Over the ing days, the Adamas aled in, and Krahe began notig the ges. They were subtle, at first, only for her skin to rapidly begin turning bd growing stiff, starting on her side right where the an had been impnted. Over the course of around half a day, the affected area would return to normal, shedding in a manner resembling fescale. It progressed outward in waves, leaving behind subtly firmer flesh. Firminus described this as a normal part of the process, noting only that it rogressing even faster than he had expected. Apparently, it normally took months for an Adamas an to settle in, and upwards of oo two years to bee effective. The Firminus-Valerian Pattern was inteo be much faster, but, in the grafter’s own words, “Not this mubsp;faster.”
Though unfortable, it was just a nuisa worst, it temporarily limited her range of motion, but that was all. Her only was whether the gradual tissue reinfort would cause issues with the following operations, but she assumed that the grafters had pnned for this, and Firminus said just the same when she brought it up during her checkup. She could also feel the transformation spreading through her ans, but it was slradual.
Krahe waited until the ge had passed over her eorso and reached her limbs before she actually tested the adamas fun. She set a training automaton for low-powered straight puo the midse, peeling the biosuit away from her stomach. Already knowing these wouldn’t hurt her, she braced herself, and using the trigger artifact, weathered two strikes from the gleaming mae. With a mustering of will, she, at first, attempted to harden her flesh directly. To say it was hard would have been aatement, but it wasn’t easy, either. Reag for the right mental trigger, she felt a dull thrumming, almost iion ing on, as if the blood itself was rioting. Veins bulged under her skin, bess spread from them, and within a few seds, her stomach had bee as if living granite, and only the dull thrumming remaio notify her of this fact. There was bleedover — it spread further than she had wanted — but it had worked on the first attempt without the and word, and that was enough.
The training automaton’s punches barely eveered, now. Knowing she was on a time limit, she dialled the automaton’s strength higher and higher, repeating until its strikes started hurting again. The force was such that it sent her sliding backwards over the training area’s sand-covered floor. Krahe released the hardening, seeing the bruise already taking shape, as bck as pitch. There was one more thing to test.
“Adamas,” she inted, visualizing the exact area she wao harden. This time, it was nearly instant, with far less bleedover. Dismissing it again, she sidered what to ge the trigger word to. Adamas was three sylbles, and it would give away what she was doing. Until she could harden any area faster and more precisely than with the trigger word, she would keep that crut her back pocket. After some thought, she eventually settled on “Nemea,” the home of the Nemean Lion of Greek myth. Zastreon had no Greece, let alone a myth of the 12 Labours of Hercules, but the word still had the i mental association necessary to make it fun as the trigger.
She tinued passing the time in any way she could. When she found out Audunpoint’s already warm climate wasn’t evetest it would get this year, Krahe arrived at the realization that she hadn’t actually built up her wardrobe all that much. Even with her disguises in mind, it wasn’t much. This realizatioed in a lengthy order list for tailored clothing, from pletely normal to an armored, self-repair capable short jacket with a back patch directly based on the Wandrei Faust talisman. Given the absence of a surveilate or an ever-presework that could allow someoo identify her identity digitally, Krahe had the idea of iionally cultivating a distinct appearance, so that people would more easily dismiss her as being someone else when wearing a disguise. She’d never inteo keep wearing those same green pants to begin with. For the time being, she filed it away, seeing as she wasly in walking distance of a tailor.
By the time she had her ocur modifications do had been a month sihe raid. She hated low-intrusion ocur operations like this. Had it been an option, she would have chosen to have her eyes repced wholesale, but the grafters simply sidered this the safer option, sidering the rafts she was also having dohin this short timeframe.
Zaveshian neurery was, in its own way, just as advanced as that of Megacity Gamma. On Krahe’s part, it involved nothing more than having her head in a vid responding to prompts every couple minutes. In this case, most of them included Fidelia waving one or more of her tendrils in front of Krahe’s face at varying speeds — over the course of the operation, she was able to observe a rapid improvement in her own ability to track fast-moving objects even with interference. From listening to the two grafters speaking during the procedure, Krahe surmised that it involved a mixture of cultured tissue and “patterns” of some sort that both o be adjusted to fit her ocur cortex specifically. She couldn’t quite tell how much of this procedure relied on feel, but then, she had never sidered neurery to be a sce.
Satisfying as it was to be closer to her former peak, it didn’t help with the splitting headache she got from stantly overshooting things. She couldn’t even read properly for the time being — and so, she decided to turtention towards something she had been putting of for some time: Razormind. Lucky for her, Firminus was, if anything, eager to observe her attempts.
Of the two months she spent at Fidelia’s pound, it would take Krahe two and a half weeks to achieve Razormind a suffit number of times for Firminus to dis exactly what the mental state entailed. She made it clear that a real fight would make it easier, but she also came to learn that the monit equipment they had on-site wasn’t suited to that purpose. So, it was left up to Krahe to push her visualization as far as it would take her. Eventually, she started going through various katas from Sector 7 Style while visualizing fictitious oppos, and this, in the end proved to be the key.
It truly was akin to walking along the bde of a razor. Evei moment of hesitation, the smallest stray thought would throw her out of it. But time and time again, she mao stay in that zone for a bit longer, aually, Firminus annouhat he had a pn.
Akaso
