Chapter 5-153: Nine out of Ten

The videos were going to set off a shitstorm across the world, and societies which had settled into a form of uneasy security with the world were going to find fires lighting in their younger people: the ones who could easily become Forsaken, and take advantage of knowing how they had to Level!

Some people with great willpower and drive would be trying to reach Seven and become Forsaken, too. Vivus and the undead gave them the potential Karma to do so.

I wondered how long it would be before some idiots started treating the Shroudzones as resources rather than threats, and regulating who could kill the undead, maybe even having to pay for the privilege of doing so and gaining Karma.

Well, I was fairly sure that anyone giving those orders would be staked out deep in the Shroudzone for the undead to discover that night, and become part of the Karmic rewards...

Dusk Renewal slid past as I murmured the Salute to Aethra up on the roof of the studio, staying alone at this moment.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

Rassum frassum...

I eyed my Assay, and things began to pop up on it.

Archsorceror/3. Fine, doubling my Valence III’s. Logical choice.

Purchased Feat, Halvyr Racial Feat, Enterprising. I focused on that.

Your ability to balance multiple paths has reached perfection. You gain Favored Class bonuses for all Classes you take.

I blinked, and then blinked again.

Well, holy shittinski, Batman.

EVERY Class? Subject to the rules that two Benefits could not be the same? Still... wow.

Okay, this meant I now had to delve into the possible Favored Class bonuses for three Races for all those Classes... which was going to be a pleasant thing to do.

It left my Mastery. I turned over Shardcaster/4: take -Mastery Level in damage from any Shard effects, and reflect Shards back on their Caster.

Nobody was going to use my spell against me...

It had also taken my Elven Racial Level for me... perhaps the melancholy and resignation I was feeling was extending from it. Still, +1 Wizard Level.

I was now a Wizard/3 (9). Valence V Slots opened up politely, gasped in disbelief that I had two bonus Slots there even as I just arrived, and Domain Slots and everything else relevant piled in, cheering that I finally had my V’s.

I eyed the bonus Elven Racial Feat it had grabbed... Attuned to the Wild, which doubled natural healing in the selected Terrain.

The Terrain was... Shroudzones...

I looked up at the hazy clouds cutting off the stars, back at it.

This whole planet, and any planet hit by the Shroud, was technically a Shroudzone, even if it was only Haze.

Just what was it planning to... I focused on the tree of Feats linked to it, and naturally Mage of the Wildcaught my eye.

Another Elven Racial Feat. The magic of your favored lands fills you with power. You gain +2 to Caster Level, Concentration and Meditation Checks, and Spellcraft checks in your attuned lands.

I blinked again. That was definitely my top choice for the Purchased Feat for tomorrow. Holy crap, elves and halvyr were definitely overpowered. A flat +2 bonus for all that in an Attuned land? The qualifying Feat was only useful for Melees with Vigor... which elves tended to be. Combine with this, and wow, you didn’t want to face elves in their homelands...

Wow, tonight was a lot more meaningful than I had anticipated. I was just expecting a faux Wizard Level, and instead got a powerful Feat and a doorway to another.

Most impressive, indeed, and now I had to figure out a lot of magic. Because gaining Favored Class benefits in Minstrel, Binder, and Inquisitor meant I was getting Extra Spells Known in them, without a doubt...

Well, I had some interesting Slotting and Writing to do! Speaking of which...

The Healing Domain spell swapped in Raise the Dead, and I Wrote it to Einz. I had an Aruan gunner who’d missed out on a lot of Karma, and wanted to come back to life.

Then I Slotted a Raised Stone Shape at V, and blew my Duskstopped on it, extending the duration out to 24 hours. Then I used the last Slot for an Energize V, needed to make the Life Diamond.

The amount of stone that I could work in 24 hours was, mmm, impressive.

I Exemplar Surged for Extra Spell,Fabricate.

This was a craftsman’s spell, and why Casters could be awesome craftsmen. As long as you had access to appropriate tools and supplies, it allowed you to get an entire day of work done in one Casting, i.e. six seconds. Eight hours of work done, poof! Didn’t have to fire up the forge or nothing... it was just DONE.

In terms of ability to shorten the time needed to get stuff done, there literally wasn’t any more powerful effect. Sure, you still had to roll the Skill Check as normal, but that was fine.

Given how much work I had to do to refine Clavus yet, it was much appreciated, too!

I Wrote the spell into Einz promptly, before it could possibly fade away, and then took the time to Slot it in a V Valence as required in that familiar process I personally had never undertaken before.

I had Valence V’s. Soon enough, I’d be teleporting around the place...

Out of the gravel on the roof of the studio, I formed up a Rune Pattern infused with a trace of dimensional energy, the sigla matched to this location in six-dimensional coordinates.

Teleport Patterns at the arrival site doubled the distance you could jump to them. This would be my first District of Washington locus. I was going to have to start making up Patterns my subordinates could Energize so I could teleport to them...

Engaging in pleasant mental versions of power-ups, and picking all the spells I wanted, as well as some interesting other minor effects, I continued with my magical day.

It was time for me to go down there and perform a miracle out of the Bible, which had never been done on Earth before...

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Sergeant Mulligan didn’t look too bad for someone whose head had been blown open from within and had a sword shoved through it.

Mending is capable of fixing up minor problems like that on objects... and corpses were objects. You have to add a necromantic flair to it so that it worked on carcasses, but that was what the +1 Intelligence modifier option to the spell was good for.

Gentle Repose both kept his body from decaying and kept his spirit around, calmly shielding it from the draw of the Haze and a trapped fate while it lasted. There was a time limit on that, of course, as Resurrection Magic had a cap, and after a point the soul was going to depart, unless you resorted to nasty soul-trapping methods.

So, he was more or less intact, a little pale, stiff, and very dead once I flipped his corpse out of Itemization, popping him back out from paper form as a literal Scroll and rising up back into proper dead flesh.

Everyone had gathered back here at midnight, out in an empty parking lot near an Imprusar church that had been burned to the ground by a certain pair of angry malcontents who’d decided to meet up with us in the middle of their rampage against Imprusar churches... said rampage being cheered on by quite a few people, and which had some strongly issued support from Heavenbound Hall. The government had calmly checked it off as inter-church rivalry, washed their hands of it, and turned dour gazes on the reports from Heavenbound Hall and their own agents as to some of the things the Imprusar had done.

People were waiting for the two to arrive and torch some other buildings... well, waiting if the Imprusar were defending it. If such wanted to be martyrs, Briggs and Sama were fully ready to make them so. If nobody was defending it, well, there were plenty of people with whiskey, rags, bottles, and time, if not outright Bottled Fire or Fireballs.

I saw a vid with one guy walking up with a WWII-issue flamethrower, and to the cheers of the crowd, proceed to wash one edifice down. He had all the help he needed refueling it.

They all watched The Mick open one of several boxes in the trunk of Bone Marrow, full of dull, clinky rough stones that didn’t look like anything special.

I reached out with Stone Shape at V, hooked into the structure of them, and began to play with my Gemcutter modifier of +26.

I couldn’t ‘mold’ gemstones... their crystalline formations were much too strong. What I could do is remove impurities, i.e., undesired residues of other elements, as opposed to desired impurities that gave them magical meaning... and pretty colors.

I could also split them along fracture lines, and meld them together seamlessly along those fracture lines. Thus, taking smaller diamonds and making bigger ones out of them involved cutting them apart along precise lines and forms, fitting them back together without gaps, and ending up with a chosen finished product.

It wasn’t molding, but it was fusing!

No, not just anyone could do this. You needed a 30 or higher Skill check... mine was sitting at +26, take 10.

Oh, yeah, I’d spent most of my travel time not coddling a toddler Infusing my Mark, and its initial +1 Sacred bonus to Intellect had activated... which my Favored by Faith Trait had nicely increased to +2.

31 Intellect, +10 bonus, kiss it. Just waiting now for the 32 and my four thoughtstreams...

So, then I had to super-shatter a bunch of fake diamonds, wash the unwanted ‘dirty’ atoms within them out, fill in with carbon or ‘desired’ residual elements (soft iron pinkness was preferred for Life Diamonds), and literally jigsaw-assemble new diamonds out of them.

Minor TK was enough to elevate them and move them about and together in the required forms. They saw diamonds lift up, suddenly ‘leak’ all their muddy earthen hues into faint crystalline clarity, suddenly get cut apart into many pieces, some too small to make out, and smoothly come back together.

In less than thirty seconds, I had a pear-cut pale rose diamond in my hand, half as wide as my palm.

It was about two thousand carats, in the old measurement system. In the new one, it was a 5,000 gp gem, the bare minimum needed to be made into a Life Diamond that could Raise someone from the dead.

Doing that naturally required expending another V Valence, but that was what they were there for.

Soft white light bloomed inside the Diamond as I channeled the Energizing into it. This was the default method of making most of the rarer Energized Elements, as finding them in their natural state was actually pretty rare. You couldn’t make much at one time, of course, often to the tune of an ounce per Caster Level or less of whatever material you were dealing with... but that just meant more Castings, and over time, you could still accumulate massive numbers of stuff.

Oh, and you better have Alchemy and Chemistry Ranks telling you what to do, too.

Stronger items required higher Caster Levels to Energize. Mithral required a 15, making it the nominal limit of what Tens could require if Casting cooperatively, and without other bonuses. Adamant took a 17, and was out of reach of most non-specialist Casters. Really esoteric Elements took high CL, high Ranks, high Skill Checks... and might take Valences past V. Mulcaster and his eggheads had worked out that Time Elements required you to know your quantum physics and higher math cold... and you needed a minimum Intellect of 25 to make the easy stuff.

Making the transcendent glow of Life grow inside a prepped diamond was nothing...