I didn’t care if it did have twenty hit dice and weighed ten tons. It was undead, it was meat on the plate to thirty-six undead-killing Shards slamming down into it, spearing deep into its undead flesh and blasting through its entire body.
Something pretty sizable down there flared, and abruptly fell back behind us as it lost all forward locomotion. It might or might not reach the ocean floor before it was just a passing hint of freshness in the salt water of the Pacific.
Captain Manaikai followed it with his eyes, judging depth, distance, and size. “Did you just one-shot an undead meg?” he asked me directly.
“It vanished from my Detect Undead after I hit it, so yes,” I confirmed for him.
“Damn!” He gripped the gunwale hard, staring at me. “Where can we find a couple more of you? We could take the fight right to the sahaug!”
I held up a finger. “I killed it that fast because it was undead. You don’t have a big undead problem here, do you?”
“Nope, just the occasional stray,” he confirmed proudly. “Undead are a problem for the Aussies, not here. Fucktards couldn’t treat the native tribes right, and it came back to bite ‘em in the arse.”
“I’m not much up on anything current in this part of the world. Can I talk with you all when we make port?”
“Only if we can drink while we do it!” he said cheerfully, and burst out laughing when I pulled a bottle of wine out of my Masspack, flicked a wine glass out of nowhere, and poured myself a drink.
A small collection of victuals followed me around for just this sort of situation...
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The Shark-Eaters brought us into Toetoes Bay, and the small port of Fortrose... which had changed into a rather important marshaling station for naval assets going out to the southern waters of South New Zealand. Invercargill held more formal naval military assets and got more trade ships, but smaller forces worked out of the more easily secured and accessible Fortrose, turning it into a fortified hotspot that saw a lot of action.
A lot of Powered passed through here, and Toetoes Bay had a lot of whales coming through seeking temporary escape from pursuers, as well as for healing. Listening posts were constantly active along the entrance to the bay, warded by steel nets beneath locks that could close in minutes to deny invaders access to the shielded harbor beyond. Pretty much all of Foveaux Strait was clear of persistent forces of attackers, and even the shark presence was minor with so many orcas willing to hunt them down.
New Zealand had kept up as much as it could with technology, and had all the local Relay Towers for the GDS and internet that it could put up; it just lacked a constant feed to the rest of the world.
Captain Manaikai brought me around to meet his people and those undertaking much of the fighting against the creatures of the deep. That included representatives of the powerful Druidic community in the islands, as well as Valusar Champions and grim Priests of Niord. They even had Waterbound Wavelocks helping out here and there against certain elements, as the demon-serving Deep Ones and devil-worshipping Sahaug weren’t exactly protected by the Waters, whereas the Merman influences that tended to stay further out from the continents were respectful of the waters and had their blessing here.
I told them I couldn’t stay long and why, as there was a lot to do... but there were ways I could help, if they and their friends would like to join me.
Finding out I was a Thirteen Caster rattled them hard. A lot of the external internet footage they received had to be carried over in datacarriers by hand, but they got them frequently enough to only be a month behind or so. They had heard of the Helix method because the Good Churches had made all efforts to spread it where they could as fast as possible, but they hadn’t heard of me taking down the Fireshroud in Yellowstone, definitely hadn’t seen the footage, nor did they know about me clearing the South Pole Shroudzone, naturally enough.
Then I started administering the first Blessings, and shortly after that, the first knees to the Banner I raised in the back garden of the Maiden’s Cross, the Temple of Sylune in Invercargill, started bending.
I also raised a minor Obelisk for them that was a copy of the one Sleipner was carting around, giving them direct access to the Internet through the Master Obelisk hooked in at Heavenbound Hall, effectively giving them access to the North and South American networks.
My new Allegiance members naturally bombarded me with requests to stop in Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland, the Relay Towers singing with the messages they were sending out to friends, family, and associates. Suddenly they were able to reach full across the ocean and access the entirety of the American Internet, including speaking with Heavenbound Hall directly to learn more.
I spent a grand total of two days going around New Zealand, stopping at those towns to meet literally hundreds of applicants for Blessings wanting to Swear Allegiance and join a growing movement. I also directed the Kiwis to start organizing among their own Monarchs, taking up the bonds of Duty and Loyalty that they had already shown and proven to themselves and the world, and make greater things of themselves and others by so doing.
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I didn’t want to rule them, only guide them onto a bright and wide road, where they could take the paths best suited for them. They knew themselves best, I wasn’t going to mold them into some new image... I wanted them to take their own image, polish it up, and make it shine on steroids.
I wanted them to be Awesome, because they needed to be Awesome; no more, no less.
The knowledge that I could literally Teleport across the entire world to get there in a real emergency, possibly with a rapid response force attached, was a big thing, too... and if they got good enough, they might even be a part of that force! Briggs was certainly happy to help out some fellow guardians of the littoral...
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Dusk came as we motored away from New Zealand, and with my final words to Aethra’s Salute, my magical day turned over.
Coming out from the South Pole, I had been gifted with a further Hierophant/2 level, and Grenadier/2. My Gift of Faith had been a +4 to Turning Level and Damage, with Extra Smiting for a Feat and Extra Turning/2 for the Mastery. Grenadier had given me another Alchemist Level for Bombs, Precise Bombs, Cone Bombs, and Elemental Bombs/1, Acid Bombs.
I guess the Shroud liked the idea of really powerful Holy Water Shards. With those two Feats and my Spellshaping Mastery, I could effectively make the Bursts of my Shards very precise, indeed.
But yesterday had been another telling Level, as I had reached Eight just before addressing a packed crowd of Shoreguards, Priests of multiple Faiths, Good adherents, and other people in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. They had heard all kinds of stuff from people they trusted, and after listening to me speak Truth, they were all raring to go to be a part of something bigger and better.
The Level was significant, because it hadn’t made me start taking Masteries. It was still letting me grab my Eight and Fives!
Thus, I had been able to take Sorcerer Eight (12) and Wizard/5 (14).
The Shroud seemed to have taken a nod to the past, as the Feat I gained with Sorcerer/8 was Craft Rod/Scepter. This was a catch-all category for the middle-range Implements, the Rods which often had unique and powerful abilities.
Whether I would be able to actually make anything so nice for a while was something else, and so having the Feat actually didn’t mean a whole lot.
The Mastery had been the third Lightning Mastery, Shocking Spell, a +1 Meta doing 2x Spell Level in extra Boost damage... not that impressive, until you were talking a spell at VII, and +14 damage getting carried along to fry stuff as it was halved and quartered... generally in sync with its Blistering counterpart, and Holy Scourge’s stacking Boost, too.
I took the Stat boost at Eight to Intellect, naturally, which was reflected over to Dexterity. That brought those two base Stats to 49 and 40 respectively... no real change for the former, a bump in real effect for the latter of +1.
Wizard/5 was more generous across the board. More Spells Known, Faux Fourteen Caster, a Wizard Discovery, AND a General Feat. Happy day!
It granted me Extra Rings, giving me the ability to wear four Rings instead of two. How nice. There were no other Rings as such I wanted to wear on the whole planet, and now I could wear three of them!...
The Discovery was Wand as Staff, enabling me to treat a Wand like a Staff in terms of how the spells came out of it, i.e., using my own Stats, Caster Level, and any default modifiers. A Wand of Shards that was only equal to the newest raw apprentice Wizard could, in my hands, launch out Shards like an archmage.
There was no need for such a Feat if I had endless recharges available, but it did give me access to a huge reserve of power... and made the emergency Wands I was toting around suddenly MUCH more useful if I didn’t have that Ghost-Ki recharge.
The Purchased Feat it gave me was Ethercutting Spell. This was a +1 Meta that rendered a spell completely ethereal, only able to affect incorporeal or ethereal beings or objects. It could thus shoot right through walls, floors, ceilings, mountains, whatever, to get to its targets, because it was as immaterial as they were. There were other Metas, like Ectoplasmic Spell, that could affect incorps in addition to normal targets, but they were still limited by material objects in where they could reach.
Ethercutting didn’t have that restriction. It was specifically designed to raze incorporeal beings wherever they were found, or were hiding.
The Mastery was the third Spell Shaping Mastery, Stylized Spell. This +1 Meta allowed me to radically change any or all spells it was attached to as far as appearance went. I could make a fireball look like an explosion of blackbirds leaking icicles, a lightning bolt would become a singing chorus of intertwining rainbow ribbons; whatever I wanted it to look, sound, radiate, and even feel like... although it didn’t mechanically change what the spell did at all.
It was a way to make it very difficult to identify a spell and take precautions against it, as even the magic you were drawing on to form it could look totally off-kilter.
It was also a sign I definitely would be going up against things in the future that would require spells to duel with, not just annihilating large numbers.
Good enough, I supposed. Ethercutting was going to be particularly useful. Applied to See the Invisible, I could see incorporeal creatures right through solid rock, enabling me to wipe them all out while they tried to hide and were immaterial.
---
We were heading to Australia now, with one stopover in Tasmania to see if it was still holding on. The smaller island had been evacuated after repeated attacks by monstrous sea creatures, although there was still an active garrison there making sure the creatures of the sea didn’t set up a base there, and it was used as a resupply and emergency shelter port for local ships, as needed. It still got attacked regularly, but the military there were expecting it, and any civilians around generally didn’t mind shooting giant crabs and harvesting them to boil in really big tubs of hot butter.
Packaging up cuts of the local giant crabs annoying them actually made them a decent amount of money, and relieved some of the supply situation. Tasted pretty good, too.
A couple members recommended by my contacts got Blessed and were brought into the Markspace. I made up an Obelisk to put them in contact with the Internet, too, giving them an actual way to call for help and report on their situation. Of course, they all wanted me to go to Australia and get their homeland linked up into this World Wide Henge that was being developed, which I intended to, anyways.