“Crystal harvest, let’s go!” Briggs ordered crisply, and the watching Undead hunters piled off the wall, jumping down into those sparkling Waters so full of rainbows and the purest Mana any of them had ever felt, ready to collect their pay for the day.
I pulled up the Star Jewel from the Mummy, and the crystalline Dreadskull that would empower itself, needing only the right Runes placed upon it. I harvested tens of thousands of Soul Crystals of my own, as did the KIA Sages, as they had Stars to treat, and I had Soul Crystals to combine.
Forty thousand Tier Sixes was only 1600 Tier-7 Stars for me, or a mere forty Grade 8... or one Grade 9 Soul Crystal Diamond Pearl.
I already had six Soul Diamond Pearls. This would make seven, which meant I could treat my starting Stars with them and make a set.
I had no idea what would happen if I did that. I was pretty sure that I should wait until I had all my Stars at 7 at least, and 2401 of them at 8. That wasn’t as far off as it could have been thanks to generous donations from the Netherworld’s countless scrap undead being vivisized and condensed down these past weeks...
I turned around at the feeling of a Sage-level crushing spell of Earth, Air, and Void Magic coming together to pin a target in place and then hammer them between a rising column of Earth and a solid wedge of Air magic. There was a pulse of desperate magic, and then something went splat.
Cameron Dow didn’t even wait around to be recognized or congratulated. He was never here, and the fellow who’d been watching and waiting and was about to try an attack on the Mick never got his spell off before being crushed to a pulp. The Archmages of the KIA and SAR teams might not have been able to stop him... emphasis on might. They were much more dangerous than that attacker suspected.
His skull was still intact, however.
Briggs noted the event in passing, and didn’t bat an eye. He just pointed emphatically and gave two orders.
Four Doors on each of the Temple Pyramids were going to be blown apart, a good chunk of those structures were going to be razed energetically, and this wasn’t going to happen again.
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“I hope he gave you something better than wine,” I mentioned to Briggs as he sat down with a sigh in his field quarters. Although the Broom Closet was but a Portal away, Briggs had made a commitment and was always visible in this area. That he worked at smithing in his downtime was no surprise, and everyone knew that the raw form of the Scepters came from his Forge.
That he was a preternatural craftsman who the best artisans in Mexico couldn’t match was already known to a select crowd, but he rarely, if ever, took orders from those begging for him to make something for them. There were already countless worthy souls among those of the Coralost Allegiance to occupy his time 24/7 if he so desired.
The Undead Hunters getting their Scepters from him directly was often one of their proudest moments. Just handling a QL 40 piece of work that would be eminently suitable for an Archmage, or even a Sage, was enough to drive many of them to tears. When they sent their Mana through it for the first time, feeling the power and potential in the Implements, a lot of them couldn’t keep their legs solid.
When they handled the Scepters of some of the Senior Undead Hunters who had been at this for months or years, it only made them even more zealous to get theirs that powerful!
“He had some special tequila in reserve for either his last drink or a true legendary event. When I told him what had come up and what you’d done to it, he dragged it out and we shared the whole damn bottle,” Briggs nodded to me with a sigh.
“Bringing up an Undead Emperor is indeed something to drive a man to drink. If we weren’t here, Mexico would literally never have been free of the Dead Zone,” I nodded to him, sighing myself. “Wow. How bad do you think it will be in Egypt?” I had to ask.
“Sama says there is something going down there. That kid Mok Fan? Turns out one of his Contracted Beasts is the youngest daughter and heir of the Medusa Queen.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it. I’d never seen her while he’d been in the Broom Closet, and I wasn’t surprised, now that I thought about it.
“There’s an Archangel there right now, and it’s Uriel,” he went on.
I tensed. Uriel was not really the head of the Archangels, but it was a triumvirate of him, Michael, and Raphael, and he was a whole generation younger than the other two, while being just as powerful. Ergo, he’d end up stronger in the end, and that meant he was first among equals, if not as wise or tempered as his elders.
“As I recall, the Medusa Queen is dead, and her position is being fought over by her daughters?” I asked.
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Briggs nodded. “That’s why the kid was there. Uriel showed up, blamed him for dealing with and having bound a great servant of darkness, and tried to throw him into the Netherworld.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I imagine Mok Fan didn’t much like that.”
Mainly because Mok Fan had quietly become a Sage atop the Broom Closet Pyramid, where nobody in the normal world could witness or be aware of it. He’d Awakened the Thunder Element by choice, and then, just as expected, the remaining Light, Ice, Air, and Water basic Elements had opened up for him in addition!
It had made him The Sevenfold Sage, and if I wasn’t around, the most powerful and versatile mage on the entire planet!
The Huando Meshing Method meant he could amplify ALL of his magics with Seven Elements, the strength of the Method growing as each of the Seven Elements did!
He’d lost his Demon Element, but the Huando Meshing Method with all Seven Elements was fully able to replace it as far as Casting power, and even resilience! Unlike me, those were actual Stars holding all his Mana, and so they reinforced the body, too...
“Everyone was shocked to discover he didn’t have any Dark Elements anymore, including the Demon Element. That seemed to include Elements of the Underworld that were trying to maneuver around and use him. He really messed up quite a few plans by purifying his Dark Elements.”
“Outcome?” I asked narrowly.
“It seems Aspis has taken her mother’s position over her sisters, and in doing so hurt their relationship with the Pharaohs who rely on them for living servants. Those Beasts loyal to the Medusa Queen have quit the Dead Zone and are establishing their own territories elsewhere, cutting the Pharaohs’ living servants in half.”
That was a pretty nice benefit. It meant it was harder to hold territory, to rove around and kill things, and fewer free souls for the Pharaohs.
“Uriel seems to have been distracted by some powerful demonic spirit made from psychic energy that was trying to build some sort of spiritual framework to become a Realm Lord of the Netherworld. He and the Archangels had to shatter that structure and either free or destroy the spirits it had collected before it could take the step, and Mok Fan and Aspis managed to flee during that conflict.”
“So, the Netherlords were trying to get another player on the board, and failed. That’s good to know.” Mok Fan would have been completely unreliable as a team player for the Underworld, but since he’d been a Dark Mage before, the Lords of Light would have exterminated him. He would have been forced to join the Under-team as the only native neophyte-Realm Lord, tipping the scales of power, even if he would only have been at the Low Imperial Stage with undeveloped Universes.
Without that threat, that meant the Light had removed a key piece of the Netherworld, or even two of them. They had to be feeling pretty confident of themselves right now, and they could hardly go after Mok Fan when Aspis pulled her people out of Egypt.
“Speaking of which, you’re probably going to have a big attendance at your Antarctic Healing Session this month.” I lifted an eyebrow curiously. “Mu Xuehua took a tour through there getting inspiration for her own breakthrough to Sage. She manhandled a bunch of Rulers, by all reports.”
Okay, that was pretty funny. Elder Ice Rulers coming to get Healed by a Human after being bashed around by a Human was a ton of grim irony.
“What’s the skinny on the Doors?” I had to ask, seeing as how his troops had destroyed half of the ones here, and collapsed good chunks of the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon while doing so.
“When they tried this tactic, it showed how desperate they are becoming. Having an Emperor Undead come in basically said they knew they were losing and something had to come in and bail them out. Us having killed everything, their fear is now at a high point.
“I won’t be delaying just to blood the noobs anymore. I’ll keep the recruiting incoming, but emphasis will shift to the current troops getting actualized, and then we’re going to Seal all but two of the Doors, and start pressing inside.”
I could also help with that, but again, I had my own stuff to do, and they had three Sages to help with that, with Cameron Dow on call and back-up if required. Mexico had never had so much power concentrated in one spot ever, and they could only wish that such strength was their own.
Two of the SAR women were from Mexico, and they would definitely be making Sage eventually. That would certainly help Mexico’s standing, and start moving power away from the established Families.
There were only three Sages in Mexico. Were. There were two now, as Sama had offed one last night with extreme prejudice, and his descendants were still wondering what had happened to him.
Don Peotr y Gonzales was one of those who’d taken the Light of Souls to gain his strength and position, and he’d been the Synod’s dog ever since. We had informed the Mexican President of the fact, and he had quietly okayed getting rid of the bastard, especially once he learned what the Light of Souls was made of.
That drink last night hadn’t been only about an Undead Low Emperor showing up! Mexico losing a Sage was a hard blow to the nation’s international standing, but losing a suck-up to the Synod? It was only a plus!
That Eduardo Caliente of the Caliente Family had accepted a Light of Souls was also dispensed to El Presidente. Sama had already filched that little prize from him, and he was going quietly nuts trying to find it.
The Caliente Family was long one of El Presidente’s supporters, and he knew Eduardo well. It just went to show you how little bonds and friendship meant when the lure of Sagedom was waved before those desperate for the power and status of a Great Family!
“Let me see your plans for the attack, and I’ll see if I can add anything,” I told him. He took that at face value, both of us knowing that any recommendations would be minor at best, but minor was always better than nothing, and tiny things meant lives and time, in the end.
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A couple weeks later, Antarctica...
“YOUR HUMANS ARE GROWING SAGES WITH INCREDIBLE SPEED RECENTLY.”
I glanced over at the head that had materialized out of the ice crystals and air next to me, covert enough that the many Beasts of Ice kneeling and accepting the Tears of the Moon and Stars wouldn’t even notice His presence.
He wouldn’t have known I was here, either, except I popped up this big Sage Healing spell visible for a hundred miles on the edge of His territory on a regular basis!