“How long before we can start making olthoi armor and Slayer Weapons?” Princess Kristie Rantha asked me as she raced across the plains south toward Eastham once more.

Briggs had moved our northern forces up to Eastham and no further, wary of Bonecrunch and the drudges he protected in Cragstone. The main focus of the Freehold forces was now in whittling down the forces of the Gotrok, squirreled away in their secret locations in the Tukals and being discovered one by one.

I was already disseminating the information herein to every crafter and mage in the Markspace, who were going over it all with a fine-toothed comb.

“This method for treating chitin is nearly universally useful for bug parts. They are pretty sure that if we discover the proper reactant, we can use it on grievvers, too. Probably niffi, nefane, and sleech shells, too, and other things with carapaces.”

“Scales?” Kris asked shortly.

“No, I don’t think so. The proteins are very different from typical chitin, which is a modified sugar. Scales are also part of a living organism, and most carapaces are effectively remnants of the organics gathering material and dying off. Still, it’s novel in that whole alchemical weird science ‘holy shit this works because alchemy is strange’ crap it heaps upon real science.”

“And that coming from someone who makes their living twisting the laws of the universe!”

“Any good mage will tell you magic is about Rules, not laws. Rules are basically exceptions to the laws of any reality. Spellcasting is about messing with the Rules. Speaking of which, how is the Lost Light reacting to your armor?”

“Seems to be the same as the Bracers, really. Loss of flexibility, covering for it with massively increased Damage Reduction.”

“Should be +9 for Crystal Armor, no adamantine, yes?”

“Yes. Is there a method for Veining the stuff?”

“Technically no, but it’s inferred. You’ve seen the Infusion methods they used to use for armor before the Fall?” I inquired of her.

“Shards of steel to increase the protective value? Yes, basically an alternative way of increasing the base enhancement non-magically. But that was more Burning it to harvest the essence, not actually implanting it. There was an infusion to actually reduce the weight of the armor, for instance.”

“Correct. The fundamental core of the veining technique is the same, you simply have to implant the proper materials instead… or something infused with the essence of them.”

Kris smiled toothily. “I don’t think Veining my armor with wool for some cold resistance would be very wise.”

“Agreed. This method appears much more common sense than that Infusion process was, and not as reliant on a vibrant mana field.”

“I’m all for dependability,” Kris assured me. “Most of the previous Infusions seem to have changed to damage reduction for a specific Element, while the steel is obeying the rules for non-magical Jadework-equivalent Crafting enhancement. All the examples I could find that were still intact topped out at +IV, and there weren’t many. Anything improved to that level was almost always magical and blew out, usually taking its wearer with it.”

“Non-Slotted?” I asked for confirmation.

“Technically, yeah?”

“So, leaving ten Slots open for other things, if you didn’t care about pure armor?”

“Huh. Technically, yeah…” I could see her thinking hard about that. “Not a whole lot of things more important than base protective value. Maybe Fortification, but we can get that outside of Armor, so it’s not a concern. Soul Forged, maybe…”

“That Eternal-grade +VII speed Buff? Constant Haste?”

“Didn’t that require orichalcum armor?” she shot back at me.

“Oh, right, you’d have to make some skinplate for that…”

Her head turned right and left, then she flicked two signaling fingers at me. “No attention on us.”

I exhaled softly. “Bastards. At least we have positive confirmation that there is an existing Eternal-grade power around able to use magicks way beyond the mortal. It Fabricated that armor through in an instant custom build for you, and made up a bunch of new Olthoi Slayer Weapons on the fly… then Called in scores of real Olthoi, not Summons, to give its little test some legitimacy, while tempting us to send up a repeating quest schedule, and they generated a bunch of instant olthoi armor parts, too.”

Lady Vundanewall had definitely been pushing them to deliver on something they hadn’t anticipated, given the heaps of armor pieces on the Disks, complete with knowledge of what olthoi pieces were best for what armor pieces, too!

“That poor woman has been trapped inside a scripted NPC shell for thirty years,” Kris murmured grimly. “Did you manage to read her Level?”

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“Not with magic. You?”

“300.”

Boosted Sense Motive checks sidestepped all sorts of magical defenses, and clearly her Deception skill hadn’t sufficed to evade Kris’ spiritual senses. Being able to assess your opponents was key for a Melee character, and so judging someone’s level and Attack Bonus, among other things, was a standard component of a character assessment check via the Sense Motive Skill.

“I’d say that’s a bit higher than 15 or 25,” I noted in amusement.

“As expected, although I doubt anyone was expecting it to be that good. Her Crossbow was also better than the rote one. Biting Strike and Crushing Blow were both maxed on it.”

“Ah, no wonder she was one-shotting half of the suckers she hit. Big crits,” I agreed. Couldn’t have your pet Olthoi Hunter be incompetent, after all, even if you didn’t want the rubes able to tell that.

“And supposedly the Olthoi Slayer tribe escaped and is living in that mine outside Arwic. We’ll have to send someone in to contact them now,” she said thoughtfully. “We’ve also secured a source of massive amounts of goldweight for personal investment in our Arms and Armor, which we sorely needed, and it’s also there as a potential harvest for anyone greedy enough to pursue it… and the fun thing is that the olthoi probably won’t even mind if we cart all the stuff off, since it competes with their ecology.”

“If we can actually mine that Mana Volcano that Gaerlan set off…” I murmured, trying to picture that.

“Possible, but extremely dangerous. More likely the Stones in the neighboring area will be cleared out first.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “How’s this affecting the timeline for Cragstone?”

“Briggs and I still aren’t confident we can take out Bonecrunch. Are you?”

“No. I might be able to land Shards, but that’s about it, and he can probably bat most of them away, then Fast Heal through the rest.”

“Cheese?” she inquired.

“His anti-magical nature likely translates as a flat bonus to Saves against Magic. Given his Level and Stats, he is very unlikely to miss a Save, and even then, he’ll just blow Health Qi to get rid of the effect.”

“That uber Olthoi Sentinel was no slouch, but that Drudge is just so much more dangerous it isn’t funny. I don’t want to take him on until I’m a Fifteen, at least, and solo I’d prefer a Twenty.”

I considered that estimation carefully. “As a Fifteen I could probably wear him down with magical attacks, and I’d have the mana to do so and overwhelm his parries. But you know that is a ways away…”

“Unless we clear Asheron’s Island, kill Gaerlan, and release Martine.”

“That is going to be a lot of Karma, sure, but that much? You know how much Karma is involved with making Fifteen in the Power of Ten?”

Kris grumbled under her breath. “Too goddamn much!” she admitted freely.

“And you know you’re the only one who can go ahead and kill the bastard once his Harbinger buddy gets taken out by the Wisps, right? So you’ll have to be sitting up there waiting as the whole island goes to absolute shit between warring Wisps and Elementals.”

That naturally didn’t deter her at all. She grinned cheerfully at the thought. “I’m going to thank him for making us rich as I kill him at the moment of his great escape, his hope and joy will become the final shroud of death taking him, and those Things he made deals with coming to collect his soul, fucking Empyrean supremacist bastard.”

“Does someone not like Casters who sell out their people and world for power?” I chided her in mock disbelief.

“What goes around, comes around, and I am fucking coming around at the rat bastard.”

“If you want to start the cascade on Asheron’s Island, I’m more than happy to do so. We’re going to be sitting out there on Disks soaking in the Karma while vivus Burns the dead and the fighting escalates like goddamn mad.”

“Hey, we’ve got the gold to make OMA Quivers for anyone who can’t master basic windfire, at least,” she pointed out to me.

“Huh.” Getting direct kills, instead of derived kills from vivus Burning dead Wisps away, would be… incredible. The number of Wisp and Elemental kills we could get would be staggering. “There’s the little problem of the Harbinger bombing us out of existence from half the island away, too.”

“I imagine that if the only magic we use is to start the Cascade and dropping a vivic hot spot, and then using rote Weapons to kill the rest of the things, everything will be just fine.”

“Huh. And if I restrict myself to just Darts, Cantrip-level attacks should be lost in the general chaos of what will be happening.” It wouldn’t be a lot of damage to any single target, but I could Chain and wear down a whole bunch of targets slowly instead, lighting them up and getting them to Burn, if nothing else.

Any other Caster was basically going to be restricted to Healing, as none of my students were overly adept with Shard Kickers, none of them possessing my Traits or broad array of Metas to wield… especially the powerful Holy Metas which really packed the biggest Kicker punch out of all of them.

Good people and Really Good People, their souls going Silver, Gold, or Rainbow, just weren’t easy to come by, and there was nothing for it.

Decent archers wouldn’t have nearly the problem.

“Talk to Briggs and start setting up the teams. I’ll select the mages who’ll run the Mass Disks once you have the numbers. We’ll get all the OMA Quivers made up that we can think about before the attack.”

She glanced away. “A lot of the men we want participating in that are on duty in the Tukals right now, drawing the noose tighter. So it will have to be back-burnered until we finally drive the Gotrok out of there. The lugians aren’t getting antsy, given they know what the tactics are, how much of a disaster it could be if thousands of Tukora Summons are sprung on us in tight quarters, but they definitely want their kingdom, city, and people back.” She hesitated, clearly speaking with Briggs in the background here. “Briggs would like you with the elite teams going into Linvak Tukal to make sure the Gotrok don’t take any of their anger out on the civilians there.”

We’d discussed that possibility before. The mounting frustration of Muldaveus and his cronies, and the lack of incoming aid from the virindi, could easily precipitate a thought for maddened revenge from the leader of the Gotrok Clans.

My ability to simply Shape a tunnel straight through the heart of the mountain and reach the city, potentially leading an army right into it, was a big reason for that, plus my ability to protect and Heal a large number of people in very quick fashion compared to other Casters we had.

“What’s Briggs up to now?”

“Setting up patrols to ward against the olthoi, operating out of Eastham, which just became our northern border. We won’t move past it until Bonecrunch is down. The drudge can easily run down to Rithwic or east to Arwic in a few hours, and we don’t want to trigger that action if we can help it.”

“Bonecrunch is fast enough to reach Hebian-To in a day,” I stated firmly. “The only way to survive if they meet it is to flee in all directions wildly, and it will still kill everyone it catches.”

“Yes. We have to Level and build up to be able to butcher it. The numbers just are not in our favor at all.”

As all the inhabitants of Cragstone had once found out…