Every building I could see from the hillside was aflame. All the vehicles, in driveways and roads, were burning freely, twisted and warped by the heat.

A lavastone hit my shoulder like a sling bullet, bounced off my Vajra. I swore. If I'd been a normal person, that would have shattered my collarbone.

There was work I was going to have to do, which meant I should get prepped for it.

I looked down at myself.

It was about then that I noticed my pants were ready to fall off, and only grabbing them with my Vajra was keeping them from dropping to my ankles. The band of my underwear was completely gone, meaning the cloth was only staying there for the same reason. When my legs, these legs, had regrown, they'd naturally poked out the folded ends of my jeans.

I had toes again! HEE! I wiggled them in the ash and grit despite myself. Not the toes I'd once had, but I didn't care. I had feet! I was in Hell and I had feet! Life couldn't be that bad...

I'd been wearing a flannel shirt, standard red and black, because Montana could still get damn cold this time of year. It actually fit pretty well.

I patted my chest. True to game, nothing there. Annis hagchildren didn't develop mammary glands, so, no breasts. All the other changed plumbing was in place, but I had no cleavage whatsoever.

So, fix the pants!

In game, I had Craft/Weaver and Profession/Tailor so I could make magical clothing. With my Vajra, I also had basically a two-inch touch-teke effect. I didn't need needles or scissors to do what needed to be done.

Versatile Unarmed Strike let my UA strikes manifest as blunt, piercing, or slashing damage. In other worlds, these fingers of mine were blades, or scissors; stilettos, or pins; clubs, or fine hammers. I could manipulate things with my soul, giving me accuracy, sensitivity, and speed that only the best of computer programs and robotics might equal… and nowhere near as flexibly.

Thousands of virtual hours of programmed experience rose up as I considered my problem. My fingers slid down my pants, following the threads precisely, removing material from my waist where needed. Without looking, simply holding the cloth together with my Vajra, I rewove the threads from the cloth into newer patterns, and stitched my pants back together around my waist, giving my underwear a new hem and fitting it properly as I did so.

The legs needed to be adjusted to stay away from my heels, so I just cut them off above my knees. With my Way of Stone, I had +5 Natural AC, meaning my skin was tougher than cowhide and my internal organs like hard rubber. The pants were for modesty, not protection. Likewise, there wasn't any non-metal footwear that I could wear that could provide the protection just my soles would, so why bother with them right now?

I adjusted my shirt to take in the waist, wondering for a minute if I should do the girl thing and let the midriff go bare. Meh. I did have to cut the arms shorter. I was a Melee, and didn't need long sleeves that could be grabbed easily.

I had a chiseled gut a body builder might envy, ladyabs and all that. My muscles were both hard and elastic, and yet didn't bulge like might be expected. I was an annis hagchild. As I got stronger, I got harder, not huger. So, despite being in world-class physical condition strengthwise, I actually wasn't that developed from a size standpoint, looking long and lean instead.

I was also at least fifty pounds heavier than someone would expect looking at me...

I'd never have to worry about wearing a bra. There was literally nothing there.

I shook my head, let my long blond hair spill reassuringly, seductively back down my neck. With a thought, my Vajra began to weave it together into braids. It would never get into my eyes unless I wanted it to, and anyone trying to grab it was going to open themselves to a slicing attack from my Vajra, or just watch it slip through their fingers like quicksilver.

Yeah, I could have big hair in a fight, for real, and even turn it into a weapon. It fell all the way to my waist, and I could flare it away from my face and hold it there like the world's best perm.

Clean it perfectly with my Vajra, too. No bed head for me!

My wardrobe modifications took less then five minutes. I could stitch as fast as a sewing machine, and more accurately. I exchanged the belt I'd been wearing for the cross-belts that held my Scabbard, looping one through my jeans and letting the other halves fall lower as I held my Sword, now waiting at the small of my back.

Another burning pumice stone smacked off my leg. I looked that way, and blinked.

That had been thrown...

The guilty creature was a Fire Elemental of some sort, looking like some sort of rough clay monkeyish thing with a warped face made out of semi-molten stone. It was standing about a hundred feet away, and had pitched a red-hot rock at me.

Magman? Planar Lore Ranks clicked and whirred...

Over the trees came streaking some eagle-sized avians, wings all of flame, tails trailing smoke. They saw me, and without an instant's hesitation, dove at me.

Aaaaand now we go right into combat. Wow, that did NOT take long. Like it was all planned encounters for the end of the world and all that...

I stepped aside from a flaming rock idly, tracking it as if it were in slow motion. My body responded exactly to my desires; I could remember, could feel thousands and thousands of hours of in-game combat time, and all the preliminary training leading up to that, a false life of training and conditioning.

It was electrifying, and yet it was routine and to be expected. These bastards did not have a chance.

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I charged the magman.

He didn't have the slightest chance to flee. I covered the thirty paces to him in under two seconds. I didn't draw my Sword. I just hit him with my fist.

He exploded around the impact point, his otherwordly nature being no defense against a Null shutting the magical parts of his defenses down. I literally tore him apart and scattered him, and the magical heat nature of him evaporated quickly into rocks cooling supernaturally fast.

Idiot. I needed to start feeding Naming Karma into my Sword. Well, no problem. The incoming firehawks adjusted course and descended for my eyes.

I drew. Flick flick flick. Tingtongtingtongtingtong.

Okay, my nigh-on five kilo Sword felt almost weightless. It was Bloodbound to me, and my Vajra extended right up the entire length of it. I could literally ignore the effects of its mass and inertia as I moved it, using my soul as much as physical power. It was exactly like an extension of my hand, my self. I was humming in the metal, every fold and layer and crystalline matrix of the alloy totally visible to me.

With every motion, its unique two-tone sound echoed out, like a beat, measure, pulse. As it did, things died.

QL 29. Ehhhh. Very low for MY Sword. I was going to have to reforge this thing before long.

But the descending firehawks didn't get a chance to reevaluate their attacks. I could plot the arcs of their attacks, and my own attacks moving between them. The edge of my Blade, shrouded in ki, cut through them as if they had no substance, one became two, three, four, came around to meet the next wave.

They dove into explosions of fire, and none of them came out. I was momentarily surrounded by burning feathers and flames, and then everything charred up and became ash.

I looked in the direction they'd come from. A volcano, spitting out living things. Now that I was looking for it, I could see bits of fire in the distance that were not acting like fire, moving contrary to heat vectors. They were coming down the mountain that was spilling out lava to kill everything.

Fire elementals. That meant the presence of a planar portal. Planar portals were bad things. I was going to have to go shut that down.

It was a perfect job, made for a Null.

I eyed the burning forest between it and me, the many miles, and just smiled slightly.

Yes, let's get the fighting started. But before that…

I walked to the edge of the house, looked down into the gutted wreck of the oil furnace.

In my Trembling Domain, I could see the safe my landlord used to have in his master bedroom. Furthermore, I could see the stuff inside that safe.

Looked like my landlord was even more conservative then I expected. Didn't expect him to have a safe with gold bars and jewelry within.

Raw comps for Investing by a Runesmith.

I kicked the remnants of the wall down out of the way, and dropped down to the basement without hesitation, landing on burning wood, breaking through, and exposing one corner of the safe.

I reached down, latched on with my Vajra, and hauled three hundred pounds of steel up with one hand. Grabbing it with the other, I expediently heaved it ten feet overhead with both hands up and outside this mess, then jumped up after it just as easily.

I could really, really get used to moving this quickly and easily...

For all its size, it was a standard combination lock, and I could actually see the tumblers inside of it in my Trembling Domain. Opening it was actually quite simple. 43-27-28. I levered it open, exposing the precious metal and jewelry within.

Mmmm. Dammit. I had no Disk, nor a Masspack. It was several goldweight worth of loot, there was no way I was going to leave it.

I turned my head. The detached garage was on fire, but that wasn't going to bother me. What was inside it were a lot of tools that I could also use. At this point, all I needed was a toolbox, and I was absolutely sure that he had one.

I could make a Disk or a Masspack as soon as I had the required materials. With a proper forge and tools, I could make a Disk from base metal in just a few hours.

Hauling around a toolbox with required stuff wasn't a problem with a light carrying capacity of several hundred pounds.

Then I'd go find me a planar portal and see about cutting it shut.

--------------

I killed everything on the way.

I didn’t get tired. My Soul Essence and Ki were both over 20, which powered my Diamond Vajra. First and most important part of a Diamond Vajra was being Sustained.

Plenty of energy. No need to eat and drink. Energy Resistance at a ridiculous level, meaning I was neither hot nor cold, and wouldn’t sweat no matter how hard I exerted myself. 22 hours a day of go-go time. In-game, that had been impossible to replicate with play time, as the game didn’t let you stay in that long, especially every day.

Which meant it had opened a built-in Macro engine for those extra hours your character had that you did not. Needless to say, those of us who discovered how to be Sustained didn’t say anything about it. First rule of Macro club was not to talk about Macro club.

The Macro allowed combat actions, but those were very dangerous with me being a Forsaken. I had instead exploited it for downtime training, allowing me to accrue truly unreasonable numbers of Masteries, Feats, Skills, and the like, all quietly working/studying/training in my down time, tens of thousands of hours of that, relentless, machine-like, day after day, every day, planned out for months, years in advance...

That was who I was now, and it felt wonderful. A will like solid steel, a relentless drive to get better, more dangerous, and overcome anything in my way.

Gods, yes, I loved being this way... and these Fireborn weren’t going to like it at all.

The toolbox with my gold and some useful tools was plenty hot after being carried through burning forests, but I simply dropped it when needed… not that I needed to do so very often. I was perfectly capable of wielding Tremble, and I didn't run into anything that required more then a One Strike to kill. Even without 400k worth of goldweight stuck into my Sword, I was a Grandmaster and the Sage of Swords. I was probably better at pure use of a sword then anyone else alive.

So, I killed the things that came diving down to kill me. They generally weren't expecting me to be able to jump as high as I could, and probably thought something as cold as I was should light up and burn pretty easily. I didn't try to dissuade them, making sure I stayed cold and very visible to them because of it.

It was easier to kill them when they thought they were killing me.

The most powerful things I ran across were Large Elementals. They averaged about the size of a horse or buffalo, were made of solid fire, and were generally sitting in places enjoying the burning of large numbers of trees, atop oil or natural gas wells spewing flames into sky, or wandering around looking for interesting things to burn. They could take the forms of crude humanoids, but most often were in parodies of animals: sometimes quadrupeds, sometimes bipedal, sometimes serpentine. They could be mammalian, avian, reptilian, even amphibian in form, it made little difference.

They also never took more than two cuts to kill.

There were smaller Elementals, massing in the human range, and then ranging down to the range of dogs. There were the capering monkey-like magmen; there were winged, big-nosed, and bat-winged mephits of smoke, fire, ash, and lava, eager to destroy stuff and cause mischief, very excited to set me on fire, somewhat less so to die.

The firehawks were a constant pest, and swarms of stingfire wasps weren't fun, either. Swooping charbird flocks, emu-like fire striders spitting fireballs out; and scorchfangs, flying flame-spitting snakes, got to annoy me, too. I didn't want to call them Hell Hounds, because they didn't have the diabolic taint to them, but there were packs of pony-sized burnhounds, and landbound firedrakes winding their way through the forests, trying to find any living mortal prey to much on. Pretty much any corpse of a decent-sized animal, like a deer or bear, that I stumbled across had some burning creature sitting on it enjoying the sensation of feeding on mortal meat and bone, inhaling the smoke and turning the remains to coals and ash.

Where be fire striders, firenewts be not far behind...