CH29: Black Rings

I drank heavily from my protein shake under the hot September sun. Ember waited quietly with her umbrella while I pounded posts in the ground, using my cube’s perimeter to keep the fence in line. Jason was right; all I had to do to get better at manipulating energy was manipulate it. Practice helped me forward, but I needed help.

The sound of an old fusion engine on its last legs rattled through the air as a truck slowly moved uphill. Mutant monitor lizards, locally called raptors, tore at the bite-proof tires of the craft as it meandered uphill.

I pulled my T-98 rifle from where it had been leaning and shot the mutants one at a time before they crossed into the half-finished fence. The truck stopped in front, and a door slid open. 10 men, each over 6ft tall and built like brick shit houses, dressed in body armor, formed up. The driver, an old grey-bearded man wearing a white hat with a bite taken out of it, strode forward with a smile.

“My name is Rigs; what are you doing here building a fence yourself, lad, especially with such a pretty lady in the hot sun.” Rigs said.

Rigs took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the beading sweat from his face. The men behind him stood straight and gave off an air of danger.

I let my energy sense wash over them. None had a culture; they might have been genetically enhanced, but that was it. My finger twitched to laser them. I wanted to laser them because they were annoying me.

I let out a huff, struggling to keep my voice cordial.

“This is my land; it needs a fence,” I said.

“Wrong, do you see this here?” The man held up a hologram of a World Gov Deed. “This here means all land from the edge of the new demon lands to the edge of Egypt College belongs to me. I can rent some of it to you for a fee, but you’ll have to build any fencing to my specifications.” Rigs said.

A gun’s safety clicked off. I turned my attention to an eighth group member with a gun trained on me.

Ember started cackling.

“I don’t understand the joke,” I said.

“Your lady knows you’re done. Either fall into line or face a little frontier justice.” Rigs said.

Was this normal? I heard they existed merchants and land brokers from Megacities who took advantage of disasters on behalf of their superiors. They might have a few cybernetic enhancements but were not a match for most mages.

Then again, most mages never came close to lvl25 and completed the trial to become a wizard. What were the odds that some normal waving a piece of paper would run into someone like me? Did he think a gun without even Mythril bullets would matter?

Should I kill them all? That was a thought that I couldn’t shake. This was obviously disrespect. I wasn’t a young master type like Mother told me about. Killing them all for bumping into me would be going way too far. But in their minds, they had me dead to rights.

When I thought about what Father would do with them, all I could imagine was the lab. They were untouched by mutation and perfect test subjects. If I wanted to experiment, I could find no better resources. Doing so would be a righteous action that could only benefit my culture in the long run. I felt it would be wasted resources.

The strangest part of the situation was that I wasn’t angry or disappointed.

I lifted a finger and thumped the gunman in the chest with aura. He fell off his feet and collapsed, wheezing. It was the difference in our power; no amount of small arms fire could cross the distance between us. Maybe if they had an installed Duster with a tracking plasma rifle, but military hardware seemed beyond them.

The old man’s head turned agonizingly slowly. Ember stood beside me, observing humans, only beginning to realize what they stumbled upon.

“What an interesting diversion? By the fact none are damaged, I suspect you have plans.” Ember said.

Teaching them my culture for free was a terrible idea. It undervalued my culture and gave strangers the tools needed to undermine me. What if I conscripted them and instituted a point system like penal armies instead? These points could be used to earn access to writing and high-quality food. It would instill value in my culture and make them work for it. People don’t appreciate something, given the need to bleed and sweat to appreciate before experiencing my culture to appreciate it.

“I have a few ideas,” I said.

Ember smiled, revealing her fangs. “It’s a vampire.”

“We are citizens; defend us from this mage.”

Ember raised an eyebrow before ignoring them.

I calmly took some rope and subdued them with my aura. Once the last rope was tied, they weren’t going anywhere. Ember quickly frisked them for weapons and found only a few small arms.

“Whatever you’re going to do, spare me. I’m a helpless old man; I’m no threat to you. Take my men; I’m no threat without them.” The old man said.

“I assure you, you’re a valuable data point,” I said.

After studying the Trans AM, I was starting to understand parts of it. I couldn’t wrap my head around some points of understanding with the Greek and Roman runes, but I was getting close to a breakthrough. The artifact had many functions that Jason and I couldn’t figure out. We wouldn’t use it on someone and lose the artifact. That led us to build various imperfect versions of the construct mine that were seal-based while Jason mixed seals with runes.

The matter making up the artifact was a kind of liquid mana filled with impurities, keeping it from diluting into the environment. After careful research, we discovered traces of fungi, bacteria, and even viruses shaped almost like Norse runes. The more we looked into the artifact, the more secrets we discovered. Every step forward was filled with traps and tribulations.

It was an interesting project, and we fully planned to crack the artifact. So far, from the research, we were able to steal the function of creating a culture to improve its wielder. It ran off mana because it was the resource the researchers were most comfortable with. For myself, energy was superior.

There were some functions we could determine and plan around, such as a quest and reward system. It was like a video game but in real life using ancient runes. Many functions were hidden within, stacked behind other functions almost impossible to tell apart from those around them. We saw a forest, and to recreate it, we had to pay close attention to each tree.

With that in mind, it was possible to take functions from the artifact and build imperfect constructs with them. Thanks to Marie, a few demonic runes mixed in helped create a sympathetic link to my black halo. A black ring appeared and hovered over my hand. The liquid energy contained by seals filled with my newly planted trees resembled more a private orchard than what we studied. A few adjustments on the fly helped facilitate some of my ideas for a point system linked to my Black Halo and monitored by an app on my cube.

I had no idea how well my recreation would stack up to the original. Using a different source type with a completely different writing system with vastly different meanings would have some hiccups. But if I didn’t test my results, how would I ever know my mistakes. Fortunately, most body-modifying trees were absent and could be added later with updates.

At the moment, there were only quests, mind-altering skills, and feel-good chemicals as rewards. I flung my black rings forward, and the men flinched as they latched around their necks before sinking into their skin.

Black lines covered the old man’s skin, and he began shaking uncontrollably. The others soon joined the old man with much weaker side effects. There might have been a reason for the pathogens used in the original product. The old man started shaking and burning up as his body rejected the culture within my black ring.

Did it have something to do with the psyche of the host? Was an old man stuck in his ways impossible to change, or would he have been fine if he wanted to change? The ring appeared around the old man’s neck, blasting the old man with electricity as more seals spread around the old man’s body. The demonic rune appeared on the old man’s head, and my Black Halo fueled it.

“This is possession, but there shouldn’t be a wellspring this close,” Ember said.

“Oh, Marie half taught me demonic runes to manipulate me into creating a kind of demon host to produce possessed fueled by my Black Halo,” I said.

“She betrayed you, and you’re taking it well,” Ember said.

“I can’t say I expected anything different from her.” I cut the connection between my Black Halo and the black ring in the old man. “Emergency shut-offs are a safety feature my Father instilled within me at an early age. Safety is important.” I said.

The old man-turned-demon quickly broke down as the failsafe in my Black Halo activated. Demonic blood ripped away from the newly made possessed into my Black Halo. It wasn’t much, but each added up.

The demonic runes I used when combined didn’t only connect with my Black Halo to assist in monitoring the situation and powering the rings. A few of them stored power, but a single array was enough to open a tiny wellspring large enough for a few lost souls. I updated my black rings and removed the array. Random demonic outbreaks were useless to me.

One of the men screamed as his eyes burst and seals spread across his body. The seals started glowing while the man flailed on the ground. I had to pick him up and toss him away from the others. Moments later, he exploded in a shower of gore. There may have been something to the necessary pathogens.

Creating seal-based pathogens wouldn’t be easy. It was an entire line of research I don’t think anyone in my family had touched. Jason wasn’t even on it; we were researching the same project.

I would have to look into it alone. I had never considered that before; usually, there was at least a little research on a subject from an ancestor.

The blood from the exploded research subject flowed off the ground and rapidly soared into Ember’s hand.

“Sorry, I didn’t want it to go to waste,” Ember said as I watched it vanish into her skin. “Science is a wonderful thing. Are you learning a lot? Do you think Jason will attempt to repeat your experiment? I wonder who will make the bloodiest explosions.” Ember said.

Her teasing wasn’t unwarranted.

“Jason is too busy trying to catch up to focus on research,” I said.

“You are too busy trying to mate with my larder to research properly,” Ember said.

It wasn’t that I was having sex with them; they were her food, even if she didn’t eat them. The blood farm had been a success. I wasn’t surprised the technology was there; all it took was a weekend of effort and digging in forums.

Ember chugged a human’s worth of blood a day and cow blood. She had become a glutton, and my vampire was still adorable. Her skin was getting toucher even though I was growing stronger every day. It seemed her diet agreed with her.

Then again, there were multiple gains from drinking the werewolves.

I took the papers from the old man’s tablet and compared them. The land baron proxies had given me. More men died while I worked to finish this area’s fence to block out invading mutants, tax collectors, and other annoyances.

By the 18th group that drove up on us, I got one survivor from my black ring. I ordered the man to remove the bodies, and he jumped. He appeared eager for more instructions when the bodies were thrown at the wild animals and mutants. I had him drive us home and begin construction on our barracks.