Adamant Blood

Wind whipped by and Mark flew faster, his forward propeller spinning so quickly that he couldn't see the blades at all. A grove of trees was ahead and Mark went right though, not bothering to go around at all. He didn't have time. He had lives to save. Living things scattered at his noisy approach, and if they didn't, they died, mulched to nothing by adamantium, the strongest, darkest metal known to man.

Adamantium covered Mark's entire body with scales, protecting him from the retaliatory spines of whatever hidden monster he had just drilled through. Those spines clicked off of Mark and scattered to the gore and the mulch. It might have been spiders, actually. Threads briefly tried to tangle him, but then he spun his suit of adamantium scales and the threads broke apart.

Quark overlaid Mark's vision with the targets far ahead, flickering numbers into his eyes, along with general positioning. Quark was Mark's AI, and though Mark could tell where living things were all around him based on their attention vector, he didn't have time to actually navigate. Quark did.

2,500 meters away and closing fast. Three of the four person team were doing fine, though they would not be fine for long. The last person was in critical condition and almost dead.

Mark rushed across the grasslands, adamantium blades shredding tall grass and one large gopher that tried to launch at him, or more accurately at the noise Mark made as he blasted across the land. More gophers were coming out of the grasses with every passing second, as Mark approached the center of the melee, where a team from the settlement had bitten off way more than they could chew.

It wasn't their fault.

This was the Wilds. Monsters abounded. Danger was everywhere and you needed real power in order to survive and thrive out here. The kind of power that no one really had, but a lot of people got close. Mark was one of those people. Most people Awakened to 1 Power. Some, if they were lucky or if they were products of nobility and breeding, Awoke to 2 Powers. Sometimes those powers were synergistic, like a person who had Create Water and also Waterkinesis. Mark had 3 Powers, and he was the product of human experimentation and his own actions, asking for it, and his Powers were absolutely synergistic.

Four people on the battlefield. Each of them were on their last legs. One poor woman, a little older than 19-year-old Mark, wasn't even on her last legs; those had been ripped from her. Her torso was held together with bandages and hope, and the bandages were giving out. She gripped onto the back of a man with a broken sword in one hand and a wand in the other, and her arms were giving out, too. The other two looked vaguely okay, except for massive corruptions growing on their arms and legs. Tumors and worse.

Forty person-sized gophers, each with massive claws and jaws, each trying to eat the humans that had stumbled into their territory. Their claws dripped with corrupting poison and plants mutated at their touch. They themselves were fine. Their corruption didn't affect themselves or other gophers.

And now there was Mark, arriving on the scene like a blender.

Union allowed him to connect to everyone there, including the monsters and the plants and the world itself, to join them in a Union where he redistributed the Good and Bad, giving the people the Good, and the monsters the Bad. Other Words of Power might be better in certain situations, but 'Good' and 'Bad' were the right call for this corruption-filled mess.

The corruption of the gophers flowed through that Union, right into Mark.

But Mark was also Incorruptible. That was his second Power. Corruption splashed upon him, eating at his skin, but he was healing just as fast. He was fine.

His third Power came to bear as Mark turned the metal of his propeller into a giant glaive. Like stretching out his hands, he turned several scales into caltrops that he then slammed into the bodies of several gophers, killing them instantly, shifting the flow of the battlefield in the favor of the humans, and giving Mark a solid grip on the land. He swung his glaive with his mind, with his Adamantiumkinesis. That was his third Power, and what allowed him to float around on the black metal that surrounded him.

Mark swiped his glaive through monster after monster, black metal separating gophers into half-gophers. Blood flew. Gophers died screaming. They weren't crazed monsters; they saw they were losing. They ran, burrowed, and leaped away. Mark killed a hundred of them anyway. They had left their reservation and they needed to be culled. That's why the team here had been caught by them; the gophers were far outside of where they should have been.

The team was supposed to be harvesting alchemically important flowers in this field. They had all the gear and Power needed to do that. Even now, the stench from their various potions and unguents drove off the flower wasps that called this field home.

Mark had no such protections, so the wasps were attacking him. He shifted his scales around his body and killed those fist-sized wasps easily enough as he cleaned up the gophers. Then he went back to the team.

The team was focused on saving their fourth member, now that Mark had taken care of the problem.

"Oh thank god she's stable," said the leader of the team, with the broken sword and the wand, as he laid the woman on his back onto the ground. "Ami! Ami! Can you hear me?"

Ami, the legless girl, waved the leader off, saying, "I'm good."

"She's not good," Quark told Mark, in his ear, as Mark killed a few more gophers who didn't get the message to fucking leave. "They need an evac but my models are telling me they won't want to go. Their healer is the Wipe Away guy that was part of that goblin incursion 4 months ago. Name of Onoho."

The healer, Onoho, was there with the woman, Ami, and he was already pushing at her legs, wiping away 'dirt', or something like that, his voice a fragile, hurt thing, as he said, "You're fine, Ami."

And she would be, now that Onoho was actually able to heal her… And Mark was here to Union with them all, to provide even more healing and corruption cleansing. Onoho rapidly 'Wiped Away' several inches of 'dirt' from Ami, which was outside of Mark's expertise. What was he doing, really? No idea! All Mark knew was that the dirt Onoho was wiping away was some sort of magical confusion that was hard to look at, and when it was wiped away, he revealed uninjured flesh beneath.

The leader, whom Quark labeled as 'Kwesi', was incredibly angry, but he wasn't about to say anything while Onoho was actually healing Ami. But he was going to. The fourth person in the team was just glad to be alive. She was a woman named Hentie, and she was smiling up at Mark, waving.

"Thank you, Mark!" Hentie said.

Mark drove off the last of the gophers and landed with a thud on the ground next to Hentie, because she seemed actually open to the idea of following whatever Mark wanted to say. Mark flowed his faceplate away, revealing a grin, as he said, "Hello! Glad I could make it. Hentie, right? Say? You guys want to come back to base? There are a lot more gophers out there. I drove them off, but they seem to be expanding their territories according to my AI, and they're just waiting for me to leave."

Hentie was very happy Mark knew her name. She was also happy to say, "Yeah sure! We'll leave... If we can get a ride? I heard you do that, right?"

"I do! Absolutely," Mark said.

Onoho's vector was pointed at Ami, mostly, but secondarily at any other location besides Mark. He continued to work. According to his vector he was incredibly furious at himself for Mark coming in and saving him again. It reminded Onoho too much of losing his entire previous team to that light goblin mess in the dragonid canyons a few months ago.

Mark switched up his Union to take in the Good of being 'painless', and to get rid of the Bad of pain, to focus on making Ami more comfortable. Ami suddenly sighed in relief, and Onoho had a much easier time finishing off her pelvis, and then Onoho worked on her legs.

Everyone else was already fully healed.

Kwesi, the leader, was not ready to leave, though. "We can handle the threats as soon as Ami is back up. She's our main damage dealer but the gopher's corruption got into her water blades and it slowed her down. We can compensate. We should stay and finish the flower picking. Otherwise we lose out on all of the money it took to get out here in the first place. This wasp spray is not cheap."

Completely expected. They probably could stay out here as soon as Ami was up and active.

Mark still wanted them to go back to the settlement.

"It's pretty good wasp spray, yeah," Mark said, looking out at the bubble of space that their spray had granted them. Wasps buzzed at about 10 meters out, trying to get close, but they turned around when they got within 5 meters of any of the team. Mark stood a bit closer to Hentie, who was absolutely okay with that, in order to stay further from the wasps. "Can't kill them; they're the only reason the flowers are here at all." And then he told Kwesi, "You all need to come back, anyway, and I know you don't want to, but those gophers are threatening to swarm as soon as I leave. They'll be back, and I can't kill them, since they guard several square kilometers of plains four kilometers north of here, and they're the monster-we-know."

Better to have known monsters in areas than unknown random shit. Random monsters got people killed, like how these gophers, outside of their known area, had almost taken out this team. Someone was going to need to clear out the gopher's original area to find out whatever caused them to breed so much and swarm (and it was probably going to be Mark) but that was a problem for a different day. Rescuing people came first.

Hentie swung her rifle onto her back. "I say we take the loss!"

Kwesi was about to object again.

But Ami, who had most of her thighs back by now, softly said, "Let's go back, Kwesi. Your sword is broken. We need to go back."

"I can fix the sword!" Onoho said, "Just give me a minute."

Mark said, "Please don't make me need to pull rank on your asses. You're going in. Blame me if you want. It will mean no penalty for loss of flowers, whatever they were—" Quark flickered an image to the side of Mark's vision; bright red firework-like flowers atop long green stems, labeled Red Sprays. "Red Sprays."

Mark stepped back, but not too far back; the wasps were still wasping.

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Kwesi spoke small words to his team. The team responded. Onoho was fully ready to get back into the action, which saved his face in the eyes of the others, who were wondering if Onoho was cursed or not. Obviously he wasn't cursed. Bad things just happened sometimes.

It took a while for things to shake out how Mark wanted, but that really just gave Onoho time to restore Ami and all of her clothes to preserve her dignity. They eventually agreed to be evacuated.

Mark spun up his adamantium into a big tri-toroid and a smaller stabilizing prop, and then he grabbed the hands of every member of the team with an adamantium grip that loosely went around their wrists. They could let go of that grip if they really wanted to, which was generally a bad way to rescue people, but Mark had found out that some people didn't have great grip strengths and so he had to compensate.

The flight back to the settlement was a lot nicer than the one leaving the settlement; slower, for one. Mark got to see the lands, for another. The Shine was flowing well to the west, flowing south, wide as the Mississippi. It was the same sort of river as the Mississippi, but here on Daihoon. The lands ahead were wild with monsters and trees and uncultivated things, though the settlement was beginning to change that.

And soon the settlement came into view.

It was a monolithic 10-kilometer-wide bastion of civilization behind heavily fortified and turreted walls in the middle of the green wilds, sitting under a sky that was blue on the horizon and filled with the figment auroras of Endless Daihoon directly overhead.

It was home, and Mark loved to see it.

Mark always loved flying people who loved flying. Hentie loved the whole experience of flying, and that was nice to see in her vector, and on her happy face.

Meanwhile, Onoho was dreading every conversation to come; dreading the breakup of another team after a slight mishap. This team was Onoho's fourth team, or something like that, since that loss of the team at the goblin infestation back in February. Kwesi the leader was quietly deciding how to let Onoho go, or how to keep him; he wasn't sure. Ami was just glad to be alive. She was ready for a long break.

Mark said to them all, "There are lots of jobs in the settlement to make money."

Kwesi said, "That job was an easy one for us… or at least it should have been."

Mark said nothing.

They crested the walls of the settlement, turrets tracking them from 600 meters back there. Quark sent a 'greetings and we're okay' packet to the people in the operations center. The turrets on the walls stopped tracking them.

And there was civilization. Big buildings. Streets. Businesses growing well. Trade happening all the time. The gate to Earth, to Memphi on the other side, was still massive. 500 meters tall and wide, like a doorway frame sitting in the middle of an airport field. The gate was the largest structure of the settlement, aside from the wall. The gate had opened 6 days ago, and they had just finished sorting and releasing the nearly hundred hoverships and hovertankers that had come through the gate with cargo for Daihoon. The hoverports were still full, though, but with the next group of people; the next shipment to Earth getting prepped. Hoverships came in and out all the time, setting down and unloading into warehouses for the next opening to Earth.

The settlement was already talking about expanding gate openings to multiple times a month. Maybe 2 to start, because right now 1 shipment a month was fine for Tokyo, but Tokyo had a massive, well oiled operation, and their one shipment was doing 10 times as much as Memphi could do in 1 shipment.

Memphi was hungry, and so were the Aluatha Empire and all the rest of Daihoon.

They'd probably expand to 2 gate openings per month by next month, July, and that would be fine.

The kaiju only came around when the gate opened, and so this place, and Memphi on Earth, were already doing very, very well with kaiju concerns. Random kaiju were a thing of the past! Mark was a major part of that security, but still only as a supporter for the other powerhouses in the settlement, and occasionally in Memphi.

Mark set down the team next to Castle South, the main place where hunters like them and like Mark conducted their business of monster hunting and slaying, and resource gathering. Hentie hugged Mark, which was a bit unexpected, but she was very happy to not die today, and she was having some emotions right now. Mark let her hug him, and that's what she wanted. Ami and Onoho bowed a little and went on.

When it was just Kwesi and Mark, Kwesi quietly asked Mark, "We were going to die out there, weren't we?"

"Yes," Mark said, not sugar coating it at all, "I got the notification from General Aurora who got the notification from her prognosticator, and then she tapped me to go rescue you. You should have died today, Kwesi. But you didn't. I'm glad you all allowed me to help you get back to the settlement."

Kwesi's vector, his entire thought process, kinda shorted. And then, like he rebooted, he shuddered. "Fuck."

Kwesi walked away, still thinking deep thoughts.

He paused after a few steps, mumbled an apology that he didn't think was good enough, and then he kept walking

Mark did more of a Union of Good and Bad, hoping to help Kwesi, Onoho, Ami, and Hentie, all come to terms with what had happened. Maybe they could experience some traumatic growth, instead of just plain trauma. Small wisps of Bad-type miasma left Mark's body through his breath, and through the pulsing of black mana veins that pulsed out of his skin, where his astral body linked into the world itself.

And Kwesi breathed easier. A lot of people did.

The world could handle the 'Bad' of people a lot better than people could. Even now, where Mark Unioned with the grass underfoot, and with the trees here and there, those plants loved the miasma Mark gave them. They grew a bit taller, they shot out a few more green leaves, and extended their branches out a bit more.

Mark Unioned with every person within 800 meters in all directions, healing them all and helping them all in small ways. Smiles were more real. Backs were straighter. Pains ebbed away, replaced with surety and clear eyes. The trees thrived, and so did the people.

Mark pulled back, reshaped his black adamantium scales into a breastplate and normal armor and then he activated an illusion enchantment on his belt. His absolute black, light-eating armor became normal armor, all plain steel with little leather fasteners. Mark looked like any guy walking anywhere in the settlement, which was still a wilderness enclave despite the big walls and civilization-like interior. Most people were armed and armored.

The only way people would recognize Mark as different was if they knew him, or if they saw his eyes.

Mark's eyes were bright silver and black these days, thanks to his talzarki, his 'born in horrors brother', the dragon Addavein. Mark's eyes stood out a lot these days, according to Mark's best friends, Isoko, Eliot, and Sally. Or at least they stood out when he wasn't floating bits of adamantium all around him, like waiting weapons. When the adamantium came out, those generally got most of the attention.

So when Mark boarded the tram, he kept his eyes to himself as much as he could. There were lots of strangers around these days, and Mark liked disappearing when he could. People always seemed to want his autograph when they recognized him as the supervillain, Blackvein.

But right now he was just Mark Careed, a 6'5" 250 pound warrior of the settlement. Pretty much completely normal, and rather small, compared to a lot of guys and girls around here. That was ignoring the 152 kilos of adamantium he wore, of course, which was currently worth about 10.3 billion goldleaf.

Thank the gods for NoWealth enchanted rings! Mark fiddled with the ring under his illusion-covered adamantium gauntlet. If it weren't for that thing people would be picking him out from 10 kilometers away.

But for now, he disappeared into the tram system, and then down another track to where he had been before the call came in to rescue some guys in the wilds.

Mark stepped off of the tram beside the farms of the settlement, to walk into the orchards, to a place hidden with enchantments to protect it from casual forest goers. A large stone ritual table sat there in the middle of a clearing, and Mark sat down on that table, crossing his legs, and then closing his eyes.

And then he meditated, falling into himself, to his soul.

Mark's soul was a black orb and Mark landed on the surface.

Quark stood upon that black surface with Mark, like a silver reflection of Mark's own body, saying, "Picking up where we left off…"

Silver lines flowed through the air, and Mark walked with Quark, to Map his Binding. Once the Mapping was complete, Mark would Alter the Binding in order to cast spells, like a proper mage, and whooo boy, that was going to be hard.

Where Quark pointed, silver lines began to show the edges of the Binding, like reflections on glass showing that there was glass there, instead of nothing. Move a bit more and the reflection was gone completely. This, then, was Mark's Binding.

Eventually it would all make sense.

… Theoretically.

Isoko was a lot better at this than Mark, and she didn't even have a familiar.

Hours passed.

A notification drew Mark out of his meditation.

Quark threw maps into Mark's vision, along with clearing routes, culling targets, and general numbers that needed to be fulfilled. It was a complete plan for the resettling of the corruption gophers. A few minutes after reading through all of that, Mark called up his team. Sally and Eliot were busy, but Isoko was free.

Isoko flew the hoverspider while Mark killed and cleared, and soon Mark flew high above the graveled corpses of two corrupted stone elementals that had driven the gophers out of their land. The gophers soon returned to eat and thus permanently kill the stone elementals, while Isoko double checked Mark's work.

"We're good! That's everything on the plan," Isoko said.

Mark slipped into the hoverspider and rode back to town while sitting beside Isoko, asking, "So how's your Mapping the Binding going? When are you going to do the Alter?"

"... Well..."