The Mick wasn’t expecting much in the way of danger, so we hadn’t brought anyone else along. It was also the first and easiest of the Elemental Vaults to reach, and would sort of be a test for the others.
Being able to just equip the right Element for attacking was also convenient.
As normal, I let him take lead, even though we both knew I could one-shot the undead we ran across without much effort. They were merely Revenants, Great Revenants, and Dark Revenants of the Gelidite Faction… and most of them were Summons.
It actually was kind of surprising to come across a couple of them in newer armor that weren’t just mindlessly charging to the attack. These actually shouted, “Passing snowflakes and melt ice! You dare trespass here!” and similarly witty commentary in Isparian as they opened up with spells.
The Mick was totally able to tank their spells and had them joining their compatriots on the floor in Burning misting chunks after less than twenty seconds each, leisurely parrying everything they threw his way before relieving them of their arms and then heads in turn.
Unlike the Summons, they went en vivus, not going to report their news back to their masters.
“A useful little base o’ operations,” the Mick admitted as we moved through the zigzag tunnels and bridged arches of the Vault. The design was annoying, and there was another silly lever-pulling combination of doors and things we were supposed to use to get things open, but all-in-all it wasn’t proving too annoying.
The local Revenants respawned fairly quickly, but only in ones or twos, making them manageable and easy to compensate for, which was good for a Dungeon.
“For them or us?” I asked, while he bowed me ahead. I hopped across a ten-foot gap, pushed the lever there, curtsied to him flamboyantly, and he just grinned as he immediately began hurrying back the way we came, and I had to skim quickly after him.
There were four Revenants on the way. The first two he manhandled backwards and were not allowed to slow him down as he brutally forced them back off their spawn points, and then took them apart as we hurried to get to the door that the lever had opened before it closed. He just pointed at the second pair, and I Sharded them into flaming chunks that fell to black ash before they could discorporate.
We made it with a few seconds to spare, the door closing literally at our heels as we stepped through. He hopped across the thirty-foot gap to the room in front of us and I followed easily.
“Both,” he finally replied, picking up the conversation without missing a beat. “The lugians never came up here, an’ they loathed the undead. The undead’s only other holding hereabouts were a mine they updated with lugian miners they turned inta undead, thinking they were doing the big blokes a great favor, allowing them t’ mine forever in the service o’ truly superior beings.
“All those are dead now, but the lugians have never forgiven them fer doin’ that t’ their own, even the Gotrok. Should be a trio of them up here.”
There were, all Dark Revenants and so not much of a challenge.
“Taking away their miners and cutting out the middleman, how dare they!” I nodded along. “Can’t extort gold out of trade partners if they grab all our labor and mines, right?”
---
“If I remember aright, that letter tells o’ the disaster that created the shades on Dereth here, an’ the death o’ Atlan an’ his army. That journal there details his creation o’ the Atlan Weapons and the Gems and Sockets they use an’ his hopes of spreading them through the armies of the empire.
“That, o’ course, be the Major Shivering Stone.”
“Which reminds me that we need to be checking out and harvesting the Minor Stones, for free goldweight if nothing else.”
“Oh, aye, I’ll get Scout teams on that right away. They be fairly easy to reach. We need t’ see what the results fer them are in the new Warfang Weapons. They were nigh useless in the old Atlan Weapons.
“If we’re lucky, they’ll stack and there’ll be synergy effects.” His eyes opened in interest. “A minor benefit would be something like Icy, giving an extra burst of cold damage to the Weapon it was mounted in, but not changing the whole Weapon like Icephasing does. A synergy benefit if, say, you had both Elemental Stones mounted, would be like Icy Burst, which does a nice amount of bonus damage on a crit.”
“They never had multiple Sockets t’ work with!” he agreed with me, tapping his temple and looking away. I waited politely while he issued orders to some of the Scout teams, and sent out inquiries and alerts for staffing this place permanently to harvest the Elemental Stones.
I picked up the glittering, icy jewel from the floor there, feeling my blood singing in sync with the jewel, which rapidly picked up the resonance of my Ceremony of the Frozen Soul and began to pulse in time with my heartbeat.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
There was a hiss and clink, and another Stone materialized right where the last one had, on the floor in front of an empty Empyrean stone chair (were they all undead with iron butts?), but a hum and feeling of power was also instantly missing from the room.
“Inneresting.” The Mick instantly stepped forward to pick up the next Stone, picking it up with the air of someone who’d held them before and inspecting it.
We both waited, but there was definitely no instant respawn coming for this Stone.
“Will there be another, or be it broken?” the Mick asked reasonably.
“The whole system is designed not to need anyone looking after it. I’m guessing this had a very fast respawn system in the past?” I asked him.
“Aye. A minute or two at most. Why? Be that important?”
“You don’t need the Minor Stones for lesser effects if you can totally produce enough Major Stones, and a respawn rate that fast is totally enough to supply an army. You’d be making in the neighborhood of a thousand Stones a day.”
His mouth opened, then closed, going over his memories again, and then slowly shaking his head. “That’s another o’ those damn inconsistent things that we looked right past before, aye?”
“Yes. Now, we just need to stick around until the next one pops up. Which will probably be at Natural Renewal, if the changes to the world remain somewhat consistent.”
“That be a few hours,” he pointed out. “Like as not we should stay busy and see if there are any changes to the place. Also… what be the chances the undead weren’t harvesting the stones themselves?”
I glanced at him, then stepped over the Disk we’d dropped the Weapons from the two Gelidite undead upon.
One of them was Icephasing.
I picked it up, and compared the magic within it to the Shivering Stone in my hand.
“The empowerment magic is identical,” I nodded to him. “This Sword was turned to Icephasing using a Stone from here.” I picked up the Acidphasing Weapon next to it. “This… does not have a primal resonance to it that the other Weapon does.”
“The Incunabula Vault be dominated by olthoi spawns with a wee powerful Matron inside. Trying to harvest that full time would not work too well for undead, especially given the speed o’ the Summons,” he judged professionally.
“And we know the Crater where the Jahannan Vault is located is hostile to them, and the Virindi moved in on the Ampherelion Vault for some reason. If they’ve been collecting the Stones, what did they use them for?”
“Were I be guessing? T’ equip their lot up in the Frozen Valley, the gurogs there, an’ mayhap t’ congeal the Bloodstones they be tryin’ t’ inflict on the rest o’ us.”
“I’m unfamiliar with the area,” I had to admit. “Coldphasing Weapons were common?”
“On all the gurogs, and on all the undead, too. And, come t’ think o’ it, it be the only place ye can find Gelidite undead so powerful, as well as the Frozen Dreads, and the Frost Golums, among other things.”
“Harnessing the Elemental Cold to upgrade themselves and the creatures tied to the Summons there? Not a bad idea if they’ve a clear affinity for the place. This place has now become a priority to maintain control of, as a strategic asset the undead might want to reclaim in the future…”
The Mick grinned as he tapped his temple again. “Aye, and I’ll relay that on. While we wait t’ confirm the respawn, I suggest a few trips through this place, see if we can locate their stash near where we encountered the two talkative ones, an’ get a very precise breakdown o’ the Summons an’ Spawn Points for those who’ll be working it hard in the near future, aye?”
“At the very least, they’re going to need basic Resist Cold to stay warm,” I had to agree. Not an issue among the undead, and a relatively minor item to make, even for us. It was just more goldweight, and we needed infinite amounts of goldweight to re-equip so many people.
All the mines in the Linvaks could be open and working full time, and they wouldn’t be producing enough goldweight to supply the crafters making things to satisfy the need for goldweight to Burn.
The Isparian systems of enchantment weren’t nearly as resource-intensive as the Matrix side of things, but absolutely nobody was going to mess with mana charges on their Gear anymore. It was the mental equivalent of running around with a dagger to your throat, just waiting for some mysterious shit to yank it across your jugular and kill you.
Just one of these Stones was ten goldweight. That was damn good daily production just about anywhere, even if the Stones were going to be allocated to Weapons and not Burned for mana.
“Her Highness already be making out lists on who should get the Stones, an’ is keen t’ be tryin’ out the Minor Stones,” Lord Mick reported after a minute, most unnecessary as Kris could simply inform me. “If it be true they only spawn once a day, that be annoying, but workable. They be not a mandatory thing if ye be an Artificer, just handy. Now, if there’s a synergy effect between the Stones, well, that be a different story, an’ they just became very hot items, indeed.”
“How close is the Minor Shivering Stone Spawn Point?”
He gave me a considerate look, flicked up a Holo of the area, squinted at it, matched memories, and updated the Map. “There.”
About twenty miles northeast. “And you have a lived-line to there?” I asked him, knowing I did not.
“Aye. Visited it two, three times in the past,” he confirmed.
“I’m thinking that as soon as we find their stash, we go grab a Stone from there, and perhaps not be surprised to find some undead sitting there waiting for Stones themselves.”
His dark eyes lit up. “That do sound more fun than grinding an easy Dungeon just t’ stay not bored. I be countering it with doing one full clear in detail, an’ then ye can Jump us right over there. I imagine we’ll be able t’ see the peak if we but go outside an’ the sky is clear!”
I thought that over, and nodded. “Makes sense. Let’s get the updated Dungeon Map, find their stash, and then zip over to confirm this as fast as possible, and not risk a Scout team stumbling on something they might not be able to handle.”
He tossed his Stone up in the air, snatched it and tucked it away in his own Masspack, and we headed on out of the room.
Wasting our time by sitting in one spot was silly. We should be able to get a lugian team up here inside an hour or three to do the sitting around, and they would happily grind the undead for Karma.
Foiling one of their undead’s plans by grabbing an important resource and upgrading our own Weapons at the same time? Win-win!