Chapter 5-139: Shroudzone Killing

It was also time to arrange my first Star.

I slotted the first Arcane Star, four spells in I Slots opposing four spells in II Slots, all in the Wizard Slots doubled by Archwizard 1 and 2. The opposing energies and forms catalyzed, forming a complete whole and harmonic that echoed up and down my Matrix, strengthening every single spell I could cast.

Star Magery, the First Star. +1 to base Caster Level, not bound by spell type or specialization or anything. Effectively, base Caster Level 7... which keyed my Arcane Strike die mod to +3. A d6 first die hit from one of my spells was now 2-12.

A small step, but a big one. The Second Star wasn’t far away.

Closer. It was getting closer...

---

My personal adjustments for the start of my magical day done, I returned to the others, who were watching with interest. They all knew I had a Dusk Renewal, and things happened at dusk for me.

Since what had happened was definitely going to affect tonight, Master Fred calmly prompted, WELL?

“Arcane Thesis and Chain Spell online. If you don’t know what they do, that’s fine, you’ll be seeing shortly. First Star in place.”

He was the only one who understood all those terms and their implications, and his quad-Sign eyes widened significantly. It was indeed a huge power-up.

“Your Aura is significantly stronger,” ‘Topaz’ noticed closely. “Is that... did you just jump two Levels?” she had to ask. Her voice, accent, bearing, and everything else were completely different from Shvaughn. Only a similar build might have betrayed her, but her attire showed more skin and muscle, giving her a much more muscular, earthen appearance than the fiery-haired, fair-skinned Shvaughn.

“No. I gained a Level in Wizard and formed my First Star, which adds a Caster Level. Since you’re picking up magical strength, you’re reading the Spell Power as a Level.”

“Oh.” She was still impressed. “Let’s see those Shards you’re so good at, then.”

Both Silent and Still were in effect on them. I literally had to think for them to appear in a circle in front of me, teardrops of jet and silver, limned with radiance... and nine different types of energy revolving about them. Ten Shards came up, with the one extra from Shardcaster in the middle.

I could still manifest two more if I desired.

They looked at the black undead banefire, glittery positive energy, ethereal vivic energy, force ripples, fire, lightning, cold, and subdued chimes of thunder, and the golden light of the Holy Metas. The teardrops of killing force seemed appreciably bigger than they should for such a minor spell, as did the humming, roiling force that seemed to be constrained about them, ready to erupt.

Helix swallowed audibly, and nearly swooned after he counted them.

“Holy Harse,” Father Bower rumbled, staring at the display. “Even with that new version of the spell, I’ve never seen more than six...”

I flicked up two more, iridescent and smokey joining opalescent to form a trio in the middle. His jaw dropped.

“What are you Casting at?” Topaz asked, staring at the display with a mixture of desire, horror, and respect.

“With Shards, I Cast at Twenty, with plus another thirteen Potency.” i.e., +33 to get through something’s Spell Resistance.

Not bad for a Five, right? The Boosts were eye-catching, but the +9 damage per Shard from different energy types, the fixed +2 boosts of fire and lightning, +8 from Clavus, +7 from Specialization and Necropotence, and my Warcaster’s Edge of +10 meant that if I chose different targets, I could be slamming 2-12 + 38 as base damage into each target, cut by half if it Chained.

In short, an individual Shard could easily take out a buffed-up Wraith, probably a Spectre, and the Chains wipe out a buffed Wraith or anything lower.

What they could do to a solo target without energy resistances was even worse!

The Mick broke the awe with a snort. “Aye, nice, but undead without limit, and limited Valences. What about your pea shooter?” he asked directly.

The circle of Shards snapped out of existence, and two Darts cycled up to replace them.

They were almost as impressive as the Shards, lacking only the Warcaster’s Edge for the extra bite, and the fire and lightning extra was at ½ a spell level, i.e. +1 each. Positive Edge’s +6 bonus was particularly noticeable, almost as strong as the Banefire.

“And you can shoot those all day?” Helix almost protested. “Those are at least as good as my arrows!”

“Which actually means your arrows need a lot of work,” I fobbed right back at him, and he could only sigh in acknowledgement.

“What is the misty white fire?” Topaz asked, looking at it intently. “I’ve never seen it before. I saw it on the bodies back at Hermitage, eating them away.”

Eyes glanced around the table warily, but I replied unhurriedly, “That is vivic fire. It only harms things that qualify as undead or extraplanar, or are loaded with non-natural energies. It feeds them to the Land, breaking them down swiftly.

“Most pointedly, it permanently kills Shroudlocked undead.”

She blinked once, her face hardening just slightly as she digested the importance of that... and she realized that I was warning her not to touch them, since she had Sinpacts that would qualify her as a target, and the fires would burn her. “That sounds really important,” she got out, the understatement of the year.

“Yes. This is how we’re going to kill our way to the Shrine. Any undead we kill are not going to respawn.” I looked at all five of them, and the five shooters. “We may not make it all the way to the temple tonight, or even tomorrow... there’s simply too many undead that can converge on us.

“But we are going to thin them out hugely, and they won’t be coming back the next night. Even if the Shroudlord reacts and sends out more and more undead, they still have to reach our location from where they spawn.

“Our objective is to get close to the Shrine and kill every single undead that we can see along the way, reducing the amount that we might have to put up with around the place, as well as its personal forces. Topaz, you don’t have a Vivic Weapon, so you’re mostly going to be on defense for this entire trip... unless and until we run into human opposition, at which point you’re going totally on offense.”

Specifically meaning Warlocks, but Dark Clergy were a thing, too.

Her crystal-gold eyes flashed understanding. “Got it.” She hadn’t been brought along to fight undead, after all, that was our job. “How are we handling dispersion? Travel? Supplies? Healing?”

“I’ll leave it to you experts on our formation, adjust as you feel fit. We are going to be aggressively getting into the face of the undead and leaving a big burning trail behind us that is likely going to reach massacre status before the end of the night. The more that come, the more will die. You shooters are going to be very sore in the morning.”

The five men grinned grimly. It would be a good ache to have.

“Travel will be by Disk. I will use a Mass Disk spell to generate enough for everyone to ride, and be casting a Flight spell that will last until tomorrow dusk, so I can drag everyone over any and all terrain, and get us away from all but the quickest incorporeal undead... while everyone is on a particularly stable shooting platform and can just pick them off while they are chasing us.

“For healing, we’ve got Father Bowser, Sir Pellier, Helix, and myself as backup to Master Fred, who can basically churn out Health healing all day within seventy-five paces. I imagine everyone has Potions and Stuff, and we’ve two CLW wands as backup for emergencies, which I doubt we’ll have to use.”

“Spoils?” she continued on, in proper mercenary fashion.

“Evenly divided, but we’re not expecting much. Everyone is going to be contributing in their own way, even if they aren’t as active. You’re going to be playing situational defense with your specialty. Master Fred is going to be on overwatch, especially with his Devilsight. I’m going to be primary firepower, Helix is second cannon, and everyone else is going to be cleaning up or taking targets of opportunity.

“If you’re wondering about Karma, we’ll be raising a Fellowship to share Karma equally. Everyone is contributing, not just the active shooters, and I don’t mind sharing, even if I might just outkill all of you.”

They grinned despite themselves. They’d be riding a sweet gravy train with me plowing the path!

I didn’t mind. They were here to help me, anyways. The more Karma they got, the better, as far as I was concerned!

I found myself amused at the thought of single-handedly clearing all the Shroudzones on this world. Sure, it wasn’t like wiping the whole population of Luna-Terra and then some, but I wouldn’t have to share it with a hundred thousand other people, either. Potentially, I could blow past Aelryinth in Level with that much Karma.

Hah!... but no, this world needed Tens, too. What was going to happen when the Shroud came down was going to require a bunch of high-Level people, and the best way to get them was to stuff them full of the Karma from the Shroudzones.

Getting vivic Weapons and spells would push the undead back from the edge of the Shroudzone, but without continuous Death Wards, or being really tough and being able to get healed quickly and insta-wipe Congregants who could unleash the various kinds of Negalances, there was going to be little they could do to press into the places and truly wipe them without taking a lot of casualties.

If they just endured and waited for forces with Death Wards to take care of the problem forever, not so much an issue.

--------

The ‘wander zone’ around the Shroudzone extended for twenty miles, instantly depopulating the once most-settled area of Mexico. The wandering physical undead generally never got to within ten miles from the edge of the Shroudzone, unless they were semi-intelligent and pushed in a single direction. That was usually because one of the Congregants got their undies in a bunch and wanted to see if they could corral some humans for munchies and extra servants.

Twenty miles outside the Shroud was the Draw Limit, the point at which the pull of the Shroudzone was so strong that even the swifter incorporeals just slowed down and wandered aimlessly in that area, unable to push further. Go in past that, and the greater shadows, wraiths, spectres, ghost, wailing phantoms, and other assorted incorps were almost certain to home in on you, drain your soul, generate a minion for themselves, and another corpse would rise up and shamble towards the Shroudzone to be assimilated.

There was no great Wall here. Mexico didn’t have the unity to make one, having fractured long ago into various states run by warlords and self-appointed nobles basically worried usually about themselves and their immediate families, and tolerating everyone else as hangers-on. The fact this situation was exploited by Dark churches, the criminal families, and a lot of Warlocks only made the situation endure.

The forces that helped corral new undead coming into the Shroud were as much rivals as compatriots, with clearly-defined areas of responsibility that were exploited heartlessly by everyone else. They could barely deal with wandering Walkers heading to the Shroudzone, and all too often two patrols meeting erupted in a shoot-out over bad blood, and things perpetuated, stirred up by servants of Shoul who loved the cutthroat atmosphere.

The people living here, of course, generally did not, but they didn’t have much power... and if they were Powered, they were generally conscripted or shot before they could become a threat.

That meant that most threats to the established powers came from outside their demesnes, particularly from the north, where so many meddling Good churches had become well-established. Said Churches were not at all understanding of the kind of shit the Dark Churches encouraged to happen and tried to export, be it drugs, slavery, prostitution, rampant theft, blackmail, extortion, smuggling, or the like.

As the Churches weren’t exactly totally honorable about national borders, especially the likes of Valus and Tiirith, the primary areas of conflict weren’t at the border. The more Lawful churches maintained a veneer of respect for the idea of Mexico as a country, and didn’t go claim land south of the border. However, they encouraged a LOT of locals, defended the Powered born there, and gave them unstinting support. Moving against a Church of Harse in one of the provinces meant moving against ALL of them, and in that way a buffer zone from the American border had been made.

With the convenient excuse of helping their brothers, they were the hotspots of conflict with the crime families, Dark churches, and the forces that had gathered around them...