-Why not?- Briggs /asked immediately. I knew they could handle the Dragonhearts; it wouldn’t even be a struggle with their mental Stats.
-For everything you’re doing, that Racial Class of yours is drawing on a lot of stuff, but NO dragonish genes. Do you think that’s a coincidence?-
They were silent for only a moment, going over the implications. -Huh,- /said Briggs, acknowledging the fact. -You’re right. Given how crazy the Stat raises are, I can’t see how the original Rantha who designed this would miss out on Template buffs. So, that has to mean...-
-...that we’ve got Templates waiting for us when we finish up!- Sama /finished for him gleefully. -And since they are built right into the Class...-
-Definitely the Advanced Template,- Briggs /nodded, and I /agreed. It was generic, but +4 to all Stats was still pretty nice. -That’s the same as Human/5, right? So we know a Template can be part of a Racial Progression of one sort or another.-
-Yes,- I /confirmed. -If there’s an advancement after that, you’re talking Lesser Exemplar.-
-Ohhhhhhh,- both of them /said together. -I ain’t giving up the chance at that for some silly Dragonheart!- Sama /exclaimed. Being a pure member of your species was kinda incompatible with taking in another race, unless it came from some outside source afterwards... and since the boosts didn’t stack, next to pointless.
ESPECIALLY if Exemplar was ultimately on the table! While you could get the Exemplar-path and THEN potentially get Templated, it didn’t work the other way, as you lost your purity.
It was why having a true racial progression was important. As a Template, half-dragons actually didn’t have one! They could borrow the one of their base species, but that wasn’t a progression that stood on its own merits.
In contrast, halvyr DID have a unique Racial Progression of their own. Magically, it made a difference...
Benefits of not being a product of magical lizards who could breed with anything under the sun, I guess...
“One more thing.” Legion looked at me inquiringly. “Tell me if your Strength goes up tomorrow. I want to know if you tied your Amazon Levels to your Racial Levels.”
They pursed their lips. “Ah. We had not noticed... but it is possible...” They looked down at their clawed hands, and a smile could not resist tugging at the corner of their lips. “Ah. That would mean... we would get very strong indeed, would it not?”
“Potentially an 85 Strength and a 92 Might. Slap a Giant Size on you, and that’s 93 and 100.”
They looked a little stunned, and partly lost. “We should have memorized the Strength tables,” they murmured, and I flicked it over to them.
At merely Size Large, twice normal size, double carrying capacity on top of +8 Strength.
Twenty-six thousand tons. That was lifting up and toting around the Statue of Liberty... or a good-sized aircraft carrier.
A ‘mere’ 92 baseline was 4200 tons. Only 40,000 times as strong as a normal athletic person. Treating a wrecking ball like a baseball... and you could probably throw it like a cannon. Bench-pressing a small destroyer, or a big frigate. Tossing around a locomotive.
Such strength was already far, far past normal physical limits, and was mostly direct kinetic control, as an organic body couldn’t possibly sustain such strength.
Maybe there was a god or a kaiju who had been that strong on the planet before, maybe not. It was just hellaciously, ridiculously strong.
“That’s going to be a very good thing.” Tattoo eyebrows rose as if alive. “The more sheer brute power we have for the end fight, the better, and Sama and Briggs are taking a lot of time to Level, since they have to pay for their Stats at a slower pace than you do.”
Legion inclined their head. “We have seen how fast you can annihilate undead... and Cultivators, if not quite so quickly. Your statement that they cannot stop you is most apt. We understand we will be facing the undead champions of the world the invaders came from, but still, the sheer amount of carnage you can wreak is literally difficult to believe. Yet you are talking as if you are... immaterial?”
I reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Yes. I’m only good as a threat. If we are amazingly lucky, I’ll get to show off for twelve hours. More likely, it’ll be four or less, and if we are unlucky, it might never happen at all.”
It was Legion’s turn to grimace. “That...” they hissed, almost in disbelief. “How? A... dedicated Counterspelling strategy?” Really, it was all you needed, and enough Casters to pull it off. Double usage, as it would prevent me from recharging readily, and I’d run out of juice like anyone else.
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“No. The standard tactic for dealing with overwhelming magical power is anti-magic. The intelligent tactic Shroudlords use for compensating against anti-undead magic is to apply the negative energy of their zone to the local manafield, and turn the entire place into a Dead Magic Zone, a Lesser Greyfield.”
-Oh, shit!- Briggs and Sama /exclaimed together.
“Yes. That means no active Casting, or external magic that isn’t tied to items. No flight, no dimension-hopping, no magical ranged attacks or effects.”
-That means... this is going to be a hacking and shooting-fest.- Briggs’ /voice was grim. -With anywhere from a hundred to two hundred million or more enhanced undead opponents!-
“Yes. And now you see why I was not emphasizing Caster mass-obliteration techniques.”
-FUUUUUUUCK!- Sama and Briggs /said together again. -Do you know how much harder that makes things?!?!-
“Yes.”
That shut them up. I did. I really did.
-No wonder the focus on cold Weapons and you not clearing more Shroudzones,- Briggs /groaned. -Why the delay?-
“There’s plenty of time, and you need those Caster Levels for the support magic, healing, and recovery... plus, there’s a whole lot of shit to kill yet that offensive magic is very good for, and all that offensive magic is going to be VERY useful after the Shroud comes down.”
That was true. There was freaking heaps of shit to do. I was doing runs every day around the world, bringing Sevens here to fight the Cultivators who still dominated over half of China, and hundreds to Level up in the Chinese and Indian Shroudzones, steady and sure before they upgraded.
The high-Level Forsaken were heading to Tibet, first to get acclimated, and then to pursue the fight there. As the Powered couldn’t endure there, that also meant they had to be their own recovery and healing specialists, unless they pulled all the way out of the place. I understood Healing Edge and Revitalization were extremely popular Greater Arsenal choices, and they were upgrading to beat the band.
Void Brothers from all over the world were converging on China, too.
All that, and the Hollow World and Hyperborea were still sitting out there.
There was tons of shit to do!
I was perfectly aware that at the national level, the existence of the Hollow World was raising dreams of colonization, industrialization, and exploitation. Expeditions were already being planned by the mercantilely-minded to see what they could find in the Hollow World to exploit. They were only being held at bay by how hard it was to actually get down there and get back out with any wealth.
Still, dreaming of conquering and owning a jungle kingdom was dancing in the minds of many. Finding out firearms and war machines were going to go away was already spurring an interest in the martial past of all our peoples. National armies, in addition to sending soldiers to Shroudzones, were breaking out very old field manuals and having to completely retrain the basic non-magical soldier from a technological era back down to a more primitive one.
That aside, steam-powered war machines were going to be a thing, that was certain, although that wouldn’t help the individual soldier, and alchemical firearms were never going to be as widespread or as strong as firearms were now.
The mass recruitment of horses and training of cavalry was now underway, too. There were no more wild mustangs left in the United States now, among other things.
Still, all that stuff was going to take years to accomplish, and clockwork stuff would be used to some degree... very carefully, since Axiom and magic tended to look at such things very opportunistically, which would again skew those who could own such things towards the elite.
And naturally all of it would take a LOT of money and gold. Just the retooling costs were back-breaking to the machines of industry, as all that investment in prior tech was going away.
“But, then, what is your role in all this? You are certainly not incapable in personal combat, but it is not your strength,” Legion had to ask. “Yet, knowing all this, you are not focusing on personal combat skills more?”
“Because the destruction of the Shroudzone is not my job,” I reminded her. “That’s your job. What is my job?”
Glowing Tats moved on their face. “Ahhh. The psychopomp...”
I nodded slowly. “My job is to prepare the way, remove threats to when the Shroud Falls... and that is biggest threat of all.”
“Understood,” they agreed. “Do you have a plan?”
I looked off into nowhere. I was every bit as intelligent now as Aelryinth had been, but I was suffering from lack of a knowledge base. The Akasha would help, but that was Level-based, and in any case, dependent on what humans knew around here. The Shroud would interfere with Divine-level knowledge, so the Angelos and Haru’Ara weren’t useful, as I’d already confirmed, and Graf Mochtal and Bey Azzar had not been helpful, either.
I could parse everything I knew very, very well, but if I couldn’t refer or reach it in the Akasha, welp, it didn’t matter.
I needed someone or something that knew more.
“I have potential plans. It depends on the nature of what is coming. I can only change them as they take place.”
“Understood. We are sorry that the information we have available is not of more help.”
The knowledge of a lilitu was naturally quite deep, but was running into the same problem as Commander Haru’Ara. Higher Levels of knowledge that touched on the Divine were currently forbidden them, and as Soulborn Outsiders whose knowledge basically was granted them by the Outer Planes they were linked to, there was nothing they could do about it.
That meant I had to find natives with the knowledge.
An option was in Tibet. I was pretty sure the King in Yellow would know what I wanted. I was also sure that the price He would demand was not something we would be able to afford unless we were in a completely dominant position, and the Void Brothers were aware of this.
That left Hyperborea, or the Hollow World... or if Aelryinth could come up with something when I wrenched the Shroud open at the Summer Solstice celebration.
Let’s see what Legion’s Dragonsire came up with after they finished advancing and could throw him around like a toy. If that was a dead end, or even if it wasn’t, well, I had to go to Hyperborea to do the Ice and Fire Ceremonies for more people. There were some Old Gods there I could pay a visit to, and I didn’t doubt they’d want to talk to someone holding the skulls of three Old Gods...
In the meantime, I had a dragon I could visit, too...