I wasn’t in a great hurry. I was getting off two sets of Shards, 13 each, for basically 25 kills every six seconds, more than enough to pay all my ki bills. At six hundred times an hour, that was a steady 15,000 kills an hour just from me, and that didn’t include any of the offensive spells I was tossing about for rep counts. The pounding array of Storms, Bolts, Bursts, Lances, Meteors, Walls, Comets, and Clouds were wreaking some pretty sweet havoc on their own, and truth be told, doing more killing than my Shards.

I just didn’t get any ki from those Rep Counts, so it was basically finding a crowd of undead, drop a rep count spell on top of them, and then Shard down anything in the area afterwards.

The Chinese and Tomb Clans came in, and ranged attack work started from their thousand-foot safe area. The undead pressed in, burned up as the Purgers pulled back, were blown apart as they tried to pass the Wall, and then blind firing thinned them down as the Purgers literally stood on top of the Wall and killed them.

If they ran out of undead, I could just move the Wall, so no problems on my end. I let them slaughter away.

Oh, the undead wanted to fight back. They certainly had some powerful creatures among them, and the Death Qi made them incredibly tough and powerful, hard to bring down, even for the minion-level things most of them were.

But all that did is make them worth more Karma to us, and if the Purgers had to stand right in the Wall of Fire to be safe from the incoming horde of undead, or stand beyond it and watch them all die as they tried to get past something like 200 points of holy flames devouring them, yeah, that was just them finishing themselves off.

And it is remarkable how much slaughter thousands of dedicated killers can do on a sustained basis, especially when they knew all these corpses were their murdered and enslaved countrymen, possibly friends, family, and ancestors, and putting them down was not murder, it was the ultimate mercy.

Swathes of vivus were soon burning energetically everywhere. Death Qi, necroic energy, and undead formed a virtual tinderbox for the stuff.

The shooters wanted to fight Cultivators, but they had basically all earned their Levels fighting undead, and they knew what to do here. Waves of combat based around the Wall of Fire were soon ongoing, and floods of undead waves coming in to assault us, prodded by their instincts.

But, for all that, when Naming Karma was satisfied, when a Level was gained, and Marks got their infusion for the day... the Purgers packed up and left, probably dumbfounding the Cultivators watching from the Inner Dome. Briggs and Commander Haru’Ara did the same thing, not really standing out, just harvesting Naming Karma and some extra for themselves.

Of course, that meant they killed a few thousand each, but that was just because they were efficient at it. The Commander needed some rep counts, too.

Me, I continued for hours more, until it was time to do my own Infusing.

Behind us, we left a few million boosted and enhanced undead reduced to vivus. I left the Wall of Fire, the better to strain their Dome and consume more Death Qi to keep it going. As of right now, streams and threads of vivus were playing over the Outer Dome like tongues of fire licking at oil-soaked wood, forming a thousand-foot-high web of hungry unwhite tendrils spreading in all directions from the relentless flames.

There were still at least two dozen other major Sect enclaves for the Cultivators, and maybe they might unite to come here while these Death Qi practitioners were being sieged, maybe they wouldn’t.

I had managed to Energize well over ten thousand gemstones, at either ten or twenty goldweight a pop. I even had some glittering marvels at fifty goldweight of value.

I had also Energized tons of various metals to various Elements. As my Skill Ranks were currently topped at Twelve, I couldn’t do the truly Profound Elements yet, but Earth Tungsten and Water Titanium, i.e., adamant and mithral, were totally possible in small amounts per spell. Even an ounce per Caster Level starts to add up when the effective CL is over thirty...

The Commander wanted some combinations of metals for different alloys he was trying out, Briggs helping process them even if he didn’t understand how to mix them quite yet.

He and Sama had quietly caught up on their Charisma costs, and so finally hit Seven. It meant a whole slew of new Stats to pay for, and Levels of Classes to gain, but the length of paying off the former would be long enough to take the latter, as long as the Karma held out, and given how much Warlording they were doing, incoming Karma wasn’t a problem.

Of course, if they wanted to go down to Antarctica and wipe out a mountain of shoggoth or two to really cement their Karma to Ten, I could do it at any time. After all, those things probably needed to be killed before the Shroud fell, or something was going to come down, take control of them, and do who knew what with them.

Having knowledge of such creatures there that had to be killed was another reason for people to urgently make Ten. Soloing a shoggoth was a good way to truly break Ten, not just in the Faux manner, but you had to be Damn Good to do that.

Shoggoths were killing machines, and there were things that could take control of them.

There was a reason I wanted there to be strong people around when the Shroud fell...

------

I checked in on the family, Azaia running Assays on them and feeding me the results.

Good, they were taking Foundation Levels sideways. Every single one of them had taken an Artificer Level and Item Familiar, then Infused a Named Ring for Sustenance. I had Fabricated the Rings to the required QL, so they could be built up, and for that Ring alone, they were treated as if they had the Item Creation Feat for it, despite not being Twelves.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The lack of lots of spells hadn’t hurt them; they’d mostly hacked down the undead under the guidance of Highsun and Flame, covering for one another, spending magic if needed, and just getting enough Karma to do what needed to be done before withdrawing.

They all had advance schemas, new aspirations, and minimum things they wanted to gain. Morningfire was adamant about learning how to fight properly, and becoming truly good with a Sword, in addition to her fire magic. Morningflame was intending to take up Bardic and Minstrel Levels in remembrance of her sister. Dawn, Fair, and Glory were enthused about gaining side careers in general, while Highsun was intending to fill out the social skills he had basically let slide for Morningfire to handle.

It would not be a quick process, but it would happen.

Money, of course, was not an issue. They were a wealthy family, but even they were a bit dazzled when I poured out some Energized diamonds for them to use as if they were pebbles. Raw materials was my choke point, not making money once I had them.

If I wasn’t the richest woman in the world, I was certainly the one with the most readily available goldweight-usable assets. The amount of money I was Burning away every day would have staggered people in disbelief, literally hundreds of goldweight per day being Infused in various things to accelerate the Leveling paradigm.

The Morningsun Clan was off to a good start, and if it ended up being slightly boring... they had all of Markspace to chat with for up-to-date news and to make arrangements. Another goal... to get Stats high enough for a second thoughtstream!

They had also watched me casually butcher a quarter of a million enhanced undead leisurely, just so I could get more rep counts in... and make over a hundred thousand goldweight worth of Energized Gemstones, as well as Energized metals of various types.

That was fifteen BILLION dollars worth of goldweight value. Made from scrap gemstones I’d refined, melded together, and Energized. And I expected it all to get used up as rapidly as was prudent.

Brought to you by the gracious sacrifices of a quarter-million undead. Mass slaughter turned into unbelievable amounts of wealth.

In the coming night, I’d do it all again.

-------

I pulled back to look at the metaview.

The Australians had managed to find common ground with the Aborigines, used a boatload of Divination magic, and located all the Blighter undead in the Shroudzone. With desperate haste, they’d gone in and reduced them to vivus, ensuring that the now mile-wide Blighted ring outside the Shroudzone didn’t grow.

They were now in the building process, getting Named Weapons built to Vivic status, both the settled and the rural folk advancing their forces side by side.

They were all born of the land there; Australia didn’t care about their cultures or colors, and would punish them all equally. They had to grind down this Shroudzone, all of the Shroudzones, and get strong enough to be able to Hallow down this Blight over and over until it was gone.

Levels, Karma, time, effort, discipline. Slowly and patiently, the Sydney Shroudzone was being eroded away, and the process was starting at the other Shroudzones there. Even if it was only a few a day, getting Named Weapons and Vivus active was the big thing. Once that was started, real progress could be made.

Get enough Nines and Tens working on it, and yeah, they could save themselves from their own stupidity.

Could they get a King? Who knew...

---

North America’s Shroudzones were disappearing.

New York was gone, as was Washington DC. The Cemetery Shroudzone by San Francisco had been designated a newbie training ground, closed to anyone above Four, making the Philly Shroudzone the designated one to get to Six.

Four was enough to get a Double Helix foundation going, while leaving undead for those behind. Someone had estimated that it took about eight hundred basic zombies to complete a Helix Foundation to Four, so a million of them was only about twelve hundred people.

More powerful undead could accelerate that a lot, of course, but as it stood, the Shroudzones had now shifted from horrible blots on the landscape to resources that needed to be carefully farmed.

---

Europe was finally getting its head out of its ass after realizing that the demon that had replaced Morningflame had been at the heart of a network that had been hamstringing their fights against the undead for literally years, evident once they started doing deep investigations of the people with her Brand. Publicizing the event meant that opposition to a formidable and in-depth response involving lots of money evaporated. No politician wanted to be known as siding with the policies of a demon body-stealer, and naturally enough, the whole system of Allegiances was starting to rock the continent with the ramifications of who you chose to follow not having to involve where you lived.

That, and the whole idea of a True King rising, definitely tugged at the romantic heartstrings of many people. The political jockeying for the Powered, all competing to be that King, was underway in big ways, completely ignoring the fact that the power brokers, wealthy, and influential were completely superfluous to the process.

Governments were trying not to break down under the pressure, and the Good Churches were actually getting involved with them in the form of a transfer of power set-up, starting to arrange matters for when a True King surfaced. As they’d done much the same thing between the old churches and the new gods, they had experience in such things...

It was very apparent to those looking for such things that there were also plenty of people who had no desire at all for True Kings to appear. Since they couldn’t be that person, naturally they wanted nobody else to be. The backstabbings and assassinations were soon to follow... but that was part of the path a True King had to navigate, and even Monarchs did, as the death of a Monarch was the death of an Allegiance, and naturally all their followers were ripe for the picking by interested parties...

Monarchies and Kingdoms came with risks in the real world.

I noted that Morningfire understood all that completely, and had already started making some moves on the side. She was perfectly willing to play up the sympathy factor for what had been done to her family to start garnering support. If finding out about the sheer number of affairs the asshole who had replaced her had enjoyed using her face and name really irritated her, it didn’t stop her ability to navigate the social scene, and she was getting caught up on things very quickly, indeed.

She was also seeing if those people had been seduced into the worship of Shoul, and finding who had been ‘agents’ of her under my sire’s influence. She had been contacted by more than one person after the fact, unsurprisingly, and was merrily sending the Inquisitors after them.

She had glommed onto the fact that I had plans for Azaia to be the Queen of Europe without me saying anything. That would implicitly allow her to be under Briggs, who was angling for King of all of Asia... and Eurasia, if it meant that. If she made Ten, or Twelve, or anything higher, that meant she was implicitly better at supporting her daughter... and at staving off the murderous hostility which had already hit her family once.

She was not going to be surprised and taken like that again, that was very plain by the sheer enthusiasm with which she was leading her family in this endeavor.

She was someone born with an 18 Charisma, as opposed to cheaters like me who Nogged into such things. Naturally her personality was on burning display all the time. Those rivals for the position that was going to be her daughter’s were in for a rude surprise...