Shape Stone at VIII+1 swirled out, rewriting and adding to the hidden Runes embedded in the countless tons of stone lining the planar walls of this demiplane maze.
The patterns of the Formations were three thousand years old and had never been updated, because there was no reason to mess with what was obviously the ultimate expression of magical power, the work and design of an Undead Sage whose mastery of the craft had surpassed death itself, let alone all those specks of ephemeral dust who yet lived, right?
I could have driven right for the top and cut off its reinforcements, but I didn’t want to deal with the surge of the Ruler/Archmages among its servants who might erupt forth from all directions if I did that... at least not yet.
I did convey that to the Undead Hunters with a wicked smile, and they knew I had something planned. I was not wasting time nor imperiling them without reason.
The bottom five layers of the demiplane were ours, every chamber and hallway within purged of undead or wandering souls, hundreds of miles of passages and dozens of square miles of chambers stripped clean of any resistance, monstrous or otherwise.
I had a Medusa head among my Baneskulls now, and there was a scattering of the lesser Medusa Skulls among the Undead Hunters, as well as that of a Noble Death’s Eye Vulture and a couple of its brood who had sworn fealty to the Pharaoh.
Eighth level, exit to Netherworld area. Seventh level, forbidden realm of the Pharaoh and its personal retainers. Sixth level, abode of the administrators and elite warriors of its kingdom. The pass-through to the eighth floor was here on the sixth, rotating among four chambers intermittently, each leading to different passages down which might exit in chambers that would link fairly quickly to the Doors out.
There was only one way down which wasn’t Burning at this point. Commanders and Nobles might make it through, but anything less was going to Burn and die, so all the chaff could only march on the open route... and I had plenty of Glyphs and Symbols etched here and there to alert us of something attempting to be clever and trying to flank us.
I watched Undead Hunters from three continents methodically working their way through the incoming Undead and Shades, blocking terrifying spells of Dark Mana, setting them on vivic fire, and using that vivus to assault the other Netherworlders as Disrupted denizens of the underworld exploded in violent white purity here and there.
“Surging!” I announced, and everyone braced to run as a hundred Greater Shards materialized around me, force-javelins seething with so many anathemic energies. The incoming Undead and Shades charging for us nearly stumbled and fell at the sheer amount of magic opposed to their very essence coalesced in front of them, and then I sent the magic out.
The passageway was over a mile long, and fifty feet wide. Bursting Chaining Shards leapt over and past one another in precisely the distance to keep their ten-foot radius explosions solid, twenty-five jumps precisely spaced so as to swallow everything in front of them. The explosions followed the looping curve of the hallway moving through non-Euclidean space, incinerating everything in its path.
A rare Commander here and there reeled, managing to survive the initial blast... but the residual energies were still Burning over them, consuming them. They were staggering and dying as the line of Undead Hunters surged forwards, striking down the survivors in passing, and formed up a new battle line as the advancing Netherworld host paused for a moment in shock at the annihilation before them.
Communication wasn’t a big thing among the post-living. Those coming in certainly had not been told how their predecessors passed on, or how they weren’t coming back. The Undead and the Shades were far too used to losing bodies, returning to the Netherworld, and making new ones. No, that wasn’t happening here. Since nothing had returned, that could only mean that the dispatched armies were still alive and conquering, right?
The alternative was literally unthinkable to things that had ‘died’ so many times!
I didn’t have any worries about the outside. Reynard was out there with several Kings, making damn sure nothing came out those Doors and lived. The Mighty Turk, now ten feet tall and clutching his extremely heavy Staff, strode next to me in all his golden glory, his mighty mustachios seemingly capable of beating the Undead to death all by themselves.
I strolled down the cleared length of corridor, reshaping the stone and pounding some nails and wedges into this oversized tomb and monument to fear and vanity. Soul Crystals were dumped into my pocket, the unliving reduced to the purpose they considered mortal souls to be used for in delightful irony.
All of the Undead Hunters had long since gained enough Crystals to reach Tier-5 in all their Stars, although not all of them had been able to apply them to all their Stars. Archmages needing to treat over eight thousand Stars took a while to do so.
Still, they all had their best Element at Tier-5 at the least, the x4 power equal to a highest-Tier Spirit Seed that stacked with all others, and the unliving weren’t appreciating the damage boost of their magic at all.
Undead didn’t have Stars anymore, even if the mummies and liches and stuff used mortal-style spells. They feasted on Soul Remnants and Essence to grow their Mana and power, much like Beasts did, and like the Beasts, the process was painfully slow.
Like Beasts, Contracting to a living Human was actually the fastest way for Netherworlders to gain power, something that vexed them even as it saved them centuries or millennia of mind-numbing competition and scrabbling after the Essence of the Damned.
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The lower-levels had possessed many repositories of Soul Essence in the tombs and soul-processing chambers, all of which had been rendered down into Soul Jewels.
I strolled through the thigh-high mist, still Singing for my people as Shaping magic crawled over everything and made some new and modern additions to this very non-chic and passé fashion statement around me.
The Undead Hunters had run into another brigade of Shade Swordmasters, the armored weapon-wielders always a pain to deal with. Unfortunately for them, their ranged sword attacks Burned in vivic flame like anything else, sapping half the strength or more from the assaults, and vivus-enhanced Walls, Barriers, and the like were twice as effective as normal magic against them, especially the Light Element ones.
Their armor was nice and tough against direct physical blows, but didn’t stop them from being set on vivic fire, and eroded swiftly under Holy illumination effects purifying away the Dark Mana they kept trying to surround and cloak themselves in.
Obai asked for a quick volley to clear them out, not wanting to waste time or Mana on them. A flight of Greater Shards flashed past the Undead Hunters line and detonated in the midst of the Swordmasters, sending armored Shades flying in all directions on fire, those directly hit obliterated instantly in passing.
A single salvo of attack magic disposed of the rest, and went ravaging into the massed hulks of the agglomerated skeletal knights looming up behind them. The unliving screamed hollowly as the Fires of Life danced greedily over their bones and ate at their souls.
With no sympathy or remorse, the Undead Hunters, Humans and Beasts alike, pressed forward with their attacks.
---
I made it up to the battle line just as the magic from a Ruler in the chamber blew over the unliving trying to reach us in a turgid wall of bat-like killing scythes. His Domain was trying to reach us and drown us in Dark Mana, and finding it deuced hard in the face of so much amped-up Light Magic and the interwoven Domains of several Archmages.
I slammed the Spellflare into the flood-like wave attack, and the corridor lit up with magic going wild. The previously-unharmed Netherworlders advancing under the wave of darkness were both illuminated and blasted wildly, transformed, cursed, set ablaze, disrupted, disintegrated, twisted, falling apart, exploding in pyrotechnical fashion and strange ways that never seemed to quite duplicate one another.
I ignored the grins at the show from the Undead Hunters as one twenty-foot-high agglomeration of a dozen corpses dissolved into prismatic soap bubbles rolling across the floor, paying more attention to the bigger flash behind and the outraged bellow from whatever was in charge of holding the chamber beyond.
“That’s the chamber we need to take to really upset the Pharaoh, everyone. The tunnel to the left is the quick access to the Nethergate we need to battle up to, the one to the right is the way to the long and complex route they have to take if they need to divert through the Pharaoh’s personal Demesne.”
I respected my people, Humans and Beasts, more than enough to let them know the objectives we had, and let the squads work out their own tactics and formations on how to address things. When I aided in some room-clearing, it only sped things up.
We’d already blocked off the alternate routes to the lower chambers with Walls of Fire. The only way down that wasn’t going to just eat the chaff was the route we had taken up here.
The way in front of us was swept clear a short time later, the Nyx Regime Domain swept away by Light and vivus, and we moved up to the entry to the hall. I swept Archmage-level Greater Shards through the packed masses in front of me, and multi-colored eruptions cleared acres of area in Singing Chains of Disruptive destruction.
The sixty-foot-tall Shade in the center of the place had a big sickle in each of its black hands. Well, at least they weren’t damn scythes. Its leering, shadowed grin seemed a bit forced with the misting marks on its robes and stuff, not to mention all the glowing whiteness on the floor about it where a whole bunch of nasty Shades had just bitten it.
“Watch this,” I said out of the side of my mouth to Mighty Turk, who lifted his bushy eyebrows in interest as I flickered a very non-combat spell out, turning it into a Ray, Splitting it, and targeting those two big sickles that seemed to be getting ready to sweep out a bladewind or something nasty.
Greater Weapon Infusion, delivering Disruption and Holy. Because I could.
Whoops. Evil or undead creatures grabbing a Disrupting Weapon instantly take damage, and Holiness adds +2d6 damage when a Weapon damaged an Evil foe. Holy Weapons, temporary or not, also added two negative Levels to an Evil person trying to wield them.
It had two of them.
This Baron Shade dropped through half-Noble right to Great Commander as it let out an eerie howl, staring at the shadowy blades that had harvested so many souls in its hands, now Burning it and visibly writhing in its grip as they seared it with The Light of Heaven.
I slammed the Archmagic Curse into it, delivering a very, very hefty negative modifier to its next Fortitude Saving Throw...
The magical Weapons seemed to flare with Holy light, and its own hands jerked towards its throat against its will. Blinding Light flared as they chopped simultaneously across its neck, and the harsh light of Disruption flared through its entire body in an eruption of condemning power.
Empty black robes poofed into open harsh white flames as the sickles clanged to the ground, a billowing cloud of vivic mist falling in all directions like a gentle cloudfall. They washed across the Shades and Undead around the Disrupted Noble Shade and set them all ablaze with whiteness that couldn’t be just slapped out, and definitely was not Elemental Fire.
Mighty Turk hooted and pounded his Staff on the floor, appreciating the show as I continued on with a more traditional Shard barrage into the ranks of the very unsettled Netherworlders. “Yeah, it was the dual-wielding which did it. Probably wouldn’t have worked so easily otherwise,” I confirmed, focusing on clearing out more acres of Shades and Undead trying to charge at us and getting caught in a whole lot of slowing magic and bombardments that seemed to be really ignoring their undead toughness and resilience.
Too bad, so sad.
There was basically a solid stream of them flooding in from the leftmost tunnel to the top, which I fixed for the moment by zigzagging a Wall of Fire right through the tunnel and completely destroying their entry point. It would force any creature trying to break through it to trigger multiple points of incidence as it forced its way through possibly twenty different contact points with the same spell.
The normal undead naturally didn’t have a chance and just died, leaving us free to reduce something like forty acres of undead to vivus. Nothing was going to get through those Walls without being seriously injured short of a King, and since they wouldn’t run, these bastards were doomed.