“You want at in your food?” asked a very enthusiastic, very short woman, nad Reeni Thumb. “We want at, too! Fish and cows and even bugs!” She rapidly digressed, “Bugs in a protein paste. Not just bugs on a plate. Not many people like the crunch of a normal cricket, and I agree with them.”
Mark had walked down to cargo 4, where Agriculture and Resource Managent was located, and found himself among lights and greenery and so, so many trees, all packaged away with most of their limbs chopped off and their roots collected into balls. The walls were layered with little seedlings in plastic rows, and the air slled of cow shit and hay.
One side of the cargo had plants everywhere, while the other side had a small farm with pigs and goats taking up three floors, and chickens taking up more space to the side. A massive housing project of locusts, or maybe just crickets, took up another big area.
And then there was a giant water tank, clear on two sides, where fish swam in water like silver glitter. It could also have been a collection of 8 tanks. Mark wasn’t sure.
People tended to all of it, all the ti. So people rushed back and forth from one area to the next, complaining of how the oranges were failing containnt and how the water tank was cracking again.
And yeah, there were cracks in that tank. Mark had looked over to the tank, and watched as water spurted out of a crack on the edge.
“Oh shit,” Mark had whispered to himself.
Soone was already running a finger over the cracks in the tank, sealing them up with so Skill.
That was when a very short, pudgy woman with bright auburn hair and a delightful face found Mark. She had run out from sowhere, from so aisle of orange trees, and introduced herself as Reeni Thumb. Mark hadn’t even gotten to introduce himself before she had gotten to the part about adding more at to the farms.
Mark began with, “I can see you’re, uh, extrely busy, too.”
“I am I am! But no bother. There’s always sothing to do. So if you want to help with at production— You co from a family of fishers, yeah? How about you co around the fish farm at the settlent every day for an hour in the morning and evening, or maybe just ten minutes or however long it takes you, and you feed the fish with sustenance? Once we get set up, of course. Anyone who works on the farm gets first pick of the food that we give out to everyone else. If you want to do the Union with the fish, I’ll get you to the front of the line.” Reeni added, “I won’t be looking over your work or making sure you co in and do it, though. Your work will simply be checked. If you’re not actually helping then you’re back of the line like everyone else.”
Mark had no trouble at all saying, “Deal.”
Reeni grinned, and it was like the sun was shining. “Excellent! See you around, Mark!”
She started walking away—
Mark called out, “Nice to et you, Reeni!”
Reeni waved behind herself as she vanished into the trees, her voice coming from everywhere, briefly, “Nice to et you, Mark!”
And then she was gone, her vector transford into a diffuse thing that recollected by the fish tank. She was already talking to the guy working on keeping the tank from cracking, patting her hands on the tank while the guy ran his fingers along the healing cracks. The cracks healed a lot faster and the panicking guy relaxed. A lot of people relaxed.
And then one of the goats started bleating extra loud. One of the pigs was tearing through the enclosure to try and eat one of the goats.
“Holy shit,” Mark whispered to himself.
And then Reeni was there in the pig pen and the tiny woman, all of 4-foot-6, was successfully pulling the thousand-pound pig out of the wall where it was trying to enter the goat pen. The wall closed over under the ministrations of the crack-healer guy, and Mark kinda wondered if he should help right now. But the pig snapped at Reeni and Reeni slapped its snout. The pig recoiled, whined, and went to lay in the straw. All of the other pigs tried to get closer to Reeni, though, snorting playfully and easily accepting head pats.
Reeni was handling it.
And then Reeni was standing in front of Mark.
“HOLY fu… Uh.” Mark looked down at Reeni. “Hello?”
“You don’t have to stay. We got it under control.”
Mark realized that Reeni was being polite, and that she was ordering him to leave.
Mark bowed and then turned around and walked away.
As he walked up the cargo hall stairs, Mark smiled a little. That had been the fastest, most productive eting he had had, so far. ‘You want to help? Here is how you can help. Later. You go away for now.’ Mark chuckled.
And he still had a sword to test out!
- - - -
There was no real space for Power testing or experintation upon Grey Whale, but there were a few spots for small-scale activation. The ship was a cruiser ant to hold, protect, and keep entertained, thousands of people for multiple weeks. As many as 20 days, normally, 60 days, if they had to, and, if they went to truly low power mode, indefinitely. All ships of this magnitude were like that since they could be arks if they had to be arks. They could just hang out in the sky, invisible and unmoving, for years.
But with dozens of people capable of fighting kaiju on board, there was no low power mode here.
The gym on the third floor, right side, was open to the sky on the right, the ‘black’ of a normal Daihoon night illuminated with auroras as far as the eyes could see. The gym was fully lit, with a platform extending out into the space beyond, where fliers could depart and enter at their whims. The flying platform was twice again the size of the gym itself.
Bulky brawnies slamd out reps on the bench machines and squatted at the leg presses, while less muscularly-inclined people pedaled hard on stationary bikes while a fitness coach blared at them in ti to the music. There was a whole row of treadmills. Maybe 20 of them.
Mark was in webweave and common clothes, like normal, but he almost wanted to get on a machine anyway. He didn’t get on a machine. He was here to head to the ‘easy sparring’ area, where he could swing his adamantium blade through a bar of the sa, and test how it worked. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it would serve, and his team could go on sleeping in their room.
The fliers caught his attention, though.
It was easy to see why Isoko was so bent on flying magics.
Five people, three in webweave and two in armor, flew in the sky, keeping speed with the ship. According to a readout on the exit to the platform, the ship was traveling at 70 kiloters per hour, but the wind was coming from the north, adding another 20 kiloters per hour to the speed that a flier would have to fly to keep up. One of the high fliers looked completely at ease, like he was rely there on a stroll. He was scrolling through his phone as he flew, occasionally glancing out to look at the rest of the people, but rapidly returning to his phone. Two of the fliers were breathing hard, to keep speed with the ship. The other two were all barely keeping up, slowly falling behind on the race through the sky, to keep up with the platform underfoot, with the ship.
Those five people were doing pretty much fine. They were real fliers. Mark guessed that the most prominent guy was so sort of Sky Shaper, or a big wind shaper, because his hair was perfectly fine and his clothes weren’t ruffling at all. Two of the other ones might have been the sa, but their clothes ruffled so, so their control wasn’t the best. Mark had no idea what the last two were. Maybe so sort of True Flier? Telekinetic flight? No idea. The options were too varied to suss out what he was seeing. The strongest flier looked about 35-ish, but the weaker ones varied from 19 to 30 years old, or sowhere around there.
Mark didn’t have much luck identifying the Powers of the rest of the attempted fliers, but they were all lesser than those five good fliers.
At least 12 people were walking forward, against the heavy wind, and then lifting off, just to try and fly at full speed for as long as they could, but their full speed was still a ‘falling behind speed’, and they all slowly, or very rapidly, slipped out of position, all the way back to the back of the platform. A half tunnel and a net was at the end of the platform, easily catching whoever couldn’t keep up, funneling them back onto the ship, onto what looked like a lower level at the back of the gym.
One guy was trying to fly with bits of silver tal, and Mark was instantly jealous when he saw the guy make silver wings and a very quicklyspinning propeller. That prop spun faster than Mark could spin anything. The mithrilkinetic —because that’s what he had to be— had obviously broken himself of his kinetic limitations, allowing him to move his stuff faster than physically possible—
Mithrilkinetic guy instantly flopped down and then rapidly upward, into the sky—
Phone-reader guy zipped upward and grabbed the man, and then gently put him back on the platform while scolding him, the words lost to the air. The guy complained, but the phone-reader guy, who was obviously the big safety net for the flying platform, just shut the guy down harder, his voice rising above the wind, only briefly.
“Get the FUCK off of my platform!”
tal guy scowled and walked off of the platform, the wind whipping at him the whole ti. He probably would have flown away under normal circumstances, but Mark caught how he used bits of silver tal to grab onto holds on the ground here and there, to keep himself standing as tall as he could.
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He walked right past Mark, glaring at nothing and everything on the way out.
… Mark wanted to go out there just to see what he could do, but… Uh. Nope!
There were lots of different types of fliers, from high grade that could practically ignore physics while flying, like how speedsters could ignore air friction to a great extent, to lower level fliers, who could only fly as fast as they ran, or slower, and who were fully subjected to physics and winds. That wind out there rcilessly tore across the platform, and not everyone could handle it at all, but a lot of people were trying. Mithrilkinetic-guy couldn’t handle the wind at all. He didn’t really count as a ‘flier’, either.
Mark also didn’t count as a flier. If he went out there on that platform, beyond the signs that read in big letters ‘Caution! Open air!’ and in smaller letters ‘If you fall, we will catch you and ban you from being out here’, Mark would absolutely end up flopping into the sky and need to be rescued.
… That didn’t stop Mark from watching, though.
Fliers out on the uncovered platform lifted off of the ground, unsure if they could move as fast as the ship, and so of them couldn’t. They slapped back onto the ground, so lightly and laughing, or heavy and getting a warning from the instructor guy. So guys got really fucking angry that they couldn’t fly as fast as so other people. But they kept trying.
“So day,” Mark told himself.
And then he went to the sparring hallway.
The sparring rooms had no doors; they were just alcoves down a hallway, each room only about 4 ters square and 3 ters tall. Big signs warned against getting too rough. So guys and girls were punching and kicking the shit out of each other, or just lightly practice-fighting. Most of the rooms were powered on, with the silence enchantnts working and the sounds of grunts and punches mostly subdued. It still sounded like a hallway full of fights, but not very loud fights. Not as loud as they actually were—
“No weapons,” said a bored-looking crewman sitting behind a desk. It was Carl, the crewman with the Bombardier Skill. He hadn’t even looked up at Mark; he was too focused on watching his phone. Carl just pointed at a sign overhead that read the sa as what he said, “No weapons!”
“Hey, Carl. I’m here to do a weapons test. I won’t make a problem. Just so noise.”
At hearing his na, Carl looked up and looked at Mark. His bored expression rapidly transford as he recognized Mark. Carl grinned. “Oh hey! I didn’t even see you. The sensors just picked up a wea… Holy fucking shit. Is that sword what I think it is?”
So people had recognized the weapon floating at Mark’s back, too.
Mark floated his sword to his hand. “Just a hollow experint.” It was not hollow at all. “I want to test how it cuts under certain circumstances.”
“Ah! Well if that’sall. Sure. Take a room—” Carl looked at sothing behind the desk. “Room 8 is open.”
Mark nodded and went to Room 8.
Once he was behind the silencing enchantnts and the world beyond was slightly muffled to maybe 50%, Mark held his sword in his hands, without his Kinesis at all, while he used his Kinesis to hold a finger-thick rod of tal in front of him. With so supportive-lock-down-adamantium bits scattered around the room, Mark was pretty sure that he was holding the bar rather solid. Just by the edges, though. Mark kept the center of the rod outside of his Kinesis.
Only holding the sword with his own hands, and not really sure what he was trying to do at all except test adamantium against adamantium, Mark swung the sword at the rod.
The impossibly hard sword struck the impossibly hard rod, and Mark flinched. Vibrations thrumd through his hands and arms. The rod dipped down because Mark couldn’t hold that solid enough, either, or maybe that dipping had been a secondary flinch.
It might have been a secondary flinch; Mark still wasn’t able to divorce his astral body reactions from his physical body limitations and bonuses.
He inspected both weapon and rod damage, and found… no damage at all.
Mark spent the next ten minutes learning how to brace himself in different ways to try and strike the rod with the sword and not have the rod slip away, or the sword practically vibrate his hands off. Shoving that crystal spike through that soft disk had been easy by comparison, and Mark wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t till another five minutes and 25-ish strikes later, that Mark decided his whole thodology to figure out the usefulness of adamantium versus adamantium was flawed in so big way. The sword was fine; no dents in the blade. The rod was fine; no nicks at all.
And that didn’t seem right.
Mark wasn’t sure why it wasn’t right, but he also felt… like he was nearing in on sothing.
Sothing important.
Mark decided to use his Kinesis on the sword, while leaving the rod supported, but not in the center, where he would strike. With a lift and a swish and a very large THOCK! Mark huffed, and then looked at what he had done.
The sword was buried about half a centiter into the adamantium rod.
… Hmm. Maybe Mark had been holding on to the whole sword, and that Kinesis had transferred into the untouched part of the rod? Thus softening the rod enough to be damaged?
Several tests later and Mark had refined his Kinesis enough so that he was only holding on to the center of the blade. This ti, when he struck the rod, the sword only nickedthe rod. It wasn’t nearly as pronounced of an effect as when Mark Kinetically held the entire blade, but it was still an effect.
Next, Mark held the sword by just its hilt and struck the rod, and that ti the rod wasn’t nicked at all.
Mark was pretty sure he was doing sothingwith his Adamantiumkinesis that was sortof like Tactile Telekinesis.
When he held the adamantium in his Shaping control, close to the point of impact, the adamantium was empowered by his astral body, which was in the early 90s right now. When he held the adamantium by the edges, the unheld parts were not empowered, and thus they were just a normal, PL 79 material. Still the hardest tal known to man, but still not as strong as sothing with a soul behind it… Maybe.
Plain adamantium against adamantium and it was an unbreakable sword against an unbreakable shield; they bounced off of each other.
It was the astral body that did the heavy lifting.
That made sense! This was good to know.
… But that wasn’t the full story. tal versus flesh versus bone versus high Power Level versus low Power Level; everything was more complicated than just a straight-up toughness comparison…
Mark held the sword and imagined it sharper… And what did that accomplish? Mark had no idea. He wasn’t actually putting power into the weapon, was it? Crystallizing it, or sothing? No. He couldn’t do much more than throw imaginations around without remaking the sword entirely. And yet, maybe he didn’t have to remake it at all? He knew that adamantium crafters used ‘various processes’ to ‘fix’ adamantium, to make it stronger as a cutting implent, but he wasn’t sure how they did that, exactly. The videos had been helpful, but not helpful enough.
Forging with heat and hamrs or even turning adamantium to liquid with high-rank Fire Shaper or Heat Manipulation powers, and then breaking out the hamr again to hamr away at the black; that’s what a weaponsmith usually did to forge adamantium. And then there were mana-filled quenching techniques for hardening tal or turning tal more ductile or flexible, but with cutting edges made of harder tal than normal. A lot of common steel forging was useful for forging adamantium, but adamantium was literally solid mana, and that ant…
“Well that ans I need to go to the Artificer’s Guild for proper instruction, right? They’re the ones that do magical item creation, don’t they?”
Mark paused.
“… So why does the Builder’s Guild make weapons?”
Or rather, why does Tulo Khava make weapons? Is it because he’s an Armsmith? Maybe so.
Mark had more questions than he had answers.
Looking at the sword in his hands, Mark knew he had a long way to go. There was a technique to creating hardened adamantium, as per the crystal spike that Mark had made earlier, but he had not managed to do that with this sword, at all. It was straight enough, and the material was solid enough, and Mark knew enough about weapons to know that he had made a rather decent tool… But this was not a mastercraft. Mark was sure that if soone with an actual Talent for weapons, like an Armsmith, like Tulo, or even just a knack for Sharpening, like that one lady who Sharpened weapons by the Northeast Rivergate of mphi… Soone like that could do a lot more with this weapon. Mark had no real skill in this area at all.
Sure, he could string together adamantium into a blade well enough to get the job done, but there was a clear difference in a kaiju blade versus normal adamantium, Shaped into a weapon.
Mark kinda wanted to go visit Tulo again, to ask him about worked adamantium versus freeform adamantium, but Tulo was probably asleep. Tulo had offered to help with crystallization techniques, though, so Mark would go to him later. But until then, there was another option. The Anti-Kaiju Team.
“They probably know all about weapons.”
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