Adamant Blood

Mark landed on the wall of the settlement, about 300 meters up from the ground down below. The East North Rivergate was down there and to the right. An ocean of light poured out from the city walls, illuminating everything in every direction, but the lights of the city were small compared to the soft night of Daihoon. Out there, everything was a soft rainbow twilight due to the auroras high overhead, with not a cloud in the sky.

It was a great night to see the moon, really. Luna was mostly full, and the golden cracks of Arakino, the Demon City, were highly visible. On Earth you couldn't see the auroras streaming off of it, but here on Daihoon you could tell, if you looked really closely, that rainbow lights surrounded the moon like a dim, sunburst halo. Endless Daihoon 'ended' at the moon, or maybe Luna was just a big pin in the wheel that was Endless Daihoon. Mark wasn't sure. That stuff was in a 'Veil Studies' classroom, and Mark wasn't sure he had time to take that class at all.

Thinking about Endless Daihoon and the Veil and all of those lights in the sky as some sort of 'energy-gathering wheel' was kinda fucking with Mark's head… And he had work to do, anyway, so he put that other stuff behind him.

Quark flickered some screens in front of Mark, showing him distant views from the nearby cameras on the walls, and the drones out there on their endless patrols. It was all goblins out there. A lot of goblins. They rolled across the land, across every monster, eating and killing and breeding and spreading. It was not an all-out assault. A lot of the goblins out there were dying to the monsters they tried to eat, to corrupt and transform into more goblins.

So it was less of an assault, and more a complete and total clusterfuck. It was the lowest-effort-possible assault, according to chatter flowing through Quark's monitoring views.

It was still a lot.

There were teams out there, right now, doing the normal night guard thing that they always did. Mark was thankful for those guys. They voluntarily took up night shifts while Mark slept. And now they were in danger, and Mark's orders were stuck on 'standby'.

Mark was getting antsy.

"Where am I going, Quark, and please tell me it's to go kill Grax."

Aurora's voice came to Mark from far away, 'The enemy will counter whoever goes out there. Do you want to counter the counter, or be the tip of the spear?'

"Tip of the spear."

'Thank you. We're ready with back up on you. Proceed.'

Quark flickered in Mark's vision, getting on with the program, "Three teams in our sight need rescue. They're holding off enemies and goblin infections in themselves. Here, here, and then here; ordered in the normal metric of established capability versus current status, closeness of the goblin wave, and possibility that it's a trap."

Mark had already spun up his propeller and rocketed forward, into the glowing night. Bright drones followed him onto the field, rapidly illuminating the land below and all around, but not him, not directly. Yes, the enemy would more easily know where he was, but so would everyone else on the field, and that made coordinating and connection easier. Other drones were already out there, flying fast, aiming to provide the same light to the teams out there, and to everyone looking out from the settlement.

The night was turning to day.

Below, some people were marked with white dots, all of them running to get into the city. Mark did a quick Union of Purity/Corruption with them, drawing out every possible toxin, infection, and especially any transformative goblin Bite. Black sparks skittered out of their bodies, vanished into the air between them and Mark, and then reappeared as it neared Mark. Black sparks broke upon his flesh. He was Incorruptible, and whatever small things those people down there might have been exposed to was not near enough of a worry to Mark to make him actually feel anything from their corruption.

Mark should note what happened, though, so he said, "Those people down below had a big mess on them, but nothing goblin-ish. The Bite feels more active than whatever they got themselves into."

Mark was far past those people by the time he finished speaking.

Quark responded, "Viewing had them filled to the brim with reagents hastily gathered from the wilds. Those reagents are gone now. Shall I reimburse them in the usual manner?"

Mark felt a small spark of regret. The reason those people had felt 'impure' was because of a bunch of expensive stuff they were carrying. Mark said, "Reimburse them."

It wasn't the first time Mark had needed to work fast and deep to prevent a possible future issue, and had thus caused the full loss of a team's gathered goods. People tended to complain a lot, and loudly, when that happened. Better to give them their payday out of his own pockets, and then double it.

Mark put that event behind him.

Three spots, numbered 1, 2, and 3, were like softly demarcated hemispheres glowing upon the land. They weren't actually glowing at all; Quark was just highlighting team positions, with 3 being a mere kilometer out there, 1 being way, way out there at 25 kilometers out, and 2 being 12 kilometers far to the right, to the south.

Mark swung over 3, since it was on the way to 1.

There were only 4 white dots in Mark's vision. Everything else out there was a sea of green dots.

Team 3 was running, broken.

The instant Mark flew over them, Mark understood several things, all at once.

The four teammates were mostly unharmed, but they were debilitated with goblin bites, though they were not normal bites at all. It was like someone had taken poison-filled knives to their flesh, raking across every open space on their body, and also scratching armor. It was the work of an uncaring butcher, hitting what they could and then racing past. Mark had seen this before, in the aftermath videos of the Battle for Memphi.

Grax, the 600-meter-tall Lightbody goblin, had done this.

Back in the Battle For Memphi, Grax had Bitten and spread goblin corruption throughout the entire gate district of Memphi, spreading corruption into churned clouddlefish flesh, and almost-dead cuttlefish hiding inside that flesh. A swipe of corruption, and then escape. There was no rhyme or reason to it. It was just a corruption goblin being a corruption goblin, force-spawning brothers from near-corpses through 'Biting' the entire living thing, all at once, and maximizing penetration and effectiveness of the Goblin Curse.

Mark shocked the world and the team with a Union of Purity/Corruption, lightning scattering down, blasting through the wounds of the four people down below, black and green sludge evaporating in the night. Now that stuff, as it shocked back through Mark, did hurt. A lot. But he offloaded all of that Corruption into every nearby goblin that was racing at the team, and then he shocked down with a Full Union of Adamant and Ethereal, crackling the team to full power and crushing down a good 40 newborn goblins racing toward the team.

Mark was there for only a second, and it had been enough. Two men and two women went from worried-to-death to thankful and strong. Goblins collapsed onto the ground in every direction, and their roars at the humans turned to nothing. The people ran better. The goblins were newborns, and they could not keep up.

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With a rip of adamantiumkinesis, Mark spun through the illuminated night, toward rescue #1, way, way out in the field, 23 kilometers away now.

The land was full of green dots. Everywhere he looked was green. They crawled out of gatorrex bellies. They sliced out of giant spiders. They ignored fist-sized wasps and died by the tens to those flying, evil little buggers. The goblins tried to eat the wasps, to snatch them out of the air and chow down, and they ate every wasp eventually, because there were that many more goblins than wasps. Too many. Mark imagined that Grax had Bitten every single living thing over a certain size all around the settlement.

Mark assumed that Grax wasn't alone out here; that there were other, big-time Goblinhome goblins out here, waiting to attack, but nothing had shot at him yet, and it was very, very possible for Grax to have done all of this himself.

"Let them come," Mark whispered to himself.

And then Mark started blasting a Union of Vein Decay and Integrity, into the night, into the goblin swarm. Lightning scattered and Mark didn't consciously control it at all. Like positive to negative, and then in chains all throughout, black zapped from heart to heart and half of the goblins melted on the inside and half were bolstered. And then half of those that had been strong were now cut down by the other half, and Mark continued flying forward. Mark left hundreds alive behind him, but he killed thousands in turn. They were all newborns, but if an elder showed then Mark would feel them… Hopefully.

In a way that felt impossible, the density of goblins actually increased, and they became varied. This land over here was mostly free of the remnant death mana of the Ether Turtle, Mark supposed… But still. This was crazy. Flying goblins. Goblins that were poisonous. Hive mind goblins with senses spilling left and right and controlling the horde like a child controlled action figures. Goblins that rolled across the ground in stone constructs. 'Dead' goblins, born from zombies, or rather from nascent necromancer goblins who had taken control of their brothers and cousins. Mark made sure he killed the necromancer goblin, for it had to have come from some secret cache of death monsters born of the Ether Turtle's conflagration that someone had decided to keep around, for whatever reason.

An entire carefully monitored and controlled ecosystem of 'kept' monsters had been goblinized.

The team he was to rescue was still up ahead.

Mark was flying at something like 500 kilometers per hour, armor streamlined, wind pushing against him so hard it was getting difficult to fly, to keep everything together, and he certainly wasn't killing as many goblins as he could. But he was getting there.

And then he was there. Right above them.

Mark slammed the world, the team, and the goblins all around with his Union of Vein Integrity and Decay. The team down there were some guys Mark did not know, but there were two Shapers, one fire and the other wind, and they were storming up an inferno of flames, while their paladin of Freyala healed them well, struggling to keep them together, and their tank— Oh, shit. It was Emerald Flash. The guy who won Brawny Battles a bunch. No wonder this was priority #1. That guy never went outside the walls. This was shit luck for all of them, for sure. All of them were practically civilians, too, according to the flash readout Mark was seeing in Quark's overlay.

Goblins exploded in gore.

Mark crashed into the paladin's Union down there, felt the horrors running through all of them, and then purified the heavily-Bitten team. Arms and guts sloughed away from human bodies as nascent goblins and the flesh they inhabited turned non-viable. And then, in the wake of Mark almost killing the team himself, he supported them with rapid healing and Adamant strength.

They yelled in pain, and Mark didn't have to tell the paladin to do a Union of Pain and Comfort; they did that on their own. It was a good thing, too, because Mark grabbed onto arms with adamantium, holding tight and bleeding them a bit, which was unfortunate.

Mark hauled them out of there, leaping into the sky and flying a bit slower with the added weight, but Mark used the goblins he flew over to heal the team faster, to make sure the rough treatment wouldn't hurt them too much more. Their vectors were on Mark, almost registering him as a threat, but then they realized who he was and a wave of relief flooded them.

Quark told Mark, "The Shapers' coms are working. Would you like to tell them anything?"

They yelled to each other, to be heard over the rushing wind.

Mark said, "We're headed to pick up another team and we're going to go faster to get there… Shit." Mark glanced at the clock in his vision, reading 5 and a half minutes to get there. "We're going faster now."

Quark probably said stuff to the team because they calmed down and acknowledged Mark, and he transitioned his adamantium manacles on their wrists to bracers and a handle. They gripped, and they knew to hold on. Mark turned on the speed and the Wind Shaper was able to help, carving air from their paths—

Ahead, a white dot vanished.

Mark's Union almost broke. A person had died up there. Mark flew faster, uncaring about killing more goblins right now. He injured the team he had rescued to go that much faster, but he had to—

Another white dot vanished.

Mark crashed into the second rescue like a vengeful black god. He tore apart freshly born goblins and blasted apart the rest, making sure to kill the goblins that had flopped out of the 2 dead humans. He grabbed the survivors and raced on, and by now he was carrying a lot of weight, but the Wind Shaper was helping with that problem.

Team 3 didn't need rescue; they had made it to the walls on their own, and they were now safely inside.

Mark ripped over the wall, wind thrumming, people battered, as he set down as fast, as safely, as he could. He healed them up some and left them in care of Emerald Flash's paladin of Freyala, as he turned his heart to stone so he didn't hear the wails of the two survivors of the second rescue group.

Mark raced back up to the wall.

Turrets softly whumped, heat filling the air, as invisible lasers of burning flame shot into the goblin horde just below and beyond the walls. The newborns died by the thousands. There were millions out there. More turrets came online every second, including the medium guns; the ordnance launchers. Those whumped a lot louder than the lasers, sounding like soft touches upon the world and then like distant cracks of thunder, blooming burning red flowers upon the field of green.

There was no way anyone outside the walls was still alive.

Mark asked anyway, "More people to rescue?"

"No, sir," Quark said, both of them knowing why there was no one else to rescue. "Begin circling the city at a distance of 300 meters. Flight plan outlined. We expected some sort of snipe by now, but there was nothing. Perhaps they are waiting for a better opportunity. Please keep your head fully protected at all times."

"Always," Mark said, as he flew into the churn, helmet fully encompassing his head, scales fully fused to prevent concussive bomb damage.

Mark flew like a man in a flying casket, fully protected.

Far afield, tornadoes began to touch down, to rip into the horde. On another part of the wall, mages were setting up and casting spells into the threat; fireballs, toxic clouds, and shredding ice that cut into goblins. Aurora was not active, so there were no rainbows touching down to Daihoon. A lot of people were not active. Everyone waited for the drop.

There was no drop.

It was a slog.

Mark killed goblins for the next 12 hours, until the sun was high in the sky again, and then past that point. By then, the only things directly beyond the wall were drones, Mark, and goblin corpses of all kinds.

Mark had to fly kilometers out from the walls to kill anything, and he did so. There were so, so many more goblins to kill. They were running, though, so they were hard to find and kill. Mark saw a lot of Monster Tutorial flashes, too, so who knew where the fuck those guys would end up; on Earth or Daihoon. Memphi was being warned about all of that, too.

Aurora called Mark back in when Mark started flying 10 kilometers out to kill things, because by then he wasn't doing much besides sniping the occasional goblin that dared to be born from the dead goblins, or purifying the remains, which had the side effect of regrowing forests a lot. Aurora didn't want any forests regrown right now, though. They'd just provide cover for the goblins. Besides that, it was time for a briefing about the event.