Adamant Blood

Mark woke up to an empty house, which was fucking weird. He had no idea what to do except lay in bed for a little while. Dad wasn’t making breakfast, and the scents of bacon and bread did not fill the air. Mom wasn’t doing laundry, so the machine downstairs wasn’t rumbling the walls gently at all.

Mark got up strongly, because he knew what he needed to do.

He needed to make his own breakfast and see if the supplies were outside, and then he needed to take whatever he needed to take before he trained for the day. On habit, though, the first thing he did was check his phone.

The phone blinked as Mark picked it up.

A stylized orange eyeball appeared on the screen and a masculine voice said, “Greetings, Mark Careed. I am your new House AI, advanced model Q-6580. Would you like to name me, or shall I name myself?”

Mark took a moment, then asked, “Are you a True AI, with a soul?”

“I am not. We expect Addashield to obliterate this house and everyone in it if things don’t go his way, so Orange City has not devoted living people to the task of assisting you. I am a basic House AI.”

Mark said, “Name yourself.”

The phone beeped.

“ ‘Quark’ is my designation, until you state otherwise. I am here if you need help. Entering observation mode.”

Mark was still alone, which was fine. He was able to get around the house on his own, now, and so that is what he did. The fridge was half-full of junk; Dad was supposed to go to the store tomorrow, or rather today, but that didn’t happen. The pantry had pastas and canned goods. That was fine. Mark’s protein powders were there at the top shelf, and he managed to get one down by himself mostly fine. At least he didn’t drop the thing and have it spill everywhere. His strength was nowhere near where it should be, but he wasn’t that weak anymore.

The porch was empty of deliveries.

He looked left and right, and saw nothing except the normal porch. There were warning stakes stuck in the ground all around the property, each of them holding a red-and-white-striped dragon-warning flag. Some of the warning flags even read ‘DRAGON’ on them.

There were no deliveries.

Mark asked the House AI, “Hey, Quark! Am I getting a shipment today of fancy and expensive medicines?”

His phone in his pocket said, “The shipment is delayed. It will be here in approximately an hour and 30 minutes.”

“Plan’s still on, then,” Mark said to himself.

Mark went back inside and soon he was smiling a little as he scrambled eggs and put them into the pan, while chopped potatoes airfried in the oven. Hot sauce, mayo, and cheese made a great binder for a breakfast burrito, and with all of that rolled up, Mark got to enjoy a really great burrito.

As he sat back in his chair, holding his belly, he grinned a little.

It was easy to pretend that everything was going to work out fine, so that is what Mark did and what he would continue to do, until proven otherwise. Eventually he’d be able to make his own decisions in life, but for now, he was still injured, and he was ready to be uninjured. Back to full strength!

And then further beyond!

Mark waited to make himself his usual muskleaf tea because whatever he was getting today might not be compatible with the stuff he was already taking…

… Actually.

“Quark? Is my dietary schedule going to change with the new supplements?”

“Yes. Do not take any of your old supplements.”

“Ha! Glad I asked.”

Mark could still get on with the rest of his day, though.

Mark did most of his physical therapy at the center, but the garage had an old multi-station gym with a pulldown bar, a shoulder press, a curls and leg raises area, and a chest and back thing. An actual bench press station and a bar sat to the side, while a few 5 kilo weight stacks sat behind that, all covered in cobwebs. Mark used to use this thing all the time, but he hadn’t used any of it in over half a year. It was too high-spec for him right now.

… Mostly.

He could maybe use it now? Had he recovered enough? It was all beginner workout equipment anyway. Welp! No place better to start than at the beginning!

Mark pulled out his phone... and paused.

He looked up.

“Quark? Can you record my numbers for me? I don’t want to record them myself if I don’t have to.”

“Certainly,” came Quark’s orange voice from his phone. “Your current height is 172 centimeters. Current weight is 57 kilograms. Last recorded max bench press is 20 kilos, deadlift is 30, squat is 25.”

“… I guess metric is fine?” Mark rapidly decided that metric was fine, and then he said, “Bah! I only did two reps at those numbers! That doesn’t count as my current max! We gotta pump those numbers up!”

“I have been installed with a Physical Therapy Module and thus I must inform you that you are showing good progress, and injury could have you backslide. And you performed three reps at those levels, so they are your accepted max ranges.” Quark added, “Also, your delivery is being delivered at this moment. The time schedule moved up for reasons that are beyond my knowledge.”

Mark happily ignored the rusted weight machine and the bench to the side, eagerly running toward the front of the house—

Mark almost tripped, but a half-fumbled grab on the side of the house was enough to save him a fall. He steadied himself and he walked out of the garage and onto the driveway just in time to see three drones fly down from the sky; two large and one small. The small one dropped a small box on the front porch, being very careful about it. The two larger drones dropped two identical office-chair-sized boxes onto the concrete in front of the porch. They were less careful about their cargo.

The drones flew away, zipping back into the sky and out of sight.

Cracking the first big box open, Mark saw that the larger ones were filled to the brim with high-calorie food bars. With a whole lot of huffing and puffing, Mark managed to get the 100 pound boxes into the house. They didn’t need to be refrigerated, so getting them into the house was far enough, and that took a good 10 minutes anyway. Mark was huffing and puffing by the end of it, so that was as far as they got.

And then he turned his attention to the small box.

He tried not to be too excited, but how could one not be excited by their salvation sitting in a box on their porch? That was why Mark had left that one for last. He knew that as soon as he opened it, he wouldn’t care about leaving the calorie bars in the sun for a while. With careful hands, Mark picked up the small box and held it tight.

Mark opened the smaller box on the kitchen counter, and it was like Christmas, but so much better.

Inside the cardboard was a white polystyrene box, and inside that was an ice pack and four smaller boxes, each looking like colorful blobs under bubble wrap. Mark carefully unpacked the boxes from their smaller protections and set them out in front of him. There was a blue box, a green box, an orange box, and a white box. A set of instructions came with them; a thick book, tucked into the side, with many pages to them. The front of the book read:

‘FOR MARK CAREED. Balanced for his physiology only. OTHER USERS MIGHT SUFFER GRAVE CONSEQUENCES’.

“Well that’s neat, I guess?” Mark rapidly decided, “Actually, that’s… incredibly cool. Quark? Do you know how expensive this medicine set is?”

“That information is not part of my database.”

Mark flipped through the instruction book for half a minute, not really understanding what he was reading. It was a whole bunch of medical stuff, though; that was easy enough to see. Seemed like a bunch of warnings, too. He set the book aside and opened each box to see what he was dealing with.

Each box contained a small glass bottle of colored liquid with an eyedropper applicator for a cap.

“So back to the instructions…” Mark mumbled at himself.

There were a lot of instructions.

Mark asked, “Quark? Can you help with telling me about this medication?”

Quark obliged, “One drop of each colored liquid with every meal. You might be eating as many as 6 meals per day. A full half-kilo calorie bar counts as a meal. You have enough bars to last 30 days. They will last longer if you have real food occasionally.

“White drops if you’re feeling nauseous/tired/restless or unable to focus, which will happen after the third colored dose, on average, at your body weight. When you gain more weight the necessity of the white drops will go down to every four meals. I will be monitoring your status and might tell you to take more white drops as necessary.

“Occasional slips of too much colored liquid is okay, but do not make it a habit.

“Missed color doses are unacceptable.

“When you are a day from entering the Tutorial then you will discontinue the colored drops and spend that next day eating 1 white drop with each meal.”

Mark nodded along. He decided, “You keep track of that, please.”

“I will do this.”

“Can I have a second meal then to start? Or do I need to wait? What about exercising?”

“Once you start on the colored drops your appetite will soar and so will your energy. You can work until you get hungry, which will take about 2 hours. You can eat and take drops and eat again with more drops for a maximum of 10 hours per day. Eventually you will reach a point where you are tired and then I will tell you to take a white drop and go to bed.”

Mark smiled at that. He looked at his skinny arms, and at his thin thighs, and at the flabbiness of his gut. He used to have a 6 pack, but now he was flabby because he had lost a lot of muscle and he was eating a lot to gain it all back, and fat came along faster than abs. All of it was slow going, though.

But with this…

This would change that, right?

Mark asked, “And this will fix my body, for real?”

“Yes. This is dangerous medication. Do not make emergency services come out here to rescue you. Addashield might be nearby and watching right now. Follow my instructions for eating and medication, please.”

“Heard and understood, Quark! Thanks for being here!”

Quark beeped in acknowledgment.

Mark grabbed one of the calorie bars, smiling as he tore it open and revealed… boring brown. Not even, like, a chocolate brown. Just an even grain of brown stuff, stamped into a bar. He took a bite.

… He took another bite, to try and see if, yes? There was a taste.

Mark was tasting what he was tasting.

There was a taste.

Mark looked at the bar as he chewed. He swallowed and asked Quark, “It tastes like brown? Or like… Well. The texture is good? There is a taste here. I cannot describe it.”

It was kind of a ‘brown’ flavor. ‘Dark brown’. Sunset brown?

Quark supplied, “ ‘Food Bar’ is the accepted terminology for the flavor you are experiencing. It is a specific mix of many different counteracting agents meant to nullify the flavors present, because the flavors present are technically bones of many magical beasts, insects of many sorts, grains of many sorts, and various vegetables. The base flavor is terrible, and sugars and such cannot be added without compromising the nutritional matrix. What is left of the flavor produces an item that often is remarked upon such that people would eat it second-to-last over anything else.”

Mark grinned as he looked at the bar. “Insect! I never got to try any of that stuff. Mom won’t let it in the house, but they do that all the time in Daihoon, right?”

“That is beyond my knowledge.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Monster bones, though? There isn’t a magic-influence problem there?”

“Carefully treated to remove all traces of magic.”

“That explains that.”

Mark set the bar down and then carefully unscrewed the top from the bottle of ‘blue’. None of these things had names, but they sure had a lot of warnings in the instruction booklet. Mark kinda felt bad for all of the stuff that Kevin had helped him get, but this stuff was the good stuff, and it wouldn’t mix with any of the normal drugs that you’d take to recover or build strength.

With a precise dropping, one drop of blue fell onto the leading edge of Mark’s food bar.

He put the blue away and then picked up the bar—

“All three colored drops at once onto the bar, neither of them touching. Eat those parts fast when you are done dropping,” Quark said, “The white can come later.”

Sure?

Sure!

Mark put a drop of green and another drop of orange onto the food bar, and then he dug in, making sure not to spill anything, and to fully consume the drops and their ‘sunset brown’ tasting bar. With the drops, it now tasted like a brown sunset with an herbal thing going on in the background.

Mark found it surprisingly easy to eat the entire food bar, even though he had just had breakfast.

“Second breakfasts are good. Great, even!” Mark got up and started putting stuff away, asking Quark, “So what about all of this protein powder and real food? Can I eat that? How about the creatine?”

“Protein shakes are acceptable. Eat the drops of color in the first sips of food. Creatine, branched roots, muskleaves, and your pills, are not acceptable. You can safely store those; you will not be wanting to use them, for they will throw off everything else.”

Mark started walking toward the garage again, with all the training equipment, as he asked, “Is this medicine regimen addictive at all?”

“If you do it wrong, yes. You will not be doing it wrong. If you need to be cleansed of this routine, then you will drink the entire bottle of white.”

“Good to know,” Mark said, as he entered the garage. He looked at the bars, and decided to do some stretching, first.

Stretching went great! He moved on to calisthenics. Half an hour later Mark was pushing off of the ground in his seventh pushup in the set, and then getting up off of the ground to go walk around the house again.

Another half an hour passed quickly.

Mark was doing lunges when his stomach growled at him—

He was hungry.

And that was when Mark realized he was sweating buckets, but feeling better than ever, and he had just done an hour of basic body work without getting winded at all. Mark looked at his pale palms, and then he turned his hands over to see his heartbeat in the thumping of the veins on the back of his hands.

“… I really just went through an entire hour of hard work… and I feel great?”

Quark spoke up, “You can take more drops and another food bar.”

Mark laughed happily. “This is amazing! Have I gained any weight yet? Height?”

“You have lost 2 pounds of water weight. You need to drink more. Would you like me to inform you to drink more water occasionally?”

Mark smiled. “Yeah sure. Help me as much as you can, please.”

“Understood.”

And then Mark went and had third breakfast, along with a few glasses of water.

Fourth breakfast came around noon, followed rapidly by lunch, second lunch, early dinner, and then dinner. Mark never stopped pumping weights, or doing lunges, or pull ups, situps, some light jogging, push ups, and more. Quark told him to take a drop of white at second dinner, and when third dinner came around, Quark told him to take two drops of white instead of the colored drops and then take a shower and finish for the day.

Mark ended up zonked out on the couch, only getting to watch ten minutes of a show that he had been watching with Mom and Dad. Halfway through the first act, his eyes were too tired to stay open anymore and he decided to just sleep there. He pulled a blanket from the back of the couch.

He closed his eyes.

Mark woke up the next day in bed.

… In his bed, which was not the living room where he had fallen asleep.

“… Quaaaaark? How did I get to my bed?”

“Addashield was here. He left after moving you to your bed and left me instructions to tell you to go to bed in your actual bed. He also refilled the fridge and the pantry with real food.”

“… Okay!”

Mark sat up in bed for a moment.

“He’s gone again, right?”

“Yes. Addashield left. He did not inform me when he would be coming back, except that he would be back eventually to take you through the Tutorial, as originally promised, when you’re capable of doing such a thing.” Quark added, “Accordingly, Orange City and several other parties to which you are unaware, all urge you to proceed safely and with speed. They thank you for your service and are calling you a hero.”

Mark laughed.

A hero, eh?

… Nah. This was just doing his duty as a human being.

Mark got out of bed while Quark was talking. Walking was easier today than it had been in a long while. Mark ended up in the kitchen before he realized he was in the kitchen. It never seemed that hard to get to the kitchen before his accident, but it had been hard afterward. Mark had been only just getting back his strength, though his coordination was still lacking.

Except he had just walked to the kitchen without any problems whatsoever.

Like it was natural to walk so easily!

Mark asked, “So they all want me to go faster, eh? Is that sound, medically?”

“You are already on a fast plan, concocted by old magics and hidden herbs, meant for the children of emperors. There have been a few updates to those old formulae since Malaqua was able to change the presets for the Tutorial, to switch the intake from age 12 to 18 and restore the magics of gods to both worlds. Those updates make the potions even better. You have nothing to fear from treatment, and you can go for up to 14 hours a day if you wish.”

Mark said, “Okay then!” And then he went to the fridge.

It was stuffed.

Meats wrapped in paper and twine, with pictures of cows stamped onto the butcher’s paper. So beef. The vegetable drawers were filled with carrots and things that were carrot-shaped but not orange at all; yellows, blues, purples, reds. Mark had heard of the many root vegetables that they grew on Daihoon, but he had never seen any, or eaten any, actually. But these were them. Three large cartons of a dozen eggs each were packed into the center of the fridge. They were not chicken eggs at all; they were half again as large as a chicken egg, and there were snakes on the cartons. Mark hummed. Snake eggs might be delicious?

Mark set out two snake eggs on the counter and grabbed out what appeared to be thin-sliced beef. He started making breakfast. Steak and eggs! Breakfast of champions.

Twenty minutes later Mark bit into the snake eggs first and he moaned for the taste. “Oh my gods,” Mark said, smiling wide. “These are amazing!” He rapidly ate another bite and then sat back in his chair. He stared at the eggs. “… This is what I wanted. To see what the rest of the world is like. Snake eggs! I didn’t know you could eat snake eggs.”

Mark added the one-drop-each of his Blue, Green, and Orange medicines, and then ate it all up. The meat was fantastic, but Mark had obviously cooked it wrong. It was a little stringy. That was fine.

And hey! If it turned out to be something like human meat, or whatever a demon might want to trick Mark with, then Mark could deal with that later. He didn’t think it was human meat, though.

Generally— Actually, no. Not ‘generally’ at all. Almost universally people were good to each other. That’s how Daihoon had survived without gods for 5,000 years, with them always being preyed on by all the monsters and demons and dragons of their world. Earth had massive problems with being good to each other, what with the two world wars before the Reveal (and the third afterward) and maybe they still had problems with that. But Mark had never given a serious thought to the idea that Addashield would have purposefully harmed him, or that Orange City was trying to screw over his long term health for short term gains with this medicine regimen.

So almost universally, Mark wanted to believe that Addashield, even the one that was under his demon’s partial control, was still basically a good man, and so of course the food wasn’t contaminated or whatever-bad-thing it could have been. But if it turned out that he was eating human meat or something, then Mark would blame the demon, and when Addashield was better, then Mark could… do something good. Mark had no idea what.

Yell at Addashield?

Eh.

Mark discarded his thoughts of mistrust, because the biggest fact was that Mark only had a very small window in which he could act in this direction or that direction, and that window did not include the overall shape of this scenario at all.

With a full belly, Mark got back to physical therapy, though he did ask Quark, as he entered the garage, “What are my stats today, Quark?”

“At the start of your first day, yesterday, your height was 172 centimeters. Your weight was 57 kilograms. Your max bench press was 20 kilos, deadlift was 30, squat was 25.

“Your current height is 175 centimeters, up 3 centimeters from yesterday. Current weight is 65 kilograms, up 7 kilograms. Last recorded max bench press is 30 kilos, deadlift is 40, squat is 40, for an increase of 10 kilos, 10 kilos, and 15 kilos.”

For a moment, Mark felt floaty.

And then a manic sort of giddy joy bubbled up through his mouth and escaped as a giggle that turned into a full-throated laugh. “Holy fuck! Talk about gains!”

Mark thought no more of numbers all day long, actively blinding himself to the weights he kept adding onto bars, or how far down on the stack of weights he stuck the pin. He counted reps and ease of pushing, and lifting, and lunging, always making sure to move with good form, like Kevin had instilled within him for the last two months of physical therapy, and which Mark had always tried for in gym, before the accident.

Mark gained in every possible physical way.

The gains came faster on this, the second day of the color ink treatment, or whatever it was called.

It was important to vary the exercise, though, so Mark ran up and down the street. He figured out how to do handstands again, and then he started walking around on his hands. Suicide drills, balancing exercises, stretching, footwork drills, wrist and forearm exercises, more stretching, running around the block with arm and leg weights. Stretching.

In the middle of the afternoon he picked up one of his trainer swords from the rack on the wall, and he held it. Just held it.

He could hold the sword again. He could swing it again.

He swung that sword around a lot.

More footwork drills. More weight carrying. More stretching. A lot of wrist and forearm exercises, including rice punching. When he felt somewhat comfortable with the sword he switched to his favored spear, and it was like riding a bike in a way that it had not been like riding a bike at all. It was better.

Mark danced with the spear how Instructor Gravel taught him, back when he was training for the Tutorial.

Mark stumbled through the first forms, his balance unfamiliar, his strength not as good as it used to be, but he got through the first forms; the sweep, the stab, the rotate and pierce. Mark made it through one whole set and crashed out onto the ground, exhausted and happy and feeling so very good. He was apparently looking a bit manic, too, because Quark spoke up like he did sometimes.

“Pardon me, Mark. You need to take a white drop now, and eat again.”

“I can do that!”

Mark ate a lot that second day. More than the first day by far.

Eating, eating, and eating some more.

Quark told Mark to take white drops 3 times during the day, in between meals 4 and 5, 8 and 9, and 12 and 13. Mark had no idea how he was eating so much and not needing to use the bathroom except to pee a lot, but that’s how it was working for him, and it was great.

Mark finished off day two with a big steak and a lot of pasta, a nice shower, and then he took two white drops before laying down in bed. He felt fantastic! He was exhausted.

Sleep claimed him within a minute of closing his eyes.