Adamant Blood

Mark and Isoko walked alone along the dirt and sand road, under the bright blue sky.

They saw people far ahead of them, and also far behind, but mostly they were alone. Just them, and about five meters worth of space from the forest on both sides of the path.

They healed a few people, running fast toward Memphi, but mostly they walked forward, making decent-ish time.

There weren’t many monsters, but then there was a surprise. An alligator appeared out of the right-side forest, growling and rumbling as it charged some guys who were walking south, and who were too close to the forest for comfort.

It attacked, rushing forward, jaws wide open and held sideways, like a clapping trap that would have swallowed a man whole. The men it targeted were prepared, though.

The first guy reacted fast enough. He took out a small handle-thing from his belt and swung it at the alligator like he was striking with an invisible sword. The alligator faltered in its charge, turning sleepy, and from a dark green color to something lighter, almost greyish. It splayed out on the ground and the invisible-sword guy jumped over the crashing body. The alligator landed at the feet of the other guy, who bunched his fists and started wailing on the alligator, punching through its skull and killing it fast enough.

Mark and Isoko watched for a moment as the brawny punched the gator to death. Soon the guy stood up from the dead monster, lined up his foot, and kicked the thing. The gator went flying into the woods. Trees broke as the almost-ton monster crashed into the greenery, sending sharp cracks into the air, both from the breaking body and from the breaking branches.

The brawny and the invisi-sword guy walked on. They nodded to Mark and Isoko as they passed, and Mark and Isoko nodded back.

That had been exciting!

When they were far enough away from the pair of guys, Isoko quietly exclaimed out of the side of her mouth, “Oh my gods what do you think the invisible sword was? It had to be a tech weapon, right?”

“It was shiny, so maybe. Could have been an artifact, too. It didn’t really put the monster to sleep, but it drained it of… of whatever. Vitality? Same sort of effect?” Mark glanced backward. The two guys were just walking along, talking about this or that. Punchy-guy was clearly a brawny, based on the punching, but the invisible sword guy was… unknown. He had on the same sorts of clothes as the other guy, but he did have a few shiny baubles on his body here and there; his sword holster, and sword, his shoulder pads which were kinda dark silver, and his boots which were some sort of shimmery purple, or something. Mark faced forward, saying, “Tinkerer, maybe. Has on a bunch of small things that look incongruent.”

Isoko faced forward, too, adding, “Magic Tinker. Maybe even a mage. That’s a good combo for a 2 person team; one mage with a bunch of tricks and one brawny to beat the shit out of a downed monster.”

“That’s a good point about the duo… What do you think people are thinking about us?”

Isoko burst out laughing. This route didn’t have many people on it, so there was no one to look their way; not right now, anyway. Isoko said, “We’re just a poor little healer and her big brawny guardian, out for a stroll.” She looked up at Mark. “A Poison Body Brawny, too. Very deadly.”

Isoko had called out Mark’s skill as Poison Body the first time they had met in the sparring arena, which had been offensive since no normal person would use such a deadly Talent in a friendly match. Mark had reacted with offense back then.

This time, Mark scoffed. “I am very deadly, thank you for noticing.”

Isoko laughed and then started jogging.

Mark kept up until Isoko started barreling down the road, going faster than he could keep up, so Mark started cheating with his adamantium caltrops, flying alongside her, smiling a little.

Without missing a beat, Isoko said, “If you don’t keep running and working out your real body, you’re in for a terrible old age!”

Mark laughed and started running with his actual feet… Mostly. “I’m not going to waste away! I’ve been working out without using my powers just as much as I had before!” And he had Healthy Body, but he didn’t comment on that.

Isoko smiled. She ran faster.

Mark kept up, but he had to ‘cheat’ more and more as Isoko really hit her stride.

The ground flickered platinum with every step under Isoko’s boots, her skin a mirror finish, reflecting all the gold of the sky and the green and brown of the forest all around. Mark saw himself in the side of her grinning cheek, though it was more of a funhouse-mirror sort of sight than any real reflection.

She was having fun.

Mark was having a blast.

Not five miles from the city, when the road began to turn to little more than a grassy path in the wilds and Mark and Isoko had left other people behind, an alligator jumped out of the woods, all hissing and roaring, to ambush Mark. Isoko flashed platinum, rapidly angling away from the beast, while Mark reacted with a scalpel of adamantium, drawing the black weapon across the monster’s neck. It was like sticking a sharp finger into particularly dense gelatin. The alligator died as Mark separated its head from its body, its roar of the hunt turning into a whimper of death. Mark used his other bits of adamantium to grab onto the monster and fully arrest its charge, and then he ripped the head off of the monster.

Blood pooled out of the severed stump.

The head tried to snap together in Mark’s adamantine grip, but it failed to do more than injure itself further in its death bites.

“Holy shit,” Isoko said, as she held her sword toward the ground, to the side. Then she put her sword away. “You killed that thing fast.”

“I killed a few of them before when I was running to Memphi after getting summoned. Those ones buried themselves in the dirt of the riverbank, though, and acted like ambushers.” Mark lined up his boot at the side of the body, to punt the monster into the woods like he had seen the other guy do… But the body was at least 2 meters long, with another 2 meters of thick tail, and Mark wasn’t sure if he had enough strength to kick the thing. “I guess they’re more active when they’re not actively waiting for prey to fall into their mouths?”

Mark stared at the body, trying to decide if he wanted to break his foot trying to kick it into the woods, or not.

He tried to kick the monster into the woods.

It did not work. It was like kicking a pile of very heavy trash; the trash didn’t move at all. Good news: he did not break his foot!

Isoko chuckled. “Let me try.”

Mark backed up. “Go for it.”

Isoko kicked and the alligator’s body flopped half over before coming right back down. Isoko paused. And then Isoko tried again. She tried a few times, but the beast must have weighed at least 750 kilos. It was as big as a cow, after all.

“… Well shit,” Isoko eventually said, stopping. “That other guy must have been a really fucking strong brawny.”

Mark grabbed the monster with some wraps of adamantium and cut into it a bit, before he spread his adamantium out some more to give a better surface area connection. He strained, but not overmuch, as he stabilized himself with other spikes of adamantium in the ground. With an astral strain, Mark heaved the body into the woods.

The gator slapped against a tree and tumbled right back down, almost back onto the road.

Mark nudged it into the woods some, saying to Isoko, “I’ll let you get the next one.”

Isoko chuckled, and then she looked at the sky. Night was maybe an hour away. “So we run until we feel like stopping? Maybe a few hours?”

“Sure. And then we can set up and sleep for a few hours. I’ll watch over you, and you watch over me. Maybe around midnight?”

Isoko grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”

They ran.

The number of people on the road was not much. That number rapidly decreased as Mark and Isoko ate up the kilometers, traveling down the gently-winding, grassy road. Most people on the road had already headed off into the woods to kill monsters, or they were a lot faster and further than Mark and Isoko. Or at least that’s what Mark thought was happening.

Monster attacks on the road increased with the decrease in people. Mostly, they were unremarkable attacks, and Mark and Isoko simply killed the things and moved on. Rabbits turned to meat blenders and got blendered themselves. Snails shot bolts of fire and got stabbed for their attempted attack. Easy stuff.

Some incidents required thought, though.

Cat-like things jumped out of trees to sail their way with claws outstretched, ready to grab, back legs ready to rend. They were shaped more like frogs than cats, with slick skin and no fur at all, but they were cat-types since the main threat was lurking in the trees, ready to pounce. Isoko drew her sword through the frog that attacked her, splitting it into half and stepping through the gore to kill the one crawling up from the grasses. Mark killed another two that tried to get him, drawing his adamantium blade through their forms, punching through skulls and bursting brains before he grabbed bones with his adamantium and tossed the frogs away. A few flicks of adamantium tossed the rest of the bodies into the woods…

And Mark heard growling and crunching on the bodies, as uncertain vectors aimed his way.

Mark had heard those crunches before, but not nearly this close. Something was in the woods.

Mark did not advance, and the crunching continued.

Isoko grabbed the slimy skin of her own assailants, wrapping platinum fingers around limbs, before she sent the bodies into the woods, directly at the sounds of crunching in the dark. Something roared with complaint, and then it went back to eating.

Isoko asked, “We killing whatever that is?”

Mark said, “It’s not hostile… It’s probably a scavenger monster. Scavengers are plentiful around hunter trails, aren’t they? I read something about that.”

“I read the same thing, but… they have a tendency to turn dependent and hungry for people eventually.” Isoko looked at Mark. “Which is why I think we should kill it.”

Mark hummed, and then he stepped into the woods—

Instantly, the crunching stopped. The unseen monster went completely silent as it vanished from all of Mark’s senses. Perhaps it didn’t actually go silent at all, since its vector was gone. Perhaps it blinked away?

Mark stopped. He stepped back out of the woods.

Isoko asked, “… It’s gone?”

“Feels like it.”

“Will we see it again, you think?”

“I have no idea.”

The sky was deep purple with the oncoming night. Fireflies danced in the air, like gentle yellow, white, and dimly blue glows. Monsters prowled in the dark, eating each other, procreating, and sometimes slipping through the Veil, coming to Earth from Daihoon and rippling the foundation of reality in their passing. The air smelled of blood and forest.

Perhaps, if Mark had no ability to scout monsters at all, and if he was unfamiliar with these wilds, then he might have been scared. But he could see well enough in the dark, for the clouds were rather thin overhead, and he could Union-sense just fine. There were things out there, looking for easy meals. But they weren’t looking at Mark or Isoko with hunger.

Mark turned to Isoko. “Can you see enough? I think the clouds are getting thicker.”

Isoko grinned. “It’s not that dark.”