Chapter 7-197: To the Caldera

Two days passed.

I was gifted with Battlemad/4 and Arcane Archer/4; their Theurgic Levels were assigned to Sorcerer, getting me to Faux Sorcerer/9 and opening up my V Slots. Dexterity Mastery/4 and /5 came with them, and oddly enough, Extra Spell Known I and II for Inquisitor. Interesting choice, but I supposed that I was going to have to take them for all my Spontaneous Caster Classes, so why not?

It had been a busy two days.

The Firelord had noticed or been informed that someone was wiping out its troops out here, and thousands more Fireborn had marched out of the Shroudzone and the nearest volcanoes, streams of animated fire and lava and whatnot creatures. This time it was without the truly intelligent troops, who seemed to be pulling back to the volcanoes and whatever fortifications they’d made of them, leaving this to the bestial or ‘immortal’ servants of the Firelord.

They didn’t know they weren’t coming back, but that was fine. It gave me plenty of targets to work with, and I was spellcasting for hours on end.

Given the amount of fire being hurled at us, I was putting Protection from Fire on the lads and the bikes repeatedly, and the combination with the Resist Fire could get us through literally scores of fireballs and other attacks, even in a swarm.

Said fireball tossers got suddenly and chillingly dead, Salamanders being the primary parties tossing around magic and stuff. They were also shooting with fiery arrows, while swarms of firebats and burncoils and stingfires and charbirds and generally a whole mess of stuff was thrown at us repeatedly.

I set off a bunch of altered Pyroclasms, cold-shifted to Cryoclasms, rather regretfully.

Pyroclasm was an Advanced II spell, in that it was designed to auto-scale depending on the Valence it was Cast from. It was also my choice for second Thematic Spell. When it went off, it looked like a zillion countless blackfire feathers edged like silver razors swirling around and shooting off in all directions, blazing through anything in their path. Very attention-getting, I was soon informed.

Pyroclasm’s claim to fame was not its damage, but its area. It didn’t scale in damage at all, except by increasing the Valence. It did, however, get much, much bigger.

Cryoclasm out of a II Valence did 2d6 damage, which was nothing to write home about... until you started adding all sorts of kickers to it. Like, oh, Penetrating Cold, Banespell/Fireborn, the Holy Metas, Warcaster’s Razor, Clavus’ Enhancement bonus, and the like.

Suddenly, a paltry 2d6 became 4d6 Cold damage, +2d6+42.

That was generally enough to insta-wipe anything below a Six, and definitely took out the small members of the swarms buzzing/flapping/gliding/diving in at us.

My Cryoclasm’s area of effect maxed out at a 100-foot radius at CL 10, 10 feet radius per CL.

Cast it out of a III, it was max 150-foot radius.

Cast it out of a IV, 200-foot radius.

And a V, 250-foot radius effect.

The only drawback is that it was centered on the Caster. So, I either had to move into position abruptly in the middle of the enemy force, or wait until a bunch of stuff charged me, and set it off.

With all those Kickers on there, it was great for clearing massive areas of Fours and less out instantly. I invested hard in Kickers for a reason, and wiping whole clouds of bats, birds, snakes, and bugs out at once so we didn’t have to deal with them was all part of it. Shattered and frozen things of fire died in droves, and Phantom Servants were everywhere gathering Cores.

Rep Counts had advanced quickly with so many targets who would not retreat, scatter, or run away. It was amazingly convenient. They came, we kited, and I reaped my counts.

Sanctified, Sacred, Blessed, Still, Silent, Reach, Extend,Vivic,Banespell, and Delimit for I’s all passed by, with Penetrating Cold simply because I was using it so much. My Fastcast was made Practical for I’s, followed quickly by Paired Spell, and then Chain Spell and Split Ray alternated between them until they were satisfied, then Topped, Bursting, and Energized followed suit. Purified and Consecrated came last.

The Mick shook his head when a Chained Shardray arced through twenty-five targets, snuffing them all. “Oy, that’s even worse than your Shards! Are you sure you want to kill them that fast?” he’d called out.

“You know that if I don’t Spellwarp it to a Ray, it’s going to Chain off every single Shard target, right?” I’d called back.

He pursed his lips as he looked at the burning river of elemental creatures flowing over the landscape after us, Smior sending out bloody Shardings at the tougher stuff that hadn’t died and were getting close.

Thirteen Shards, twenty-five Chained targets...

“Oh, I see. Ye just keep up with that nice, easy restraint of yours, Lady Traveler, and ignore the bloodthirsty ramblings of a demented swordsman.”

“Of course, Lord Mick.”

I’d really hated that I couldn’t work on more than one Meta or Spell per Casting, but when I was getting nearly a thousand Reps an hour, I got over it.

A huge train of burning giant Fire Ants was vomited out of a lava river and scampered towards us in a burning tide, the line of them literally a few miles long and still being sent forth in a swarm a hundred meters wide.

I sat there and did rep counts, blowing off Cryoclasms as they overwhelmed my hampered rate of fire, and rinsed and repeated the tactic for over an hour as they kept coming in mindlessly to the attack.

When they were gone, the Burn Scarabs started up, both flying and on the ground, raging at us in an incredibly loud buzzing, roaring Swarm. Walls of Icefire from Master Fred around us made sure they couldn’t actually reach us as I repeated the exact same tactics, and countless numbers of ravaging beetles as long as my forearm were smashed to frozen ash by repeated Cryoclasms recharged by constant volleys of weaponized Shards and the Ki they generated.

It was a good thing the bugs all vivisized fast, or there would have been heaping mounds of them all around me, despite us moving slowly.

The Salamanders did try assailing us while the bugs surrounded us, and found out that the range on my Shards was at least four hundred meters, well beyond the range of their own bows and spells. I had no problems reaching out and touching them, and if they died way over there or right in front of me, it didn’t matter, I still got my Ki.

A couple of their Nobles did try sniping at me from that range. They obviously weren’t familiar with Seeking spells, as I promptly picked off any of them shooting Rays at us from the distance, the Shards zipping around their cover like winged birds to crash into them, explode, and kill them.

I’m sure the spotters out there had interesting expressions when I was able to keep Cryoclasming for three hours straight, making it Efficient to +2 Metas.

The nigh-endless Fire Asps, each of them twenty feet long and spitting outsized blasts of fire as they slithered towards me, with massive super-cobra Greater versions rising among them to lead them, started coming at me, just as I was about when I started working on the III’s.

That, of course, meant Widen, which meant a V Valence.

A five-hundred-foot-wide dome of feathered ice flames became a thousand-foot dome of feathered ice flames.

I could slaughter thousands of the smaller snakes, and pick off the sixty-footers with virtual impunity after they were weakened. Sure, there were dozens, perhaps even scores at a time of the bigger ones... but I could Pair eighteen Shards into thirty-six, or I could Chain Shardray twenty-five at a time, whatever was needed to be able to connect them, generally the latter.

Best of all, when it was time to go, we just left. They couldn’t keep up with Sleipner, except with fliers, and fliers were just asking to get shot down by me, more free rep counts. When you are half a mile in the air and still getting picked off by the icy cold being you are following, you start not wanting to follow them rather quickly.

We’d be gone for eight hours, and then come back the next day to start anew...

Fighting prepared Wizards really does suck, no?

----------

I was pretty happy as we paused at dusk, the nearest Elemental Swarm a mile away and coming our way relentlessly.

Lesser Restorations to get rid of fatigue and exhaustion dealt with mental and physical exertions, so everyone was fine as far as readiness to fight went.

I was feeling very good. Literally months of Rep Count work had been covered in approximately two days. Sure, I had boatloads of Valences and Slots, but even recombining Down and getting off a hundred or two spells a day didn’t compare to getting a thousand rep counts an hour.

During these last few days, I had completely caught up on any version of standard Rep Counts I could possibly have managed. This Ki Reaping method was indeed extremely powerful.

When my Renewal came and dusk came down across the land, I finished my Salute to Aethra as I was smugly dinged once again.

Arcane Theurge/5. Extra Spell Slot V, Sorcerer. Wisdom Mastery/5, for +1 Wisdom.

Full synthesis of Sorcerer and Wizard casting for all Valences, and an extra Spell Known. Casting at Faux Ten for Sorcerer.

Still a Six.

Unbelievable.

My four Sorcerer V’s were True Seeing, Wall of Force, Arcane Fusion, and Spell Resistance.

Spell Resistance cast at 25 was enough to give invulnerability to all the lesser targeted spells coming in at us. Arcane Fusion let me cast a I, plus a I to IV Valence spell at the same time, adding more spells to the carnage as needed. Wall of Force was the most obdurate hard defensive spell known. True Seeing was the single best spell for looking through illusions and all forms of magical concealment and disguise, very hard to fool.

They were all spells I wanted available all the time. My Bloodline was still at Six, so I hadn’t gotten my Bloodline spells permanently... but that was what Wizardry was for, placeholding until they were activated.

Archsorcerer/5 should be tomorrow, doubling my V Spell Slots, and giving me over a dozen Slots I could spend on V’s a day... or in a burst, to be restored for 2 Ki each.

Mmm...

“We still driving for the center of the volcano?” The Mick asked, Smior in hand and studying the moving, burning landscape of Elemental Fireborn heading our way.

“Yes. I’m going to Blight the Node and collapse their control and the expanse of this section of the Firezone. It should basically force the Fireborn back, especially when I vivisize the disruption.”

The Mick smirked at the irony of the Blight interrupting an undead’s control of the Fires of the Earth hereabouts, and being unable to remove it. “Shall we be about fetching our Karma, then?” It was plain he really enjoyed being able to Level every day.

“Very well. Forward, Master Sleipner!” And our unicorn led us into the fray.