With the goblin threat gone, standing orders at the settlement shifted from wartime to normalcy.

Noble houses ordered or hunted for resources far beyond the settlement's borders, to restock what had been lost in the goblinization. Mark had his eyes set on some of those quests and Isoko was preparing to go on those outings with him, but magic learning took precedence.

Isoko broke her Wind Shaper Alteration one day, through normal practice, but she was able to Alter it back into her Binding that very same day. Being able to do that was a hallmark of someone actually becoming an accomplished mage. They had a small party for her at the house after that.

A few Aethercall parties came and went. For Mark, the benefits were minimal. He learned how to do it well enough, and he ended up being banned from actually Calling in public due to the strength of his voice. He broke the wards on the walls twice and made several people soil themselves.

Elaria was subject to the same ban, but she had learned how to tone it down. Turned out that she had been holding back a lot every time she sang on that stage to open up every party. Mark would have to learn how to hold back far, far outside the walls, the next time he went out there.

Mark went back to the Vault to get his next language.

Manawork.

Manawork took over an entire shelf, 18 books, and it was both a language and an action. At its core, Manawork was about mana, what it was and how it worked, and learning all the different types of mana out there. Most people only ever learned the types of mana out there, and Mark suspected he would be in that second camp.

Mana was, like most things, simple to explain and complicated in practice. Like taxes, or rather, more like chemistry and physics.

Mana was a metaphysical thing that came from the union of the physical and the spiritual.

Everyone produced mana.

The Binding turned mana into a constant effect.

What kind of mana did people produce?

So far, there were millions of recorded manas, each based on elements that had been expanded into the spiritual along methods that were not quite known, but which were easy enough to experiment with.

There were 648 main types of mana, though. Most people worked in those, instead of in individual offshoots of mana types, like the ones present in each individual.

Mana types started to differentiate with hydrogen, at 1, to '118', which wasn't named anything but 118, because 118 only had one stable mana type that was kinda useless, according to the text. Every normal element had a corresponding mana, and some of those manas were more differentiated than others. Element 118 only had one useful 'main mana' type, in the 648.

It was used to kill things.

People who had 118 mana usually ended up killing themselves when they Awakened, or they turned monstrous, or they got a useless Knack regarding miasma and they never rose above that. That would be a common theme going forward, Mark realized, as he read. Someone's mana type influenced pretty much everything about them, and there was no known way to change one's mana type once it was set. That's why Curtain Protocol was so strict.

The most useful elements were everything up to gold, with dense pockets of 'useful' and long stretches of 'not too useful'.

The 'noble gases' were each a type of 'Wind' Shaper, with the size of the Wind Shaper's Power determined by their starter mana. Denser manas, like those derived from xenon, radon, and 118, were all more miasma and poison-based than Wind-based. 118 was the Wind Shaper for pure Miasma; Miasma Shaper. That was one of the usually-controlled Powers.

All of those specific mana types had names that Mark would never remember, and were mostly archaic and varied. People used the element themselves when referring to those manas these days, as it was cleaner, and all of Earth used the Periodic Table.

Helium-mana-based Wind Shapers were Sky Shapers. Other Wind Shapers came from other naturally-gas elements.

Carbon 'Anima Mana' had several main types and then hundreds of sub-types.

Brawnies arose from Anima mana; from carbon.

"Neat," Mark said, as he turned the page.

'The Holy Group' of elements, including osmium (76), platinum (78), and gold (79), were the ending point for most normal manas. Mercury (80) was where all of the manas usually only had niche uses, with 'mercury mana' being one of the best ways to poison someone long term.

Poison Body came from mercury.

Mark focused on the platinum group, though.

According to the Periodic Table, there should be something at 77, Iridium, which was also a 'Holy Group'/'Platinum Group', but iridium wasn't listed.

Adamantium, mithril, and orichalcum all required the person with one of those mana types to ingest all three of those metals in order to begin manifesting those metals in their bodies, but each manametal had a metal that was required above the others to actually manifest. Adamantium came primarily from osmium. Mithril came primarily from platinum. Orichalcum, the god metal, came primarily from gold. But there was nothing for Iridium? What the fuck?

"Like I believe that shit," Mark scoffed. "Lying book. Quark?"

Quark had already read and digested all 18 books, so he answered, "I am as confused as you are, sir. There should be an 'Iridium Blooded', but there is not. It could be that since the Three Metal Bloods are confluences of three platinum group metals and iridium is never included in that confluence, that there is simply no valid option in that direction. But if we're looking for any mention of iridium at all, the series says in book 7 that iridium creates prismatic mana, which mostly creates all-rounded Powers, like Isoko's Platinum Body, which is obviously misnamed, but also not misnamed at all. She's still in the Platinum Group, after all."

Prismatic Mana was the reward at the end of the Tutorial, Mark recalled. Prismatic Mana Awakened a person in the best possible way they could be Awakened, and was thus worth a whole fuck-ton of money. It wasn't normally for sale on any open market.

"… Huh." Mark asked, "Show me the passages?"

A few holographic books hovered into Mark's view, into the little reading room in the Vault, and paragraphs pulled out of those books for Mark to read.

It was all very neat.

Useful to learn. Interesting in applications.

Didn't help Mark kill monsters better, or at least not yet.

Mark asked, "Is Isoko... 'Prismatic Blooded', then?"

Mark was suddenly very worried for her… and yet, no one had come for her? Hmm. Mark was suddenly less worried.

"Miss Kanno is likely 'Prismatic Blooded' in a way that doesn't equate to Prismatic Mana, according to the text," Quark said, adjusting the paragraphs, bringing forth different ones. "True Prismatic Mana is not found in any person. It is only found in the Tutorial, and a Tutorial Taker has to take special precautions to retrieve it from the Tutorial. It has been extracted from the freshly Awakened before, but that is considered human experimentation and is grounds for an execution."

Mark nodded slowly. "Less worried for Isoko, then… Good! Also, good for her! … Wait. This is why everyone was always saying she'd be good at magic, yeah? Her mana can do anything well. Not like—" Mark flipped through the book in his hands, to get to what he had read before— "Ah ha! Not like Phosphorus, which is mostly fire-aligned. That kinda mana produces Fire Powers with really strong flames, but not much else. Phosphorus mana users are not good mages for that reason. Hydrogen-based Fire Mana can do wind and fire-based magics, though, and Oxygen-based Fire Mana users can become really good all-rounder mages… Hmm."

Mark kept reading.

Adamantium, as expected, was good for doing 'solid things'.

Adamantium was not a good fit for immaterial magics, divination, scrying, or illusion-work.

But Adamantium could do literally everything, if you knew how to work it right. You could use adamantium inside your immaterial spellworks to keep the body from falling apart. Divination magics that were more reliable than otherwise. Scrying magics that didn't pop when experiencing the slightest disturbances. Illusion magics that seemed real.

"I need to try doing Protect again," Mark told himself.

A week passed while Mark read about Manawork, first at the Vault, and then through holographic displays of the recorded books at home. Manawork was about more than memorization, though that was the largest part. It was about shapes and imprints, and some practical stuff, too.

At home, Mark took a little bit of adamantium, and, through copying the shape he saw in the holographic overlay, Mark made his adamantium mimic oxygen-based Fire Mana. Most Fire Mana, and even Fire Shapers, came from oxygen, and oxygen had a whole lot of variants to it. Mark picked the 'warming fire' kind of fire. The one that supported life.

The basic shape of Fire Mana was a sphere, which was pretty normal for most manas, actually, but Mark crystallized this drop of adamantium through normal Shaping, into the image on the holographic book.

It was an orb with little points at specific locations, and Mark hadn't actually caused any of those points, directly. He had caused them through the crystallization process; through pumping in thoughts of warming fire, and thinking about oxygen-based fire mana when doing it. And, checking on it, yeah, that looked like 'warming fire mana'.

Mark pulled away from the droplet.

Soon, the little drop of adamantium began to replace itself with actual 'warming fire', since there was a lot of that, here inside of the Castellan-shielded settlement. After an hour, the absolute black adamantium began to take on a soft orange color.

It was different from what happened to that poison dagger Mark made, but it was also the same. This drop of 'warming fire adamantium' gradually and then solidly fell out of his ability to Shape. Mark wasn't sure how he felt about that.

1 million goldleaf, lost to an experiment. It was okay.

But now he had a crystal of 'warming fire'.

Was this useful?

No idea.

Mark put his hand around the orange/black colored droplet, and it was like putting a hand over a heater. Not a hot heater. Like a cup warmer, maybe.

Was it useful for… for anything at all?

"Now what?" Mark asked.

"Are you asking me, sir?" Quark asked.

"I think so?"

"Set it somewhere and see if it can grow more warming fire."

"… Yeah okay, and then what?"

"Make adamantium-shaped adamantium?" Quark suggested.

Mark tried that.

What he ended up with was a mess of quartz-like crystal that was not properly 'adamantium' at all.

He moved on to book 10 of 18.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

- - - -

July gave way to August.

The memorization for Manawork was over and now it was time to use Manawork as an actual language, which seemed…

Complicated.

"I just don't get it," Mark said to Rekaro, "It's a bunch of 'saying numbers' and other people saying numbers back to you, along with 'angles of direction'. Quark says it's sort of like building chemical reactions based on stuff I can't even visualize… Is that true?"

Rekaro said, "That's the baseline interpretation of it, yes. What you have to understand is that pretty much every enchanting language uses Manawork as a base. You don't have to be good at it, but you do need to know it going forward."

"Well bring on the party, I guess."

"It'll be a few more days. There are some constructors coming in from Crytalis to do some Construction work with Eliot… hmm. Have you read ahead to that language? Construction. It's one of the first useful languages that use Manawork. Might be your next one… or not? I'll have to check the list."

"I read the spine on the next language. It's 'Waterpeople'."

"Ah! Yes," Rekaro said, "Waterpeople. Tulo Khava is coming over for that one… It's not my place to say, but perhaps reading forward to Construction will be good for grounding Manawork in usability. Construction is great, anyway. Construction is ritualized Manawork, and a lot easier to use than pure Manawork, too. There are bastardized versions of that stuff floating around everywhere in those superhero shows you and Tartu do, so you should be familiar with it. The magic circles? Yes, you know of them. That's all Construction-based Manawork."

"… Huh," Mark said, mind traveling far, thinking.

The magic circles he saw popping up around a few heroes and villains in the Hero/Villain Program were all fake things, made to look good and that was it. What did real Construction look like?

… Well, probably like that Shaper Decouple Ritual that Blackthorn had given to Mark.

Rekaro moved on, saying, "Some Conductors from Crytalis are coming to mark you for the International Teleporter List. Are you aware of that? I believe they're doing the marking at your Understanding buildings?"

Mark nodded. "I'll be here…" Mark hummed, then asked, "Do you know how that works? I'm mainly concerned with whatever sort of true vulnerabilities I'll face in a teleport. I've been ported before, but that was just around Memphi. I'd like to know how it all works, too, if you know."

Rekaro easily said, "Let's start with teleporting itself. I won't get into specifics, but teleporting is all about deciding where a person is. A person at a low energy state is easier to teleport than one at a high energy state, which is why all teleports require the person to pull their astral body in all the way. That will be your biggest vulnerability in a teleport. They can't teleport you without you pulling in and lowering all your defenses. You can put your defenses up quickly, but they still need to come down, first."

Mark nodded, saying, "Ahh… yeah."

"As for how it moves a person around… that gets complicated. I can tell you the basics.

"Basically, every approved city in the Two Worlds has a resonance frequency due to special crystals implanted somewhere in the city. When the Conductors for the Teleport List mark you, they'll make it easier to latch onto your specific personal frequency.

"When you actually undergo a teleport, the main crystals in Crytalis will then resonate with you personally, even across vast distances. And then the crystals in the destination city will resonate. When that happens, you'll be yanked through the capital and then pushed out at some destination near some other resonating crystal.

"There are some spellworks involving Castellan to make it all more precise, but that is outside of my personal experience. I'm sure the Crystal Constructors coming for Eliot for the Manaworking Understanding parties can tell you more. Those people and the Conductors work close together, all the time.

"Anyway. That's how the big teleporter list works.

"Every big city can work their crystals themselves to move people around inside their own Castellan-marked areas, though. You don't need a special marking for that like what they're coming to do to you soon. You just need to be inside the Castellan-marked space, and ready for teleportation."

So many things made more sense, at that moment.

Mark found himself saying, "Crystal Tower with Glorious Man and the rest… It's called Crystal Tower because there's some big teleporter crystal there, and that's how they respond to the rest of Earth so fast."

Rekaro nodded as though a completely normal thing had been said. Mark found that reaction underwhelming. Rekaro said, "And Crytalis, the capital of the Aluatha Empire, is called that because of the Crytalis Crystal located in Domal'Takela. They don't use that crystal these days because they got rid of a lot of vulnerabilities around that system after the Reveal, but the historical crystal is still there. The translation for 'Crytalis Crystal' means 'Crystal Crystal' if you want to get technical about it, which I've always found a bit funny."

Mark went, "Ha!" And then he remembered something else he had been told a while ago. "Do you know why it's so expensive to run the International Teleporter List? Aurora quoted me a billion goldleaf a while ago."

"A billion?" Rekaro frowned a little, hummed, didn't believe it cost a billion goldleaf at all, and then said, "She would know more than I. I do know it's expensive, but a billion seems unreasonable."

"Why could it be that much?"

"Maintenance, I am sure, along with… well could be anything really. It is a system of magics and complicated systems break all the time, and they are transporting very strong people with big astral bodies across the world, so I would assume that would cause problems, too." Rekaro added, "Compensation and fees abound, too. Have you spoken to a Conductor about compensation?"

"No, I haven't…" Mark didn't really care about the money, either. Mark had another minor revelation. Mark began, "If you run into problems teleporting people with big astral bodies… And the Tutorial of the System only accepts completely Baseline people… Is the reason that the System only takes in Baselines due to some big teleporter crystal on Arakino, on the moon, only being able to work with small-astral-body people?"

That one got a reaction from Rekaro.

Rekaro's eyebrows went up, and he nodded, seeming both proud and surprised, and being 'proud' surprised him, too, for some reason. Mark didn't read too much into that. Rekaro said, "That's one of the Stone Church's deeper secrets."

Mark grinned— He had another question… And he wondered if he should even ask it.

Shavallian turned off the 'switch' at the bottom of every Tutorial-granted Power, but Aurora used shavallian when she was younger to be able to reach 12 years old and still be eligible for the Tutorial. But how did that work, if shavallian only worked on Tutorial-granted Powers in the first place?

Mark decided to ask the question in a smaller way than the direct way, asking, "Can you use shavallian to keep a person's astral body contained, so they can go into the Tutorial beyond being technically Awakened already?"

"Shavallian does tend to crush even natural Powers, like the ones people are born with, but there are limits, and the reason a Baseline becomes ineligible is usually due to growth or change in their astral body; mana taking hold, you know. Shavallian does almost nothing against most monsters, though, so there are reasons you only ever see it used in prisons, and the like.

"Most people who have strong starting Powers from birth eventually get offered the Tutorial early, but 12 is the earliest. I assume that Malaqua can compensate for whatever 'costs' there are in bringing that kind of person up to the Tutorial." Rekaro asked, "You were thinking of Aurora's story, yes?"

"Yeah, I was, and yeah… a god can compensate, I suppose."

Rekaro nodded. "Whatever teleporting capability the System has is far beyond what we humans have access to, but we certainly try."

The next day the teleporter people from Crytalis showed up. The 'Conductors'. Or rather, just 1 Conductor.

It was a non-event.

Mark dressed well, Aurora and Rekaro were there, and then this guy blips into the main Understanding room wearing dirty coveralls like he had been working at an oil rig, and after a moment of orientation, he turned around and saw Mark and them standing there. He had black hair and brown eyes, and he introduced himself as Conductor #7, Timms. Mark had already had a brief conversation with him the previous day, but it had been short and kinda disrespectful to Mark, but Mark decided to ignore it all. The guy was obviously busy.

In person, the guy looked even busier than he had sounded.

Timms took out a black case from his overalls that was about 20 centimeters long and 8 wide, opened it, and presented Mark with a fragment of clear crystal with a sharp point. He said, "Pick it up, scrape your arm and get blood all over that, put it back in the case, and I'll take it back, and you're on the list. It's Power Level 99 so you ain't breaking it, but don't try, either."

Mark looked to Aurora.

Aurora nodded. Yes, this was correct. But she was miffed, too, so she said to Timms, "Is this really how they're marking people these days, Timms? This should have been a ceremony. Where is Head Conductor Lissi?"

Timms winced. He still held out the case and the crystal inside. "Yeah, well… I mean… We're busy, Aurora. What do you want me to tell you? That the system is stressed to the max, that people are chasing Addavein at every possible appearance and he broke 10 of our crystals on purpose to piss us off and make us unable to chase him, and that our funding was cut yet again this year because of aforementioned dragon problems? I got problems. Want me to talk about 'em?"

"… Sorry to hear that. Take the crystal and do it, Mark."

Mark looked at the thing. "… Should I use gloves?"

Timms said, "Not at all. If you want to stick the crystal through your arm and out the other side, that would be for the best. But fingerprints, hair, spit, body fluids, markers of all kinds, all help to solidify you in the system. Not your adamantium, though. We'll get enough of a mana marker when you do the rest."

Mark… picked it up, and it was sharp. The edge cut right into his skin, and then deeper. He didn't drop it, but it was a near thing. "Right through the arm might be really easy with this, huh."

Aurora said, "You don't have to do that."

Timms shrugged, and hummed. He still held the box out, ready for Mark to put the crystal back inside.

Mark... rubbed the shard of crystal onto his arm, and it easily cut. Soon, the clear crystal had soaked up his blood and was solid red, acting more like a sponge than how Mark expected it to act. You know. Like a crystal; just getting dirty on the outside. Mark put the thing back into the box and Timms closed the box.

"And that's it! We'll confirm your mark tomorrow, before the party." Timms put the box back into his overalls, adding, "I've always loved Manawork! I look forward to being in the crowd if I can!"

And then Timms stepped back and the air crackled as he vanished.

"… Neat, I guess?" Mark said.

Aurora frowned. "That was concerning. The lack of ceremony was… Hmm."

"I agree," Rekaro said. And then he looked at the clock on the wall. "Four hours until the Manawork Understanding Party. You ready for that, Mark?"

Mark admitted, "It still doesn't make sense at all."

Rekaro said, "It's chemical reactions but based on mana. It doesn't make sense to most people, but it is one of the hardest magi-sciences there are. You just need to know the basics, anyway, for further language work."

Aurora said, "It's difficult. I never learned it, so I'll be coming to that one."

Mark was stunned. "You will?! Great!"

Rekaro was surprised, too, but he didn't show it at all. Mostly he made plans in his head, rearranged things, and said, "We look forward to seeing you, Aurora."

"I'll keep out of the way so don't go changing too many plans on my account. But if I need to actually speak with someone, then I can do that." Aurora added, "I expect it to be a lecture series, though?"

"Yes. Some of the finest lecturers in Crytalis and Okuana are coming and the speaker list is a trim 18 speakers and 200 listeners. It'll be a little symposium, and I expect a great many things will be discussed in great detail that will fly over the heads of everyone present. But I also expect that a great many intractable problems will be solved—" Rekaro said to Mark, "Like the astral body teleport crystal degradation problem, to name a specific. There are tens of issues like that still out there that can be solved with better magi-chemical understandings."

Aurora nodded. "I'll be back."

She left.

Rekaro asked Mark, "What will you be doing?"

"Staying here, I think." Mark glanced at the part of his sight that Quark knew was his phone. With Mark looking that way, words and images popped into view that had not been there before. Mark moved his finger some and adjusted the display, reading messages while also saying, "Eliot is coming over... soon, and the others will be here, too. I'm staying here."

Rekaro nodded. "Then I must attend to the caterers and all of that. Busy busy!"

He left.

Mark remained.

Mark sat in a chair and read holographic books until the caterers needed to set up where he was seated, so he moved elsewhere, snacking on some little hamburgers that were much fancier than their larger versions.

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