Examining the Engram Seals close-up, Zanma found he wasn’t aware of any varietal of cross-tree that produced this type of hard wax. Then again, these trees were some of the most varied in existence. There were only two consistent traits shared by all Cruciforma trees: Firstly, the shape of a cross, with the most ancient having a shape like a T, while newer ones had evolved into the shape of a Y or X. The second trait was the fact that even the entirely passive strains were lethally poisonous and allergenic to certain wretched beings: the Chosen of the Axle, the same creatures responsible for the devastation of the arcology-city Zanma had gone through earlier in his journey. Some newer X-form varietals also had this trait when it came to Tilters and several types of silicon-based life.
“And is it safe to remove them, or not?” Zanma asked, brushing his fingers over the seals. A faint thrum flowed back from them, a slight buzzing under the skin.
Based on Baikal’s hesitation to answer, Zanma decided to just be careful, it wasn’t as if they were attached to a vital operational component. For now, he brushed the seals aside and got to work. It was clear that a true technical expert had not laid hands on this weapon any time recently; all of its numerous customizations had been done from the perspective of someone educated on c-prop guns first and foremost. It wasn’t bad per se, but there were a fair few low-hanging fruits for him to pick, low-effort improvements, and only the delusional assumed a low-hanging fruit was automatically less sweet. Just as often, they were so ripe and heavy they bent the branch.
With the surface examination done, he extended his psionic awareness into the weapon, ever so slowly, just in case the seals reacted. Their resonance strengthened, but there seemed to be no active reaction, so he proceeded in mapping out the weapon’s interior. From there, it was just a matter of picking out the fitting pieces and tools from his stash, swapping out this and that, adding a few hypercapacitors, adjust some paneling. By the time he was done, he’d cleaned up the wiring and improved the weapon in a few easy and noticeable ways.
“Couldn’t fully implement a spin-stabilizer on the spot, but a partial stabilizer was easy enough, and the power draw should be more consistent now. The amount will be the same, the curve will just be smoother so your suit’s output will match it better,” he explained as he floated the weapon over to the quietly awestruck stalker, who just slowly nodded as he cautiously hooked the weapon back to his suit, testing his grip and aiming around.
Naturally, in the process of his work on Baikal’s gun, Zanma had placed a safeguard, just in case. It wasn’t anything fancy — it was a piece of incorrectly formulated TPR within the fire control unit. This formulation was extraordinarily reactive to one specific psionic frequency that Zanma could produce, but wouldn’t react to anything else, meaning he could effectively detonate a small bomb inside Baikal’s gun if he ever needed to. If left alone, Baikal would probably find the block alongside a note and a piece of currency a few weeks later.
Grinning ear to ear, Baikal stood and picked out a few of the targets Zanma had set up down the street, varying in distance from ten to a hundred meters. Crack. Crack. Crack. The mass driver’s only noise was the crackle of electricity between its coils, the operation of its ammunition feed mechanism, and the thunderclap of each dart breaking the sound barrier. With bright blue sparks, each shot blew a hole clean through one of the alloy plate targets, which were 1.5cm thick and equal to the best third-millennium steel — they were scrap picked out from the ruins at random.
Zanma observed with rapt attention, his eyes watching the targets, then the gun, then the targets, then the gun. With each shot, he sensed a faint resonance from one of the seals, and, indeed, the gun performed better than it ought to. Naturally, he stirred the Pillar Centurion into motion and willed the puppet to fire its third-arm’s accelerator at the targets, just to double-check that they weren’t somehow softer than he had thought. It carved into them with ease, but no greater ease than it should, proving the plates were not to blame. Several flaps along the accelerator’s housing opened up, gaseous coolant venting from within, revealing the lattice of fleshy webbing that had grown of its own volition in the empty space between the actual accelerator and the housing. The sight seemed to disquiet Baikal, just a bit. Zanma couldn’t help but stop Baikal and rearrange the plates, place some at an angle, he even set up a gravitonic accelerometer to gauge the darts’ speed and mass, just in case they were somehow being made heavier after acceleration to give them the extra punch. No such thing. It wasn’t much, a few percent of additional penetrative power, but that was enormous. The projectiles didn’t move any faster, they had no additional measurable momentum, and yet they punched through when they shouldn’t. A free 3% paracausal armor penetration increase? What fool would turn that down?
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
He had no doubt that there was a price to be paid, but he also held out hope that these seals operated in a “price paid in advance” pattern; that is to say, once their creation criteria were fulfilled, they would become active and provide benefit without further investment. This was as opposed “price paid afterward” enhancements, such as the use of stimulants to increase raw psionic output in exchange for deleterious side effects. Applying such seals to his puppets was the most natural thing, but, now that he thought of it, he couldn’t conceive of a means to apply them to his implant, if that was even possible. Regardless, that was an issue he could solve later.
“I had my doubts, but you delivered, so I will deliver as well,” Baikal spoke up, glancing side to side. “It would be best to depart as soon as possible, after the next Deathrattle. We can speak on the matter then.”
And so, a breath of change passed. Not two days, nor even a single day, but just a few hours. He spent these preparing, packing up, and even still, working, stretching his thoughts every-which-way, almost kneading his own mind in the attempt to focus on five things at once. A faint pearlescent sheen flashed over a small portion of white ceramic, the same nigh-indestructible, mysterious material that composed the White Serpent’s armor. Taisei had assured him it was a potent psi-resonator, but his psionic energy wouldn’t be nearly potent enough to trigger its resonance for a long, long while. Thus, he had experimented with applying TPR as a surface glaze. At least, it would create a faint resonance, and at best, the TPR’s resonance could maybe, perhaps, possibly, hopefully, trigger the white ceramic to resonate, even if faintly. Coating that one piece of ceramic, detached from the White Serpent, had been a success, but that was all for now. There was no time for indepth experimentation now.
The sky bled. A choking, gurgling wail ripped through the earth and carried over the air, and shivers ran up and down Zanma’s spine. The Pillar Centurion’s armor shone, the deathrattle’s psionic energy washing over it and reflecting off the pearlescent resin, casting a wake-shadow in the image of a terrifying trident-wielding warrior from ancient times, refracting the purpose and ideology behind the Centurion into visible light, albeit for just a moment.
How many did that make? Six, seven deathrattles now? Velibor had been right, they did get easier to bear with. Never entirely bearable, even with proper, heavy-duty cover, but not nearly as harrowing as that first one. If anything, he felt the added strain may be a good way to push forward and force through to the Fifth Degree of Division. Just now, he could swear he was getting there, almost reaching that place, pushing through the figurative membrane.
But then, it was over. A foolish impulse considered exposing himself to the next deathrattle, but Zanma tore out and discarded that thought before it could embed itself any deeper.
Treading down a road composed from great slabs of stone-like plastic, the White Serpent carried its rider upon one platform-like shoulder with a smoothness of movement unbecoming of its enormous mass. Grasping the upward pylon of its shoulder with one hand, even this, the appearance of how he kept himself in place, was in part a lie, a performative deception, and in part, the posture was a mental tool to embody the mentality of keeping himself steady, hence making it easier to do it through the true, psionic method.
Scarlet fog gave rise to the silhouettes of eldritch, fleshy quasi-vegetation sprawled out in all directions. One had no hope to make out the ground more than a few meters out, and the rancid, off-red, foamy waters of the swamp promised an altogether new kind of insidiousness in exchange for their non-corrosiveness. This place was no less hostile than the Sea of Blood, it had merely traded the straightforward, honest corrosive for a far more insidious and vitriolic spite towards those who would brave its shifting, wall-less labyrinth.
There, at the mouth of that red hell, Baikal awaited. No longer a man, but a crustacean figure of oily-blue armor, gleaming in the faint twilight glow that reached this place from far above, from the metal sky, the false suns that stared down with impassive, unyielding stares. False, not because they did not burn with the brilliance of true stars, but because they were imitations, tiny in comparison to real stars, moved along by incomprehensibly vast, armillary-like tracks. Zanma wasn’t sure why his mind kept casting itself to far-off things, to reminders of his smallness in the world. Perhaps it was to distract himself from the reality of wading into an actively hostile swamp.
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