Chapter 5-144: A Question of the Heavens

Sama rolled her eyes, tugged up her shirt, and displayed the set of Marks spaced evenly around her killer waist and abs. Nymphs, succubi queens, and sirines got together and made a Rantha Hag, indeed... No, no, all the boys weren’t suddenly looking in this direction and imagining putting their hands on that...

She transferred the Intellect Mark to her palm, held it out to me. I turned my shoulder, and she slapped it on.

There was a catalytic popping of eldritch energy, and whatever pure energy was used to empower what had formerly been a Demonic Boost was infused into the Tat there.

Eight days to power up to the first tier, assuming I earned some Karma to feed it... and then it started glowing a soft white and grey.

I turned a critical eye on it as the incoming energy shifted, and the nature of it.

Sama noticed the oddity as well. “That’s not empowering correctly. Not Slotless and Typeless?” she asked calmly.

“Still Slotless.” I flicked up Detect Magic, and examined the nature of the energy that was fading, but still present. “Sacred bonus... it’s stealing energy from my Shroudborn Ur-link and investing it as Divine energy...”

“Well, that should save you some time, then.” Down to five days, probably. And my Favored by Faith would proc off it, too...

The original Succubi bonus was Profane, anti-Sacred, so this wasn’t totally unexpected.

I dug out five more golden plates with symbols familiar to her on them, and she just laughed softly as she saw them. She took them and pressed them to the Marks around her hips, and they glittered softly as they actualized.

“How’d you get a Mark to stick on The Mick?” I had to ask. No way a basic Tat-Mark of hers could stick on a Powered.

“Carved it into his nasal cavity.” She opened her mouth, and golden light glittered at the end of her tongue. That damn thing could extend to six feet long, and punch right though someone’s head, according to her Stat block. “Longest kiss he’s ever had,” she winked at me.

“Given how old he is, that’s something!” I bopped knuckles with her, and we shared a grin. “I’m probably going to get him to swear to me at some time. That cool with you?”

She just waved her hand. “I can’t use the Allegiance system, so knock yourself out. Powered should be with Powered, in the end.”

It was true, and Primos and Forsaken were best led by their own... and Sources drove the world as Powered manipulated (destroyed?) things. Working together, we became a nigh-irresistible force. In competition, we self-destructed...

“So, what was Sama’s relationship to the Aelryinth you came from?” Sama asked archly.

“Basically, she and Briggs headed up his Forsaken military forces, and she used her Marks to train a lot of people in skills they needed to survive in a magical world. Most people considered her the most dangerous woman on the planet,” I informed her calmly.

She sort of frowned. “She was your Vassal?” she exclaimed. “To Aelryinth? The Ringlord who couldn’t make another Ring?”

I just smirked at her slightly. “You’re not remembering things properly. What was the biggest thing contributing to Sama Rantha becoming The Tip of the Spear?”

“I was the toughest damn bitch in the game!” she answered firmly.

“Because?...” I prodded.

She opened her mouth, shut it, and thought about the reply. “Because I found the secret to getting a Vajra.” I made a ‘go on’ gesture. “And I got Sustained...” she trailed off.

“And who was the first person in the game to become Sustained?” I went on.

She pursed her lips in sudden shock. “Oh, shit...” Her eyes got really wide after a moment. “There’s no damn way he quit the game as a Nine after that long...”

“No, he was an unranked Ten,” I admitted.

“Fuuuuck. I don’t wanna ask. I don’t. Shit! How Deep?...”

“M.”

“M,” she repeated, staring at me blankly. “And then magic came, and he was suddenly a Rank M Deep Ten in real life from mundania...”

“Pretty much.”

“So... how the Hells was he only a Fifteen?” she demanded. “That Deep... nobody could possibly have rivalled him!”

“He had to share the Karma of saving the world with a hundred thousand other people.”

Her mouth opened, closed again. “Well, then, that would sure take a bit longer to get somewhere, wouldn’t it?” she asked rhetorically, blinking a few times.

“And they did such a good job, the major threats to the population were all gone, and the new ones coming in were best handled by lower Levels also eager for the Karma. Gaining Levels came from basically Quest Awards. Plus, when you’re feeding that many Classes, well, it’s the exact opposite of Ironskulling.”

“Okay, that pain I’m feeling,” she admitted. She looked south, towards our target. “Well, we don’t have to share Shroudzones with quite that many people, so don’t take them all before I can join in.”

I drew out the spare Amulet I’d made for her, and tossed it to her. She caught it, looked at it, and grinned. She waved it at me and said, “Good, now I don’t have to put up with you taking all the kills when you’re around!”

“Says the woman who can run a thirty-meter Cleave Train?” I rolled my eyes, poo-pooing her. “Tell me the next one. I know what you’re capable of, you old hag.”

She gave me all eight canines. “It is good that you know! Come on, let’s blow this popsicle stand. I’ve got me some Imprusar temples to be burning down with Mah Fuzzy.”

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Present time, almost a day later...

For some reason, the Dark Bishop coming in didn’t want to get in control range of us. That said, it did send out a couple dozen Congregants to shoot Negalances of hate lightning, pyreflame, soulchill, sanguine acid, and death screams out our way.

Topaz was on that job, and the Congregants shooting them Went Away suddenly and violently, along with pretty much everything around them. Naturally, the Bishop didn’t mind spending the Congregants, as it would just get them back tomorrow, right?

I had a lot of ki and mana in my conjoined pool, and I kept bringing the Slots back for use again so that I had them ready when it tried another rush of incorps at us. It tried a wave for the first bunch, and I blew that one apart with two salvoes.

The second one came from all directions, and I had to wait until they had less than sixty feet between them to let off my first salvo. That was fine, as they ran head on into Master Fred’s Wall of Fire raging up to completely encircle us. Those who tried to charge through it died instantly, and those who paused just outside the burning of the flames became a burning torus of vivic flames seconds later when my second set of Shards went off.

Just to let the Dark Bishop way over there realize how much I liked this, I salvaged the energy and recycled it to send directly at him a thousand meters over thataway. My Shards themselves were a couple hundred meters short... but a wave of thirteen Chained arcs advancing in full twenty-meter jumps twenty times through his packed undead was more than enough to cover the remaining distance, and it blew right through him and his personal cohort of higher-order undead.

I didn’t kill any of them, but I’m sure they enjoyed the 60-point shots to the face, nonetheless, tossing them in all directions as Toppeling blew them off their feet. Of course, in the next second, a wall of burning lead from the GAR came ripping through that crowd with a life of its own, and yes, there were explosions of vivus there among the elite undead as they ate a lot of Wrathfire to the face repeatedly.

We also finally ran into some undead who could use guns, and first tried to snipe us down, and then bury us in gunfire.

Unfortunately for them, we really did have better eyes than they did in this situation, and I noticed the undead with guns pretty quickly. Also, everybody could Dodge Missiles and Rays, and instinctively avoided the Deadeyes trying to shoot us without even realizing it. Also, their guns couldn’t breach Topaz’s Ward Walls.

Ki was a very useful thing against missile ambushes...

Said Deadeyes only got one shot each, and then dual Dartrays came driving in behind their cover to end them brightly. As for the group of gunners, some of them actually got their decaying rifles to their shoulders before the Dartrays blew through them and wiped them out in swathes, their corroded old guns losing their necroic attunement as their owners died, falling to rust and scraps with them.

There were too many undead to kill them all, or make it to the Dark Bishop to repeat what we’d done earlier, but that was fine. This was about Karma Harvesting, after all.

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The Dawn came. Natural Renewal blew across the land, including the Shroudzone. Out here in the open, exposed on so much of the landscape painted white by vivus, the undead burned away like leaves in the wind, wooshing out of existence as the Curse of the Sun swept them away, back into the embrace of the Shroud, to be resurrected come the evening.

But more than three hundred thousand of their compatriots would not!

Sighing in relief, guns went down, and the men and woman with me gasped in relief that it was finally over.

“Well done. We might have killed almost a tenth of their weakest members!” I said in an encouraging tone.

Doleful eyes turned my way, and I smiled widely. “Now we’ve a certain temple to visit. Everybody do their second investments on their Weapons, please, and prepare for some serious Meditation. They are going to have people coming out this way to investigate exactly what is going on, and we are going to have to kill them.

“Sleipner, find us some cover.”

The unicorn obligingly directed our path towards a hill nearby, and subtle folds in it that could shield us from those looking for us...

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The ravens were pretty conspicuous here. No natural animals would dwell in a Shroudzone, even at the periphery, so they were either unnatural or in service to something else.

Happily, they were moving in a flock, which meant when my Dartray smashed into them, the whole flock went up in flames as the arcing Chains tore them apart. The Holy magic was active, so there was evil magic involved with them... possibly fiendish bloodline, or mutation by Warlock powers involved.

Of course, that would just draw in searchers, like a big alarm fire in the sky. That was fine, as we were waiting for them.

Or rather, Topaz and I were.

An hour of Meditation had been enough to do what I needed, which was basically get my ki and mana for my Pool back. I had half my active Slots, but if I had my Pool, I could replace most of the spells.

Topaz, of course, had nothing to worry about as far as fatigue went, naturally Sustained with five Pacts. What was coming was the reason she was out here, after all, and she was looking forwards to the hunters and stalkers coming out here after us.

That being said, she wanted to talk to me...