“I used potions sometimes,” Sally said, sitting in the back of the vehicle, by the monitors. “But not really. They’re always too fucking expensive, and they’d all go bad every time we came to Earth. Arana had a few that worked fine but… Not really.”
“Potions do work on Earth a little,” Mark said. “I had that Color Drop treatment… which I am now wondering about. How did that survive the negative ambient mana pressure?”
“It’s something,” Sally said. “They use shavallian in some high-powered prisons, but it’s not common at all.”
“It’s probably an additive,” Isoko said, one hand to the steering wheel, the other on the throttle. The vehicle rumbled as it rolled down the way, slow and steady. Very slow and steady. “Something they put into the shavallian to make it viable on Earth. Into all potions. I still like that theory the most.”
“It really could be a defined thing,” Eliot said, as he sat in his own seat, at the base of the vehicle. He wasn’t really here; most of his focus was outside of the vehicle, on the ground under the big wheels. “People who know magic can do magic well, and their magics last a while. Everyone else has to make do with knowing the recipes but not the power behind the recipes, like with alchemical silver. Some people make really good alch-silver, and some people make it crappy, even though they use the same recipes.” Eliot continued, “The Veil of the Demon City Arakino defines how magic works, siphoning all loose magic on Earth back to Daihoon. Potions, stationary magics, even Powers outside of personal control; all of that sort of stuff just doesn’t work as well on Earth as it does on Daihoon. It’s an ambient mana problem. Negative pressure and stuff.”
Today was the third day since Mark had been stomped by Tartu. Until today, Mark had been mostly confined to his apartment while he had been healing from the shavallian, flushing it from his system, but even by yesterday, he had been feeling better. Nearly 100%. Today, Mark felt completely normal. Physically, anyway.
Emotionally?
Not great.
They had been talking about shavallian for the last few days, and about the holes in their knowledge of Daihoon and the world, so that certainly didn’t help.
But there was still work to be done.
Currently, Mark, Isoko, Eliot, and Sally, were all inside a great big track-laying machine that Eliot had built, and which Isoko drove. It was the size of a tram car at about 20 meters long, and it was super wide, at 10 meters across. A normal tram was only 5 meters wide. This vehicle had giant wheels, spaced far apart, with the cab high off the ground so that the space between the big wheels was large enough for a track bed to rest. Most of the vehicle was storage for the tracks that Eliot was laying down, as Isoko drove. The cab where Mark, Eliot, Isoko, and Sally rode the vehicle, was relatively small. The vehicle drove relatively slowly, too.
Physically, it was a comfortable, slow drive.
Big windows showed off the settlement in every direction, while the road ahead was a flat mound that Isoko drove straight above, keeping the mound between the tires, and Eliot, seated at the lowest point of the cab, turned the steel rails and other stuff into a tram line. It was rote work for him by now. Just some basic infrastructure alongside the tram tracks. Internet and power, mostly. Mark was on Union duty, linking his people to the world, making sure Eliot never flagged. Isoko drove very slowly, as well as helped with Union. Sally coordinated drops from Castle North.
The sky was blue in the distance, but auroras straight above, and all the world seemed pleasantly plain. Grasses grew everywhere and Mark linked to them and the world, feeling calm, and healthy. He only had 400 grams of adamantium, and that was worrying, but he had pushed himself a whole fucking lot yesterday to make as much as he could, so it was what it was. It was enough to make a few caltrops for hovering purposes, and a single small scalpel for battle.
With her eyes up, looking out of the sunroof of the big vehicle, and then glancing at the radar to the side, Sally hummed, and said, “The next drop is coming. Should be here in 30 seconds.” She glanced behind them, at the bed of the vehicle. “You need more precious metals? We’re practically out of copper, I think? Gold is low, too.”
“Just copper,” Eliot said… And then he blinked a lot, then frowned. “No, uh… Yeah. We need gold, silver, titanium— The whole computer loadout, too. Aluminum, tin, zinc, neodymium, etcetera.”
Sally tapped away at a tablet, saying, “Heard and understood. Requests sent. Annnnnd—” The tablet beeped. Sally said, “Requests received. They’ll be added to the next drop— And here’s our current resupply, now.”
A hovercar was headed this way, the vectors of the people on board, and the fliers hanging off of the load on the bottom, all pointed in their direction. Isoko pulled back on the throttle of the vehicle. They slowed. The fliers hanging off of the hovercar’s load all flew off of the load, to get ready to drop it into the bed, behind the cab. It was a dance they had done a few times now, yesterday and the day before, but it had been a lot more difficult with only half their team in the vehicle. Every transfer had taken a full five minutes. But now that everyone was here it went a lot better.
Wordlessly, Mark joined everyone present into a Union of intent.
Everything kinda clicked together after Mark did that.
Isoko angled the vehicle just so, before she ground to a complete stop. The guys driving the hovercar held it just right, until they were positioned perfectly. Instead of needing to manhandle the materials onto the vehicle, the fliers just unclipped stuff after it was already set down properly, belts slipping away and several tons of steel settling down onto the vehicle, right where it needed to be. Eliot, as a part of the Union, made sure that the feeder systems were working well, and soon, the fliers zipped to the front of the vehicle—
Two of the three fliers were people Mark recognized from the Hero/Villain Program. They were Wilma and William… something. Last name started with an ‘H’. They usually wore blue and white superhero outfits and they had met with Mark briefly, a few times back on the ship. Not many times after that, inside the settlement, though.
They were wearing green and gold webweave right now. Not blue and white. They had been wearing blue and white, but… they had changed? Why did they change?
… Because of Tartu’s blue and white scheme?
They waved at Mark looking directly at him for a brief moment before flying back up to the hovercar, as it flew back to base.
Isoko looked at them fly away and went, “Huh,” and then she revved the engine back up, and then they were keeping on, keepin’ on.
Mark said, “They had on different costumes, right?”
“That’s what it was!” Isoko said, in realization. “They changed their colors?”
“Used to be blue and white,” Mark said.
The vehicle rumbled.
Sally continued the conversation from earlier, saying, “I was always told that Earth didn’t have alchemy because of the mana pressure. But that’s just not true—”
“It’s absolutely true,” Eliot countered.
“—because,” Sally enunciated, “There’s alchemical silver and some people do have health potions, and Mark had that whole Color Drop treatment, so all of that means that alchemy does work on Earth. But not most alchemy.”
Eliot said, “Alchemical silver potions last twice as long on Daihoon.”
Isoko led with the question, “So it’s an additive, yeah? A stabilizer? Well-made magical items work well on Earth, too, but the cheap shit breaks all the time.”
“More like the cheap shit cannot be made on Earth,” Sally said, “Because you need solid mana, and that only exists on Daihoon.”
Isoko went, “Nuh uh! You can get solid mana on Earth!” She paused. “You have to be able to; I’m sure?”
“…Weeeeell…” Sally drifted off, not sure if she wanted to fight that point or not, because she was probably in the wrong.
They had been discussing shavallian and potions and single-use wands for two days now. Right now they were on the potion discussion, but they had been talking about wands and how those were completely unusable on Earth, or at least no one had ever seen one in use on Earth…
Maybe.
Mark wasn’t sure.
The number 1 import to Earth was magical materials, though; that ‘solid mana’ that Sally mentioned.
“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Mark said, feeling some kinda way about a lot of things.
He knew about single-use wands, in the way that he knew guns existed and were used against monsters. Usually, guns were great for small, weak monsters, like young goblins and stuff like that. He knew about potions, in that alchemy was massive on Daihoon, but barely visible on Earth, aside from a few big exceptions. Alchemical silver was the major exception to the ‘no potions on Earth’ status quo.
Some people even used alchemical silver on their bullets, which was a pretty normal exception to the way fights usually played out, which was how Mark fought; with his Powers.
What Mark was having trouble with was that he had been tricked.
He had been tricked to be honorable, while the enemy wasn’t honorable at all, bringing resources beyond Mark’s understanding to what was effectively a spar. A spar! This Hero/Villain Program was all about people fighting each other for the cameras and hamming it up according to their characters. Why would anyone spend money on a spar, shelling out thousands upon thousands of goldleaf on single-use items!?
… Obviously, if the ‘winnings’ of the spar were in the millions of dollars, then the answer was ‘everyone will spend money to make money’.
… Did villains spend money on things like wands and shit, when they robbed banks for the camera? Mark watched the movies just like everyone else but he had never been one for Weekly Brawl, or any of the other popular weekly shows. Reality television just wasn’t interesting to him. Maybe there were villains who made items and stole things with those items… And yet, couldn’t they make more money selling the items they made instead of using them to steal more money? Anyone with a Power for making items could make a whole lot more money making items than they could stealing things.
Earth had a whole lot more Tinkerers than Daihoon, though, which was a whole different angle to this cultural shift thing that Mark was experiencing. Tinkerers used AI and metals and electricity and computers and big gears and shit like that. Daihoon had artificers, which used solid mana to make magical items. Tinkerers were maybe 90% real stuff and 10% mana. Artificers were 60% real stuff and 40% mana.
Enchanters were maybe 5% real stuff and 95% mana.
… Maybe.
Just look at Eliot, turning steel and metals and stone into infrastructure. He was sort of like a Tinkerer, for sure, and he was making a whole lot of money doing Tinkering. Sure, he was in the top point-zero-zero-zero—many more zeroes—1% of Powers capable of such feats, but even Knacks for making things were still useful. Anyone with a basic Knack for creation of any kind could always find really good work at one of the Basic Income factories. Sure, it was boring as fuck work…
Mark shook his head.
Mark continued, “There’s a lot I didn’t know, but the problem with that fight with Tartu is there was a lot I didn’t expect to happen. I thought it was a fight for a camera, and Tartu wanting to challenge me first before anyone else did, because that’s what he said back on the Grey Whale. But it was obviously more than that. I didn’t expect him to be a thief like that.
“All I know, right now, is that I’m not doing single spars anymore. Maybe I’ll start off that way, but I want you guys to jump in next time something like that happens. I was stupid with Tartu. I should have asked for Eliot’s help. Tartu took advantage of so… so many expectations.”
Sally was quick to say, “Of course!”
Eliot almost said something—
“You’re going to get targeted like that again,” Isoko said, her voice deep with certainty, her eyes locked on the slow drive ahead. “The first time was rough. Rougher than most. Tartu approached you like you’d approach any supervillain; with as many specific counters as he could. Villains and heroes get targeted at their weaknesses all the time.” Isoko turned and looked at Mark, saying, “And now you know what an alpha strike feels like, and you’ll never let it happen again. Distance would have saved you, too. Running, the very instant Tartu put up an anti-Union Domain around himself, would have fucked up his plan. He’s not a Seer; his Power has a set range, just like everyone’s. If you had been at range, then you could have picked up rocks out of the ground or carved rocks from walls and thrown them at him.”
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Sally and Eliot were both silent.
Mark sighed. “… Yeah. You’re right.” He felt stupid all over again. “I was just… not expecting… any of that. But you’re right… Gods dammit. Yes. You know? … The first fucking lesson they taught us in Tutorial training was to run from monsters if you had no idea what they were doing.”
Isoko nodded a little, her eyes back on the track ahead.
Sally said, “Yeah. Instructor Gravel was a real hardass about that lesson.”
Eliot blurted out, “I’m sorry I didn’t jump in—”
“It’s okay, Eliot,” Mark said. Eliot had already apologized and Mark had already forgiven him, but the apology and the forgiveness didn’t seem real, to Mark; not until this moment right here. Mark stressed, “It’s no one’s fault but my own.” He squared his shoulders, sitting straight. “This time was just a loss to some asshole and a beating to remember. Something like that could have happened in the wilds instead, and I could simply be dead.” He put on a smile, feeling better already— Quark rumbled Mark’s phone. He pulled up Quark and looked at the readout for the map of the settlement. “Quark is saying there is some mistake with the internet? There’s a break 40 meters back?”
Eliot refocused fast— “Ah, shit. Back up, Isoko. We need to run the last 50 meters again.”
“Sure sure,” Isoko said, as she pulled a mobile screen to the front of her driver’s seat while flicking on some screens to the side. The screens showed the rear of the vehicle; the main view, far beyond the piles of stuff in the back of the cargo bed, and the sides and bottom, where the wheels went over the track they had just laid down. With a change of the throttle, the vehicle’s engine roared free, and then caught once. With eyes on the screens, Isoko said, “Reversing.”
They went back, Eliot fixed the track, and then they went forward again.
It was a lazy day of driving.
At the end of the day, after Isoko parked the vehicle at the depot of Castle North alongside a bunch of other working vehicles, they went to the tram station right outside. It was kinda nice to see a bunch of people get on the tram headed south, toward Castle South and Castle One beyond that. A different tram headed northeast, toward Castle Five, one of the apartment castles. Those two tracks circled around the War District, carrying the main load of people traveling in the settlement. It was nice to see people already using them.
As Mark and his team got on the next tram, on a tram that Eliot had built yesterday, he glanced out at the signs outside that Eliot had built this morning, and he remembered what it all looked like three days ago.
“There was nothing here two weeks ago,” Mark said, feeling some kinda amazing, as he sat down on a sturdy blue metal seat, and the servitor at the front of the tram engaged the rail. The tram rolled south, and Mark watched the world go by, saying, “It’s amazing, Eliot.”
Eliot’s smile had to be one of the brightest things that Mark had seen in a long time. The guy held onto a pole and leaned out a little, saying, “It’s pretty great, but I think what’s even better is that I really, really love doing this. I hope you three aren’t too bored escorting me everywhere.”
“We’re still getting paid, even if it isn’t a whole lot,” Sally said, watching the vast plains of the open settlement roll on by.
“It’s 3k per day, yeah?” Mark said, already pulling Quark out to check his balance. “13.7k so far. That seems like… Not a lot, actually.”
“You’re a few days behind the rest of us,” Isoko said with a smirk.
Mark rolled his eyes at her.
Sally said, “It’s credit you can only spend here, too, and only in ways that they say you can spend it. It’s not even real money, but everyone is treating it like it is.”
Mark, Isoko, and Eliot all looked at her.
“I’m not complaining; I’m just saying we’re being taken advantage of!” Sally said, holding up her hands in mock defense. She switched to pointing at Eliot, saying, “You’re not getting paid nearly enough. This whole place only exists because of you.”
“Oh I know it,” Eliot said, completely unperturbed. “I’m getting paid more in political power than monetary power, though. You could do the same, yeah?”
Sally’s vector lightly focused. “What are you going to do with that political power?”
As though the question hadn’t been massive with meaning, Eliot smirked and easily said, “Build a really nice mansion, woo a wonderful girl, have a nice family in a nice land, but also have a home base that I can always come back to after exploring the world and documenting Daihoon.” Eliot looked out the windows, smiling slightly. “I don’t mind if the particulars take a long time. I got time. We all got time.” He shrugged, turning back toward Sally. “But you guys need more points and I’m almost ready to go do some of that exploring, as soon as the work schedule clears up. I’d go on a raid, whenever you guys find one—” He quickly reinforced, “There’s still ten days of building to be done, and I want to get all of the low-hanging points I can, while I can! After that, though. Afterwards, for sure.”
Eliot was getting paid 25k points per day of building, but guarding him was only worth 3,000 per day. It was pretty good pay, in Mark’s opinion, but, yeah, like Sally said, it wasn’t enough. Not really.
All four of them were after at least one item on the reward list that was worth 500k points.
Mark asked, “You’re saving up for an Obsidian Card, right?”
“Yes, yes!” Eliot said. “A lifetime 25% discount on all normal goods at all Artificer Guild shops! It’s a lot of money saved. That’s part of the political power I’m buying.” He added, “Getting the connections to the people who can actually make the truly good stuff is going to be as important as having enough money to buy the stuff in the first place, though, which is why I’m here.”
Isoko grinned, teasing, “Gonna be like Item Man going into battle.”
Eliot exclaimed, “Exactly! With those kind of artifacts on me it won’t be like wearing power armor ready to be crushed by any random fucking monster. It’ll be good power armor. Really good power armor.” He grinned. “I think I can anoint it with Castellan, too, if I do it right. It’ll be like walking around in my own private castle.”
Sally asked, “That won’t mess up the Castellan here in the city?”
“Nope! That’s not how that works.”
Mark smirked and teased, “Tell us how it works!”
“I can’t! Hearthswellian Secrets! I can tell you that the tracks are a good part of the formation that will keep the city safe, though the walls are the major part.”
“Bah!” Isoko said, “That doesn’t count.”
“That’s internet-search stuff! Give us the goods, Eliot!” Mark said, feeling good.
“Nope!” Eliot said, also smiling.
Sally grinned a little, too, and then she put an arm up on the windowsill, to watch the world go by.
It was all grasses and a lake in the distance, and though there was a wall further beyond all of that, it was the most open place that Mark had ever lived. No trees. Not yet. It was nice to see all that open space.
Soon, they arrived at Tram Station One, located across the way from Castle South, the main war castle of the settlement. Everyone did their physical work of harvesting or storage in Castle North, but Castle South was where the offices and war councils met. Tram Station One was currently unbuilt, but it was going to be the largest of tram stations once Eliot fixed it up.
Tram Station One was currently a bunch of metals, stone blocks piled high, a few pits and basic stone bridges for where trams would ride low or high instead of at ground level, and piles of glass.
For the rest of the day, Sally walked around with a big metal club in her hand, smacking the stone so Eliot could walk by and transform it into a proper main tram station. Isoko did the same, but with a smaller club, and smaller strikes, while helping Eliot to keep his Power going strong. Mark got to hold a creation button, linked to the electronics of the place, while he Union’d with everyone, keeping them all healthy, satiated, clean, and energized. Pressing the button amounted to sending electrical shocks through the wiring of the building, which were all linked to tiny hammers here and there, which, in turn, made the whole place just a bit more ‘man made’…
Which got Mark to thinking about AI being used to make things ‘man made’. Mark had already had that particular conversation with Eliot and Eliot had already explained how it didn’t work that way, because AIs of all kinds fell into the category of ‘familiars’, based on the ancient magics of the demons… Which got Mark to thinking about how to break Tartu’s Domains.
Mark asked, “I know AIs don’t count as human made, but could they count for the purposes of breaking targeted enchantments on a person? Like one of Tartu’s Domains? Or any other targeted-effects, actually? Maybe one of those livium-core subdermal AIs; that way your person couldn’t be targeted because you were actually two people.”
Eliot was busy, his eyes rolled into the back of his head as his fingers pressed invisible buttons and lights blossomed overhead, in the new tram station. He did not answer.
Sally smashed the ground a few tens of meters away, so she didn’t hear.
Isoko shrugged. “I’m not sure about the AI stuff. A livium core would make a separate astral body, wouldn’t it? But that’d be a real person, right?”
“Not if it was just a basic AI; that is an option… But then again, if it wasn’t a person, it wouldn’t count, would it.”
Isoko hummed, glanced at Mark, and looked away in thought.
Mark got the distinct feeling that both of them had no idea what they were talking about.
Mark said, “I don’t really know what I’m talking about here. Union-users are supposed to be among the strongest defenders out there… So this whole thing has blindsided me.”
“Same,” Isoko said. “But… You know? Healers outside of Union-users are rather vulnerable. I bet if we went to the Healer’s Guild they might have some trinkets for sale to protect a person. Maybe the solution to a Tartu-type attack is layered defenses. A livium-core AI might be able to do something to break a strong, concentrated Domain, and a bunch of charms, or whatever they are… those small things that defend a person? I think they’re called charms.” Isoko shrugged. “I never expected to spend money on those things either.”
“Me either, but… it’s a good idea.”
Mark mulled that over while he Union’d with the world and his team, and clicked the big red button.
An hour later, the main tram station was done and the four of them stood outside the front, looking at the most modern tram station that Mark had ever seen. It was glass and light and with sweeping views of the land beyond, and it had lines for 10 different tracks which was an incredible overkill, but which was great for future expansion. Some army guys took over when Eliot was done. They were Tinkerers and they began working on the electronics and redundancies inside the station. They would continue to work on all of that for the rest of the night.
They were supposed to be putting in a ‘central tinkerer interchange’ in the tram station; whatever that was. They explained it as a place for Tech-people of all kinds to play nicely with each other. Mark got the impression that it was more of a chat room than anything else.
Tomorrow, Eliot would start moving the lines from the temporary tram station to this main location—
Oh.
Mark remembered something.
Mark asked Eliot, “You have a charm, right? A mental charm?”
“Huh? Oh! Yeah, I do.” Eliot pulled back the collar of his shirt and showed Mark a silver necklace. “It doesn’t actually defend against mental attacks. That’s too difficult.” He put away his anti-Mind charm. “It just reminds me to think about who I’m interacting with… Would a charm be enough to break a Domain?” Eliot didn’t seem to know.
Mark and Isoko didn’t know either, and they said as much.
Sally said, “Charms are shit. All magical items are overpriced in the shops and they underdeliver in battle. Literally the only good magical items are quality of life stuff, like Prestidigitation Boxes for cooking and maybe a hoverbelt for getting around. A giant hunk of steel for a weapon is just about the only thing that you really want to use. That’s why the Builder’s Guild is separate from the Artificer’s guild, but they both make ‘magical’ items; Builders make solid items that can’t break, but Artificers make easily breakable stuff.”
And so began a long conversation about magical items, which none of them expected to have to spend real money on. Sure, they were going to buy stuff to let them all kill stuff better, but relying on items to survive monsters?
Mark felt uncomfortable about relying on physical objects for anything.
Quark had broken every other day since he started hunting monsters outside of Memphi, months ago. It wasn’t until Blackthorn told Mark how to make more adamantium, and Mark used that adamantium to keep Quark safe, that Quark survived a day of hunting. There were lots of magical items for sale on Earth that could have solved Mark’s issues, but all of them were either too expensive or just not good enough, and so Mark had made do with new phones every other day, thanks to Eliot.
Maybe magical items on Daihoon were better?