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Mark grumbled, tapping the 'System Call' button on his setup on the roof of his soulhouse. The amalgamation of parabolic dishes and screens and computer tech sent out signal after signal with each press, echoing ripples of flexed darkness out into the prismatic black dream beyond. Still no return signal." Ugh! Why aren't you working!" Mark said, as he hit the button again.

"It was working at the settlement! It was working yesterday— Oh!" The screen flickered and blue replaced the black, almost like it was starting to connect, to show Mark his Status… but then the blue vanished and Mark scowled. It was Friday of the Winter Ball, and the last 4 days had all been mostly the same.

People wanted to talk to Mark, and so Mark had had meetings with them about the Reset Quest and about Okuana and about goblins and about much less immediate concerns, like funding for this project or that project. That's how the weekdays went here at the Winter Ball. Everyone was here to mingle and talk and plan and make connetions. Mark took the afternoons off so he could study Basic Enchanting and talk to Rylan and Tulo and Andria and Tartu about all of that stuff.

He had given them all more adamantium for their own projects, including Rylan's cousin who was deep into Swords of Empire creation, but he had not gotten anywhere with that direction in a long time. That cousin was named Yadono Drakemore, and he bowed and scraped at Mark when he was there, giving Mark the distinct impression that he was a dragonist, like Rylan. It was uncomfortable to talk to Yadono because of that, and Mark didn't do a great job at hiding that fact.

Rylan talked to Yadono in private for a moment in the middle of that meeting, though, and Yadono came back much more normal-like, though his vector had still been full of deference. It wasn't that bad, honestly. Mark had spoken to Walaria a few times since Monday, and each time she quickly updated Mark about the situation with Okuana, and each time it had been basically 'Nothing is happening yet. Might happen soon or not at all', and then she went on to see if Mark needed anything.

Mark had said he was fine, each time. The Understanding Party for Basic Enchanting would be happening Sunday, provided nothing happened at the main event tomorrow. Mark had been going hard at Basic Enchanting on his own, figuring out how to make magical items and 'cheating' a whole bunch, because adamantium was very good at not doing the one thing that all other magical items did. Adamantium did not degrade if you made it properly.

All other magical items eventually either condensed improper mana onto them, causing cascading failures in linkages and 'short circuits', or the base item itself dissipated into the manasphere, the mana used up as it did its functions. Adamantium remained adamantium, and yes, it could condense other mana onto it if you did it wrong, but it was easy to 'do it right', as long as you used mithril coatings and mithril bridges.

Mithril flowed easily, meaning that even if mithril did condense other mana onto itself, that mana rapidly flowed away when it was used up by the actual enchantment. The mithril might degrade if all you used was mithril, but when you used an adamantium base the mithril remained strong.

Way back when Mark actually used a spellbreaker to give himself an automatic 4-ish seconds of complete immunity to whatever magic specifically targeted him, those spellbreakers needed to recharge for days at a time before they could be used again. Mark never really understood how or why they 'recharged', but now he knew how and why they recharged. When a spellbreaker was being used by a person, that spellbreakers gathered the appropriate mana to activate the Protect-effect from the user and the atmosphere.

When the spell activated, that buildup was transformed into effect. That's why it took days to recharge them, and why you could concentrate on a spellbreaker to make it recharge faster, and why mithril was one of the main components of a spellbreaker. If, however, you made a spellbreaker with an adamantium core and a mithril overlay, and if you accounted for multiple atmospheric mana condensation possibilities, then you could charge it effortlessly and it would last a lot longer than usual.

It was even theoretically possible to have a continuously-running spellbreaker. It was difficult to do, but the primary hurdle to such a creation was the adamantium demand. Mark solved that big demand long before he solved the rest of the demands, but he had been working through those smaller requirements slowly and steadily.

Binding work to understand the architecture of the spell in the first place, Sigaldry to understand the individual parts of the spell, Manawork to understand the individual parts even more, and finally Basic Enchanting to pull it all together into a workable whole. Usually Quark did most of that for Mark when making signs and using Mark's adamantium mana to cause effects, but Basic Enchanting allowed Mark to put all of that into an item that other people could use… Theoretically."

I just need this fucking System Call to work so I can check our work," Mark mumbled, as he pressed the System Call button again. The signal went out. Still nothing. Mark sighed, "Dammit." Quark, floating to the side and standing tall and proper, said, "Master Drakemore and Armsmith Khava have given their approval to the proposed design, and we have replicated it in adamantium well. Perhaps a System Call to check on the working isn't necessary?" Mark frowned a little.

"Yeah, but Addavein said it was 'passable'." He had also said that Mark could do better. Mark had been doing the Protect spell for months, though mostly he had not. Not directly. Quark did it for him. Mark did have the Protect spell and a few other basic spells in his Status, though, sitting on a shelf in his house downstairs, along with his new Protect-like magic which he still wasn't sure would work for his enchanting needs.

When Addavein had seen that Mark was still working with basic Protect, Addavein said he had expected Mark to expand his capabilities past that initial magic. Maybe even to 'Continuous Protect', which Mark hadn't even known existed until Addavein had talked about it yesterday."

' Repetition is the mother of learning', according to many sources," Quark added.

"… Fuck. Yeah. You're right. I'll do it with what we got, but I'd like it if this System Call would work and tell me if I even managed to make the spell— Ohh! It's doing something!" The jumble of machinery and antenna pulsed, and then a blue box filled the air slowly. It did not dissipate this time. 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: 36/148 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 (Old): Strong Body (Incomplete), Healthy Body (Incomplete), Low Shaper (Incomplete), Bolter, Breeder, Camouflage x3, Eater, Healthy Body, Hider x7, Ice Shaper, Parasitize x3, Plant Body, Slick Body x8, Strength Unending, Strong Body x2, Stunner Body, Water Shaper x2 Archived Abilities (New): None Archived Spells (Old): Protect, Vision, Listener, Tracking Archived Spells (New): Extended Protect (Warning! House is too full to hold extra abilities.)" Ah ha!" Mark said, "It worked! Extended Protect! Not 'Continuous Protect', but viable enough!"" Very good, sir," Quark said.

"Shall we craft?"" Yes indeed!" Mark blinked. From one moment to the next, Mark had been on the roof of his soulhouse— Mark opened his eyes to a small crafting room located on the second floor of the Green House. A 1-kilo brick of adamantium, a similarly-heavy but twice as large brick of mithril, and a brick of orichalcum that was between the size of the other two, lay in front of him. Mark wasn't going to use all of it, but he was going to use enough.

First, Mark checked on everyone else in the house, and there was nothing worrying at all. Eliot and Tartu were doing stuff in the garden, Andria and Rylan were forging something in the smithy, Tulo and Lola and Rekaro were on a conference call with someone else (probably people at the settlement), while Sally and Isoko were out with Derek somewhere. Maybe doing some HVP things, since Lenny and Shawn were out, as well.

Isoko had been trying to restart that after they were all blackballed-but-not-really by Crystal Tower, but they hadn't gotten very far with that. Mark expected something to happen with regard to the Hero/Villain Program tomorrow, at the big main event of the Winter Ball. A lot of stuff was going to happen tomorrow, and so Mark wanted this 'spellbreaker' he was about to make to be complete and working by then. Mark breathed in, and then out, centering himself…

And then he kinetically pulled off a dollop of adamantium about 2 centimeters across, and he flash-Shaped it into the Extended Protect that he had already built in his soulhome. The darker than black metal easily flowed into hexagonal shapes connected at the edges before flowing in and around itself, becoming even more hexagons, gradually forming most of a sphere. You couldn't make a fully-hexagonal sphere, though. Not in reality. The shapes just didn't line up right.

In the dream, in the Binding, you could, because the dream was malleable like that. But in reality you had to add pentagons, which were not protective at all. That's what made the spell useful, though; that in-built weakness in the defense allowed you to still act beyond the protection. If you didn't have dedicated-and-known weaknesses, then you were just building yourself an astral cage. Mark had actually done that to himself a few times, trying to cast the spell.

He had learned to include the pentagons to make the spell work properly. Pentagons in Sigaldry did not mean all the same thing, though. They were either a 5-out-of-6-sided defense, or they were an attack, or they were other things, depending on the surrounding Sigaldry. They were sort of like consonants versus the vowels. Everything included the vowel-like hexagons, but the pentagons outnumbered the hexagons a lot. Other shapes outnumbered the pentagons.

Those other shapes, including triangles and squares and seven-sided shapes, swam through the developing Extended Protect like chains surrounding each pentagon, forming the edges of regulatory holes purposefully left in the magic. After a minute of Shaping, of allowing reality to mirror the dream Mark had already built… reality had fucked up in a few places. One of the hexagons was bent, one of the holes was full of almost-cancerous Sigaldry chains, and so Mark crushed the entire working back down to nothing.

He went into his dream, found the issue by rotating the sphere four full times around and somehow exposing a part he hadn't fully seen until then, and then came back. He started again. This time, the spherical 'Binding' completed correctly. No mistakes. No bunched up lines of Sigaldry.

It was about 3 centimeters across, and though it had taken him 40 minutes to make the spell in his dream and it would have only taken him 5 in reality, this way he could make the spellform whenever he wanted, and such a creation would only take him 10 seconds. If this worked. Mark asked, "Quark?" Quark was a dollop of silver, hanging out to the side on the wall. He flexed and changed, glass-like structures appearing in his body along with other visual equipment, and Mark held the black sphere up to him.

Quark flexed and scanned, and soon he said, "It's already absorbing mana."" Good!" Mark crushed the sphere into a spot of black, destroying the gathering mana on its surface and the item itself, and then he left it aside. For his next trick, he detached his hands, regrew his hands, and he wrapped the mithril in his kinetic grip. He twisted, crushed, broke and folded the mithril, hammering it with a simple application of violence. It began to heat. The noise was incredible.

When much of the initial heating was done, Mark crafted a sphere of adamantium and then began manually flexing the sphere, crushing the mithril under great pressure while practically chewing the mithril inside. As he did that, as the mithril eventually began to melt from pure physical crushing, Mark covered his work surface in adamantium to protect it from the heat. The adamantium heated alongside the mithril, but the mithril got about halfway to liquefying long before the adamantium even got hot.

So Mark flexed the adamantium even more, focusing on the heat of the adamantium, and soon the ball of black was so hot that the air felt dry, a fire would have started if Mark put the ball down, and the mithril inside became liquid, sloshing around. It felt nice to hold, really. Warm. It was really fucking hot, actually. But to Mark it was just warm. The adamantium was never in danger of melting, at all.

With a quick application of Shaping, Mark put a small tripod onto the work surface and he put the orb containing the molten mithril on top. Mark did the same thing to the orichalcum, eventually getting a sphere of liquid orichalcum sitting in a black sphere next to the sphere full of liquid mithril. Finally, Mark grabbed the dollop of adamantium again and he Shaped it into Extended Protect.

The small Binding of adamantium looked perfect, was confirmed as perfect by Quark, and so Mark opened the top of the mithril orb— Mithril spurted out, no longer contained by adamantium and too pressurized to remain inside. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it" Ooop!" Mark ignored the burning ceiling and whatever as he dropped the Extended Protect into the rest of the liquid mithril, and then he closed the sphere.

He reached up with a free hand and brushed the molten mithril out of his hair, as he focused on what he felt inside of the sphere. Kinetically, Mark sensed the smaller sphere inside of the larger sphere, resting on the bottom, so Mark flexed the outer sphere, keeping the inner sphere sloshing around. Eventually he just rotated the outer sphere, letting the inner sphere 'float' somewhere in the middle-ish of the concoction.

It was much denser than the mithril, so it tended to sink, but a bit of sloshing kept it afloat. A minute passed quickly, and then another minute passed, and gradually Mark stopped being able to sense the inner sphere. The physical Binding for Extended Protect was fully mithril'd, the adamantium core fully covered by transformative grace. It didn't register to Mark's senses anymore.

Opening the top carefully this time, Mark extended his fingers into a pair of tongs and retrieved the core of the enchanted object from the pool of molten mithril. It looked weird. Like the frame of a soccer ball but in silver, and with holes in it. The flat spaces were flat, but little mithril fragments layered like sprays of ice on every edge, which correlated with the diagrams of how mana flowed. Mana always started gathering and breaking first at the edges; at the precipitation points.

Mark did not let the orichalcum container spurt like he had the mithril container. He let off the pressure slightly, creating a slight vacuum in the orichalcum container, then he opened up— Golden red light spilled out of the container, filling the air with dancing sparks and a vision of the dream. For a moment Mark looked through the molten heat of the divine metal, through the sparks, and he saw the prismatic dark of the dream lurking in that heat mirage.

Mark tossed the binding into the sphere of molten orichalcum and he closed the container— The container began to contract in Mark's kinetic grip, as though whatever was inside was slowly draining from the container without Mark noticing it. Or rather, it was like something really hot was cooling really fast inside of a closed container. There was a vacuum. A strong one, too." The fuck? The books didn't say anything about a vacuum? Uhhh? It's supposed to be a closed system—Quark!?"

Quark said, "Tulo spoke of a slight vacuum as a sign of a quality product, and well-taken orichalcum."" Ah… yeah. He did." Mark frowned a little.

"It's not supposed to be this strong… Suggestions?" Quark opened up a holographic book in Mark's view, showing a page on how to do this, and then turning to the section on troubleshooting, saying, "If the vacuum is too strong open a pinhole to relieve tension, unless you have a system that automatically does this for you at 1/100 vacuum. Do not let it go past that point, as you might damage the container.

Do not go past 1/150 vacuum, or you might damage your project, though trial-and-error is necessary to figure out the exact tolerances of your project. Do not go past 1/200 vacuum, for the orichalcum might not adhere well if you have too much vacuum. Never go to True Vacuum unless you know what you are doing, and if all you are using is this book then you do not know what you are doing."" Ahh… So many small parts to learn..." Mark looked at the sphere, and said, "It might be headed toward a True Vacuum…

that is a very strong… mmm." Quark said, "I apologize for not being able to measure inside the sphere, sir."" Oh no no," Mark said, "You're good, Quark. I don't want you to have an injury in there, because I have no idea what is going on in there… I suppose I could pluck out an eye and put it in there, though… Nah. Let's just…" Mark went quiet as he focused on what he was feeling from the orichalcum container. The vacuum got stronger.

It was almost like trying to hold two very strong magnets very close together without letting them come together. Mark could do that these days with his adamantium without issue. But this vacuum reminded him of being a child again and playing with magnets. …

Mark let the container relax for a moment longer and the whole thing crunched inward, so Mark controlled the crunch, and then he opened a pinhole— A train-like whistle filled the room and a spear of molten dream cut a ribbon through the room, against the mithril-sprayed ceiling. For a moment, Mark saw through that slice of molten orichalcum heat, into a world of dark rainbows that glowed, and then the glow faded.

The heat died quickly, the sphere cooled unnaturally fast, and soon Mark decided to open the sphere, to see what he had. The remains of the project glowed fiercely upon a tumble of broken gold, in a nest of black. It sparkled. Why did it sparkle? It was gold and silver and it should not sparkle like it was a diamond, but the metallic surface had depths to it. It was sort of like looking at a hologram of a diamond, but in reality." Weird," Mark said, picking it up with his fingers.

The magic inside latched onto him, and he latched on to it, and suddenly things were clearer in his mind, like he had taken a shot or two of espresso. It was a good kind of feeling.

"Double weird. Why is it activating now? The Witches' Welcome, maybe?" There were so many spells in the air that Mark had no idea what the Protect could be activating on. It might even be activating on the Castellan power that laced through the Green House that Eliot had set up, or maybe something that Addavein had done.

Every time Mark glanced at Addavein with his fragment of a divine mirror active the dragon-guy was always scrying somewhere else, his vision tunneled into tiny holes in reality that were surely some sort of seer-type extension of power, letting him view far, far away. … Mark frowned as a thought crossed his path.

Mark strung the glittering sphere of Extended Protect magic onto an adamantium chain, fine enough to feel like silk in his fingers, and then he hung it on his neck, saying, "That asshole probably knows where the People's hidden house book is and he's making sure I can't find out…" Mark wasn't serious when he said it, because Addavein had never done anything mental to him at all… except for the talzarki stuff, but… did that count? Probably not.

"So maybe it's just the Witches' Welcome." The Witches' Welcome was a constant flexing in the air, moving people around to benefit Empire Aluatha. Mark could resist it if he wanted, but if he resisted it then the people came to him and the Welcome acted on them, even harder, and every time they came to him Mark saw people who needed help, who he could help, he decided to help them anyway. The Welcome wasn't an evil magic at all.

If Mark started calling the Welcome 'evil' then he might as well call his own use of Union as 'evil' whenever he organized everyone for battle situations. Mark flexed his eyes and looked around in the dream, and… yeah? Maybe the Welcome wasn't touching him right now. … Seemed like a massive security oversight if someone could just pull out a Protect artifact and be immune to the Welcome. That shit was protecting everyone, as long as they were part of it.

This little trinket seemed to put Mark outside of the effect completely. Mark looked at his skin, at his astral body, and he saw the shifting directions of the Witches' Welcome shifting like a moving piece of glass between him and the world, beyond his body. Mark cleaned up the cooled mithril on the ceiling and around the room, keeping an eye on the Extended Protect on his neck, watching as it remained diamond-like and charged all the while.

It didn't dim much at all, and while parts of it faded, other parts came back shining as ever, only to fade again as other parts got brighter once again. It was recharging itself even as Mark wore it, which was pretty awesome. Mark went up and knocked on Addavein's open door, saying, "Hey! So how's this look?" Addavein sat on his chair, reading news on a tablet, but most of his attention was very far away, his vector vanishing into invisible holes in the world all around him.

He hummed, pulled his attention back to the present, and then he looked at Mark, eyes flexing and draconic. He stared… and then he said, "Looks well-made."" It's like I had a shot of espresso," Mark said, "Something stopped affecting me." Addavein got a little concerned at that, eyes widening as he looked around Mark… and then he went, "Ah. Just the Welcome… That's probably not a good idea, Mark. That Welcome guarantees your safety here."" I can already resist the Welcome fine, but something else feels gone.

Or hidden? I'm just wondering… What's your opinion?"" Paranoia?" Mark checked himself and felt a little hyper, actually, like he wanted to get out and do something.

"No. This is different. It's like I'm amped up on caffeine, back when I could actually be affected by that."" Could be a side effect of the item." Addavein held out a hand.

"Let me try? I might break it, though." Mark took off the 'spellbreaker' and handed it over, saying, "Do your worst!" Addavein kinetically shifted the adamantium string around his own neck and let the diamond-like bauble hang on his chest. He focused on the bauble and whatever slight sparkle it had suddenly magnified ten-fold, the depth to the glow strong and fractal— The Witches' Welcome ripped away from him, too, the shifting pane of glass in the dream shattering and flowing away in every direction.

And then other things spilled away, like drops of screaming power, like parasites let go, or being purged." That doesn't look good?" Mark said/asked." No, it is not." Addavein scowled as he flexed his wings out, stood up, and then shook off a bunch of other astral parasites, saying, "Damnation! This is the problem with Forbidden Magic, Mark. Even when you protect against it the damned threats still find their way to you, and the problem is even worse when you get a larger astral body— Bah!"

And then he stood tall, wings out, claws flexing, eyes closed and vector focused on the glowing Extended Protect sphere, making it float like he was underwater for a moment. The sphere was like a portal into a world of diamonds. Suddenly, a rush of disintegrating flexes burst from Addavein's body, leaving Mark to guess that he was destroying a lot of small issues that were deeply embedded. And then the magic faded, and Addavein sighed, relaxing, to look at Mark— He paused.

And then he reached out and said, "You got a problem of your own stuck right… here." Addavein plucked something from Mark, from his astral body, talons holding on to some writhing, flowing thing, that was kinda like rushing water and also scrabbling vines, then he crushed it magically in a way that Mark didn't understand, but which he clearly saw happen. Mark waved his hands away, freaked out as he exclaimed, "What the fuck?!"" Ahhh…

Don't worry too much about that one," Addavein said, taking off the sphere and handing it back to Mark… And then Addavein paused.

"Or rather, do worry. I know what that one is, and it's a rather common memetic threat. Anti memetic, specifically. They can be tuned to a whole lot of different frequencies, causing the infected person to not be able to think about or act toward a certain thing. It's always one thing, too; that's the type of threat it is. Every nation uses them and… Hmm." Mark saw the thoughts turn in Addavein's mind, in the thinness of his lips, and in the judgment of his eyes.

Mark's voice was a threat as he said, "What aren't you willing to tell me?" Addavein scoffed, then said, "I'm simply deciding where to start." Mark frowned, not buying that kaijushit. Addavein rolled his eyes and said, "It's like a geas, but simpler. Less intrusive and —here's the important part— impossible to know what it was trying to prevent you from doing or thinking. It barely even got into your soul, unlike all of the hundreds that were sitting on top of me.

I bet it was one of a thousand such attempts to control you, too. So you did good!" Mark exclaimed, "Fucking WHAT?!" He asked, "I thought I was immune to that shit?" With a matter-of-fact tone, Addavein said, "No one who lives in a world with others is immune to these sorts of things, Mark… But I suppose you can try some cleaning magics? I mean that Waterpeople ritual we did, with the cleaning of the goblins. You should try replicating that in your soulhouse, but for something broader than goblins.

Not too broad, though. The witch magic of Aluatha is rather helpful for you right now. Be careful with your cleaning." Addavein truly wasn't worried, and that made Mark less worried by the moment. Calmer, Mark asked, "Do you know what the eldritch parasite on me was, exactly? Or the ones on you?"" I'm not going to tell you about the ones on me, but as for you …"

Addavein hummed, judged, and then said, "Perhaps, if I had been a full capacity I could have dissected it and figured out what it was supposed to do, exactly—" Mark stared and grumbled." It was probably a simple antimemetic botherer!" Addavein said, "Like I said: Something to prevent you from doing something? Thinking something? Who knows. These things are very insidious, Mark, but they're very small.

As long as you keep the number affecting you low, then they probably can't do anything except for one or two specific things."" What did that one do?!" And then Addavein stood taller, more imperious, as he put on airs, saying, "It probably just made you vulnerable to other ones! That's how they do it—"" How who does it?"" Probably Okuana! Maybe others! Demons! Who knows! When you have a hundred on you then you should be worried, so I need to do some soul maintenance right now. Off you go!"

Addavein made shooing motions, his vector turning complicated, internal, and worried. Mark didn't let himself be moved yet, as he said, "Is the Welcome to blame?" Addavein grumbled something tiny and disparaging about young scions getting mad and worried at the wrong things, and then he said, "The Welcome is more of a cleanser than an infector. Make of that what you will! Now leave! I have maintenance to do and so do you!" Mark kinda said, "Okay! Okay. Uh…" Mark started walking out the door, saying, "Thanks?

I guess?"" Thank you, too! I had completely forgotten about this stuff, which means the infection probably came through you to get to me. I need to do maintenance on everyone." Mark's heart skipped a beat. He focused.

"Can I help?"" Nope! Fix yourself first!" Mark was in the hallway. Addavein shut the door. And then Addavein's vector went everywhere and internal and focused. … Mark walked downstairs, to his room, where he sat upon his bed and also focused inward.