Chapter 1-19: Losing a Bit of Your Soul

“If you have any long-term spells to Cast, do it now, while you’re at Five. We want to get you Drained as soon as you can, so that all the Karma you earn is while you are at Three.”

His pale eyes flickered. “Do... you want a Fly spell? It should last for about an hour.”

“Sure. It’ll help with our Karma harvesting.”

He had to smile at that, reaching over and touching me on the forehead. Arcane syllables tripped out of his mouth like wind, and flowed over me lightly.

I lifted an inch off the ground and stayed there. He seemed somewhat surprised I didn’t go soaring away in glee.

“Are you Force Armored?” I asked calmly. He sighed and murmured that spell, ripples of rigid force gathering about him in an unseen screen of mild protection. +4, like wearing light mail made of force, better than nothing... and unlike material armor, effective against incorps.

“Here’s what we are going to do.” I elevated over everyone’s head, and he followed as I glided over to stand on the battlements we’d chosen. He looked a bit impressed at how easily I was handling myself, and not getting excited at being able to fly.

“The key part of pulling and killing is the undead getting away. So, we’re going to pull them in from basically point-blank range. The shadows won’t flee if we are that close, so we pull back to hit them again as they close on us. That way, you can use your Lightning Reserve instead of Shards for the follow-up, and have your Rays in reserve.

“If we are quick and have good teamwork, we can totally earn you a whole nuther Level before the sun rises.”

He looked excited at that. “I’ll follow your lead!” he promised.

“Good,” I said, as my third Renewal hit.

I was already at full Valences, so all this did was cleanse them and get them ready. I shifted around my Wizard spells, sighing, and-

Dingding!

Gawdammit...

What had the damn Shroud inflicted on me now?

Blighter/1...

Blighter? BLIGHTER?!

I resisted the urge to spit. Blighter, the anti-druids?!

Blighters were another Evil class, woven around the concept of ripping the power out of the land to use Natural magic, instead of being chosen by the Land as one of its caretakers. It wasn’t harmony, it was looting and pillaging, abusing death magic, cursing the land...

Hells, it couldn’t even gain new spells without devouring the plant life in an area, reducing the greenery to dust and Cursing the place...

Cursing, yeah...

It was ALSO a tie to Druidic magic, probably the only tie I could make... and it was a Charisma-based Prepared Caster, like a Bard, because the people who did this sort of thing certainly weren’t wise...

Four skill points, three of which maxed out Faith, and one of which went into Stealth.

And the Druidic domain of Summer. Or, in the Blighter view of it, Parched.

I eyed the +1 Caster Level bonus to fire magic, the intent being to stimulate drought, famine, and ruination, from a Blighter’s perspective. I was also immune to natural extremes of heat, which increased to actual Fire Resistance with time...

The Ritual of the Burning Heart. The Ceremony of the Frozen Soul...

Despite myself, I had to smile.

I still had the echoes of those grand Druidic ceremonies inside me, and this Blighter Domain had just touched the first one with its Domain.

And what wonderful Feat had it chosen for me today?

Ah, Ghost-Scarred Soul. Almost an Achievement Feat, as taking necroic damage of one kind or another from an undead was a pre-req for the Feat. +2/+2 to hit and damage all incorporeal undead, and +2 to saves against undead.

It was a good feat for an undead hunter, make no mistake. Not what I wanted right now!!!... but whatever.

So I got to choose my Mastery. I picked Spellwarp Mastery/1, 0-I Valences.

Spellwarping was a skill that transformed an attack spell that inflicted damage into a Ray. This was nice because the Ray immediately had medium range, and there were other effects you could use once it was in that form... like, oh, Chain Spell, and especially Split Ray.

So, now I could turn my Valence 0 and I spells into Rays on demand, which would also give them a range boost of over a hundred feet.

Good enough to catch any undead trying to run away...

Tomorrow, tomorrow I could get the Good Domain...

-----------

The incorporeals were the fastest of the undead, and so naturally the first to arrive. It was like a cloudbank of screaming, damned souls, some dark, some phantasmal, rolling up like a necroic storm cloud of howling hate across the sky.

Helix said that they always came charging up in an undeathly rage, and rammed right into the Barrier, screaming and trying to get those beyond to let them past en masse, trying to get someone to panic and shoot wildly, freeing up multiple numbers to attack.

I wasn’t worried about it, although I cast a Protection from Evil on Helix, to his surprise and relief.

The wraiths were black, the spectres were spectral, and the ghosts were ghostly. The shadows were lagging back behind the truly quick incorps, flowing across the shadowed land down there towards us, the living, sitting behind this barrier.

Seeing how many thousands there were, I was plenty glad I’d had no intention of crossing this no-man’s-land during the night.

I pointed out the one I was going to shoot, he nodded, and his fist began to crackle with a lot of electrical juice.

I think the wraith was pretty surprised when 6d6+12 of disruptive cursed holy vivic damage blew a hole through it way out there as it was charging at us. The Barrier effect was broken by our attack, so it went right through it, its dark form peeling away shadows as an arm elongated like fluid, reaching for me with a phantom replica of a pitchfork or something.

Helix came in from the side resolutely, and slammed his fist into it.

His gasp wasn’t quite as loud as the shriek of the wraith, as a lot of voltage writhed over it, hooked into the vivic burn on its chest, and blew it apart into quickly dissolving white specks.

The people on the wall were gaping in disbelief at the sheer stupidity of his move... and of us being out there.

Helix’s hand was ghostly white, as was his face. He looked like someone had just dragged a chunk of his soul out, but the opposite had actually happened. He had a lot of negative energy in him, and if he didn’t push it out, it was going to permanently nullify a chunk of his soul.

The highest-Level chunk of his soul, as it were.

“I lost my Valences. I’m... I’m down to a Three again,” he whispered, shocked despite himself. He’d lost two Caster Levels with one blow, exactly like I’d said.

“And feeling horrible. First step on the road to greatness, Helix! Now, you’ve ‘just’ managed to reach Level Three in Sorcerer again, so there’s some stuff you can change.” He turned and looked at me in disbelief. “Change your Favored Class Benefit from the skill point of Flight to Extra Spell Known, Valence One. I trust you lost Unseen Servant?”

“Yes...” he admitted.

“Excellent. Replace it with Featherweight... which has uses against big things moving quickly at you. Ready with that Lightning Reserve?”

His staff lifted. To the surprise of many of the shooters above us, we were ready to go again!

“Retreat sideways as soon as I shoot it,” I murmured, he nodded, and I flicked out the Spellwarped Ray of Disruption Darts.

The wraith I hit had half its body blown away, and given we were right in front of it, it couldn’t wait to charge at us, rapidly closing the distance as we backed up urgently-

It hit thirty feet, and his bolt of electricity whipped over into it, and that vivic hole burning in it got some new fuel, shredding the wraith promptly.

“No Minister flames really helps,” I murmured to myself, Darts flicking up again.

Sixty feet away, the wraith there caught the shot, and almost fell through the Barrier. It flew at us fast, we retreated sixty feet, and as it came up on us, he zapped, I Darted, and it blew apart.

“Those are some extremely nasty Darts!” he swore, watching the pair swirl up on my hand.

“Shard-type spells are the most widely-used attack spells for a reason. You should consider making them your signature spell.”

“My Bloodline is aligned to lightning,” he replied matter-of-factly, as I sent out another Ray at another wraith, who promptly charged us.

Zap! Pooosh... “Shards can be aligned to elemental damage. Shardcaster Mastery/2.”

“No shit?” He watched me shoot again, and the damage I was doing. “That looks much more effective than my Reserve!”

-------

His Fly spell wore off in half an hour, forcing us to head back up top. By then, we’d killed nearly a hundred wraiths and shadows among the numbers hammering impotently at the Barrier, and thoroughly shocked the shooters up above us, many of whom had started and ended their shooting fairly quickly, with almost near the same number of kills... but usually divided up between four and six people.

Also, they weren’t using vivic energy, so the undead they were killing would be coming back. It made a major difference in the Karma they were getting. Disposing of a problem vs. knocking down a duck at a shooting gallery was a thing... especially since they weren’t getting them out of the way for a purpose that meant something. Target practice could be lethal, and if the undead actually got to swing at them, they’d earn more, but otherwise... yeah, they were just grinding and slowly putting in their time.

When Helix ran his Assay on himself and found that he already had the Karma back he’d need to get to Six, he was stunned. This whole event hadn’t cost him ANYTHING. He could be flying again in two days, if he ignored what I said and just gained straight Sorcery Levels again.

Then he thought about being able to use new and different spells, and healing magic, and realized not being able to fly for a few days wasn’t such a bad thing...

But... if he could hang around with me and get some more of that incredible Karma, wow, wouldn’t that be something? Couldn’t he get, like, all the Levels he wanted?...

Being the social guy that he was, he was soon hobnobbing around, and since the pure gunmen had largely left the wall by now, he hooked up with a few of the pros who didn’t mind me pulling something that was blasted half-dead.

They were soon impressed with my accuracy, as I basically didn’t miss any of the undead at all... and they really were half-dead as they came streaking in to get me, and were blown to flaming bits. This group of Archers, calling themselves the Deadwood Bows, enjoyed the pyrotechnics, and soon enough we were popping off wraiths and shadows left and right, with great regularity.

It was a nice Karmic grind for me, and I was happy to work that way and just keep accruing extra Karma. It wasn’t going to be enough for everything that I wanted to do, but that was hardly a problem.

I had zillions of undead to kill. Numbers of targets was not going to be an issue.