“Well, the arrays used in Mystic Armaments are sometimes called five-phase diagrams,” she began, pointing to the intricate etchings on the grand silver bow. The proximity made him slightly uncomfortable, but it was more psychological than physiological, since he recalled how often he had been burned by the metal.

  “At the centre sits the heart of the array — the controller. In a Red Governor, that heart houses the Red Engine Crystal that powers the system, it also contains a secondary interpretive array that selects optimal operations depending on the kind of fuel used. Taking it out after use and placing it in an analyser can even give you an engine's load profile. It is very much the heart and mind of the engine, exerting influence over every function.”

  She shifted the bow slightly.

  “In a Mystic Armament, however, it functions a little differently.”

  Without warning, she loosed a bolt from Feathercloud.

  The projectile tore through the air and struck a distant machine. A compressed gale detonated on impact, wind shearing metal with such violence that even the bloodthirsty Lycan beside her felt a little sympathy for the innocent hunk of equipment.

  “That,” she said calmly while nocking another arrow, “was the explicit mode.”

  The second bolt flew faster than sight. It punched through the stone wall beyond the target, embedding itself so deeply that only the fletching remained visible.

  “And this is the implicit.”

  She glanced at him. “I trust you understand the distinction.”

  He considered the display before answering.

  “The explicit mode manifests the element itself,” he said slowly, searching her face for some note of encouragement. “The implicit mode borrows its properties without assuming its form. It's akin to the essence/accident distinction — the substance remains unchanged, but its attributes are invoked.” [1]

  Chaina’s eyes brightened.

  “You learn quickly.”

  “It is only because of your instruction, young mistress.”

  She had since gotten used to his manner and no longer chastised him for it.

  “On a serious note,” he said, scratching his head awkwardly, “I had some understanding of the concept because I’d dueled with so many opponents who used Mystic Armaments, but I just now understood the mechanism.”

  “That’s not all,” she said with a smile, running her finger from the centre of the formation to four nodes positioned just beyond it.

  They were arranged in a cross around the array’s heart. The north and south nodes sat closer to the centre, while the east and west lay slightly farther out.

  “These are the Axes. In the Red Governors, they simply determine the nature of the output, but here they decide the elements in the array. The north and south Inner Axes establish its vertical alignment — sometimes called Heaven and Earth — and the east and west Outer Axes determine the specific element itself, which falls under one of those two groupings.”

  Her finger moved upward.

  “Heaven elements refer to immaterial forces — wind, shadow, light, vibration, and similar phenomena.”

  She traced downward.

  “Earth elements include earth, water, wood, and the like. The characters in Feathercloud’s main array denote wind, obviously. The arrows only carry a simple transfer array, so there’s no need to engineer a full five-phase diagram into every piece of ammunition.”

  He noticed this portion of the lesson would not involve further destructive demonstrations.

  “The third component is called the Path,” she continued. “These are the connective vessels running throughout the array. They receive the user’s mana and distribute it across the system.”

  “And the fourth?”

  “Directional Gates,” she said, tapping the outer border of the design. “They’re essential — and varied in purpose. Imagine activating a defensive array on a shield. Instead of spreading the energy evenly or concentrating it at the point of impact, it disperses violently, as my first arrow did earlier.”

  “Directional Gates regulate flow, resist backflow in the face of resistance, filter out discordant energy signatures, stop interference from energy outside the system, and more. It’s basically the computational lynch pin.”

  “So,” he said slowly, tilting his head to the side a little, “Directional Gates are what stop the array from blowing up in your face.”

  “Bingo!” she said, mimicking a dart being thrown into a bullseye as she did.

  “The gate borders the system and maintains a direct path to the heart. All mana entering the array passes through it first, then into the heart, which decides how that energy is used till it makes it back to the gate, where that’s properly enacted.”

  “And lastly?”

  “The Anchors,” she said. “They stabilise the structure, prevent erosion over time, and other such things. Usually, jade or some other material is used on the outside for this purpose.”

  He noticed that the last three were basically identical in function for both Red Governors and Mystic Armaments — what a fascinating cohesion of concepts.

  He was truly awed by the complexity of the system and how it addressed many things at once.

  "Arrays are an attempt to make our weapons fuller extensions of ourselves,” she said with evident excitement, closing in on the Lycan in front of her. “Unlike with engines, which we mostly require to process fuel into power, we want our weapons to behave like sensitive limbs - to react to our needs, discriminate between foreign energies, trigger on impact without an explicit command!”

  “Mystic Armaments are an attempt to make the weapon… sentient? Sentience is overstating it, but you get my meaning; it’s the mapping of a primitive mind onto the weapon and making it able to compute!”

  “In the old days,” she continued, “our societies were almost entirely oral, but with the advent of Humanity and our subsequent conflicts and trades, we were introduced to a system that brought perpetuation to magic. Array technology and the Red Governors are the root of our new civilisation.”

  Despite his deep interest in these matters, he could only nod along. As a Lycan, these technologies had their place, but did not have much impact on him personally as he could mostly participate in them secondarily. Still, he was pleased to see her excitement; it was quite different from her usual playful indifference. Now, if she brought out an engine, he might pay a little more attention...

  He turned to the furnace in the distance.

  It should be about hot enough, he thought to himself.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  He walked into the room with nothing but a towel on while the young mistress took a seat overlooking his work, separated by a treated glass window. She had wanted a closer view, but he had been insistent. This was actually a compromise, as he’d rather not have her see the process.

  He had all the necessary equipment at home and would have done it there if not that she had threatened to come there herself – he couldn’t imagine the scandal of it without feeling a little ill.

  “This might be a little disturbing,” he said apologetically, before lying down on the cold concrete floor.

  The heiress leaned in to observe and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first.

  “Did I see that right?” she asked one of her attendants after a while.

  The servant didn’t know for sure either – it looked like something was moving under his skin.

  It happened again, this time undeniably.

  Subdermal motion across his entire body so that it seemed like there was a whole colony of fist-sized bugs underneath the covering of his skin.

  There was no clean way to do it at this stage.

  He clenched his jaw as the skin on his chest stretched out almost to the point of translucence before rupturing and revealing a sphere the size of a tennis ball. It rolled down to the floor with a ding and left a disturbing trail of blood in its wake.

  Disturbing was an understatement, and one of Chaina’s servants, a light-skinned girl her age with a weak constitution, passed out at the sight.

  A second one emerged from his arm, more violently than the first, as the process seemed to increase in its pace.

  Ding.

  Ding.

  Ding.

  One by one, the spheres dropped to the floor like bloody, metallic drops of some nightmarish drizzle.

  The formerly spotless floor was now littered with at least a dozen metallic spheres and the blood of her friend.

  He hadn’t made a sound throughout the experience, and the world was completely silent save the blaze of the furnace and sickening squelches of flesh re-joining with flesh.

  Chaina made to descend, but the young wolf's raised hand held her back.

  In a few moments, he was on his feet again.

  “These metallic spheres are the result of continuously imbibing metal over the course of weeks and months,” he said, looking for his bag full of the resources he needed.

  “Our bodies are combination chambers unlike any other,” he continued, looking up at her, “able to dissolve and aggregate all sorts of disparate materials into one super material.”

  He extracted a large red crystal almost desperately and bit into it in the same manner.

  She watched aghastly, remembering some details he had filled her in on before the fact.

  That was a blood crystal.

  Since Lycans couldn’t use life energy, the radiation they formed stimulated their growth and physical prowess beyond what was possible for most creatures. This power was stored in their blood and cells in what was referred to as Innate Energy.

  The process he was undergoing had obviously depleted him, and the blood crystal existed to fix that. Lycans had a swathe of means for rapid replenishment. They could use the mana crystals or blood pills of sorcerers and cultivators, or utilise a technique to crystallise their own blood and consume it in times of need.

  This technique obviously had its limits, but for a ritual like this, one’s own blood was the best method of replenishment.

  The boy in question got up after a while, the caked blood on his form falling off as he bent over and loaded the spheres into the furnace.

  I can’t believe that was only the first step, he said to himself dazedly.

  The Blood Weapon rite was generally only performed after one’s second growth phase. At that stage, the forger not only possessed higher Innate Energy but also greater control over their body. Rather than the brutal extraction he had undergone, a Lycan in their second growth phase would have expanded their pores and released the metal like beads of sweat all across the surface area of the skin. It was by no means comfortable or painless, but obviously far less traumatic than forcefully expelling metal by way of his skin.

  He couldn’t wait until his second growth phase – there were too many threats on the horizon, and he needed all of his strength to face them.

  Live, even if it kills you, he repeated to himself, finally understanding the gravity of such a command. He was no stranger to pain, but this pushed him to the limits of his capabilities at this stage of growth.

  He revealed a sharp claw and cut open his hand, spewing blood like an arrow into the open furnace. The flames leaped upwards dangerously in response to this, burning white and threatening to spill into the room.

  The bloody arrow was far more concentrated than his usual blood, almost as dense as the crystal he had made. He was nearly out of energy once more. Had he known…

  He heard a gentle footfall a few metres away from him.

  “You said you’d stay away,” he said, barely looking up in his exhaustion.

  “You never said you’d turn yourself into a sponge.”

  “I’m giving off dangerous radiation,” he pushed back.

  She didn’t speak but instead showed a defensive charm on her neck.

  He didn’t have a good reply to this and was honestly too tired to argue with her.

  “Go and sit in another corner then,” he said, forgetting his usually deferent manners in his exhaustion.

  “I can give you a mana crystal to replenish your reserves,” she suggested.

  He shook his head tiredly.

  “I’m already balancing energies and auras from an uncountable number of sources. My own blood has to possess only my signature, or I’ll taint the metal and the whole process will be for naught.”

  She didn’t reply, but instead stretched out her hand and placed a certain cool material in his hand.

  He looked down and saw that it was a shimmery set of scales. He had no idea what it was exactly, but his instinct for materials told him that it was extremely valuable.

  “I can’t take this,” he said, pushing it back.

  “You told me that using that metal against the wildebeest as a last resort severely damaged its strength and purity,” she said, “you need something that can compensate for that… you can’t afford to wait any longer and aggregate more materials.”

  Although he had merely narrated his encounter with the mutant wildebeest and made no mention of the mysterious metal or that reptilian creature for fear of over-involving her in what seemed to be obviously dangerous secrets, she was very aware that he was in dire straits of some sort and therefore insisted on intervening as much as she could. Even her long-winded lecture earlier was given in some far-flung hope that it would prove useful to him at some point.

  He knew that she was right – he had hesitated to use the metal against the wildebeest for this very reason – but couldn’t bring himself to take it.

  “You’ve already done too much,” he said.

  “I haven’t done anything you couldn’t do for yourself,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Not that.”

  “I’m not leaving until you take it.”

  Still, he hesitated.

  The scales left his hand suddenly and flew into the furnace.

  “You’re… a tyrant,” he said helplessly.

  In his peak state, no trickery of hers would have evaded him, but with the amount of blood he had lost, he definitely couldn’t keep up.

  “If you don’t hurry, the scale is going to be ruined.”

  He sighed and rushed to the work ahead of him.

  Regardless of his feelings about it, it was true that he needed some material to strengthen what he had. The bulk of the materials he had with him was intended for steady digestion over time.

  If this were a regular weapon, then all that would be left would be to extract the molten metal and place it into a mould, beating and folding and reheating and hammering away till it was perfect.

  It was never that easy for a Lycan, though.

  He looked back at his friend, who had obediently taken herself up in a corner and wondered if she could see his hesitation, his cowardice.

  Damn everything! He shouted in his mind, plunging his hand into the hellfire furnace.

  This was the true final phase of this harrowing process.

  A normal weapon was of limited utility to a Lycan.

  A Lycan’s weapon was his body, and the only way to make them substantially stronger was to strengthen that body.

  The Blood Weapon rite was not only to create a super material capable of surviving their freakish strength, it was a way for them to integrate the metal fully and truly into their bodies.

  How could one describe the pain of forging oneself into a weapon?

  He tried to focus as he forced his blood into the molten sphere.

  He was trying to merge with it but he felt his sense of self being eroded by the second.

  The pain threatened to overcome him.

  His mind went blank.

  It was too much.

  Reference of Essence and Accident: For those curious: