It looked like one of Master Fred’s Amazons was pursuing the Zen Gunner route, because she was using his Grit non-stop, firing as fast as she could at the undead coming from all directions at her.
The undead were dying, of course. A Mighty Firearm enchanted as high as Fred’s Grit had one hell of a kick, and Bane and Vivus naturally made riding the gravy train easier.
I was surprised to see she was Oriental. Maybe she’d heard too many tales about the American West, or just wished she could use guns instead of bows. Master Fred was probably using the Amazon Pact so she didn’t have to be short, and all Amazons had the same build, so just overlaying her face meant she was basically in her former Amazon form through a roundabout way.
I popped some undead in the distance to recharge my Pool, patiently waiting as she got in hundreds of rounds of shooting practice. The real trick for a Gun-Fu expert was Pistols Akimbo, of course, meaning he’d have to make a Main-Gauche Gun with an Endless Ammo cylinder just for her.
He had already spent my three Wishes today... two for new Chinese Allegiance members to get them to a 14 Stat, which was sending them on the Helix Leveling road, and one to improve the QL of an existing QL 21 revolver he happened to have stashed away to 30, enabling it to be Named and improved by her.
I gathered she had already shot a bunch of things with it, and was just using his Grit to clean things up for now.
She wasn’t doing bad, working hard on the Zen gunmanship side of things, although the monstrous physical Stats she had certainly weren’t hurting her aim. Now it was a case of Precise Attack and Rapid Fire piling on penalties to hit, and still being able to hit everything.
It was noteworthy that the Way of Zen didn’t help you hit more; it made you miss less, i.e., it got rid of penalties, but it didn’t raise your ceiling. Distance penalties, fancy shot penalties, rapid-shooting penalties, Guns Akimbo penalties... Way of Zen helped mitigate all of them, and since rapid, distant shooting with great precision was the key to a ranged attacker, it basically applied almost all the time regardless.
Abruptly, she put his Grit back into the shoulder holster for it, and her face shifted with a marginal change in skin color to a Eurasian mix, and Idiot flipped out of its scabbard, growing to its normal size. The Sword was lifted for just a moment in a formal Chinese dueling style, and then she was darting to the attack.
I raised my eyes as the next Amazon started using Wind-style Swordplay, working on the lightfoot in the style of a Chinese jian-user.
Of course, Idiot was a Heavy Weapon made of laen-wrought adamantine now, and about as much a true finesse weapon as a brick. However, when your default Might is 52, using a Sword weighing twelve pounds that lightly without breaking your wrist is akin to wielding a table knife.
I just sat up there in the air and watched as she ran around, working on the speedy and agile lightfoot of Rising and Racing Winds, slicing off the heads of undead with ease and grace, charting where to go to weave in and among them while taking them down one after another.
Mmm. She had quite a way to go to get to Whirlwind Attack or a Storm of Steel, but Karma was Karma. Progress had to come from somewhere.
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It was an hour before they were all finished up. The two Priestesses were last, one working on a Cold Reserve of Ice Darts with the Grit, the other blowing Slot after Slot on Valence I healing spells she discharged through Idiot, until they were all gone.
I waited by Sleipner as Master Fred flickered back, Riding the Light, long golden hair chasing away the dark hair of the Priestess as an Oriental face melted into classic blonde bombshell.
“They all agreed so quickly?” I had to ask, offering a kiss for their cheek Master Fred accepted calmly. A dose of Wrath had already cleared away any sweat and smell.
“It didn’t take much sensory sharing to convince them, especially after our talk. They all want to get out and be doing something... and they’ve been watching as we took down the Cultivators, and what they’ve done to the normal people. They all loathe Cultivators, while the undead have just been a nuisance,” Master Fred replied calmly... in a fourteen-voice reverb.
“Understandable.” They’d not had to worry about undead, save for people who died before midnight not being incinerated and getting up and stumbling around... and the Rue Priestesses could actually control them, if the undead weren’t tied to a Shroud. Trapped in Hong Kong, they’d had one enemy to withstand, and so naturally hated them. “There’s a difference between seeing them, and seeing everything they do, however.”
“Yes. The utter subjugation, the mass conversions, the scale of the Qi-making Formations... and it is all designed to just keep going, keep marching on, until the whole world ends up that way.
“Without that Ward, they would’ve been overwhelmed long ago,” Master Fred agreed.
“If they’d turned to the planetar instead of Hell, Heaven would have been on their side, and they wouldn’t have sacrificed their best people to the Damn thing. They’d easily have been at least twice as strong as they ended up, instead of growing more and more reliant on the Ward and sacrificing more people to it.”
“That is also becoming painfully apparent to them. They were lied to on so many levels by the devils. They are hoping they burn a long time,” Master Fred nodded.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I imagine it will take a year or more. It depends on how many others are sharing the load.” I hopped up on my seat, while Master Fred took the lower one, as normal. Sleipner rolled into motion smoothly as soon as we were set. “A Priestess of Hell can’t get Healing Reserve or Positive Edge. What is she hoping to accomplish?”
“The negative versions of them,” Master Fred replied calmly in their fourteen-layered voice. “It was how she fought against Cultivators when she had to. They had no special resistance to negative energy attacks. She is merely hoping to gain proficiency in both energy types, and interchange them.”
I frowned, and considered the point. She was a negative-energy bound Caster, and couldn’t change that. However, there was no negative version of Healing Reserve for the undead, as they didn’t have the Soak/Health mechanic that humans did, being more akin to magically-reinforced Constructs.
It took a Feat, White Fist, to be able to apply Healing Reserve’s effects as damage against undead. I’d just been endowed it at Warshaper/3. However, the key was to be able to wield both types of energy. I’d also gotten that at Monk/5.
“The Feat she wants is known as Versatile Channeling. It’s generally only available to those with skill at necromancy, or Neutral Priests. Basically, it allows you to use positive energy instead of negative energy, or vice versa, at reduced effect, and so qualify for things you might not otherwise.
“In doing so, you can take White Fist. That Feat allows you to use healing magic concurrently with weapon or unarmed combat strikes against the undead.
“That, in turn, allows you to gain access to a limited version of Healing Reserve, which only allows you to do damage against the undead, and other negative-energy lifeforms, not to heal.
“Once you have that, there is a Black Fist variant you can use to alter the Healing Reserve healing effect into negative energy attacks against living creatures... but you must be very careful when using it. Abuse the limitations of Healing Reserve, and you lose access to it, although your Black Fist will still be able to carry Cast Harming spells.” I frowned despite myself. “The main damage-boosting Feat against undead is Positive Edge, which allows you to add your Caster Level to damage against the undead when using Healing effects. Under a Black Fist, that would also necessarily be reversed.”
Master Fred glanced over at me, and nodded slowly. “She has heard it all. Any other advice?”
“Use your spare healing Wands for her to practice with. It isn’t like you can’t charge one up every day. Put it inside Idiot’s Wand Chamber.” It wouldn’t be as powerful as a Cast Spell, but the point was making Karma, and getting experience using positive energy to hurt things. She probably already had the negative energy reps, so she didn’t really need all the rep counts per se, she just needed the catalytic limit.
Charging up Wands was something Master Fred did in idle downtime, and liked using the vivisized power of Hell for. As long as the basic structure was made for him, he could charge a Wand up with ease and speed. The old situation in Heavenbound Hall where Wands were always waiting to be charged up by spellcasters had completely flipped by now, with the Casters being unable to keep up with the new ability of Heavenbound to charge them up with some Theurgic practice.
It was a good thing. So many Healing Wands going out was generating a lot of revenue, and getting healing available to more people. That was hardly a bad thing.
If Fred got all those women trained up and working with him, hmm, that would be impressively powerful, especially if they could all take mental actions in conjunction with him.
I flicked up The Map’s current readout for him, noting the nearest Qi-making Formations, and Sleipner adjusted course smoothly. My Lived-line rolled out behind us, anchoring me to the world so we could Teleport across it, and, unaffected by the darkness, we zipped on into the night, hunting.
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The next few days were the definition of a grind, except for the two times I made an emergency pop back to China to intercept a couple huge Cultivator waves. Perhaps some wiser ones were watching from the distance as a few thousand Daoists fell from the skies all at once, while others were advancing on the ground and running right into the buzzsaw and blood mill that was our infantry.
Every day, getting stronger. Every day, joined by more of the rare Chinese Powered, and a whole lot of Chinese Primos, some newly made Warlocks, some not, most of them Human Racial mains.
I had to make up more carry-jars for all the blood they were pulling from the bastards, Itemize them, and send them off. They also loved the Disks I whipped up so much that they begged for more, and certainly didn’t turn down extra Healing Wands all charged up by Master Fred.
Alchemists had found out Cultivator blood made an excellent foundation for Scroll ink, too, so even if we didn’t want Blooded elders sipping on it, there was a use for it. Everyone was happy to hear that, and there were lots of experiments by Alchemists hoping it could be made into useful Potions... or, as one put it with heavy irony, Pills.
There were a lot of Daoists, just like there were a lot of Buddhists, but they seemed to have been more elitist in who they picked, not wasting time on the untalented who could not break Four (“poor meridians”), unlike the Buddhists, who generously and forcibly inducted anyone who could handle Qi.
The individual Daoist was thus far more dangerous than the average Buddhist, but they had little way of contesting a Buddhist supported by a bunch of acolytes lending them energy, much as they might hate it. Like me, they thus tried to wipe out as many lower-Level disciples of the Mantra as possible before coming to blows with the stronger Monks and Lamas.
The forces we had were thus vastly outnumbered for now, but they were also growing, and with remarkable speed. If the Daoists had any idea on how it worked, it would have severely astounded them. Normal people were shooting for Seven, those seventy extra years and returned youth, and at this point totally willing to risk death to get there.
With the Helix Method, they were guaranteed to get there. They just needed to fight and be willing to die. The Daoists had made sure they were willing to help them risk that. Nice of them!
The biggest weakness for all that fighting required was in having the healing to keep up with the fighting, but that was most easily solved by bringing in some Amanans with Healing Reserve, and some Heavenbound. They were especially useful for the people Leveling in Human and Orc, because that was all Health damage, and so the Reserve and the Healing Wrath could completely fix them all up, while the Classed people had to get Soak back mostly on their own.
The Healers were once again the Anvil, helping forge the growing force with the power of healing magic and Karma. The Chinese forces were growing, and the new Shroudzone that had been made was getting forced back, probably going to be the fourth Shroudzone wiped from the planet, even with over fifty million undead inside it.
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The New York Shroudzone was eliminated on December 3, 2018, 153 days after I came to this world. The shadowy Shroudlord perished under a hundred ghost-blasting Guns and an Obelisk slammed down atop him, offered up to the gods and blowing open a hole in the Haze as the last of his Shroud was consumed that lasted nearly four hours, until the dawn.