Chapter 10-318: Another Town, and One More Show

Author's Note: Just so everyone is clear: The Royal Road voting system is vote 1/two weeks, for however many books you want to. What they intend to do with that, I don't know.

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Mother Morningfire was, of course, insistent on being dashing in her fighting, with a poofy-sleeved white shirt, plumed hat, thigh-highs, and a mithral Rapier that occasionally sparked with lightning. Sorceress, cleaned up instantly and mended everything quickly. She had done her military service, however, and she did know how to fight undead; she simply insisted on looking good while she did it, and of course the rest of the family were not allowed to look much worse, even Highsun and Flame in their uniforms.

I didn’t think the undead would much care, but I suppose turning undead-slaughtering into a fashion event showed the Morningsun regard for the undead.

I was by far the most drab out of all of them, although all my Baneskulls definitely gave me the Goth-vibe edge over everyone. I reckoned it would not be long before the fashion corrections started coming in, no doubt couched very subtly...

Well, I suppose there were worse families to suddenly become a part of.

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I was leaving them in good hands with Azaia and Legion, so I had no worries for them. Of course, using Mass versions of Dawnstopped Death Ward, Greater Magic Weapon, Vivic Weapon, Force Armor, Improved Darkvision, Motion, and Elemental Resistances, so they were Buffed to the nines for the fighting, didn’t hurt their chances at all, either.

They all had magical items to work on in downtime, too, in one form or another. Picking up the Item Creation Feats with Artificer and Alchemist Levels was going to be one of the things they needed to do.

The goal was to put down enough undead to at least gain one Level, plus feed their Named Weapon and the Item Familiar they were going to pick with that new Level. All of them had agreed that it would be Rings, since I and Azaia were paving the way, and getting Sustained was of primary importance.

They were all very impressed by the dark vibes of the Old Steed, completely unafraid of his flames and skeletal appearance – he was my mount, so why did they need to be afraid, right? - and they all got to pet him while I rode alongside Sleipner to their hunting zone.

Highsun and Flame took over when we reached a combat zone, the first zombies having clawed their way out of the ground and starting to come our way.

They were all only Threes, but they were Buffed and knew what to do. I wasn’t worried for them, and if incorps came in, well, Azaia could handle anything short of a true Horde of them without a problem.

Of course, there was nothing for it but that I’d have to Mark-feed everything I was going to do, because they all wanted to watch and see me at work. I could only roll my eyes and agree, since there were tons of others getting the same service.

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I came out of my Teleport at the closest Lived-Line location to Beijing, which was about a hundred miles away.

The Old Steed, wearing his new custom Horseshoes of Speed which doubled his velocity, headed off overland at a clip that could rival Sleipner’s casual cruising speed, very enthusiastic about it. If I gained another actual Level of Binder, he would probably gain the power to Veilwalk and really be able to cover ground, but that was for the future.

I assessed the progress the Chinese team had made as we tore across the landscape, trailing harmless magical flames as we did.

The Shroudzones were churning out more and more Sixes and up. My supply runs for high-QL Weapons to supplement what Briggs and Commander Haru’Ara were putting out certainly helped matters a lot. There were entire dwarven clans churning out swords, axes, and spears for the Chinese, being paid for out of the Firezone profits. It was a sign of just how much shit they were pulling out, and which I was able to Energize, that the money was basically being written off... although the Chinese were very clear on the debts they owed us for procuring all of this for them.

Sometime in the future, they’d pay it back. Just not now. There were murdering Cultivators to butcher.

The Chinese were playing it very efficient, exploiting the Karma of the Shroudzones as precisely as they could, then leaving them behind for those of lower Level once their Double Helix was active and they hit Six, and could finally be considered tough enough to take on Cultivators.

Their slow and lethal expansion and progress was now running into more new Shroudzones, larger numbers of Daoists gathered together in defense, and similar things. Happily, if they couldn’t take on the Daoists, they could just take out their anger on Shroudzones until more new recruits arrived to help them out.

The situation in this place was a little more special. I wasn’t facing one Formation defending Beijing; I was facing two.

Death Qi users...

I had to admit this bunch of bastards was pretty clever. They had discerned that the masters of a Shroudzone and its lieutenants were channels from the Shroud for tremendous amounts of negative energy. The Death Cultivators had swarmed into the center of the Beijing Shroudzone, captured the Dark Cardinal here and its Bishops, along with most of its Congregants, and staked them out as the center of a Death Qi-forming Formation, fed by the massive amounts of negative energy coming right from the Shroud.

Using that power, they’d basically taken over the millions of undead in the Dead March around the city and circled Beijing with them, drawing on their power yet further to produce ever more Death Qi for their use.

The end result was a whole lot of Cultivators that had broken Six, at least one that had glutted himself enough to break Ten, and two massive defensive Formations: one around the city with the Cultivators sucking in that Death Qi, and the other protecting the millions of undead outside, standing there and feeding their power into the Congregants powering the whole process.

Briggs and Commander Haru’Ara had already set up a trio of vivic Obelisks to counter the effects of the spreading Death Qi, and the life-leeching stuff was streaming into the Stones and burning away, leaving a ‘safe’ zone in between them. The burning triangle of unwhite fire standing a klik from the Domes, daring the Daoists to come out and play, was a clear challenge to them, but the Daoists were definitely not taking the bait.

Well, wasn’t that special of them. It conserved their strength and forced us to come up with some way to defeat their cute little scheme.

Which, naturally enough, was why I was here.

I rode into the camp, definitely attracting attention, but everybody knew who I was, and, given the shit they’d seen, they weren’t going to be put off by a mere flaming skeletal not-horse running along a foot above the ground.

I naturally had a lot of Blessings to distribute. There were a half-dozen very loyal Chinese who’d invested enough in Tatting that they could now make Sama’s Marks, which was a very not-small Investment in Skill Ranks, Feats, and Masteries. However, they were always busy, because Nulls weren’t limited to just one Mark, after all!

Me doing the initial Blessing saved one Tat per person, and got the recipient very quickly into the Markspace and the /tellepathic link that replaced an Allegiance /tell system for them.

They were basically all sworn under Briggs, although he could and did organize them under gifted commanders with potential Warlord talents, creating sub-Monarchs/Nobles to head up fighting companies with particular sets of skills or combinations thereof. The uncommon Sources were nominally ideal for that, but of course just because you were a Source didn’t mean you had the head to be a good commander. As often as not, Sources were just the strongest men in a company or platoon, and even that might not be true if they weren’t particularly strong to start with.

Such was the fact that average people were average in most ways. Even if they had been hardened and conditioned by a tough life, it didn’t make them Amazon-level in their Stats... although taking Forsaken Sorcerer Levels and the like so they could Nog their Stats up to at least 14 quickly was definitely a big thing for them.

Cultivators weren’t the only ones building for perfection, and the Chinese were definitely ready to push the point down their throats!

I spent an hour passing out hundreds of Blessings, mostly Constitution or Intellect. The instant +4 was a major benefit over Marks, which had to be Infused in fighting and combat towards their full power, a process that took over two weeks if they were fighting every day.

If they were Nulls, they could hold a lot of Marks, but only one Blessing.

Things to Invest in, after all.

But they weren’t the only ones working on Investing...

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I touched Clavus to the outer Dome, and as the Formation’s field snarled at me and tried to get through my Death Ward, my Argent Touch took the Force elements of its structure and blew them apart.

Silver and jet energies blew inward, vivic elements devouring the Death Qi running through the air, and I floated through the opening while it tried to reseal itself, getting a better look beyond the shadowy Formation that had been protecting what was beyond.

Oh, isn’t this cute...

A whole bunch of dead and glowing eyes turned up to look at me. I waited for some Congregants to let loose, or incorporeals to manifest, but nothing happened.

There was a flock of undead birds or something that came my way. Chained Swarmkiller Shards blew through them, and they became dissipating white feathers of vivus.

It looked like they’d surrounded the primary Dome for a mile around with a solid mass of undead, at least one per square meter. They were on the ground, atop ruined houses, covering roads and ditches and streets and plazas and pretty much damn near everything.

There were definitely a lot of them to be fighting, but they didn’t have any fliers, and no ranged attacks to speak of. There were some mutated monstrous varieties which were pretty strong if they got into a physical fight, but like I was doing that.

No, this was just an opportunity for me to get a lot more higher-Valence Rep Counts was all.

Expecting this, I had memorized an Arcane Fusion, a hard-set of combined Energize and Shards. Since it was hard-set, I got Rep Counts to fuel the Energize, and the Shards would regain my Ki for me. That meant I still had a Fastcast I could use to top off more Valence III’s and even IV’s with Residual Metamagic, working on Pair, Admixture, Top, or Repeat Spell.

I had literally millions of undead in a great big ring around the Inner Dome to work with, too. This was going to be useful to me for a long time.

I could also alternate with Fabricate, which most amusedly would get some of the work I was doing with rough gems done instantly if I fell behind.

So saying, I began to Energize stuff. LOTS of stuff. I wasn’t restricting myself to gems, although I was doing ten-goldweight gems as standards now, and I had a virtual hill of crap gemstones I was working on, purifying, assembling into greater stones, and making ready for some sudden upgrades in value and usability.

Naturally, I didn’t want the local lads to miss out on this fine, constant, readily accessible bonanza of packed undead. So, among the first gems I brought up was crap rubies purified and merged into a flawless ruby, said ruby then Energized to Fire to be worth twice its nominal value towards doing Fire stuff, and it paid for the Permanency on the Sudden Widened Full Holy Meta’d Wall of Fire Cast at 50+.

This particular Wall of Fire was once again anchored to a pair of Rods buried in the ground, blazing away merrily right at the edge of the Dome. I shattered the Dome in front of it with an Argent Touch, and instead of healing back, the Dome was instead eaten away everywhere the blazing thousand feet and more of the Wall touched, forming a huge burning gateway into the area of the Outer Dome.

That area also happened to be massively antithetical to undead, as in any that entered it promptly exploded in Banefire and all the fun stuff. It also was completely harmless to Good and Neutrals by design, so the Chinese warriors could enter, stay within the 20-foot killing zone of the Wall, or retreat back through it, where no undead there could possibly chase them, and they could open up on the undead to get their daily Karma fills.

They had a Shroudzone right in front of them. It only made sense to work it.