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232 - The Adamas Organ [Cherno]
🕑 Added 2024-10-01 01:26:38 +0000 UTCTaking a long puff and ashing his cigarette, Firminus continued, exhaling that strange blue smoke all the while.
“In the short term, we can implant reinforced conduit lines — it’s a permanent version of what many Mamon Armors employ for the same reason, to protect the user from their amplified power output. When it comes to these, the options are differentiated mainly between synthetic and organic. Synthetic conduit lines are physically tougher and generally can withstand more abuse, while organic lines can self-adjust to a greater extent and heal from damage without special design considerations. Regardless of your choice, they won’t hold up long-term, but it’s a direct, fast, and low-impact fix that can be reversed easily.”
“Elaborate. Won’t hold up as in they’ll wear out quickly? Require regular maintenance? Clog up with entropy residue? What am I looking at here?”
Firminus shook his head.
“They need to be tuned precisely before implantation, anything too far above or below your current Throughput will not work correctly. Afterwards, they can, in theory, hold out indefinitely, but they won’t develop to match any attribute growth beyond what they were tuned for — if your power output remains the same, they will hold. But eventually, at the rate you’re going, they’ll fail. If I were to guess, yours will probably burst. Gruesome, painful, but a minor injury, and it won’t cripple you right then and there. As I said, organic lines will more readily accommodate any growth in throughput, but even then, there is a hard limit, and their performance characteristics will degrade the more you stray from the level of throughput they were tuned for.”
“Sounds reasonable. What else? Somehow I doubt reinforced conduit lines and some adjustments to the Liminal Coil will suffice. Fixing these types of problems always ends up being a seven-step pain in the ass that can create twenty new problems if you fuck up even once along the way.”
Firminus laughed at that. A laugh of understanding and agreement.
“How right you are. Next up, cardiovascular system. You felt it, yeah? The burns? We pumped you full of blood softeners and clot-targeted omniphage, and still had to damn near replace all your blood, you were that full of clots. A side effect of the Molting Tonic, and of Semzar’s thaumaturgy I wager. Silver lining, since you had no brain damage, no clots formed in there. We would’ve had to quite literally wash your brain if that were the case.”
“Sounds like you fixed the major problem. What, do I need to have all my veins replaced?” Krahe asked facetiously. She couldn’t believe that the church lacked the technology to non-invasively repair what damage had been done.
“No, no. Your veins are fine. Your heart, too. Your vascular tissue has been permanently made more elastic and highly regenerative, one of the Molting Tonic's few positive side effects. This elasticity itself can cause some issues, so we’ll introduce something to reinforce it further and stiffen it up a bit. Moreover, as part of your preemptive care, I want to give you a Jas’raban Heart Scarab. It’s a type of self-implanting graft — we cut you open and stick it in, the scarab does the rest. It attaches to your heart and melds to it over the course of a few weeks. The result is generalized structural reinforcement and redundancy.”
“Well, putting aside the fact it sounds like a parasitic insect, I’m somewhat concerned about the Jas’raban part, considering what I know of the baneworm civilization and their grafting practices.”
“It’s true, the Heart Scarab is in fact an originally Jas’raban design. Old man Sorun reconstructed the design in the early years of Audunpoint’s existence as a glorified archeology outpost. Not sure why he shared it with the church, but he did. Of course, we made significant adjustments to bring it in line with Zaveshian grafting standards. I would never recommend a dangerous graft or procedure — not without informing you of the dangers at least. Speaking of, regarding that liminal coil tuning, we can either target nullifying the resonance issues, or attempt to harness the resonance for beneficial ends. The risk is mainly that we might make it worse, requiring corrective re-tuning.”
“What are the odds?”
“I am not High Grafter Fidelia, I cannot predict things to that extent. The choice will remain until immediately before the procedure, I only wished to make you aware of it.”
“My skin. Can you make my skin tougher? Put armor under it, maybe? The voidkey has no wards or barriers, so I will need to make-do until I can address that.”
“Ah, a good question. This in fact relates directly to what I mentioned earlier regarding your veins. Even once we correct the resonance issues causing the thaumic turbulence, your new voidkey will still cause internal damage until your body adjusts. Direct surgical modification on such a wide scale is not an option at the moment, so our next best choices are flesh-transformation compounds, and Black Blood. The former entails a mixture of elixirs and nutrients that will induce specific, limited modifications to certain tissues, much like the Molting Tonic did. The latter entails the replacement of the spleen with an organ connected to the heart and the liver, simply called the Adamas Organ after its creator and first user. Some also call it the Black Spleen. I cannot explain exactly how it functions, but in simplified terms, it takes on the same function as your spleen whilst also acting like additional bone marrow. In this manner, it modifies the composition of your blood, which results in the reinforcement of all your tissues. Lastly, for short periods, the organ can be used to achieve greatly increased durability with an accompanying increase in strength, at the cost of cardiovascular stress and general tissue damage after a certain period of use. This act manifests as bulging veins and blackened skin, hence the name. As you may have guessed, the Adamas Organ’s operating principle is, in fact, a direct precursor to the Dregsteam-type Mamon Coupler.”
Firminus seemed to take a great degree of pride in the Adamas Organ. It almost sounded like he was bragging.
“Firminus… You wouldn’t happen to have a personal investment in this “Adamas Organ,” would you?”
“I plead guilty to all charges! I was, in fact, Adamas all along, returned from four millennia ago!” the grafter exclaimed. “Yes, I admit, I have some personal bias. I have worked with the graft for a long time, and have made improvements to its design. My understanding of its operating principles, advantages, and disadvantages is what led me to recommend it.”
Comments
lizard King
My previous theory was pretty close. Praise be my prefrontal cortex. It appears to be functioning quite well.
