The Power of Ten

Chapter 7-188: Charnel Charcoal Pit

I always had stuff to shoot, given the range I could plink stuff at, and salvoes of Darts were reaching out constantly at range, sometimes split up, sometimes as a Ray, Chained, or Split, whatever was needed to inflict maximum carnage.

I was judicious and spare on using up Slots, as there were a bunch of Cultivators trapped on the island right over there who needed to die. I wasn’t sure if they realized what a pickle they were in, as they simply watched the carnage from afar, as if it didn’t matter to them what was happening.

I found that pretty funny, but just kept up with my zapping and Chaining, while the lads all concentrated on finishing stuff, and Sama, Briggs, Master Fred, and the Mick focused on keeping violent personal attention focused on themselves and their Fast-Healing Health.

This was a big, big nom-nom Karma harvest, and even if we couldn’t quite get to looting everything properly, it was a slaughter with a lot of threats coming from all directions, forcing everyone to stay on their toes at all times. Burning frozen shots were going off constantly, Guns were roaring, flaming Spirit beasts were bellowing and dying, and Karmic Hauls were spiking nicely.

A shindig like this was plenty enough to get someone to Ten, given the size and danger level of all the creatures we were butchering. By unspoken agreement, Sama and Briggs had the Shooters working with them, while The Mick, Sir Pellier, Helix, Father Bower, and Master Fred were focused with me, with Master Fred and The Mick drawing attention while the rest of us did fire support.

Given my range, I had absolutely no problem supporting Sama and Briggs, either, and so anything big coming in got softened up hard before it could reach them.

The most popular Buff I was handing out was Arrowflight.

This was a ten-minute Buff that doubled the base damage of ranged weapon fire. Everyone shooting had Profound Weapons, so they were all doing 3-21 or 4-24 base damage already, and doubling that meant their shotguns and rifles hit like cannons. It was designed for use in mass combat, but mass slaughter was certainly worth using it on, and when particularly large numbers of creatures came in, it was easy to drop it on them, and immediately double every shooter’s damage output, to murderous results.

It was a common spell to be Sieged, given you constantly wanted it up in a battlefield situation, but that was another Rep Count thing...

I Summoned up a Mass Phantom Servants, Shaped up some obsidian knives and lots of jars for them, and set them to carving out the Cores of the dead and collecting blood and hearts, since we were way too busy to do so ourselves. Sleipner’s side car was getting full, and the contents had to be Itemized repeatedly, such a horrible situation to have...

The carnage and killing frenzy was affecting the Qi, making the incoming creatures even crazier, while to us it simply stank even worse. They raged against one another, then realized tasty magic-using folk were over here, came our way for a delightful meal, and ended up power comps and stuff.

Vivus was soon blazing everywhere, and warring trails of burning blood, black volcanic rock, and vivisized whiteness were crawling and competing everywhere. There were mounds of large bodies everywhere, frozen, shattered, burning, hacked, shot, sliced, and chopped. Phantasmal figures were crawling over the dead, jars of blood were being carted away on Disks into a cave over there, and our haul was getting more and more massive.

Alas, we couldn’t keep all the meat... which didn’t mean I didn’t keep large amounts from here and there, label them clearly, and bundle them up for transport, la la la. Sama and Briggs gave me knowing smirks at that behavior, as it was only in keeping with a proper Power of Ten gamer to Loot Everything, and a Summoner marshalling an army of Disks and Servants was like the perfect means to do so!

Higher Tier Servants could also be imbued with Skill Ranks, and while they weren’t as good as pure Butchery, someone’s Heal, Survival, and Alchemy Ranks could all be used to speed up harvesting of the dead, too, for the rare moments of downtime

I was spending more Valences on our loot than on our killing. Given that everyone else was also killing, that was par for the course.

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“Calling it!” Briggs announced, as Endure came down, and a tiger the size of an elephant, its chest already bearing a dark circle of hoarfrost from a passing Dartray, found its massive head getting slammed to the bloody, burning black ground in midleap by a Hammer moving way too fast for something that heavy. “It’s time to go!”

Sama’s reply was a whole lot of swearing, and she leapt into a bunch of meter-long crimson ants, looking totally annoyed that her fun was being interrupted. Bits and pieces of chopped insects exploded in all directions as her Cleave Train tore through them, and their swarming tactics just resulted in the whole mass of them dying explosively before they realized they should be fleeing instead of fighting.

The Shooters backed away to our treasure cave, while Phantasmal Servants bundled up jars and Exsanguinating Tubes, others hastily carved the last of the Cores out of the bigger dead things they hadn’t gotten to, and I started nonstop shooting Vivic Darts all over the place to really clean the place up.

The incoming Qi was making the vivus really blaze up, consuming it even faster as it devoured the Qi-heavy corpses, and exacerbating the nasty situation the Cultivators had found themselves in. Whole sections of the incoming Qi flows were instead being converted back into hostile mana, flowing into the ground outside their harvesting Formation, helping strangle and isolate it even more.

It was some really Good work, if I did say so myself.

Everyone pulled back, covering for one another, the torrent of fire never letting up. Chainrays arced every which way, finishing shots doing their job afterwards as we pulled into the cave.

“Sama and I are going to stay here,” Briggs announced, and nobody really said anything to that. They were both Sustained, and as the vivus was cleaning heaps of blood and gore off of them even now, they both looked excited, hale, and ready to go for another twelve hours.

“We’ll be back at Dusk Renewal. I put a Seal up on the rim. If there’s any problems, you go up there and I can pull you out, and that’s where we’ll insert when we return.”

Sama glanced at the Holo as she sent a Sharding out to smoothly remove the head of an incoming eight-foot scarlet mantis from its neck. “Got it!”

Unless something huge came up, that wasn’t going to happen, and if something huge came up, they were just going to run like hell, probably to a much more distant evac point.

Valences burned as Tapestries reduced loot to a wall hanging, stacks of jars and bundles of body parts became Itemized scrolls, and then I Mass Reduced everyone here, swept them all up into my Teleport, and we were out of there.

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This warehouse space was even bigger, and underground. I’d excavated it with permission of the Hall in a new area, given it a unique Seal that was easy to Energize for accuracy, and we materialized in the place with a swirl of motion along my Lived-Line, ending up a thousand miles away precisely and safely.

“Whoa!” the nearest Priestess said, stepping back at the stench rising from us.

“That’s what raw Fire Qi smells like to Powered,” I spoke up, as the others hastily separated their half-size forms from around me, spread out, and I released the shrinking effect, zipping them back up to full size. “Take a whiff, everyone. This is the kind of stuff that Cultivators want to turn the whole world into.”

Yeah, Cultivators probably thought it smelled like ambrosia. The faces around me coming up to take a whiff didn’t agree at all, the revulsion absolute in everyone’s eyes.

“Alright, let’s get cracking!” I looked at my nigh-empty Sorcery Slots, reflected how much money we were going to be making, and glanced at The Mick, whose suit was once again spotless. For all that he liked their blood, raw Qi smelled even worse to him, and he’d lost no time cleaning up. “It’s time to make some money!”

Cheers and grins broke out everywhere as I brought up a whole lot of Disks to move stuff around on, and then began to break everything out of its alternate forms.

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Everyone was off and snoring or Deep Meditating. It had been one heck of a day for them.

The Shooters all wanted to be Sustained, so they’d only need two hours of downtime. They needed to be Forsaken with Vajras for that, and were urgently cycling through the last of their Runechemist or Runesmith Theurgic Helix-pattern Leveling before bumping them with the core Levels, then Racial Levels, so they could reach Ten. Only a few days now, and they’d step into Forsaken and a whole new world.

They had all the Karma they basically needed to do it now, and could basically sit back and just let it happen.

Of course, that left all that sweet Naming Karma laying on the table, and better Gear waited for no man. Why spend their shares of the loot on Weapon goldweight when they could get it for nothing?

The feeling of getting stronger was addictive. They all wanted it.

Qi-laden blood was burning all over the Halls right now, subbing for goldweight... as were some Cultivator’s Weapons. Death Ward Amulets were high on the priority list, and 28 goldweight for each one didn’t just make itself...josei

The Shooters’ destiny was to lead teams of their own, being the point men in helping others break Six, become Forsaken, and help the world get stronger. There were many nations, organizations, and people going crazy trying to Level correctly, get their hands on vivic Weaponry, and put final ends to the Shroudzones.

It didn’t matter, as it wasn’t something that could happen overnight.

It would take me hours to recharge my Valences, which was wonderful yet unwelcome. I didn’t like wasting time throwing my mind out there and pulling in mana to recharge my Valences. Sure, it was mentally refreshing, and an okay way to spend two hours of downtime... any more than that, and I was wasting being Sustained.

I did have Name Theurgy, and could use that to pull energy out of eldritch entities and greatly speed up my mana renewal. If I had a Warlock Pact, that would have been ideal. Aelryinth, for all his hundreds of Valences, could generally get them all back in an hour with his Heavenbound Pact, and definitely in two.

The only entities I would be able to contact would be in the Shroud, and I wasn’t dipping into that cold mess of desperate souls while I was still sane... or a lot stronger.

Fortunately, I was in the center of the largest collection of Warlocks on the planet, and one of them had basically become my personal retainer and henchman.

Showing Master Fred how to purify his energy for me and allow me to pull it directly off him to supplement my mana draw wasn’t too hard. I could only do three Valences a minute, a mere tithe of his output... but that was 180 Valences an hour added to my own direct production.

This was all necessary because my Mana, Ki, and Arcana all took time for me to regain, and the latter two were significantly slower than Mana. Alternate means to regain them were going to be important, so I couldn’t waste time with pure Mana. Happily, sacrificing Valences to Arcana was a possibility, but while Arcana and Ki mixed, one didn’t replace the other, I could merely use them for one another. The pools of energy were still different...

Regardless, it looked like I was going to need to have a Warlock around to help me with Valence expenditures.

He inquired if this technique could be used by others, and I informed him it was one of the abilities associated with Pact Magic Theurgic Classes. Any Caster who took the Theurgies could use a friendly Warlock’s help to do the same.

There was nobody on the whole planet who had the same problem with Valences that I did right now, and my problem was only going to get worse as my Sorcerer Levels filled up and I surpassed Ten... and my Stats rose.

As they say, it was a good problem to have... but now I had an Allegiance to run, coordinating the use or sale of the things we’d recovered, and a lot of usage there would be. Add all that onto the new spells everyone was clamoring for, and the goldweight was coming in, and it was getting burned...