Aurora said, almost happily, which was good.

"Lancer and Buckler cleared out the goblins for the nearest 10 kilometers and we transplanted some goblin-resistant monsters into some lands around the settlement. We're doing an elemental defense, mostly, but some real monsters are out there, too, now. With some help, those monsters will hold off the goblins a lot better than continual patrols and such. When you wake up, go and check on all of that, and then Mother, Reeni, and Rekaro wish to run you through some ritual magic with Sigaldry.

You can say no to that ritual magic, but I believe you should try it. To hear Mother speak of it, you're ready. That's all. It's 3 AM now."" 3 AM? Shit." What time was it now? It was not 3 AM at all, according to the sun out there, beyond the edges of the blackout curtains. He had slept a lot. … Mark got up and started getting dressed, grabbing for his webweave... He paused, solid black webweave in his hands. He didn't wear the webweave all the time; usually only when he was working.

But he had been working for the last week inside the suit. It was clean, of course. Mending enchantments worked overtime to clean the webweave, and Mark did Unions of Purity, so it was clean. And also soft and comfortable. But it was work clothes. Was today a work day? Yeah, Mark supposed. It was a workday for at least a few hours. He stretched the neckhole wide and shimmied into the suit, using caltrops on the floor to elevate himself and actually get into the suit.

As he fiddled with his ring of No-Wealth and adjusted his junk in the suit, Mark asked, "What time is it?"" 7: 49 AM. You were out for 14 hours." Mark nodded.

"Guess I needed that? Where's everyone else?" They weren't in the house. People were outside in their own houses, across the street and in every other direction, but there was no one inside the house right now. Eliot's security system was working well, and Quark was tapped into that, so there was no worry about intruders. They probably had shit to do, so Mark didn't begrudge them doing shit while he was sleeping for 14 hours. Sheesh! That was a long sleep.

Quark said, "Eliot is at Cybersong Industries, outfitting Derek alongside the Sacredcut family. Isoko went to House Valen to try another Alteration to her Binding. As of 3 hours ago, she began another attempt. Sally went to Inquisitor's Hall and I no longer have eyes on her, either. She spoke of linking up with Eliot, though, before she went to the Hall, so she will probably go to Cybersong Industries when she is done in the Hall." Mark nodded, and then he said, "First! Breakfast.

Then patrol, and then Mage Society for ritual magic, and hopefully Isoko had a good Alteration." Mark found himself smiling a lot at that last thought.

"It'll be awesome to have her flying with me." Wearing his webweave and with his adamantium sitting to the side, Mark made himself a good breakfast of cheesy, spicy eggs, toast and jam, and a big cup of coffee filled with cream and sugar. Mark kinda liked the small buzz that coffee gave him, but the taste was only good when it was loaded with a bunch of nice flavors.

With his stomach full, Mark did a Union of Purity/Impurity instead of going to the bathroom and brushing his teeth, or taking a shower, and he felt great. He stepped out of the house and the grass was green, the trees were tall, the neighborhood was stable and clean, and Mark was ready for a good day. Today felt like a good day, for some reason. Mark spun up some adamantium and took to the sky, wind rushing past his helmet, his scales, the feeling of the wind on his scales like it was on dulled skin.

Mark felt every brush of cold, every warm updraft in the sky, especially above the black asphalt roads between the districts. Quark blinked a flight path for Mark, if he wanted to follow it, but right now he did not. He was connected to everyone nearby, his heart beating Good and Bad, healing and fixing a lot of small things, strengthening astral bodies, healing fatigue. … Mark took a little tour, because he felt like it. Mark flew over to the lake, at the center of the city, which was deeper than before.

All of the islands had been removed, and the entire thing dredged to an average of 20 meters deep. The fishery had been expanded to fill the entire outlet-half of the lake, and a bit more besides that. They mostly farmed freshwater tilapia but there were some other varieties that were as big as tuna. Those ones were half-monsters and they were great eating.

Mark didn't feed the fish much anymore, but he did come by to check on the place, and according to his Unionsense there were no overly concerning vectors in the waters. Everything down there was simply living life, their vectors varied from hungry to horny to harried by bigger things that were rather hungry themselves. Satisfied that the lake was fine, Mark flew higher in the skies, toward the south, past the entertainment and shopping district. It was a ghost town compared to 14 days ago.

A lot of people had left once the goblin shit started, once the fact that this place was a settlement in the Wilds had been proven true. Still, there were warriors in armor or otherwise out and about, shopping and selling. The wild market, full of goods from the Wilds, was completely gone. Shut down. The usual town square filled with monster parts and otherwise was a plain city square, all the booths gone. Mark swung to the east, to look down upon the coliseum.

The coliseum looked as good as ever, but it was about 9 am now, and the place was mostly deserted, like normal. Some people were on the sands, fighting mock battles. Just 10 people, according to Mark's Unionsense. It looked like a remedial battle training session, with people letting their shields drop when they should have been holding them high, or aiming low… Oh. It was goblin fighting tactics. Right. They were aiming at shadows on the ground on purpose. They weren't dropping their shields at all.

Goblins were only a meter tall, at the most, after all. South of the coliseum lay a residential district, filled with most of the people who signed up for the settlement. Some people here took off from the ground and flew left and right, wherever they needed to fly, but they kept it below 100 meters. Mark flew at 300 meters right now, just above the edge of most of the grey wall of the settlement. Some people noticed him up here. They waved. They knew him and some guy even shouted something about Blackvein.

He seemed excited. Mark had no idea what the guy said or who he was, but Mark waved back anyway, and then he flew higher and higher, to look out past the grey walls in every direction. The city was a lot of green space and big buildings and nice streets and tram tracks everywhere. Beyond the wall was a warzone. It looked a hell of a lot better than it did a few days ago.

Before, monsters popped out of holes in the Veil all the time, reintroducing prey for the goblins to convert, and the problem continued from there. But now, Mark only saw craters and things moving in those craters. Elementals, mostly. Someone had thrown down lava elementals in the big craters, and water elementals where water pooled. Stone elementals patrolled glowing rocks that people had set out there, and Mark couldn't feel a single goblin at all." Must be that elemental defense…

someone mentioned," Mark muttered." A lot of people spoke of that," Quark said, "Kandon, Aurora, many others." Mark nodded. Elementals were fucking dangerous because they were very hard to kill, but they mostly stayed where they were born. So all of these elementals would be hard to remove, eventually. But by that same token any goblins would suffer their wrath, first, and that was great. If any of the elementals turned kaiju, then that'd be a very large problem…

But Mark was sure Aurora was on the case, and doing what needed to be done. Mark flew a circuit around the settlement, checking out the place. It was like an entirely different land compared to 5 days ago, and compared to 20 days ago it was unrecognizable. Landshapers, Stoneshapers, and otherwise had turned craters here and there into holding bins for elementals, while they had also mostly flattened the land outside the walls— Ah! And there they were now. The Terraforming Team.

Mark hovered above the Terraforming Team, which was about 200 people, led by a woman named Emory Napp. Mark had never interacted with her, but Eliot had. She and her team of people were responsible for land construction and repair. Usually they just went around repairing broken things, but here they were breaking the land and turning it into a viable battleground for elementals and otherwise. It was like watching an ocean wave move through the land, with tens of people riding behind the wave, pushing it forward.

They had a contingent of Freyalan Paladins working with them, keeping everyone strong, while a collection of warrior teams were scattered all around, keeping everyone protected. All of them were on high alert and working fast, but the warriors on the edges, the ones prepared for a fight, were all bored. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. If they were that bored then Mark suspected that nothing had happened to them in several hours. Which was a good thing, really.

Boredom was the bane and balm of warriors all the world over; Mark had heard that from someone, and he liked it. Boredom meant that no one was dying. Mark Unioned with all of them, of course, supporting and flexing out the kinks in the paladins' Unions, thrumming Good and Bad throughout the hundreds of people down there. People noticed him, of course.

Mark was not the only flier overseeing the operation, but his absolute-black armor and the big spinning blade were rather unique among the other fliers over the group. Him being up there eased some tensions in the minds of everyone." How much land do they have left to alter, Quark?" Quark threw a hologram of the settlement into Mark's vision, delineating done versus to-be-done.

The main cordon near the city was done, meaning 1 kilometer out from the walls in every direction was filled with elementals that would prevent the goblins from getting close. The team down below was on part 3 of the 'encircle the city' plan. They were technically done, and if the goblins attacked as an army, the Terraforming Team could retreat without worry and leave behind more than enough deterrent.

The plan had a 50% effectiveness, 100% effectiveness, and 200% effectiveness mark, and they were somewhere around the 110% mark. Mark grinned.

"That's awesome." Some of the fliers in the group and on the ground waved to Mark. Mark only really knew the twin fliers, William and Wilma, in their green and gold outfits, but he didn't know anyone else.

He waved to the flying twins (and had a weird thought about how there were another pair of 'flying twins' now and so these Hero/Villain Program twins were getting doubled on, and that would inevitably lead to a conflict, because Noel would want that to happen if he had anything to say about it; but no, that was a weird thought and wouldn't work for any number of reasons, mainly that the 'other flying twins' were archmage twins, and Noel would never touch that) and then Mark waved to the guys on the ground, and flew on.

The river outlet for the settlement, on the west, had been reinforced from the wall to the shine, and filled with water elementals. Goblins tried to swim into the river and up the river, hiding under meters-deep waters, but the elementals found the goblins and ripped them up, every time. At the north, about 6 kilometers further north, spider-like stone elementals tore out of hiding holes in the ground to ambush a goblin patrol, to kill them to the man. It was brutal.

To the northwest, the tributary into the settlement was reinforced like a spillway, with a bunch of water elementals swirling about in whirlpools and crunching like ice on the land. There were no goblins at all there. Mark made another circle of the settlement to be sure that what he was seeing was what he was seeing, and soon he flew back into the settlement, smiling a lot. It was 10: 56, and Mark felt good about leaving all of that out there to the elementals." Who makes elementals, anyway?"

Mark asked Quark, as he flew back over the wall." Emory Napp, of the Terraforming Team. They are not controlled elementals at all; she has warned everyone about this multiple times. There have been incidents."" Huh! I didn't know that…" Mark paused high in the air, to turn around and look toward the south, toward the terraforming team. They were still going at it out there, churning the land to embankments and flatness and clear sight lines, and making craters for elemental homes.

"I suppose Emory Napp didn't do that prior to now because… Because elementals are hard to get rid of, once you start?" There were a lot of problems with elementals, really. If they got rid of all of them by the next gate activation, though, then they probably wouldn't end up with an unkillable kaiju. Elementals turned unkillable most of all when they were kaijuified.

Quark said, "The ecosystem is not stable at all, so half of them will die to their own neighbors in the coming weeks, but we expect the elementals to start to undermine the walls in as little as 15 days. Secondary elementals, the results of multiple elementals combining into one, will happen in as few as 10 days, and those will need to be killed as soon as they happen."" Plenty of time!" Mark asked, "Is Isoko done with her second Alteration attempt, yet?""

She has completed the Alteration, and she has said in the Accord chat that she hopes it stabilizes." Mark gasped a little.

"Already?! Bring up the chat!" Mark read through a few entries from Eliot about the plans to arm Derek working out very well, thanks to the shipments from Dad's Crystals in Memphi, and then Mark saw the messages from Isoko. - - VeryHuman (Today: 9: 42AM): We're at 2 guns per hour! As soon as Julia gets here to help with some finetuning, we can get higher than that, for sure. VeryHuman (Today: 10: 07AM): Julie arrived. 6 guns per hour! Dad's Crystals comes through again!

All of them attuned to Derek, too, so even if one of him dies then the others can pick up the gun, and the goblins can't use them at all. HimePink (Today: 10: 19AM): I got it! Wind Shaper! The whole deal, too! It's stable, for now, but it's a fragile thing. Elaria says not to stress it too much, but I'm probably gonna do that and break it right away. Rebuilding should be simpler the second time! HimePink (Today: 10: 31AM): I broke it. HimePink (Today: 10: 32AM): Heading off for ritual casting thing in MS.

Saw you flying around, Mark. See you in MS? - - Mark chuckled, and then tapped away at a screen that only existed in his eyes, writing out a 'Congrats! You'll get it next time!' and that he was headed to Mage Society now. It was 11: 10 AM. Almost time for lunch! Did they want to have lunch? Mark sent that question, too. Mark landed at the tram station leading into Mage Society, where tens of people were already in line for the smaller trams.

Everyone noticed Mark, and Mark said hello to several nobles from Crytalis who he had met sometime in the last several days, but he couldn't place them at all. They seemed nice enough. Soon, Mark was alone in an individual tram, headed through the wall. He stepped out on the other side, out onto Magic Street, and it was kinda like whiplash. Mark had spent most of his time in the last 10 days either at Mage Society, at home, or out there killing goblins.

He hadn't even seen the rest of the settlement in any large manner, until today. Out there it was a ghost town, but Mage Society was hopping with a lot of people. Maybe twice as many as before. All of the people here were packed into a handful of square kilometers, and Mark, as he walked through the center, could feel out the entire place, if he sectioned the place and took it piecemeal. Mark did that and figured there were a lot more people today than 10 days ago. 25, 000 people? 35, 000? Mark wasn't sure.

Every single one of them knew Mark on-sight, now, and a few even bowed as he passed. Quark notified Mark that Isoko had responded, and that she was in the main Understanding Hall that Eliot had built for Mark's Unions of Understanding work. She did not want lunch yet. Elaria and Rekaro were there, too— Reeni thumb walked out from behind a tree, onto the grass beside Mark, and Mark kinda shuddered. He almost flicked out an attack. Almost. Some of his scales did come off and flutter in the air.

That's as far as Mark got to surprising Reeni back. The short witch of the farm grinned up at Mark. She was having a good day, and an even better day after scaring someone. Reeni teased, "Bit jumpy, eh!"" Greetings, Reeni," Mark said, heartbeat calming, several scales slipping back onto his forearms and shins.

"Aurora left me a message about some ritual work, so I'm here for that. I take it that you're leading the ritual?" Mark was kinda excited now that he was here, and actually prepping for big magics. He wondered what they were doing. The last time Mark had worked with Reeni he had carved apart the sky with some kaiju-sized 'Claws of Summer', rending apart the Winter Auroras down to something manageable. Reeni nodded. She left a bit of her levity behind as she said, "I'll be an anti-goblin ritual.

We've done it before and it obviously didn't work perfectly —they never do— but if we do the same one it will drive away all goblins within 20 kilometers and prevent the Bite from taking hold in any human currently inside the settlement, even if they leave the settlement." Mark paused. He continued walking.

"… That's awesome? It didn't work before, though?"" Yup. It had problems, has problems, etcetera, and this time you're going to help secure against those problems, and it might be an entirely different ritual, Mark. See you at Understanding 1." And then Reeni stepped around a tree and was gone. Mark got another response on Accord, and it was a request from Isoko. Isoko wanted coffee and donuts.

Mark easily stopped at a coffee shop called 'On The Rocks' to fulfill that request, and also do something nice, because he felt like doing something nice. There was a small line, but the guys behind the counter knew Mark, or at least they knew Blackvein, and one of them called out asking what Mark wanted, bypassing the line.

It felt a bit weird to bypass the line, but Mark got himself a nice coffee, Isoko a plain black coffee, some 'everyone likes this option' kinda coffee, times 3, and some nice, expensive donuts for a group of people, including the matcha ones that Isoko specifically requested. The rest of the donuts were a variety, from normal Earth-stuff like chocolate and strawberry glazed, to Daihoon flavors like icechip, which was a creamy 'blue' flavor, and greenberry, which was kinda grassy/sweet.

Mark actually liked icechip as an ice cream, but as a donut? Never tried it before, so he wanted to try it. The guys behind the counter rushed through the order well and fast, and Mark left a 100% tip on a 75 goldleaf bill, as well as paying 100-gl-times-7 for everyone else in line. That helped mollify the dislike that emanated from the other people in line, for Mark getting served first.

Several people were very, very happy about that, their opinion on Mark completely turning inside out, into something like a little ball of sunshine. It was a really nice feeling, to feel that. Mark moved on, drinks and coffee floating at his side in his adamantium grip, though he did take out the icechip donut and take a bite. A creamy blue almost-berry taste filled his mouth, and it was good. It was kinda like mint, maybe? But no. Not like mint at all. Mark grinned.

He finished off the donut and started on his coffee as he walked down the side roads of Mage Society. It was a pretty good day.