Traveler had settled down for the night... or eight hours of more work, depending on how you looked at it.
It basically meant he didn’t have to stand by discreetly on overwatch, especially if she needed to go meeting with outsiders.
They hadn’t wanted to tell her that they’d intercepted at least three attempts to kill her for one reason or another, but they could hardly keep him out of the loop... and he had informed her without fail.
Her complete lack of surprise or fear was conveyed easily. “Only three? Ah, right, I’m still a Two. Keep up with the Karma harvests.”
She trusted him, so he decided to trust her and what she’d spoken about. Given how rapidly she was turning things upside down here at Heavenbound Hall, his trust was approaching extreme levels.
He was Heavenbound, and knew the power of a Heavenbound Pact. She still had the shadows of one, and the Angelos Himself had confirmed that she was worthy of one... if being able to use Sacred magic and the Words of Creation weren’t a damn big bell ringing out the Truth for all and sundry.
Still, if you didn’t know where all this game-changing knowledge came from, you were going to look askew at her. Certainly, they couldn’t help but envy her ability to earn massive sums of money in not much time at all. Indeed, that was a truly ludicrous amount of money flowing into her grasp every day... and the rate she was spending it at was equally as impressive...
And now she was multiplying it yet further. The faint smile that never went further flickered across his face as he picked up his sixth Wand, and proceeded to charge it.
She knew how to use his Wrath better than any Warlock he had ever seen, and she had nothing but respect for his skill at something as simple as using it to flick up his text-words. It was so simple, but overlooked by so many people...
He never would have expected that the Wrath could be used to charge up Cure Light Wound Wands. It was such a simple idea and execution, but the intersection of Wrath and Divine Healing Magic was not a simple thing at all.
It had required time and investment by him, thousands of attempts to get the proper context and mental architecture reliably in place even after being shown precisely how to do it. Indeed, she had used his Wrath and done the task fifty times right in front of him, taking an empty Wand and charging it to full with his own Pact’s energy.
Using the Wrath as a Healing effect was specifically restricted to the Heavenbound, and some Faith and Healing Ranks to access the positive, non-lethal aspect of Heaven’s power to deliver the healing instead of the harm. Then it took lots of practice, an Artificer’s general understanding of magic and Using Magical Devices, and you had to have Wrath at II, at least, IV if you wanted to sub for Cure Moderate Wounds.
Oh, and the appropriate Mastery, of course. Warlocks were all about the Masteries...
But once you did... storing up Healing magic was a matter of time, not spell Slots. Siegecraft couldn’t charge Wands, after all, so charging up Wands and Potions with Healing Magic was just a case of expending the Wrath properly, over and over and over...
Traveler had literally gathered together all the un-empowered Wands and Potions being made by the Casters, Artificers, and Alchemists of the Hall, set them on a table in front of him, and as the watching makers goggled, he had charged up all of them, one after another.
In an eight-hour shift, he’d done something like fifty goldweight worth of work, if they turned around and sold what he’d charged up. Multiple tests had proven they were exactly as viable as any normally made set of Craft; all the Casters had to do was come up with the initial items, and he could do the charging for them.
The demand for Healing magic could never be met, so in one day he’d basically paid back the Hall for everything it had ever spent on him. It was a good feeling, and so every day he had at least a score of Potions and three new Wands to charge up.
Those Healing Traps of hers had upended a lot of concepts on mass Healing. Sure, they would only work on a person once a day... but an unlimited number of people, or animals! Just have the wounded cross the trap, and a huge load would be taken off any sort of triage healing in a combat crisis as the Cure Light Wounds went off...
She had actually made one, cut ten volunteers across the face, marched them across the white Disk, and the cuts had vanished. It was faster and cleaner than Reserve Healing at quickly getting rid of or stabilizing minor injuries.
He’d watched her pack it up and ship it off to Briggs in Baltimore, who’d been happy to hear it was coming. Apparently, that monster of an Ancient didn’t have some of the requisites to make one...
Then she’d recruited one of the Minstrels of Tiirith to help her make a Mercy’s Guitar, and turned the ability of musicians to help the wounded on its ear.
Listening to the music for up to an hour per day would restore up to the equivalent of a Cure Serious Wounds spell, or about 4 Health, or Soak if Health was full, every ten minutes. Again, better than Reserve Healing, which only fixed Health... and generally only devoted healer Clerics had access to.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Being able to Heal a whole tent of wounded men at one time was pretty powerful all by itself, and anybody who could play an Instrument well could use a Mercy’s Instrument! So, it had again moved the onus away from a particular person’s power to the Instrument and just having people on hand who could play it well. The better you could play, the stronger the Healing effect... no requirement for the Heartsong, even!
A quiet census was also rippling through Heavenbound Hall, and Deep Assays were being done of everyone, with a focus on those people who were stuck at Three. One or two a day were going in to see Traveler in the early morning before Natural Renewal, and coming out as Fours... and sometimes Fives the very next day, if they’d been there a long time... and they ignored the Leveling advice they’d been given.
The Windgraf’s cautious use of Wish magic had obviously been overturned. Inherent bonuses from Wishes did indeed satisfy the requirements to gain Levels, which meant that suddenly literally thousands of people were seeing hope of being able to Level without having to wait years... or for those in physical Classes, literally never.
Making a thousand Sixes out of a thousand Threes was basically a quadrupling or more of power. If they were smart and took Traveler’s Leveling advice, they could see Seven, or even Eight or Nine...
One to three people a day. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and nobody else on the planet could probably do it...
Except that Sama Rantha person, who seemed to have access to a magic that was once Demonic in origin, and which she had cleaned up and made usable by normal people, too!
That magic was called Marks, and The Mick had one inscribed inside his nasal cavity. Given he was Blooded, he didn’t need such a thing, but Lady Traveler said that it had raised his Strength by 4... which, given how strong the Mick naturally was, made him a true monster among his kind, easily as strong as Fred was with his Heavy Gravity Training, if not quite so bouncy.
Master Fred smiled slightly again.
That Sama Rantha person was wanted as a person of interest in several Disaster-level events, and had been a willing participant in a declared Holy War going on against the Church of Imprus that had seen the destruction of sixteen different churches, and scores, if not hundreds, of Powered Faithful of the church in bloody conflicts across America, Europe, and South America. It was a nasty Church to have as an opponent, insinuating itself into Powered and Human society as it did, but Heavenbound Hall didn’t have any problems with her doing so... as long as she didn’t deliberately harm innocents.
The Hall was no friend of the Imprusar, or the Order of the Temple they were subverting. The Powers of Good had no tolerance for the racism or elitism of the Imperial God and His Church. The Angelos had been very firm on that point. There was no open conflict between them, but Tiirith and Jestanna were both more than happy to heap all the shit the Imprusar generated back upon themselves, with interest and lots of mockery to boot.
The Imprusar’s pious insistence that they were the only Church who cared about the human race fell flat on any Good person’s ear, especially given their open endorsement of human Powered as the saviors of the people and born champions of the Church. The brainwashing started young among the Imprusar...
He was starting a collection of Baneskulls at Traveler’s insistence (and she was fronting the money, so why not?) and the werewolves had been nice enough to provide three of them. Their Packs weren’t very happy about the matter, but given the bodies needed to be disposed of quickly, it wasn’t like the carcasses were going back to them for verification, anyways.
It wasn’t slavery of spirits, anyways. The skull was needed as a focus for the Curse magic that powered the Bane, nothing more, nothing less. Enemies of humanity used the effect on human skulls... it was how humans had learned to apply the same effect against them, and to destroy human Baneskulls when they saw them. Happily, he didn’t need to devote his own time to making them, although he probably could now...
Traveler had informed him that they’d be leaving for Yellowstone after she reached Five and discharged some important responsibilities, which she had assured him would be in less than a month. The reason for doing so was mass Karma, and finding a whole lot of raw precious metal very quickly. She was also very confident that she would be able to get it out of the ground...
He wondered what kind of plans she had made, and his mind wandered to the Leveling Guide she had made for him.
It was definitely hugely Karma-heavy, the amounts requiring, well, just massive amounts of enemies to be killed, or mighty deeds done, or something...
Then again, they were going to the Yellowstone Firezone. The most powerful fiery undead and creatures in the world lived there, under the Burning Shroud of the supervolcano there. One of the things she was doing was making sure that everyone who would be going there with her had some form of fire resistance, or they’d get cooked just by the supernatural heat under the Shroud there.
She didn’t seem particularly worried about the creatures there, or maybe she was just getting the proper things in place. It was true that the place didn’t have the massive Spirit Host of incorporeals that made other Shroudzones unassailable, but with vivic energy available, Spirit Hosts could now be whittled down with remarkable speed, especially if the undead didn’t realize that they wouldn’t be coming back.
But... the key fact is that while a Firezone was dangerous, if you were equipped with the right cold-using Weaponry, it was actually easier to kill the things.
Accordingly, he’d already imbued Coldphasing, Icy, and Quenching into the Arsenals on Idiot and his Grit. The Elementals, burning undead, and other creatures of fire there would be getting quite the unwelcome surprise from him, and as it turned out, the alternate form of energy on his Heavenly Wrath was also Cold...
He would be indeed hitting them hard. Putting them permanently down with Vivic would mean Karmic accumulation would be true and real, not the petty accumulations from slaughtering foes who would just be coming back tomorrow.
Nobody knew what would happen if you actually started perma-killing the undead, but she had told him that the Shroud shrank fairly quickly as you destroyed the minions powering and anchoring it, and vivus ate away the centralized effect. The Dark Clergy that commanded them would rapidly start losing their extra powers as their Congregation was extinguished, and since it was basically unkillable until they were, you always left it for last if possible... or you had a means to contain it while it was killed really fast before it could get away.
If the Dark Clergy died and there weren’t enough undead to anoint a new Minister, the Shroudzone would completely collapse, deprived of the anchor that allowed it to manifest.
The destruction of a Shroudzone. The whole world would sit up and pay attention in profound shock. Then, a whole lot of forces would start to move, one way or another, once that was possible...