Author's Note: HO! It's Chapter 200 of The Human Race. Hopefully the people sticking with me have come to enjoy the story, so it's time for my 100-chapter harrangue. Has it been three months already?...
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As I write this, I've finished Ch. 314, so there's a lot more story coming yet. Yes, I could stop writing and you'd have chapters for three months. I take the job seriously.
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=== RE Druin
======================================================
The Mick left off any fake attempt at contributing, withdrawing smoothly to fetch a ride on a Disk, and to watch the show.
This was no longer anything resembling a contest. This was a slaughter and massacre, and the denizens of Fire had been corralled, gathered themselves to the task of confronting her, and now only wanted to flee the terrible web of cold stretching out in every direction.
He knew the math quite well on these spells: the Chains were at half power, and the Bursts at half that. But the shining silver of the Kickers tearing at these things affected by Evil magic didn’t dim at all, and now every spell wasn’t just a dozen or a score dying, it could be hundreds.
If she could Chain pure Shards instead of Shardrays, how many more would she kill?...
They cannot stop me...
She had made that claim about the Shroudlords. The steel in her eyes, the utter confidence in her voice when she said that... Despite all that, he had thought her somewhat crazy, as who could be so confident about such a task?
Now, watching stabbing lines of black and silver dropping shattering icicles of frozen gases as they wove terrible webs of death among the Fireborn, he finally believed.
He had nearly lost his bowels when that dragon had reared up. It was easily two hundred feet long, old and massive, and its fiery presence had seemed to be burning his very soul.
She had one-shot it, and then reduced it to spell components, its entire body salvaged in seconds. That meant that she had known she would, and had everything smoothly on line to save it.
Just... damn!
This was a spellcaster like he had never imagined could exist, something from a crazy cartoon or dreamy novel, a pipe dream of someone stuck on giddy desires for power and more power... and he was watching it all right here.
Utterly surreal.
Back in Pittsburgh, after he’d first met her, he’d been chatting up a couple of the Sylunar nuns there, who had asked him in hushed terms if he knew what her hair signified. They weren’t sure, but it was Lit by the Moon even in the brightest light, and they had been fairly certain it was a sign of being Chosen by Sylune...
He wasn’t even sure how that was possible, as Traveler had declared herself that the gods couldn’t see them here at all, so how could she possibly be Chosen?
But here he was, slowly floating forwards over an island of lava frozen into a caldera at the heart of a volcano, frozen by icy magic so cold it made him terribly, terribly glad that he wasn’t harmed, by dint of being Excluded by her concentration when it all went off. He was watching her wreak the kind of harm on enemies that Wizards would wet themselves to pull off even once... and she was doing it in unending, savage, relentless volleys, giving the Fireborn neither time nor mercy.
His face lit up suddenly as his dark eyes fell on the Magical Beasts and things whose carcasses were left behind... and tellingly, weren’t burning vivic.
There were Phantom Servants all over the place, picking up pyric Cores from the ice, filling up Disks, dumping them into Sleipner’s sidecar, making them even more goldweight, and right ahead there were bunches more, waiting to be gathered up by a discreet hand.
Ach, such a dear girl. Never forgetting about the money, even in the heart of total massacre. If only his mum had been able to find such a wee lass for him to marry himself...
---------
I spun slowly to survey the whole area.
Darkvision, infravision, and Eagle Eyes combined nicely, and one thing Fire creatures didn’t have was the ability to hide easily with all the heat they gave off. Given how much ice was covering everything, anything Fireborn stood out like a candle in a dark room... but I didn’t see anything around right now.
The lava lake behind us had mostly swallowed the cap I’d frozen atop of it, but the jarring, wrenching disruption of the Blight was still a huge plug on the ley line below. The Firelord’s power and dominion over this section of the Charlands was completely fading, and with it the unnatural pyromana sustaining its nature.
In other words, everything was cooling down as the pyromana faded, was subsumed into the Land, or was outright devoured by the vivic fire spread out everywhere, hastening the process of a return to ‘normal’.
Even the Haze up above was visibly thinner, given this much Land-feeding was going on.
There had been reinforcements coming in through the lava tunnels for a short time, but those had dried up, as if they had better things to do with their time than to wander into a landscape somehow below freezing despite the lava right over there... but that lava was cooling too, although it wasn’t visible quite yet. Still, the edges of it had withdrawn a good five feet, especially after it had to eat so much Cryoclasm-chilled rock. It was just that there was literally mountains of lava below fighting back.
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The harvesting was going on behind me, and I’d already had to Itemize several loads of stuff given the quantity of what we were gathering. The Mick and Master Fred had lined up the carcasses of most of the snakes and stuff that weren’t Elementals when I slowed down my sniping, just so I could keep Casting, and I’d shrunken the hauls down to Scrolls ready to send out soon.
“Anyone see any reason to stick around much longer?” I had to ask.
WOULD POPPING ONE OF THOSE LONG-TERM ICEFIRE WALLS ON THE POOL ACCELERATE THE COOLING OF THE AREA?, Master Fred asked.
“In the same manner as a big fan would against a thunderstorm, sure. Magic’s effect is too localized for this kind of cooling. You’ll notice that even the ice is melting far faster than is natural, despite how much pure cold it was being hit with. A Wall of Fire only heats stuff within twenty feet of it... outside of that, you barely feel anything, and that includes above it.”
“Aye, the engineers I know cry when they start talking about magic and physics and such nonsense,” The Mick agreed sagely. “In truth, I’m surprised it left behind much ice at all!”
“It’s because there’s a negative energy saturation in the fire, and the vivus responded with topical consumption and sticking the ice around there longer as a result. There’s a geological scale of energy on the other side... it would take hundreds or thousands of Walls to have any real effect, even in just a mile or two radius. Too much energy moving. It’s like fighting the tide with a kid’s sand castle shovel.”
“Time to be going then, Boxer?” The Mick asked, and Master Fred inclined his head as one got on a Disk, the other on the unicorn cycle. “Let us be off, and dumping whole shitloads of stuff back in Detroit. I hope they’re ready for the mother of all butchery jobs.”
“There’s like fifty alchemists and apprentices waiting for the linnorm,” I confirmed with a smile, as Sleipner kicked up into motion, and we headed out of this place.
As soon as I got out of the dimensional lockdown from the vivus, I had a bunch of Itemized Scrolls to send out. My Allegiance and the people they had recruited were frothing at the bit to get to work on the linnorm... it was one of the biggest coups in alchemical history, getting basically a fully intact elder linnorm’s carcass to take apart.
Except for the damn eyes, of course. Seriously, that was annoying.
I had video of a lot of this stuff, too, which could be released at a later date. But truly, people didn’t need to know how I was doing this stuff quite yet, and especially didn’t need to be informing any Shroudlords about it, who some people most assuredly were.
No, the only thing they needed to know is that we were making progress on clearing the American Firezone, and that was it.
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The Heavenbound Horde, as it was impolitely named, had been having a good time dealing with the counter-push of the Firezone, and had made their own mark with thousands of kills, painting the charred land white and contributing to the cooling influence all around.
Druids serving with the united effort reported that the influence of the Firelord within its Shroudzone was being pushed back, something they had not felt with prior efforts, greatly astonishing them. Their sudden enthusiasm for the fight only encouraged those also willing to pitch in, but the Hall forces were happy to dump cold water on them and take it grimly and mercilessly slow and thorough.
The enemy would be there, there was no need to hurry. Make enough for a Level, enough for Naming Karma, enough to Invest or Infuse something, harvest your gains, consolidate.
My last contribution to the efforts here was an Argos Obelisk, Shaped into being and fifty goldweight of Elemental crystals dropped into the thing to power it up. The Mick looked at the glittering fortune, counted on his fingers, and didn’t even bother to comment as seven and a half million dollars disappeared into the black balsatic rock. The Obelisk rose to the sky, its roots extending down to tap into the Land and broadcast its power forth.
All the ash and dust and whatever the volcano was and would spit out would be almost immediately precipitated down, landing within a mile of the volcano itself. Certainly the Haze didn’t need more necro-Energized ash to drop on everything after waltzing around up there, and it would curtail the influence of Fire even further.
Heavenbound Hall DID put up the video of the dissection of the Fire Linnorm, which raised all kinds of sensations. As for the crystals and whatnot for Power Comps... yes, it was zillions of dollars worth of them, literally hundreds of goldweight.
It poured into the endless well of demand for such things, and was basically gone. No saving for the future, no conservation. It was allocated to make Death Ward Amulets, Vivic Weapons, and Fire Resistance items, and used up as fast as it was generated.
Just like I’d mandated. I wasn’t trying to build a fortune. I was trying to build a massive army that needed to be equipped and tempered, and these were the tools needed to do so. No converting into cash and earning 5%, thank you. It was there, and then it was gone.
Making high QL firearms fast enough to supply the demand was getting harder and harder, and so one of the demands on the people Leveling up fast was actually to grab the Ranks in such skills so that they could create a rolling snowball of effect, carrying this process forward. That also meant appropriate Tools had to be made to increase the speed of the whole process, Infused and Invested, and basically production ramp up as the massive injection of capital and new blood getting trained by the wonders of Karma started to change the face of things.
There were also select people who’d been informed about the Fire Nodes, and to say they were salivating at the bit to get working at double and triple speed, and harvest all that free pyromana, was anything but an exaggeration. A free half a million dollars a day of pyromana was just too good to pass up.
Negotiating the rights to do so was the province of others, although of course there were certain parties wondering exactly why Heavenbound Hall was negotiating for such rights...
I was following in Sama’s path, that the free mana should go towards equipping the Primos. If that meant the military, that was fine... they needed magical Ammunition and Gear, too, and Trigger Wands were fine and useful things to make for them, if not. It wasn’t like the army was going to turn down half a million dollars of magical Gear a day, even if it had to be fire-centered...
Baneskulls and Tokens against Fireborn were proliferating rapidly, Swarmkiller Clasps were beloved by anyone who managed to pay for one, and the Firezone was suffering for it. Guns were roaring with cold banefire, and Elementals were dying faster and in greater numbers than they ever had before.
People were stumbling into the fact that they had to become their own Crafters to get the stuff made they wanted, and all the fat and happy Karma was helping make it possible. Being both Maker and User was Not Possible in a normal world, but a world of magic was anything but normal. Fast Learning via Karma was a horrendously powerful thing, and the undead were making it happen.
Judicious sniping of undead from Walls all over the world was already commencing as the first vivic Weapons were coming online. It was going to take a LOT longer for Death Ward Amulets to proliferate in the numbers that would allow actual thrusts into a Shroudzone, but careful and prudent harvesting would go on until the undead realized those dying weren’t coming back, and got out of range of being shot easily from walls.
Or, you know, they looked up at the sky, and noticed the black clouds of the Shroudzones were pulling back, instead of advancing.
Were there idiots who weren’t careful and got themselves dramatically killed? Yes. They became object lessons for the rest, their bodies vivified, and in some cases, the shadows, wraiths, or spectres made out of them also shot away. Stupid overeager people who couldn’t swallow their ambitions were lessons for others to not act that way.
That included Heavenbound Hall, which was sending a lot of people to the Firezone as fast as they could equip them properly, knowing that Karma trumped a lot of training, and field service was going to do more for them in a week then they might get in a year practicing at someplace safe.
They still didn’t send anyone less than a Three, however. People still had to be tough enough to help out and not die promptly if attacked.
My Allegiance was still growing... faster and faster, as it proliferated among the Good Churches and those following them. Junior Heavenbound were particularly eager to join, working with Powered on the /tell linkage, powering it up further and further towards the planet-wide linkage that surpassed any cell phone, and was only exceeded by a Mark...
A hundred thousand Levels and at least twenty-five thousand people was the critical mass point where it was all self-sustained, and it was coming quickly.