The Power of Ten

Chapter 7-187: Such a Good Bad Time You’re Having

Well, there was nothing for it but to prepare for a really good time, and lots of intense and excitable visitors coming right to us.

Or, as The Mick put it, we were going to fight them with money. Claymore mines accentuated with Glyphs of Warding, Warding-type spells ready to go off, Stone Shaping the terrain to channel the creatures this way and that (although doubtless there would be many who ignored the terrain), and so forth and so on. Since I could excavate a whole lot of stone remarkably quickly with a Sudden Widened Dawnstopped Stone Shape V, everyone had their own pet ideas on what they wanted to see.

But first, I slowly and grandly flew up above the burning fiery Dome of power these alien wankers had made about themselves, and which they arrogantly believed could hold against our attacks. I wanted to tell them that Sama and Briggs could hack their way through it, but leaving all of them to be killed by the duo might have been asking a bit much.

I could also disrupt sections of it with a touch of Argent Savancy, but no reason to tell them that until it was entertaining on my end.

No, I flew up right to the apex of the Dome, and sat down in midair above it. Then I removed a mental barrier I’d put in place, and I reached out for the power of the Land.

Blargh! I had to fight the urge to vomit. The Dome below felt like I was sitting above a massive cancerous postule ready to pop and cover me in ugh, the revolting touch of the Qi shaking me with its viscosity. I could feel the ley line under the volcano being tapped, its power drawn up, ripped apart, and wrenched into a new and alien configuration that was currently being tapped by this Dome, while the creatures inside it drew the Qi in to accelerate their Cultivation.

I did a Very Bad Thing, but it was for all the Very Best Reasons.

I reached out, and with a superbly calloused attitude, as if the power of the Land belonged to me and only to me, tore it away for my own use, shredding and severing it from the rest of nature as I did so with the Cursed force of my will.

Two things happened. One, dozens of Druidic spells lit up on my inner Wall of Spells, finally able to be Cast as the power flowed into me. Sure, it was Fire-centered power, but I had the Blighter Parched Domain, so that wasn’t an issue. To make it clearer, the entire Blighter spell list was open to me to draw from, up through Valence III... and I had the Elemental Theurgy to promptly hybridize and merge all of them with arcane energy.

Pure Theurgy, ONE spell list. I just couldn’t do it with IV’s and V’s yet.

I couldn’t Write them all at one time, I had to Slot them to do that. But I should be able to recycle the energy here from my Wisdom bonus Slots and Domain Slots, and do so over and over, as long as I didn’t Cast from them.

That would all clearly sidestep my need to Blight to access the natural magic of the land. The back of my head was gleefully conflating spells and types on the list, taking the best of both and leveraging it for more Theurgic power.

Some magic was done better in one type of energy than another, or a Class had more insight into the function of the magic than another. Theurges could take the best of either... and sometimes, put them together!

Oh, and yes, the entire area for hundreds of feet around me was severed from the magic of the Land, and that meant the ley line, and the entire area of this little encampment below.

Its Transformation Formation shuddered as abruptly all of its fuel vanished, and left it with nothing to do. I imagined that the Cultivators monitoring it just sort of gawked.

Since it wasn’t being fed by the Formation, the protective Dome naturally had to get the energy it needed from somewhere else. It had not been pushing the Qi out while it was feeding the Dome, as there was no excess, but now it was doing the exact opposite, and I could feel the power moving in from outside, a wind of that stinking Fire Qi getting drawn into the vortex as the demands of the Dome reached out into the area and sucked all the Qi there into this area to fuel it.

There was nothing they could do about the Blighted, Cursed land they were now sitting on. The only way to get rid of the Blight was to Hallow the area, Blessing it and returning it to Nature, and Cultivators simply could not do that. They preyed on the power of the Land, they didn’t revere it or work with it.

Option #2. Energized Cold Diamonds and Sapphires in my hands for the goldweight equivs, I very happily put a Widened II Wall of Icefire around the Dome, at full Caster Level. It only took two spells to circle their entire Dome... and I anchored it to the Dome, not the ground, so if it shrank, it would bring the spell with it.

Twenty goldweight of Energized gemstones per spell. Throwing money at them, indeed. But judging by the six corpses we’d recovered, we’d make it back and a lot more from their Gear, so what did it matter? Six million dollars going once, twice, sold!

The raging Wall of Fire re-Aligned to Cold was cast at 40, as I Infused Clavus to add Sanctified Spell to it and the helpful Druidic Theurgy stacked on top. With the vivus, it was raging and tearing at the Dome of fire, doing continuous damage to it.

Forty feet high, each 5’ section taking 2-16+56 +4d6 damage or so... which was completely enough to chew through its Wall of Force, start devouring its structure, and demand more and more energy to repair the holes rapidly being eaten in its flames.

Since they couldn’t do anything about it, I also took the time to cast a Ritual Form Stillflight Field above them, which would last until my Renewal. So, no flying away. If they wanted to escape, they’d have to do it on foot... which meant going through that hungry Wall.

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The reversed flow of that thaumaturgically odoriferous Qi was being drawn past us back into the crater, swirling around that Dome in visible lines of burning energy, being drawn in and consumed to rebuild the Dome’s defenses.

Yeah, they could have lasted forever with a straight draw off the ley line. But the supremely hostile massive AoE beating at it, combined with the power draw fueling the entire massive thing, was consuming its power at a rather alarming rate, far, FAR faster than it had been spreading it into its surroundings.

Above and beyond that, the Qi had naturally been dissipating in the hostile manasphere, and absorbed by the Spirit Creatures they’d brought in, too.

All of which meant the massive area of Qi they’d brought into existence in the Firezone was now collapsing very quickly, indeed.

The biggest vector of collapse was naturally along our backtrail, where we’d vivisized everything we’d slain and basically built little islands of disruption into the coverage area of the Qi. Now the Qi was peeling away from those zones, cracks extending from one area to the next, and its pervasiveness was breaking apart rapidly.

The Spirit Creatures naturally felt the Qi flowing away, and the way it thickened and condensed as it did. Being naturally greedy for more Qi, they followed it...

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It was about two hours before the first Spirit Creatures found their way in, a flock of oversized Fire Sparrows with mean streaks.

They zipped over the caldera’s rim, swooped down towards the Dome following a thread of almost solid Fire Qi, and zoomed out over the caldera towards the near-solid vortex of Fire Qi around the Dome.

Then they hit the Stillflight Field, and with chirps and squawks of alarm, proceeded to tumble, fall, and nosedive right into the lava, plop plop plop.

Spirit creatures of fire weren’t necessarily immune to Fire, unlike true Fireborn. They went into the lava in flutters of wings and fiery feathers, and didn’t come out.

“Me chickens!” The Mick protested for all of us, naturally stirring up images of wonderfully braised fowl for everyone, and earning a chorus of sympathetic groans. “Traveler, how could you!?”josei

“You’re welcome to dive in after them and retrieve them!” I retorted blithely.

“Summon up a little Elemental to fetch them afore they char!” he immediately bandied back.

“That is a VERY bad idea when a certain someone has just Blighted a large section of the local landscape,” I replied with pursed lips.

“Oh, aye, that aura of heartless wickedness and vile ambition about ye just attracts the wrong kind of folk, I see it now,” he nodded sagely, and I gave him another amused look as I swirled three Sanctified Darts around my hand.

“I rather think that it is a wake-up call, and if you want to collect some fine dinners, perhaps you should shoot them before they reach the lava?” I returned archly.

“They were two hundred yards away!” he protested.

“Someone needs to work on their shooting eye,” I hmphed back. Being able to take the position that since he was male he was automatically wrong was quite useful in many situations, I’d noticed. Benefits of being an attractive and extremely dangerous female... more the latter than the former.

“I’m going to kill one of those fire stags, smoke it in fine steaming bubbles of holy water like Sama does, and make a ton of jerky out of it,” declared Shooter Five, and started a new discussion on recipes and things which Sama was happy to contribute cooking instructions to.

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It was another hour before the first group of landbound Beasts came in, burning cow-sized badgers rumbling into the place. They ran right into murderous Coldphasing crossfire and didn’t get very far, tough and irascible as they might be. They were swiftly deprived of their Cores, but their carcasses left to distract those coming behind.

Therein began to rapidly follow snakes, lizards, bears, wolves, great cats, rats, various sorts of large birds, stags, rhinos, bulls, pangolins, and even a remarkably quick group of massive tortoises, in addition to groups of smaller insects, arachnids, scorpions, beetles, and other vermin, both giant-size and in swarms, who came buzzing or scuttling in to join the fun.

We only set up on one of the paths going down, although we did trap the other one, and were happy enough to set them off when we could get a bunch at one time. Too, the pit traps with spikes, punji stakes, triggered springstakes, and what magical traps I bothered to set up all did their work well.

Soon enough the creatures were attacking one another, as territorialism and threats, combined with the blood and swimming sea of Qi all around, drove them basically nuts with excitement. All the dead creatures around to feast on only helped matters, and the fact we were contributing to the carnage didn’t actually earn us any extra attention, as there was too much else to do and enjoy here.

Anything that tried to fly over the lava to the Dome to enjoy the REAL Qi there went plop into the lava, and nothing made it out alive.

It was good that everyone had invested in Infinite Ammo effects or was nigh tireless, because the Spirit Creatures for the entire Zone were coming to us, and the resulting carnage did nothing but keep ramping up as time went by. Tens of thousands of square miles of territory covered by Qi were shrinking in size precipitously, and all the residents thereof were coming here.

It saved us a lot of travel time, it did.

Everyone’s favorite kill spots were the Caustic Fens areas, and the Chilling Cacophany zone I set up.

The Caustic Fens were sections of the trail that splurted up corrosive grit and fumes when trod upon; the further you went, the more damage you took. The original spell had fumes that would ignite if exposed to fire, increasing fire damage in the area.

Since it used Elemental damage, switching the acidic fumes to crystallize cold magic instead of igniting in fire was totally within the remit of Elemental Mastery.

The original Cacophany spell was Creaking, aligned to Sonic/Thunder. It set up a reverberation field that resonated in the bones of anything within it, giving them Vulnerability to Sonic damage.

Using Elemental Mastery, it was totally possible to swap that effect out with Charring, Chilling, Corrosive, or Crackling. The creatures of Fire who weren’t Vulnerable to cold now were, and those that were, it was Penetrating right into them quite badly in those areas. The lads all a-shooting were quick to take advantage of those killzones while they lasted.