Chapter 16-411: On with the Job

Okay, Shvaughn was on the hunt, and some wealthy and powerful individuals were soon going to be part of the Hungry Warlock, I had no doubt. I wasn’t worried about them being powerful, as the number of Tens in the World who could be a danger to Shvaughn were generally all very focused on Leveling up right now.

If she was smug about how she was literally one step from a booty call with Legion at any time, I was nice enough not to point out that she MIGHT make the top ten of Legion’s amours...

Speaking of which... -Briggs, Sama, how goes the constant slaughter?-

It was now June. Rapidly Leveling Powered and Forsaken had been engaging in massive amounts of combat and slaughter for a Good Cause for half a year now, and the numbers of those joining had done nothing but increase over time.

-Their last attempt to push west into Afghanistan was stopped by the Morningsuns and the Europa Volunteers,- Sama /replied promptly. Which had generated a fairly cataclysmic amount of firepower in the stopping, too. Azaia and the rest of the family were once again making a very bright and burning name for themselves. -We’re preparing for the final push into Nepal and Bhutan. There’s limits, as we’re bordering the Yellow Fog off the Tibetan Plateau, but the Buddhists don’t dare go up there, either.-

-And those Brothers are still taking my best people!- Briggs /protested half-heartedly.

-Aye, the Forsaken Level quick and easy, without the distraction of going Deep,- Sama /agreed. -Makes some of the Powered pretty green with how quick they hit Seven and keep going. Got tons of Forsaken at Nine and just waiting their acknowledgement to hit Ten.-

-Brother Shadowknife, are they performing well on your end?- I /sent out to the ‘head’ of the Tibetan Purge.

The hyn /replied smoothly, -All is going well. It is basically killing nightmares. As they become better at killing them, they lose their fear, which weakens the phobos and makes it harder to form more of them with less fear about. As soon as they can start soloing the phobos reliably, our progress will be much quicker.

-We have basically made less than a few miles of real progress, as we keep getting pushed back come nightfall when new phobos are formed and surge into being. All having more people does is widen the front we are fighting in. This is a test of quality, not just quantity.-

The vast majority of Forsaken were straight Humans, so lacking some punch was understandable. On the other hand, half a year allowed them to improve their Gear a lot, and that had to be helping, as did basically becoming more and more immune to spells...

-The Brothers?- I /asked. I could monitor the state of their souls, and there was no doubt all of them were at Ten, and just getting Deeper for now. Their Karmic Hauls had to be impressive, but when you’re fighting dark dreams generated by literally the whole planet, it just wouldn’t end.

-We engage in oversight, or simply guiding the way each day through the Phasma.- The Yellow Fog could mess with heads, and without a triple array of Forsaken to lead the way, swallow even strong fighters.

Happily, there were many such trios exerting themselves there.

It was tedious, monotonous, dangerous, and messed with people’s heads when they were up there a long time. Every night, pushing forwards as far as they dared, clearing the Fog of nightmares, then retreating backwards, their camp and the burning vivic fires advancing only a short distance behind them, spreading out around the burning carcasses of the various nightmares that had lunged out of the fog.

Powered would have gone barmy. Forsaken just built up a tolerance to it that had to be frightening the phobos, if they weren’t made of fear themselves.

Their force was also tens of thousands strong and growing by the day, but like he said, having more people just meant more phobos could engage on people, since they all wanted to fight. The front was miles long at this point, vivic beacons holding the trembling space firm as nightmares burned and pushed back the Phasma bit by bit.

All of the Tibetan Purge was basically in their own chatbox, and only the very strongest were allowed intermittent outside connections, which basically meant the Void Brothers, as they could filter out the maddening shit readily enough. The Yellow King couldn’t maintain a foothold in my Allegiance through the Forsaken, so any successful infiltration into here through the mind of one rapidly degraded and was lost, while a Powered might have opened up to the whole of the Allegiance... which could have been bad.

So, I wasn’t going there. The only Powered allowed there were healers staying in the camps, at this point basically Heavenbound with Auras of Courage that made them immune to fear after the Amanans couldn’t hold out. The Heavenbound were basically constantly busy, and to their amazement, were also Leveling fast as they doled out the shiny stuff that sent others out to do the fighting instead of fighting themselves.

Amanans had long known that they were the anvil which the hammer of war beat against, the healing that tempered fighting men and made them into something more. Yeah, you could earn a LOT of Karma healing fighting people up, as basically all the Karma they earned was possible because of you.

Getting better at healing others was a pleasant side-effect, and going Deep into side Classes while you administered to a never-ending stream of horribly injured men and sent them right back out to do unto as they had received was resulting in a qualitative improvement on that side, too.

Indeed, the Angelos was rotating in every Heavenbound who would volunteer for healing duty just so they could experience this themselves. They had to be at least Fives to have Healing Wrath, but that literally took only days now...

Briggs /flipped me the strategic overview on the Cultivator side.

Even the most arrogant blockhead Cultivators had realized there was something very, very wrong at this point. Despite their overall numbers, they had slowly been ground north, and were entirely thrown out of Korea now. They still held territory on both sides of the Great Wall, but probing attacks south were met with extreme violence, and their mortal populations were melting away as fast as Briggs could get them evacuated.

The Cultivators hardly minded us taking on the logistical burden of caring for civilians and being burdened with their defense. They hadn’t yet harkened to the fact that every thousand people evacuated was fifty to a hundred more that took up arms, wandered into the Shroudzones to the south, and a month later was a Six ready to go up into Tibet or hack a Saber into a Cultivator.

There were a lot of very angry Chinese out there. The Cultivators actually had no clue how bad the situation for them was, as most of the Chinese presence was concentrated in the south. The Sects down there had been encircled by dint of exterminating the Shroudzones around them, and were being pressed in from all sides, not giving them any way out.

It would be a whole generation before the Chinese had anywhere near the Powered their population should have had, but they had more Forsaken than any other nation in the world at this point, were closing in on a million people at Six or higher, and if they weren’t filled with a sense of destiny, they were brimming with the feeling of forging their own path against all the horror that had been heaped upon them.

The reason the Cultivators in the north weren’t dead yet was because Briggs couldn’t encircle them and cut them off from fleeing north over the mountains into Siberia.

The American and Canadian armed forces were now prosecuting that angle.

Hank Blakhamar had led the way for thousands of Slavs to pour into the eastern end of Siberia and start reclaiming the lands of their forefathers the long way. Sir Pellier had piggybacked on that, and requisitioned basically the entire Canadian and American standing armies that weren’t vital for home defense.

There were no active Shroudzones in North America remaining, even in Mexico. All the independent hunters and shooters were pouring into Siberia, and the conjoined forces of North America were moving down the Gulagzones, setting up outside each one with a force big enough to Reduce It before moving on to the next.

Each site had cold weapon production and maintenance zones, with Leveling soldiers taking the Ranks needed to make and maintain equipment, while they were retrained in ancient ways of fighting and weapons that were out of vogue.

The only people allowed to retain firearms were sniper specialists. Alchemical ammo was not cheap, and never would be with the personal requirements behind it. Only true specialists or the very wealthy could afford it, making them the equivalent of people who relied on Wands for their firepower.

Powered soldiers had always been fertile ground for Divine servants, too, and having a Paladin sitting up there, and beyond him, a Great Angel, the Angelos, and others, as well as all the souls of Heavenbound Hall...

Soldiers knew how to pray, and to believe. Powered soldiers took Divine Levels, and, hey, Create Food just ameliorated more and more of the logistical situation, while Primos and Forsaken grew their Vajras and their caloric intake requirements plummeted rapidly, basically vanishing when they became Sustained with a Diamond Vajra, one of their big goals.

There were a lot of very enthusiastic Americans who were dreaming about conquering Russia and making it another territory of the States, until it was pointed out that the Russian Motherland would have to agree to that, and She had a track record of treating invading armies... coldly.

Enthusiasm did wane somewhat, and then rumors and tales about how the vast and empty land was going to be prime real estate for invasion from Other Places also popped up, and wasn’t there a whole bunch of empty land in America that needed defending?

All-conquering enthusiasm fell away, and Sir Pellier’s no-nonsense, pragmatic approach prevailed.

Level up our people, wipe the Shroud, contain the threat, pull back and prepare for what happens when the Shroud comes down.

The land wasn’t going anywhere; they could always come back.

The Slavs wanted to remain, of course. But even they were leery when they looked across those vast and rolling forests, plains, and mountains, and knew tons of magical shit was out there. There had been skirmishes with werewolves and fey, as well as various Jotuns who had come out of seemingly nowhere with all sorts of giant-sized pets, and weren’t happy to see humans or their descendants back here.

The armies weren’t happy to see them, either, and were perfectly happy to clear them out if they caused any trouble. They were also happy to recruit them if they were amenable, and the promise of regular meals was actually enough to make that serious.

That did involve removing the influence of Hags from the areas, but that was fine. Sama had a bunch of little Hagchild sisters now she was happy to go slumming with in the cold wilds, hunting their Aunties with extreme prejudice.

As for the werewolves, the Siberian Task Force wasn’t taking any shit from them, be they the Mazed or rebellious Great Packs. If they tried guerilla warfare, the Powered went off on them with like everything. Recent losses after the tragedy up north not long ago were compounded by more fanatic wolves getting chopped heartlessly apart by once-normal mortals who weren’t so normal anymore.

The movements of ships and supplies also provided a great excuse for the slow dispersal of the fleets. I had a lot of mapping to do yet, but there were cold, dark stars on The Map gleaming and waiting for the sun to come down to Earth and light them up.

The stars would be all wrong, and the situation would be very Right. Bright lights in the deep, water turning to plasma, shock waves, undersea earthquakes, some lethal radiation, all chased with vivus to eat the dead, feed them to the Land, and remove the radiation afterwards.

If my smile was rather cold and cruel, they deserved it all. Commander Haru’Ara was quietly expending a lot of power to obfuscate what was going to happen from their Diviners, too...