Adamant Blood 166

Mark broke the flow of battle, disconnecting from Shroor—

Suddenly the world was smaller. Mark had heard the team talking to each other while he was out there, fighting, but now Sam Ranger was in on the conversation.

“… climbing to Body 85,” Sam said, his voice calm and even, “Everything else is at 65 and expected to settle higher; maybe 75. It’s a mini-kaiju, after all.”

Eliot, with a voice less calm, asked, “Why did its PL shoot up that fast?”

Mark landed on the white ground far from Shroor, asking, “It was at 65 in every category, right? It felt a lot tougher than 65.”

“Mark is back,” Isoko said.

“I never left,” Mark said, “I was busy.”

Isoko rumbled, “I guess?”

Sam and his oversight team were high above them; a silver dot against the auroras. His voice was clear in Mark’s coms, though. “You’re still cleared to fight it. It’s still worth 10k points. It just advanced in its life cycle all the way to the end, to its bipedal form. Soon it will detach from the ground and start walking.”

Mark looked out across the white land and the red mist, at Shroor standing there at its full height, eyes bleeding from its bulbous head… It kinda wobbled, looking this way and that. It seed blind again. Mark had disconnected from it, so yeah, it didn’t know where he was anymore? Maybe not.

Mark asked, “Those are fake eyes on its head?”

Eliot said, “They’re fake; yeah. Already tested. Still testing, actually.”

The small towers that Eliot and Isoko had put up were flashing with lights in so sort of pattern. Well. Not a pattern, Mark guessed. Just flickering here and then flickering there, trying to see if Shroor responded. It did not.

Sally stood beside the silver spider about 100 ters away from Mark, looking at the sa things he was looking at. “So, Mark. You went all in. I did not think you were going all in. Those hands are double jointed. They almost got you.” That was an admonishnt, but trying not to be.

Mark skipped to the end of that conversation, “Yup. It was dumb. I went for it anyway.”

“We’re in a fight,” Eliot said, as though that explained everything. It kinda did. And then Eliot spoke about sothing else, “I have flathrowers on standby in case we need to press the big button and end the fight, but we shouldn’t need to do that. The acid misters are working well against the miasma, and Sally has reported too much damage from the miasma, so I’m going to get rid of that.”

“Ah, good,” Mark said, “That’s why I escaped, yes.”

His suit was going to be ruined after today, he could already tell.

“Yup,” Eliot said, “So I’m deploying so acid drones as we speak. With this action I’m 75% tapped for resources. The miasma is tougher to combat than I thought it would be.”

Balloon-drones lifted off of the back of the silver spider and spread into the sky, each of them carrying a payload in a different, smaller balloon, held below the larger one. It was a good ti for a short break, so Mark just stood there, watching. The drones took 30 seconds to get where they had to go, but when they were in position they started spraying over Shroor. Mark couldn’t see the spray, for it was too fine, but he could tell the effect instantly.

Shroor was covered in a red cloud, and then, it began to appear.

The red cloud settled down like soone had run fingers through the miasma, erasing it, and then splashing on the ground below. Yellowish gases rose from the downed red spores and the acid spread, eating and eating, breaking up the mycelium mat.

Shroor smoked a little, its wounds aggravating under the mist, but it did nothing and the acid did nothing to it in turn. But the acid did break the white veins snaking up Shroor’s red legs, and thatcertainly did sothing.

Shroor suddenly lurched, going from straight and observant, to hunched, with its arms reaching all the way to the ground. Its arms might have even gotten longer; Mark wasn’t sure.

The mycelium mat, the colony underneath the ground, reconnected to Shroor for a little bit, in a very strong way. Shroor bulged one last ti, its back erupting in a series of white spikes. Red wounds opened up on all of those spikes. Shroor’s legs bent, and then it lifted a leg, teetering just a bit, like an unbalanced baby, before it smashed back down into the ground, standing sturdy once again.

It walked, and it was not a fast walk at all.

Ah.

It was fully developed now. This, then, was its end-stage form. It was ready to be eaten by a kaiju, and it let all the world know that fact in one unmistakable way.

It keened.

The red holes inside of its spikes and its head opened up and wind passed through, filling the world with a droning sound that shook Mark to his very core. Mark gasped. He shuddered. He would never forget that sound as long as he lived, for it was a sound he had heard a few tis already. It was a deep sound.

The terrible noise of a kaiju.

Mark had a weird reaction.

He knew he was having a weird reaction as he had the reaction, but he couldn’t really stop himself from feeling how he felt. It was as though he was outside of his body looking in, for just the briefest of monts. For long enough.

It was weird.

Sally said sothing about, “Fuck. Did we fail, or succeed?”

Sam said sothing about, “That's a mixed bag. It should never have walked, but the combined threat managed to spur the colony to pump up the growth in hopes of being eaten by a kaiju, and that very well could happen. That sound is going to attract another kaiju now, so the kaiju kill squad is taking it down before it does. Clear the area.”

Isoko’s voice was clearly indignant as she asked, “So it was a failure statefor us to try and get the thing to move at all?”

“You’re still getting your points, Isoko,” Sam might have said, but Mark wasn’t really sure, “But now this thing has so kaiju quality mana crystals inside of it, and I will be taking it down to save those crystals, and prevent it calling a kaiju to our location. Clear the area.That ans you, too, Mark!”

“Uh, Mark?” Eliot asked, “It’s headed straight for you… I don’t think Shroor can see him, though?”

Isoko’s voice was saying, “Check if it grew real eyes—”

“The eyes in front are real now!” Eliot announced. “Mark! Get out there! … Mark! What the fuck is—”

Mark was in the flow again. He recognized it now. The sound of a real kaiju had broken a small barrier inside of himself, turning the natural desire to flee or freeze into the ultimate desire to fight. To erase the threat.

To kill the terror.

Mark felt his adamantium turn into claws, held in an easy grip, like a bunch of daggers.

Mark launched himself off of the ground and flowed forward on the wind, racing on his gliding wings as he clawed at the acidic ground, yellow clouds burning the air before him. He pulled faster and faster at the acid-covered stone underneath as Shroor stared down at him from on high, still hunched over but seeming larger by several ters.

It reached for Mark.

Mark yanked at the ground, twisting fast, connecting to the monster in a burst of Union and then he put on real speed. Mark flew up, sending his caltrops directly at Shroor, to grab Shroor’s reaching arm and then gripping deep enough to hold, but not too deep. Shroor had an astral body that tried to fend off Mark, but Mark was adamant personified, and he gripped re centiters into the creature’s body, and Shroor could do nothing against that.

And then Mark was in.

He danced around Shroor’s slow body, moving around andacrossthe arm and then up. Shroor tried to slap, but he could not slap. Mark ripped as he flew, ten hands of tal gripping tight, like he was a spider himself, and then he was up at Shroor’s back, among the keening shrooms, each of them like stretched white garlands over invisible Christmas trees, with eyes ringed around the base of every protuberance. Red oozed from the eyes, and the eyes stared at Mark.

They were real eyes this ti.

The vector of the monster flickered this way and that, like a sea of thoughts pointed in multiple directions at once, but also straight at Mark. Mark felt the hand coming from behind, so he moved forward, into the forest of singing shrooms on Shroor’s back.

The sound itself would have killed Mark if his Body was normal, but he was soaking in the Power Levels from Shroor, and he was more than capable of surviving a simple sonic attack. His gear was not. His gear cracked.

The hand followed Mark into the forest of shrooms, crashing through the ‘trees’, tree eyes locked on Mark, the hand slapping against the whistling grove, damaging the noise and the weeping red eyes.

Mark wasn’t sure what he was doing as he escaped the forest of sound, zigging and zagging and slamming his caltrops onto the monster's back, holding him where he needed to be, but then he looked back and saw the monster’s arm tangled in its own forest. Instantly, Mark turned and attacked, wrapping a line of black around the monster’s wrist. He hadn’t been able to get a good grip, a good angle, but he had all of that and more at this particular mont, so Mark turned his line of black into a bandsaw. He spun that bandsaw around himself, around the wrist of the monster, and not-blood flowed hard, getting everywhere.

Shroor scread, a whistling note among the sound of a keening kaiju.

It pulled away, and Mark almost went with it, but he let go, breaking the black bandsaw before he got torn away instead. He had almost cut off the hand. The wrist held on with nothing more than a few sticks of white, beneath the red.

Shroor attacked with the sa arm again, but Mark saw it coming—

The arm slamd into Shroor’s own back and the hand broke off and went flying in a random, unpredictable direction, right into one of Mark’s caltrops. The caltrop went flying and Mark almost went with it, pulled along by the extra mass stuck around his weapon. It was like getting his knees kicked out from under him. A thousand kilos of hand went skidding off the side of Shroor, and Mark let his adamantium go with it.

He’d get it back later.

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Shroor’s vector turned wild. Hateful. It leaned back and scread and Mark held on as the world went vertical. Shroor tried to slam its broken wrist into Mark while he used its other hand to reach and grab, and Mark danced around to Shroor’s underbelly.

It was softer there, and bulging.

Mark turned his bandsaw of adamantium into a blade five ters long, and then, like a surgeon, he made a slice across the belly, keeping his adamantium under firm control. Not too deep. Don’t risk losing the weapon itself inside of Shroor’s astral body. Just enough. Slice! Slice! Slice!

Here ca the broken wrist, and then there was the full hand, both aiming for Mark from two different angles.

Mark saw all the angles of attack long before the attack reached him.

He zipped downward, to Shroor’s thick legs, slicing a line of pain as he went, like dragging a monowire behind himself, curling into the flesh. The legs were thick with muscle and not built like humanoid legs at all. They had scales to them, too. No joints to cut. No veins to crack open and make the monster bleed out.

A Union of adamant and weakness pulled doubleti in the beating of Mark’s heart and the dance of electrical signals in the brain. It was more than enough to keep Mark in the wild fight, and it was enough to weaken Shroor’s flesh enough for Mark to cut.

He breathed purity to keep the miasma off of himself, but soon he’d be needing to heal himself… more than he already was. His suit was holey and his flesh stung, but his body was strong and his armor was doing enough—

Shroor’s arms reached for Mark, the broken forearm stabbing while the hand grabbed.

Mark flowed up, getting out of range again—

Sally was down below.

Mark didn’t see her so much as sense her, and then he connected to her, and Sally sang in his Union like a harmony of Retribution. The air glittered gold sowhere down below, by Shroor’s legs, and Mark heard the striking of tal on flesh, but he was already up on Shroor’s back. Sally was working. Mark would work, too.

Shroor ca for him again and Mark slipped up and Shroor’s remaining hand went too far south.

It was a target.

Caltrops splashed into bandsaws like twisting spiderwebs and then they ca together into a full line of cutting black, already wrapped around Shroor’s wrist.

Mark pulled.

Shroor lost another hand, and this ti it was a clean cut.

Mark was getting better at this.

Almost preternaturally, he looked at the oozing red shrooms on Shroor’s back, and he leapt away, speaking through the coms for the first ti in 10 minutes.

“Get away.”

Mark twisted his adamantium into wings and glided away, putting on so speed with a flap and then a steeper angle.

Sally made one final hack at the monster’s right leg, leaving behind one nasty looking wound, and then she looked up and saw Mark gliding away.

She booked it.

Just in ti.

Shroor roared and its wounded leg wobbled, but it remained standing. And then Shroor went fucking wild.

It slamd the ground with its arms, moving easily twice the speed it went before. It roared. It jumped and tried to attack whatever had been injuring its leg, but Sally was already gone, and then it broke its leg where Sally had injured it. It turned to face Mark, still gliding away in the air, and then it raced after him, reaching with its handless arms, all of it hobbling and slapping the ground as it went for Mark.

Mark couldn’t actually fly.

Shroor was almost there.

But Isoko and the silver spider got there first.

Mark reached up and grabbed the spider’s leg, yanking himself out of Shroor’s path, as Isoko hauled ass into the air.

Shroor reached upward, trying to get to Mark.

Mark glared down at the monster, and watched as it reached too far.

Shroor’s belly opened up completely, the wounds Mark had caused finally giving way. Its insides fell outward, like so many spilled guts, but it was all white, lumpy, car-sized ‘seeds’ covered in red gore. The eggs went everywhere, slipping across the regrowing mycelium mat.

Shroor’s shrooms on its back began to falter and die as its insides fully fell out.

Mark’s visor was finally lting too much to see through so he reached up and pulled it off, revealing the clear, unobstructed sight of his kill. His armor was already breaking in small ways, but his adamantium was strong, and his grip on the leg of the silver spider was good and strong, too. Shroor was still barely alive, for Mark was still connected to it, but it was dying faster and faster. He kept the Union going for now, connecting to Isoko’s Union, and to the further world beyond, taking everything he could from Shroor to make it die to its wounds even quicker.

Mark was in the flow…

And then the flow hitched.

Mark breathed easy in the clear air, and then he said, “Let’s go pick up Sally.”

“Holy fuck, Mark,” Eliot softly exclaid.

“Co inside,” Isoko said. “There are board shorts in the airlock and a new phone for Quark.”

“You really just went for it, didn’t you,” Sally said, from on the ground way, way over there.

Mark smiled a little and waved to Sally, happy that his coms were still working. He casually said, “Death to all monsters.”

“Yeah yeah,” Sally said, “Battle junkie with his junk hanging out all the damned ti.”

“You know it!” Mark said, hauling himself up into the airlock and putting on his new board shorts. “And your tit is out! What happened to your TT?”

Sally huffed, saying, “I let a bit too much damage in, but it worked! I hacked those leg scales open! Did you see it crash down when it tried to support itself?”

“I did! That was aweso!” Mark said.

They talked about the fight, and ti seed to speed up now that Mark wasn’t in the flow, in the fight.

They landed and Eliot had a shirt ready to go for Sally, and Mark went back out, into the oozing sheet of mycelium, into the sunshine, to look for his adamantium that had gotten caught on the broken hand. He found his missing dagger fast enough...

It was shaped kinda like a dragon claw, which was funky and Mark didn’t want to think about, so he didn’t. He lded the adamantium back into a normal part of his armor and left it there.

Soon enough Sam Ranger’s team was down on the ground and partitioning Shroor’s very dead corpse for parts.

Whole teams of harvesters had to be pulled off of active duty, schedules broken and remade, because no one expected Mark and his team to be able to kill Shroor, but they had, and the body absolutely needed to be harvested, and fast.

The fungal colony under the ground was already trying to reclaim the remains, but that wasn’t much of a problem; not when highly Skilled Harvesters and otherwise got involved. Barba Sacredcut was there, and Mark said hello to her, and she greeted them back, and then she was on the job, cutting open a giant white sac to get at the goods inside.

Mages ca out and cast so fungal sleeping spells and those spells put the colony into a temporary torpor that would last a day, so no one was worried about the kaiju-sized colony underfoot.

“If we had those spells we could have used them on Shroor?” Mark asked, as they all stood to the side, near the main recovery operations.

Sam said, “Oh sure, and then you wouldn’t get any points at all for this kill. The goal of allowingyou kids to fight these things is to get you fighting experience with almost-kaiju, and I think that happened. I think you did so things very well, and so things very poorly but we’ll talk about all of that later, after the harvest.” Sam smiled a little. “But it was a good showing! How do you feel? How do allof you feel?”

Isoko said, “I want to do more.”

Eliot said, “I ran out of supplies. I need better options. More concise options.”

Sally said, “I…” She shook her head.

She had things she wanted to say, but she was too scared to say them.

Sam moved on, to look at Mark.

Mark said, “I feel fucking fantastic.” And then he looked at his team and truly ant it as he said, “We did a great job! A very good job! Co on, you guys! We did great!”

Sally didn’tbelieve him.

She was having an issue. She had closed off since Awakening, since their distancing caused by Addashield, and then all the rest, so Mark didn’t know what she was thinking as much as he used to know.

Isoko wantedto believe him. Her issues were easier to see and know, for she had never made any secret of how much she wanted to be the one flying around, killing kaiju with hurricanes or other grand gestures of power.

Eliot was scared and trying to hide it. Mark wanted Eliot to be less scared, though he wasn’t sure how to make that happen, or even if he could. Eliot was putting up walls and feeling better behind those walls, but that seed like a self-reinforcing future. The way he was going, Eliot was always going to be scared of the outside world, and especially of kaiju.

Mark said to all of them, “We did great, you guys. Excellent.”

“He’s right,” Sam said. “Despite being a hot shot who went in when he should have backed up, and who could have gotten himself killed if the monster had any surprises, he’s mostly correct.”

Mark almost wanted to scoff at that assessnt. He knew what he was doing! There had been no vectors anywhere that would have indicated an attack that would have hit him, and he evaded all of the ones that did co for him… But Sam probably knew what he was talking about, and Mark could, theoretically, understand that there might have been, like, trigger sensor proximity dangers, or sothing like that. Those things were usually vectorless until triggered. Ambush monsters did that a lot.

… And Mark had lost a caltrop to a wayward break of Shroor’s hand. So…

Yeah.

Sam lookedat Mark, and Mark prepared for a dressing down, because yeah, that’s what you did to hot shots who almost got themselves killed, even if Mark was pretty sure he was totally fine out there.

But instead, Sam just nodded, and said, “Good job, team.”