Chương 298: 298

Magic was pretty damned cool once you got over the limitations around it. Of course, now Mark would have to deal with different limitations… or he could simply not do this centipede-thing. There might even be better shapes than this, but Mark couldn't think of any other good shapes now, and Quark seemed to like being a centipede. He liked it a lot better than the contained-ball version that was the initial idea, too." How's that?" Eliot asked."

Better," Quark said, "Though the parts seem to break down rather fast."" You're PL 80 in Body, just like Mark, and all of this stuff is only PL 10, and you're metal trying to physically move metal, so you don't have the benefit of Mark being mostly fleshy bits, which are a lot softer against other materials..." Eliot asked, "You really can't make the body a part of your matrix like you do with the cameras?"" I cannot."" I really thought I had made this one as thin-walled as I could, too…" Eliot hummed.

"Must be an in-built limitation, and yet… You can take in cameras and speakers and screens of all kinds… Can I make it even thinner? More screen, less leg?" Quark said, "I cannot take in large screens, either, sir."" Right," Eliot said, "That whole idea is dead on arrival." Eliot had been quizzing Quark to make this work, and there were lots of limitations that everyone was discovering right now. But there was a lot of good, too. Mark stood to the side of Eliot's workbench. Eliot stood in front of his workbench.

And a silver centipede about 50 centimeters long and 10 wide, with very complicated joints and legs and whole systems of gears and stuff, stood on the workbench, curled in on itself just a little. Its head was raised and it was facing Eliot. Quark was inside the centipede right now, looking out from cameras all along the body's length, silver veins unseen inside the body.

The body had 10 pairs of hands that rose and fell from its segmented body like articulated scales, and it had two main hands on the front of its body, instead of pincers. It had two long, slender hands on its back end, like the twin tails that centipedes usually had. The whole thing was incredibly complicated, but Eliot had whipped it up in a matter of moments from the raw materials he had had delivered via drone from his workshop.

Ten other experiments lay to the side, including a few other body options, like a ball with interior hands and an angel-like winged ball, with wings made of hands. Mark had slipped in tiny rods of adamantium into all of them, into those fingers and palms, into slots that Eliot had built into the 'bones' of every phalanges and metacarpals and carpals.

It was in those little adamantium bones, with Mark leaving his astral body 'loose' around those bones, and with Quark flexing those hands, that Quark was able to use Mark's free mana to cast spells. When an experiment was deemed a 'maybe not', Mark had torn his adamantium out of those other options, leaving holes and split metal in all of that scrap. Eliot would reuse the stuff, of course, but that would come later. This was an interesting problem for Eliot.

One that he was already seeing define his future in ways he never expected. He wanted lots of failed experiments to look back on. This was how you could layer defensive, responsive, ritual magic systems into a city, after all. Mark only had so much astral body to go around, though. That was the main problem.

Usually his astral body was either sparsely scattered in big Unions, 650 meters in all directions, with his adamantium held close to his body to give him more Union range, or his astral body was mostly Adamantiumkinesis, out to an impressive 100 meters, at the most, that way he could still swing a blade with some power behind it. There were a lot of tricks to getting more range, with the biggest trick being narrowness of astral body, and the second trick being gradual growth due to constant use.

But when Mark gave over his astral body to Quark, to all of those hands on all of that body, Mark had to be kinda loose with his control. Otherwise Quark couldn't move his little hands at all, and then there was no point to doing any of this at all. The metal was still Mark's body, after all. Quark was like a puppeteer when he was doing this; controlling Mark's body for both of their benefits.

When he was linked to the centipede's hands like this, Mark's range was about 300 meters with Union, and if he tried swinging a full spear with Adamantiumkinesis, then he'd be lucky to get 25 meters before the spear wobbled out of his control, or his strike simply wasn't strong. But there were a lot of benefits to this thing happening right here. Mark asked, "Try a visual camo, Quark. No magic yet." 75% of the centipede's body, aside from the silver hands, might just look silver, but it was also a screen.

Eliot had called it some special type of screen that gave off no light, but Mark didn't really know about all that. All he knew was that one moment Quark was a silver centipede with a lot of hands up and down its body, and the next he flickered, and Quark was still obviously there, but kinda blurred. Those screens showed the workbench below the body, and the room to the sides.

It was more of a blurring than a real invisibility effect, but once Quark added in actual magic then the effect might be enough to hide him from normal sights. Actual invisibility cantrips were better, though. Simpler, too. Eliot hummed.

"Looks like the adaptive camo is working, but not nearly enough. How is the power supply?" Eliot had put a few different generators inside of the centipede's body, and all Quark had to do was spin a little motor fast to get more than enough power for the centipede's motor functions. Quark could easily do that, because he used Mark's energy, his astral body, to create work. It was draining for Mark for Quark to do that, but it was a negligible drain, like most of Quark's power requirements.

Still twice as much as the normal negligible requirements, though." Power supply is stable, sir," Quark said, flexing the centipede's body and moving it around here and there. He was looking at himself from other cameras in the room, and from Mark's own point of view. Those various images were on the screens around the room; pictures taken for posterity and for diagnosis. The centipede did not move fast. It did not move securely. That was fine. Mark could move Quark around just fine.

Quark just needed ways to hold on to surfaces to cast, and he didn't need a lot of speed for that. Quark said, "Seems inadequate in various ways, though."" Yeah, it clearly is," Eliot said.

"That's the limit of basic tech. Artificing can get you a lot further, and you might want to consider that, Mark. Camo charms are cheap. Even the good ones are cheap."" I'd need to get a repair charm made anyway, yeah?" Mark asked." Oh yeah. Lots of things to put into this design," Eliot said, "I can only get you the base body."" It is a very impressive body, sir," Quark said. Eliot snorted.

"Thank you, Quark."" Now for the camo magic," Mark said, and he prepared himself." Beginning camo cantrips," Quark said. None of them knew 'good' camo cantrips, but the basic idea was easy enough to put together in Sigaldry, once Mark and Eliot started to talk about it. All that was really needed was for light to pass through the centipede's body.

After a few misstarts where light also passed through Mark's body, blinding him (and informing Mark that he needed to figure out an 'invisibility except for the eyes' kind of cantrip), they had figured out a better way. They just had to target an object for light to pass through, and not Mark himself. Of course, there were problems with that solution, too... Little hands across the centipede rose on articulated limbs, giving them more range to maneuver, and then Quark began to gesticulate.

It was like Quark had opened a hole in the bathtub that was Mark's astral body. Strength flowed away, fast. Mark beat his heart with Good and Bad, black veins thrumming into existence, reaching out of his skin and into the world. Strength returned a lot faster than Quark spent that strength. The sound of so many hands flashing signs was barely audible. Eliot had pulled his own Power completely away from the centipede, so the thing wasn't silent, but he had made it well.

It didn't break this time, either, unlike lots of other times. And soon, after Quark finished the first layer of invisibility, the centipede vanished from sight. All of the tiny black adamantium rods that inhabited every little 'bone' of the centipede's hands became fully visible, and so did Quark. Mark's silver familiar stretched along the inside of the centipede's body like a network of silver veins, reaching into every hand and threading down the length of the centipede's back, like a spinal cord.

Mark thought it was pretty neat, actually. Eliot said, "So there are issues."" But they're fun issues to have," Mark said, grinning.

"You gonna try to do something like this, too?" Eliot said, "Absolutely. I need to figure out how to manifest my mana into liquid form, though. Shouldn't be too hard? I have no idea."" Power drain is a problem too, yeah?" Eliot had a moment of thought that sent his mind spiraling in several directions at once, and then he said, "This is a layered solution to a layered problem. Primarily, I can only cast cantrips with living mana. Not sure if that's a real thing or not, but I'm calling it that.

'Living mana'. Meaning mana that is a part of my astral body." You can enchant stuff with 'dead mana', with the mana crystals you pull out of monsters, and dead mana does one or two things very well. Things it is specifically crafted to do." Living mana does anything you want it to do, though." So you need to use living mana if you want to cast cantrips." So I need to be personally involved in the action, which is… draining. I can't just control a bunch of hands to sign for me, though… Or can I?" Eliot had an idea.

He said, "Don't support me right now." Mark nodded, silent, pulling his Union away from Eliot completely. Eliot grabbed one of the failed projects to the side; the millipede, with too many arms and hands to be useful. Mark's astral strength simply bottomed out when Quark tried that one. So, with a bit of Man-made Manipulation, Eliot cut a section of the millipede away from the rest and set it on the table next to Quark's invisible-with-visible-internals body. Then Eliot morphed it into a bunch of hands in a line.

He imbued those hands with his power, and then he kinda… moved them. They moved poorly. The hands jittered, they flopped a little, but they still made fire-gathering sigils, and the air above the hands began to glow with fire. A minute later and with Eliot sweating profusely and his astral body strained, there was a tiny orb of fire above the hands. Eliot released the cantrip and the balloon of fire popped. It made a pretty loud sound. Eliot grinned as he said, "Okay! That works.

Now for the easy way, which I think does not work." Eliot took control of the hands again, and this time the hands twitched and flexed, and then they fell in line with each other. Their movements were perfect and synchronized, obviously fully-automated, and the air above them did not gather power at all. Eliot was not actively controlling the hands right now at all. He frowned, but he also nodded. Mark guessed, "Automated systems don't work for cantrips."" They do not," Eliot said.

"It has to be directly controlled by either myself, or a Familiar AI, which is like getting a secondary mind to do all the mundane stuff for you." Mark nodded.

"I can do cantrips when I do them directly, or when Quark does them."" So yeah. The problem is layered," Eliot said, "I need to do it directly, which is something I do not do at all under normal circumstances, or I need an AI to do it for me, and I need massive free mana storage, which I can probably do with Castellan, but… Mmm." Mark was a little surprised about a part of that, so he asked, "You have mana storage with Castellan?"" The settlement is imbued with a lot of mana that everyone puts down all the time.

We're not supposed to use that stored mana for personal reasons, and I don't, because it's the literal power in the walls, so… you know. I don't touch it except to make sure it's being maintained. There's mana in the house, though, and that I do use because of course I do…" Stolen story; please report. Eliot hummed and did something in the background. It was like the solid world all around Mark got a little bit non-solid, like sand shifting.

The hands Eliot was using on the table suddenly flickered to gold, to glint with a fire just below the metal surfaces, and began moving at Eliot's demands. The first experiment, with heavily synchronous hands, did nothing. The second experiment with Eliot straining and the hands moving a bit out of sync, made a glinting golden fire gather into the air. The golden fireball popped, releasing sound and not much else, and then it was done.

Mark said, "So you can use Castellan just like your Manipulation, but a fire-gathering Castellan-cantrip does golden fire… for some reason. Probably due to mana types? Fire mana should do fire-things better, right?"" Castellan is fire- aligned," Eliot said, "It's not fire mana, but yeah. Of course."" What even is mana?"" Fuck if I know." And then Eliot asked Quark, "Do you like that body, Quark? I could do another one?"

Quark turned his mostly-invisible body toward Mark, saying, "I am unable to make that determination, Mister Cybersong." Mark answered, "It cuts my range in half and having him in that body is like trying to walk around while keeping my arm in a cast, because if I move it at all I'll break the whole thing. It's weird. Not sure I like it. But my utility went up by a lot, and Quark can cast Protect on me, and I think it's a really good option. Just not one that I can use right now."

Quark disentangled himself from the invisible centipede, his silver veins vanishing. He reappeared on Mark's retracted helmet, which was laying on his neck and shoulders and forming a half-collar on his shirt. Quark spoke through the room's speakers, "Miss Kanno is figuring out how to Wind Shape sigils, like what Mister Cybersong and what you, sir, have tried to do directly with your various Powers. According to what we have seen in the Sigaldry Understanding parties, most mages do something similar to that.

That is invisible on cameras." Mark nodded, saying, "I need to figure out a way to make my adamantium invisible… Which might be really good, actually? Could I do that?"" Seems likely, sir," Quark answered. Eliot hummed, thinking, staring at the inactive, still-invisible centipede body. Mark's adamantium was left behind, in the 'bones' of every hand, but he was going to take that back as soon as Eliot was done investigating the thing. Mark waited. Eliot came back to the moment, saying, "Okay.

You can tear the bits out." Mark slipped the bits of adamantium out of the centipede's many hands, breaking the invisibility in flickers and then all at once, as he broke the shells containing the adamantium. Mark sighed a little as fragments of adamantium rejoined the main body, as he was once again able to move with all of his body instead of trying to let other people move his body for him.

Mark said, "Isoko might like to experiment with a centipede too, and her wind will be a lot less destructive on the mechanics."" Maybe maybe," Eliot said, his thoughts still far away. Mark asked, "You gonna ask United Sapients for an AI familiar?"" I kinda really want to, but…" Eliot paused in thought, and then he continued, "You need 100 points to be considered for an AI and I'm a tinkerer and they don't like giving tinkerers AIs, so I'm already in the hole, point-wise.

It's a whole 'worries about abuse' situation. I already know I would use the AI to automate a bunch of rote work, which is exactly the thing they don't like, because they don't like AIs being raised as slaves. They want AIs raised as people. And I have no need for a familiar, not really. I am never without communication devices and I'm not fighting kaiju up close and personal…"

Eliot looked away, thinking, "But maybe knowing about automated rituals and being in Mage Society might get me over the 100 point threshold? I haven't checked in on point totals… I don't think I'd be a good father to an AI." Mark scoffed.

"What! You're a great guy!" Eliot chuckled… and then his chuckle kinda faded.

"I think today was really important, Mark, and in a lot of weird ways. You know I wanted to be a bard, right? I talked about that once already but… Going everywhere, meeting a lot of people, documenting it all… And then scary shit happened and I retreated. But hearing those songs today reminded me about important things. Real shit, you know? I'm doing what I want to do here, but I also very much want to kill all monsters."

He added, "Today had me thinking that there was even a sort of logic to that craziness you were joking about with Isoko months ago, with nuclear bombs scattered all across the Two Worlds and people evacuated, and then just doing clear sweeps of everything. Crazy shit, I know. And yet… You know?" Mark was serious, too, as he said, "I do know. But there have to be better ways than that craziness."" For sure.

A flying castle with an entire 'centipede core' with millions of hands doing magic all together, taking in the power of a whole lot of people and turning it into massed effect? You did that ritual with Isoko and targeted all goblins within the area, so why not do that to all the rest of the monsters?" Eliot added, "Because, if we can't kill all monsters right away, then making humanity invisible to them would be a good first step."

Mark had been having a few big thoughts ever since this morning, and it seemed Eliot was having a few new big thoughts, too. Mark voiced his conclusion, "And yet, if it could be done, then it should have already been done. So why not?

'Because demons' is probably the most valid answer. But this sort of stuff is done on smaller scales all the time. Cities have stuff like this working all the time, apparently. I'm reminded of that grand airship tower that we visited at Crytalis. You know the one?"" Ahhhh, yeah, I do."

Eliot nodded, adding, "It wasn't visible until you were close enough to see through the invisibility, and it was located deep inside the city, too, so that the kaiju that spawn that can see through the effect, and that are attracted to the effect, are kept to a minimum."" Exactly," Mark said, "Because if they did that invisibility effect everywhere, then the demons would make invisible kaiju that target and thrive off of eating that type of magic, or whatever. But there has to be a way around that, right?

Some combination of powers; some combination of magic; some combination of logistics and otherwise." They went silent in thought. Eliot said, "Maybe we are doing all of that stuff already? We are in a new settlement, and humanity is expanding. But we can't expand like they did on Earth, in the 1700's and otherwise. Everywhere is monsters. Everywhere needs individualized responses. Heck, you can't kill a kaiju on your own, but I bet you'll get there. Most people can't do that at all.

You're literally, like, 1 in a million. Less than 4, 000 people like you in the world. Every city only has so many strong powers to it, and every power can eventually be planned against, like the demons and cultists did with Memphi." Mark nodded, saying, "Yeah." Silence. Deep thoughts. Mark said, "I got, like, lots to do. Talk later."" Me, too," Eliot said, his mind already far, far away. Mark went to his own workshop and started practicing cantrip casting, like Isoko was, over in her bedroom upstairs.

She was moving air around, making 'invisible sigils' in the normal way, with her new Wind Shaper power, and Mark started doing the same with his adamantium. He couldn't actually use his solid adamantium to make magic, but he could shape it into hexagons and circles and lines and otherwise, and the free mana of his body would create cantrips just the same.

He didn't have to make hand-signs, since the hand-signs abstracted to shapes, too, but after experimenting a while, he found that the hand-signs were simply more responsive. So he made a bunch of skeletal-hands with locking joints, and kept going. And he joined a Union of Understanding with Isoko, who startled just a bit, but then she fell into a flow right alongside Mark, and together, in separate rooms, they worked on Sigaldry through Shaping.

- - - - Mark got 3 hours of sleep and then the sun rose and he got up and got ready. Quentin, in the command center, had already put together a packet of problems at the burned goblin villages that needed to be eliminated, and Mark checked on those while he got dressed. Kandon had issued those problems as quests available to high level teams, and since those problems were mostly inside of the anti-goblin 'can't see us!' ritual zone, some high level teams were already out there, already solving those problems.

Mark needed some targets for Union experimenting, though, so he was going out there on his own, to go kill some big fire elementals, some monstrous miasma plants, and some other assorted issues he had marked down for himself. Mostly, he expected to counter ambush whatever might show up to hunt the high level teams, and Mark was excited for that. Not for the other teams to get injured, no no.

But Mark had figured out a few neat tricks that he needed to practice out in the field, aside from all the new Unions he wanted to try out, of course. Stability/Instability, Fear/Glory, and Mercurial/Predictable or Flow/Stop, whichever one worked best. Mark loved to fall into the flow of battle, so he assumed that Flow/Stop would work a lot better than Mercurial/Predictable, but it might not. Having 'Stop' anywhere in a Union at all would be… difficult.

If you stopped breathing, or heart-beating, or brain-electricity-firing, then Union stopped, too. So Mark would need to figure out how to make that work. But attempting a trick like 'Stop' in the middle of a battle would be dangerous; too dangerous to practice with other people, so he had to practice in the field. So he had a big trick to pull, to make all the rest of his experimenting easier." Ready, Quark?" Mark asked, preparing to sign." Ready, sir!" Quark was not a centipede right now.

Instead, he was a hollow adamantium sphere about 5 centimeters across, with two pairs of adamantium-boned arms, with 3-centimeter-wide hands on the ends of each of those arms. Everything was articulated as well as Mark could articulate it, but there was also room for Quark to flow, silver, between everything, to be able to move all of those hands as needed. It was almost too heavy for him, but Mark controlled the weight of the actual ball itself, and Quark could move the hands well enough.

Mark and Quark began signing, together, 'From-the-eyes, by-way-of-mind, light/sight filters untouched through the body, the clothes on the body, and the astral body, except for the eyes, which are windows to see the world unfiltered.' There were probably better 'invisible except for the eyes' cantrips out there, but this was the one Mark had come up with, and it worked well enough.

Mark's astral body began to weaken, fast, with 6 hands all signing for the same ritual, but he had a Union of Good/Bad keeping him strong, and each time Mark finished the Sigils, by making the 'OK' sign over both eyes, his body, clothes, and adamantium began to fade. Quark remained fully visible, beginning to appear like silver veins floating midair in his little handy-orb, and also around Mark's head, neck, eyes, and ears, where he normally hung out.

Mark's eyes and about 3 centimeters of the nerves behind his eyes also remained visible. Light bled through to the back of his eyeballs, though, and that was rather painful, but Mark's inability to make Quark invisible (with this methodology) proved to be useful. Quark flexed inside Mark's body, around his eyes, forming eyelids and blocking out exterior light, and now Mark could see again. It was concerning to see Quark so deep inside Mark's head, but Quark was Mark's body anyway, so… this was fine, right? Right.

And soon, even Mark's adamantium was invisible." Neat!" Mark said. Quark spoke up, "We need to log this with the command center if we want to use this in battle."" And we will," Mark said, stepping around his room, smiling as he dented the carpet with his boots. Invisibility Powers were not common, but they were common enough, and so they, and obfuscation Powers, from camouflage to shapeshifting, were all given the same talks by regulators in charge of that sort of thing.

Mark regurgitated some of those talks, now, saying, "The biggest danger of invisibility is getting splatted on accident by friendly forces because someone literally cannot see you." Mark had his Unionsense to 'see' invisible people, though, so he had never accidentally splatted someone, but it had happened to other people. Glorious Man had once crushed an invisible reporter by accident, and that had been a whole big news story years and years ago.

There was concern in Quark's voice as he asked, "And how are your eyes, sir?"" You're helping, there, but I'm getting bleed-through and it's getting painful again. Probably not gonna do this too often. But it's fine. I can see everything well enough and it only took us 2 minutes for the full cantrip. I bet doing half of the cantrip is more than enough for most situations, too…"

Mark looked at himself in the mirror, and he saw nothing but his eyes, and then he looked at Quark, and asked, "So you can manifest with that much distance between your body parts? Any… trouble with that?" Quark was on Mark's eyes, ears, and helmet, but also floating like scattered silver veins on the adamantium orb to the side. There was nothing connecting his separated systems… except, Mark supposed, Mark's astral body." It is uncomfortable, but I can manage well enough, sir.

Do you think you can fight in this way? I have no idea where your adamantium is."" Oh sure," Mark said, moving his invisible adamantium around his body. He didn't even scrape the floor.

"I can feel it like I can feel my fingers, Quark…" Mark's voice trailed off as he looked to the side, to the door to his room. Sally was down the hall, just now waking up. Mark got an evil grin that no one saw at all, as he said, "I kinda want to scare Sally— No no nono." Mark shook his head.

"Let's not do that—" Mark's invisibility began to fade, and his body came back into view, slowly, like he was materializing out of the air; layer after layer of cantrip peeling away, one at a time." Ah, good," Mark said, as he watched his hands come back into view.

"Let's go get breakfast."