Adamant Blood

"The City AI was reporting that there are no people here, and we've double and triple checked, so now there is this: one easy ritual," Blackthorn began.

Mark was standing next to a nice flat stone that Blackthorn had unearthed moments ago, in the middle of nowhere, somewhere far to the south of Memphi. Memphi's city walls were over in that direction somewhere, but all Mark could see in every direction was snow and a few trees, and also his team and Blackthorn's obsidian-like hovership.

Blackthorn stood on the frozen grasses near Mark, dressed in black and gold.

Mark wore jeans and a tee shirt, and nothing else. Blackthorn expected all of his clothes to be destroyed the moment Mark created and activated the ritual circle on the stone underneath him.

Blackthorn pulled a roll of paper out from nowhere and handed it to Mark, as he continued, "This is the design for the ritual circle you need to build. I made it using plain language. It's all very self-evident. Ask Quark to help you with creating the actual circle, if you need help, but perfection does not matter for ritual magic— Not for this kind of ritual magic.

"I heard Reeni Thumb gave you a basic rundown of how this works, yes? Eliot has already had this lesson… And I don't believe Sally or Isoko have?"

Mark looked over the paper and Quark blinked in his vision, telling him he had the design, as Mark was saying, "Isoko and Sally were there with us when I activated the Winter Breaking Formation… or whatever it was called. I think someone called it that?"

Blackthorn nodded. "It probably had no formal name, but the name you gave it right now is a good one, since it did exactly that. Rituals are very easy when you know how to work them right. They're actually incredibly dangerous things to teach, as well, because they are so easy to learn and do. This is a Mage Oath sort of thing, Mark."

Mark solidly said, "I understand."

"… I see that you do. Paper please."

Mark handed him the paper.

Blackthorn turned the paper to ash, to flutter on the winter wind. "However you want to do the ritual is fine. Just do what feels right. You only want to learn how to disconnect astral body speed from physical speed, to be able to use your astral body as fast as… Well. I'll let you figure it out. It's better that way. NOW! That said. You cannot kill yourself with this sort of ritual, but this is very dangerous. You will see why soon. Perhaps it is better this way so that you will know why this sort of magic is highly guarded, and why there is a natural limitation on astral body speeds, based on the speed of the human body." With extreme seriousness, Blackthorn stressed, "All you are doing is suppressing one coupling. Remember that! One coupling! One. Temporary!

"Don't do anything until we're a good 3 kilometers away!

"I highly doubt anything could hurt you when you trigger the ritual so you'll be fine, but we will not be fine until we're far away."

Blackthorn looked at him.

"… I fully understand," Mark said.

He imagined Quark overlaying his sight with ritual circles and the whole thing suddenly activating.

Which seems like it would be bad.

Blackthorn frowned a little, staring… And then his eyes went a little wide and his vector went from concerned-does-he-even-understand to concerned-he-understands-completely. Blackthorn turned and began to run away, calling out a cryptic, "You be careful with that now! It's easy to abuse! Which I think you already figured out!" Blackthorn ran faster, toward Isoko, Eliot, and Sally, all of whom had stepped out of the vehicle to watch from a distance, yelling, "Get back in the fucking hovership! Go, go!"

Quark said, "I think I can overlay your sight with this image and you can activate it at will, sir."

Mark smiled a little, saying, "It's probably more complicated than that, but let's specifically not do that. Not yet." Mark looked at the rock. "Overlay my sight, please. Whole thing at once."

Little blue lines popped into being upon the rock, but they were really on Mark's eyes, so when he moved a hand over the rock he saw the overlay on his own hand.

"Can you compensate for intervening objects?"

Quark said, "Compensating… Done. Is that sufficient, sir?"

Mark moved his hand over the rock, watching as the overlay flickered a little around his skin. It vanished when his hand was in the way and returned when he moved. "Very good. How much processing power is that?"

"I am not limited in that way. This is simple. I still have full surveillance capabilities in a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and sound-based systems." Quark added, "The acclimation period is over, yet you barely use 5% of my capabilities, sir."

Mark smirked a little, studying the diagram before him, making an attack plan as he said, "I'm not sure how to use you to your full extent, Quark. When this Attack the Gate thing is done and we're back on Daihoon, I will try to use you more."

"Thank you, sir. That is all I ask."

Mark nodded, his mind now focused on the diagram.

Basically, it was a donut, with Mark needing to sit in the empty center to activate it all.

In a more nuanced way, it was an outer ring, an inner ring, and words that repeated around those rings.

It almost looked like the 'ritual circles' that he saw characters on kids shows activate at each other, throwing blasts of fire or lightning or whatever. Mark never watched those shows because he had better things to do, but some of the guys on the rugby team watched them all the time, and so Mark had seen a few episodes with the guys. Mostly clips online.

This ritual circle was not one of those overseas-cartoon ritual circles at all. There was no 'sacred geometry' here. It was just purposeful words. 'Disconnect the astral's speed from the physical's speed' was repeated 4 times to form the basic structure, written along cardinal directions and swirling into each other, while the word 'TEMPORARY' ran along the inner donut 4 times, in the hole area, and 'ignore the action limit' bound the exterior of the outer donut area, written small and long, filling the entire space outside of the outer donut. There were some lines and curves added to the design, and Mark was pretty sure those lines and curves were very important, but for whatever reason, Mark could not say.

Blackthorn had left a note on the paper he had given Mark, which he had then burned, but Quark had saved that note. Mark read that note as he looked into the air.

'Ritual Magic, of the kind you are practicing now, works as the user wants it to work. What I have given you is a guideline. Add your own understanding, and be purposeful about it, and you will get there.'

Back when Mark had activated the ritual that Reeni had created in the farms of the settlement, he had Unified the trees and the little dolls that Reeni had placed all over. That was a ritual of Union.

This was going to be a ritual of Adamantiumkinesis, though.

Mark had a few good ideas of where to go with this, to make it actually feel like magic. He started, of course, with making a blade of adamantium, refining it to a needle, and then he started carving on the lines Quark laid before him. The stone Blackthorn had pulled from the ground was about 4 meters across and mostly flat… Hmm.

Mark pulled back, and looked at the stone.

He took his adamantium and made it into a thin blade, pulling on two ends, making the center as straight as could be. In a matter of a moment, Mark created a 5 meter long thread of adamantium. Like a wire through very crumbly cheese, Mark removed the top several inches of the boulder in one quick slice. The noise was incredible and Mark had fucked up the cut at the end, chipping upward. A bit more carving solved that problem, and now Mark was left with a perfectly flat surface. It looked level, and Mark asked Quark to level it for him.

Another 5 minutes worth of carving and shimming later, stuffing rocks into the northern and western undersides of the rock, and the rock was level and flat.

And now, with a completely flat and solid granite surface, Mark started carving with adamantium… which was more like scratching. Scratching seemed wrong, so Mark had Quark look up carving options.

Mark ended up with an adamantium tool shaped like a V, with a knife edge on the front. Mark skimmed the tip of the V into the granite and ribbons of granite chips flowed up the channel of the V where they scattered off the end of Mark's tool, and soon the circles were carved.

Carving the words was simple. Mark had never had the best penmanship, but Quark's lines helped make it all rather legible. Carving into the tier 0 stone with PL 79 adamantium, backed by a PL 90-ish astral body, made for short work.

15 minutes after he had started, Mark was done.

Mark smiled at his handiwork, and then he clambered onto the rock to sit down in the middle.

It was kinda weird, sitting there.

Would carving a ritual circle like this actually make magic happen? Mark hardly believed it. None of this felt really magical at all. Not like the Winter Breaking ritual that Reeni had made.

Mark was rather certain that the lack of that magic feeling was his fault.

The ritual circle was clearly missing mana.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

… And adamantium was mana.

… How much of his adamantium did Mark want to dedicate to this crazy dangerous result? It wasn't an experiment, after all, so Mark didn't call it an experiment. It was a result.

Mark had had 8.9 kilos of adamantium a handful of days ago, after buying Blackthorn's help for this entire Attack the Gate thing with 2 kilos of adamantium. Mark still had 8.9 kilos of public adamantium. Mark also had a bunch of adamantium inside of his bones, waiting for him to take it out. Maybe about 3 kilos, according to his rough estimates. It was getting pretty dense inside of his bones, like for real.

He did not want to bring that adamantium out into the open, though, because to do so would mean losing a hidden weapon, and that hidden adamantium was also his proof that he was adamantium blooded. He planned to reveal he was adamantium blooded after this whole Attack the Gate program was over, to prove that he had what it took to play with the big heroes and that the empires were after him for selfish reasons and that he would not be controlled.

Fighting a shadow war for a week was one thing. Fighting it for the rest of his life? No thank you. Better to have open war and open season on people trying to turn him into a slave.

The Collective would become an ally in that sort of fight, too, after they saw that their bosses were using them to try and do the exact opposite thing that a paladin should be doing with their life. The Collective made sure that True Healers and (some) metal blooded people remained free. Most metal blooded people, from mithril to orichalcum, were supported and kept free by the banks of the world, like Metallic Bank. Mark's bank. Were there hidden adamantium blooded people out there, too? Probably. Mark didn't know about those guys, though.

… Mark looked at the ritual circle and decided to leave the 3 kilos of adamantium in his bones, in his bones. It would not come out without him actively pulling it out, after all, and not with Adamantiumkinesis. He had to use Union to get it out.

This ritual was only about Adamantiumkinesis, though…

Was it, though?

Mark was adamantium blooded, and therefore adamantium was in every thing he did. Could he decouple his kinesis speed from his physical speed, without involving everything else?

Probably not.

… Let's keep going, anyway.

"How to start, though? To make it feel more magical?"

… Mark took one spike of adamantium and turned it into a prop, as for an airplane. He hovered that prop above himself, right above, and then he turned that prop, spinning the prop as fast as he could. It made a downdraft, but not much more than that. Mark focused, spinning the prop at his top speed, focusing, focusing… focusing…

He looked down at the ritual, then up at the prop, and the prop spun faster and faster, or at least Mark wanted it to.

"Overlay my sight with the ritual, Quark, projecting the words I carved into the air above me."

Mark's sight flickered and lines rose from the stone all around him, into the air, around the spinning prop—

Mark felt something come together. Like a line was being touched.

This wasn't enough. Not at all.

… Mark knew what he needed to do. The spinning prop was Mark's goal, to be able to spin the metal so fast he could fly with it. But if he just… lined the letters of the rock with his adamantium… yes.

Mark looked down while he still spun the prop overhead, and with his Adamantiumkinesis he turned almost all of his adamantium into liquid that he poured into the words, into lines, that kind of reminded him of that kaiju squirrel's monowire tail hair, or how his Union threaded through the world—

It was like throwing a switch on a power station.

Suddenly, something gave way.

Mark's adamantium ripped through the letters of the rock all around him and then shot off into the distance, into every distance, like threads of Union, impossibly thin and truly far reaching. The spinning prop above Mark disintegrated into adamantium lines that spread upward like so many spider threads. Mark felt the world through those threads like it was a soft thing, like he had a thousand feelers reaching out into every direction.

Mark floated in a crater of churning gravel, adamantium wires turning rock to stones, to pebbles, to sand.

Every touch was the swaying of a hundred feelers through the rock, through the trees, through the sky.

Mark watched adamantium trail across his skin, carving away his clothes, playing in Quark's body, with Quark mostly ignoring the feeling of all those lines touching him.

Quark's voice was a distant thing, "Sir? Are you, uh, in control, sir? Mark?"

Mark turned his head and raised his arm, and the land in that direction suffered from monowire disintegration. It was a phenomenon that Mark had seen yesterday, with the kaiju squirrel's tail, and which he had momentarily thought about when he enacted this ritual, which… was working out as he wanted it to work? But… Er. Monowire was wildly illegal all the world over, and for very good reason.

… Was Mark in control at all?

Mark said, "I think I'm in… uh… control… hmm."

Mark had seen his monowires carve the land ahead, his voice giving vibration to those wires that then billowed through the rock with every word uttered, which was disturbing. But…

Mark was floating in the middle of a mass of wires that had broken and destroyed the land underneath, reaching deep into the depths, but his wires still supported him. He was floating over a crater right now. A constantly mulching crater. Hmm. Yes. Perhaps there were some, uh, unintended synergies between Adamantiumkinesis and Union's thread-like behavior.

… But could he spin a propeller fast enough to fly—

His adamantium crashed together, coming from every direction all at once, slamming into the space in front of him, sending Mark plummeting into the gravel and stone underfoot. Mark startled and released the gathered adamantium to its normal hovering position behind him, and the adamantium instantly moved behind him, smacking into his head and splashing in every direction like a thousand released bullets that carved into the ground and sent Mark flying forward as the rocks struck ground and he tried to regain control, to pull the adamantium back to him, back to his close control.

Mark went flying toward the ground, pulled in by his adamantium anchors that were buried 200 meters below the surface, and then the adamantium slammed back into Mark, to become droplets high in the sky.

Mark breathed a simple healing Union and the adamantium became monowire again, but in a billowing sort of way, and Mark catapulted into the air, tumbling and going, "Whoops!" very loudly.

Mark tried to do nothing, to hold his hands outward and spread his legs a little.

He was nude again, because of course he was.

It was cold.

But he was stable in the air, held maybe 50 meters in the sky by a lot of monowire that was very casually carving more and more land into gravel with every beat of his heart.

"… Quark? You okay?"

"I am unharmed, sir. I seem to have your same invulnerabilities to adamantium. This should come as no surprise."

"Right! Yes."

Mark moved a little and hillsides crumbled.

He imagining getting back down to the ground safely.

His adamantium retracted back to his body, all the way, splashing against him like a soft punch and then scattering around him. This, of course, sent Mark plummeting.

Instead of easily touching the ground with his adamantium to cushion his fall, Mark instead pushed off of the gravel with all of his entire might. Bad news: he blacked out from the sudden upward throw. Good news: when he managed to force himself to start a Union with the world, to heal, he came to, and all of his adamantium spread out into a monowire poof-ball with him at the center. All of that monowire was supporting him even if he wasn't making any real movements anywhere.

Even if he was high in the sky.

Air had its own density of weight, after all. As soon as you had enough surface area, even air's low density still affected you.

Mark came to in a winter sky, watching the world from on high, nude and barely feeling it because of the sight of it all. He was flying. Flying in a way he did not want to fly, so he would need to find another way. But he was flying under his own power.

Floating.

It was magnificent.

The world was a white and brown winter landscape, except for the parts Mark had destroyed on his way upward. That part was thoroughly gravel'd.

But the rest of it was magical. There was the Mississippi, like a brown snake through the land. There was Memphi, far to the north, looking comfortable with all the smoke rising from chimneys here and there. The sky was overcast but kinda clear, with big open blue areas… And Mark wanted to fly into those spaces—

His adamantium crashed into propellers and wings and some of them were dragon wings and some were plane wings and the propellers were made of claws and Mark began to fall back to Earth, yet again, because there was no order to the propellers at all.

"Oh dear," Quark said, as the ground rapidly approached.

Mark's adamantium poofed outward, into a land-mulching ball of adamantium threads before he hit the ground.

"Okay, so," Mark asked himself, his adamantium sweeping across the land and attaching to things in the way that Union usually did, but also moving faster than Mark could think. "How long is this going to last."

Mark killed a hundred small animals hibernating and every single tree and plant in the area, because every vector he felt out there, he felt. With adamantium monowire. And then the vectors vanished and the monowire moved on to find another vector. Any vector at all.

Mark churned through vectors rather fast because dead things did not have vectors.

Mark held himself outward, in every direction, just being calm, like a rock—

His adamantium crashed inward, like a thousand weighty rocks, which were more like splashed drops of water when they hit, and then Mark was falling again, like a rock usually fell.

He tried to throw out caltrops, to stabilize himself and hover like he usually did, but monowire formed instead and then the black threads became impossibly-fast-spinning bits of metal that burrowed straight down, at the very edge of Mark's Union range, and Mark sort of floated downward. He thought about stopping the spin and just hovering, and how the caltrops were usually only 4 meters from him, at the average, and Mark slammed himself into the ground as the caltrops yanked him downward, and the caltrops came to him.

"… Ow," Mark said to no one in particular, face and body deep into the gravel, as he switched back to Union and his adamantium became monowire again. Mark gradually ascended on cutting wires, as the ground mulched even more, as he muttered, "Okay. This can stop now."

He was glad his friends were probably very, very far away. Maybe they were even beyond the walls—

His monowire drifted toward the city, pulling him in that direction, and Mark instantly shouted to Quark, "Missions to kill monsters in the area! Missions out in the wilds!"

Mark found himself whipped around on his monowire Union and facing white hills once again, his monowire searching for monsters.

Like a seeking, searching squid, Mark was the center of an undulating mass of monowire that he barely controlled, except in the largest of ways.

He tried not to panic.

"Good news," Quark said.

"Okay?!"

"I am in contact with Blackthorn and he suspects that this will last maybe 45 more minutes, and everything happening right now is simply a linking failure that will last only as long as your astral body can sustain the action."

Mark was about to say something about how Union meant he could go forever.

… But he could also purposefully weaken himself?

Ah.

Yeah.

"That works!" Mark announced.

"Yes, sir," Quark said.