The invitations going out had naturally stirred up great interest, and great jealousy, too. The invitations were not to organizations; they were to specific individuals in those organizations, namely their most pre-eminent individuals. If they didn’t choose to come, no substitutes were accepted.
He, his Vice-President Marcia Kennedy, and the leaders of the Republicans, Democrats, Liberty, and Green parties of the House and Senate were invited, along with the leaders of most of the Churches and powerful multinational organizations. Pointedly, there were no leaders of academia, the military, entertainment, or businessmen being brought in, who were creating rows about being excluded and denied their chance to meet Traveler themselves.
Likewise, the Prime Minister and leaders of the major parties of Canada were invited. The major parties of the European governments also had specific people invited, and naturally there was teeth-gnashing over that entire list, as well.
All the generals looked at one another, fighting the urge to say they’d love to go as well. After all, no major player except Heavenbound Hall had talked with Lady Traveler at length about anything, and finding out more from her could only be advantageous.
The information that she had given them was changing the world. Only the Hall might have had access to it early, and everyone was tracking the moves they were making now, trying to deduce what was going on.
The fortune they were making after buying up the mining rights in the Firezone might have had a little something to do with it, too.
“The security risk of having both you and the Vice-President there at the same time is not something that can be ignored.”
“Generals, and I mean this in only the best way, is there any way that the security at Heavenbound Hall is inferior to our own in that respect?” he had to ask, and watched them stew again.
Heavenbound Hall was rumored to have an angel and a genie in residence, and so had access to more powerful magic than almost any other faction on the planet. There were constant attempts to subvert or attack members of the Hall by their many enemies, yet they never seemed to get very far... and said enemies were almost always caught, and remarkably quickly, too.
There were unsubstantiated rumors that random bomb attacks that had taken place in certain areas were the results of terrorist strikes being spontaneously transported to the vicinity of their makers before going off. No one was sure about that, but it was true that even something as basic and crude as driving a fuel tanker and ramming into the Hall had never successfully taken place.
“The threat from Traveler herself is not something we can deal with,” General Mallory sighed. “You saw the video, sir. And,” the general suddenly sat down, looking five years older abruptly, “have you read about some of the reports coming out of the Far East, Mr. President?”
Havier nodded slightly. “It appears that she’s lighting into the Cultivators over there, and is raising up and arming the natives with the help of Heavenbound Hall... and some of the Tomb Clans?” he remembered vaguely. Another windmill-tilting Good Cause, he supposed, although he doubted there would be eternal gratitude for the deed.
“Sir, she’s been making up those Obelisks that give them internet connections through Heavenbound Hall. Through them, we’ve been able to exchange diplomatic and military information for the first time in decades with locations in the islands, China, Thailand and the smaller nations, and India.”
“Mithar, India...” muttered General Roberto Brown, the General of the Army, shaking his head.
“Sir,” General Mallory said softly, “she wiped out a fortified position of senior Buddhists in India, who had access to magic far beyond what we are capable of, short of forcibly bringing in dangerous Entities from outside the Shroud. She killed them all.
“Rough estimations are that in Bombay alone are that she killed ten million humans who had been turned into Buddhist Cultivators.”
President Havier sucked in a breath. Ten million... Powered? Equivalents? With ratios of Senior Powered? And things from Outside the Shroud?
By the Land, just how powerful was that young woman?
“In other words, what you are saying is that it would be unthinkably stupid of me to turn down her invitation.”
General Mallory opened his mouth, shut it, and glanced around the room at the others, including the silent Admiral LaSalle. “She is likely capable of taking on the entire United States armed forces by herself, sir. Turning down her invitation is indeed unwise.”
“Well, then, I’ll be clearing my schedule... and enjoying the view of the sky on the twenty-first,” President Havier agreed calmly.
He wasn’t scared of the young woman, despite her power, probably because the Land wasn’t. It approved of her and what she had done, so what was he going to do, overrule the Land?
Idiocy, and he didn’t get this job and want to keep it because he was an idiot. While the job didn’t have the power or influence it might have had were the world not such a magical place, it was still a place where many people and powers got together to get things done, and money and people were directed to projects nobody would fund themselves.
Now, he’d be going to Detroit, it seemed, and would be the first to hear some other world-shattering news. He didn’t know whether to be worried or excited... probably both were appropriate.
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It wasn’t boring or even tedious, given how many places we had to go and things we had to kill... and there were things to see.
Particularly on the ocean floor.
A ninety-mile-wide Commune with Nature naturally allowed me to go all the way down to the ocean floor, and all of that stuff was painted into the Map.
That included things like, oh, underwater dens and settlements of aquatic races... or big bare spaces where no Divinations were possible, which also kind of stood out. So did larger raiding parties of supernatural entities, like, oh, eel-folk, who had demonic ties and influences that the Land definitely considered unnatural.
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There was a raiding party of a couple hundred of them approaching southern India, and we diverted over to right on top of them.
They were three hundred feet down, and certainly didn’t expect volleys of Aqueous Shards to come streaking down from above and do the loop-de-loop circuit through all of them, slaughtering them all and starting them burning en vivus down in the deep.
Briggs was already making plans for me to map the oceans so we could find out where the sahaug and Deep Ones were holed up, and wondering if we could borrow some nukes to do the job. As they’d slowly done something similar on Terra-Luna, that didn’t surprise me at all. I was well aware of Briggs’ loathing for hostile aquatic races, especially Dagonic creatures of all kinds.
In the game, we’d never been allowed to try and track invading aquatic creatures back to underwater bases and cities, instead having to put up with regular invasions and the like. Briggs simply wasn’t going to put up with that shit in a real-world setting.
I didn’t have an issue with it. There were things we wanted to get rid of, and needed to get rid of, before the Shroud was lifted. Once the Shroud came up and the eyes of the dark powers turned this way, most of the competition better be dead, or we were going to be having problems.
That was part of what I was going to be doing. With vivus and the Double Helix method, the stage was set for a lot of post-Sixes and maybe-Tens to start coming into the world, avoiding and ignoring the suppressive effect of the Shroud. That foundation should be enough to deal with random surprises, but if they had high-Level people already here who could really start bringing in powerful shite, well, something had to be done about that.
I was going to be that something, so finding them and killing them was definitely one of the things I was going to be doing.
It went on The List. My List was not short, but Gutting all Cultivators in the Following Lands was at least coming along nicely.
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Ceylon was occupied by Buddhists or slaves to the Buddhists, and they weren’t happy to see us arrive, being fat and happy collecting their toll of meridian-bearing humans, brainwashing the rest, and either subjugating or killing any Powered who were born. It seemed they had problems with aquatic attacks on multiple fronts, being fairly isolated out here and having no naval presence to speak of, but the Buddhists were, generally speaking, more than capable of wiping out any aquatic invaders with their united front, Mantra power, and unshakeable morale.
Creatures still came out of the sea, but the aquatic races liked to send monsters or stuff here, or raid the normal humans fast and run away before the Buddhists could respond properly, forcing them to stretch their forces out and guard the perimeter areas of the island wherever people dwelled or villages could just vanish overnight, dragged into the sea by slimy hands and scaled claws... or needled teeth and suckers, it was all one.
Was this going to cripple the island’s defenses? Yes. Were the people going to have to retreat inland? Yes. Were they going to have to learn to defend themselves? Yes.
There were more volunteers to help with that, starting with Shvaughn, who had pretty much maxed out the numbers of Warlocks she could get going up in China, so she came down here to start selling all the various Pacts that could be found in this area, getting in touch with the local Spirits, and generally keeping her Windwise persona going and making herself beloved and famous for what she was doing.
From there, once the Arsehat brought in to rule this place was disposed of with prejudice and a good headlopping. Then it was back to Thailand, and down the Malay Penninsula, letting the Buddhists there know we hadn’t forgotten about them, and that they could run, but they couldn’t hide.
Master Fred was now absolutely and fully capable of being Very Impressive and recruiting Landbound and Citybound, as well as various River, Mountain, and even Forestbound, if need be, although he was leery on the latter and restricted it basically to tribes who lived in the rain forests there. The Forests were better served with Druids, but the Cultivators had been taking all their Powered... or at least, taking the ones who could not get away.
Kuala Lumpur. Singapore. Jakarta. Brunei. Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, the many Sunda Islands; Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and the Banda Islands of Indonesia. It was good I had a ninety-mile range with my Commune with Nature, so that we didn’t have to actually stop on every one of the thousands of small islands in the South Pacific... but we had to stop at a bunch of them, and basically every single coastal community.
Brunei and Indonesia ended up being contested hot spots between Daoists and Buddhists, fighting over people and Powered prey, spreading Qi and trying to make new little kingdoms and Sects of their own. They were largely uninformed of the mass slaughter that had been going on with their fellows back in China and points west, and I didn’t bother to inform them of their homelands’ status before I killed them all.
Well, not all. Master Fred’s harem took a grim and savage delight in going off on both types of Cultivators, and were improving quickly.
Kalimantan was wide enough that we had to do a ride across the center of it to make sure we found all the Cultivators... which was good, as two Sects and three Temples were attempting to set up bases of operation in the interior, which we terminated with extreme prejudice. The native tribes were naturally very happy to see them die, and if I left a Permanent Illusion copy of The Human Tongue in their bases of operations just so the lingually-diverse tribes investigating the bright lights, explosions, and screams could finally get onto the same page, well, that was just me being unduly clever, or something.
Still, it all took time, with the travel there and around leaving Lived-Lines eating up more time than any actual combat.
Also, we were called back to China twice more when the Daoists got uppity and came in with larger numbers. They were not happy to see us arrive, and we took the opportunity to extend my Lived-Line into (out of?) the interior of China after some rather lethal excitement.
The Chinese were only getting stronger by the day; Sama and Briggs and the first waves were making sure of it, and the Daoists couldn’t match their growth. Shroudzones were now sources of power, and the Chinese were making patient, deadly use of them to get stronger so they could face the Cultivators, with lethal results to the pasty-skinned gits.
On the eighteenth of December, with the islands virtually cleared and our next goal going to be returning to India and proceeding west to see what was going on there, we instead headed back to Detroit and got ready for the big meeting that would really herald changes in the world.
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The next Skill Mastery I was fed after Nobility was Concentration. One Tier per day, to /5, and when I finished it, lo and awonders, my Sage of Focus Title came online.
Your ability to focus can define reality itself. All your Caster Stat bonuses apply to your Concentration check.
+56 went to +82. That was indeed a totally monstrous Skill Check number.
It also meant that Find the Flaw did 92 points of damage. I could pluck up a blade of grass and chop an aluminum baseball bat in half with it. It ALSO meant I could do what Aelryinth had, and save against a No-Save effect of Legendary power.
Very nice, very reassuring.
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Einz finished his full Intelligence upgrade to Intellect 20, Wisdom and Charisma 16. He immediately started work on his Telekinesis, his penultimate power, the one by which he’d be able to actively contribute to the world. It would take ninety days of Karma to complete.
I’d have to make some stuff he could toss around for me...
As I was accruing Meditation Tiers, Clavus finished his Indestructible upgrade, and began his Intelligence upgrade, too. That would be fifteen days, and then I’d get him on to Detect Bane at V, which would take fifty days, but be a very useful personal sensory tool that could change with whatever Baneskull he was mounted with.
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Completing Meditation/5 was the key to getting the Sage of Serenity Title, identical to Concentration from the other side. Given how many Valences and how large my Pool was, and how much larger it was going to get, a huge Meditation number was basically necessary if I wanted to get my power back with anything resembling haste.
Your ability to harmonize with the world knows no equals. You add all your Caster Stat bonuses to your Meditation Skill.
+80, taking 10, x2 from Unlocking the Skill, was 180 Pool or Valences per hour. That was a very nice place to start with, as I had 700 Valences, and 160 Points combined in my Pool...
And now it was time to return to Detroit, and shake the world in multiple ways once again...