The Power of Ten

Chapter 13-382: Legendary Benefits

Base 4-16 damage for lilitu claws, as deadly as a greatsword. PLUS Improved Natural Attack, PLUS Draconic Claws upgrading the base, ending up at 4-24. Normally a ki layering wouldn’t stack at all... except they’d taken the Half-Dragon Template, and crashed through the Legendary Eligibility level, just like Sama and Briggs.

Profound Demonic Natural Strike was what the Feat was called. Seven damage advances to their claw attacks. 4-28, 4-32, 4-36, 4-40, 6-45, 7-50, and 8-55. They could idly claw through steel like it was papier-mâché, and rend armor plate like tofu.

Profound Weapon carried that over to Idiot. A Heavy Weapon was a damage buff equal to Improved Natural Attack.Draconic Claw was a die advance. Idiot was already a d10 vs a d6 base, so it got two more advances over their claw attacks.

11-66, averaging 42 points of damage before any other effects. Sama couldn’t get so high as a base... yet! She had proclaimed that an Amazon Heavy-Gravity Lilitu was totally cheaty, and Briggs had agreed emphatically. It really was a pretty freaking awesome set of physical enhancements as you went to post-Ten, and trying to equal it with Gear was hideously pricey and would take a long time.

Briggs had hopes, but it was some time down the road. Exoskeleton support from magic Armor was a thing for high-Level Melees, and he’d definitely be getting it. It would just take literally thousands of goldweight...

But as it stood, Legion was the most dangerous melee combatant on the planet at the present time, and by far the strongest. Still impossibly huggable, bless that nereid and those sirines with appetites for drowned souls...

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Sleipner actually pulled to a stop on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, edges of jungle lowlands and rolling, old mountains all around us, just so we could see this better.

There were sixteen different dimensional Rifts tucked away here and there on the landscape. Not all of them led to the same places, either, and those that did weren’t necessarily close together inside, either.

In addition to a bunch of mappers recording everything for posterity (including two Hollow World connections that still weren’t the ones Professor Shellington had used!), there were a couple thousand eyes studying this scene, and a lot of heads shaking at yet another set of mysteries opening up that had to be explored, concealed from the rest of the world for so long.

To accent all that, the Felldeep of Africa drifting past in the Commune was just as vast and involved as that in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Whatever else it was, this Shrouded Earth had a lot more shit in it by default than Luna-Terra had. It meant a lot more could go wrong, too.

Pure random distribution meant that the larger Shroudzones were extremely unlikely to intersect with the Felldeep, and weren’t anywhere near hidden realms like these. That said, I didn’t have everything mapped out yet, so the odds that at least one Shroudzone wasn’t intersecting with the Felldeep was small... which meant that area would have to be purged to kill that Shroudzone.

We’d know if the surface of the world cleared and the Shroudzone didn’t go away... but that meant sending forces into the Felldeep, always a shitty job. Nobody in their right mind wanted to go into such places.

We also didn’t know what was behind each of these places, although if the rumors were correct, it was more areas with time-lost inhabitants, primitive creatures, and ancient cultures ignoring the rest of the world in their safe little habitats.

Not so safe under the Shroud, and probably very well-guarded right about now, I considered.josei

“There are probably a lot more, aren’t there?” Legion asked softly.

“Darkest Africa, Deepest Africa, and Deepest, Darkest Africa,” I replied in mock dramatic fashion. “Whole worlds of wonder waiting to be discovered by modern peoples! Who knows what knowledge and riches might be found by the lucky and determined?!”

“Ah, yes. No doubt motivated by all the best intentions for the natives, of course,” Legion agreed firmly.

“Your faith in the higher morals of humanity is very reaffirming.”

“Humanity does not have a good record of exploration and first contact. Motivations for such things are usually centered in exploitation.”

“There is a redeeming factor in that far too many of these time-lost cultures seem to be centered in the worship of Old Gods and the reprehensible traditions that go hand-in-hand with them.”

“Ah, yes, crusades. Another fine and inspiring example from history. We all love our religious wars.”

I gasped. “And this from a Heavenbound in good standing? Say it isn’t so!”

“Heavenbound fight fights. Wars we leave for even greater idiots than we are. Our wars have basically been a series of endless skirmishes. It is non-Heavenbound who go to war, and the forces that compel them are very rarely from Heaven.”

“You’ve got too many history lessons from the other side. It makes it much less fun...”

“Queen Rayet had a great, great deal of fun corrupting the jihads and crusades and other religious conflicts, not to mention the seduction of the Catholic Church’s leaders. She received a remarkable amount of help from the Illuminati and the Magi, too.”

“Religions without active benevolent Powers behind them will always have problems stemming from the mortal elements.” I could only shake my head. “It really does take a Divine nature to stay on course for an extended period, and it’s not helped when even deities can change over time, or at least be perceived that way.”

“The Aruan Pantheon’s non-species centered origins should help with that, right?” Legion asked. “Queen Rayet is very aware of many, many other gods and other Powers out there...”

“Can she verify if there are alternate worlds where Earth’s mythological deities exist? Terra-Luna never got a straight answer from that. It seems Earth’s basic timeline was well outside the realm of Aru. This Shrouded Earth is much closer to magic than theirs.”

Legion frowned. “We can’t recall any true mentions of Asgardians, Olympians, Hindus, or Native Americans, such as they are, unless they are related to Old Gods, who are basically demigods and such, and so provincial in nature they are basically ignored unless you have to intrude on their domains. However, the Chinese gods seem to have names interwoven with Cultivators, and certainly their Divine Realm does not seem to be something located in any normal multiversal context, and so might be located Outside Creation.

“But Pantheon limits and the boundaries of Demonium are affected by such things. The numbers are infinite, after all,” she clarified. “Given the scope of things, even knowing all the Demon Princes and various Kings and Queens is basically impossible, even for a lilitu. Relationships between demonic Realms are acrimonious at best...”

“The Chinese gods were often elevated mortals in their tales, so that makes perfect sense.” It was the Cultivator Way, after all. They wouldn’t be able to endure Inside Creation, so they would have to go Outside it, trying to make their own realm there, idealized for them, but every bit as imperfect and flawed as they were, doubtless constantly raiding Creation for vital energy and warring against the other forces Outside Creation who just saw them as snacks. Given they had the same attitude, it was a match made in mutual bloodbaths, doubtless.

So, there might be realms out there with the gods of humanity... and what interesting places those would be, as the stories made it plain the gods considered themselves basically above most standards of mortal behavior. Who wanted to put up with their shenanigans when you weren’t strong enough to fight back?

Well, not my problem, unless the Shroud went there and I got dumped there, and then we’d see what a bunch of puffed-up demigod-level entities would do beneath it.

“Oh, I forgot to ask. Have you been able to take any of the Legendary Crafting Feats?”

Having two people capable of Crafting Legendary Items was going to be very key, given how long it might take Briggs and Sama to get there... and the planet was likely to lose one of them if Commander Haru’Ara got reassigned when the Shroud went down.

“Taking on the Half-Dragon Template worked as you surmised, giving us a virtua plus-four to our Level cap. However, the limitations are now on Skill Rank totals and actual Attack Bonuses, and similar things,” they answered.

“Oh, wonderful. So, you have to take more Class Levels to get the Ranks to get to 21, and be eligible for the Feats.” And that meant acquiring them at the cost of a Seventeen, doubled for being an Amazon.

“There is a workaround.” I lifted an eyebrow. “The Cohort still acquires Ranks and Levels at their Levels, doubled cost for being an Amazon... but they are eligible for anything we are.”

I narrowed my eyes thoughtfully. “They don’t have the Stats to justify Ranks that high. They’d need a 31.”

“Not those using Human Racial Levels,” they replied smugly.

I blinked. “Well! Well, well, well.” There were no Stat requirements on Human Racial Levels! “You don’t qualify as a Human, or even a half-human, anymore. How are you managing it?”

“The Cohort is still human on a mental level, and the Levels they have been taking are all outside the paradigm of our Skills. The early ones used Class Levels and cannot do this, but the later ones have no such difficulties, and so have been using their Skills to complement and stack on top of what we have gained elsewhere. We began swapping the core Skills gained from Lilitu Levels back and forth for their other non-Essential Skills in exchange.”

Every Lilitu Racial Level was 8 skill points, plus their Intellect bonus, with an accrual cap of 17 Ranks pre-Template. Their Attack Bonus stopped at +17, however. Human Levels gained six skill points, so just one Human Level would be enough to get a Skill to 21 Ranks.

“That is excellent news,” I had to admit. “Have you gotten any Skills there yet?”

They nodded. “Maria got Flight to 21, and Legendary Flyer. Selena has raised our Faith to 21, and Bastion of Faith.” They smiled widely, a truly saintly expression on a demonically beautiful face, and their Heavenbound Pact pulsed under their skin in acknowledgement. “Trudi has taken Spellcraft to 21, and Sage of Magic.” Trudi helped run the TK from their Ring, so that was appropriate. “Lillabelle is urgently trying to raise our Song and Dance Perform to 21. We wish to sing the Sublime Chord with you!”

“Ohhhhh, sweet!” Non-spellcasting spellcasting via the Songs of the Chord! Given how tightly constricted their Sorcery was... “I can see you’re holding back, though...”

They sighed. It’s really hard to lie to someone with a telepathic link to you, even if you are suddenly higher Level than them. “There was great insistence on the social skills from the demonic side...”

I inclined my head. Sense Motive/Insight, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Bluff, and...

I started to smile. They couldn’t help it, and a smile tugged at the corner of perfectly sexy lips, too.

“So, who was the lucky one for the Profession: Courtesan?” I purred knowingly, holding back my laughter.