“What are the High Emperors doing?” Sama asked, just as a particularly deft flanking maneuver crumpled the left side of the Pharaonic defenders below, and racing Undead Hunters smashed into the side of the long-range mummy Poison spitters deployed behind the guardian skeletons meant to protect them.

“Flowing Silver is shuffling advice to them. They still don’t want to be told what to do by a Human, but cunning advice from a Nine-Tailed Fox is much more palatable. Briggs has been suggesting some nasty things, and of course the True Emperors are all on board with what’s coming.”

“You really are expecting problems on the Beast side?” Sama didn’t really ask. It was expected, after all.

“It was pointed out to Infinite Sands High Emperor that His domain is literally seething with billions of subterranean, Poison-using insects of all kinds, and He’s been protecting their growth in numbers while not checking up on them in the slightest. It is entirely possible He’ll have to set the entire Sahara on fire to kill them all.

“Sea Emperor already had His purge, and the active Conduits in the seas are all Sealed, but that leaves potentially dozens of inactive ones ready to open on a whim. The amount of Dark Mana in the oceans is still incredible, and if concentrated, can Corrupt anything within its area quickly.

“Ice Emperor has been advised that the Netherworld is probably going to ignite the volcanoes under Antarctica and bring Blightfire directly into His Demesne to try to destroy Him and His servants. He wasn’t happy to find out that the amount of molten lava underneath His Elemental Domain has increased to a very dangerous point.”

“Ah, the mighty, ever ignorant of the things happening right under their noses, because they don’t pay attention to the ants.” Literally, in the case of Infinite Sands! “Did you confirm the corrupted Bugs for Infinite Sands?”

“Now, that would be intrusive. I did confirm that roughly ninety percent of the Dark Mana coming from Egypt has been flowing into and under the surface of the Sahara, however.”

“What about Queen Aspis and her followers?”

“If you go wandering over to those areas, you’ll find that every single creature with an exposure to Dark Mana also has Vivic Eternal Lights Burning on them, often in multiple locations. I would dearly love to see what happens if the Netherworld tries to surge in on them and take them from her now.”

“Ah, that’s where you went two days ago, when you didn’t go back Down,” Sama nodded sagely. She twitched a finger, and suddenly about fifteen acres of ground sprouted a lot of gleaming crystalline spikes, spikes that happened to be impaling thousands of stealthily buried Withering Sand Mummies. Lightning crashed down from above and danced among the glinting spikes like a living thing, blowing apart the sand-wrapped undead struggling atop them in sprays of misting dirt and old bones.

“Nice catch,” I complimented her keen eyes, warning the mages that intruders were stealthily closing in there via sand-burrowing.

“This Pharaoh has a long history of clever tricks and leaving openings that are actually ambushes,” Sama sniffed. The slaughter below was tremendous, tens of thousands of undead dying by the minute and the road to the Pyramid itself opening up, despite ever-more powerful undead trying to get in the way.

They simply weren’t prepared to meet so many powerful living mages optimized to fight Netherworlders. Their unearthly strength and toughness weren’t advantages here, they were vulnerabilities! To vivus, Disruption, and true Holy powers, they were weaker than humans were!

The fact the Undead Hunters were still growing in numbers, albeit more slowly than before, certainly didn’t help matters. Newcomers were arriving to every company every week, were blooded in turn, issued basic Soul Crystals to start their Star-tempering, and issued an Implement to Name and feed victory. They were growing steadily and strongly.

“How many infiltrators have you turned away at this point?” she had to ask.

“Thousands. Over ten thousand, and that just is the people sent by others to get into the Undead Hunters, as opposed to people who just want to do it for the power and the prestige.”

“Can’t imagine why, what with how fast they improve and how powerful they get as they improve, all without sucking down endless cultivation aids costing millions.”

“For which the Egyptian government thanks you with the tax dollars they are keeping for their wealthy generals to misuse.”

I just glanced at her. “What, you didn’t pick the right price point to charge them?” I was a little amazed.

“They were canny enough to set up the whole bit just before they went in to start purging their Stars, and I wasn’t going to bug them while they were doing that. However, I think I’ll be visiting their banks incognito and emptying out the accounts they are diverting the funds to... and maybe a few others, besides.”

“They are going to complain SO loudly that their secret embezzled accounts have been emptied! Wait, no they aren’t. I imagine you can encourage the President to get those extra funds allocated to the widows and orphans of faithful Egyptian soldiers, too?”

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“With no doubt the hardest smile he’s ever put on in his political life!” Sama assured me toothily.

“Ah, because he’s dipping into them for his own benefit, too...”

“Can you see the headlines? ‘While the valiant sons and daughters of Egypt die fighting the menace that have preyed upon us for millennia, the noble leaders of our country steal the money meant to go to their families!’” Sama framed it with her fingers. “Sound catchy, right?”

“Sounds like a good way to get lynched, actually. The Families have bled this country for as long as the Pharaohs have, after all.”

She leaned into me. “That might just be going to change here shortly, end of the world and some incredibly skilled and united troopers here and all.”

I leaned back into her with a sigh. “Hadn’t occurred to me, nope, nope.”

“For which reason I ask why you haven’t gone Down three days in a row, idiot Avatar posing for bad press releases aside.”

“One of Them noticed something was wrong,” I replied quietly.

Sama sucked in a breath. “They didn’t find the Pyramid...”

“No, I parked it in an area that hadn’t been Burned clean yet, so it’s just a part of the landscape among millions of square miles, nothing to see. But I came in a safe distance away and just watched for twelve hours, and a Realm Lord’s Awareness swept the area four times.”

“Well, damn. I guess you won’t get to rack up any more billions of undead kills. Did you get what you needed?”

“Not quite, but... I’m set up to.” I smiled slightly, and she squinted at me.

“Oh, you did something clever,” Sama grinned for me. “Do we get to hear what?”

“Well, the path I was following with the Pyramid wasn’t exactly random, and wasn’t to the next area with the most undead in it.”

Sama naturally took that to the next step. “You made a Rune or Seal out of the vivic dust of billions of undead...” she hissed in razored appreciation. “And you’re going to pop it on one of them...”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“The sixth.”

“The... sixth?” Sama blinked. “Oh. Well, fuck.”

I smiled ever-so-slightly. “That was what I said when I found out. Then I started going through the new scenarios, and I thought, ‘Hey, Fae, these Dark bastards think they got the whole edge on these Light guys, who probably consider a five-on-four fight to be fair enough. That sixth, now, he’s gonna totally blow their drawers, and is why they aren’t concerned with all their other schemes and stuff being unraveled and destroyed. They figure they got this in the bag.’ ‘Oh, Fae, I know, I know. So, what’re you so smug about?’ ‘Well, Fae, just imagine what’ll happen to their nasty fucking little plans if we blow the piss out of a Realm Lord so hard he can’t risk himself in a Realm Lord fight like that?’ ‘Damn, Fae, sounds cool. How do we do that?’ ‘Well, Fae, first you start with at least ten billion undead...’” I trailed off, and if my eyes were dancing a bit, well, I earned it.

That had been so goddamn much grinding on undead and collecting Soul Crystals and combining them...

Sama had to muffle herself from laughing out loud. “Ten billion-!” she gasped, snorting in disbelief. “I suppose that is proper vengeance for all them Damned souls on their would-be lords...”

“There are times I really miss not knowing Justice, but Hope will have to do.” Sama sighed with me as the shadow of one Word and the declaration of another rang quietly around us, both of us closing our eyes and basking in the sensation that all the damn work, the gods-damned YEARS of labor and planning and grinding and killing and plotting and sneaking and slaughter and drudgery and conniving and leading and...

“It’s good to be able to think that we’ll actually be able to take a break sometime in the future,” Sama murmured.

“Kids for you?” I asked softly.

“We figure we’ll have at least two of each of our own, and we’ll adopt a bunch of others so the new Samas and Briggs can have siblings beyond one another,” Sama said softly, not opening her eyes. “How about you?”

“Stopping the ceaseless grind and power-leveling and just meditating, dreaming with the whole of the world for... I don’t know... I miss being able to just let go and dream.”

“How close are you to Human Thirty?” Sama asked grimly. She and Briggs had long since reached Twenty in the Rantha Racial Class, insane as that jumbled-together bit of Hag work was.

I reached out and spread my fingers.

Seven egg-shaped crystals the size of a grapefruit hung there in the air, and all of magic around us seemed to pause in shock and awe at their presence, before I stowed them back away.

“I have the feeling the instant I Temper the first seven of those, I’ll hit Thirty in Human Racial.”

High Exemplar, the final step in being Human. If that didn’t satisfy any pre-reqs for becoming a Realm Lord, I didn’t know what would.

“Magos?” Sama asked shortly.

“If I wasn’t taking Secondary Classes for the skill points and class abilities, I’d’ve hit Thirty in Sorcerer some time ago, as I’m sure you realized. Genocidal behavior towards things that were supposed to die a long time ago is good for the soul, you know?”

“You’re making me want to go down and just engage in Cleave Trains for hours,” Sama told me.

I blinked once, and turned to look at her. She looked back at me, and her eyebrows slowly rose as I didn’t look away.

“Just how long a Cleave Train do you think you can make?”