He noticed me just about the time I cut between the first two rows on his left side, Tremble working with terrible singing fury.
Tremble's two-tones suddenly solidified, cutting through the noise like sonic knives. It didn't save the Salamanders. Only the ones at the front of the formation even got the chance to turn around in confusion at the source of the sound as I cut through the middle of them.
Literally. My Sword was working in figure eights as fast as I could make it, no more than a golden blur of motion as Supreme Cleaving carried me the length of their formation. I banked hard to my left, spraying lava in a wall of motion that happened to completely cover that damn prissy genie and the two shills up there on his throne. I did toss the magic Spear I'd confiscated off to the side on non-molten ground, and came in at the other set of Salamanders.
Their training said to stay close and surround a foe, which was fine by me. I dove between them, and added eshbronze spears to the number of things I cut through on my path. Metal screamed in tune with the Song of my Blade, fractured shrieks of spears cloven and their masters with them as Tremble cut them off at the waist or head. Salamanders folded or fell behind me, and the ones behind only had time to see me coming and try to thrust at me before I was past them, and the caldera and Vortex were looming ahead of me.
I shifted focus, driving my Null down along my Blade, and space began to writhe and twist, trail behind my Sword. No, space wasn't twisting… instead, twists in space were piling up around the edge of my Blade, like a breakwall thrust into the path of the incoming tide. Yes, a solid stream of Normality was coming in behind my Blade as I ran-skated out into the caldera, dipping Tremble down.
With every ding-ting note, the ripples building up in the wake of my Sword shattered, driven further and further back. I hit the edge of the Vortex, and lava exploded into the air on either side of me, exactly as if it had run into an impassable wall. The swirls were shorn apart, a wedge thrusting across them, clearing away the dimensional rupture, and the Veil was pouring after me into the rent opening I'd given it.
I skated across the instability, and tore it apart like the illusion that it was. It was shredded and unrolled, vanishing like an oil painting washed away as I clove it in two, and left behind me the churning, angry, violent, but very, very normal and predictable surface of the caldera.
I cut around in a tight arc again, throwing up that sheet of lava again with impunity, giving the now-standing efreet who was scraping semi-cooled lava off himself an idea of just how fast I was moving.
The Song of my Blade was now cutting through everything, he could hear it clearly from nearly two hundred paces away. He snatched up his shiny gildensteel burning Blade, leapt into the sky -
And quite awkwardly threw himself straight into the lava below as he failed to fly.
His consorts tittered despite themselves, flapping their wings to give themselves room and elevation, and then shrieked despite themselves as they also went tumbling backwards. Their wings were in no way strong enough to actually lift them and allow them to move around; it was the natural aeromancy built into them that enabled them to fly. In the area of a Null's Stillflight field, that magic was totally suppressed, and those wings were literally no more than clumsy adornments barely capable of supporting their own weight.
The efreet heaved himself up out of the lava, throwing crimson droplets everywhere as he bellowed his outrage at this humiliation.
It was only two hundred yards. His fiery eyes got wide as he tried to bring his Tulwar around in time to block me -
I used blunt damage, hitting him with a four-inch wide plane of force delivered from a ten-pound weapon coming in from someone moving at sixty mph.
He didn't have near the mass of the Jotuns. I hit him in the throat, crushed everything, heard the crack of his spine giving way as I combined the charge with the Mage-Slaying Stroke, and shredded whatever Wishcraft Wards and Contingencies he had upon himself at the same time as I smashed his body up and out of the lava and onto the shore.
He hadn't even hit the ground when I skipped out of the lava, traded Blooding for Mercy, and came down on the first of the succubi. She had time to scream and throw her hands up, and then I sliced through her neck and was skating for her sister demoness, who was having much the same reaction, except she managed to grab a jeweled jambiya and raise it instinctively to guard her neck.
Her slender waist wasn't any impediment, and she never came within reach of my skin, not that I was worried that she could actually cut me. I was past her, and system shock took her out as I kept going.
Okay, there was a cave over there. If this Efreet was using succubi, why content himself with just two? Without slowing down, I headed for the hole in the side of the caldera lit by Eternal Flames.
I had the surprise factor, so I had to exploit it for everything.
I'd noticed that the Efreet had nine different Damned Marks from his little pets on him, all of them now suddenly becoming inactive due to abrupt death. That would surely wake up his harem, but their first instinct to teleport away wasn't going to work at all. In addition to my Null reinforcing the Veil, the abrupt vivic-fueled collapse of the Vortex would harden the Veil here like tempering steel for hours, if not days.
Nine succubi, eh. My eyes glittered. I could do things with nine succubi. This big honking hollow soul inside of me, for instance, needed to be filled. Soulborn were a perfect raw material to do that with.
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"Wake up." I kicked her casually; the shock was enough to get her eyes to snap open. She startled to scramble away, tail coming up to flail and distract me.
I had hold of her horn, casually lifted her into the air, brought her over and down and smashed her into the stone. She had Damage Reduction; I wasn't worried about actually hurting her… casual abuse like this wouldn't even cause pain to her. It was basically foreplay.
I smacked her face into the ground, reciting the mantra of "Shut up" a few times, until she realized I was speaking to her in Demonic, and actually managed to stop screeching and shrieking and flapping her bat wings.
I lifted her head up off the ground, twisted it so she could look at my waist, where a few Demonic Marks glowed accusingly against my tan. "Recognize these?" I nodded her head for her, tilted it up at me, smiled down at her. Saw her focus on my double canines. "Now, I know you aren't stupid. You know exactly what I'm expecting from you. You furthermore know that you're going to get out of this alive if you give it to me. Furthermore, I ain't worried none at all that you're going to take things back, 'cause reasons. So, you're going to give me the last of the Marks, and then I'm going to send you back off to the Pits like the rest of your kind.
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"You got a problem with those terms, tell me now." Unwhite flames popped up along Tremble's length, and she flinched back instinctively. "Yeah, I didn't think so. I ain't talking with you. Open up, show me those stickers." Hesitantly, she opened her teeth, and canines a vampire would appreciate were revealed. "Yeah, them's the things. You're gonna need those to do the job." I glared down into her eyes, which would be rather lovely if they weren't currently blazing puke green-black. "See, I've got a really hard soul, and you're going to have to bite into it something fierce to do the job of etching that Mark onto me. Some puny little kiss isn't going to shit against me, you're going to have to make it hurt." Her eyes flickered in something akin to respect, glee, and fear at my resolve, flicking to the other Marks she could see. "Yeah, that's right, the other eight of your kind have already done their bit and are gone.
"Now git to scribing that Mark, and we can both be rid of one another." And I promptly stuck my other forearm into her open mouth with the forked tongue and perfect lips, and slammed her chin closed on my knee, hard.
It hurt, of course, but wasn't nothing I couldn't take. Her eyes rolled for a second, then I felt the negative energy pull at my soul, trying to drain my life energy. Pure instinct, she realized she shouldn't be doing it as soon as she glanced at my eyes again.
"Naw, ain't worried about your puny kiss, girl," I told her coldly, holding her head and jaw tight against my knee. "Get to work with that tongue of yours. I ain't got all godsdamned day."
With the energy of the freshly intimidated, she got to work, her tongue working around the holes she'd punched in the boundaries of my Vajra, painting the Mark onto me. This was the last of them, a +2 profane bonus on Charisma checks against members of the opposite sex. I watched it get scribed onto my Vajra with demonic energies, ignoring the pain of the vile energies infiltrating the edge of my soul and the corruption it represented. She had to etch it into me, like scoring acid onto steel, and there was no way she could break the connection without coming back down and physically erasing the Mark. As long as she lived, I'd get the bonus, and we'd have a connection.
I watched it complete and actualize, the demonic Rune the Mark represented powering up with a rush of mental and spiritual energy, bringing with it a wave of sexual dominance, energy, contempt, and raw lust.
And then I nailed her skull to my arm through the Mark with Tremble.
She was a bit surprised, clearly not expecting anything like that at all in our little win-win game of mortal greed for power. She must not have recognized the golden edge of my Soulbound Blade.
The vivic energy tore through her physical form with incredible speed… and down the hole she'd made in my Vajra, setting the Mark on fire as pure spiritual energy burnt free of demonic taint and corruption drove down into my soul. It then came circling right around back up into the Mark sitting there.
Her form on the mortal plane was ectoplasm, and went up like vivic tinder, pure spiritual energy binding random matter into a physical form. It all burned away far faster than meat and bone would, poured down into my hollow soul, and then bubbled back up into the Mark.
Naturally, if she had the energy to keep the Mark active while alive, the sum total of that energy was more than enough to keep it active when she was totally dead, and then some.
I guess she should have wondered more why the Marks I had were glowing white instead of painted black. I held firm as she burned away, body built for inspiring and satiating lusts little more than vivic fuel, dropping the remnants of her scant geniecraft attire away to fall into dust at the touch of vivic flame.
Tremble phased through my arm without harming it at all, and I sheathed it, satisfied. I pressed the glowing Mark on my forearm against my waist, transferring it over and completing the impromptu belt of Marks there.
+2 to all Stats, +10 to movement, +2 to Natural AC, +2 to Charisma checks against the opposite sex. The complete set of Marks glowed actively on my skin, but were hidden easily enough just by pulling my shirt back down.
The Efreet had probably used Wishes to allow himself to carry more than one Mark, and render himself immune to the influence of the succubi who gave them to him. The normal limit was one Mark per soul.
I was a Null and a Diamond Vajra, and us no-magic sots had souls that could be carved up and could carry more than one Mark. A master of Soul could simply treat the Marks like a variant Soul Tat, power it up with available soul energy... like the perfectly attuned energy gained from feeding it the one who'd made it.
The energy basis was now pure soul energy instead of power birthed from sin, and I flexed and felt the 40% increase in Stat effect. My head felt clearer, faster, sharper, senses more attuned, nerves calmer and smoother, stronger, quicker, tougher.
Mmm, gave a jolt to the old sex drive too, it did. I sighed, threw that matter to the back of my mind. If I had aggressions to work out, I also had a ton of work to do...
Most wonderfully, the Efreet's Sword could get Tremble all the way up to Funf… and then empty a metric crapload into Arsenal, and Slaughter. The restrictions on transfer were about going no higher than the Weapon you were replacing. Nothing said that as part of the process you couldn't add a metric ton of alternates to your Weapon...
His Tulwar was +III Keen Flaming. Barely better than a Sun Brother Weapon, but that was all I needed. I set up the Transfer Array, arranged the Karma Transfer, and shoved my Sword into whatever burning/apocalyptic/doom-filled/grandiose/I rulez excuse of a Name his Tulwar had, killed it, and Tremble ate it.
Nyar, nyar. Now, just to wipe those mephits and magmen, and this place was all mine, poisonous fumes and four hundred C’s of temperature and everything. Paradise, wot?
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Tremble’s advance to Funf would be Bane/Humans. Why? Because otherwise I'd have to kill a Human to get the Bane. It was also a perfectly acceptable draw and go Bane in case of emergency, like, oh, ambush by thieves or assassins.
Then, I could add Slaughter for basically any creature type I'd killed in the last 24 hours. That list would include Fireborn, Evilborn, Magical Humanoids, Golems, Vermin, Giants, Magical Beasts, and Dragons. Hadn't killed any undead recently, pity that, have to add them later.
50k of Karma in the Tulwar. The advance from Vier to Funf to gain Bane took 18k. The Slaughter variants would cost another 16k.
Opening an Arsenal would allow me to swap out Sharding for other Zvei-Level Runes, or for any two Einz-Level Runes in Arsenal II. The cost would be 8k for each Zvei Rune. I put in Revitalizing as a placeholder. Getting rid of any fatigue or exhaustion effects on need was one more checkmark off my list of vulnerabilities.
That left me a whole 8k for Arsenal expenses, or four Einz Arsenal Runes.
Those were used up in literally seconds. Defender, Distance, Icy, and Acidic went into my Sword as alternates. Defender could swap the enhancement bonus of my Weapon, currently at +IV with Bane set properly, to my Armor Class, giving me a defense boost if I felt I needed it. Icy would be a great damage boost against these Fireborn, and just being able to cool superheated stuff down very quickly would be useful. Acidic meant I would not have to puke on regenerating stuff again.
Distance would double the range of my Sharding to 10-yard increments, 50 yards total. My reach had just expanded dramatically!
This still left me literally dozens of Einz and Zvei grade Runes I still wanted to Arsenal, and all I could do was slowly shove Naming Karma into Tremble at this time, 1k per day. Once I got my smithing Triad in place, however,things would change very quickly.
Still, Tremble was now a Soulbound Firebane Sharding Weapon, with a nice array of Arsenal Runes to swap in and out as desired. +4/+4 +2d6 against Fireborn, a ranged attack, and options for more damage and against specific foes.
Needless to say, the efreet and Salamanders also had other loot, from the metals of the weapons they dropped, to adornments and minor magic generally only good for burning as fuel for my own Craft. The succubi had jewelry and trinkets, and the efreet had a chest stashed away in an illusion-covered cubbyhole that I carved the magic out of before cutting out the lock and shaking my head at the gold and platinum coins within. Raw mana fuel, but needs must.