Akaso

  Taking a long puff and ashing his cigarette, Firminus tinued, exhaling that strange blue smoke all the while.

  “In the short term, we impnt reinforced duit lines — it’s a perma version of what many Mamon Armors employ for the same reason, to protect the user from their amplified power output. When it es to these, the options are differentiated mainly between syid anic. Syiduit lines are physically tougher and generally withstand more abuse, while anies self-adjust to a greater extent and heal from damage without special design siderations. Regardless of your choice, they won’t hold up long-term, but it’s a direct, fast, and low-impact fix that be reversed easily.”

  “Eborate. Won’t hold up as in they’ll wear out quickly? Require regur maintenance? Clog up with entropy residue? What am I looking at here?”

  Firminus shook his head.

  “They o be tuned precisely before impntation, anything too far above or below your current Throughput will not work correctly. Afterwards, they , in theory, hold out indefinitely, but they won’t develop to maty attribute growth beyond what they were tuned for — if your power output remains the same, they will hold. But eventually, at the rate yoing, they’ll fail. If I were to guess, yours will probably burst. Gruesome, painful, but a minor injury, and it won’t cripple yht then and there. As I said, anies will more readily aodate any growth in throughput, but evehere 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 duit 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 create twenty new problems if you fuck up even once along the way.”

  Firminus ughed at that. A ugh of uanding and agreement.

  “Hht you are. up, cardiovascur system. You felt it, yeah? The burns? We pumped you full of blood softeners and clot-targeted omniphage, and still had to damn near repce all your blood, you were that full of clots. A side effect of the Molting Tonid 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 o have all my veins repced?” Krahe asked facetiously. She couldn’t believe that the church cked the teology to non-invasively repair what damage had been done.

  “No, no. Your veins are fine. Your heart, too. Your vascur tissue has been permaly made more estid highly regeive, one of the Molting Tonic's few positive side effects. This esticity itself cause some issues, so we’ll introduething to reinforce it further and stiffen it up a bit. Moreover, as part of your preemptive care, I want to give you a Jas’raba Scarab. It’s a type of self-impnting 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 reinfort and redundancy.”

  “Well, putting aside the fact it sounds like a parasitisect, I’m somewhat ed about the Jas’raban part, sidering what I know of the baneworm civilization and their grafting practices.”

  “It’s true, the Heart Scarab is in fa inally Jas’raban design. Old man Sorun restructed 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 signifit adjustments t it in lih Zaveshian grafting standards. I would never reend a dangerous graft or procedure — not without inf you of the dangers at least. Speaking arding that liminal coil tuning, we either target nullifying the resonance issues, or attempt to harhe 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 ot 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. you make my skin tougher? Put armor u, maybe? The voidkey has no wards or barriers, so I will o make-do until I address that.”

  “Ah, a good question. This in fact retes 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 best choices are flesh-transformation pounds, and Bck 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 tter entails the rept of the spleen with an an ected to the heart and the liver, simply called the Adamas an after its creator and first user. Some also call it the Bck Spleen. I ot expily how it funs, but in simplified terms, it takes on the same fun as your spleen whilst also ag like additional bone marrow. In this manner, it modifies the position of your blood, which results in the reinfort of all your tissues. Lastly, for short periods, the an be used to achieve greatly increased durability with an apanying increase in strength, at the cost of cardiovascur stress and general tissue damage after a certain period of use. This act mas as bulging veins and bed skin, hehe name. As you may have guessed, the Adamas an’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 an. It almost sounded like he was bragging.

  “Firminus… You wouldn’t happen to have a personal iment in this “Adamas an,” would you?”

  “I plead guilty to all charges! I was, in fact, Adamas all along, returned from four millennia ago!” the grafter excimed. “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 uanding of its operating principles, advantages, and disadvantages is what led me to reend it.”

  Akaso