The explosion of necroic energy and Dark Mana was pretty intense, but it became a brilliant white double explosion of vivus fountaining up into the sky as the double Conduit passed through a dozen Seals each and flowered itself impotently up into the sky. There was a lot of crumbling of the combined plaza between the two as the two halves of the crater migrated and imploded together, space squeezing and forcing them into one as the Veil was magnificently reinforced by all the vivus being generated. The stacked Seals resonating with one another even more effectively didn’t help any efforts as the Conduit’s controllers tried to save the connection from below.
Something big and vague did try to reach up, a shadowy hand a hundred feet long thrusting up through from the Conduit for a second... a hand that was utterly ablaze as it punched through the Seals, which tore into it like razors and set it alight. It was stripped and being Burned down as it came to a halt, and then something below really, really screamed as the hand fell apart, withdrawing it as fast as it could. But it was already Burning, and all that it did was set the Conduit below on vivic fire, too.
Something down there wasn’t going to be very happy with us.
Happily, the convergence of the Craters merging into one and the way the Conduit was shrinking meant I’d only have to build one Pyramid of my own to cap the thing, instead of two!
-------
Several days later...
“She’s making the entire city nervous, you know.”
“Yeah, why’s that?” Talking to Sama didn’t interrupt anything I was doing, wrenching Blocks out of the vivisized stone all about and sending the ten-foot cubes into place every six seconds. The Pyramid was almost done.
“A two-hundred-foot-tall giant Mantis gives a lot of people the heebie-jeebies.”
“Oh, really? Hadn’t occurred to me.” I cocked an eye up at the beautiful Mantis Emperor up above us, her carapace the purest shade of butter white, edged in gleaming prismatic crystals that made it look like she was highlighted in liquid diamonds. “She’s so beautiful, why would they care? It ain’t like they are paying her to guard this place.”
Sama just smirked. “The Mantises have a pretty dreadful reputation as ambush predators in the jungles.”
“Yes, she’s definitely going to ambush tons of stuff here,” I conceded. “You relaying the braying of the Mexican Generals, giving a Great Beast authority over the Wards here?”
“Oh, you do know about that.”
“Briggs sent me an earful of their complaints. Then he noted that after he compiled a list of powerful mages, including them, to replace what she was doing by herself, doing nothing but sitting around all the time with their thumbs up their bums waiting for a High Emperor trying to break through, they all declined the responsibility, remarkably enough.”
Sama just chuckled again. “Yeah, spine isn’t exactly something we expected out of those protesting the arrangement. Is the Emperor okay with this?” she asked, glancing over at the nearest leg of the massive insect, her clawed foot only a hundred feet away.
Glittering Dewdrop White Jade Mantis Emperor had a clear view of everything I was doing, especially the flows of Earth Mana being wound up through the Typeless Mana burning off the Nether Conduits energy beneath it.
“She’s cool with it. She’s getting really pure Earth Mana for her time, and lots of pure Typeless Mana, even sitting here in the middle of a Human territory. In some respects, she’s being overpaid!”
“Yeah, they really didn’t like her having control of the Wards. They wanted to be able to trap her in there if something went wrong, buying themselves more time.”
“Eh, fuck them.” A tiny shard of the Mantis Emperor’s claws was embedded in each Formation powering up the Warding Wall, allowing her to raise and lower them at will, and specifically Attuning them to her. She could pass through them as if they didn’t exist, and they’d have no effect on her body or Mana.
Fair treatment instead of treachery.
“I also might have forwarded the names and Auras of those who wanted to do such a thing to her, and indicated that she should not trust them. If anyone tries to pull her claws out of the Formations, she’s to eat the one who does so, and the ones who give the order,” I told Sama whimsically, who just laughed at the reward for treachery.
Far above us, an antenna dipped just a few inches in recognition of my words. The Mantis Emperor was extended up the side of the Pyramid, enjoying the elevated view. She didn’t move much, but when she did it was with startling grace and delicacy for her size. Her arrival in a glittering spread of wings and carefully-subdued Aura had shocked the city, even after I’d warned them that an Emperor was coming to watch over the Sealing Pyramid that I was putting up.
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I’d be done with it by the end of the day, then back to my regular schedule of turning Undead into ever-more condensed Soul Crystals...
------
The Netherworld...
I checked my backtrail, and shook my head in bemusement. Most of the areas behind me were completely covered by random undead again, pressure from other territories expanding slowly into the extra space. The near-mindless dead were just stumbling into them for pressure relief.
Even the chance that the Realm Lords would notice a thinness in the undead population was being resolved organically. It was more like something cut a swath through the Damned, and since they couldn’t see the weapon or creature doing so, it was nothing for their bosses to look too hard at.
Now, if they actually studied the landscape and saw the very essence of the Plane had been consumed and reduced to rote inert matter, which itself was slowly being re-stained by Dark Mana, drawing the energy in from the lands around it, that was different. That was a thief at work!
But they’d have to know to look, and if they looked, they’d have to know to conceal their attention ahead of time, or I’d find out promptly.
And then, then things would get interesting. It was just a question if the Realm Lords would get curious about the flotsam of their kingdoms being cleaned up. It was such a small number in relation to what was here, after all...
We would only see. I condensed hundreds of thousands of Soul Crystals down with Soul Crystal Fabrication, in between Sharding any survivors of The Heavens Weep, and continued about with my tasks.
I had slaughtered over a billion undead. My Tier-8’s were accumulating... as were my Tier-9’s, which would take billions more undead to possibly finalize. Making a bin of extra Tier-6’s hadn’t taken too much away, given the numbers I was working with. I could probably do the same with 7’s, and if I didn’t need them, well, I knew plenty of Sages who would leap to gain them.
Another hundred thousand Soul Star Jewels? That... was pushing things. The mere idea of gathering up 16.8k Soul Diamond Pearls was straining my belief index at the slaughter required. Another hundred thousand of them, on top of what I needed?
Sure, it was just a number, but the amount of massacre that accompanied it was completely unreal. I felt sour knowing that even balking at the thought of having to do that much killing was considered a sign of weakness by those I was acting against. They certainly had no such hesitation when undertaking actions with their own hands!
I was reaping a hundred thousand undead minimum to create each Soul Diamond Pearl, a thousand to ten times more if it was the weaker Warriors and Servants. It was a LOT of killing to have to do!
And to the interloping Realm Lords, it was of no more concern than flicking an ant off of their sleeve. They just did not care.
I could only console myself that it was the Right thing to do, Damned souls kept past their time, finally dissolving back into the cycle of life and being shunted back up into the mortal realm by my Pyramid here, instead of being trapped and adding to the weight of this pet realm of theirs by their presence. Even that tiny bit of contribution was enough for the Realm Lords to keep them here past when they should have simply degraded into nothingness.
They had no incentives to keep the cycle of souls going, only disincentives. Thus, why do what was right for Creation, as opposed to what was right for themselves?
Utterly pragmatic, no emotion in the decision. There were no downsides for them gaffing the natural way.
Well, that would change, if we just had the time, and the Faith to bring a true god to a reality where no such things existed.
-Fae,- Sama’s curt /voice intruded on my abject slaughter of the dissolute denizens of the Netherworld.
-Problem?- I /sighed back knowingly.
-The Synod just tried to activate the Wings of Gabriel.-
Despite her grim /voice, I snirked at the thought. -And how did the Avenging Heavens Sage take the news of that final nail?-
-The Synod also just listed Mok Fan as a Threat to Humanity and is calling for his destruction by all nations and Mage Associations.-
I closed my eyes and sighed. This was the default moment of escalation. Mok Fan was supposed to be a Dark Mage and a potential Netherlord. However, he had escaped from that status and the Synod couldn’t take even a glimmer of a moral stand to the world, so they had to come up with another reason.
They’d activated Gabriel’s Wings to deliver them the Final Prophet and start the inevitable conversion of the world, since they didn’t have the nascent Dark Lord to provide the excuse for them.
-So, you’re rendering them Wings down as we speak?- I /gathered with dry amusement.
-I don’t normally take a lot of joy in rendering down Item Spirits, but I’ve got a special place for this bastard,- she /confirmed.
-I take it Briggs is on the spin control?-
-He released the Archangel Files, or certain of them.-
I had to fight down a chuckle. -Oh.- That meant the whole world was going apeshit at the highest levels up there. I looked at the activity in the Markspace and could see that certain areas of it were starting to ramp up rapidly... but they were all in the Allegiance. They knew the Archangels and the Synod were complete pieces of shit already, and now they got to watch as the rest of the world found out, too... as well as just how corrupt the higher Mage Association leaders were, and how tightly they were bound to the Synod.
Uriel’s reputation was hitting the shitter right now. Mok Fan’s service record and heroism was being brought up right next to a half-dozen atrocities and a whole lot of just plain mean, lethal, and petty shit the Archangel had been involved in, as well as listing out his personal servants, the Seraphim, and the red-handed shit they’d been involved in.
After all, they didn’t fight Beasts, they took care of Humans!
-Looks like the local Magic Associations outside of most of Europe are basically telling him to go fuck himself. Oh, hey, look at that. He just lost the votes of most of Scandinavia, too.- That was pretty funny, as the warrior peoples of those lands were, generally speaking, pretty faithful to the Synod and its goals, even if they had their own proud warrior legends.
I guess when you’re behind the assassination of some of their promising heroes and the downfall of several famous Families who wanted nothing to do with the Synod, opinions change.
There was even a picture of Kargil Jarnbjorn’s legendary Axe Frostmourn sitting up on Uriel’s trophy wall in his office! The famous Bear-Skin Archmage had been missing for a decade, no word of what had happened to him, and there was the proof of it, right there!