Chương 421: 421

Mark settled down into his deep-dive room in the base of the house, while an illusion of himself sat on the couch in the living room upstairs, reading books on magic. Perhaps it was overkill to keep that sort of misdirection going. Mark hadn't experienced an assassination attempt since all of those attempts months ago, before he left for Endless Daihoon, but he had talked about it with Addavein once, wondering if he was being paranoid. Addavein had unequivocally told Mark that it was better to be safe than sorry.

Even if blowing Mark's head off these days was both nearly impossible, and it wouldn't even kill him, getting sloppy with one's defenses is how they eventually got you. Mark's current protections might be as simple as choosing to meditate with misdirecting illusions, but in a year, or sooner, someone would catch on to the hows and ways in which Mark dreamwalked and thus they would plan an assassination around his downtime, and he wouldn't have that misdirection to save him.

And then Addavein had gotten into the weeds about how misdirection wasn't good enough, and how this or that were important for magical practice once people started to look your way, and Mark could practically feel his eyes glaze over. People were still after him, but who, exactly, was after him? Empire Okuana, for one. Who knew who else. Did Mark really need any other reasons to practice good magical practice besides having an entire Empire after him to keep up his best practices? Not really.

Addavein mostly told Mark to learn how to go in and out fast, in the field, to get done what he needed to do and then come right back out; that was how all the pros did it eventually. But for now, in a hole in the ground, Mark closed his eyes and purposefully started dreaming.

He opened his mind's eye to the porch of his house, to the black grasses spread out beyond the main property, to a black sky that still shone with clear sunlight even in the darkness, illuminating everything in the way only dreamed light could. With a thought, Mark did a circuit of the property. It all seemed normal.

One main room held the bed (for general rest and healthiness), the adamantium 'bank' (for putting away his metal when not needed), the kitchen (for food containing and prep), and a bunch of other stuff. Most of his adamantium forms were in the main room, hanging beside one of the walls, so that he could manifest adamantium into specific shapes and needs as quick as a thought, instead of actually having to make those shapes on the fly.

A shelf held a few blueprints for Powers that Mark had managed to mangle into existence, somewhat, though all of them were bad and Mark hadn't gotten to experiment with them nearly enough to make them useful. One bathroom took care of Mark's cleaning needs and further healing through infinite 'panacea' medicine in the cabinets. Mark didn't really get physically dirty these days, for dirt kinda sloughed away from both him and his clothes.

It had been like that when Mark was using Union every day to keep clean, but now it was automatic. He always felt rested when he was rested. He was always clean unless he was dirty. It was nice. Below the main structure of the house was the septic system that offloaded most of Mark's digestion into the dreamlands, and Mark was very glad for that. He did not miss going to the bathroom at all.

In fact, if he were to list and rank the good things about this new body, not having to even care about going to the bathroom was high on the list. Also high on the list would be the windows on the house, and his weather vane up top, and his stair steps surrounding the porch that surrounded the entire house. A lot of Mark's Union was tied up in all of that, and also in the septic system, and that allowed Mark to sense the world and heal himself as a matter of normal life.

Thanks to the fragment of a divine mirror he had put into all the windows, Mark could even view how powerful other people were at a glance, though all that really allowed for was Power-Level-typing and estimation. It wasn't a true System scan, or anything nearly as sophisticated as what Eliot could do with a visor. But a Power Level typing and estimation was often good enough.

If he ever ran into a monster (or person) that was high in Body, Kinetic, or Arcane, then Mark could estimate those battles as 'easy', in most cases. Even a Mind monster was usually a simple thing for Mark to deal with, though he killed those super fast because not everyone else could deal with those. Natural and Arch monsters were always the real wild cards which meant that if Mark saw those through his dreamsight, then, if he could, he took a bit more time to try and understand them before he went after them.

And that was most of the structure of the place. It all looked normal. Nothing truly different from the last time Mark went looking. Mark was changing, though. This place was built upon orichalcum, probably just like the divine realms, though the historians were still debating on that one and the gods never told people what they built their realms on, and to even suggest that the realms were a physical place was often considered heresy by some people, and 'yeah sure I can see that' by others.

Mark wanted no part in those conversations, and so he stayed out of it, but orichalcum was the divine metal, so it made sense to think that this house, built of the same materials, was sort of like a divine realm, but very tiny and personal. Mark had been digesting a 5 kilo ball of orichalcum every day or two by sticking it into his belly, literally, through his belly button.

Surface area didn't seem to matter for rate of absorption, so while Mark had experimented with orichalcum dust and found the absorption rate to be the same, he had stuck to orbs, and now his System Prime Status was probably up to… 113 Utilized? Whatever that metric meant, Mark did not know it. All he had were numbers, but he didn't have access to System Prime in the real world. And so, the first part of the day's action was getting new numbers. Mark lifted into the air and landed on the roof.

The weather vane in the middle of the roof looked normal; it was a rooster and an arrow. The whole thing listlessly angled to the side, which was normal for right now. Mark wasn't focusing on anything, and nothing was focused on him, so of course the weather vane was still. If anything focused on him, or if he focused on anything else, then the arrow would rapidly spin toward that thing.

Mark hadn't known that's how it would work when he made it, but that's how he had imagined it would work, and eventually, when he was able to figure out how to 'half-dream', to enter his house while he was still fully awake, Mark was able to see the vane working exactly as he imagined it would.

The weather vane actually got rather hyperactive once Mark started really concentrating and looking at stuff on a battlefield, and Mark's senses had felt a lot stronger ever since he made the weather vane, which was the purpose of it all. Mark walked on, toward the back of the house, where a parabolic dish angled up to the darkness beyond his soulspace. This thing was Mark's connection to System Prime, to his Status readout… sort of. It didn't work well.

Duct tape and antennas and computer screens were plastered all over the thing, every part of the bad engineering a part of Mark's attempts to make the connection stronger so he didn't have to query System Prime so many times in order to get a response. It still barely functioned. Mark said to himself, and to Quark who had yet to show up in his dream, "Here we go. Turning on the dish. Quark? You there?"

Quark materialized to the side, floating in the air like a silver hologram of Mark himself, but dressed up as a butler and not really looking like Mark at all. He looked like a cousin, too; like Addavein, but different. He couldn't act without express permission, not ever since he had been re-infused with a livium core and turned back into a false-AI. Sometimes Mark thought he was just pretending, but… if this is how he wanted to be, Mark still needed an AI, so this was fine.

Quark asked, "Shall I record today's events as well, sir?"" Yeah," Mark said, looking up and out. Addavein, Walaria, and Elaria Valen got these recordings because Mark trusted them, and he valued their magical expertise. Lola, Eliot, and Tartu got these recordings because he valued their opinions. Mark continued, "Maybe now that I have a goal for this house —aside from being able to resurrect my friends and family if they should be murdered— then today's experiments will be particularly of note for all of them.""

What is happening today, sir?"" Today, I'm going to throw together some simple spells, like Protect, Vision, Listener, and maybe I'll even use that malformed Strong Body that I have in storage, and then I'll go out hunting for some easy monsters." Mark tapped at the screen for the System Call system on his roof, and the signal did not connect. A red light flickered. Mark tapped the screen again, and again, and eventually the Call came back.

As the screen resolved into an actual readout, Mark continued, "I'll try to switch out some low level Bindings. Take what the monster has, and then give them what I have created." Mark added, "I fully expect to kill a lot of things before I get this right, so I might as well kill monsters… And I'm pretty sure monsters don't even have Bindings, so this will be a whole lot of experimentation." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation."

Forbidden magic, then, sir?"" Forbidden magic, yup," Mark said, as he looked at his Status.

"Ah. Looks like 114 Utilized. Not my estimated 113." Mark Careed, Age 19, human (Elf, as per System) [Inheritor] Physicality set to: Weak, [Variable], Full Mana Type: True Adamantium House: Several Bricks Extra Lives: Secure Utilized: 13/114 Cohort: 0/1 Bindings: Full.

Body, Adamantine Immortal: 099 Shaper, Adamantium: 099 Mind: 99 (Unusable; Familiar Detected) Natural, Union: 099 Soul: 99 (Empty) Arch: 99 (Empty) Archived Abilities: Strong Body (Incomplete), Healthy Body (Incomplete), Low Shaper (Incomplete) Archived Spells: Protect, Vision, Listener, Tracking (Warning! House is too full to hold extra abilities.) Mark read off the readout for Quark to record, since he couldn't visualize Mark's dreamhouse, and then he said, "Still at 'House: Several Bricks'.

No idea what it'll take to get to something like…

'First Floor', or whatever?

'Foundation'? Make a note: Why did the elves choose house-analogous wording when they built the system? What kind of culture created such a thing? And why 'house' and not 'home'? They do have different words for 'place where living is possible' versus 'place where people live'... probably. Maybe not? Who knows!" Mark moved on, taking a step through his dreamspace, through the roof and directly to the main room. Two shelves stood before him, each of them holding the spells and Powers that Mark had worked on so far.

He hadn't really experimented with any of them, because he had made them in between meetings or when he had an hour or two downtime here and there. All of the archived Spells and Abilities —all capitalized and proper, Mark supposed, and using the Daihoonian words for 'Spells' and 'Power' instead of the Earth words; but at least 'Spells' was the same— were rolled up scrolls sitting on their proper shelves. One shelf for Spells, the other for Abilities. … Both of them were located in Mark's main room."

I need a new room," Mark decided. Mark thought about building a new floor or an extension, and he rapidly decided he needed a disconnected room. An office, perhaps? Yeah. Mark stepped outside of his door and extended the porch to the right, where he made an outdoor office. Four walls, a separate roof, and the porch connecting them together. With the walls created, Mark stepped inside and with a thought he put his blueprints and shelving here. The house would be his own space.

This here would be the experimental space, separated, so that if Mark needed to jettison or erase all of it due to catastrophic whatever then he could do that. It was rather easy for soul stuff to go catastrophically wrong, so Mark… Mark extended the porch from the house to the office a bit more, and then he considered the idea of shifting around Bindings. What would such an operation look like?

Mark verbalized his thoughts, "So I need a construction that would grab something out of the dream, right beyond the house, and then pull it into the property and pull it apart and replace what was there with a blueprint I have in stock. What sort of operation would such a thing look like? Quark? Any ideas?"" A pair of armatures with grabbing hands on the ends. A bookshelf for storage and holding. Ways for that exchange to take place, and sensory equipment to guide the system."

Quark asked, "So perhaps a surgery suite, as well? Soul surgery does tend to be incredibly invasive, from the databases I have access to. Most forbidden magic research takes place in hidden locations underneath normal places, and it usually involves a lot of blood and gore. Many times they are likened to butcher shops." Mark frowned a little, humming, thinking. He had seen those same databases that Quark was referencing, but Mark would have called them 'movies', which were probably more fantasy than reality.

There were a few documentaries, which were probably closer to reality, but even they were not the real story at all." Surely the Empire's Skillers don't have butcher shops? It's probably like Uncle Alexandro's office; clean, professional, and with rooms that can be washed easily, so that when he turns people younger he can wash away all the bad stuff that sometimes comes out of them. So I like the idea of a surgery suite instead of a butcher shop…

Make a note: I want to talk to Skillers at the Winter Ball, please, Walaria. Thank you. As for this room…" Mark went quiet as he began turning dreamstuff into a workstation. The floors flickered, turning to slick metal, the whole place becoming silver. Instead of shelves for scrolls, Mark made filing cabinets and hanging folders. The exterior wall pulled open into a folding wall, exposing the interior of the space, and Mark raised his hands to pull a surgery table out of the ground, to waist-height.

Bright lights descended from the ceiling, providing a lot of lighting, and then Mark pulled two giant hands out of the air… and then Mark turned the hands into many smaller hands, like a hand-shaped swarm of thousands of individual hands. Mark smirked as he muttered to himself, "Many hands make light work—" He suddenly paused. And then he winced hard as a thought intruded.

"I have no idea how to actually interface with the soul of another… But I do have some ideas. Addavein mentioned it a few times, and so did Tartu with dreaming. I just have to open up a connection…" Mark drifted into silence and thought as he continued fixing up his surgery office.

Mark might not be a witch, or a mage, or have any real skill in all of this stuff, but he knew the theory behind it all, and that theory was simple: Reality followed rules that were laid down in the System, in the Veil, in the dreamlands, and Mark had godlike control over a very small part of the dreamlands. That control extended into reality.

His ability to Union, Adamantiumkinesis, and for his body to function as an Adamantine Immortal, were all based on dreams influencing reality through established systems of communication, primarily rooted in Sigildry and then secondarily rooted in memory… Or maybe it was primarily in memory, and secondarily in Sigildry? The memories at the base of every one of his Powers came first, after all, but the Sigildry attached to those memories is what created his Powers. …' Which came first; Sigildry or Powers?'

was a question to ask someone, Mark supposed, as he continued to tweak his 'surgery bay'. It would all likely vanish when Mark stopped looking at it, though, since it was a fresh construction with no basis in his actual Powers or memories, but maybe some of it would stay! Mark didn't know unless he tried—" OH!" Mark exclaimed, suddenly thinking about who would know more about forbidden magics.

"Lola and the Inquisitors! Duh… I wonder what Lola is going to say about this?" It was a question to ask later, after Mark figured out what he was doing here, and how he wanted to do it.

"I hope she's supportive… She usually is."