The undead who’d been slain were reborn at their graves, and had to run back overland to where the fighting was taking place. Since they didn’t tire, that actually didn’t take them too overly long, and they threw themselves back into the fighting against the Shaded, this time starting to wrap the Shaded up.
The few following spawns from the Shadow Vortexes were more numerous because of that, direct cause and effect. But instead of dispersing in random directions, an annoying light in the sky to the south attracted the attention of the incoming Summoned creatures, and they all headed in that direction to extinguish it, cut it down, and get rid of it.
As a result, there was almost no further resistance, except for some corrupted landscape Summons Points, for the undead to worry about as they moved up the north and central portions of the Tou-Tou Peninsula. The handful of living soldiers with them bearing vivic flames did their best to set the Shaded en vivus and Seal off those Summon points, every Summons point, in passing as they moved.
What it really meant was that every Shaded they had been fighting was now being sent in waves down the south side of the peninsula, down toward the Choke.
They didn’t join the fight there instantly, of course. There were many, many miles between Tou-Tou and where we were fighting, and the Shaded had to travel all that distance at paces alternating between trots and walking, taking hours to do so and staying staggered out as they did so. The undead helped by also staggering out the killing they did, so the waves weren’t overly massive, either.
But they did come all night.
Heal Deadly Wounds/Breath of Life had a Gold-grade Counterpart every single Life Magic user had now been taught. Get to someone within a minute of death, bring them back without further cost. It had a base Cost of 50 mana, 100 if revivifying someone, modified by Mana Conversion. That meant it wasn’t cheap, but it had now been used sixty-four times, with the record of five times on paramount Ensemble, who had at least expended Kris’s ire at him with his willingness to get himself killed, and then immediately was raring to fight again once they brought him back.
Getting killed was nowhere near as casual as it had been with the deathstones. The yawning emptiness and the sense of something hostile waiting for them in the void as their spirit started to slip away meant none of those revivified were taking the process casually. If their allies didn’t get to them, they didn’t want to picture what was waiting for them.
The paramount Life Mage Stillwell led the pack with twenty-one revivals, including four of them inside one minute, and basically was staying in Aurora Stance constantly to keep his mana topped off when he wasn’t bringing someone back, just to be on the safe side. There was no doubt whatsoever that his reputation had soared among the younger generation considerably with his devotion to bringing them all back alive.
Bringing back someone past that one minute threshold was considerably more expensive, requiring the sacrifice of bars of Life E-gold or gems to power a Raise Dead, neither items which we had in great numbers… and I was the only one who could Cast the spell, which would take me a full minute of time being off the line, which none of the soldiers I was constantly dispensing Healing magic to wanted to see.
No, this fight was about health, stamina, and mana management. The field of vivic Burn in front of the Choke was helping immensely with the DPS situation, doing constant damage to the Shaded who were pressing and eager to get to the living waiting for them. If we held them there, they would die, that was all there was to it.
Somewhere along the way the soldiers had noticed I never had to Heal the Mick at all, and they had figured out that it was because he was Healing in combat with every blow he landed. Yes, the Mick had Healing Edge upon Bunita for that very reason, and would Infuse in Revitalizing whenever his exhaustion crept up on him, keeping him hale and vigorous through the entire fight.
Yes, it was only 1-8 Healing per blow. When you were dishing out 5-6 attacks a round, in addition to his paramount Fast Healing being boosted by Blood and Soul, he got back his Health and Soak with incredible speed. The creatures would have had to land chains of War Magic to bring him down, which would have required coordination and intelligent planning by creatures who were basically berserkers.
Interest in what kind of magic on a Weapon allowed that kind of endurance was crazy high among those I hadn’t trained, to be sure. It was a +III effect, working off Greater Magic Weapon and requiring a Caster Level of 12 to get off, and so still beyond almost all of my students yet, nor had they advanced the Names of their Weapons enough to pay for such a pricey addition to their Melee Weapons.
The big Karmic investiture by just about everyone was in the Favored Enemy Masteries. Even the paramounts had been told to take them, all of them having long since satisfied the basic requirements of killing fifty shades to start the process and gain the Shade Slayer Achievement Feat. They invested Karma in the Feat, and bing! Instant +2 to Hit and damage.
Then, one Mastery rank yesterday before dawn, another one during the killing today, and they’d be taking another one after dawn again, with two more waiting.
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+5 to hit and damage all of the Shaded creatures was a very hefty bonus, and all of them noticed the effects. They were hitting where they might have missed, cutting in deep and true for more damage, which earned them more Karma as they cycled through the Shaded faster and kept the whole process moving.
If they couldn’t take the Class Levels, that was fine. The process of converting Weapon Skills to Attack Bonus was also underway, changing focused skill in one weapon to generic skill in all Weapons, with particular focus above and beyond that.
Most importantly, as Attack Bonus increased it also increased the number of attacks for every five points of the bonus unlocked past the first. It was a simple, basic change, and it was already having effects as the paramounts hit the first stage. Suddenly their speed of attack and damage spiked by 75% as they suddenly started flowing through patterns and their shooting grew ever faster, instead of continually smashing in basic One Strikes that didn’t do all that much more extra damage.
Enhancing their One Strike damage to greater multipliers that stacked on Feat-derived bonuses was also something the melee and archer paramounts were taking eagerly, building on the new Attack Bonus mechanics and giving themselves options.
The subtle yet game-changing play for the Casters was releasing knowledge of the Arcane Mastery Feat to them.
That was a Feat that allowed people to ‘take 10’ on Caster Level checks, nominally for Dispel Magic and similar contested rolls. Transmuted to the Isparian standard, it had an additional effect: it had made Mana Conversion predictable!
My discovery of that fact had been unexpected, but oh, the results!
No more wild successes and failures of making your spells more efficient. You could use Arcane Mastery, put in an average effort, and as long as you passed the guideline needed, you got the same results, every single time!
Applied to Isparian magic, it completely eliminated fizzling a spell if you passed the 55% success baseline check, as opposed to needing to reach a 100% chance of success to do the same.
Controlled averages meant predictability, meant ease of management, goals needed to hit, and where you wanted your bonuses to go for such things.
Arcane Focus, where you could expend your Focus to take 15 on a Concentration or Caster Level check, had followed that up. Being able to see the instant savings in mana when it was expended gave it great value for the more powerful spells, and when every single point of mana was something you were clawing for, made all the difference in staying power.
I’d been watching mages Focusing and then Expending that Focus all day, and then all night.
Today’s Feat I would release would be Augment Healing. As Feats went, it wasn’t very powerful, but the benefits were stable, useful, and would be appreciated. Unfortunately, many of the Healing Metas were tied up in Divine Magic and Channeling, and there was absolutely no access to that for the people here, with no true gods represented and the Entities available more opening up people to specific lines of arcane magic or spells than the spheres of true Divine Magic.
I would have loved to get people into the Healing Domain. Automatic Energizing or Topping of Healing spells would be wonderful, but there was no helping it here.
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There was a lull in the fighting before dawn as the incoming lesser waves finally reached us. They could be dealt with fairly speedily and thoroughly, giving people time to rest and regain some strength, especially the Casters who were urgently getting back as much mana as they could.
Kris was still up there on the archer’s battlements, despite the archers around her having been relieved several dozen times over the past day. There was little doubt she’d inflicted more punishment personally on the incoming Shaded than anyone else in the force.
Smaller incoming numbers also allowed me to unleash Shardrays on those approaching if the forces fighting could be killed off in between. While it took a minimum of two salvos for me to kill anything, I could severely weaken them even with only one volley, and the better archers could pick the wounded off before they ever got into melee combat.
The waves in the middle of the night were thus wiped with great speed compared to those from earlier, and the ground for two hundred yards in front of the Choke was stained a bright white with vivus from all the Burned and Burning Shaded going up on them.
The twenty-two Grievver Shredders had been chewed to bits before they made it into the Choke, and the dozen who straggled into the Choke had died with great speed. Everyone who could was kneeling or sitting in mental and physical exhaustion, the kind of grind only the most fanatical about them had ever engaged in before.
“Reports are coming in. Master Ben Ten and MacNaill’s forces have rolled up the length of the peninsula and eliminated all passing Summons points in doing so, including the two corrupted settlements. New spawns from the Vortexes have matched the numbers they’ve been eliminating as they moved.
“We are past the apex of the effort, and in effect are simply mopping up the rest of the invading forces until they can be regenerated from other sources. However, that still involves at least two thousand more Shaded creatures who are mostly coming this way in their waves.
“We will not be advancing into their teeth and proving our might. We will stay here, let them Burn themselves on those that have died before them, and cut them down while minimizing the threat they pose to us.
“I cannot give you true sleep or rest until no more of the enemy is being dispatched, or is so reduced our undead defenders can deal with them without much in the way of losses.
“Catch what you can, while you can. But as you do, first join me in the Salute to Aru.”
There was some skeptical grumbling, but nobody gainsaid the Warlord who had been riding herd over every aspect of this fight. She allocated targets, she approved the primary Melees who led the effort, she dispersed the teams, and so on and so forth.
Also, there was a nice reward for participating. That feeling of energy stealing across them, that tinge of maybe just a little bit of hope and expectation for the day, and a sense that somewhere, something was watching, and maybe even approving of you?
Yeah, that was a reason to do it.
Faith, starting in all the little ways.