Chương 484: 484

In a small room at Wandering Castle, Mark sat by himself in the dark, closing his eyes to the real world— Mark stood upon the deck of his soulhouse. The dark dream was kinda windy out there right now, breezes flowing across the black grasses of his demiplane's lawn, ruffling patches of magenta flowers of Death, playing in the trees. The wind whistled around the weather vane at the peak of the main building, gently twisting it left and right.

The 12 copies of Mark that formed the Clean House ritual, surrounding the house at the edge of the property, looked the same. Which was good. Isoko's pink bedroom sat out there away from everything else, looking normal. The four poster bed's curtains stood open, fluttering a little on the wind. Isoko was not there right now, but there was an impression on her bed where she would manifest if she died again.

Mark's Skilling suite was the same as before, a thousand floating hands of Union forming the basis of the Skilling he did with others. The records were fully stocked, as much as could be stocked. He could have done more there, but he wanted space in his soulhouse for further action; he was at 89 out of 174 Utilized, according to his Status.

When the numbers had rolled over from 999 to 1, 000, after Mark had absorbed all of that orichalcum from Crystal Tower, his House had gone from 'Foundation' to 'Level One', and he had gained a Cohort slot, going from 2 to 3. And then the numbers had condensed, dropping a 0. There had been enough orichalcum left over to bump Mark all the way up to a new Utilized cap of 174, which was really 1, 740, but System Prime didn't work that way.

The only part of his house that had changed after going up to Level One was that he had a lot more space for Bindings. What else could he put in here right now, anyway? Nothing? Something? Mark wasn't sure what he needed, aside from a magical button to end the war and get back to actually solving the problems of humanity, like monsters and demons and all the horrible things that were actual problems, instead of problems that people made into problems. …

Mark briefly entertained the fantasy of running into Okuana and killing every dryad they sent at him and tearing through the entire leadership of Okuana, all by himself. He had done it to the goblins, and they were a lot more insidious than humans would be, though humans and the dryads who controlled them were a lot smarter than Goblinhome's goblins. More plentiful, too, with a lot more resources at their command. So 'just go after Okuana right now' would be a stupid idea.

There was a certain joy in thinking that he could just… go. Just go and then do it and save the world from a war and from death and maybe, if Mark did it well enough, he wouldn't die, either. … Mark moved on. He had about 4 hours before he was scheduled to start Skilling more people for New Tokyo, and he needed to make the most of that time. Soon, he'd head off to Vaka, to meet up with whoever was down there with the Picory.

Mark had sent off an email to the people he had met at the Winter Ball to let them know he was coming, but he hadn't gotten a response. And so, he had sent a message off to Tulo Khava at Dawncoast, and Tulo had shot him back an answer ten minutes later, letting him know that messages to Vaka almost never get through, but if he showed up then he'd be welcomed. Tulo told Mark he had sent off his own messages to Vaka, on Mark's behalf, so that would help when Mark went down there.

It was a 'good enough' plan, when it came to eldritch antimeme territory. He had tried talking with Isoko about it again, but she had completely ignored him, like his words simply weren't being heard. Tulo had told him that would happen to Mark over and over and over again, every time he tried to involve someone else in that journey.

Even if he did manage to get Isoko to go with him, either through a True Spellbreaker keeping her out of the antimeme or with a giant black box, literally dragging her with him, the antimeme would break the box and Isoko would 'accidentally' lose the True Spellbreaker. Tulo wasn't clear on exactly how that would happen, and that was on purpose. If he was clearer on how it would happen, then his message wouldn't even go through at all.

So Mark planned on leaving Isoko behind, even though he did not want to, and then head off to Vaka in, like, 2 days maybe? He wasn't sure. He was sure that he needed to leave behind some magitech for others. Maybe a Dynamo staff for Tartu and Addavein? Yes. That was the main purpose of this morning, Mark decided. That, and figuring out if he could enchant adamantium, orichalcum, and mithril in his soulhouse, and then bring it out into the real world.

Surely, if he could do that, then he could mass-produce 'Dynamo Staffs', and then… and then… And then maybe other people could win this war for humanity, because Mark certainly didn't want to be the one annihilating countrysides and armies." Gods, what a fucking ugly thought," Mark said to himself in the privacy of his own soulhouse.

"Millions are going to die because I can't fucking kill people. Fucking fuck. This is such fucking bullshit. Fucking Dominant is some kinda unkillable bastard, too. So what are we gonna do there…" Mark sighed, looked out at the dark rainbows of the dream, and said, "… Quark?" Quark appeared like a butler version of Mark, but in silver and different, standing to the side.

"Sir?"" I need to talk to someone, and I want that person to be you, but you're not a real person right now, so… So can I talk to you? Or… Or fuck. I don't know what's going on. I feel lost, man."" I am not a real person, so speaking to me is not like talking to a real person who is able to help you diagnose an issue. But if you speak, I will listen, and I will not tell others what I hear, and based on what I know of your history I might be able to help you through illuminating your past to you once again."

Good enough. Mark blurted out, "I'm worried about war and I'm scared I'm not doing enough, but I don't know what more I could be doing." Quark replied, "Imagine the world is at peace. Tell me what you would be doing instead."" Fuuuuck," Mark said, thrown for a loop. For a moment, everything felt different, like there wasn't this big looming threat over him and over everything else. He admitted to himself, "I'd be out killing monsters and saving people. Doing some HVP productions with the guys.

Prepping for Gate Days and… and I'd still be Skilling people, but I wouldn't be making thousands of super strong people. I'd probably be figuring out demons and magic, and…" He looked to Isoko's bed, over there at the edge of the property.

"… And giving Isoko the respect she deserves, because right now I love her, and I think I always have, but I also 'love' Sally, and Eliot, and… I don't tell the people around me that I love them nearly enough. But it's not the same as how they feel 'love'... or maybe it is? But it's really not. They all want to fuck and that's just… No." I don't want to care about Okuana or Dominant or the Reset Quest… Well. No. I do care about the Reset Quest. A whole lot, actually. But…" A truly dark thought clouded Mark's mind.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to voice that thought, at all. But this was Quark. So Mark told him, "If the world had no monsters, if we completed the Reset Quest and killed all of our problems forever, then I don't know what I would do with myself. I think, without direction, I would… I would go insane or insensate, like some Elemental Body people do." It was an ugly thing to admit.

Quark said, "The majority of activities you expressed do involve monsters, but if there were no monsters you could still do HVP productions. Those are an evergreen activity, for stories and communication between people is always a valued activity." Mark scrunched his face, saying, "And then what would the stories be about? A conflict between people? Heroes and Villains? Yeah, I guess that could be true, and then we're back to war.

So it's a good thing that we have monsters and kaiju, otherwise we'd be at war forever." Quark said, "One time, you expressed the idea that 'if there were no monsters, there would be no violence, and that this would be a fine thing'. Do you disagree with that history?" Mark laughed once.

"People are always going to fight."" That is an untrue statement," Quark said. Mark scrunched his face again.

"No it's not. People fight all the time, and especially when someone's power base is being threatened. Governments are always at war."" Broadly, people are prone to doing the least amount of activity possible. A few people will always make problems for others, and the higher up those malcontents are in governments or hierarchies the larger effects they have on the people below them in all aspects.

You, sir, are currently at the very top, so you see the movements you make and others make, and you conflate these movements to the desires of the people below you, but this is untrue. Most people are just people, and people help other people." Quark added, "And you like helping people, so you could always help others. People will always have problems." It was like getting slapped to the past, to a more naive time. A heroic time.

Mark stared out into the waving black grass, the motes of purple flowers, and the dark dream beyond, and he imagined a better world once again. A world where monsters were myths, and the worst thing a guy had to consider was getting a date for homecoming, or what college they were going to go to, or what their life would look like in 10 years based on what they did today, tomorrow, and the next day. It was a world worth fighting for, but wasn't that a kick in the pants.

Mark was a weapon who made weapons, and if he succeeded in enough violence then he'd put himself out of a job, of an entire life. And then what would he be? What use was a sword in a world of words? Mark stared out into the dark for a while. Quark broke the silence, saying, "You'll likely never get to that world of no monsters, anyway, sir." Mark snorted once, and said, "Yeah." He stood up.

"Let's focus on the present." With a thought, Mark added a room to the house, beyond a walkway, under a covered roof leading there. Mark moved the walls out, turned the floor solid stone, the walls into sturdy wood, and he opened up the side, allowing for an unobstructed view of the fields of dark grasses and purple flowers, and then he added an anvil. A workshop always needed an anvil. He waved his arm and tools multiplied onto hooks on the walls.

Mark took a step to his Skilling room, grabbed some Dynamo Bindings, and then he stepped back into the workshop. It was time to make a Dynamo staff. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Here's where it got tricky. Mark knew pretty much everything required to make the object he was trying to make in the real world, but only theoretically; Sigildry, Basic Enchanting, Manawork, Binding work, etcetera. Making it in the dream would be a whole lot easier, theoretically.

And when it was done he could bring it into the real world with a Union of Dream and Reality… theoretically." No place to start but the beginning." Mark grabbed the air, his fingers wrapping around an adamantium staff. It was plain; solid black, 2 meters tall, with a rounded shaft and caps on both ends. Mark splashed out the top cap, turning it into a gnarl of wood. He'd put Dynamo up there in a minute. Firstly, he needed to figure out what he was doing with the whole thing. Mana was a deep subject.

He could just make a staff of adamantium, which was already mana, and people could grab the staff and use it up, actively using the adamantium to fuel spells. That was the bad way to use adamantium. A much better way to use adamantium was as a focus for other, replaceable parts.

Like you'd have an adamantium base, and then you could slot mana crystals into the base, and then those mana crystals would be used up and flavored in adamantium-based ways; spellworkingly stronger, less prone to disruption, and actively directed in the ways the user directed it. It was the same principle with using a zinc anode on a boat's hull; the zinc got corroded instead of the boat.

If the enchanted object got used up beyond the load of the mana crystal, which was like a zinc anode being used up, then the actual enchanted object would start to break down, which was like the boat hull pitting and breaking. Eventually, this led to the collapse of the magical item; a sunk boat, as all the water got in and destroyed the internals. That was the fate of all Wands of Destruction; those things only ever got 2 or 5 shots.

So, what Mark was trying to do was to make an adamantine staff as a focus for spellwork, with a tip made of Dynamo that never needed replacing, like you would have to replace if you were using normal mana crystals, because Dynamo would be creating more mana all the time." So I have to solve for a few things:" One; the user being able to grab 'adamantium' mana for themselves, for their spells, without degrading the staff, with the Dynamo making the mana for the staff."

Two; the Dynamo flavoring itself with adamantium, to provide endless adamantium mana…" Hmm… Am I just making an endless adamantium staff?" Mark paused." No. Not endless adamantium, because mages can't all use that kind of mana themselves. The point is to integrate with the user, and to refill their own mana constantly… Yes. That's correct. If someone was Adamantium Blooded, then they might 'eat' the staff, but… I can account for that." Mark realized where he was going with this.

"I need to make the Dynamo able to make more mana of whatever kind of mana the person using it has, so that they can use that mana to supplement their own…" Mark paused, and looked at his staff. He decided, "Probably using some blood magic to lock it to the user, too… if that's how blood magic works. I know they used blood magic to attune me to the ITLKR system, when I grabbed that crystal with my bloody hand, but… I have no idea how to make that happen… But it's a dream. Let's just try it and see if it works."

Mark took the blueprint for Dynamo and twisted it, turning it into a crystal that he stuck onto the end of the staff. It was easy to do stuff like that in the dream. In real life, Mark had fucked up a few different Healthy Bodys before he had managed to make that Sword of Agitation/Homeostasis. Maybe this time would be different/easier? … The whole staff seemed kinda dull. Just a crystal sitting in a cradle of black wires on a black stick. This was the first try, though, so… Sure?

Mark stared at the staff, Shaping the interior into sigils and more, as he told it, "You attune to the person who holds you, allowing them to endlessly use their own mana, but flavored with adamantium mana. You are an endless mana staff. That is what you do…" Mark had a thought, and then he inscribed that thought onto the length of the staff in Sigaldry, "Endless Mana." If anything indicative happened, then Mark did not see it, feel it, or sense it happen. Mark opened his eyes to reality.

The room was still dark, which was probably the best way to do this. Mark focused on the dark, Calling to himself, saying, "Come forth, Endless Mana." He held his hand out and felt the dark, Unioning with Dream and Reality— A slight tearing, like a brick threatening to fall. Mark stopped. The brick fell back into place… sort of. Mark wasn't sure what was happening, but it was sort of like a pressure vanishing.

Mark resumed, Unioning strongly with Dream and Reality, heart, mind, and breath flowing as one, his body standing tall, the dark deepening, as Mark reached forward, into the shadows, making sure not to aggravate that breaking feeling happening inside of his soul. He Called out, "Come to me, Endless Mana."

Mark gripped the air once, and nothing happened, and then he gripped a bit different, splitting his focus between the dream and reality and Unioning with Dream and Reality at the same time, repeating himself, "Come to me, Endless Mana." Mark grabbed— The staff appeared out of the dark, and the dark pulled away like an uncurling shadow— This one was clearly a dud. The staff appeared in Mark's hand and it immediately broke.

The crystal at the top was cloudy and it fell apart into tens of pieces, scattering to the floor, while the bottom half of the staff broke away, leaving Mark with a sharp edge of adamantium in his hand connected to the top half that was also breaking apart. Mark recognized the main issue. He hadn't done enough to solidify the direction of the adamantium. He had gone too broad, and that's why the staff crumbled into a bunch of different pieces. Dynamo was the main issue.

Dynamo was an endless source, and when it pushed through the adamantium the adamantium fractured. Maybe Mark needed to give it a central memory? Or maybe just an impression of a memory, like that which existed at the center of all Bindings. Something to direct the Dynamo into the adamantium, into the person holding on to the staff. … Jessie's 'brand new day; ready for everything' was a good place to start, when it came to Dynamo. Mark didn't want to put something that variable into the staff, but maybe something…

Hmm. Mark had a think. Mark closed his eyes, dipping back into the dream. He paused for a moment, gazing upon the wreckage of his previous attempt to make the staff, which looked like a bunch of black bits hovering in the air. It was all sort of ephemeral. The Natural Dynamo at the top was little more than a brush of prismatic light, all of the truly magical Natural part of the Power seemingly stuck in the dream when Mark pulled the solid bits back into the world.

Mark nodded as he saw that, feeling confident that his next idea was going to work out well. … And it was quite possible that his first idea would have worked out well, too, because there had been something to that 'tearing' sensation back there. Maybe Mark should have kept tearing. Dreams became reality when orichalcum was used up, after all, and Mark had a lot of orichalcum in this dream. He suspected, but was not sure, that he needed to rip out some of his demiplane to actually make this thing.

And with that thought in mind, Mark grabbed another Dynamo from the bin, made another staff, and then put Dynamo into an orb of light that was a miniature sun, heralding power everlasting. A dynamo was, after all, a machine that turned physical action into power. The physical action happening here was the spark of the sun. Mark named the staff, inscribing its truth upon its surface and driving that truth deep into the warm depths of its adamantium grip, separating the grip from the Dynamo at the top.

The holder of the staff would be safe from the power of the staff when it really got going, but most of the time the sun would be quiet, at rest, waiting for a user. It felt like a much more complete inscription. Mark opened his eyes back to the real world. With one hand forward, hand open to the dark, Mark Called out to the staff," Come to me, Solar Flare. Be born, and herald the dawn of better days." The ripping sensation returned halfway through Mark's Call. Mark let it tear.

A gentle weight settled into Mark's hand— And a miniature sun unfolded from the gloom, white and gold and radiant red, gripped in adamantine black, connected to the staff in Mark's hand like a dragon claw staff gripping the very sky itself. That sky, that brightness and clarity, flowed along the length of the staff, like faint mist, that then flowed into Mark and rapidly quieted. The sun quieted.

Mark's astral body had weakened when he used mana to make the staff, but now he was full again, so yeah, the sun was done. Mark waited until the light was completely subdued and then he flicked on the lights in the room. Some old storage stuff lay to the side of the underground stone room and the naked light overhead illuminated a staff that was unlike any Mark had ever seen. It certainly looked like a magic staff, all black and veined with gold, all archmage colors and a white crystal tip.

That tip was fully white now and kinda crackled on the inside, hinting at dynamic depths, like a cold sun. It had already refilled Mark's astral body with the strength that it took to summon it from the dream… which was good. But was it an endless mana staff? He had no idea how to test that out… But maybe he did? Mark popped off his left arm, the white of his flesh vanishing as the adamantium revealed itself as solid black.

Sure enough the staff 'healed him' by turning bright white again and then fiery gold, flowing power into his body, into his Binding, refilling the mana that had been in his arm. The air was warm, but not hot. Like standing under the sun. Mark's arm began to regrow. Adamantine Immortal did the kaiju's share of the actual work, of course, but the Dynamo staff provided mana, right here and right now, and the safeties Mark had put into the staff made it so that Dynamo provided all of the mana.

Mark's adamant blood didn't draw any adamantium out of the staff at all. Solar Flare remained whole. Soon, Mark had his arm back, and he had the one on the floor, too. Mark slurped the floor-arm back into his body, through a coin and into storage, as he held the staff, Solar Flare, to the side, saying, "Let's see… Eliot, Tartu, Addavein, Tartu's dad… Who else?" Probably a lot of other people. But first, Mark checked his Status. Sure enough, a number had changed.

"Ahhh, yeah. I was at 174 Utilized, but now I'm at 173. A full 10 Utilized for this one item, which means about 20 kilos of orichalcum for this one object, taken directly from my divine demiplane." Was it worth it? From most every standpoint, yes. … But Mark had recently gone on a trip to Endless Daihoon, and they had seen Kabberjaw as a 'back door to the System', and this staff right here was made with many different pieces of Mark, and, indeed, taken directly from his own dream.

Mark hadn't really thought about that, at first, but he was thinking about it now. If he was worried about nothing, though… He could produce a lot of these things, and that meant a lot of mana for a lot of city defenses, both strategic and personal. Mark said, "Quark, call up Addavein. I need to have a chat about this thing."