Everything ahead of us was dead for sixty kilometers.
A huge chunk of it was on fire, too. Every single human and animal larger than a dog was sitting and rotting out there in the sun, and death was gathering.
The killzone extended off inland and around, representing the territory of the Daoist Warlords around Hong Kong.
We didn’t stop as the kill totals mounted, only swinging inland.
The bodies were fresher in that direction, so the Daoists carrying out the scorched-earth policy were in that direction. After all, our goal was to save the people, right? So, killing the people would deny us our victory, even if they all died. If we pulled back, they could just go find some humans elsewhere. After all, there were still at least a hundred million Chinese left...
Still, we had to cover a hundred kliks of ground before the first slaughtering teams flying and racing around showed up on the awareness of the land, crawling over the land like locusts. Wherever they went, everything was dying...
Naturally, everything we were seeing was going out on streams to basically the whole planet. Villages filled with dead, humans and animals slaughtered, the ground and buildings covered in blood and gore, corpses exploded and ravaged, everyone from children to grandparents butchered without mercy.
When midnight came, all these corpses would be rising, bearing horrific resentment for their slaughter... but unable to do much about it, constrained by the Curse of the Sun. They would head north and south, killing everything as they did, expanding their numbers, growing a huge new Shroudzone.
A buffer zone against invasion? That wouldn’t work...
Sure, they’d point at us and claim we forced them to this point, which was total bullshit. You were never forced to take out your impotency on civilians and innocents. This was simply the callous hearts of creatures who didn’t care about humanity taking pitiful revenge for the annihilation they could feel was coming.
The Chinese on Taiwan and to the south weren’t getting frightened off by this, but it did mean that the normal people here needed to be warned.
That’s what Mass Message is good for.
The Daoists have slaughtered the living in a broad swathe to the south of you. You need to flee, or when they rise and come walking, you will join them. Look at the sky, it already turns dark.
I sent that Mass Message off repeatedly to the little presences at the edge of the Commune’s awareness, enough to get the warning out. By the way people started to move, they were going to at least make the attempt.
It didn’t mean we couldn’t do something about it, either. After all, I could Teleport back to Shanghai, and quickly pick up a whole lot of help.
But before then, I had to slaughter as many thousands of the Daoists as I could.
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The first teams were ground teams, racing over the streets and fields as fast as deer, chasing down the people and butchering them without emotion. They crashed through doors and walls seeking everything that was living, ignoring the screams, the begging and pleading, as they cut everything down as rapidly as possible.
Then they began to die.
They could feel the attacks incoming, but they couldn’t dodge the death that was coming for them. Clusters close to one another would explode without any visible source, giving them no idea where the attacks were coming from, or what it was. All they knew is that their fellows started getting blown apart and crashing down to the ground, burning in multi-colored flames very hotly indeed.
“Try to get as far north as you can,” I told the civilians via Voice. “The dead will be rising at midnight. Help is coming from the north.”
That simple reminder was enough to get even the most distraught of them moving as fast as they could. There was no time to mourn or to recover.
In the far distance I could see the Daoist flying squads swooping around, bombarding the ground below with fire and lightning, shooting arrows like they were at a gallery. Unseen Shards flicked up around my arms, and we closed in on them grimly.
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An hour before dusk...
I stepped out a moonbeam from atop the Energized Seal in the newly renamed Court of Dead Dragons back in Shanghai.
Over a thousand people were waiting for me there. All of them had hand Weapons now, while those who had working firearms were clustered together.
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I could not Buff them all straight off, that was impossible. Briggs and Sama had already marked out who I should Buff, and with what.
Ultravision to give decent sight under the Shroud was passed out to a couple hundred people. The guns were all made +V via Greater Magic Weapon, with Extended Endless Ammo III added on, as were a couple hundred Weapons to be split among the squads, and all of those were made Vivic as well.
The Taiwanese were allocated among the various squads that had been assembled, and then I Mass Reduced them in teams of a hundred, held their hands as foot-tall men and women gathered around me, and Teleported us all into the distance along the frontal area at the edge of the killzone, and into the areas I’d purged of Daoists.
I could refill my Pool damn fast if I had enough targets, but once the Daoists realized that they were being eradicated, they fled hastily back south towards Hong Kong in urgent waves. For a short time, that made my job very easy, and Chains of unseen Shards reaved through their packed numbers and groups, filling the air and dotting the landscape with burning Daoists in all their finery.
But eventually I had to stop and turn back, letting the colorful dots flee back to their Sects and Schools, getting away with their slaughter. As much as I wanted to press ahead, saving those still living was still the priority.
How many more millions I was consigning to death by not following them was something I would have to make up...
The teams and squads were scattered through the northern half of the killzone, grimly ready to face the undead who would be rising. Most of them should just be normal zombies, which a good axe or sword could deal with. The main problem would be when the first truly enraged zombie became a Dark Minister, and began to Buff, enhance, and take control of the wandering zombies... and it would happen, sooner rather than later.
But the key part is that doing all this took most of my Pool, but it only took about a half hour of time to get kill teams in place to help the people who would be fleeing the Zone, and to cut down the undead coming in.
I wouldn’t be able to Teleport under a Shroudzone, but I could Linejump with searing accuracy, and the Taiwanese Powered could deal with small teams of undead with great ease.
Just because I had to pull back didn’t mean that Master Fred did, and he was more than happy to follow the fleeing Daoists along the roads with Sleipner, about as visible as a shadow even on the dirt roads.
I would be returning to each team, and rebuffing them once I needed to.
The Haze was turning black, negative energy was happily converging in massive numbers, and in multiple places, Dark Ministers were waiting to be born, fight it out, and a Dark Bishop to emerge.
If the people still living close to the southern edge of the Zone could get far enough they could outrun any directionless undead, and if they got lucky, the Dark Ministers would turn on one another and brawl it out for the right to be the Bishop... but they would still have to abandon their homes.
That likely would force them south into the Daoists, who would probably just butcher them if the undead didn’t... but that meant the Daoists were going to be on a static line, which is exactly where I wanted them...
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The Daoist line was pretty obvious to me, a thick line of Qi-using bastards stretched across the awareness of the Land, all looking north for signs of an attacker, and watching the darkness gathering in the sky.
Mass Messages warned the people, already running from the dark clouds, to not get within a couple kliks of the Daoists, or they would also be killed. As long as they died after dusk, there was no worry about them rising at midnight, and they’d just be drawn back by the pull of the Shroudzone the next day.
Dusk stole its shadowed way across the land, the sun sinking behind the Haze, and Aethra’s Salute stole its way into the breeze that rose with the creaking rise of Death.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
Sigh...
Alchemist/5 (7). Base 4d6 bombs, +4 Poison Resistance...
General Feat, Toxic Spell (+1), include a dose of poison into a spell, adding a Fortitude Save to it... including Ravages.
Perfect, in its own way. Basically operated on the same principle as Holy Water and Alchemical Bomb material components.
Purchased Feat, Deep Poison, exchange d6’s of Sneak Attack damage for penalties to my poison attacks, up to +5.
Nice synergy for once...
The Mastery was Elemental Bombs/3, Cold bombs, hardly unexpected. Another variable to add to my multi-Element attacks. I had enough catalytic energy now to power up almost 40 Alchemical bombs a day right now, which was going to make a lot of people unhappy as I expended them... although whipping up containers of the catalysts took time on its own. Thankfully, that’s what Masspacks were for, and Itemized amounts of the raw materials needed did the rest.
A lot of Daoists needed to blow up, so these were going to be quite useful...
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The roads close to their living areas were actually still paved, as allowing them to be so was a sign of their power and influence. Of course, they preferred tiled roads and shaped stone to asphalt, but in any event, it was paved road.
Sleipner was basically totally invisible on paved roads.
I didn’t need to see them to kill them. Seeking spells ignored cover and concealment as long as there was a path to the target; Invisible spells couldn’t be seen to tell where they were coming from; and Detect Qi at VII let me zero in on them every bit as effectively as looking at them within its range.
I started on the stronger ones, because the weaker ones couldn’t run away as fast, and died much more quickly.
Chained Split Shardrays reaved through up to twenty-five at a time, commencing retribution for the slaughter they’d undertaken, and there was no way under the darkening sky that they could hit the Saves needed to survive the hits. Holy Primal energies with a lot of Kickers howled through them, ate their Qi Reserves and their Health, and their Challenges to Heaven ended abruptly.
They couldn’t hide from me or the Land, although they were trying to stay concealed. They didn’t have enough skill to avoid Detect Qi at VII, and I tracked them mercilessly. Master Fred kept an eye on the immediate area, dropped his Wrath into the initial target of my Shards; Sleipner rolled along the empty streets as unseen storms of killing Force energy zipped through the area, whipped around trees, into windows, through doorways, past chimneys, and over walls to find their targets... as did the Chains that leapt forth from the abruptly-dying targets, if weaker targets were in range.
The night began, and vivus and wrathfire began to erupt among the Cultivators waiting to see the result of their heartless massacre, and they found themselves beginning to get harvested impotently...