Adamant Blood

The offices of the Slayers and the Hero/Villain Program were both located in Central Citadel, on the western side, closer to the airfield. A lot of worldly corporations, guilds, organizations, foundations, and all the other ways that people could be organized, had offices there. There were even, surprise surprise, unions.

Mark smirked as he saw a sign for ‘Steelworkers Union’ with a sign hanging out front that spoke of magical item creation and getting good prices for work, both recurring and freelance, and helping new crafters get into good locations. They primarily worked with steelcraft, which was… some sort of way to craft magical items, Mark supposed? He wasn’t sure.

The office was small, but it had a nice front window. A solid steel statue of Freyala with wings and a sword took up almost the entire window. It was quite pretty.

‘Worldly Road’ was the name of the road that Mark walked down, and that moniker showed everywhere. Firstly, the street was massive. Easily twenty meters wide. Big trees grew in the center, reaching high and shading the land from the bright sun. People were everywhere. The businesses on both sides of the street were broken up with cafes with seating under umbrellas on the street, and little shops that sold stuff from this part of Daihoon, or that part of Earth. The buildings on both sides of the street also had multiple levels. Mostly two levels, but as Mark walked down the street, he saw a few three story buildings here and there, and there was even a 20-ish story building further down the way.

Most of these places were satellite offices, with main offices located here and there across the world, from Tokyo to New London, to Nigeria and elsewhere. Maps held outside of most offices that showed where the satellite office’s primary office was located.

A lot of the magical stores were a part of the Aluatha Empire. That place was located on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where Mexico and Central America were located, but on the other side of the Veil on Daihoon. The Aluatha Empire had a bunch of smaller cities located all across North America. Not South America, though.

On their side of the Veil, Aluatha had built a rather famous wall across the land-bridge that separated North and South America, because of some horrors located in South America. There were no Daihoon cities down past that wall, though that was changing post-Reveal. They were trying to take back South America’s Daihoonian equivalent… But Mark didn’t know much about that whole thing, except for that… probably wrong bit of trivia.

The Aluatha Empire was the biggest empire on Daihoon, with the largest successes both in territory and population, so they had a large showing here on Worldly Road.

Next up was the Dominion of Okuana. They were located on the other side of the Veil right here, in the Europe-ish area. They were half the size of the Aluatha Empire, but their cities were the safest, since they were made of trees and stuff that all actively ate monsters. Most people didn’t want to live inside nature preserves, though. Mark was pretty sure he didn’t want to live in a nature preserve, either.

… But living in an Okuanan city would make using sustenance/deprivation a lot easier, and he did like plants, in a sort of ‘yeah that’s neat’ sort of way. He could even do some basic magic with plants, too, supporting them. So Okuana had a certain appeal.

Aluatha was all about elemental magics and ripping the world apart to make it habitable for people. Not many plants grew in Aluathan cities.

The last Daihoon empire was the Settlement of Xerkona, but Mark didn’t see any of their offices, and they were mostly about making sure places worked well, anyway. They mostly existed inside other empires. They did have a few actual cities scattered across Daihoon, though, located mostly on the other side of the Veil from the Earth nations of Kazakhstan and the Caspian Sea and those sorts of places.

The Xerkona culture was incredibly influential across all of Daihoon, because it was their generals and their mages and archmages who helped everyone they could, with politeness and aplomb, before they went on to help other people—

Oh! There was an office for Xerkona. Pretty small. Looked like an information kiosk, too, what with the great big sign on top saying that they would happily help people with information. They were even talking to some people right now.

Neat!

And then there were the offices for various Earth-based places.

The East Coast Union had a nice big office. Mark wanted to go in there and ask what was happening to Orange City, to find out what had happened to his former home, but… Mark kept walking.

Over there were offices for the Central Cities, and then California, which had taken over much of the western coast of the former United States of America and unified it into a country all its own. A lot of Old World major cities and states had been completely destroyed by the Reveal, but a lot of them came back, and in different forms. California was its own nation. Central and Eastern United States had been fractured hard, with the various powers that arose during the Reveal all deciding to go their own way. The Colorado Rockies was a whole nation now, too, which Mark almost wanted to go see, but not really.

Mark kept looking around, trying to find the offices of the Slayers, or the Hero/Villain Program, or Crystal Tower; whichever came first.

He saw signs for Nigeria, and South Africa, and—

Oh!

There’s the Hero/Vil—

Ah. Nope.

Just a sign for Tokyo and Japan. Not Crystal Tower or the H/VP. They even had a sign out front that said ‘Not Crystal Tower!’ and an arrow pointing further down the street, saying Crystal Tower was that way. The sign was well-made on actual laminate, or plastic, or whatever it was, which showed that they needed to tell people this was ‘Not Crystal Tower!’ all the time.

Mark walked on.

There was a sign for some place called Lake Eyre, Australia, which had some really dramatic pictures from before the Reveal and after the Reveal, and the flooding of the world. Mark stopped and read. Previously, the lake was some sort of ‘rainy season lake’, and the land around the lake was a desert. But since the Reveal and due to a bunch of efforts, both personal and from the Dominion of Okuana, the lake had been turned into a year-round lake, and the desert basin was green with life. It was pretty far inland, and pretty shallow, so it was a rather ‘a safe place to live!’ according to the signs. Mark believed that. Shallow lakes couldn’t hide much, while also allowing a lot of fish and other life to thrive.

Mark looked inside the windows and saw some guy on his computer, typing away.

Mark kept walking.

Some people noticed him, but not really. He was just a brawny-looking guy wearing basic browns, which… stood out a little bit. Most people had money and real clothes.

But! Of those who were wearing basic browns, brawnies were the vast majority. It was that growing-body thing they had going on, and which Mark sort of shared with them. Even his hair was changing. His hair was still brown for the moment, but it would be growing in black thanks to that dragon.

Maybe he should go get it buzzed right now.

Mark walked down Worldly Road, and eventually he found one of his two destinations.

The Slayers.

It looked like a bank.

It was a medium-sized office space, with some big double doors that were open. Mark walked inside, through a gently rushing air curtain that kept the cold air in the building. The floor was white-ish concrete and the walls were wood pillars and white plaster. An angled counter divided the front room in half. A series of poles and ropes further delineated the public space into a line that zigzagged back and forth. A few people were in line to talk to the people behind the counter, of which there were three.

Mark got in line.

He listened to the other people as they met with the tellers and got business taken care of, which seemed to follow a pattern that Mark had never seen before, but which was easy enough to understand. The customer would take out an emblem from around their neck, scan it by running it across a black box on the counter, and then they would start their business.

Mark listened to one of them.

“Yes, Mister Julioz. How may I help you?”

“Returning from rounds. Took a quest to kill some bears and some frogs and also did a patrol in the area. Frogs are impossible. Team can’t do it. They’re flying and invisible. We almost lost a member. She’s recovering in the hospital. Bears are gone, though. Round otherwise complete. Around 2,000 kills.”

The woman typed away at a computer, nodding, saying, “Understood. Looks like the frogs will be upgraded to a higher threat level and their quest will be reissued accordingly. I’m glad your team is otherwise okay...” She paused, then said, “Looks like you’re up for an honesty check.” She brought out a black stone that she set down on the counter between them. “Hand on the rock.”

Julioz placed his hand on the rock, without complaint or anything resembling anger at all, which kinda surprised Mark. To be called into question like that… But maybe this was a routine thing? It might have been routine.

The teller asked, “Where did your patrol take you?”

“Northwest #18 patrol route, COFR-made and approved variant to the normal route. We cleared out every monster along the way, except for the frogs.”

“How many monsters did you kill?”

“Around 2,000.”

“The outcome of your targets?”

“Bears are dead. Nest burned and young exterminated as much as our scout could find. Frogs had some sort of mutation that wasn’t listed on the threat ranking that made them invisible and maybe even intangible. They were definitely flying, too. Not just jumping real good. We had to get out of there.”

The teller nodded. “You can take your hand off, Mister Julioz.” The teller tucked the black dome-thing under the lip of the counter on her side, as she said, “That’s 1,000 gold leaf for a completed round and 200 extra for the bears. The frogs have been upgraded in threat from Red to Orange, and their bounty has increased from 200 to 400. We’re sorry your team encountered a mutation, but we’re happy you survived. Would you like us to split your funds between your members? Or all to the team leader?”

“Split ‘em up, but 100 from my account to Orneka...”

There were some more small words past that, but Mark had made it through the line and was being beckoned to stand before one of the tellers.

Mark walked forward to a man who was probably a brawny, based on his size. The guy looked to the scanner that held to the side, like some sort of card swiper, but Mark had no tag, or whatever it was people were showing off.

Mark said, “I want to sign up with the Slayers. This is my first time in one of these offices.”

The guy went, “Ah! We’re glad to have you.” He went right into a spiel, “Would you like to fill out paperwork yourself, or have an AI do it for you? If you’re an acolyte here, COFR can fill out the paperwork for you, and we accept COFR’s reports as valid. Otherwise we still need personal AIs and all information on the paperwork to be... verified through... a third party AI…” The guy kinda looked at Mark, and his speech kinda trailed off there at the end. He blinked. His eyes went wide. He said, kinda loudly, “Oh!”

Some people looked this way. Some people behind the teller, sitting at desks, also looked this way.

Some guy stood up in the back of the room and started walking this way.

Mark said, “I’ll do the COFR-fill-out-thing, if it’ll let me.”

Mark saw a golden glow overtake the teller’s monitor, but only from the side. He couldn’t tell what was actually happening on the screen. The teller glanced at the screen, then back to Mark, then back to the screen. The guy who had been at the back of the room came fully forward by then.

The teller jolted at the appearance of the other guy, but then he relaxed.

The teller bowed toward Mark, and then stepped away.

The guy from the back, the supervisor, Mark assumed, took the teller’s place. He smiled and said, “Hello, Mark Careed. Welcome to the Slayers. When we heard you were interested in us we hoped for the best, and we’re glad to see that the best won out, and especially after that training mission video. I’m Slayer James Ietho, Yellow Rank. You can call me James, Mister Careed.” James gestured to the side, to a hallway that led to a few different rooms. “Would you please join me for an interview? It will take 10 minutes, then we can make you an official Slayer.”

Mark said, “Sure, uh, James. Nice to meet you.”

James smiled a little and walked to the side, past an archway and into the hallway.

Mark followed, but he also glanced behind him.

A few people were bowing.

… Which was intensely uncomfortable. What had Mark done to deserve that?

James opened the way into a room, and Mark went in with the guy.

Mark found himself sitting in a comfortable, but sturdy chair, across from James, sitting in the same sort of chair, with a table between them—

“Do you know what Slayers do?” Jame asked, getting right into it.

“Mostly they do routes around cities and specific monster-kill quests, as denoted by the various powers-that-be inside of a city. You’re paid by taxes in the cities and you pay out to Slayers based on quest level, while only allowing Slayers of certain ranks to access certain levels of quests. It’s mostly working for money, and being honorable about it.”

James grinned. “There’s some nuance, specifically with the ‘honorable’ part, but that is pretty much the whole thing, yes. The Slayers organization goes back centuries, but it’s always been in existence in some form or another, to be crushed under the heel of some dragon and then rise under the auspices of a different dragon, to take care of problems that they don’t want to deal with themselves. You can replace ‘dragon’ with any great organization of power out there, and that covers 90% of our history.

“We’re mercenaries who have a good reputation.

“The version of the Slayers that exists these days mostly deals with the trash that cities and other organizations cannot be bothered to deal with themselves. Trash routes out into the middle of nowhere. Monsters that need killing, but which are hard to find and kill. Distant problems. Monsters that aren’t worth anything to kill. That sort of thing. Usually we’re just supplemental. If you go to a guardhouse or place like that, they usually outright tell us they have no work for us, but they always do. You just have to find the local office.

“And in some places, like here at Citadel Freyala, we’re one of the major backbones of the city’s normal defenses.

“This is for many different reasons, but it started off this way because Freyala loves us, and we love her.

“Because of that, we’re allowed to have actual power here. We have teams coming in here all the time, from all over the two worlds, to find acolytes of Freyala, or anyone with healing and protection magics, to take and go out into the rest of the Two Worlds and make real differences.

“We’re nomads that do bitch work that needs to be done, and who can fit in anywhere. Sometimes we take on the deeper threats, out there in the deep wilds. The ones that will only occasionally threaten a city, but which aren’t currently big threats.

“And we always stand up and fight when the kaijus come roaring. That’s the major difference between us and adventurers. ‘Adventurers’ is a bad word around here!” James said, with a grin. “And so, because we’re honorable, that’s the only reason we have much power here at all, but we don’t have much real power at all, Mark.

“If you came to us for power, that’s not how this works. Did you come to us for power?”

Mark felt a little weird at the mention of dragons crushing the Slayers and also raising the Slayers from the ashes, or whatever, but then James kept talking, and Mark felt better and better about this decision by the minute.

Mark answered, “I have power. I want to prove myself and fit in anywhere. Explore the Two Worlds. All of that stuff. And I need legitimacy. Can the Slayers give me the legitimacy I need to move freely?”

James solidly said, “We do legitimacy quite well. The Slayers routinely engage with City AIs to verify quest completions through truth magics and otherwise. We’re an honorable organization, and you’re expected to be honorable as a Slayer, in all aspects of your life. That means a lot of different things to different people, but the only actual laws we have are simple to list. No extrajudicial killing of fellow humans. No stealing from humans. Complete the quest, but if you can’t, then report that you can’t, and why. Lesser laws include ‘doing bitch work quests if they’re on the list for a while, even if they don’t pay well’, and stuff like that. We’re protecting humanity, and mostly that is messy, time-consuming work.

“Most of our work is on Daihoon, though we do have some here on Earth, though not nearly as much.

“Does that seem like something you want to do?”

Mark grinned. “Absolutely. I’ll be going to Daihoon, too.”

James smiled a little. “Glad to hear it. So everyone starts off as a Nascent Red Slayer, and you will, too.

“Our ranking system is the color scale, from Nascent Red, to Red, to Nascent Orange, to Orange, all the way to Purple. It’s only 6 ranks, with 6 intermediary testing ranks. You have to clear Red quests easily before you’re allowed to advance to Nascent Orange, and then take on Orange quests. As soon as you can prove yourself on the easy Orange quests, then you can become Actually Orange, and take any Orange quest you want.

“And so on and so forth.

“F-rank Powers can usually clear Red quests just fine. E-rank Powers can usually do Orange quests. Etcetera.

“Red quests are killing nuisance monsters. Bears, flying fish, etcetera.

“Orange quests are killing dangerous nuisance monsters.

“Yellow quests are killing threatening monsters, as in threatening to cause a monster wave, or directly threatening a settlement. A lot of Orange quests turn Yellow if they’re not taken care of well enough.

“Green quests are dangerous threatening monsters. Goblins are Green quests. Most sapient, humanoid-type monsters are Green quests. Individual bands of goblins and such are lower ranked, but the goblin settlements are always Green rank quests. We usually do not go after those, because then they come after us, but we absolutely kill them wherever they are inside of our lands, or around our settlements.

“The majority of powerful Slayer work is done in Green, and it’s broken down from tier 1 to tier 10.

“Blue is for kaiju quests.

“Purple is for dragon quests.

“Slayers don’t usually go after Blue or Purple quests, because most places-that-exist have people that can handle kaiju or otherwise, or else they wouldn’t be places-that-exist. We do have more than a few rapid-response Slayers that can help in those situations, though. Those are the Dragon Slayers. You’d call them superheroes here on Earth.

“Most Slayers stop at Green, if they’re able to get that far at all. Maybe Green 5, Green 6.

“I would expect you to eventually become a Purple-ranked Slayer, but you’re an outlier.

“Everyone needs a team, but you don’t need to have everyone on your team be a Slayer to be allowed to do Slayer quests, or get paid for quests. However, when you register for a quest, that team registers, and everyone on that team gets a team ranking, based on the teams they are on. In addition, everyone has an individual ranking that is usually a lot lower than their team ranking.

“It seems like a lot right now, but it’s pretty simple in practice.” James asked, “Any questions?”

Mark thought for a second.

“I have… so many questions—” Mark paused. “Language! That’s first. I heard there’s about a hundred of them.”

James said, “English is spoken by most people because it was already spoken by most people on Earth at the time of the Reveal, but there’s also Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. If you can speak two of those, then you can usually communicate with someone over on Daihoon. As for Daihoonian languages, they speak Farnal, Getana, Dragonal, and Xerk. Xerk is perhaps the most widespread, due to the Settlement of Xerkona. They’re the Speakers and the major diplomats who try to make inroads with almost everyone. If you want to learn 1 language, I suggest Xerk.

“As for actually learning the languages, I suggest you seek out a Mind Expansion Minder. The effects of their Powers fade over a week or two, but that’s usually enough to start learning a language on your own. Most major cities have one at the entrances to the cities that will imbue their Power onto you for a small fee. The really big cities usually have someone at the intakes that can limit their Expansion to language acquisition only, and forgo the usual side effects of such a Power,” James finished with, “If you’re taking a boat to Daihoon, most agencies will throw in a good Expansion if you ask for it, and pay for it. It’s a 500 goldleaf standard fee last I checked.”

Mark grinned at that. “Thank you. That sounds…” Mark had… some money? He wasn’t actually sure what the banking situation was… like, at all. He had completely avoided even thinking about buying stuff or his parents bank accounts or any of that—

James asked, “Is everything alright?”

Mark blinked and came back to himself. “Yes! Sorry. That’s all of my questions, actually. Can I sign up now?”

James smiled, stood, and gestured to the door, saying, “Let’s see what COFR has to say about paperwork.”

Over the next ten minutes, Mark filled out some small parts of paperwork himself, which was mostly verifying that COFR had filled it all out correctly. A few thumbprints on a few different devices here and there, and then Mark put a hand to a truthstone and answered questions that all seemed pretty normal. ‘Do you have any intention to bring harm to other humans?’ ‘Can you uphold the Code of Conduct as described here, and which you already signed as read and understood?’

“Do you have plans to work with monsters to undermine humanity?”

Mark almost asked James if Addavein counted, but he figured a big fuck-off dragon who was trying to be a Hero of Humanity did not count, and even so, the question was about ‘undermining humanity’, which already had an easy answer.

“No,” Mark answered. “I will not undermine humanity with any of my actions.”

James subtly raised an eyebrow as he looked at his screen, and then he moved on to the next questions.

It was basic stuff.

Soon enough, Mark got a solid-state badge that was a black hexagon with barely-red edges. It was some sort of computer thing, or something. Every Slayer had one. James made a big deal of telling him that it was not a recording device and that Mark did not have to keep it on himself at all points in time, and that it did not function as any sort of ID, except as a Slayer. They were easy to replace, too, because ‘they get destroyed in fights all the time, so don’t worry about replacements’. Mark could get another badge as easily as heading into any big Slayer office, and getting ID’d by the City AIs. They’d be happy to print Mark out another ID for just a small fee of 5 goldleaf.

“But the first one is free!” Jame said, like it was a joke.

Mark just smiled, because he didn’t get the joke.

Not too long later, Mark walked out of the Slayer office with a badge around his neck, hanging from a stainless steel military-like necklace. It felt good to have it there.

It felt like a big step forward.

Mark asked his phone, “COFR? Is the Slayer badge a tracking device?”

His phone glittered gold and words appeared, ‘The Slayer badge is little more than an artificial mana crystal that has a name, number, and ranking attached to it. The main use of the badge is to more easily link a person to the Slayer database, which contains actual information. The badge can be tracked by special means, but the same is true of practically everything. The badge has no specific tracker on it, in it, or near it, unless the user puts one there, which some people do. Your badge has none of that.’

Mark grinned as he read that while he walked—

Mark paused.

He asked, “COFR? Should I get a personal AI?”

‘Based on projections and standard situations that one might find out in the world, you need a Tech Minder of some sort to prevent your tech from being corrupted to foul ends. I can build you a personal AI from myself and accomplish much of this, which is a rather normal arrangement for most graduates of Citadel Freyala, but a strong enough Tech Minder could invalidate your AI anyway. As such, any AI I grant you will not be a living AI, but instead a link to me, which will allow me to contact you regarding various important information. Your personal AI would remain your own.’

Mark felt confident enough, after having dealt with COFR for a couple of months now, to say, “I accept the offer. Thank you.”

The phone flickered gold and then faded to silver.

‘Please name your Personal, non-living AI.’

Mark didn’t know what to name it, at first, but that silver color sparked a memory. When he had been doing the Color Drop treatment, Orange City had installed a techno-organic silver box in the corner of the living room. It had burrowed roots into the house and been Mark’s ‘not really personal AI’ for a brief time. And then the house had been destroyed.

Mark couldn’t ever get that house back, but he could at least carry some part of it around with him, even if it had been a very new part.

Mark said, “Quark. That’s your name. Quark.”

The phone flickered gold and then faded to simple, solid silver.

‘Hello, Mark Careed. I am your Personal AI, Quark. I am an offshoot of Citadel of Freyala Resources, and am here to keep your information in good working order, and to allow for easier verification at various checkpoints. Please bear with me as I update to functionality and gather information about your person. Estimated update time: 2.7 minutes.’

The phone faded to a simple black rectangle.

Mark grinned and put the phone into his pocket.

He headed down the road, toward the Hero/Villain Program headquarters, which was also the location for the Crystal Tower embassy.

It was the 20-story building.