The Sea Emperor had seen these go up before, and had paid attention to the making of each one and the differences between each of them. He had noticed that I was making them resonant to each of those that had been Sealed before, and so this Pyramid was resonating with all the previous Pyramids, forming an ersatz Formation of sorts through the Manafield of the world while plugging numerous holes.
It was also then that He noticed the first Pyramid this one was attuned to was the one capping the Death Zone in Ghana that I’d put up, and realized that Land or Sea didn’t matter, ALL the Death Zones were vulnerabilities.
Twenty-four hours of The Moon and Stars, and the Aquatic forces dispersed to make sure the entire landscape was on vivic fire and being purified. Their job was largely done, and only a mated pair of Sea Dragon Low Emperors remained in the vicinity, inspecting their territory to see what the area was like.
They were the selected guardians for this Pyramid.
Another fifteen hours, and the Obelisk and its ‘cap’ of a foundation lifted off the sea floor and moved out over the Pyramidal base floating above that Nether Conduit.
Lightning cracked and boomed down from the cyclone above that had returned. Runes lit up on the Pyramid, step by step, energizing with each descending cataclysmic bolt, and the Pyramid radiated and Burned unwhite mists, locking in the Conduit and all its power. Like four heavy waterfalls, vivus flowed off its sides, and its job was complete.
The High Emperors looked on this and nodded together.
Seamlessly, quietly, the rolling maelstrom from the top of the sea closed and came together smoothly, all the kinetic energy spun out of it, and it was over.
The Ice Emperor made no move to leave, nor The Sea Emperor. The latter asked me gravely, “CAN YOU OPEN A WAY FOR THE FOX HERE?”
“No, Your Majesty. The Veil here is absolute. I cannot open a Portal here.” I waved a hand in any direction. “Thirty miles away, yes, the Interdiction effect fades.”
Serpentine Sea Dragon High Emperor looked at winged European-style Ice Dragon High Emperor. “WE MUST SPEAK ON THIS,” Ice Emperor agreed, and pushed off the sea floor, shooting for the surface as if a couple of miles of water was merely air.
“COME.” I set foot on The Sea Emperor’s head at His word, standing behind one of His horns, and He turned and shot off in a direction I was sure was matched by The Ice Emperor.
---
We came to the surface thirty-five miles away, the waters falling away all around seamlessly as The Sea Emperor surfaced. The Ice Emperor came gliding down in all His purity and crystalline splendor from the sky, an ice floe forming to accept His weight and mass instantly.
I obligingly opened a Portal to Flowing Silver High Emperor, who hadn’t really moved from the position He’d held at the beginning of the fight. “A MATTER FOR HIGH EMPERORS,” He deduced casually, but the power of His thoughts was anything but casual. “HEALER FAE, YOU WILL REMAIN,” He stated calmly, and I calmly shifted off to the side between the two Dragon High Emperors and sat down on a Disk between them, instead of leaving promptly. “WHAT NEEDS BE SPOKEN?” the Silver Nine-Tailed Fox asked with His normal whimsy.
“THERE ARE STILL THREE DEATH ZONES ON THE LAND,” Ice Emperor stated. “THEY SHOULD ALSO BE SEALED, SHOULD THEY NOT?”
“ABSOLUTELY,” Flowing Silver agreed unequivocally. “WHY HAS IT NOT BEEN DONE?” He asked lightly. “INDEED, IS NOT ONE OF YOUR NUMBER RIGHT NEXT TO ONE?”
The two mighty Dragons glanced at one another. “THE DEATH ZONES ON THE LAND ARE POPULATED BY THE SOULS OF UNDEAD HUMANS. THEY MAINTAIN A CONSTANT LINK WITH THE UNDERWORLD, AND A NETHERLORD’S INFLUENCE CAN BE FELT IF A HIGH EMPEROR MOVES TO INTERFERE,” The Sea Emperor explained sourly.
“AN ANNOYANCE,” Flowing Silver agreed with a yip. “BUT THEY DO NOT REACT TO HUMAN EFFORTS?” He inquired, looking to me.
“The Pharoah I killed elicited no Netherlord response, or even Imperial reinforcements, Your Majesty. Were I to guess at their motives, it would be that if the Pharaoh was so weak as to be unable to overcome an attack by mortal humans, especially with all the constant Undead reinforcements he was receiving, he was too weak to be concerned with as a minion.”
“ARROGANT, PROUD, AND DISMISSIVE OF THEIR SERVANTS. A POTENT COMBINATION TO EXPLOIT,” Flowing Silver yipped, showing His own Burning Fangs, while the Dreadskull woven into His chin-braids burned black fires of anathema.
“I will see Ice Emperor receives such a Skull made from the head of His foe,” I told them all quietly in an aside. It was an offer I did not have to make, and although He said nothing, He knew He was in my debt once again.
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The skulls of every slain Great Ruler and Emperor had been salvaged to make Dreadskulls. Naturally the Aquatics couldn’t use Baneskulls against Aquatics themselves, but they glommed onto the ones from the Netherworlds happily. Briggs and Sama had been keeping busy with those. The trade for them was pricey in our terms, but nominal from their perspective for the time and skill needed to make such things.
“DO YOU THINK THEY FELT YOUR TRUE POWER, HEALER FAE?” Flowing Silver asked pointedly.
“No. Nothing I did radiated power beyond what I have displayed before, and any such senses are weakened by having to pass the Conduit and entering vivified water. They would have laughed off any discrepancies as obvious weakening of their servants from the vivified waters and the work of the Emperors about me. The mass Dispelling was concealed by the shattering of their own Dome and the obvious fact we were waiting for them.”
The feedback had also set them up perfectly for The Sea Emperor’s Roar, and the subsequent huge attack of Compressed Ice Lances. My Shards looked quite weak in comparison, clearly an individual attack.
Kinda hard to judge relative efficiency when relative Mana expenditure was so hard to measure in such situations. There had literally been a billion Mana blown in the opening seconds of the fight!
The two Dragons knew better. I had expended enough Mana to deplete most normal Human Sages, then maintained The Moon and Stars for an entire day, and yet I was now at full power once again... and that full power was considerably higher than any Human Sage!
Indeed, when I let them, they could feel my Mana Capacity ticking up literally every six seconds.
I had over two and a half million Mana in my Syzygy at this point. A five-Element Sage would normally top out around 1.76 million. Adding in the 710k in my Stars, and I was closing in on having twice as much Mana as the most powerful Sage alive.
I could spend it incredibly quickly relative to any normal Sage, but I still couldn’t hold a candle to the massive amounts a Beast Emperor could wield so casually. On the flip side, my Mana Renewal was higher than theirs... but currently totally unaffected by the increase of my Syzygy at all.
It was fine. I was still putting up over 400k an hour of Mana Renewal, which would be slow when I had many, many millions, but for practical purposes was still insanely fast. One of the reasons the Emperors and Rulers also enjoyed my Bringing Down the Sun and Moon is that the Mana Renewal under it equaled my own. Getting back ten million Mana over the course of the day was much faster than they could do so naturally, and one of the reasons The Sea Emperor had to take at least a week between each raid.
It was going to take the two of them months to fully recover from their Mana expenditures here, and I wasn’t going to be sitting around helping them do so. Flowing Silver Emperor could park Himself by the Pyramid in the Broom Closet, and furthermore request a Formation to help boost that even further... one which would start as soon as this impromptu conference was over.
He didn’t underestimate or devalue His vassals, after all.
“IT WAS OBSERVED THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE RULING AND IMPERIAL DENIZENS OF THE NETHERWORLD SEEMED TO BE RAISED FROM HUMANOIDS, AND NOT FROM GREAT BEASTS,” Flowing Silver went on calmly. “HEALER FAE, WHY WOULD THIS BE? WOULD NOT THE INNATE ADVANTAGES OF THE GREAT BEASTS MAKE THEM MORE SUITABLE FOR SUCH STATUS?”
“Beasts are tied to their own nature. Perhaps they can add to it, perhaps they can Corrupt what power is there, but Beasts are what they are.
“Mortal Humanoids who are born sapient are innately mutable, and furthermore, can easily choose to change their own nature, both early and frequently. Typeless Mana becoming Elemental Starfields is an example of this!
“It is probably a spiritual matter instead of a physical matter. Once some mortals can make their own body in imitation of a Beast, Beasts have no advantages whatsoever over such mortals, and will be somewhat fixed and lacking in some perspectives, while wholly masters of others that may have much less value, yet cannot be changed.” I waved a hand at The Ice Emperor. “Enslave The Ice Emperor and Corrupt His Elements, and you still aren’t going to make Him a smith and forgemaster. Thus, Great Beasts tend to be fixed specialists instead of flexible generalists... and specialists often have powerful weaknesses to match their strengths.
“A last possibility is simply that wherever they came from, there simply were no Great Beasts similar to what our world and the Beast Realm have evolved.”
That was actually probably the most startling to the three of them, as from their perspective, Great Beasts had been around forever, and it was Humans that were the recent evolutions and latecomers. I held up my hand at their startled expressions.
“Your Imperial Majesties, You must consider the perspective that this world and the Beast Realm are incredibly infused with Mana. You have no experience outside these Realms to compare, but I can assure you that in most worlds, the concentration of Mana is a tenth, hundredth, a thousandth, or even less compared to what our worlds possess.” I paused and let them ruminate on that fact before proceeding.
“In such worlds, there is no way that Great Beasts like yourselves can evolve easily. The incredible fecundity of such a world likewise tails off considerably. Innate magical ability is rare or non-existent. Massive growth simply does not happen because things do not get strong enough to support their own weight.
“In such worlds, beings as powerful as a Ruler would be far rarer than Emperors are now, Emperors would be non-existent, and Commanders would perhaps barely be sapient, certainly not to the degree they are now. The vast majority of Beasts would be simple animals, at the intelligence level of Servants or less, and never growing beyond that point.
“In such worlds, humans and humanoids born sapient have by far the most potential and power, simply because they ARE intelligent, and the physical advantages of the Beasts can be overcome with teamwork and tools.
“Thus, the spirits of such mortals are by far the best tools for the Nether Lords. I posit that finding so many intelligent Great Beasts is a novel experience for them, and given their own biases, they simply don’t bother to consider them as equals, as the existences of such are so dependent upon intense Mana to be sustained.
“Reduce the Mana of the world by a factor of a thousand, and it is likely almost every Great Beast on this world, save a few desperate handfuls, would rapidly starve and die, falling upon one another in a killing frenzy to gain the Mana to sustain themselves. Their senses of self and reason would fall away under the red rage of their hunger and instincts, and they could only cling to the whispers of what they were in the rare centers of higher Mana.
“It is likely the Rulers and Emperors would simply perish, or enter the deepest of suspended animations, as without constant Mana replenishment, beings as powerful as You simply cannot exist. You would starve to death just by breathing.”