No More

Chapter 73: Revealing

Jess P.O.V.

I just sat there. My feet dangling off of a cliff while the stars in the nighttime sky shine like a polished gem. Yet the black, scorched crater still glowed with hot embers of the recent destruction of a town once full of people.

Living... fragile... bleeding... ignorant people...

Occasionally, I would look back to see my mutant enderman, Blink, using his multiple arms to teleport the frozen, black statues that were once living people onto the large clearing behind me.

"So, the freak did it again," Said Cassie inspecting the dead silhouettes with her cat following her, writing in a book to keep track of the number of people being transported. "Even though he knew he is being used, he ends up killing everyone in each village under the protection of the Clockwork Fortress."

"Well, everyone except the citizens who runs away from the fight." She continued to write in the book. "I guess the freak was telling the truth when he said he's only after the soldiers under the command of the Clockwork Fortress."

"Why would someone with nothing left to lose lie, Cassie?" I asked rhetorically, before looking back at destroyed village far below the cliff I'm sitting on.

"So what is this stuff?" asked Cassie, tapping a black statue, only for her recoil back in pain as her nail cracked from the action.

"It's carbon, Cassie, the base of all life." I said, recalling a chemistry lesson from when Ivor was alive. "Yet when rearranging the carbon atoms, and the atomic bonds, you create an allotrope of it."

"An allotrope?" asked the Chaos Sorcerer, rubbing her cracked nail.

"Multiple physical forms in which an element can exist," I explained. "Diamond and charcoal are allotropes of carbon, it's just that the atomic structure is different, and determines how strong they are."

"So what allotrope is this then?" asked Cassie, using her chaos magic to heal her nail, gesturing to the black statues that Blink is teleporting eight at a time.

"Lonsdaleite," I answered. "Ivor had a theory about reinforcing the atomic bonds, and rearranging the atoms, of carbon can make something stronger than diamond. So he named the now-possible material: lonsdaleite."

"Did that theory worked?" She asked, walking up to sit next to me on the cliff under the night sky. "Did he actually create something harder than diamond?"

"Ivor never got to test his theory," I said sadly. "He died before he could, and he never had anything, at the time, to even attempt to create the material."

"So how are you able to do it then?" Cassie asked skeptically before realization birthed into her eyes, letting out a sigh. "Never mind, it's your skill [Transmutation], right?"

I nodded. "If I practice and study hard enough, I can even manipulate the atomic structure as I rearrange the existing matter." I acknowledged. "With the research Ivor left behind, I'll carry on his legacy... and his retribution."

"Well I wish you told me that before I tapped that stuff..." Cassie grumbled, rubbing her healed nail. "But how did the freak reconstruct living people into carbon, then into lonsdaleite? How does he know the allotrope, or manipulate things on the atomic level?"

"I had PAMA download that knowledge into the freak," I explained. "Copied from Ivor's chemistry notes, and the results of my own alchemy experiments."

"So that black stuff that's pouring out of him...?"

"It's also carbon, well mostly." I added. "His body is breaking down into its primary component, and yet regenerating just as fast."

"So how can he move it?"