Adamant Blood

Mark made himself a breakfast of steak and eggs again, but this time made into a burrito.

As Mark chowed down, Quark spoke up.

“Pardon me, Mark. You need to use the scanner that was left in the living room after breakfast.”

“Sure!” Mark asked, “Say, what are my numbers?”

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

“At the start of your second day, yesterday, your height was 175 centimeters. Your weight was 65 kilograms. Your max bench press was 30 kilos, deadlift was 40, squat was 40.

“Your current height is 179 centimeters. Current weight is 71 kilograms. Last recorded max bench press is 50 kilos, deadlift is 65, squat is 65.”

Mark smiled as he ate his burrito. He had looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, and what he saw was amazing. Nothing like what he used to have, because he was also growing taller. But hey! Taller was good! Taller was fantastic! More range with a sword, or a spear, and he was always kinda short, but that had been fine by him. Taller was better, though. As a taller guy, Mark could pack on more muscle and get stronger, too, so this was all sorts of good.

Sally had probably grown after she took her Tutorial and gotten brawny. Most people had that happen to them, even if they weren’t brawny. Mark had been short and he had accepted it.

But now he was taking emperor’s-kids Tutorial-prep drugs.

Mark entered day 3 with gusto.

He pumped those weights! He swung those weapons, moving from sword to spear to shield and axe! He ran those kilometers with those weighted bracelets, vest, and anklets! He stretched, and shadowboxed, and did footwork drills across sand and gravel and grass!

He ate, and ate, and ate.

He got in the scanner twice. It was a basic model, like they had at the physical therapy center; just a full-body jacket and metal head-ring that he could put on himself. Quark read the readout for him.

“Well below the warning area. All of the medicine is being turned into physical cultivation. You are safe to continue as you are.”

Mark would ask about ‘physical cultivation’ when compared to all other types of cultivation some other time, when it wouldn’t ruin his mana channels or his ability to enter the Tutorial, and that was all he cared about right now. Fuck taking physical therapy for multiple years! Mark saw the finish line ahead of him, just a week out!

Amazing!

And when this was over he was going to study as much magic as possible. Or maybe just enough to get by, depending on how hard magic turned out to be. He’d probably be spending a year learning how to use metalkinesis, anyway. That would be his first goal. To become a metalkinetic! And he’d use the adamantium his body naturally produced, thanks to Addashield! And Addashield would return to being a Hero of Humanity!

This was going to be amazing—

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

“Sure sure! Man, this stuff really gets you hyped up to take on the world, doesn’t it!”

“The Color Drops do instill an urge to work, but not this much. This is all you. The white drops mitigate the rough edges that come up when the body goes out of balance from the drops not being fully utilized. You are fully utilizing the drops, but the white drops also balance the whole body, and I am having you take them more as a preventative measure of possible damage than any real need.”

Mark wondered, “But they make me exhausted? You sure they’re not stripping away everything the colored drops are doing?”

“When you are balanced, a side effect is imposed rest. That is what you are feeling. Also, you should stay away from this level of questioning for now. It borders on magical training.”

Mark just shook his head and went about his day.

He tried not to look at himself in the mirror too much, but it was fine to be a little narcissistic, right? Yeah. This was fine.

Mark was looking fine.

- - - -

Mark asked Quark to display his gains as a readout on the screen in the kitchen as he made himself breakfast again, on the fourth day.

172 → 175 → 179 → 182 centimeters tall

57 → 65 → 71 → 78 kilograms

20 → 30 → 50 → 65 bench

30 → 40 → 65 → 80 deadlift

25 → 40 → 65 → 75 squat

Mark cackled at that, saying, “Almost 6 foot tall!” He looked at his night shirt and boxers, happily saying, “I’m outgrowing my clothes again! This is amazing.”

After breakfast, Mark tried to put on his shoes and found them too small.

“So maybe there are some side effects.”

Holding his shoes and wondering what he was going to do…

Welp. There was one solution already available to him. Mark never liked wearing that solution, but basic income came with basic amenities even before they became first citizens. Basic brown clothes. Maybe being a first citizen opened up better options than brown? That’d be nice.

Mark looked up, and asked, “Quark? Can I get some new basic clothes?”

Quark said, “I will have suitable sets delivered to you as needed. Unfortunately, being a first citizen does not change the allowed styles. Would you like new training weapons as well?”

Bah!

Basic brown was called ‘basic brown’ for a reason, but even first citizen basic was still going to be brown? Eh! No problem there.

Mark hadn’t considered new training equipment, though, because what he had worked just fine, but… Now that the option was out there, Mark kinda wanted to be greedy. At least a little.

“Yes. I will take some new training weapons.”

“Understood.”

Mark nodded… And then he wondered something else. He almost didn’t want to ask, for to speak a demon's name was to make them appear. And yet… Mark asked, “Any news about Addashield?”

“We have had no sightings.”

“No news is good news, right?”

Quark remained silent.

Mark trained barefoot until the drones came by with the deliveries, and then he readily put on new shoes, along with new clothes of all kinds. These basic clothes were… Well. It was a specific color that was kinda white, kinda brown, and kinda sand-colored. People called it ‘basic brown’ but it was more sandy than brown, and it was a fine fabric. Mark hadn’t needed to wear the color for a long time, and it kinda irked him to need to wear it again at all...

It was fine.

He got back to training.

- - - -

172 → 175 → 179 → 182 → 184 centimeters tall

57 → 65 → 71 → 78 → 83 weight in kilograms

20 → 30 → 50 → 65 → 80 bench

30 → 40 → 65 → 80 → 100 deadlift

25 → 40 → 65 → 75 → 90 squat

Mark grinned as he stared at those numbers on the screen, the final readouts of yesterday, day four, as he ate another massive steak with even more eggs for breakfast. He kinda worried about why he hadn’t needed to use the bathroom for anything other than peeing, but it was fine.

It was the start of day 5, and he had broken 6 foot tall, or rather 184 centimeters.

All of Daihoon used a metric system which was pretty much the same measurement system as the metric on Earth, but they were not exactly the same. A ‘Dai’metric meter was .7 centimeters larger than Earth-metric. It was close enough for most cooperative understandings, though, and because of that it was hard to tell which metric system people were talking about some of the time.

Quark was using Earth-metric. Mark had already asked.

Most people in the business of monster killing used daimetric.

And then there were the languages of Daihoon that Mark would need to learn.

Mark found himself thinking about the future over that breakfast, on the fifth day of training. He didn’t think about it all too long, because there was training to do. With the dishes washed and drying on the rack, Mark put on his shoes and got out there, into the garage, and started training with his new swords.

One of them was a kaiju blade.

Mark hadn’t played with it yesterday, opting to leave it to the side when he couldn’t even lift the damn thing. But now, Mark grabbed the meter-long handle of the 4.5 meter long wooden blade and tried picking it up…

“Ah, fuck,” Mark muttered, as he dropped the sword back to the ground. It thudded and twanged as it struck the floor, the wood of it vibrating for a moment from the drop. He had managed to pick it up off of the ground but he was not nearly strong enough to lift the damned thing. Mark told the sword, “Not today, I guess. Tomorrow, hopefully.”

He had picked up a practice kaiju blade in Tutorial training, a year ago. It was a real blade, weighing 200 pounds. It had been difficult. Tutorial Instructor Gravel had effortlessly lifted it. Then again, Gravel was a brawny. The strongest of normal people could at least lift a kaiju blade, though, and even swing it around some.

“Tomorrow,” Mark told himself, as he stared down at the wooden thing.

He moved the practice kaiju blade back to the side of the garage, where he had stored it after a pair of twin drones had dropped it onto his front yard with a great thump. He hadn’t ordered that sort of weapon, but Quark had, and so it was here for his use.

Mark wouldn’t ever be able to wield a kaiju blade like a brawny, but that was fine.

He was going to lift it like a metalkinetic, soon enough.

Mark started the day with stretches and lost himself to the thrill of numbers going up. He tried not to gauge himself like that, but here he was, pumping out 10 bench presses at 85 kilos, and then putting another 2.5 kilo weight on both sides of the bar. It was thrilling.

- - - -

172 → 175 → 179 → 182 → 184 → 185 centimeters tall

57 → 65 → 71 → 78 → 83 → 84 weight in kilograms

20 → 30 → 50 → 65 → 80 → 90 bench in kilos

30 → 40 → 65 → 80 → 100 → 115 deadlift

25 → 40 → 65 → 75 → 90 → 110 squat

Mark stared at himself in the bathroom mirror.

He had gotten it all back, and then some. He was taller now, for sure. That was the biggest change. Over 13 centimeters taller. That was a lot. His face was mostly the same shape, but maybe his chin had gotten stronger, and maybe his eyesight had gotten better, too. Hard to say. He shaved as he did sometimes, with a clipper. And yeah, that was a stronger chin.

And then he looked at himself for a little bit.

From his big shoulders to his arms to his chest and abs —those were really good abs— to further down, Mark had absolutely no complaints about anything at all. The ‘emperor’s kid’ medicine did a lot of good work. Really. No complaints at all. What was this stuff, anyway? Whatever it was, it was probably hard to make and restricted as all hell.

He even had a good butt! He had a good butt before the coma, too, but he had always been a middling rugby player because he didn’t have the ass for it. But now he had height and weight and he could probably tackle any baseline just as good as the others. Maybe even better!

Mark smiled a little more, doing poses in the mirror because he liked what he was seeing, and then he put his clothes back on and went to the kitchen to make breakfast.

He pulled open the fridge—

“Oh. Addashield came back?” Mark asked, as he looked at the refilled fridge.

And then he started taking more snake eggs and prime cuts of beef out.

“Addashield returned,” Quark said, his voice coming out of the kitchen screen. “He was here while you were asleep. You will have 2 more days of training as hard as you wish, and then you will have 1 day of rest, and then you will go into Tutorial.”

“Oh shit!” Mark said, smiling. “Already?”

Quark continued, “You will succeed and then follow Addashield to be introduced to the demons of his demon’s family. You will do what you need to do to cement Addashield’s return to his Old Contract, and then you will be returned here, to your current life. You will likely face questioning as to the full nature of the events of your Tutorial.”

“So normal plan, then. That’s good?”

Quark replied, “Orange City wishes to impart, again, that they are thankful for you taking this risk, Mark Careed.”

Mark smiled at that. “People help people. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“Even so,” Quark said. “That is not how it often is.”

“Of course people fight all the time but we also help each other all the time, too,” Mark said, “I wasn’t raised in a perfect Xerkonan household by any means, but grandpa always loved that tradition and we sort of kept to those ideals.”

Quark said nothing. He was just a non-sapient House AI, after all. A true AI would have gone for a conversation… probably? Mark wasn’t sure, actually.

Mark made another great breakfast, added a drop each of Blue, Green, and Orange to the eggs, and then ate it all. Soon, he was out in the garage again.

This time, he could lift the 50 kilo training kaiju blade by its huge handle. He laughed as he held the wooden practice sword aloft, and then he swung it around for a while, trying to match the forms Instructor Gravel had once shown him. Wielding a 4.5 meter sword was a lot different than wielding a normal sword, and the style was completely different, but Mark could go through the normal motions well enough. With two hands on the meter-long handle, Mark did overhead slashes, down slashes, side slashes and running pierces.

Then he switched his grip and did the whole thing over again from the other direction.

His shoulders burned. His core and thighs burned, too. He tired quickly. The weight of the massive wooden sword was balanced around the handle, with lead weights distributed inside the wood to give it the balance of a real blade, so it was balanced. It was just too big to use for anything other than kaiju. As a result it was, quite simply, heavy as fuck, and Mark’s footwork was all over the place. He didn’t have the brawny strength to use it right, nor the kinetic power to use it in a different, no less proper way. Footwork and leverage was the real problem, but attack angles were another issue. Mark was, despite his increased height, still just standing on the ground.

Kaiju were all building-sized. From house-sized to skyscraper, Mark, as he was, could never hope to do anything against any kaiju. Running was the only recourse for most people. Even most heroes dealt with evacuating others from the path of oncoming kaiju. It was the rare person that could kill a real beast-of-the-world, which is what some people on Daihoon called them. The term ‘kaiju’ sort of took off long before Mark’s time, due to a confluence of events with the Godzilla movie in the 50s in Japan and the breaking of the Veil in 1969, and everyone on Earth rapidly learning the singular name that the Japanese used to indicate large monsters. The nations of Daihoon were way too fractious at the time to have any one name for the monsters, but ‘kaiju’ was catching on over there too, as Mark understood it.

Mark rested the wooden blade on the ground, still holding onto the handle with both grips, as he breathed. He was the only one standing outside right now, on the entire street. Probably the only person for 5 kilometers around, actually, if those original evacuation numbers held. They had probably expanded the evacuation zone now that Addashield had appeared twice. Gladegrove, Mark’s home, was pretty sparsely populated. The whole place probably had, like, a thousand people? Hard to know. Maybe a little bit more than that.

Over lunch, Mark asked Quark, “How many people were evacuated in the area?”

“1208 people. The evacuation order was given to 6 kilometers out, but they expanded it to 10 after Addashield’s first appearance. Luckily he did not attack anyone on his ways to and from this house.”

Mark nodded.

And then he finished first lunch and went right back out there to run drills with the kaiju blade. After third lunch it was early afternoon, and Mark knew that his fascination with the kaiju blade was not over, but it wasn’t the best possible thing to be training with. Later, he’d get one of these things for real.

He stretched, did core workouts with medicine balls and free weights, and then he went for a run, followed by more suicide drills, followed by more of everything else.