章 70: 70. Of Blood, Sweat, and Element
In front of Liam laid a fifty-centimeter (~20in) tall glass cylinder connected from both top and bottom to a sophisticated bulky machine, itself attached to a blocky metal structure.
From the same structure tubes and cables led to a vacuum chamber of which passed from on its corner a thin tube of nanofiber lead and titanium alloy entered and it was connected to the vacuumed centermost cube of a fist-sized translucent tesseract that was held at equidistant from all sides of the chamber by magnetism.
Extending his left hand toward a circle on the main body next to the cylinder he willed it open and thrusted his hand in almost to the elbow then it closed around, almost like a seal what followed was UV light being blasted against his forearm, hand, finger, and implant before all air began to be vacuumed out and metallic claws grasped his wrist for it to stay still.
"Here we go…", Liam said under his breath as a needle he was controlling suddenly breached his skin in the space connecting his flesh and metal.
He felt it slide against both surfaces as they were sensitive to various degrees, it moved deeper until it perforated his hyperdeveloped radial artery, and an anticoagulant was then injected to facilitate the procedure.
A few of his powerful heartbeats later from the top of the cylinder dark red half-liquid half viscous blood, his blood could be seen accumulating on the metal.
And then it started to fall slowly, large scarlet droplets by large droplets showing that the drainage had begun and it wasn't going to end now. Seconds turned to minutes that turned into a full hour where litter upon liter of blood was drawn out to the point the cylinder was full.
With a pale face and lightheadedness bordering on a splitting headache, Liam almost buckled as the machine by his will took out the needle and got a hold of his left forearm.
Placing his bare back against the cold metal wall of the room he gazed with a strange mix of muddled emotion at the sight of almost eleven liters (~2.75 gal) of his dark red blood taken from his body being flushed down the machine to be filtered down to the atom was a good reminder.
And it was getting filtered down because the element he wanted was in his blood but it was in such a minuscule percentage it might as well not be here, but he knew it was here thanks to the scan of his inventory yet he couldn't get it through his inventory by itself.
At maximum, he could take out individual thin grains of sand in terms of size and weight but as precise as it was, it was almost on the cellular level but the atomic level necessary to filter his blood himself was in the million times smaller in terms of scale as such a specially designed machine was a must.
His specimen implant was Tek in nature and this means Element in some form.
And this element he did everything to get was well Element, fractional particles of it that got expelled and absorbed by his implant daily with an increase after eating due to a boost in production, a quantity that even if it were to be multiplied wouldn't change anything as it was what he lived on, literally.
The true essence of his being was even that to a no small degree. All the metallic roots and pulsing blue energy when he spoke to Eywa or when he tamed Aegis were no simple representation, they all had Elements in some shape or form or showed their presence in the deepest part of his being.
It was one the potentially most dangerous substances in the universe when in its raw form, it could alter anything and everything into copies of itself forever altering the fabric of reality, from physical material to energy and more.
It was an exotic chemical outside of all known physics yet at the same time with interaction to all, only the word Element was a good denominator for what this thing was. It couldn't be truly classified on the periodic table being placed to the side as Ex short for Element, it was in a way not part of how reality was understood. It seemed to work both in and outside of the closed system that is the universe.
As it grew it created more matter and energy than it consumed increasing its growth further breaking several laws of physics such as the First, Second, and their law of Thermodynamics, it broke the entire notion of entropy by its mere existence.
This was in its raw pure uncorrupted form, it wasn't immutable to change, the exact opposite. Each of its forms had different properties and uses, it was an endlessly strong and adaptable substance. If it wasn't the case it wouldn't be usable at all and Liam would be presently dead, having turned off.
It wasn't conscious, alive, or anything of the sort by itself; it simply was as much as hydrogen or any inert matter was neither alive nor conscious. It just reacted differently depending on its state and what it was used with.
It wasn't evil in the same manner as antihydrogen, or the most dangerous virus that could exist, or prions or plutonium weren't, they were to not be handled recklessly or without extensive knowledge.
Well as long as it didn't become the Corrupted Element then it would have a will, a twisted destructive one born as a consequence of humanity's collective action and emotion such as pain and madness brought by war.
Thereby changing what was pure, not alive, by giving it a purpose to grow, consume, and subdue everything standing in its path by any means necessary, switching from passive to aggressive.
For that to happen he must mess up really badly or do it on purpose. But even though it was pretty harmless overall as of now it needed to be handled with the utmost care, it could snowball rapidly out of control with its capacity to spread like something almost akin to cancer.
At least that was per Liam's understanding and he will make sure it will grow by his will to be used for his, Eywa, and everyone's continual existence.
A few minutes passed as his weary silver eyes instinctively trailed toward the tesseract even before the various scanners that told his foggy mind it was eleven picograms worth of impure Element, slightly lower than the weight of a human red cell. One picogram of impure Element per liter of blood, one picogram being one quadrillion times less than one kilogram.
All of this blood for so little, he almost shuddered, and the thought that this would have been done to him if he had been captured, and if he got captured, this would happen and so much worse. Blood wasn't going to be the only thing to be extracted.
It was low on the ladder of horror but if the humanity of this universe came to get Element and he had no control then the end result wouldn't be different from the lore or reality of this video game universe.
What he was doing was a risk that could end for the worse but between this and the certainty it would turn for the worse then the choice between the two was self-evident.
The tesseract was a safe place for the few picograms of Elements he recorded from his body and there was no need to worry about it since the form it currently was its growth capacity was almost zero and it was kept in the tesseract as a way to not lose it.
Far from the sheer scale and speed that for example an odd five kilogram of raw Element could swallow an entire town in not even two weeks, the more time passes the greater the growth. Even without it being corrupted it wasn't a toy or to be underestimated.
"Sleepy… Might have gone a bit too hard for the first time.", he mumbled massaging his sweaty forehead as he stumbled back toward the Living Quarter and fell like a log on the bed that was defying the moon's gravity by simple magnetism. A mattress, with pillows and a comforter where he could change their shape, density, and temperature to his will.
The sudden disappearance of more than a third of his blood from his body was not without effects, it was already miraculous he didn't pass out yet. He was slightly too excited and only stopped before the seriously dangerous limit.
Liam woke up the next day after twelve hours, his face still pale and heavy eye bags under his eyes with in bonus a killing headache that came with a feeling of weakness, and a deep hunger, which was something he had predicted in advance.
Walking up to the massive fridge that was more of a cold chamber than anything, he opened it and stared at several dozen metal compartments that each contained four kilograms worth of extremely nutrient-rich food, all with ingredients oriented toward replenishing blood.
He wasn't going to only drink this meat-plant-smoothie when alternatives existed and he doesn't have much of it left to begin with.
'What to eat…', he scratched his beard while cold air wafted over his body, his stomach rumbled loudly and without much further thought he took the closest to him with a full course meal with pot au feu as the main dish but instead of beef, the meat was of a thanator and every other ingredient from Pandora with various supplement added it.
After heating up what needed to be heated he sat on his bed a table rolled by itself and he began to eat, at this point, the headache had mostly disappeared and his face had gained some of its color back.
"Hmmm.", he hummed as soft classical music started playing and a hologram appeared before his eyes, lazily waving in the air as he took a large piece of meat that melted on his tongue. The freezer didn't alter any of it, he designed it right.
His left index finger moved as from the hologram what appeared to be an alien tower of metal and strange root with a lozenge-shaped cavity right below its split pointy top. Implant glowing a bit brighter the plan of the megastructure snapped into millions of pieces all grayed out or loading as it focused on a small part of the whole.
It was the design of an Obelisk, similar in shape but in a grant party different in goal than the ones on an ARK. It was barely a month-old project and these Obelisks would serve three major purposes: defense, attack, and support.
But it was Tek, Tek he didn't have the Tekgrams of, and as knowledgeable as he was a single month wasn't enough, several years were, then there would be the astronomical amount of resources necessary to build them. At the moment he didn't even finish working on the outer shell.
"Oh fuck my head…", the hologram fizzled out of existence as he cursed the headache suddenly flared back in a way that led him to crush the titanium fork in his hand and stopped him from thinking coherently.
"Yeah, clearly overdone it… But it's… I will do like half of it now…", Liam babbled, breathing heavily and deeply as with the twisted utensil he finished eating, the table by his mind moved away and every dirty silverware was put in the washing machine, even the fork but he couldn't manage to bring himself to care.
He laid on his back, his boot still on from yesterday on the mattress whose temperature lowered, closing his eyes he breathed in and out deeply as he tried to void his mind of stray thoughts but without much success. Groaning he cut off the music and tried again yet no success.
He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep from the get-go and to begin with having no thoughts for him was almost an impossibility, his brain constantly going over and over many things at once.
Abandoning this senseless endeavor he decided to go the opposite direction as in either case, the headache wasn't going to diminish, even less disappear until his blood level became close to normal again.
Focusing upon his links to his tames he felt the minds of every one of them, nearly all were asleep and only one was dreaming something remotely interesting.
It was Gladius and it was about eating with him and everyone, it was heartwarming but quite common for the murder bird while for the awake, Meri was playing with apparently still living food, and Aegis, the massive armored shark was just hunting, likely going to take down two or three reckless flying creatures before sleeping.
Surface yet detailed level information garnered from his deep familiarity with his tames, he knew them like the back of his hand. They were an extension of his will.
One interesting was that there was no variation in intensity, no latency or interference, the kilometer of snow, the ice above, with the blizzard, added to the sheer distance between the icy moon and Pandora was almost three times the one between Earth and the Moon being of no effect to this Psionic phenomena.
It meant several possibilities of which three stood out, it was supraliminal and couldn't get affected by those earlier mentioned points by ever the tiniest degree or it was working on a different plane of reality or a blend of all and some more.
It was fascinating and from his weak understanding the last option was the answer, it couldn't get affected and didn't obey regular laws of physics because it was simply working outside of them, they were metaphysical in nature.
The only physical material seemingly interacting with it without being alive to a great extent were pandorium and Element but for the latter, he played just as much of a major role not that life didn't play a role for the former. Psionic was tied to life, or as it seemed emotion, thoughts, Mind, and Soul, all that was born and the byproduct of sentience and sapience.
And those two materials had in common that they were doing the middle finger to physics and many if not all of the great minds behind its development.
But the study of physics at the end like all sciences was a human idea, a way for the species to try and understand a fraction of the universe, it wasn't the universe itself. It was bound to have mistakes and change to evolve for a better version of itself.
And he, Eywa, human, Na'vi, and tulkun, for all sapient beings or species, needed a common understanding of reality wherever its name may be to communicate and understand each other.
There is the truth and the opinions around this truth no matter how close or far to it they are, their very nature as opinions is immutable unless the individual can bend reality.
That's how he saw it, that was his opinion.
Seeing on the side for his tames there wasn't much going on and it needed more focus to have any information not helping the headache Liam decided to do the obvious and put his entire focus foregoing everything but the empathetic bond toward the being that for Na'vi would be considered eerily close to a mate.
A bond that had kept on growing slowly like a tree, its root digging deeper, its trunk gaining in strength and leaf in vibrancy. Focusing on it his thoughts stopped for the briefest of instant.
The pain didn't go away, it was a physical one and not mental but his Mind entering in a suddenly deeper mutual embrace with that of Eywa let him put it at the back seat of his thought, it was there but not a focal point anymore.
Both basked in the other inter and intra flow of emotions, both human, aliens, and oh so much more that none but them could understand they didn't need to have a deep meaning or need to complex the presence of the others was enough to bring a sense of peace, protection, and serenity to both.
This was how the next month unfolded, eat, drink, communion with Eywa, work, eat and drink, bath, blood drainage and filtration, sleep rinse and repeat until no food was in the fridge or his inventory.
A flight back to Pandora was in order, and for more than simply refurbishing the fridge Liam couldn't stray for too long, he couldn't communicate and connected to Hell's Gate from here aside from his tames and such he was limited.
And the amount of blood drained and filtered led to the production of not even a nanogram of Element, it was a slow start but a start needed to be somewhere. It didn't matter how much effort, blood, and sweat he had to put in for it to truly begin.
*
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クリエイターの想い 
The_Bip_Boop2003
The_Bip_Boop2003 Hello. So this is how Liam will get Element and the way he does is an important plot point. I hope it makes some sense how he can get it but it won't be easy if you count bleeding yourself for an undetermined amount of time an easy task to begin with.
Bye-bye!
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